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47 percent” and how out of touch it made the wealthy Republican nominee to the plight of the struggling working classes.
That was then … this is now. Instead of feeling your pain, Harry Reid stood on the Senate floor to tell millions of Americans impacted by skyrocketing premiums, incompetent administration, and policy cancellations from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act that they don’t really feel pain at all.
Related: Consumers Hit with Surprise Tax in Obamacare Premium
Democrats find themselves hammered by an avalanche of data and personal anecdotes that demonstrate the damage done by Obamacare. Instead of addressing those – which granted, would take most of the time between now and the midterm elections – the Senate Majority Leader angrily dismissed all such information as “untrue.”
"Despite all that good news,” Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday, “there's plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America.” Reid specifically referred to an ad from Americans for Prosperity featuring the case of Julie Boonstra, a leukemia patient whose new plan disrupted her ability to budget for medications.
Reid blamed the brothers who own Koch Industries and who are major contributors to AFP. He dismissed Boonstra and apparently every other horror story as just “stories made up from whole cloth, lies distorted by the Republicans to grab headlines or make political advertisements.”
Related: Ten Worst Places to Live for Obamacare
It’s true that Boonstra’s story turned into a dispute when others looked into her claims. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler gave the AFP ad two Pinocchios, noting that the premium decrease for Boonstra’s new plan (her existing plan, which she preferred, got canceled under Obamacare) added up to the out-of-pocket limit, negating her claims of extra expense. News media reported on that interpretation, and a Democratic incumbent filed a complaint with the FCC to force stations to stop airing the ad.
However, Boonstra disputes that interpretation, because while it might balance out by the end of a year, the immediate out-of-pocket expenses are much higher in the new plan – and there is no guarantee that the new plan will cover her current medication regime. In fact, they declined to do so when Boonstra tried to renew the prescription.
“I went in to have a prescription filled, thinking well it's never been a big deal,” Boonstra told The Dexter Leader. “I never gave it a thought, and now it's no longer covered.” That means she will pay the full price of the medication up front, and she can’t afford to do it – even if the insurance eventually covers the cost later in the year.
Related: Obama’s Health Care Mandate - My Whim Is My Command
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Harry Reid’s dismissal of Boonstra’s pain was entirely justified. What about the pain of Catherine Blackwood, who also lost her insurance due to Obamacare and lost coverage for her cancer medication as a result?
Her previous insurance covered Sandostatin as a treatment for her terminal carcinoid. But despite being repeatedly assured during the problem-plagued enrollment process that her new Obamacare-approved plan would cover the drug, she found out this month as she was going into surgery that her plan would not cover the drug. It costs $14,000 just since the beginning of the year, and now Blackwood will have to cover it all herself.
What about the pain of Katherine Cadman? She signed up for coverage through Covered California, expecting to have access to doctors listed for her plan on the exchange. Instead, out of 41 doctors supposedly in her network and in her area, only four were taking new Covered California patients – and only one of those was board-certified. Julia Turner made a similar discovery after selecting her Covered California plan. The only doctors who will see the San Francisco resident are clinics in the high-crime East Oakland area.
These are just the anecdotes from the last week.
Related: Obamacare Penalty - 4 Things You Don’t Know
The data looks even worse for the “don’t believe your own lying eyes” messaging strategy. When the initial rollout of Obamacare took place, the Obama administrations oft-repeated claim that the currently insured would be able to keep their plans went out the window, as insurers were forced to cancel insurance for five to six million people under now-forbidden coverage. To this day, the Obamacare exchanges have only had four million sign-ups, with as many as 20 percent of those failing to complete enrollments.
This week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated that another 11 million people with coverage from small-business group plans will see their premiums rise as a result of the law – 65 percent of all those with such coverage.
That follows a rapid rise in small-business group plan premiums that coincides with the passage and implementation of Obamacare. The year before the bill passed (2009), the National Small Business Association found that the average cost of health insurance was $590 per employee. Four years later, that average more than doubled to $1,274 per employee – a far cry from the White House promise to “bend the cost curve downward” in health care.
Related: Finally Doing Real Math on Obamacare Policies
When costs increase again, as the CBO predicts, many of those small-business employers will simply opt to dump health-insurance coverage for their employees. The workers will have to fend for themselves in the individual markets that are inflicting pain on millions of Americans already. Since most small businesses won’t be required to provide coverage, the financial incentives will all be in favor of cutting their losses.
That doesn’t take into account the tens of millions who will lose their current group insurance plans when the employer mandates come into full force, a development predicted not by Obamacare critics but by the HHS itself – nearly four years ago. “The department’s mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013” – meaning those plans will be cancelled.
Given the rapidly escalating costs for providing insurance, even the penalties for opting out of coverage for employees will not stop many from bailing out of group coverage. If so, many more will end up experiencing the same pain as Boonstra, Blackwood, Cadman, and Taylor.
Harry Reid and the Democrats can keep ignoring that pain at their own electoral peril. It’s amazing how quickly they have gone from feeling our pain to causing it, and then trying to convince us that pain doesn’t actually hurt anyone. Not even Bill Clinton can sell that nonsense.
Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:Could jokes be as effective as bombs and bullets when fighting ISIS? Following its rise to power in large swathes of Iraq and Syria, a flurry of satirical video skits, pictures and tweets have been poking fun at the Jihadi group.
A recent parody of ISIS, shot in Gaza in the end of February, mixes a mock execution and #thedress, the viral phenomenon of a white/gold or black/blue dress which has recently taken the Internet by storm. It ridicules the group’s ultra-rigorous interpretation of religious texts and its fickleness. The video itself has gone viral as well, with almost 780 shares and 1600 likes.
The use of humour to fight terror groups in not new. In 2010, the Britain-based think-tank Demos, in a report titled “The Edge of Violence: a radical approach to extremism” wrote that the media can help strip the glamour and mystique of radical organisations such as ISIS, or Al-Qaeda.
“Messaging, from a range of organisations, should stress that most al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists are in fact incompetent, narcissistic, irreligious,” it said.
There are historical precedents according to the authors: “satire has long been recognised as a powerful tool to undermine the popularity of social movements: both the Ku Klux Klan and the British Fascist party in the 1930s were seriously harmed by sustained satire.” The idea is, in short, to damage ISIS’ appeal to foreign would-be fighters with ridicule.
However, the report notes that “governments cannot be seen to satirise terrorist movements, but can offer support and information to those who might. This aspect therefore needs to come from non-government organisations and agencies.”
American comedy TV show SNL, an institution which has just celebrated its 40th year on air, has on several occasions poked fun at the Jihadi group, most recently in a skit parodying a car commercial.
If the skit’s goal was to ridicule the group’s prospective members, some of whom include teenage girls, it proved controversial for some
Media in Israel, which often finds itself a joint-target alongside ISIS in many videos originating from the Middle East, also takes a comic path with regards to the militant group. A video procuded by Israelis depicts the ski mask-wearing jihadi militants as a bunch of incompetent doofuses in a skit reminiscent of Monty Python and Borat.
ISIS, the butt of jokes on Twitter
On February 15, ISIS released a video of the execution of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya. The video finished with a warning to Europe, just across the Meditteranean Sea: “We will conquer Rome”.
Italians and Europeans quickly answered to the threat with tongue-in-cheek tweets, including travel tips for the Jihadis.
#We_Are_Coming_O_Rome When in Rome do as the romans do, so please buy some fashionable clothes & swap the jeeps for vespas! — Valeria (@ValeriaSxox) 21 Février 2015
#We_Are_Coming_O_Rome - don't let #Schettino steer your ships. He has a tendency to get too close to islands... pic.twitter.com/m5lm7GLcpq — Sara (@EthicalRobot) 20 Février 2015
For more on the hashtag #We_Are_Coming_O_Rome, look here
Japan, too, joked about ISIS when on January 19, the jihadi group released a video threatening to kill two Japanese hostages, Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa.
Japanese Twitter users jumped on the occasion and posted pictures and messages ridiculing ISIS and their members with the #ISISクソコラグランプリ hashtag, which means “ISIS crappy collage grand prix”.
Hope I'm not too late the memefest everynyan #ISISクソコラグランプリpic.twitter.com/J7cvlSAWQI — 黒人 C O L D 黒人 (@immoraldigital) 21 Janvier 2015
Read a full analysis of this satirical Twitter campaign, courtesy of Reported.ly here
Gallows humour as a coping mechanism
There is more to joking about ISIS than destroying the Jihadis’ reputation. Dark, or ‘gallows’ humour is also a way for populations who are the most exposed to the group’s violence to cope with the situation.
In “Humor: An Antidote for Terrorism”, a 2003 research article, Elaine Anne Pasquali, a nurse and cultural anthropologist, writes that “Freud (1928) described gallows humor as a type of purposeful humor that unconsciously meets one’s psychic needs by attempting to deal with morbid or tragic situations. One thereby gains a sense of mastery over them.”
In Iraq, state-run Al Iraqiya TV produced a whole show called “State of Superstition”, the whole purpose of which was to make fun of ISIS. The name of the series is a play on the words “khilafa” (“caliphate”) and “khirafa” (“superstition”) according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.
The teaser for the series pokes fun at the conspiracy theories around the origin of ISIS: an “ISIS-ling” looking like ISIS leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi, emerges from an egg laid by a women wearing a star of David around her neck, after she wed the devil, in a ceremony organised by a drunk cowboy, and attended by the Batman’s Joker, Dracula and the former first lady of Qatar. The rest of the video shows Baghdadi conducting with whips instead of a baton, a choir of millitants singing lyrics such as “Bomb to your heart’s content, you will lunch with the Prophet Muhammad.”
At the end of the video, the self-proclaim Caliph shoots everybody and then detonates his explosives belt.
“Making a comedy about [ISIS] is like trying to defuse a bomb,” said Thair Chiad, the show’s urbane writer and creator to the LA Times. “One mistake and you die.”
Coming from another region at war with ISIS, KurdSat TV broadcast last October another music video in which black-clad bearded men representing ISIS fighters are ridiculed.
They play air guitar on their kalashnikovs and sing gaudy lyrics such as “We are ISIS, were are ISIS, We milk the goat even if it is male,” according to the translation provided by the (controversial ) NEMRI.
Quoting previous works on the topic, Pasquali, who taught at New York state’s Adelphi University, adds that “laughing at death and tragedy helps people cope with the underlying psychological pain associated with the tragedy.” ISIS satire does not have to deal only with ISIS’ crimes, as the Middle East is rich in tragic situations.
This become clear in this Palestinian skit broadcast on June 29, 2014, making it one of the earlier examples of ISIS satire. The video manages to mock ISIS, neighbouring Arab countries and Israel.
In the video, three ISIS gunmen arrest various people at a checkpoint and demand if they are true Muslims. If not, they execute them off camera.
At one point, the video, to lampoon ISIS’ zealotry and obsession with holy texts, shows one of the gunmen asking one of the passers-by: “How many times does the letter “a” appear in the Al-Bukhari Hadith Compilation?”. And the passer-by to answer: “Ummm… Just shoot me.”cryptogon.com news – analysis – conspiracies
July 29th, 2010
This astonishing statistic is mentioned in the audio feature on the page linked below.
Via: PRI:
The term we were looking for is “Forward Operating Base” or FOB. The US has many FOBs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The large ones have many tents and other structures where personnel live and work. And all of them need to be heated in the winter, and cooled in the summer. That can take a lot of fuel.
Steve Anderson is a retired Brigadier General who was General David Petraeus’s chief logistician in Iraq. He says the Pentagon should find ways to make structures at FOBs and other military compounds more energy efficient, not only to save money and be greener, but also, to save lives.
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U.S. President Barack Obama has more than 19.5 million fake Twitter followers.
Analysis:
Circulating messages and few news articles as well report that the U.S. President Barack Obama has more than 19.5 million fake Twitter followers who do not correspond to real people. Yes, it is a fact!
It is a common practice for celebrities, politicians, start-up companies, aspiring rock stars, and anybody looking for fame and much social media presence to buy large blocks of Twitter followers. There are many websites and services that sell Twitter followers by the thousands, and even Facebook likes and YouTube views.
This practice has become so widespread that StatusPeople.com, a social media management company has a Web tool called the ‘Fake Follower Check’ that it says can show up how many fake followers you and your friends have. In a related article on The New York Times published in August 2012, it was reported that the Fake Follower Check web tool had shown that 70 percent of President Obama’s nearly 19 million followers are fake. Again, in September 2013, mail Online (dailymail.co.uk) talked about the same tool saying 53 per cent of Obama’s 36.9 million Twitter followers – or 19.5 million – are fake. It also published a list of U.S. politicians with many fake followers, which you can see in Image Gallery. As of this writing, when we checked using the same tool, President Barack Obama had 59% fake, 31% inactive and only 10% good Twitter followers.
Rob Waller, a founder of StatusPeople, said that the tool examines Twitter relationships, “Fake accounts tend to follow a lot of people but have few followers. We then combine that with a few other metrics to confirm the account is fake.”
So if the tool is accurate, as of this writing, President Obama has more than 23 million fake Twitter followers in his 39 million plus followers. However, it should be noted that Obama’s Twitter account is run by Organizing for Action (OFA), a nonprofit organization which advocates for the agenda of the U.S. President. When contacted to reply on these messages about fake Twitter followers, mail Online reported that the White House did not respond.
The social network presence has become a status symbol. Perhaps.
Hoax or Fact:
Fact.MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- Rich Rodriguez could barely get the words out. He paused. He shook his head. He looked down at the table in front of him, as if searching for a way to describe how West Virginia let its chance at a national title slip away.
Eventually the Mountaineers' coach came up with this.
"It was just a nightmare," he said. "The whole thing was a nightmare."
In a season defined by upsets, the second-ranked Mountaineers became the latest to be felled by the curse of No. 2, falling to their fierce rival Pittsburgh 13-9 Saturday night.
A win away from playing for the national championship, the Mountaineers (10-2, 5-2 Big East) were expected to roll over rival Pittsburgh (5-7, 3-4) in the 100th Brackyard Brawl on their way to New Orleans for the Bowl Championship Series title game.
No way. Not in this unpredictable season, when nothing has gone according to plan and upsets have become so frequent the word itself has almost lost its meaning.
Pitt, which had lost four of the last five to West Virginia and allowed 45 points to the Mountaineers in each of the last two games in the series, celebrated the biggest victory of coach Dave Wannstedt's three lackluster seasons.
"I remember walking off the field two years ago at halftime saying that we needed to run faster," said Wannstedt, who received a three-year contract extension on Friday. "Today, we ran faster."
The Pitt coach improved to 16-19 and repaid the university for its show of faith with a BCS-busting victory
"It's exciting to know people believe in you, even after a difficult season," said Wannstedt, who like Rodriguez is coaching his alma mater.
No. 2 had already lost six times this season, five times to unranked teams. In a year when Appalachian State beat Michigan and 41-point underdog Stanford beat Southern California, West Virginia losing as a four-touchdown favorite probably shouldn't even be all that shocking.
Especially after the Mountaineers lost Heisman Trophy contender Pat White to a dislocated thumb in the second quarter. White tried to play in the fourth quarter, but he couldn't put together a comeback.
"I just wanted to help the team as much as I can," White said. "It was killing me sitting on the sidelines."
When Pitt punter Dave Brytus ran out of the end zone for a safety on the final clock-killing play, West Virginia, a program that has won more games then any other in major college football without winning a national title, was done.
WVU Fans sat stone faced. The Panthers did some dancing on the WV logo at midfield. Some West Virginia players took offense and there was a push or two. Most of the Mountaineers just trudged off slowly.
"If we would have lost every game this season and won this game, my season is a success," Pitt offensive lineman Mike McGlynn said. "They were going to try to get their team into the national championship. They tried. It didn't happen."
Sitting at home in Columbus, Ohio, the Buckeyes got the last upset they needed to get themselves back in the national title game.
In fact, they got it twice. No. 1 Missouri lost in the Big 12 championship game 38-17 to No. 9 Oklahoma, making the BCS a total mess heading into selection Sunday.
Almost a month ago, Ohio State was No. 1 and in control of the Bowl Championship Series title race when it lost at home 28-21 to Illinois. The Buckeyes beat Michigan a week later to lock up the Big Ten then watched week after week as the other contenders went down.
They needed one more to fall Saturday and West Virginia was first to oblige.
Today the Mountaineers will have to be content with their second BCS bid in the last three seasons and a trip to the Orange or Sugar bowls.
"We picked a bad time to play our worst game offensively in years," Rodriguez said.
The Mountaineers' struggled offensively even before White went out. They squandered two scoring opportunities in the first quarter, missing short field goals, and finished with a season-low 183 yards and only nine first downs. That's usually a good quarter for West Virginia, which came in averaging 310 yards rushing and 42 points.
"It was just frustrating we weren't able to put the ball in the end zone," said White, who had run for over 100 yards in each of his last four games. "It hurts, but everything happens for a reason."
LeSean McCoy was the star. The Pitt freshman ran for 148 yards on a tough 38 carries. Pat Bostick scored the only touchdown for Pitt on a 1-yard quarterback sneak to make it 10-7 in the third quarter.
White ran for 41 yards, and was 5-for-10 passing for 50 yards. He was supposed to be done for the night after dislocating his thumb in the second quarter, but reappeared in the fourth, taking snaps on the sideline after Conor Lee's 18-yard field goal made it 13-7 with 6:17 left.
The scene was set for a Hollywood ending and Noel Devine gave a lifeless and cold crowd a reason to cheer when he broke a 48-yard kick return to set West Virginia up at the Pitt 33.
White couldn't even lead the Mountaineers to a first down. Steve Slaton was stopped on a fourth-and-2.
Pitt couldn't keep the ball. McCoy scooted around the corner for a first down on third-and-long, but a late flag for holding wiped it out and gave the Mountaineers and White one more shot.
White hit Darius Reynaud for 17 yards to the 33, then he did what he does best, darting for 12 yards to the 21.
That drive died too, with White overthrowing a receiver in the end zone on fourth-and-long on West Virginia's final offensive play.
"Pat White is a champion," said backup quarterback Jarrett Brown, who ran 6 yards for the Mountaineers' only touchdown in the second quarter, capping the drive in which White was injured while being tackled at the line of scrimmage. "Everybody is hurt from it, but he is a champion and he will bounce back from it."
White and Slaton are both juniors and could very well be back to make another run next year. As for this season, the Mountaineers are left to wonder how it got away.
"It will be a long month," Rodriguez said, "but hopefully we can bounce back."For years the Broncos and Denver have been interested in hosting a Super Bowl or NFL draft to put the city on a national stage. And they’re hopeful they’ll get to do so soon.
Broncos president and CEO Joe Ellis told The Denver Post on Saturday that the team has submitted an application to the league to try to host the 2020 draft, and that if Denver is not selected for that year, they will “absolutely” try for 2021, 2022 or 2023.
“The draft is something we’d really like to see accomplished,” Ellis said. “I think it’d be nice for Mr. B (owner Pat Bowlen), to know that the city he’s witnessed tremendous support from in terms of what they’ve done for the Broncos and how important the Broncos are to people and how important football is people.
“We’ve put in an application for 2020 and that may or may not come to fruition depending on how the league feels about when they’re going to honor 100th season. … We believe it would be a great thing for the city, a great thing for Colorado, a great thing for this Rocky Mountain region. It would draw a lot of people and would be a really fun event.”
Ellis said he’s already had discussions with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his staff about Denver’s interest in hosting and said that “if we put the right package together we have an excellent chance.”
Though the Broncos had looked into submitting bids for earlier drafts, they faced scheduling issues with events at the convention center, where draft night would likely take place.
The Broncos will likely face the same hurdles in future years because of Denver’s growth and popularity as a site for hosting conventions. But as NFL drafts morph into city-wide festivals, the league has gotten creative with venues and Denver could use Philadelphia’s 2017 model to work around potential conflicts.
Instead of hosting the latest draft inside one of Philadelphia’s historical venues or its convention center, the NFL created a 3,000-seat theater on the steps of the Museum of Art. The city attracted a record 250,000 people to its streets for the three-day event.
The Broncos are also interested in hosting a Super Bowl, but remain realistic about their odds of landing one.
“The sense that I get is that the (NFL) committee tasked with guiding ownership to the pool of candidates for Super Bowls is less than enthusiastic about cold-weather sites,” Ellis said. “It appears after New York (Super Bowl XLVIII) they’re not in a hurry to do that again. And one day in Denver in February it’ll be 60 degrees and sunny, and the next day it’ll be snowing.
“Now, if the league were to open up the game to cold-weather sites without a dome, we would definitely want it. And I think Visit Denver and the mayor expressed interest in trying to throw our hat in the ring.”Fewer and fewer technology startups are going public, and when they do go public, it’s after they’ve raised enormous amounts of capital from private investors to whom they often give attractive financial protections should things go south.
A report from Ernst & Young analyzing the Q4 IPO market offers some compelling reasons for why this “multitrack financing” model has become increasingly popular, and why it has lasting power. But first, the final numbers on tech IPOs in 2015:
“Technology IPOs on U.S. exchanges were 47 percent lower in 2015 by deal number, and 27 percent lower by proceeds [excluding Alibaba] compared to 2014, raising only $8.1 billion through IPOs, compared with an estimated $20 billion through private offerings in the first six months alone.”*
Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson and Fortune’s Dan Primack have pointed out that this decline in public offerings was brought about by SEC rule changes from the mid-2000s that made it a lot easier to raise significant amounts of money in the private market. The authors of the EY report believe that this model of financing is going to stick around, because both startups and investors seem to like it better than the old rush-to-IPO strategy during the dot-com era.
From EY:
IPOs generally take at least two years to plan, but access to private capital is much quicker, enabling companies that need to scale rapidly with the chance to lock in the funding they need to generate competitive advantage sooner. Other factors in favor of alternative capital include the narrowing of the valuation gap between public and private capital (i.e. the difference between market valuation at IPO and at last rounds of fundraising prior to IPO), which makes it harder to achieve and sustain the first-day pop.
What the report calls “the narrowing of the valuation gap between public and private capital,” you might more easily recognize as the recent downswing in private valuations of high-flying multi-billion dollar startups like Snapchat and Zenefits. Wilson and Primack argue that as more big private equity players like Fidelity and BlackRock (whose investments are semi-public) come into the picture, we’ll see more of the up-and-down valuations of Zenefits-like startups that you’d otherwise expect from the public market (although probably much more subdued).
On the whole, the global IPO market appears to be relatively healthy. Predictably, the biggest growth area going into 2016 will be in Asian markets where the Chinese central bank’s loose monetary policy will have the biggest impact. The whole report is filled with handsome-looking charts and a lot of numbers you can use to impress your family with at Christmas dinner.
You can read the full thing below:
EY Global IPO Trends Q4 2015
* We’ve made some slight grammar and punctuation edits for clarity.Data collected from your smartphone is shaping the future of marketing -- and cell phone companies are cashing in.
What your phone knows about you -- where you are, what you're searching for and what you like -- is mouthwatering for advertisers. Combined with other third-party data, including your age and salary range, marketers are using cell phone customers' information to make decisions about how they advertise.
Though all four major carriers sell their customers' smartphone data, Verizon's (VZ) year-old Precision Market Insights program is the farthest-reaching. Here's how the Precision program works, according to Verizon spokeswoman Debi Lewis:
When you sign up for Verizon service, you agree to let the company use your location, Web searches, app usage and other data for its Precision Marketing Insights program (you can later opt out). Verizon sends that data to an internal database, matching it up with a deep trove of demographic information about you from companies including data giant Experian. The data are stripped of any personally identifying information, aggregated into categories and are placed into reports for Precision customers to use.
The one-two combination of phone activity and personal demographic information paint a revealing portrait of subscribers' habits for marketers.
Related story: Find out what Big Data knows about you (it may be very wrong)
Maybe you're the owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team (a Precision Insights customer), and you're interested in the types of people who go to the US Airways Center for a game. How many of them have attended your team's games in the past? Do they make enough money to think about buying a season ticket? During the game, are fans ages 25-55 searching for restaurants near the stadium?
Or maybe you're more interested in what happens after the game. Do most attendees get on the train, or do they catch a cab? Do male fans tend to head to a particular local bar for a post-game drink?
Verizon's Precision reports can offer answers for those previously unanswerable questions.
Using Precision, the Suns determined its fans tend to be tech-savvy travel enthusiasts with a household income of $50,000 or more. About 22% of the crowd for Suns games in March were out-of-towners, and 13% of spring training attendees also went to a Suns game. Verizon says Precision helped the Suns gained a 35% "lift" in identifying people who might buy season tickets.
Verizon shared sample Precision reports with CNNMoney that show marketers can look at a variety of data, including moviegoers or people who attended a "pop star concert" based on their income, age range, ethnicity, primary language and even whether children are living in the household. A "heat map" shows where those customers are located. Marketers can also choose from among 800 "attributes" -- including both mobile data and demographic information -- to define a target group they're looking for, such as "young professionals."
The Suns are among a "few dozen large brands" that have partnered with Precision, according to Verizon.
Related story: What your zip code reveals about you
AT&T (T) and T-Mobile (TMUS) told CNNMoney they sell anonymized and aggregated data, but they would not comment in more detail about those services. Sprint (S)declined to comment for this story.
The fact that the carriers' programs are based on the sharing of deeply personal details can be unsettling to customers. Lewis, the Verizon spokeswoman, stressed that the data can't be traced back to an individual, and that subscribers have the ability to opt out of sharing their data.
One privacy expert says that isn't enough. Peter Eckersley, the technology projects director of the digital rights advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation, thinks the data being shared are too valuable for carriers to share without active approval from users.
"The default setting is for you to share information that reveals incredibly intimate details of your life: where you go to church, which nightclubs you frequent, where you fall asleep every night," Eckersley said. "The fact that you have to actively opt out of something like this is ludicrous."
Concerns aside, the reality is that the sale of customers' personal data is an increasingly lucrative business across all sorts of industries. Credit card companies, junk mailers and loads of other marketers have long used anonymized data to make money.
Now, technology is changing the business of big data -- and Verizon and others are harnessing tech to make customers' information even more valuable.Yup. Vegan food porn at its finest. I give you, snickers banana icecream. A delicious blend of peanut butter nicecream layered and topped with chocolate sauce and a date caramel.
Ingredients:
3 frozen bananas
Cupful of ice
2 tbsp powdered peanut butter
2 Tbsp cocoa powder + 3-4 TBSP water (watch out as too much can make it too thin, add in slowly)
Date caramel (Recipe below)
Directions:
1. Make your nicecream by blending up your frozen bananas, powdered peanut butter, and ice in a high speed blender.
2. Pour into a mason jar in spoonfuls, intermittently layering with drizzle of your chocolate and caramel sauce.
3. Finally, top with the rest of your chocolate and caramel sauces. Optional: add in some crushed peanuts to complete the Snickers texture!
Date Caramel:
Handful of Dates
Water
Directions:
1. Soak your dates overnight in a jar filled with water.
2. Blend up your dates and slowly add in the left over water (already flavored from the dates) until a thinner and smooth consistency forms.
AdvertisementsWhen the Union-Pearson Express goes into service next year, Toronto’s newest train will be pushing uphill against brutal economics. The ticket price — which hasn’t yet been announced but is expected to be more than $15 one way — must compete against cab fares and parking fees. If you’re a business person travelling alone and staying downtown, the math makes sense. If you’re on holiday with a family of four, not so much. Strangely, Metrolinx last week revealed that the case for riding the UP Express just became even more daunting due to a $2 ticket surcharge that will flow to the Greater Toronto Airports Authority for lost parking revenue.
The $29-billion infrastructure fund for transit and transportation announced by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals won’t include a single dollar of revenue that might have hit drivers at the gas pump and encouraged them to take transit. ( Dick Loek / Toronto Star file photo )
The decision is perverse: with a creaky business case, the $456-million UP Express doesn’t need to be encumbered by disincentives and operating shortfalls. More broadly, the parties to this silly deal seem to have forgotten the environmental case for a service meant to take cars off the highways and ease gridlock. But the surcharge agreement reveals a more worrisome blind spot in the way Queen’s Park has been thinking about its massive investments in transit. Public spending on such infrastructure is a necessary step in the battle against congestion and emissions, yet it is far from sufficient. New transit lines need to be convenient and cost-effective relative to other options. But despite years of warnings by transportation economists, Queen’s Park has no overarching financial strategy to encourage drivers to shift to transit as a more affordable alternative — a gaping policy void that the UP Express surcharge story confirms.
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Consider the evidence: the $29-billion infrastructure fund announced by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals won’t include a single dollar of revenue that might have hit drivers at the gas pump, despite the fact that both Metrolinx and Anne Golden’s transit investment panel last year urged the government to hike gas taxes. Gas taxes are an effective form of road pricing, and they tend to be less politically divisive than tolls. With both, the revenue raised is less important from a policy perspective than the economic signals such levies send to drivers. Yet for more than a generation, successive Ontario governments — Tories and Liberals alike — have refused to take advantage of this policy lever. According to Kim Jarvi, an economist with the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, the provincial gas tax rate — 14.7 cents/litre — has remained unchanged since 1992. George H.W. Bush was president, Brian Mulroney was prime minister, and “911” didn’t yet have a sinister second meaning. In the 22 years since, gas prices have tripled, while the effectiveness of Ontario’s gas excise tax as a road pricing tool has plummeted. In 1992, Jarvi says, it accounted for almost 30 per cent of a litre of gas. Today, that figure has fallen to 11 per cent. Jarvi is hardly alone in his critique: an International Monetary Fund study released in July concluded that Canada’s gas taxes are among the lowest in the developed world, and should be hiked to 55 cents/litre to “discourage overuse of environmentally harmful energy products” (in Ontario, federal and provincial gas taxes account for 24.7 cents/litre).
Gas taxes aren’t the only means of influencing driver behaviour. A new study by Virginia Tech researchers on the commuting habits of 4,600 people in Washington, D.C., concluded that when employers offer workers free parking, that perk proves decisive in commuter transportation choices, even if they also have access to transit. The implication: if governments want to influence commuter behaviour, employer-provided parking needs to be treated as a taxable benefit. Politicians are fearful of such moves, for all the obvious reasons. But what the Ontario government has failed to articulate is the long-term cost to taxpayers of underwriting the operating losses of inadequately used transit lines.
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Wynne convinced voters to back her plan to spend $15 billion on GTHA transit projects, such as two-way/all-day service on the GO network. What she hasn’t yet done is lay out the consequences if that massive level of investment fails to attract sufficient riders |
work with stakeholders to bolster pro-bono services to increase legal assistance to lower-income defendants.
Community Interaction: Pappas says a bigger community presence can help “restore faith in the justice system.” Wants to use his role as a judge to mediate minor disputes that might not necessitate court proceedings “while still following the judicial code of ethics and maintaining independence.”
Landlord-Tenant Disputes: Says district judges can play an important role in housing disputes since landlords tend to have the upper hand in eviction cases. Would apply more leniency to vulnerable populations facing eviction, like single mothers, seniors, and addicts in recovery.
Friends and Supporters: Endorsed by the Pittsburgh chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Nina Turner, of grassroots progressive group Our Revolution, said in a press release endorsing Pappas: “The best way to end mass incarceration and expedite criminal-justice reform is to elect justices at the local level that are committed to positive change.”INTRODUCTION
In the world of strength training, ‘frequency’ is defined as how often you perform something. In more specific terms, I define frequency as the number of times per week a particular lift is performed. Frequency can vary from 0/week to 7/week. Meaning you can perform a certain lift as little as 0 times per week or as often as 7 times per week. For the purpose of this article, we will consider only one training session per day, even though some athletes may use multiple sessions per day.
Strength training has an odd way of repeating itself throughout time and each time a new ‘style’ of training comes around, it’s often mistaken for a new, groundbreaking technique. In reality, there has been nothing ‘sparkling new’ about training methods in quite some time, and there will likely never be. There are only so many ways to use volume, reps, frequency, speed, and intensity in training that over the years, every different combination has been tried. 30 years ago, it seemed that ultra-high frequency was setting the European weightlifters apart from the rest of the world. They were performing competition movements up to 7 times per week. A few years later most of the American strongmen and powerlifters that my generation looks up to like Ed Coan and Kaz, used a linear periodization utilizing progressively lower reps and higher weight performing major movements once per week. When I first began paying attention to the powerlifting world in the 2000’s, Westside, or the Conjugate Method seemed to be the most popular method. Max effort was prioritized and speed and band work became popular. Now I look at where I have seen the trend moving in the past few years, particularly with the growing popularity of raw lifting, more and more lifters seem to be utilizing a higher frequency protocol. More raw lifters are modelling their training after Olympic programs rather than the conjugate method that produced so many strong equipped lifters.
The purpose of this article is not to blindly state the best frequency to use as a lifter, just to guide someone to understand the pros and cons of varying frequency and how to experiment and implement changes into your training.
QUESTION THE STATUS QUO
When I began programming and training on my own, I followed the traditional Western Periodization of performing the lifts once per week, and over a cycle reducing the reps and increasing the weight, while putting a lot of emphasis on non-compound assistance work. I began to question ‘why does everyone only have one day a week for squat, bench and deadlift?’ I figured it was out of convenience. The American week is based around the Monday through Friday workweek and this probably allowed lifters and crews to have a set schedule. Squats, Bench Presses, and Deadlifts were at the same time and day every week. Then I thought that if gaining strength was the primary goal, maybe 1/week wasn’t ideal, it was just convenient.
The science of gaining strength and size is simple on the surface. 1. Break the muscles down in the gym. 2. Recover from nutrition and rest. 3. Muscles heal and grow to be stronger from the induced stress. 4. Repeat. Over weeks, months, and years this repetitive process develops the body. Well if you were to focus on the bench press and only performing it once per week, this entire cycle covered a week. What if you now benched twice a week and could still recover from session to session; would you make the same gains in 6 months that you otherwise would have in a year? What if you bench pressed 4 times per week, would you now make the same gains in 3 months that you would have in a year? Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work like this, but adjusting your frequency correctly can lead to quicker improvement.
PROS AND CONS
Training with a higher frequency than you are right now may or may not be right for you. However, over my training life I have come to believe that training at the maximum possible frequency is best. ‘Maximum possible’ does NOT mean to go 7/week. It simply means, training with the highest frequency that your body will allow. This means you still need to recover from session to session and not overtrain. For some lifters this may mean 2 sessions/month of a certain lift. For others it could be 30 sessions/month. It takes time to fine tune what is best for you and your body.
PROS:
1 More practice: Perfecting technique and efficient movement patterns are a huge part of moving maximum weight. Simply said – the more frequently you perform a lift, the better your technique will become.
2 Competition-like: Having a dedicated day for only one lift is not applicable when it comes to meet day where you have to perform three lifts. If you train doing more than one of the main competition movements per day, it resembles a meet more and you are more likely to hit in the meet what you believe you are capable of your gym performance.Feeling healthier: I don’t have any scientific data to prove this, but when I began training competition lifts multiple times per week, my body actually began to feel healthier in terms of joints and nagging injuries. I have spoken to numerous lifters who echo this feeling.Allows for higher volume: Increasing frequency is one easy way to also increase your total training volume.
3 More flexible training: If you miss a workout, it’s easier to make it up the next day. When you are used to having fewer rest days in between sessions, your recovery becomes better. Always training on lower rest prepares you when you may need to train multiple days in a row.
4 Better supercompensation: Again, I have no scientific data to back this up, but when I began training with a higher frequency and would taper going into a meet, I felt that my supercompensation at the meet was drastically higher. This is likely due to constantly training at a higher threshold so when you back off and recover before the meet, you REALLY recover.
5 More specific ‘assistance’: Say you are going to do 3 deadlift sessions/week. This means you can perform 3 very specific variations as ‘assistance’ as opposed to doing rows or other back work. One of the most common questions I see are ‘how do I experiment with switching to sumo deadlift’. These frequent and specific training sessions can allow you to put an emphasis on both. One day can be a high priority sumo deadlift, and conventional on another day. So instead of performing heavy conventional deadlifts, then going right into sumo deadlifts in a fatigued state, you can perform them fresh on different days and practice new technique without being pre-exhausted.
6 Still use your old methods: If you utilize any combination of max effort, speed work, or repetition work, you can manipulate these around to increase your frequency. Instead of alternating weeks of each method, you can try to perform each in the same week as it’s own session.
CONS:
1 Overtraining: By increasing the frequency of training sessions, there is also a higher risk of overtraining. It will take careful monitoring to make sure you stay under the overtraining threshold.
2 Lower training weight: By performing the lifts multiple times per week, you won’t have as much recovery time between sessions as with lower frequency. And this holds true for a whole training cycle. It can be an ego check but you simply won’t handle the heavy, PR weights every week. The eye needs to be on the prize though and realize that PRs can come in meets.
3 Higher injury risk: Even though this is contradictory to what was listed above, injuries can happen when you perform compound movements. So naturally, the more often you perform a compound movement the more likely an injury can occur. It is the same as driving a car many miles – the longer you drive, the higher the chance of an accident. This can be mitigated by choosing proper training weights and not sacrificing form.
4 Inconvenience: If you train with a crew of lifters, it can dampen the atmosphere and make it hard for everyone to train together. If everyone hits heavy squats on Monday night, it may not fit your program for that day and take away from some of the team atmosphere.
5 Equipment: Performing the competition lifts with a high frequency means you will spend a significant amount more time in the power rack as opposed to being on machines or dumbells. This can pose a problem at some gyms.
6 Time: Generally, spending more time performing heavy compound movements will add to the total time you spend in the gym for a training session.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT:
Even though the theme of this article is to suggest higher frequency training is better all else being equal, does not mean you should jump right into a high frequency program and start squatting 7 times per week. Increasing the frequency should be a gradual process to avoid injury and accommodate the body to the stress. Think about setting your frequency like you set your windshield wiper speed. If the wipes are too frequent, it gets in the way and the wipers are working too hard. If the frequency is too little, not enough work is being done to keep the windshield clean. It takes some fine tuning going back and forth to find just the right frequency. Furthermore, the same frequency for one lift does not mean it is the best for another lift. Some lifters may find that they can squat and bench more frequently, but not deadlift. Currently in my training I have found that bench pressing 4 heavy sessions per week is right for me, but less frequency in the squat and deadlift.
Start slowly by adding one extra session per week, and allow it to stabilize for a few weeks. Keep kicking it up until you feel that you reach a point you cannot recover anymore. I found it took a good 4-5 weeks for my body to adapt and that during the first few weeks, everything felt painful, slow, and weak. But once I hit my stride after week 5 I could really feel it. If you feel you can’t recover after increasing the frequency, back down. You may find that you can tolerate significantly more sessions per week, or you may find that your current program is just right.
The biggest teaching point is understanding the weight will be less and that you cannot let it mess with your head. If you are used to hitting one big set of 5 reps on bench press every week, you won’t be able to hit that same weight every time if you start bench pressing multiple times per week. Train in a sub-maximal mindset, and you will compete in a supra-maximal body. Practice the lifts and aim for perfect technique. Also, give yourself plenty of time in between meets to experiment around with your frequency.
One more remark about the use of higher frequency training relates to the training experience of the athlete. The more advanced a lifter is, the more specific and frequent their training needs to be. The newer a lifter is, the more they can get away with. A brand new lifter will certainly get stronger in the squat by squatting once a month and performing leg extensions, leg curls, and jumps as accessory work. However, an experienced lifter will require more frequency and specific movements to continue to improve.
CONCLUSION:
The only absolute in strength training is that there are no absolutes. Not everybody will benefit from training at a higher frequency, but it is worth it to experiment for yourself. There are world class lifters who train competition lifts 1-2 times per month, and others that train 31 times per month. There are infinite ways for somebody to get stronger, but you need to find the right way for you. I encourage lifters to find the highest frequency they can train with while still being able to recover while staying healthy and motivated to move big weight.The Catalan Government first announced its controversial plans to control the wearing of burqas and other face-covering attire in public spaces "for reasons of public safety" in 2013.
The move had nothing to do with religion and would also see the public wearing of garments including helmets and masks banned, Ramon Espadaler, Interior Minister for Catalonia, announced at the time.
On Thursday, Espadaler said the Catalan government would the begin of process of getting the bill approved in the regional parliament after the summer 2014 recess, Spain's Cuatro TV channel reported.
The recent EU ruling that France's ban on full-face veils like the burqa and the niqab in public was legal had opened up a "new perspective" on the proposed law in Catalonia, said the minister responding to a question in the Catalan parliament.
This meant the region could now leglisate against such face covering from a human rights perspective as well from a safety angle, Espadaler said.
The minister also pointed out the Catalan government wanted to legislate on the issue because previous attempts to do so by individual Catalan towns had been thwarted by Spain's courts.
Spain's Supreme Court in March 2013 annulled previous burqa bans introduced by a number of municipalities, including Lleida in western Catalonia, on the grounds that local authorities do not have the jurisdiction to regulate fundamental rights.
In that ruling, the court also said that the council in the mid-sized Catalan town had contravened the European Convention on Human Rights, originally signed back in 1950.
Burqas, which cover the face completely and incorporate a mesh screen to see through, are rarely seen in Catalonia. The niqab, another traditional Muslim garment, covers the face but leaves the eyes visible.
In Catalonia, as in the rest of Spain and most Western countries, both the niqab and the burqa are much less commonly worn than the hijab, a square headscarf which does not cover the face at all.Erri De Luca has been named the winner of the 2016 Bad Sex in Fiction Award during a ceremony in London. The renown Italian author, poet and translator won the award for the following passage in his work, The Day Before Happiness:
“My prick was a plank stuck to her stomach. With a swerve of her hips, she turned me over and I was on top of her. She opened her legs, pulled up her dress and, holding my hips over her, pushed my prick against her opening. I was her plaything, which she moved around. Our sexes were ready, poised in expectation, barely touching each other: ballet dancers hovering en pointe. She pushed on my hips, an order that thrust me in. I entered her. Not only my prick, but the whole of me entered her, into her guts, into her darkness, eyes wide open, seeing nothing. My whole body had gone inside her. I went in with her thrusts and stayed still. While I got used to the quiet and the pulsing of my blood in my ears and nose, she pushed me out a little, then in again. She did it again and again, holding me with force and moving me to the rhythm of the surf. She wiggled her breasts beneath my hands and intensified the pushing. I went in up to my groin and came out almost entirely. My body was her gearstick.”
Described in some quarters as “the writer of the decade”, De Luca was unable to attend and his publisher at Allen Lane accepted the prize on his behalf.
The Italian beat fellow authors Janet Ellis, Tom Connolly, Ethan Canin, Robert Seethaler, and Gayle Forman. All of the nominated extracts for this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award can be read here.
Every year since 1993, the Literary Review, which founded the award, has honoured an author who has produced an outstandingly bad scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel. The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction, and to discourage them. Last year’s winner was Morrissey for the following passage in his book ‘The List of the Lost’:
“At this, Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.”
Past winners have included literary giants including Tm Wolfe and Sebastian Faulks. You can read the winning extracts of all the past award winners in our full compendium of bad sex in fiction.
How Erri De Luca feels about having their name and extract added to the list remains to be seen. Previous winners Wolfe and Morrissey have both expressed vague dismay at winning the prize, with Morrissey describing it as “a repulsive horror” and Wolfe claiming the judges just didn’t understand irony.
Perhaps all the winners should simply have thought a bit more about how not to write about sex in fiction.
AdvertisementsHoney has been used for centuries for its healing properties and sweet flavor. Honey is much sweeter than table sugar and is better for you. When possible, it’s best to buy locally grown, organic, raw honey that's produced by bees in or near the environment you live. Consuming foods from the area you live is beneficial as they contain the immune stimulating properties needed for your body to adapt to its environment.
Fresh, raw honey is also tastier and more potent. When you buy from local independent farmers, you help your local economy.
Health Benefits of Honey
As a healing remedy, raw honey can address multiple issues. There are far more benefits of honey than I can include here but here are some of the more interesting benefits you may not know about.
Organic, raw honey can provide an energy boost. It's a good source of the carbohydrates your body needs for energy. Many people believe it can boost your endurance and reduce muscle fatigue.
Honey is a great aid in relieving morning sickness — reportedly even more effective than traditional soda crackers.
Honey is good for sore throats, laryngitis, and pharyngitis.
Honey and cinnamon can help in many areas including relief from bladder infections, arthritis, upset stomach and bad breath. It’s even supposed to be able to slow down hair loss.
Raw honey can be used for issues related to male impotence and female infertility. Warm raw goat milk mixed with raw honey is believed to increase sperm count.
A salve made of honey, for diabetic ulcers, has been proven effective when other topical ointments are not well tolerated. It can be applied to eczema, canker sores, or bleeding gums.
Honey and apple cider vinegar is used for many ailments like stomach aches, constipation, and even migraines.
Honey and lemon go to work in the body shifting the extra fat stores, making them into usable energy for regular body functions. Honey is cholesterol-free and can reportedly help keep cholesterol levels in check
Raw honey has a viscous texture due to its low water content. As a natural preservative, it doesn't accommodate bad bacteria.
Raw honey is a remarkable natural substance that is receiving a lot of well-deserved attention. Seek out local markets for organic goods to get the freshest products. Support your local independent farmers; helping them to stay in business is good for them and your local economy.
Precautions
Honey contains a natural presence of botulinum endospores. Because of this, children under one year old should NEVER consume honey. Before the age of twelve months, a child’s intestinal tract is not mature enough to inhibit the growth of Clostridium botulinum, which can be found in honey. Honey, in all forms, should not be given to babies younger than one.
†Results may vary. Information and statements made are for education purposes and are not intended to replace the advice of your doctor. Global Healing Center does not dispense medical advice, prescribe, or diagnose illness. The views and nutritional advice expressed by Global Healing Center are not intended to be a substitute for conventional medical service. If you have a severe medical condition or health concern, see your physician.Tidal bloom.
Rising Tide has a steep hill to climb. Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth hasn't received the warmest of receptions by strategy fans, with many believing that the game feels more or less like Civilization V with a sci-fi wrapper around it. The litany of criticisms range from affinities being limited by technologies and leaders lacking personality, to a lack of incentive to trade with other civilizations and aliens being around just to be an irritation to exploration. Rising Tide addresses all of these issues by introducing hybrid affinities, ocean terrain, aquatic cities, and revamped diplomacy, transforming the game into a far more complete and distinct experience.
Rising Tide, as the title suggests, concentrates much of its attention on ocean terrain and water-based buildings and units. The variety of ocean tiles has been expanded tremendously, with a showering of basic resources (algae, plankton, shell, etc.), strategic resources, and resource pods spread throughout the sea. That means that approximately two-thirds of the map has been opened for settlement, providing far more flexibility and requiring a lot more thought into city placement and development.
Exploring the sea bed for resource pods and potential expedition opportunities is well-rewarded so long as there are tiles still left undiscovered. Artifacts, which take the form of cards, can be gathered from both these sources into your library and spent for minor boosts in science, food, production, and energy that greatly aids civilizations in the early game. Later down the road, it's better to wait until you collect a set of three artifacts which can be used collectively for bonus perks that impact all cities like enhanced city strike damage and for unlocks to special buildings and wonders for production.
Complementing this are aquatic cities which can be built on top of any water tile that isn't in deep ocean. As opposed to their land-based counterparts, aquatic cities have better health, higher trade yields using trade vessels, and stronger naval-unit production, balanced by lower overall city defenses and lower production rates for air and ground units. Since these aquatic cities float on water, they can also be moved to a nearby tile, potentially adding terrain into its jurisdiction, though citizens can still only work tiles that are up to three spaces away. However, since moving a city stalls production of units and buildings, and aquatic cities don't expand with culture production, you'll find that purchasing tiles around them may be better than sitting around for several turns waiting for it to move. Roads and magrails haven't been expanded either to be able to cross ocean tiles, so they're somewhat left behind in the dust.
The three affinities—Supremacy, Purity, and Harmony—have been made less rigid with the inclusion of hybrid affinities. Not only have the associated perks for each affinity been reworked, but you will earn additional bonuses for having high affinities in two different affinities at the same time. All of this is displayed in the new handy affinity color wheel that shows your affinity progress succinctly. Technologies have been recoded to show their affinity association more clearly, and many of them now boost two affinities at once instead of one so that you can choose technologies more freely. New hybrid units, like the Evolved Immortal and the Prime Xeno Cavalry, as well as new hybrid-based unit upgrades come along for the ride as well.
The other major overhaul in Rising Tide is the diplomacy system, complete with four new civilizations (the Middle-Eastern Al Falah, German INTEGR, Korean Chungsu, and British/Scandinavian North Sea Alliance), which has been entirely rewritten and revolves around the attainment of diplomatic capital. Think of diplomatic capital, which grows when you accept agreements and finish the construction of wonders and specific buildings, as baseline currency for establishing trade agreements and better relationships with other civilizations as well as bolstering your leader of choice with additional perks through traits. Your leader comes with four slots for personality traits, with one already pre-filled by your leader's unique starting ability. Using diplomatic capital, you can add additional traits from a wide selection that bestow more positive perks.
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide Review - GameRevolution WATCH GALLERY
The strength of an agreement depends on your relationship with the civilization at hand, netting further bonuses if you are Cooperating or Allied. Being at War or being Sanctioned removes all possibility of trade, so it's important to keep track of the political landscape as it shifts beneath your feet. However, spending diplomatic capital isn't enough to improve a relationship as you will also need to meet the civilization's standard of respect and fear. While fear is easily measured by your military strength relative to another civilization's, respect is defined by how well your civilization matches the political, economic, and military outlook of that civilization, as determined by their chosen personality traits. A leader with the Progressive trait, for instance, frowns upon civilizations with poor health, and you will be constantly reminded of whether another civilization respects you or not through short communiques almost every turn.
This overhaul of diplomacy has more upsides than downsides. Leaders now have clear personality traits that evolve over time and make them distinct from one another, and how diplomatic capital weaves with trade agreements, relations, and personality traits is conceptually solid and extremely open to player choice. Diplomatic capital can also be used to purchase units and buildings exactly like energy in case you have a surplus.
That said, being allied can be too costly since it includes an embedded defensive agreement that can drag you into needless wars, so it's in your favor to keep most of your relationships to cooperative. Simple one-on-one trade for resources and energy has been nixed altogether too, in favor of using trading vessels instead, which makes sense in practice but is far less precise in what is traded. Wars are now determined by War Score and can't control what the terms of the peace agreements will be.
The continual feed of communiques can turn into incessant nagging and complaining if you don't meet another civilization's standards, especially if you're intentionally trying to build your civilization in a different way than theirs. AI civilizations are fickle in general and dislike agreements that you break with them, even though they break agreements with you frequently and without hesitation. The option of asking other civilizations to stop settling near your civilizations is no longer available either, though they will be annoyed with you if you do the same. If there was the ability to send communiques in response, it would lessen the obstinately one-sided nature of relationships with other civilizations.
Last but not least, aliens have been given a more aggressive, unpredictable attitude. Ultrasonic fences no longer deter aliens as powerfully, so being hostile against the local wildlife will result in high alien resistance. New alien units—the amphibious makara, the sea-based ripper, and the smaller land-based scarabs—fill in some of the gaps in the alien species. Best of all, you can now leash aliens by learning Alien Lifeforms and Alien Domestication technologies, where your explorers can spend some health to sway a nearby alien to your side. With a bit of careful planning, you can turn an alien nest that was once a nuisance into a spawn point for a friendly army of aliens for protection. Aligning yourself with the Harmony affinity is longer as weak militarily as it was before.
Rising Tide enhances Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth to the point that it's difficult to imagine the game without it; in fact, the regular Civilization series should take a few cues from Rising Tide. Hybrid affinities, ocean terrain, diplomatic capital, agreements, and personality traits all improve player freedom and significantly raise the replayability of the game. Nearly every complaint with the base game has been handled with attention, though the new diplomacy overhaul comes with its own unfortunate issues. But that aside, Rising Tide is an essential purchase for Civilization fans who want to give Beyond Earth a well-earned second chance.With her straight As, former Dunman High School student Lim Xin Min stood a good chance of landing a place studying medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS). But the 19-year-old opted for nursing instead.
She is among the growing number of young people choosing to study nursing at NUS, which received 2,200 applications this year - an increase from 1,730 applications two years ago.
Another indication of the growing popularity of nursing: Of the 2,200 applicants, 940 of them had listed nursing as their first or second choice, compared with two years ago when about 600 had listed nursing as their top two choices.
To cater to the higher demand, the NUS Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies has increased its intake of students from 155 last year to 235 this year. It is looking to increase the number further to 300 over the next few years.
Professor Emily Ang, head of NUS Nursing, attributed the increased demand for its Bachelor of Science, Nursing degrees to the changing public perception of the nursing profession.
"It is largely a result of concerted efforts... in promoting greater public awareness of nursing as a challenging and fulfilling career," she said, adding that it helps that nursing graduates have comparable, if not slightly higher, starting salaries compared with their peers graduating from other degree courses.
Last year's graduate employment survey saw nursing graduates start off with median monthly salaries of $3,500 for those with honours, and $3,400 for those without honours - higher than the $3,360 median salary for graduates across all degree programmes.
"We hope to groom a generation of 'thinking' nurses and develop future nursing leaders who can take on key roles in hospitals and clinics," she said.
Ministry of Health (MOH) chief nursing officer Tan Soh Chin said MOH was encouraged by the trend of more students choosing nursing.
2.2k Number of applicants for the NUS nursing course, an increase from 1,730 applications two years ago. 235 Intake of nursing students at NUS this year, up from 155 last year. 38 Number of male students taking up nursing this year. This works out to 16 per cent, compared with 10 per cent two years ago.
The increased interest in nursing comes at a time when the Government plans to add 30,000 more healthcare workers - including doctors who specialise in geriatric medicine and highly trained nurses capable of helming clinics in primary and community health settings - by 2020 to cater for Singapore's ageing population.
Ms Tan said today, nurses enjoy greater career advancement, with more upgrading opportunities.
She noted that MOH has reached out to secondary school students with information about healthcare and nursing careers, as well as engaged parents and family through the Care To Go Beyond nursing publicity campaign.
The efforts seem to have worked with school-leavers like Ms Lim.
The MOH scholarship recipient said her interest was sparked while on an attachment with Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
"I saw for myself what it is that nurses do, and realised that not only was it a fulfilling and challenging profession, but also one that offered variety," she said, referring to the different tracks that nurses can progress to, including the management and research tracks.
Polytechnic graduate Tan Jung Howe, 22, listed nursing as the only course in his university application.
MORE DIRECT CARE TO PATIENTS I drew a list of pros and cons and nursing, for me, offered more pros, most of all to offer more direct help and care to patients. MS LIM XIN MIN, a straight-A student from Dunman High School who chose nursing over medicine.
He is part of an encouraging trend of more male students taking up nursing. About 16 per cent or 38 of the students taking up nursing this year at NUS are male, compared with 10 per cent two years ago.
Mr Tan said it was his experience as a combat medic during national service that convinced him to choose nursing.
For Meridian Junior College student Nur Diyana Sapri, 19, her interest in the profession started much earlier. "I had to care for my ailing grandparents (during my) primary school days and realised I like caring for people."
Besides NUS, the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) also offers a two-year degree in nursing with the University of Glasgow - aimed at polytechnic nursing diploma holders. SIT said it had also seen more applicants - a 27 per cent increase from last year. As a result, it has increased its intake from 55 last year to 64 this year.When approaching Plato’s dialogues, we are led to a quandary concerning several contradictory positions held, and yet attributed to Socrates. The most blatant of these is between the positions held in Protagoras and Gorgias regarding the Socrates’ view(s) on pleasure. In the former he equates what is ‘good’ with pleasure; while in the latter he rejects this equation put forward by one of his interlocutors (Callicles).
I am not interested in resolving this contradiction. Many respected academics have tried to, and typically have come with opposing views. My interest in this article is to elucidate the varying possibilities of reading Plato’s dialogues; and indeed on the character of Socrates in these dialogues. I see five ways to approach Plato’s dialogues, all of which say something about the contradictions and, hopefully, can clear up the confusion arising from reading his work. It should go without saying that a combination of these ways is not only possible, but even recommended for an in-depth understanding of Plato. Yes, that could lead to contradictions (and much headache), but will also make the reading more pleasant and hopefully also clearer.
Plato as Socrates’ student
The view currently held by most scholars in the field is that Plato’s dialogues are based on a historical figure of Socrates. As his student, Plato thought as Socrates did (or thought that he thought as Socrates did) and aimed to represent Socrates’ views through his dialogues. What we thus have is Plato playing lip service to his master in his early work, aiming to spread Socrates’ views through his writing. As he matures, Plato engages in philosophy for its own sake and, while still playing lip service to Socrates, he in fact develops his thoughts further, changes his mind and becomes less ‘Socratic’ and more ‘Platonic’. The change from clear dialogical/conversational style in Plato’s early work to more scholarly work in his later dialogues is meant to testify to this end as well.
Holding this view explains the inconsistencies/contradictions – Plato grew from a student of Socrates to a philosopher in his own right. This reading may not explain all contradictions in Plato’s work, but it remains the most dominant one, and perhaps the most natural one to hold. We think it natural because, as teachers know, students more often than not start by mimicking their teachers for a very long time (and we hate that) and usually reproduce the college lectures to the best of their ability. It is only later in their research (if they become researchers) that their own voice slowly starts coming through.
Pedagogical method
It is often opined that some of Socrates’ positions and arguments are so poorly thought through, that it is almost embarrassing to even have put them to writing by his student. But what if Plato only intended to propose a pedagogical method? It is possible that his intentions were to have the reader think about the issues that are discussed, and find the answers by reading between the lines, between the different characters. Contemporary educators find great pleasure in this kind of ‘sadism’ – but the truth of the matter is that it also works very well. Studies have shown that giving answers to students up front is almost useless (I am exaggerating), and that going through the problem is of much more benefit (here I am not exaggerating). Some universities are slowly shifting towards something called Problem Based Learning (and similar, like Bloom’s taxonomy, etc.) precisely because going through problems is deemed of higher benefit to students than spoon-feeding them the right answers.
According to this view, the inconsistencies in Plato do not really matter – after all, neither Plato nor Socrates are then believed to hold any concrete views but only aim to encourage the reader/listener to think. In support of this claim, there is The Seventh Letter, which reveals the existence of his ‘secret teachings’ or ‘esoteric doctrine’, communicated orally and not written down in his dialogues. If this is the case, as some scholars have argued, then we can easily disregard the contradictions and hold the pedagogical method having some weight.
Plato the frivolous writer
Additionally, it can be held that Plato did not hold any particular views. He was merely exploring different possibilities, writing his thought processes down. He was writing frivolously and without any particular outcome in mind. Any writer can confirm that we often do this – the aim is to strike that moment of inspiration from which something beautiful will come out. In Plato’s case, what came out are numerous dialogues of good quality on their own/individual standing. Their merit is precisely in that they can convince the reader of a position held in that one dialogue. The dialogues are then not meant to be compared to one another, but only to present the reader of a position. Any inconsistencies are irrelevant because Plato was not ‘dogmatically’ holding to any position but only aimed to write – he was, as it were, writing out loud. A lot of thought experiments in history of philosophy are in fact nothing more than this particular approach of thinking on a piece of paper – a ‘what if?’.
The point here is not to diminish Plato’s work as a mere thought experiment without any value, but in contrast to enrich it beyond the scholarly/academic philosophical reflection. Contradictions in his work become superfluous, the reader is enthused with a position – how far he aims to go with that position is then up to the reader. As long as the reader finds value in, and does not aim for some absolute truth beyond that value, becomes irrelevant.
Some recent scholars have pointed out that Plato was only using Socrates as a genre – the so-called Sôkratikoi logoi were written throughout this period and there is evidence of similar writings by Phaedo, Aeschines, Antisthenes, Euclides, and Aristippus (next to the better-known Plato and Xenophon whose works remain). The aim of this genre was to present a believable depiction of the real Socrates discussing similar topics that he would, but remaining fictitious at heart. The aim was, in other words, only to resemble the real Socrates by capturing his spirit and not |
they would "speak with one voice" for the benefit of all the victims.
Anita Busch, a spokeswoman for the group, declined to elaborate on the topics.
Busch said she expects the families of most of the 12 people killed in the shootings to be represented.
The suspect in the July 20 shootings, 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes, faces charges of murder and attempted murder.
Police say Holmes was heavily armed and wearing body armor and a gas mask when he opened fire on the audience in a packed theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora during a showing of the latest Batman movie.
In addition to the 12 killed, 58 were injured.
Holmes is being held without bail and has not entered a plea. Defense lawyers have said he is mentally ill.
Holmes was a first-year Ph.D. student in a neuroscience program at the University of Colorado, Denver. He told university officials about six weeks before the shootings that he was withdrawing.
Prosecutors have said Holmes failed an oral board exam June 7, at about the same time he began buying weapons and ammunition.
Prosecutors are seeking the university's records on Holmes and also want to see a notebook that Holmes reportedly sent to university psychiatrist Lynne Fenton. Fenton is expected to testify at a hearing Thursday.
Defense lawyers are fighting prosecution attempts to see the material.
Investigators, attorneys on both sides and the university have said little about the case outside court hearings, citing a gag order imposed by Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester.
Many court documents have been kept secret as well.
Only a handful of family members of the slain victims have spoken publicly, and most of their comments came in the first few days after the shooting. A joint appearance by multiple families would be a first in the case.Trailblazing Indian gymnast Dipa Karmakar said that she’s not disappointed at missing out on a historic bronze in the vault final of the Rio Olympics and that she’s satisfied with her performance.
“I never expected a medal from this Olympics but to have come fourth is very creditable. In boxing, wrestling you get a bronze even when you finish fourth but not for me. It was very close to medal. After four years, my target would be gold,” Dipa said brimming with confidence.
“For me this is my first Olympics. But I don’t need to be disappointed I will give my best in Tokyo 2020,” she added.
The young gymnast, who hails from Tripura, said that she is “fully satisfied” with her performance.
“This is my highest score. But the medalists were better than me. Maybe, it was not my day,” a graceful Dipa added.
The 23-year-old, who had become the first Indian woman gymnast to have qualified for the Olympics, scored an average of 15.066 points, a mere 0.15 less than the eventual bronze winner Giulia Steingruber (15.216) of Switzerland.
The gold went to American pre-event favourite Simone Biles (15.966) while reigning vault world champion Maria Paseka of Russia got the silver with an average of 15.253 points.
Dipa could have been in the reckoning for a medal had she not landed on her haunches in her risky ‘Produnova’ vault for which she is now known all over the world. Dipa landed on her feet but then sat down and lost points.
She scored 15.266 from her ‘Produnova’ with 8.266 points for execution for a difficulty level of 7. The average of the two attempts gave her 15.066, a mere 0.15 difference with bronze winner Steingruber.
“This is my highest score in Prudonova, I had 15.1 earlier. I am very happy with my vault. I gave my whole effort to bring an Olympic medal for my countrymen. But it was a tough luck.”
The young talent also pointed out that to have competed at this level under her personal Indian coach Bishweshwar Nandi and without any foreign exposure was really a big achievement.
“Gymnastics is not that easy. We have not got any foreign training, and had only three months to prepare. We were able to achieve this through my coach and the SAI’s effort.
“To have finished fourth competing against former Olympic champions is a creditable performance. I think it’s a bigger achievement than even Simon Biles, she’s consistently winning gold,” said the gymnast who stands at four feet and 11 inches.
Having missed bronze by a whisker would however earn her brickbats from her family members and coach Nandi, she admitted.
“She went a bit deep while landing. If she landed with a perfect standing pose than a gold was there. First vault was however perfect,” Mr. Nandi said.
Dipa thanked her supporters, said: “Many thanks to my fellow Indians. I couldn’t have achieved this without their prayers and best wishes.”
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.Project Zomboid Decoded Media V2 a guest Mar 24th, 2016 7,713 Never a guest7,713Never
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Speaker 1:... but it's localized. Speaker 1: There's just a handful of reports of strange behaviors. Speaker 1: Panic, confusion... Speaker 1: I've been told that military scientists ARE present within the zone. Speaker 1: We should hear concrete details tomorrow. Speaker 1: If anything else comes out of the Exclusion Zone... Speaker 1:... you'll be the first to know. Speaker 1: Keep safe Kentucky. Speaker 1: This is Jackie Jaye. Speaker 1: I'm here at the checkpoints to the north of the Knox exclusion zone. Speaker 1: I'm here with Denise, who has a story to tell. Speaker 1: Denise, you were one of the last out of the Zone. Am I right? Speaker 2: I was. My Mom's still in there. Speaker 1: Have you heard from her? Speaker 2: Nothin'. Phones are out. Speaker 2: These guys... all standing in-between us. Speaker 1: The Army, yes. And how did you get out? Speaker 2: Well we heard the helicopters all night through. Speaker 2: Mom was ill. High temperature, real sleepy. Speaker 2: Nothing serious I thought. Speaker 2: I was going to work at Gas to Go early, like every morning. Speaker 2: I saw these guys in plastic suits. Speaker 2: Y'know... bright yellow? Speaker 1: Hazard suits Denise? Speaker 2: I guess. Anyway I saw them down the road. Speaker 2: Thought it was weird, but everything's weird at 4AM right? Speaker 2: Then I drive through, get taken aside... Speaker 2: They shine a light into my eyes. Take a blood sample... Speaker 2: Keep me locked tight until like... ten minutes ago? Speaker 2: Then they say I'm clear and kick me out. Speaker 2: Then I meet you. Speaker 2: What's going on Jackie? Speaker 1: We don't know just yet Denise. Speaker 1: From what I've been told your Mom will be fine. Speaker 2: You know that? Speaker 1: I don't know that, I've been told that. Speaker 1: Keep close Denise, you'll know what I know. Speaker 1: Just like the guys listening will. Speaker 1: Keep safe Kentucky. Speaker 1: This is Frank Hemingway, taking over coverage of the Knox Event from Jackie. Speaker 1: It's the end of the second day of the Knox exclusion. Speaker 1: Still no word on the contagion. Speaker 1: So what do we know? Speaker 1: Influenza symptoms brought the towns of West Point and Muldraugh to a standstill. Speaker 1: Then overnight... the blockades appeared. Speaker 1: Military sources suggest the area is watertight... Speaker 1:... there's even boats patrolling the Ohio river. Speaker 1: If the checkpoints aren't gone tomorrow, however... the boundary will be tested. Speaker 1: We've got concerned locals, evacuated families and, yup... Speaker 1:... more news teams turning up every hour. Speaker 1: Everyone wants to get in just as, we assume, the residents want to get out. Speaker 1: We're promised answers tomorrow from one... General John McGrew. Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear them General. Speaker 1: Better make them good... Speaker 1: Frank Hemingway. LBMW. Speaker 1: Good morning. Speaker 1: You're listening to LBMW. Speaker 1: It's day three of the Knox evacuation Speaker 1: Still NO official statement on the contagion that has gripped Kentucky. Speaker 1: The Exclusion Zone remains in place. Speaker 1: Military personnel from local bases have a HUGE area closed off. Speaker 1: Their primary deployment: south of Louisville. Speaker 1: The Exclusion Zone stretches out below the curve of the Ohio river... Speaker 1:...and contains the small towns of Muldraugh and West Point. Speaker 1: We have been told: there will be answers. Speaker 1: LBMW understands a press conference will be held this afternoon... Speaker 1:... on the brewing chaos of the last four days. Speaker 1: Will the communications black-out be explained? Speaker 1: Until then, the only advice for those nearby remains: stay indoors. Speaker 1: This is Frank Hemingway for LBMW. Speaker 1: You're listening to LBMW. Speaker 1: We're reporting direct from where General John McGrew made the following statement: Speaker 2: I am making this statement at 11AM on the 14th July 1993. Speaker 2: There are many rumors circulating. Many falsehoods. Speaker 2: This is an appeal for calm. Speaker 2: I can confirm there has been an outbreak. Speaker 2: The ailment is, as yet, unidentified. Speaker 2: It is flu-like. It leads to panic. It leads to confusion. Speaker 2: There is NO evidence of fatalities within the Exclusion Zone. Speaker 2: We are using judged and judicious force to maintain the border. Speaker 2: Warning shots have been fired. Speaker 2: No civilians have been harmed. Speaker 2: We must ensure that this infection is not allowed to spread. Speaker 2: I am in hourly contact with the President on this matter. Speaker 2: The no-fly zone will remain in place for the foreseeable future. Speaker 2: At this time, we will take no questions. Speaker 1: You're listening to LBMW. I'm Jackie Jaye. Speaker 1: The exclusion zone to the south of Louisville remains in place today. Speaker 1: No vehicles, no phone calls, no cameras... Speaker 1:... just the rapid deployment of military personnel and vehicles. Speaker 1: LBMW is in a temporary camp on the exclusion border. Speaker 1: Panic throughout the nation is endemic. Speaker 1: What next for Kentucky in this sad story? Speaker 1: Good evening. This is LBMW. Speaker 1: I'm Frank Hemingway. Speaker 1: After repeated demands General John McGrew today explained the Exclusion Zone. Speaker 1: But are his answers enough for Kentucky? Speaker 2: I can confirm there has been an outbreak. Speaker 2: The ailment is, as yet, unidentified. Speaker 2: It is flu-like. It leads to panic. It leads to confusion. Speaker 2: There is NO evidence of fatalities within the Exclusion Zone. Speaker 2: We are using judged and judicious force to maintain the border. Speaker 2: Warning shots have been fired. Speaker 2: No civilians have been harmed. Speaker 1: General McGrew went on to state that the no-fly zone... Speaker 1:... would remain in place for the immediate future. Speaker 1: His comments have done little to allay public fear. Speaker 1: Why are we in the dark? Speaker 1: Why can't they talk to us? Speaker 1: And why won't they let US talk to them? Speaker 1: Ah, wait we've just got this in. Speaker 1: It's a statement from the President distributed to all media. Speaker 3: This is a distressing time. Speaker 3: The situation in Kentucky is unexpected and saddening. Speaker 3: My first thoughts are with the friends and families of those within the Zone. Speaker 3: People have been separated, folk have been evacuated... Speaker 3: I understand the difficulties facing us. Speaker 3: However, I have faith in the fine people of the Center for Disease Control... Speaker 3:... to get to the root of the panic and confusion within the Exclusion Zone. Speaker 3: I have faith in our Servicemen and Women to fulfill their duties... Speaker 3:... and for General John McGrew to command them with the foresight and dedication... Speaker 3:... he has shown throughout his exemplary career. Speaker 3: It is a distressing time America, but you are in safe hands. Speaker 3: Thank you. Speaker 1: This is Frank Hemingway for LBMW. Speaker 1: Saying it like I see it. Speaker 1: Keep safe Kentucky. Speaker 1: This is Frank Hemingway, LBMW. Speaker 1: I'm in the media camp on the Knox Exclusion Zone boundary. Speaker 1: Last night, the President gave full support to agencies fighting the Knox Event. Speaker 2: This is a distressing time. Speaker 2: The situation in Kentucky is unexpected and saddening. Speaker 2: My first thoughts are with the friends and families of those within the Zone. Speaker 2: People have been separated, folk have been evacuated... Speaker 2: I understand the difficulties facing us. Speaker 2: However, I have faith in the fine people of the Center for Disease Control... Speaker 2:... to get to the root of the panic and confusion within the Exclusion Zone. Speaker 2: I have faith in our Servicemen and Women to fulfill their duties... Speaker 2:... and for General John McGrew to command them with the foresight and dedication... Speaker 2:... he has shown throughout his exemplary career. Speaker 2: It is a distressing time America, but you are in safe hands. Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 1: Now back to the Exclusion Zone Boundary, where I am this morning. Speaker 1: In my hand? An exclusive statement from General John McGrew. Speaker 1: Here he apologises for... Speaker 1: a 'lack of clarity'... Speaker 1:... in what many are calling 'The Knox Event'. Speaker 1: In the EXCLUSIVE statement to LBMW he again confirmed... Speaker 1:... that the outbreak is contained... Speaker 1:...and that he is unaware of fatalities within the exclusion zone. Speaker 1: When I asked whether the miliary sensitivity of the region... Speaker 1:... had an impact on the way the Event is being handled... Speaker 1:... I was met only with silence. Speaker 1: This is Frank Hemingway for LBMW. Speaker 1: Saying it, like I see it. Speaker 1: Keep safe Kentucky. Speaker 1: Hi. Jackie Jaye for LBMW. Speaker 1: What caused the Event? Rumor is rife. Speaker 1: A strange cloud hangs over Kentucky. Speaker 1: I'm in one of the camps that has grown on the Event border. Speaker 1: Displaced families, people with families inside the Event... Speaker 1: They're all here. And, guess what? They're angry. Speaker 2: They say we shouldn't be worried... Speaker 2:... but they won't even say what in HELL this is? Speaker 2: He says there are no casualties? Speaker 2: There's a lot of bad stuff leading up to a casualty, right? Speaker 2: What happened to my wife, General? Speaker 2: Why can't we speak? Speaker 1: Do you know what caused this sir? Speaker 2: Hell if I know. Speaker 2: Some are saying it was the smell. Speaker 2: Awful bad smell here, for weeks. Speaker 1: And what do you think has happened to your Mommy, sweetheart? Speaker 3: I don't know. Speaker 2: Neither do I honey. Speaker 2: It'll be okay. Speaker 1: This is Jackie Jaye. Keep safe guys. Speaker 1: This is Jackie Jaye, here today with Professor John Ramirez - a military scientist Speaker 1: Professor Ramirez, we've been told that you can provide some answers. Speaker 1: How are they doing in there? Speaker 2: Not good Jackie. Speaker 2: They're all on two feet, but they're in a bad way. Speaker 1: What are the symptoms? Is this life-threatening? Speaker 2: We've taken samples. Speaker 2: There's a team looking into that right now. Speaker 2: There's no reason to spread fear or alarm. Speaker 2: We have top men looking into what this is... Speaker 2:...and just where it came from. Speaker 1: And the symptoms? Speaker 2: Like we said: flu-like at first, then - panic and confusion. Speaker 2: We think the spread has slowed now. Speaker 2: But we don't deal in absolutes. Speaker 2: This remains a volatile situation, with a contagious illness at its heart. Speaker 2: The lockdown is required by international law... Speaker 2:... and common sense... Speaker 2:... until we know for sure we are safe. Speaker 2: I'm sure y'all can understand why. Speaker 1: And the reports of violence? Speaker 2: At this point in time we have no reason to believe folks won't recover. Speaker 1: Thank you for your time. Speaker 1: I'm Jackie Jaye. Keep safe Kentucky. Speaker 1: Good evening. I'm Frank Hemingway. Speaker 1: This is LBMW. Speaker 1: Public anger reaches boiling point... Speaker 1:... and Knox Telecommunications accept responsibility for ongoing communication outages... Speaker 1:... that were in place days BEFORE the Knox Event began. Speaker 1: Meanwhile, fresh details of the Knox Infection emerge. Speaker 1: Flu-like - then panic and confusion. Speaker 1: A contagion that spread throughout entire communities. Speaker 1: A contagion that, scientists claim, might soon have run its course. Speaker 1: So, if it's all over: why the black-out? Speaker 1: What aren't we being told? Speaker 1: Today a public demonstration in Washington DC exploded into angry scenes. Speaker 1: All we need, the people say, are answers. Speaker 1: LBMW ask the questions.. Speaker 1: But sometimes the silence is even more damning... Speaker 1:...than the answers that aren't there. Speaker 1: Frank Hemingway. LBMW. Speaker 1: This is Frank Hemingway, signing off for the night. Speaker 1: Growing unrest has been reported throughout the nation. Speaker 1: Placards in Washington. Firebombs in Detroit. Speaker 1: A Greene's Grocery Store in downtown LA: set ablaze. Speaker 1: Isolated incidents with one voice: Speaker 1: We don't feel safe.' Speaker 1: and 'What aren't we being told?' Speaker 1: Meanwhile, camps on the edge of the Event boundary continue to grow. Speaker 1: Onlookers, well-wishers, worried families... Speaker 1:... staring through the wire and arguing with military personnel. Speaker 1: As anger continues to grow. Speaker 1: Frank Hemingway. LBMW. Speaker 1: We're five days into the Event exclusion. This is LBMW. Speaker 1: This is Jackie Jaye on the Event boundary, with your breaking news. Speaker 1: Last night anger at the handling of the Knox Event boiled over. Speaker 1: As public outcry and disorder spills onto the streets of our cities. Speaker 1: The President has released a statement asking for calm. Speaker 2: I understand the frustration. I can hear you: loud and clear. Speaker 2: I understand the frustration because I'm like you. Speaker 2: I want to know when my fellow Americans... Speaker 2:...fellow Americans who are laid low with sickness... Speaker 2:... can be returned to their families. Speaker 2: To this end I will be talking to the General today. Speaker 2: From which I will be able to provide more answers. Speaker 2: However. Speaker 2: The horrifying activities we have seen on our streets over the last 24 hours? Speaker 2: There is no excuse. No excuse whatsoever. Speaker 2: Arrests will be made. Every authority is on high alert. Speaker 2: If you are seeking to disrupt our way of life through fear and scaremongering... Speaker 2:...you will be sorely disappointed. Speaker 2: I will come back to you with more information... Speaker 2:...FULL information... Speaker 2: When I have it in my hand. Speaker 1: Meanwhile, closer to home. Speaker 1: General John McGrew has issued a warning to folks camped out on the Event line. Speaker 1: His message: if worried relatives and displaced families do not move on... Speaker 1:... they will be dispersed. Speaker 1: Meanwhile, gunshots from inside the Zone have been heard. Speaker 1: The military refused to comment. Speaker 1: This is Jackie Jaye. Keep safe Kentucky. Speaker 1: You're listening to LBMW. I'm Jackie Jaye. Speaker 1: Breaking news. Speaker 1: Commercial flights out of the US have been grounded by the World Health Organisation. Speaker 1: Any flight scheduled to take off after six tonight is cancelled. Speaker 1: In a statement the World Health Organisation highlights... Speaker 1:... an 'ongoing concern over the still unidentified Kentucky outbreak'... Speaker 1:... as it seeks to prevent the malady spreading internationally. Speaker 1: The President has reacted with anger. Speaker 2: This move is as unwelcome... Speaker 2:...as it is economically unsound. Speaker 2: I will seek to redress this move at every opportunity. Speaker 2: After talks with the General I am satisfied that... Speaker 2: The Knox Event is, to all intents of purpose, contained. Speaker 2: However. Speaker 2: Tests on those recovering from the Knox sickness are inconclusive. Speaker 2: We have labs set up inside the Zone now. Speaker 2: I assure the American people that every dollar I have at my disposal... Speaker 2:...will go toward their healing and rehabilitation. Speaker 2: However, I repeat: the Knox Event IS contained. Speaker 2: Procedures are underway to ensure our safety. Speaker 2: That will be all. Speaker 1: From six tonight EST the ONLY craft with permission to take off... Speaker 1:...will carry medicines or military personnel. Speaker 1: Meanwhile in unsavory scenes... Speaker 1:...panic-buying has turned to looting in many states. Speaker 1: America sits on a knife-edge. Speaker 1: Jackie Jaye. Speaker 1: This is Frank Hemingway... Speaker 2:... and I'm Jackie Jaye. Speaker 1: Scenes of turmoil tonight as military forces roll into towns and cities. Speaker 1: Peacekeeping forces have been stationed throughout the nation. Speaker 1: Throughout it all: that same message: Speaker 1: Stay indoors where possible. Do not panic. Speaker 2: This all in response to the unprecedented move made by the WHO... Speaker 2:...who have cancelled all flights to and from mainland America. Speaker 2: All eyes are on developments in a sleepy corner of Kentucky... Speaker 2:...now a no-go zone ring-fenced by the US Army Speaker 2: Once we'd report from Muldraugh and West Point about county fairs and sick pets... Speaker 2:... now times have changed significantly. Speaker 1: Pictures released to LBMW, however, show crowded streets... Speaker 1:...suggesting that, despite it all, some townsfolk are living as normal. Speaker 1: Frank Hemingway and Jackie Jaye, LBMW. Speaker 2: Stay safe everyone. Speaker 1: Breaking news on LBMW. Speaker 1: The Knox Exclusion Zone has been widened. Speaker 1: Early this morning, some camps growing along key access roads were moved back. Speaker 1: A statement from the office of General John McGrew reads as follows: Speaker 1: Civilians were moved peacefully and calmly...' Speaker 1:...and sometimes in military vehicles for their own safety.' Speaker 1: Rumors of conflict on the edge of the abandoned perimeter... Speaker 1:... however, have not gone away. Speaker 1: Meanwhile, throughout the nation the disruption continues. Speaker 1: There were fatalities today when a demo in New York turned violent. Speaker 1: Fear and panic are growing. Speaker 1: America looks to its leaders for answers. Speaker 1: Frank Hemingway, LBMW. Speaker 1: This is Jackie Jaye with breaking news. Speaker 1: We're going straight over to a briefing from the White House. Speaker 2: It is time to face facts. It is time to settle down. Speaker 2: We only ask for your responsible actions as an American citizen. Speaker 2: I, personally, take responsibility for the perceived lack of communication. Speaker 2: And for the rumormongering that has grown around the so-called 'Knox Event' Speaker 2: At this time we have no reason to believe residents of Kentucky will not recover. Speaker 2: However, as the picture clears, and more information is made available... Speaker 2:... its likelihood is starting to recede. Speaker 2: We have been hesitant to discuss specifics, yes, but with reason. Speaker 2: The Knox Event IS contained, but its panic and confusion is not. Speaker 2: We wanted to establish facts, but public alarm has not provided enough time. Speaker 2: From 6pm tonight there will be curfews in some of our biggest cities. Speaker 2: This is for your protection. Please do not leave your house. Speaker 2: Please have faith in both our military and our emergency services. Speaker 2: I ask our journalistic community to report responsibly. Speaker 2: We are examining all potentialities. Speaker 2: I will update you whenever we have new information. Speaker 1: This has been Jackie Jaye. Speaker 1: Keep safe Kentucky. Speaker 1: This is Jackie Jaye on LBMW. Speaker 1: We've seen... disturbing evidence from inside the Exclusion Zone. Speaker 1: But... it's not |
going off. I would like if it was possible to manage these timers/reminders from my phone, because part of the appeal of not disturbing people sometimes is also not having to loudly talk to my watch.
Agenda – Every night a card pops up remind me of tomorrow’s agenda from my calendar. This is great because I’ve actually never been good about consistently checking the night before to make sure I am prepared for the next day. Now it’s automatic. This may not work for people who go to bed before midnight because right now it seems to just be based on the date; the card pops up at exactly midnight. Since I’m a night owl, that’s more than enough time for me. If you want to see your agenda any time when the card doesn’t automatically pop up you just have to say “show agenda” to see it.
Navigation – Currently the only useful use case for this is when you are walking around in a strange city, but when you are it’s so nice. I feel much less conspicuous glancing at my watch periodically than walking around with my phone out. I feel this app could use some visual tweaks as it’s very plain/ugly right now, and I’d love for them to find a way to fit a little more information on it (a way to see the next step, landmarks, alternative street names) but even as-is it’s highly useful for walking.
Weather – Weather was the one thing I consistently went to Google Now on my phone for. Now it’s on my watch, usually right under the time. A swipe to the right shows the weather for the next 4 days. I’d love to see them add support for another swipe to show me the hourly breakdown for the next 24 hours like I can in Google Now on my phone, that information is often more useful to me than what the weather is going to be like in a couple of days.
Messaging & hangouts – It’s nice being able to read most SMS messages at a glance, but what’s really cool is how much less annoying it is to be in a group hangout with a bunch of chatty people while you’re busy doing other things. No more constantly having to pull out your phone to keep up with the conversation. It’s also really handy to be able to send a text message when my hands are otherwise occupied/dirty, like when I was in the middle of cutting up raw chicken and needed my girlfriend’s help with something but she was outside tending the garden, or like when I was kayaking and wanted to let her know I was getting close to where we were meeting up. Did I mention that the watches are water resistant?
Grooveshark & other media players – Grooveshark works right out of the box on this, even though our most recent release predates the existence of Android Wear. Once music is playing, a card appears on the watch with the album art along with artist and song names, with a Play/Pause button. A swipe to the right shows a Next button, and another swipe to the right brings up a Previous button. All of these work, right now with no work necessary on Grooveshark’s side. The only annoyance I have with this is that the card doesn’t come up until music is actually playing. So I can’t say “ok google, start Grooveshark” and then immediately control playback. I still have to get it started playing on my phone. But after that, controlling via the watch works perfectly. There are two use cases this is awesome for: When I’m cooking in the kitchen, I have my phone plugged into a small speaker system playing music. I can now see what is playing, and control playback, without having to walk over to it and unlock my phone. The other use case any time when I am listening to music on my bluetooth headset and my phone is in my pocket – I no longer have to fish it out of my pocket to control playback…that makes the whole experience so much more convenient in general, but it was especially nice on the insanely long flight back to Gainesville from San Francisco; fishing anything out of my pockets when sitting in a cramped airplane seat is a chore.
Netflix & Chromecast – Much like how you can control Grooveshark with the watch, you can also control Netflix when casting to Chromecast. I can just run into the kitchen whenever I want, and if it turns out I’m missing something I can instantly pause it. Previously if I wanted to have that option I would have to make sure to bring my phone with me, then turn it on, unlock the screen and finally hit pause…by which point I’ve already missed whatever I was trying not to miss, and of course half the time I’d forget to bring my phone with me anyway. It’s one of those things that I never really thought of as annoying before but I find myself greatly appreciating the watch for solving anyway. I do wish they had the “skip back 30s” option like the app does on the phone, and there is a minor bug that I expect will be fixed soon where the card stays on the watch after the show has finished playing and it’s impossible to dismiss until you toggle play/pause on the watch, even though it’s not even playing (even if the TV is off!)
How it can be even better
Even though Android Wear is great today, I’m especially excited for the future because it has so much potential to be thoroughly awesome. Here’s hoping even a fraction of these come true.
Better Casting: The way Netflix & Chromecast works, anyone in the house can control playback no matter who started it. Right now though, if my girlfriend starts something on Netflix, I have to start up the app on my phone, switch to our shared profile, turn on casting, wait a few seconds for it to figure out what is going on, and then I can finally pause. If Android Wear could just figure out that hey, something is playing on the Chromecast, so you should have control options, that would be truly awesome. Obviously the same would be true on the Android phone, but my expectations for awesome context awareness as so much higher for Android Wear because it already delivers that experience for some things.
Payments – I want to stop carrying a wallet, or at least credit cards, and I don’t think NFC is ever going to get us there: retailers need to buy new equipment, more than just flagship phones need to support it, and a standard that everyone can use and be OK with needs to emerge. Imagine if whenever you walked into a store you got a card on your watch along the lines of: “It looks like you’re in Starbucks. Swipe right to pay.” swiping right shows a one-time-use QR code that the retailer can scan. That’s a system that I think would actually have a chance of succeeding because it utilizes equipment that retailers already have, and doesn’t require users to fiddle around with anything, the information is just there when they need it. If, instead of Google Wallet, that was supported directly by Visa, MasterCard, etc., the friction to adoption would just melt away. In fact Visa and MasterCard might have a strong incentive to go along with it since the one time use nature could reduce fraud by eliminating stolen credit card numbers. The same technology could and should exist on the phone as well, but it would be truly convenient on the watch.
Where’s my phone?! – Maybe it’s just me but when I’m at home I have a penchant for leaving my phone in odd places and then forgetting where that was. If the watch is in range (and the range is quite good for bluetooth), I’d love to be able to make my phone buzz or ring from the watch.
Better media player support – As far as I can tell there’s no way to send a Play event like you can from bluetooth media devices. For example in most bluetooth enabled cars there’s an option for it to just send play to your phone the moment you turn the car on. I don’t want that to be automatic with my watch, but I’d love to be able to say “ok google, play” and have it send a play event to whatever media player I had open most recently (usually Grooveshark of course!)
Soundhound/Shazam – I’d love to be able to say “ok google, what’s playing right now?” and get an answer on my watch.
Fitness / health / sleep tracking: Some of this will have to come on a different watch from either of the ones available today, because even the Samsung doesn’t have continuous heart rate monitoring. There’s no denying that fitness is a killer app for wearables, and one that’s more or less ignored in this version. It does include step counting, but that’s it. Continuous heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, waking you up at just the right time, and food/calorie monitoring are all good places to start, and it’ll be interesting to see what Apple’s take on this will be since rumor has it their watch will be health focused.
Speaker This one is tricky because one of the things that nice about the watch most of the time is that it is silent. But there are times where it would be really nice if it could read something back to me, or even reading it back to me via the phone’s speaker would be an improvement.
Wireless charging – The charger for the LG isn’t bad or too annoying, but the magnet isn’t really strong enough to guarantee that it seats properly without fiddling. What would be really nice is being able to just take my watch off and plop it on a tray without paying any attention to where or how it lands.
For the love of god let me turn off the screen when charging! – My current solution of turning the watch off at night feels weirdly old fashioned, and it’s not exactly easy, you have to dig through the settings to find the option to turn it off. Really I just want to be able to put the watch on its cradle at night and turn the screen off, there’s no reason for it to be on lighting up the whole room when I’m trying to sleep.
Make everything dismissable – Certain notifications are impossible to dismiss (like that Netflix one I mentioned earlier). It really should be possible to tell every single notification to fuck off if I really want to. Go ahead and make it a 3 step process, as long as it’s possible.
Pin/resurrect cards – At the same time I also occasionally find myself accidentally dismissing cards when I actually wanted them to stick around and was just trying to get back to the “main” screen. A stronger hint that you’re about to dismiss a card would help, but really it would be nice if there was a way to quickly undo. It’s especially bad because dismissing a “Google Now” card seems to teach it that you don’t want that card anymore. I accidentally dismissed the weather card and I had to look up the weather a few times a day for a couple of days before it started coming in on its own again.
Better watch faces – I know it’s super early, but for now I’m stuck with a black watch face because I wanted one that shows the time and date, and none of the colorful ones do that. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time, there have already been a bunch of 3rd party watch faces made so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the perfect one for me exists.
Camera I’m officially in fantasy land on this one but some day in the distant future it would be cool to be able to take pictures straight from my watch. This was inspired from the most recent of many attempts to take a picture of an interesting creature in my back yard — by the time I got my phone out and fired up the camera app, it was gone. The biggest impediment to ever getting this is the creepy/spywatch factor, and the last thing Google needs is the same set of concerns people have about Glass.
Multiple device controls – This isn’t entirely Android Wear specific, but really in all of Android if you have multiple devices tied to the same account, dismissing a notification on one should dismiss it on all the others. My tablet constantly ends up with tons of useless notifications on it that I have already seen on my phone. Android wear has raised my awareness to the possibility of dismissing a notification on one device affecting the other, so now we just need to make it do that from my watch to all my devices, rather than just the phone it’s paired to.
Desktop integration – It would be really awesome if my watch could be more than just a remote extension of my phone. If there was a chrome extension, Android Wear would become even more useful: Controlling YouTube, Grooveshark, Netflix when they are running in the browser too? Yes please! I’d also love to see the same automatic lock/unlock functionality that’s coming to Android L, on my windows desktop. Even if it meant pulling up some card on my watch to lock the screen (or check whether it’s locked), that would be great.
3rd party integrations – Hangouts has me spoiled. Whenever I get a Facebook notification about a comment for example, I expect to be able to actually read the comment by tapping on the notification or swiping to the right, but right now all I can do is choose “Open on Phone” and then go find my phone. When app developers start including the full context in their notifications, they will be incredibly useful.
Wrapping it up
Android Wear is a great platform today, with a lot of potential to become truly amazing in the very near future. The watches available today are not perfect, but their drawbacks are minor, at least in the case of the LG G which I have experience with. If you have any interest in wearable computing or just making your life a bit more convenient, I think picking one up today is well worth it.The headline says it all.
We, as fans, have all had teams that we have hated for one reason or another. Whether we're embroiled in an old-school rivalry like the Raiders and Chiefs or Packers and Bears or if it's a relatively new hatred, like the backlash that sprang up after the Dallas Cowboys took the mantle of America's Team, football fans are some of the most ardent grudge-holders in sports.
Of course, everyone will have a different take, and that's what makes it so compelling. What one fan has spent their life defending, another has spent their life loathing. While we can sometimes lose ourselves while rooting for or against certain teams, we always come back for the rivalries—and yes, for the hate.
Your humble blogger and a few of my B/R colleagues go over the teams we consider the Most Hated in the history of the league. Let us know who we may have missed or if there's a reasonable defense for the teams we've listed above (which I seriously doubt...).Jimmy Carter discusses his belief that religion is one of the ‘basic causes’ of violations of women’s rights worldwide.
Former President of the United States, Nobel Peace Laureate and veteran peace negotiator Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life to the advancement of democracy, peace and health across the globe.
As part of his worldwide efforts, Jimmy Carter works as an Elder:
Chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Elders is an independent group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights. They were brought together in 2007 by [the late] Nelson Mandela, who [was] not an active member of the group but remain[ed] an Honorary Elder. The Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was also an Honorary Elder, until her election to the Burmese parliament in April 2012. SOURCE
In the following video presented on behalf of The Elders, Jimmy Carter discusses the impact of religion and tradition on the lives of women and girls and his belief that religion is one of the ‘basic causes’ of violations of women’s rights worldwide:
(Visited 48 times, 1 visits today)Microsoft is working to patch the vulnerability through a software update
Investigators say they are closing in on the source of the cyber attacks that hit a number of US companies, including Google, according to reports.
The Financial Times suggests that US officials have tracked the author of the code used to attack the company.
The paper says the alleged hacker is a Chinese "freelance security consultant in his 30s" who had published extracts of the attack code on the web.
The attacks led Google to announce that it may pull out of China entirely.
The attacks allegedly hit more than 30 companies. Google said they had targeted the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
The hackers had used a security hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser to launch the attacks. The hole has since been patched.
The FT says that the alleged hacker posted pieces of the program to a hacker's forum and that Chinese officials had "special access" to the code.
"If he wants to do the research he's good at, he has to toe the line now and again," the paper quoted a single, unnamed government researcher as saying.
The news comes after reports linked two Chinese schools to the attacks.
Reports suggested that the source of the strikes had been traced to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang School, a large vocational training centre in Jinan.
Both schools deny any involvement.A man died and five other people have been taken to hospitals after a crash in South Austin Wednesday.
Austin-Travis County EMS and Austin police said the three-vehicle crash happened around 12:05 p.m. in the 10200 block of Manchaca, which is just south of Slaughter Lane. APD said their preliminary investigation shows a 2001 Mazda Protege was going southbound on Manchaca and drifted into the northbound lane, striking a 2012 Kia Sportage head on. The Sportage then spun and struck a 2005 Hyundai Sonata that was also traveling northbound.
The driver of the Mazda, identified by police Thursday as Tyler Robinson, 22, died at the scene. The other five people involved in the crash were taken to hospitals by ambulance. EMS said Wednesday that one of those people, a woman believed to be in her 40s, had critical injuries. The other people were expected to be okay.
Police said in their release that toxicology is pending to determine if impairment was a factor in the crash.
Anyone with information on the crash is asked to call APD Vehicular Homicide Unit detectives at 512-974-5789. This is Austin's 59th fatal crash and 60th fatality of 2016.Liz Gasser is vice president of business operations for Qualcomm Labs (@QualcommLabs). Follow her @LizGasser.
Incubators are a great way to help accelerate your early-stage business. And luckily for you, they are springing up all over the place.
You should know that there are short- and long-form accelerator programs, and nearly all of them have an involved application process. Most of them are also oversubscribed.
Qualcomm Lab’s incubator initiative, QualcommLabs@EvoNexus, sees quite a few applications. Since kicking off this collaboration in mid-2012 with local San Diego incubator, EvoNexus, the pair have jointly screened over two hundred applications. Taken together with the experience of working with internal startups at Qualcomm Labs, we’re learning a lot about what works, and what doesn’t, when pitching innovative new businesses.
Here are a few tips to help you get through the initial screening process and land that all-important pitch with a selection committee.
Dot your “I’s” and cross your “T’s.” This is going to sound extremely basic (so please don’t be insulted) but follow the instructions carefully and answer all the questions. An admission cycle can have hundreds of applications, and no matter how cool your idea, missing pieces (such as the lack of an executive summary, or failing to answer questions about your competition) doesn’t exactly shout “Pick me!”
Hone your elevator pitch. You have less than 5 minutes—and probably more likely 2 minutes—to capture the imagination of your reader. Make your opening words count. Tell why the world shouldn’t go on another minute without your product. And please take note: Explaining your business as the combination of two existing successful concepts (e.g., “We’re Pinterest meets Salesforce.com”) only begs the question of why your two comparison companies don’t just expand their markets and put you out of business.
Know how to describe yourself. While your business is second nature to you, it is coming at the reviewer cold. It is okay to assume we are completely ignorant of the value you provide to the world, and explaining it in simple, jargon-less terms doesn’t take away from the genius of your concept—it helps us understand. Try this exercise: For [your customer], who needs to [the need your product meets], we provide [your solution/product], unlike [your competitor], our product/solution [the stuff that makes you great].
Show and tell. If you have an application or prototype, and the application form or requested materials permit, then show it off. Not every reviewer will make it to your website or download your app, so bring it to them. Screenshots/photos and even short videos can go a long way.
Be honest about your experience level. You always hear that team and track record matter to investors. They do, but not every great idea from a young innovator comes with a storied team and prior exits. What is key is demonstrating that you truly understand the value your solution can (and does) bring to the world. If you have experience in the space you are going after, or the problem you are solving, play it up. If you don’t, then get some. Find advisors who do know the space and get them to give you feedback. Also, get out and talk to your prospective customers. Saying you’ll engage with them when you launch is not an option. If you don’t have a product yet, at least invest time to talk with potential users, interview them, and understand their pain points. Show them sketches, mock ups, you name it. This all goes an awfully long way.
So, to all you entrepreneurs out there: You are trying to change the world, and all of us will benefit when you do. If you are thinking of using an incubator to help get you along the way, spending a little bit of time upfront perfecting your message can go a long way!
For more insights and advice for entrepreneurs—as well as a look at amazing inventors and up-and-coming companies, check out our Entrepreneurial Invention issue, including our video profile of Las Vegas' Downtown Project.
This article is commissioned by Qualcomm Incorporated. The views expressed are the author’s own.Image caption Fans in Scotland can only buy alcohol in hospitality or corporate areas
Fresh calls have been made for the ban on the sale of alcohol at Scottish football matches to be lifted.
Strict controls were introduced in 1980 after violent clashes during the Scottish Cup final at Hampden.
Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell has said the club would like to be able to sell alcohol to fans in a controlled environment.
I think responsible drinking is perfectly possible at football stadiums Archie Macpherson, Broadcaster
However, supporters of the ban say a reintroduction would create problems for police and stewards.
The Scottish government said the issue of alcohol at games was one of a range of things it may consider as part of wider work - with the police and football authorities - to explore how to improve the sporting experience for fans.
The general sale of alcohol was banned at stadiums in the aftermath of the 1980 Scottish Cup final between Celtic and Rangers, which saw rival fans battling on the field and police on horseback attempting to defuse the trouble.
It was largely attributed to the volume of alcohol consumed by spectators.
Broadcaster Archie Macpherson, who commentated on the match, told BBC Scotland he thought it was time to bring back alcohol.
He said: "I think we have matured greatly since those days.
"That was a stunning scene. It was a seminal moment and nobody complained about the new laws that came in after that because things were so bad.
"But I think it went too far. If you add all the legislation together about attending a football match, including the recent anti-sectarian ones, I think football fans are being treated like cattle."
The commentator added: "I think responsible drinking is perfectly possible at football stadiums. People have become much more responsible. Stadia are much better equipped to deal with these things. I think attitudes have changed."
'Bevvy' call
However, the former head of the Scottish Police Federation, Les Gray, said the idea of having alcohol on general sale in stadiums "beggars belief".
Speaking on BBC Scotland's Call Kaye programme, he said: "I am one of the old guys who was actually around in 1980 when the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act was introduced to football.
"Everybody just keeps blaming this one game but it was a whole host of events that brought about that ban.
"We used to stand at the football and get pelted with cans and bottles, which weren't full of their original content, and it was an absolute nightmare."
Image caption Legislation banning the general sale of alcohol at football matches was introduced in 1980
Mr Gray said the controls on the sale of alcohol during games had helped improve the standard at Scottish football "beyond recognition".
The ban on alcohol does not apply for events such as concerts when they are held at football grounds. American football, rugby league matches and rugby union club matches are also exempt from controls.
In 2007 the Scottish government lifted the ban for international rugby matches at Murrayfield Stadium, allowing fans to drink alcohol while watching games.
Mr Gray said: "The atmosphere and the attitude at rugby and ice-hockey are completely different to the football atmosphere."
He said talk of "bringing back the bevvy" was an example of football fans' attitudes to alcohol. "Some people just can't get enough," he added.
In Scotland, alcohol can only be sold to fans in hospitality and corporate areas during football matches.
In England, football fans can buy a drink on the concourses at designated times during and after games, but are not allowed to take alcohol back to their seats.
'Enjoyable environment'
Dev McDonald, from the Scottish football supporters' website Pie and Bovril, said he would like to see a similar model introduced north of the border.
"We are talking about controlled, responsible drinking," he said.
"People who watch football come from every spectrum of society, and they are no different to the people who go and support rugby or ice hockey. You can't treat them any different.
"It is demeaning to actually say that football fans can't be trusted to have a drink."
A Scottish government spokesman said: "We are committed to ensuring that football fans can enjoy our national sport in a safe, enjoyable environment.
"Decisions are informed by advice from the police, and we are actively working with football authorities, the police and fans' representatives to explore how we can both improve safety and the enjoyment of sporting experience for fans."Caption: Thousands demonstrates against adoption by parliament an Islamic constitution in Bangladesh capital on Thursday.
Thousands of protesters marched in capital Dhaka on Thursday against Bangladesh parliament adopted an Islamic constitution, steering away from a secular political culture, which was enshrined in 1972 constitution.
A half a mile long rally organized by a conglomerate of left parties and pro-secular groups, chanting anti-government slogans and waving red flags marched towards the parliament, where the ruling party and her alliance lawmakers hastily adopted several amendments to the constitution on Thursday noon.
Hundreds of riot police in flak jackets, armed with shot guns and tear gas shells blocked the marchers putting up barbed-wire fences. The protesters in summer heat and intermittent rain stopped at exit of the Dhaka University, where leaders in makeshift dais addressed the crowd and bitterly criticized the government for switching to an Islamic constitution.
In a massive constitutional reform, the non-partisan interim government has been deleted, which was practiced for 15 years to hold credible elections and ensure smooth transition to an incumbent political government. The opposition fears that the ruling party will rig the election, despite denial by the prime minister.
A set of 55 amendment proposals were incorporated in the constitution amendment bill by 289-1 division vote.
Main opposition described the abrogation of neutral caretaker government from the democratic constitution will be written in the history as a “black day”. Opposition leader and former prime minister Khaleda Zia threatened series of street protests and political agitations to undo the constitution reforms.
Prime minister Shiekh Hasina warned the opposition not to create anarchy and instead olive branches to hold parleys with the government and suggest how to hold a credible election scheduled in 2014 and also reduce military interference in state polity.
The prime minister was highly critical of the last military-backed caretaker government (2006-8), which sent the present prime minister and opposition leader to prison for corruption.
The independence war veterans, secularist and left leaning parties have came down heavily on the government for converting a secular political culture to an Islamic one.
Several lawmakers mostly from the left leaning parties have voted against the proposed amendment of the constitution, which has included Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim (in the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful), a verse from Koran in the preamble and Islam as state religion.
The ethnic minority leader Mangal Kumar Chakma in a statement protested the new constitution, which has termed the indigenous peoples as “tribals, small nationalities, ethnic groups and communities.”
What angered the indigenous peoples when the discovered that they have been bracketed as “Bangalee”, who are majoritarian Sunni Muslims. The indigenous communities divided in several sub-groups have different languages and are mostly Buddhist, Hindu and animist.
Bangladesh gained independence from Islamic Pakistan after a bloody war on the principle to establish a secular and democratic nation.
Former Justice Golam Rabbany lamented at a seminar on Thursday that from now the nation has lost its secular identity, which was gained after decades of struggle. The sacrifices of thousands of martyrs during the independence war, forty years ago have been insulted, he decried.FARGO-A bicyclist who was struck and dragged by a vehicle has died several days after the accident.
Fargo Police Sgt. Jim VanLith confirmed that Randy Bryson West, 19, died sometime Saturday, Sept. 23, at Fargo's Sanford Medical Center, 5225 23rd Ave. S.
West was riding a bike shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 19, when he was hit by a BMW as it turned left onto 45th Street South from 17th Avenue South, according to police. Officers said West and the bike were dragged under the vehicle for about a block before the driver stopped in the parking lot of HuHot Mongolian Grill, 1801 45th St. S.
Police said after the accident that the driver, 71-year-old Fargo resident Theodore William Kleiman, didn't realize he hit West until he stopped in the parking lot. Firefighters lifted the car there to remove West and the bike.
VanLith said Saturday that the case is still under investigation.
A Police Department news release on Wednesday, Sept. 20, said West was in stable condition at Sanford.
But several posts in recent days to a Facebook profile with the name Crik N Jess Jessop, apparently a shared account between West's parents, Christopher and Jesseca Jessop, in Utah, suggest the man's recovery from the accident was unlikely even several days ago.
A Saturday evening post to that account said West "has now gone with the angels," and went on to thank the 19-year-old for "choosing me to be your mommy."
Another post two days earlier said the parents of West had decided to "say goodbye and let him go" by removing him from life support rather than letting him remain in a "vegetative state."
"His dad and I ask for privacy at this time so we may mourn the loss of our beloved son and prepare for his return home for burial," Jessop said in the post.
Other posts included a video of a flag-raising ceremony at Sanford to celebrate West's "gift of life" through organ donations, followed later by a list of four people who would receive West's lungs, liver, pancreas and kidneys.
"Due to the extreme amount of damage done to Randy's body, these are the only organs that he can gift," the post read.If, like me, you still find yourself shaking your fist at the abysmal numbers of women speakers at your average STEM conference, and you enjoy a bit of geeking out over math, then today’s post is going to make your toes curl in delight.
A few months back, my mathematician friend Greg Martin at the University of British Columbia invited my feedback on a paper he was writing on how to increase the number of women speaking at math conferences. One bit in particular jumped out at me:
He used statistical probability to disprove the notion that underrepresentation of women on any given speaker’s list “just happens.”
(Picture me bouncing in my seat with glee. Take that, sexist STEM-ers!)
If you’ve ever followed a debate about why an event has so few women speakers, you’re likely familiar with the argument that gender was not a factor (AKA “we chose the best speakers, regardless of gender”), and that speakers were chosen in an unbiased fashion, on merit alone. Well, if I understand the math correctly, the odds of that assertion being true are next to nothing.
It delights me to no end that Greg has found a way to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. So naturally, I asked if he’d be willing to share a little more about how he arrived at his calculations.
What follows is, to be sure, a fairly technical read—but it’s an accessible and engaging one, too. I hope you’ll follow along, even if math isn’t your most cherished subject, and share this with your favourite stats nerds.
Over to Greg:
In a recent article, I made the following statement regarding the genders of plenary speakers at the International Congress of Mathematicians:
The appropriate null hypothesis is “the ICM speakers were selected independently of gender from among the pool of people who have received PhDs in mathematics in the last 25 years”. Under our conservative 24% assumption from above, the observation of nineteen male plenary speakers and one female plenary speaker rejects ( ) this null hypothesis. Indeed, it is 18 times as likely that we would have seen an “overrepresentation” of female plenary speakers (five or more, since ) by chance than to have seen at most one.
Clearly the gist of this statement is that having one female speaker out of twenty is really unlikely to be the result of chance or bad luck. But how were those exact numbers, 0.031 and 18, determined? How can we calculate analogous numbers in similar situations? It turns out not to be that hard, once we know the formula to use; the purpose of this post is to supply that formula and give some examples of how to use it.
Let’s start by examining an idealized situation divorced from social issues. Imagine that we have a giant bag full of marbles; the marbles come in two colours, orange and green (we like the orange ones better), which are well mixed together. We are going to take 50 marbles out of the bag, one by one, and see how many orange marbles we end up with.
Of course, without knowing whether orange marbles are common, rare, or somewhere in between, we have no idea how many orange marbles to expect! Let’s say that we know that 40% of the marbles are orange and 60% of them are green. On average, we’d expect to get orange marbles in our selection of 50 marbles; but of course, we might get lucky and get more than 20 orange marbles, or we might get unlucky and get fewer than 20 marbles. How likely is it to end up with, say, only 13 orange marbles?
As it happens, the probability of ending up with exactly 13 orange marbles, if we draw 50 marbles from a bag containing 40% orange marbles and 60% green marbles, is1
Here, the symbol is a “binomial coefficient”2 (sometimes written as, and pronounced “50 choose 13”).
While it’s not impossible to calculate this on our own, we might as well use WolframAlpha to help out: if we type in
Binomial[50,13] * (0.4)^13 * (1-0.4)^(50-13),
we receive the answer, telling us that the chance of getting exactly 13 orange marbles is about 1.47%. We can also go to Stat Trek’s online binomial calculator and enter 0.4, 50, and 13 in the first three fields; we see the answer 0.0147378… appear in the fourth field.
The general version of the above situation is: we have independent opportunities for success or failure (in the example above, was 50, and “success” meant drawing an orange marble while “failure” meant drawing a green marble). In each opportunity, the probability of success is some number (above, ). If we are interested in a certain number,, of successes (above, was 13), then the probability of succeeding exactly out of times is given by the formula3
Now, suppose we suspected that some funny business was going on. For example, maybe our housemate loves orange marbles, and we think that she snuck around one night and pulled a bunch of orange marbles out of the bag before we started taking our 50 marbles. (I guess the bag is so huge that emptying it out and counting all the marbles it holds is out of the question.) She denies it, however, saying “sometimes you get few orange marbles by random chance”. What should you believe?
It seems unlikely to get only 13 orange marbles out of 50 (if there really are still 40% orange marbles in the bag). On the other hand, any specific number of orange marbles is pretty unlikely. Getting exactly 20 orange marbles is the most likely outcome, as we remarked above, but even that has less than an 11.5% chance of happening4. So instead of asking how likely it is to get exactly 13 orange marbles, standard procedure is to ask how likely it is to get at most 13 orange marbles (in other words, how likely it is to get a result this extreme or even more extreme).
There’s no secret here: to get the probability of obtaining at most 13 orange marbles out of 50 (assuming that the bag really does contain 40% orange marbles), we just add up the probability of obtaining 0 orange marbles, 1 orange marble, 2 orange marbles, and so on up to 13 orange marbles:5
Fortunately WolframAlpha can do this for us, if we enter6
the sum of Binomial[50,j] * (0.4)^j * (1-0.4)^(50-j) from 0 to 13.
The Stat Trek binomial calculator also calculates this for us (the answer appears in the third field from the bottom). Either way, we obtain |
on the sidelines of the visit by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to Moscow.
Read more
A memorandum of understanding has been reportedly signed to help the kingdom develop its own defense industries.
The Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has already said Riyadh was showing interest in buying Russian missile systems.
“There is some interest, of course. Talks on S-400 are in progress, but there are no final decisions yet,” he said today, adding that confidential negotiations on military-technical cooperation were being held.
The S-400 is Russia’s most advanced long-range anti-aircraft missile system and can carry three types of warheads designed to destroy targets including ballistic and cruise missiles.
The system is able to track and engage up to 300 targets to an altitude of 27 kilometers at the same time.
The deal is a potential coup for Russia. Saudi Arabia has traditionally purchased defense equipment from the United States.
In June, the kingdom signed its biggest ever defense contract to buy American Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) defense systems, guided missile frigates, military planes, and howitzers.
READ MORE: 'Turkey to get what Libya & Iraq lacked: Russian-made S-400 missile system'
Earlier this year, Turkey signed a deal to buy the S-400 missile system from Russia with deliveries reportedly to start within two years.A Los Angeles woman has filed a police report alleging Democratic Assemblyman Matt Dababneh had sex with her without consent four years ago, adding new allegations of sexual misconduct to those that led the politician to announce his resignation last week. He says her claims are false.
Nancy Miret, 26, told The Times that when she was 22 and a recent college graduate, she spent time with Dababneh over two months in late 2013, primarily at his Encino apartment.
At the time, Dababneh was running for Assembly to represent the western San Fernando Valley. They had consensual sex on one occasion, but after that, Miret said she had multiple nonconsensual sexual encounters with Dababneh that left her traumatized. Miret, who now works in commercial real estate, is one of three women interviewed by The Times who have made new allegations concerning Dababneh’s behavior.
“These allegations are false and I’m confident that when all the facts are in, it will clearly show that these claims are not true,” Dababneh told The Times.
The assemblyman announced his resignation Friday, effective Jan. 1, after two women publicly accused him of harassment. Pamela Lopez, a Sacramento lobbyist, said Dababneh masturbated in front of her and asked her to touch his genitals at a 2016 party. Another woman, Jessica Yas Barker, alleged that Dababneh routinely made degrading comments about women and discussed his sexual exploits in the office. Dababneh has strongly denied the accusations.
The Assembly Rules Committee has hired an outside investigator to look into the allegations against the Woodland Hills lawmaker, who is not married.
Assemblyman Matt Dababneh to resign following sexual misconduct allegations »
The other two women who spoke to The Times also described incidents that they claim occurred before Dababneh was elected to the Assembly in 2013 — one when he supervised local field operations to help John F. Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004, and another when he was chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Porter Ranch), a position he held from 2009 to 2013.
Jenn Kang said Dababneh was her supervisor in 2004 when, as an 18-year-old just out of high school, she worked on the Kerry campaign in a Pasadena field office. She alleged that Dababneh exposed his penis to her and asked her to touch or perform oral sex on him one day when they were out trying to raise money for the candidate. Kang offered to speak to the Assembly Rules Committee last week as part of its investigation into Dababneh’s conduct.
Carrie McFadden worked in Sherman’s campaign office from 2010 to 2012. She said Dababneh, as the congressman’s chief of staff in the district office, would regularly talk about his sex life during his frequent visits. She said he once offered her a raise if she could convince a UCLA student to have sex with him.
Neither woman formally reported the incidents, saying they weren’t sure how to do so at the time.
“I did not know who to call. I was only reporting to Matt…. There’s no one else that I would have talked to,” said Kang, who is now 31 and working in healthcare. “A big part of me thinks that had I been able to have that route, he wouldn’t have been able to do this to other women.”
Dababneh, then a recent graduate of UCLA, appeared to take special interest in Kang during her summer job assisting the 2004 campaign, she said, asking her to go on weekend vacations and saying he had feelings for her.
She said Dababneh once asked her if she was a virgin. “I wanted to jump out of my skin,” she said.
Her older sister, Irene Kang, recalled that Kang said her male supervisor had taken interest in her and was asking her to hang out outside of work.
One afternoon in summer 2004, Kang and Dababneh were out knocking on doors to raise money. As they were sitting in his parked car, Dababneh pulled out his erect penis and asked her what she thought of it, she said. He asked her if she would touch him or perform oral sex on him, she said. When she declined, she said, he asked if she would at least touch his arm, and then put his penis back in his pants.
They finished their shift, but Kang didn’t return to the office to work again after that day. Her friend Sarah Kwon said Kang told her at the time that Dababneh had exposed himself in the car.
Kang said she had been “too young to process” what had happened to her. She said she’s speaking up now because she feels she “would be complicit by not saying anything.”
California assemblyman accused of forcing lobbyist into bathroom and masturbating »
McFadden said she frequently interacted with Dababneh when she worked in Sherman’s campaign office, a job she began as a 23-year-old UCLA student in 2010. Dababneh was then chief of staff in the representative’s district office in Sherman Oaks.
McFadden said Dababneh would hang out in the campaign office and talk about “which interns he thought were hot, or which women he had hooked up with in politics.”
In February 2012, McFadden was honored as the UCLA Bruins Democratic Club alumnus of the year. She said Dababneh attended the event and told her if she could convince the then-president of the club to have sex with him, he would get McFadden a raise.
McFadden said the comment made her uneasy.
“I think at the time I was in shock, and I don’t think I even directly responded,” she said.
Because McFadden worked for the campaign and not in the district office, Dababneh was not her boss and had no formal authority to adjust her pay.
McFadden did not report the incident to her boss, but she confided in two friends. Both confirmed to The Times that McFadden told them about Dababneh’s behavior, including the comment about the raise.
Later, McFadden sent Dababneh an email, congratulating him on an endorsement in his campaign. She said she remained in occasional contact with him because she was “being mindful of not burning any bridges.”
McFadden, now 31 and working at an election law firm in San Francisco, said she struggled with whether to tell her story publicly.
“There are still a lot of people from that campaign I consider friends,” she said.
Miret was 22 years old and a recent UCLA graduate when she and Dababneh first spent time together alone in October 2013. Dababneh, 10 years her senior, was running for office for the first time, locked in a tight Assembly race that he would win narrowly the next month.
They met months earlier when her friend, Susana Mejia, brought her to a party. Mejia, who was then an intern in Sherman’s office, said she introduced them there.
The first time they spent time together, Miret said, she and Dababneh had sex at his apartment. She said that first encounter was consensual. When she met him subsequently, she told him in advance that she didn’t want to have sex.
They did not have sex every time they saw each other. But on multiple occasions Dababneh would remove her clothes as she tried to squirm away, Miret said. She claimed she would tell him “no” or “stop” before he had sex with her. Miret said he would bite her neck and other parts of her body, leaving visible marks, and sometimes apologized for his actions.
“If you’re saying ‘No, no, no, no,’ and you stop and then you’re quiet, you still never gave consent. That’s something that I didn’t understand” at first, Miret said. “I didn’t understand that me stopping fighting was not consent.”
In her own words: Women of California politics tell their stories of sexual harassment and unwanted touching »
Miret said she grapples with why she returned to see him.
“He made it clear he was a powerful person with connections, someone who was important to know, and I naively believed nearly all of it,” she said.
One Saturday night, she said she insisted they meet at a restaurant, hoping to avoid having sex with Dababneh by being in a public place. She said Dababneh convinced her to go to Sherman’s district office in Sherman Oaks, which was empty at the time, where they had nonconsensual sex. She said she felt “intensely violated” after the encounter, and afterward took photos of bruising and bite marks on her neck.
She showed The Times photographs she said were of those injuries; metadata from the photos confirmed they were taken on the night Miret alleged the encounter occurred. Miret’s friend, Kevin Schallert, confirmed she canceled plans to attend a barbecue the next day, which she blamed on visible marks on her body that embarrassed her.
She said she stopped returning Dababneh’s calls a short time later, after his election to the Assembly, and “found the strength to abruptly end all communication with him.” She told her friend, Mejia, at the time that the sex was not consensual. In an interview, Mejia confirmed that. In December 2013, Miret also told Schallert, which he confirmed to The Times.
Miret didn’t file a police report at the time, she said, because “I was still at a point where I could hardly talk about it.”
In June 2014, Miret sought advice from Schallert, who put her in touch with Kaya Axelsson, a student activist on campus rape at USC.
“She wanted to know what her options were as far as coming forward and as far as receiving some form of institutional support,” Axelsson told The Times.
Axelsson suggested she call a rape crisis center affiliated with a local hospital. The Times reviewed a summary of Miret’s June 16, 2014, call — placed seven months after Miret stopped seeing Dababneh — which was released by the center with her authorization. Miret asked questions about reporting a sexual assault and said she had been assaulted by “Matthew Dababneh,” according to the report.
Several weeks ago, Miret was connected to Lopez and Barker through mutual friends. She spoke to The Times before the women made their allegations public, then decided last week to go to the police.
Dababneh’s attorney, James Blatt, said they are cooperating with the investigation.
“I remember what it was like to not have a voice,” Miret said. “It’s not fair to not speak out when you have the chance.”
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melanie.mason@latimes.com; seema.mehta@latimes.com
Follow @melmason and @LATseema on Twitter for the latest in California politics.
ALSO
Assemblyman Matt Dababneh to resign following sexual misconduct allegations
Lawyer for lobbyist who accused Asssemblyman Matt Dababneh of sexual misconduct seeks details about investigation
California assemblyman accused of forcing lobbyist into bathroom and masturbatingSAN DIEGO -- Phil Mickelson turned to his biggest blunder on the golf course to apologize for his latest mistake with his mouth.
Mickelson caused a sensation this week by saying new federal and state tax rates kept him from being part of the San Diego Padres' new ownership group and might cause him to move away from his native California as part of "drastic changes" brought on by the political climate.
He said Wednesday it was a "big mistake" to go public with his views, and he illustrated it with his worst moment in golf.
Mickelson was on the verge of finally winning the U.S. Open when he had a one-shot lead on the final hole at Winged Foot. He drove left onto the corporate tents, and then tried to hit 3-iron around a tree. It led to a double-bogey that cost him the championship.
"This reminds me a lot of Winged Foot in 2006, where I hit a drive way left off the tents. So this happened to be way right," Mickelson said, a playful reference to his position on the higher taxes. "I've made some dumb, dumb mistakes. And obviously, talking about this stuff was one of them."
Golf Digest magazine listed Mickelson's earnings on and off the golf course last year at $47 million, and millionaires complaining about their taxes is sure to be a polarizing topic. Mickelson figured that out quickly, issuing a statement on Monday night that he should have kept his opinion to himself.
After his final round of the Humana Challenge, he said the federal tax rate combined with California passing Proposition 30 -- the first tax increase in the state since 2004 -- would force him to make big changes.
"If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and the state, my tax rate is 62, 63 percent," Mickelson said on Sunday at PGA West. "So I've got to make some decisions on what I'm going to do."Nordstrom has lit the internet on fire with another expensive product that many are calling ridiculous.
On its website, the department store is selling a $425 pair of jeans that is covered in fake mud.
The Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans feature obvious splashes of what Nordstrom calls "caked-on muddy coating," giving the effect of being worn on a day in the dirt.
In its description for the pants, the company says they "embody rugged, Americana workwear that's seen some hard-working action" and that, when worn, they show "you're not afraid to get down and dirty."
When he discovered the product this week, "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe posted about them on his website, saying the Nordstrom jeans were proof of "our country's war on work."
"They're a costume for wealthy people who see work as ironic — not iconic," Rowe wrote on Monday in a post titled, "Jeans made to look like you work hard so you don't have to."
On Fox News Tuesday, "Fox & Friends" co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt criticized the jeans, with Kilmeade saying "if you're going to wear muddy jeans, you should earn the mud."
Earhardt said she thinks the pants are "for the kid who inherits the millions of dollars, the kid who doesn't want to work hard and wants to go into Nordstrom, pay a lot of money and act like they work."
Nordstrom got ripped by critics in 2016 for selling average rocks wrapped in leather for $85 each. The store also recently started selling $95 "mom jeans" that have clear plastic panels on the legs to allow the wearer to show off their knees.
Clint Davis covers entertainment and trending news topics for the Scripps National Desk. Follow him on Twitter @MrClintDavis.By Minami Funakoshi, Ami Miyazaki and Thomas Wilson
Image Attribute: Gursewak Singh poses for a photographer in front of decorations on a wall at his house during an interview with Reuters, in Matsudo, Japan, September 25, 2016.REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
MATSUDO, Japan (Reuters) - Gursewak Singh composed his first letter to Japan's justice minister when he was 10 years old. Almost seven years later, he is still writing. In all, he has written more than 50 letters.
He has yet to get a reply.
The letters, all written in Japanese, have become more eloquent as Gursewak has grown up. But the message is unchanged - a plea to the Japanese authorities to recognize him and his family as residents in a country where he and his younger twin siblings were born and his parents, natives of India, have lived since the 1990s.
"My family loves Japan," Gursewak wrote to then-Justice Minister Keiko Chiba on March 6, 2010. "We really don't want to go back to India. Please give us visas."
In his most recent letter, composed in August to the immigration authorities, he wrote: "The Immigration Bureau tells us to go back to India. Why do the three of us have to go back to our parents' country, even though we were born and raised in Japan?"
Gursewak's parents, who are Sikhs, fled to Japan from India in the 1990s. For several years, they lived without visas under the radar of the authorities until they were put on a status known as "provisional release" in 2001. It means they can stay in Japan as long as their asylum application is under review.
But it also means they can't work, they don't have health insurance and they need permission to travel outside the prefecture where they live.
They are also subject to unannounced inspections by immigration officers at their home and they face detention at any time. There are currently some 4,700 people with this status living in Japan.
Gursewak, who has never left Japan, has inherited his parents' provisional release status and all the restrictions that go with it. That fate has exposed him and more than 500 other children who share his predicament to lives of perpetual uncertainty.
They can go to government-run schools, where tuition is largely free, but the university is out of reach for most because they and their parents aren't allowed to work and so can't afford the fees. These children, many of whom are asylum seekers, will soon face a stark choice between forced unemployment and work illegally.
Image Attribute: Gursewak Singh (R) and his parents pose for a photographer next to their house (L) during an interview with Reuters, in Matsudo, Japan, September 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
"THEY ARE ILLEGAL"
"Since I was born I've only ever interacted with Japanese people," said Gursewak, who is now 17, speaks the language with native fluency and considers himself Japanese. "I don't get why Japan won't accept me."
The immigration authorities are unmoved. The fact that these children were born in Japan, or arrived at a young age, doesn't afford them any special status, officials say. "They are under deportation orders, so they are illegal," said Naoaki Torisu, a Justice Ministry official overseeing immigration issues. "They have no legal right to stay in Japan."
Interviews with some two dozen children on provisional release from 11 countries, including Vietnam, Pakistan, and Ghana, reveal stories that are similar to the one told by Gursewak.
Their experiences highlight Japan's deep reluctance to accept foreigners, even as the country's population ages and its workforce shrinks. Earlier this year, Reuters exposed how asylum seekers on provisional release are working without permits to provide the muscle on the government-funded road and infrastructure projects, even as Japan says they must leave.
While there were almost 14,000 asylum cases under review at the end of 2015, Japan accepted only 27 refugees last year. The year before that, the number was 11.
The low acceptance rate stands in stark contrast to Europe, which has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees arrive from countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Eritrea. In the first half of the year, European countries ruled on 495,000 asylum applications, approving more than 293,000, according to Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union. In addition, European countries had more than 1.1 million more cases that they had yet to decide on at the end of June.
Belgium, with a population less than a tenth the size of Japan's, decided on more than 13,000 asylum applications in the first half of the year. It had approved almost two-thirds by the end of June, of which 1,975 were minors.
Germany, with a population two-thirds the size of Japan's, approved 174,230 asylum requests out of 256,715 in the first six months of the year. That included 51,185 children.
At the same time, countries in Europe and elsewhere are growing colder on immigration - not least the United States, where Donald Trump this month won the presidency on a nativist platform. Trump is vowing to deport millions of people illegally residing in the country.
Chiba, the ex-justice minister who was in office when Gursewak wrote his first letter, says Japan's immigration policy needs to be revamped.
Image Attribute: Japan's Justice Minister Keiko Chiba speaks during a news conference at the ministry in Tokyo August 27, 2010. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo
"There should be a proper, wider system of granting residence permits," even to those who are in Japan illegally, she told Reuters in an interview. "We could grant amnesty to everyone who is already in Japan and is living illegally, and work toward setting up a proper system of accepting newcomers."
Chiba's is a rare voice of dissent. Across the Japanese political spectrum, there is broad support for keeping immigration barriers high. Last year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the solution to Japan's demographic problems was getting more women and the elderly into the workforce, not loosening the nation's immigration laws.
For at least some children, there is a path to residency. But it involves a cruel choice.
Five families on provisional release told Reuters that immigration authorities had outlined a deal to them: The children could stay in Japan legally if the parents returned to their country of origin. Immigration officials confirmed such an arrangement exists, but said the offer was only made in cases where the family first raised it.
Image Attribute: Gursewak Singh (2nd L) and his father, Bharpoor Singh, (L) take part in a protest calling for visas for children on provisional release in front of the Ministry of Justice in Tokyo, Japan, August 24, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Wilson
A DISTURBING OFFER
That's not how Gursewak's father tells it. It was early on a weekday in mid-2015 when Bharpoor Singh says he got a phone call from the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau asking him and his wife to come for an interview that same day.
The Singhs were worried. In the past, such requests had been made in writing. And only a few months earlier, their appeal against the rejection of their asylum application had been turned down by the authorities.
The first part of the meeting followed the pattern of previous engagements, Bharpoor said. Speaking through a Punjabi interpreter, an immigration official quizzed the Singhs about their lives, in particular how they made a living. Bharpoor told the official that their only means of support were donations from a Sikh charity and individuals in the Sikh community.
Then, about an hour into the interview, Bharpoor said the officer made the Singhs an offer that left them badly shaken: He and his wife could return to India, while Gursewak and his siblings remained behind in Japan, where they might then stand a chance of getting residency.
"I said that we couldn't leave our children because they were still small," Bharpoor recalled. "And they have religious needs such as a vegetarian diet and wearing turbans. Their mom does all of that for them. We'd never thought of separating, that would be absolutely impossible."
Gursewak was horrified when he heard about the offer. "Who would look after us?" he said. "We can't work. What would the twins do?"
Immigration officials say that they never initiate such offers but they are open to the idea if it is first broached by the family. They said they didn't know how many cases there had been in which parents agreed to separate from their children in the hope of giving them a better life in Japan.
"If the children themselves wish to stay in Japan even after their parents leave, and there are guardians who take care of them and their living expenses can be covered, then we can consider whether to grant them special residence permits," said Tadashi Shirayori, who oversees special residency permits at the Justice Ministry.
Ex-Justice Minister Chiba said several of these deals with migrant families had come across her desk during her tenure from 2009 to 2010. There was no official policy stipulating how the arrangement should work, the offer usually was not put in writing, and it was done on a case-by-case basis, she said.
"Separating the parents from their children is not how it should be," Chiba said. But it's difficult to let the parents off without punishment, she added. "So in the end, we ask the parents to go home."
Bharpoor says he can't go home. He fled the village of Sakruli in the Indian state of Punjab in 1992 after he was persecuted as a Sikh religious leader, he said. India put down an armed revolt for a separate Sikh homeland that erupted in the late 1970s, and thousands of Sikhs were killed by angry mobs in 1984 in the days following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.
According to court documents from two trials related to his status in Japan, Bharpoor said he was arrested by the Indian police and tortured. He pointed to a scar on his right foot that he said was the result of being given electric shocks.
Image Attribute: Gursewak Singh (R) and his father Bharpoor Singh are seen in the living room of their house during an interview with Reuters in Matsudo, Japan, September 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
NOT GUILTY
According to the state police in Punjab, Bharpoor was arrested in March 1989 for allegedly "giving shelter to terrorists and keeping their weapons at his home." He was tried and found not guilty, and released in November that year.
Satwinder Singh, a police officer in the Hoshiarpur district where the case was filed, said he couldn't confirm whether Bharpoor was tortured by the police but that it was "quite common to torture the Sikh youth at the time who were arrested for alleged involvement in terrorist activities." Singh, who reviewed the old case file, said there was no case pending against Bharpoor and that he was "free to come back."
After leaving India, Bharpoor headed to Hong Kong, where he spent several months before moving to Japan. All of the family's four asylum applications have been rejected and they are now applying again. In 2010, Bharpoor said he was detained for 10 months after the third application was denied.
At the time, Gursewak's mother became ill with anemia and rheumatoid arthritis, leaving 10-year-old Gursewak to care for the family. He would go shopping for frozen food, which he would heat up for his mother, brother, and sister.
"I was little and couldn't understand what was going on," recalled Gursewak, who wears a kirpan around his neck, a miniature ceremonial dagger carried by Sikh men as a symbol of their faith. "My mother was crying, and my brother and sister were panicking."
It was the moment Gursewak's childhood ended. His mother barely spoke Japanese. Fluent in the language, he began calling lawyers and migrant NGOs for help. He also collected signatures from his Japanese neighbors to support his family's petition for visas.
Image Attribute: Gursewak Singh holds a Japanese newspaper as he prepares for an interview with Reuters, in Matsudo, Japan, September 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
That's also when he started writing his letters.
"We are having trouble getting by because my dad's not here," he wrote to then-Justice Minister Chiba several months after his father was detained. "Please, I beg you, let my dad out soon."
Chiba doesn't recall ever seeing the letters but says she wants to apologize to Gursewak. "I'd like to say to him, 'I'm sorry.' Japan hasn't been able to set up a system that can properly respond to people like you, and made you suffer greatly as a result," she said.
With Gursewak's parents barred from working, the family has to scrape by on donations. They have no health insurance, and medical bills have piled up.
In May, Gursewak fell ill with chronic stomach pains and nausea. Medical tests added more than $700 to the family's existing debts. A contract with a local hospital shows the Singhs are paying back about $50 a month.
"I'm really worried all the time," Gursewak said. "Maybe I think too much. But I have to think. College is on the horizon."
While Gursewak is not barred from attending university, his family cannot afford the fees because they can't work. Average annual tuition for government-run universities in Japan is around $5,000, plus a one-off entrance fee of about $3,600. The family's monthly expenses are about $1,800.
Gursewak, who will start his final year of high school in April next year, wants to study web design. He runs a blog about Japan's Sikh community and showed off a computer in the room he shares with his twin siblings. He built it from scratch with friends using money from his school.
When he went to Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics hub, to hunt for parts to build the computer, he had to get written permission from the authorities. As part of the process, he had to supply a list of all the shops he planned to visit.
CHERRY BLOSSOMS AND SIKH PRAYERS
Image Attribute: Gursewak Singh sits on a bed in a room of his house during an interview with Reuters, in Matsudo, Japan, September 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
The Singhs' simple home in Matsudo, a suburb east of Tokyo dotted with Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, contains a blend of Sikh and Japanese motifs. A television beams Sikh prayers live from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the bastion of the Sikh religion in northern India. An embroidered map of Japan decorated with cherry blossoms hangs behind it.
On a recent Sunday in September, Bharpoor, a religious leader in the local Sikh community, led prayers at a temple in Tokyo. Gursewak played tabla - traditional drums used in Sikh ceremonies - as his mother and sister sang prayers. Later, they dished out steaming plates of daal and chapatis to the 60-strong congregation.
Image Attribute: Gursewak Singh serves food to worshippers after prayers given by his father at a Sikh temple in Tokyo, Japan, August 21, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Wilson
The Singhs' lives in Japan have been peppered with legal battles against deportation orders and detention. The authorities have kept close tabs on them. Every two months, the parents and their twin children have to make a three-hour round trip to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau to extend their provisional release permits. Gursewak, who must now make a separate trip because he is over 16, goes every three months.
Earlier this year, immigration officials paid the Singhs a surprise visit as part of a stepped-up crackdown on the estimated 60,000 foreigners living without proper visas in Japan.
The Singhs said the officials took photos of their home, including the family's prayer room and piles of laundry.
The Justice Ministry's Torisu declined to comment on the Singhs' case, but said immigration officials do make unscheduled visits to the homes of people on provisional release to ensure they are not working in violation of their status.
Immigration authorities are clamping down, detaining people working without permits as well as those who have traveled outside their home prefectures without permission, according to interviews with people on provisional release and immigration activists and lawyers.
An internal Justice Ministry memo from September last year reviewed by Reuters called for closer surveillance of people on provisional release.
Chiba describes provisional release as "a totally impossible, contradictory system. Working is illegal, but if so, how are you supposed to live?" she said.
When it comes to children, the provisional release system is "out of touch with reality," she said, because it "doesn't look at children independently of their parents. The provisional release system itself wasn't set up to deal with people who stay in Japan for a long time. So, the fact that these people have children and their children grow up in Japan is beyond the system's framework."
The Justice Ministry's Torisu describes provisional release as a "humanitarian" approach. "We do not think the provisional release system is inhumane or faulty. We have no plans to change or reform this system," he said in an interview.
After years of writing unanswered letters, Gursewak took his plea to the doorstep of the Justice Ministry in August. Standing in the rain with his father and three other provisional release families, they chanted: "Give us visas! Let us study! Let us have our dreams!"
"I need to raise my voice," Gursewak said, his fists clenched as he stared straight ahead. "Otherwise, no one will know what is happening to us."
Image Attribute: Gursewak Singh is silhouetted against a window in a room of his house while he has an interview with Reuters, in Matsudo, Japan, September 25, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
(Additional reporting by Manoj Kumar and Rupam Nair in New Delhi, and Himanshu Ojha in London. Edited by Peter Hirschberg)
(c) 2016 Thomson ReutersThe United Autos Workers, which has endorsed President Barack Obama, announced Thursday that its members want the US Office of Government Ethics to investigate Gov. Mitt Romney for violations.The UAW leadership held a press conference in Toledo, Ohio, Thursday, alleging that Romney profited from the 2009 automotive bailout of General Motors and Chrysler Group through an investment in a company that itself was invested in Delphi Automotive. The irony, of course, is that Romney opposed a government bailout of the auto industry."The American people have a right to know about Governor Romney's potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue," said UAW President Bob King in a press release. "It's time for Governor Romney to disclose or divest."The UAW based its claim that the Romney family profited on an article published in The Nation magazine. That article claimed Romney's family made more than $15 million through the auto bailouts based on investments in a company invested in Delphi.However, after carefully examining the article, as well as another article in The Huffington Post, it remains unclear exactly how that money was made. Furthermore, the original article noted that Romney's disclosures were not illegal, meaning, in fact, that they were legal.No matter for the UAW."While Romney was opposing the rescue of one of the nation's most important manufacturing sectors, he was building his fortunes with his Delphi investor group, making his fortunes off the misfortunes of others," King added.Personnel at the Office of Government Ethics could not be reached for immediate comment.KAS is a Portuguese self-taught street artist who was born and raised in Porto, he currently lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
His passion for art began at a young age. His father – also a painter – was a major part of his childhood and had big influence on him. KAS took part in various international exhibitios around Europe. In his recent works he mixes photorealism and puzzle patterns which gives this amazing 3D effect to his works.
KAS has been in Bali, China and Malaysia during the last two months and he managed to paint many murals on various street art events, commissions and live paintings.
He also agreed to answer a couple of my questions about his work – If there is anything that you would like to ask KAS then let me know in the comments! I will be more than happy to forward your questions to him!
Thank you for visiting Street Art Rat!jQuery plugins are getting popular in web industry day by day. Now a days use of jQuery and Java Script in web development is about 40%. There are hundreds of plugins that provides a large number of new tools and features to add in your website. Separately from all this, the new improvements are always seen in jQuery and we see new plugins being announced almost every other day.
If you are a website owner or a blogger, you will openly acknowledge that jQuery plugins play a significant role in improving the presentation of your website or a blog. To one side from this, jQuery plugins might help you in building your website look well. A large number of of jQuery plugins are available out there, in several tasks it permits you to reach various types of features and styles.
jQuery plugins let you make various things, such as slideshows, moving picture, and other good-looking effects much hard work. All you have to do is to just get jquery plugins, modify it the way according to your desire and then get the final outcomes! All this is far easier and faster than the straight designing procedures.
Animations are a best way to get the attention of your users as they look truly good-looking in a design. They are striking, exciting and make the design more thrilling. In this post, I am going share with you all a list of 50 awesome jQuery plugins for your sites. Select the best one that you want to use for your website. Don’t forget to tell us your views about this collection of through your likes and comments. Also check out 30 latest HTML5 and CSS3 web templates
50 Useful jQuery |
was in the forefront of cold fusion research from early on. Some of the best cold fusion research ever published was performed at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) under the leadership of late P. K. Iyengar.
The BARC team found excess heat, neutron bursts and large amounts of tritium in reactions from multiple types of electrolytic cells in what was claimed to be a clear evidence of the nuclear origin of the phenomenon.
At its peak, 12 independent research groups – in BARC, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and IGCAR – involving about 50 scientists were engaged in the DAE programme on cold fusion research. According to Mahadeva Srinivasan, former Associate director of BARC and a cold fusion pioneer, the DAE stopped the research in 1994 because of “global peer pressure”.
In the last two decades, several countries have however pursued research on cold fusion and to date, a series of 19 international conferences on cold fusion – renamed Low Energy Nuclear Reaction or LENR – have been held, the latest one at Padua, Italy, last month.
“Research over the years not only confirm the occurrence of cold fusion but has also intriguingly demonstrated the transmutation of radioactive waste into stable elements using microbes, with possible practical applications,” says Srinivasan. Demonstration in 2011 by Italian scientist Andrea Rossi of a 1-MW working, industrial-grade reactor has revived immense worldwide interest in the whole field of LENR, he says.
At present, there are at least two other private companies which have announced near-commercial products.
NIAS director Baldev Raj said his institute held the meeting to review the developments globally in cold fusion research with an “open-minded approach.” Given that private industry has jumped into this field, and many groups are reporting new findings, “we cannot remain idle,” he said.
According to Raj, the high level group has suggested that cold fusion experiments could be started within three to six months in two or three laboratories to verify the claims made elsewhere and to validate each other’s work.
These laboratories can be within the DAE, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and the Institute of Chemical technology in Mumbai, he said. “They already have the facilities and the people and will not require fresh funding.”
Depending on the outcome of these experiments, a decision will be made on setting up a pilot LENR reactor for which funding will be required, he said.
The NIAS high level group’s recommendations echo the views of several scientists who contributed to a special section on LENR in the February 2015 issue of ‘Current Science’, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences.
“The recognition by the mainstream Indian science journal for the emerging field of new energy marks a turning point for LENR research in India,” Srinivasan said.ANALYSIS/OPINION:
National Beer Day is this Friday. (Or, if you’re like us, it’s more or less every day.) To celebrate, our brewmaster friends in South Dakota are cooking up some special brews for the best day on the calendar.
Check out some of these offerings from the Mount Rushmore State:
Lost Cabin Beer Co. in Rapid City is now unveiling its Saison de Roubaix, which is fermented with ginger, rhubarb and locally sourced French Saison yeast.
Firehouse Brewing Company, also of Rapid City, was South Dakota’s first brew pub. This National Beer Day, sojourners to the state’s second-largest city can enjoy the Bogus Jim Spruce, which contains actual spruce tips from the nearby Black Hills in lieu of hops.
In Spearfish, South Dakota, Crow Peak Brewery is joining up with Leones’ Creamery to create a new ice cream infused with Crow Peak’s Pile O’ Dirty Porter. (We’re sure it’s better than it sounds.)
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Apple has updated its iMac lineup with a new 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display, which takes the crown as the ultimate iMac.
Let's take a look at the hardware specification for this machine.
As the name suggests, the new iMac with Retina 5K display is built around a 5K display. This 27-inch panel has a resolution of 5,120 by 2,880, making it the world's highest resolution display.
Image: Apple
That's a total of 14.7 million pixels. And all that in a display only 5mm thin.
Inside the new iMac with Retina 5K display is Intel's new fourth-generation Core processors, with the lineup starting with the 3.5GHz Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz), and going up to the 4.0GHz Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz). for an additional $250 The top-end spec offers 3.5 teraflops of compute power.
The new iMacs also feature AMD Radeon R9 M290X graphics processor with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, with an option to upgrade to AMD Radeon R9 M295X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory for an additional $250.
The systems also start with 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM, and can be upgraded to either 16GB or 32GB as an option for an additional $200 and $600 respectively.
Storage options are as follows:
1TB Fusion drive (default)
3TB Fusion drive (+$300)
256GB PCI-e flash storage
512GB PCI-e flash storage ($300)
1TB of PCE-e flash storage ($800)
The iMac with Retina 5K display simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on an external display via the Thunderbolt port, which means you have plenty of space to get work done.
On the connectivity front, here's how the new iMac with Retina 5K display is kitted out:
802.11ac Wi-Fi
Bluetooth 4.0
Headphone port
SDXC card slot
Four USB 3 ports (compatible with USB 2)
Two Thunderbolt 2 ports
10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)
Kensington lock slot
Prices start at $2,499 for the base model, and upgrading the system to the 4GHz Core i7, adding 32GB of RAM, the AMD Radeon R9 M295X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory and a 1TB PCI-e flash storage takes this up to $4,399.
See also:Kubernetes deployments have 3 distinct types of nodes: master nodes, ETCD nodes, and worker nodes. In high availability (HA) setups, all of these node types are replicated. Failures of individual nodes will not cause catastrophic consequences, but you need to get your cluster healthy as quickly as possible to prevent further failures.
Recovering from events like this can be extremely difficult. Not only are your nodes (and production software) down, but you must expend IT and engineering effort to fix them. What’s worse, there aren’t any comprehensive guides to get our cluster back up and running. Until now.
An ETCD Node has Failed
How to tell?
The kubectl command has a resource, Component Statuses, that will show the health of ETCD:
$ kubectl get cs NAME STATUS MESSAGE scheduler Healthy ok controller-manager Healthy ok etcd-2 Healthy {"health": "true"} etcd-0 Healthy {"health": "true"} etcd-1 Unhealthy Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 $ kubectl get cs NAME STATUS MESSAGE scheduler Healthy ok controller - manager Healthy ok etcd - 2 Healthy { "health" : "true" } etcd - 0 Healthy { "health" : "true" } etcd - 1 Unhealthy Client. Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers
HA Recovery Steps
If Kubernetes was properly configured in HA mode, then the cluster should be able to handle losing a single ETCD node. Create a new node to replace the failed ETCD node. Record the IP Address of the new node, but do not start ETCD yet.
On one of the working ETCD Nodes, remove the failed ETCD node from the cluster and add the IP Address of the new node:
$ etcdctl --endpoints=http://127.0.0.1:2379 member list 10b576500ed3ae71: name=kube-etcd-1 peerURLs=https://10.0.0.1:2380 clientURLs=https://10.0.0.1:2379 isLeader=false 30bcb5f2f4c17805: name=kube-etcd-2 peerURLs=https://10.0.0.2:2380 clientURLs=https://10.0.0.2:2379 isLeader=false a908b0f9f07a7127: name=kube-etcd-3 peerURLs=https://10.0.0.3:2380 clientURLs=https://10.0.0.3:2379 isLeader=true $ etcdctl --endpoints=http://127.0.0.1:2379 member remove 30bcb5f2f4c17805 Removed member 30bcb5f2f4c17805 from cluster $ etcdctl member add kube-etcd-4 --peer-urls=http://[new node IP]:2380 Member 2be1eb8f84b7f63e added to cluster ef37ad9dc622a7c4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 $ etcdctl -- endpoints = http : //127.0.0.1:2379 member list 10b576500ed3ae71 : name = kube - etcd - 1 peerURLs = https : //10.0.0.1:2380 clientURLs=https://10.0.0.1:2379 isLeader=false 30bcb5f2f4c17805 : name = kube - etcd - 2 peerURLs = https : //10.0.0.2:2380 clientURLs=https://10.0.0.2:2379 isLeader=false a908b0f9f07a7127 : name = kube - etcd - 3 peerURLs = https : //10.0.0.3:2380 clientURLs=https://10.0.0.3:2379 isLeader=true $ etcdctl -- endpoints = http : //127.0.0.1:2379 member remove 30bcb5f2f4c17805 Removed member 30bcb5f2f4c17805 from cluster $ etcdctl member add kube - etcd - 4 -- peer - urls = http : //[new node IP]:2380 Member 2be1eb8f84b7f63e added to cluster ef37ad9dc622a7c4
Configure the new ETCD node to connect to the existing cluster:
export ETCD_NAME="kube-etcd-4" export ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER="kube-etcd-1=https://10.0.0.1:2380,kube-etcd-3=https://10.0.0.3:2380,kube-etcd-4=https://[new node IP]:2380" export ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE=existing etcd [flags] 1 2 3 4 export ETCD_NAME = "kube-etcd-4" export ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER = "kube-etcd-1=https://10.0.0.1:2380,kube-etcd-3=https://10.0.0.3:2380,kube-etcd-4=https://[new node IP]:2380" export ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE = existing etcd [ flags ]
Finally, login to each Kubernetes master and update the kube-apiserver component’s --etcd-servers= option to point to the new ETCD node.
Non-HA Recovery Steps
If Kubernetes was not running in HA mode and the only ETCD node has failed, the cluster will be down.
If you still have access to the disk or a snapshot, attempt to recover the ETCD data directory. Typically this is the /var/lib/etcd directory. Build a new ETCD node with the recovered data and the same flags as the failed ETCD node except this time, set ETCD_INITIAL_CLUSTER_STATE=existing.
Login to the Kubernetes master and update the kube-apiserver component’s --etcd-servers= option to point to the new etcd node.
A Kubernetes master Node has Failed
How to tell?
The kubectl get nodes command will report master nodes that are unreachable as NotReady :
$ kubectl get nodes NAME STATUS AGE VERSION kube-master-1 Ready 21h v1.7.2 kube-master-2 NotReady 20h v1.7.2 kube-master-3 Ready 20h v1.7.2 kube-worker-1 Ready 17h v1.7.2 kube-worker-2 Ready 17h v1.7.2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 $ kubectl get nodes NAME STATUS AGE VERSION kube - master - 1 Ready 21h v1. 7.2 kube - master - 2 NotReady 20h v1. 7.2 kube - master - 3 Ready 20h v1. 7.2 kube - worker - 1 Ready 17h v1. 7.2 kube - worker - 2 Ready 17h v1. 7.2
HA Recovery Steps
Create a new Kubernetes node and join it to the working cluster. Add the appropriate master labels and taints, either in the kubelet configuration, or by using kubectl :
kubectl label nodes kube-master-4 node-role.kubernetes.io/master= kubectl taint nodes kube-master-4 node-role.kubernetes.io/master=:NoSchedule 1 2 kubectl label nodes kube - master - 4 node - role. kubernetes. io / master = kubectl taint nodes kube - master - 4 node - role. kubernetes. io / master = : NoSchedule
Login to one of the functioning Kubernetes masters and copy the configuration to the new Kubernetes master. Usually this can be accomplished by copying the /etc/kubernetes directory from a working master to the new master.
Certificates, kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, and kube-scheduler configurations should be copied to the new master. If they are defined as systems services, ensure that all services have started properly. If they are run using kubelet manifests in the /etc/kubernetes/manifests directory, restart the kubelet service and use docker ps -a and docker logs commands to ensure that the services have started properly.
Once the new master is working, remove the failed master:
$ kubectl delete nodes kube-master-2 node "kube-master-2" deleted 1 2 $ kubectl delete nodes kube - master - 2 node "kube-master-2" deleted
Update your Kubernetes API load balancer by removing the IP Address of the failed master node and adding the IP Address of the new master node.
Non-HA Recovery Steps
If Kubernetes was not running in HA mode and the only Kubernetes master node has failed, the cluster will be down.
If you still have access to the disk or a snapshot, attempt to recover the Kubernetes configuration directory containing the original Kubernetes master certificates. Often times this is the /etc/kubernetes directory.
Assuming that ETCD is still intact, create a new Kubernetes master pointing to the existing ETCD cluster. Use the recovered certificates on the new master. Ensure that kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, and kube-scheduler are running on the new master.
Login to each worker node and update the kubelet configuration to point to the new Kubernetes master. Often times this file is found at /etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf. Restart the kubelet service after making this change.
A Kubernetes Worker Node has Failed
How to tell?
Just like detecting a Kubernetes master failure, the kubectl get nodes command will report worker nodes that are unreachable as NotReady :
$ kubectl get nodes NAME STATUS AGE VERSION kube-master-1 Ready 21h v1.7.2 kube-master-2 Ready 20h v1.7.2 kube-master-3 Ready 20h v1.7.2 kube-worker-1 Ready 17h v1.7.2 kube-worker-2 NotReady 17h v1.7.2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 $ kubectl get nodes NAME STATUS AGE VERSION kube - master - 1 Ready 21h v1. 7.2 kube - master - 2 Ready 20h v1. 7.2 kube - master - 3 Ready 20h v1. 7.2 kube - worker - 1 Ready 17h v1. 7.2 kube - worker - 2 NotReady 17h v1. 7.2
Recovery Steps
Kubernetes will automatically reschedule failed pods onto other nodes in the cluster. Create a new worker to replace the failed node node and join it to the Kubernetes cluster. Once the new worker is working, remove the failed worker:
$ kubectl delete nodes kube-worker-2 node "kube-worker-2" deleted 1 2 $ kubectl delete nodes kube - worker - 2 node "kube-worker-2" deleted
Wrapping Up: Deploying to Kuberentes
Fixing clusters is one issue, but how about actually getting your application deployed to Kubernetes? Codefresh makes it very easy to deploy applications to Kubernetes clusters. Codefresh supports any Kubernetes cluster, whether its on Google Container Engine, AWS, Azure, Rackspace, IBM Bluemix, or even your own datacenter.
Try it out.Gun ownership is an alien concept with our British cousins across the Atlantic, but that doesn’t mean that violent crime has been reduced. In fact, with no guns readily available, though there are gun crimes in the UK, knives seem to be the weapon of choice. This isn't surprising. The rise in knife attacks has been in the UK press since 2008–and they’ve increased by 13 percent since last year (via Sky News):
Knife crime has increased for the first time in many years, annual crime statistics have revealed. The figures show there were 1,577 more knife assaults (up 13% from the previous year) and 1,000 more cases of knife possession (up 10%). Overall, knife crime rose by 2% in the 12 months up to March this year, said the Office for National Statistics. The ONS [Office for National Statistics] report also revealed that sex offences rose by 37% to the highest figure since 2003, but it suggested this was the result of victims being more willing to report such offences, improvements in police recording methods and a significant number of reported historic sex attacks. The official figures for all crimes recorded by police show they went up by 3%, with a particular rise of 23% in violence against the person, but the ONS said that was purely because of changes in police recording methods.
In January, the Telegraph reported that violent crime, overall, rose by 16 percent. Yikes:
Violent crime recorded by the police soared by 16 per cent last year to nearly 700,000 offences, new figures show. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) covering the 12 months to the end of September last year showed 699,800 recorded incidents of violence against the person compared with 604,100 offences in the previous 12 months. The data also showed a new record level of rapes recorded by police in England and Wales. There were 24,043 rapes in recorded crime figures for the year, a rise of 31 per cent on the previous 12 months and 81 per cent higher than a decade earlier. The figure beat the 22,000 figures recorded in the previous quarter's data and suggests that continuing confidence in police and the courts is leading growing numbers of rape victims to come forward.
Even in 2008 and 2009, there were reports about the surge in knife crime. In fact, in 2008, the Daily Mail reported that there were 130,000 incidents that year, which averages out to be a knife assault every four minutes.
Concerning homicides in the UK, John Lott of the Crime Prevention Center noted that the rate spiked in Britain once the country ritually outlawed handguns in 1997. It only began to drop when the UK added more police officers in 2003 and 2004.Posted by coltsindianapolis on March 20, 2015 – 11:30 am
The Indianapolis Colts today agreed to terms with unrestricted free agent inside linebacker Nate Irving.
Irving, 6-1, 245 pounds, spent the past four seasons (2011-14) with the Denver Broncos, where he totaled 104 tackles (67 solo), 2.0 sacks, two passes defensed and 22 special teams stops in 54 regular season appearances (12 starts). In six playoff games (three starts), he recorded nine tackles and one pass defensed. Last season, Irving started the first eight games and posted a career-high 44 tackles (25 solo) and 1.0 sack before being placed on Injured Reserve on November 13, 2014.
In 2013, Irving started 4-of-15 regular season games and opened all three postseason contests in the Broncos’ run to Super Bowl XLVIII. In 2012, he tied for the team lead with 10 special teams tackles. Irving was originally selected by Denver in the third round (67th overall) of the 2011 NFL Draft out of North Carolina State.
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Posted in Colts BlogVHL and MHL in relation to the KHL
When looking into the KHL there are other two Russian leagues that work along with it. In this post I will run through of them and highlight their top scorers, as when looking at a prospects production overseas I always saw points in these three leagues in one year for a player.
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VHL
Translated to also be known as the Major Hockey League, or Higher Hockey League, the VHL (founded in 2010) is considered to be a step down talentwise from the KHL, housing 26 teams in the league, but is not considered a farm team to the KHL. The confusing part is that the two leagues do work together and transfer players between them, calling them up or down. On each VHL team’s roster only a maximum of seven players over the age of 29 are allowed. There are rumours the league could soon become a farm league of the KHL but I cannot confirm that. Many of the top scorers in the VHL are not really on any prospect radar so I will not dive much into them.
VHL top five scorers
Artyom Gordeyev (28 years – F)
In 47 games played for Toros Neftekamsk, Gordeyev has 42 points to lead the league in scoring but cannot seem to stick long term in the KHL.
Stanislav Golovanov (33 years – F)
In 46 games played for the same team above (the team has three players in the top five), Golovanov is a playmaker with 42 points as he has pretty much been a career VHLer.
Anatoli Rayenko (30 years – F)
The forward for Molot-Prikamie Perm has 38 points in 47 games, and has played a majority of his career in the VHL and Russia2/3 leagues.
Igor Cherkasov (25 years – F)
The youngest player in the top five scorers has 37 points in 40 games for Yuzhny Ural Orsk, and has never gotten a crack at the KHL as of yet.
Artur Sarvarov (31 years – F)
Sarvarov has 35 points for Sarayarka Karaganda in 45 games played.
********
MHL
The Minor or Youth Hockey League was founded in 2009, consists of 39 teams from 7 countries, and a are used as minor league teams for their respective KHL teams and can be minor league teams for other professional leagues like the VHL, BEL, and PHL. Some teams do not even have an affiliated team but are in the league anyway. The fact that the MHL can be an affiliate for the KHL and VHL, while some teams in the VHL can also be affiliates for KHL teams, makes the whole set up confusing when trying to track league affiliations. In the MHL players cannot be 21 and older, and once they are too old for the MHL they must go to one of the other leagues. Highlighted below are the top five point leaders in the MHL, and may be on some NHL radars but it will be tough as none are over six feet tall.
MHL top five scorers
Artyom Manukyan (18 years – F)
Playing for Omskie Yastreby, Manukyan is the youngest player in the top five and leads the league in scoring by 12 points. He has 96 points, 36 of those goals with 60 assists, in only 52 games played. He will be 19 in June and could potentially be a top player for Russia in the upcoming World Junior Championship. Now you (the reader) may be wondering why you have not heard of Maukyan, at least I was, but then I read why. Manukyan is 5’7 and only 139 pounds, making him a very small player. Now he does have the skill, speed, IQ, and elusiveness that NHL teams covet, but he also has the size that many shy away from (and the birth country). If he were to gain some mass to his frame it would be wise of an NHL team to take a chance on this player late in the 2017 draft. He has set the record for point seasons in the MHL with 96, the previous being 94, so there is a ton of skill there. The points separating third place in scoring from 31st are 19 points, now the points separating Manukyan from third place is 37 TOTAL POINTS, if this kid could grow he could be very sought after asset.
Anton Kovalyov (19 years – F)
Kovalyov also plays for Omskie Yastreby and is riding shotgun to Manukyan’s hot play. While being no slouch of his own in the skill department, he has 84 points in 48 games, with 39 of those being goals. He has surprisingly never played in any international tournaments despite putting up have a 0.99 point per game average in the MHL. Kovalyov is 5’10 and about 170 pounds, so there is room to grow, but since he is 25 points away from the next highest point producer, he should be getting looks from NHL squads. What seems more likely however is that he plays in the KHL next season and within a few seasons you may hear his name.
Andrei Karavayev (19 years – F)
In his fourth season of MHL play for Kuznetskie Medvedi, Karavayev has 59 points in 44 games as his points have increased every season. Standing at 5’9 and 170 pounds, the forward has played in 23 KHL games over the past two seasons tallying only four points with low ice time. Karavayev could spend next season in the MHL or go to the KHL, but he may end up on some NHL teams map in the future.
Konstantin Parkhomenko (20 years – F)
Playing in his final MHL season for Kuznetskie Medvedi, Parkhomenko is playing his best hockey to date. His previous career high was 17 points, but currently he has 58 points in 43 games. Injuries have been a factor to Parkhomenko’s career so far, as he is only 5’8, but this season he is fully healthy and playing up to his potential. Parkhomenko will likely need a few seasons in the KHL before he is ever on an NHL map, but he may be one of those players that never come over as well.
Dmitri Shaburov (20 years – F)
Shaburov has had an interesting career path to say the least in his four years in the MHL for Amurskie Tigry Khabarovsk. In his first season he registered zero points in 43 games, he then preceded that with 36 points in 55 games, 29 points in40 games, and this current season he has 58 points in 50 games as he is carrying the team he has played with through his entire career. At 20 years old and with a good, yet slight, frame to him Shaburov could potentially be a big free agent signing down the line.
Most impressive goalie so far:
Danil Kudashev (20 years – G)
Kudashev has put up great numbers in the MHL since the 2014 season. He has three straight seasons of a plus 0.930 save percentage, including this year where he has a 0.938 save percentage in 34 games played for Sarmaty Orenburg. Previous seasons were with the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl franchise as he was called up last season but never played. Kudashev could be a hidden gem in the Russian leagues as he has good size standing at 6’1, but has never played in the KHL to date. The way Shestyorkin, Sorokin, and Samsonov are all playing in the KHL it will be hard for any other goalie to make a name for himself but if you can keep a tab on any goalie he may fit that mold.
KHL scoring prospects currently:
TBL – Nikita Gusev has 68 points in 54 games, good for fourth in KHL scoring.
Sought after UFA – Yevgeni (Evgeni) Dadonov has 62 points in 50 games, good for seventh in league scoring.
Min – Kirill Kaprizov has 42 points in 47 games, good for 21st in KHL scoring.
Sought after UFA – Vladimir Tkachyov (the other one) has 39 points in 47 games, good for 24th in league scoring.
CHI – Maxim Shalunov has 36 points in 46 games, good for 34th in league scoring.
Thanks for reading.
I use the cyber to tweet things, you can follow here —> @FHPQuinnHere Are My Two Main Benefits for Having a Chatbot:
So How Did I Do It?
Step 1 : Define Chatbot Objectives
What will this chatbot do for music studios and users?
Studio :
Drive traffic and awareness to studio website
Build a CRM channel through Messenger
Gather feedback from studios and loyal fans
User:
Build a novel experience through Messenger
Create an easier way to find music studios and book studio time
Step 2 : Define Chatbot Domain
Understanding Chatbot Domain
How broad is the understanding?
Can the chatbot find any type of music studio and also any location in the world? Or just music studios in the United States? Or only music studios in Los Angeles?
How deep is the knowledge?
Will the chatbot know of every music studio? Or just the Top Line music studios? Will it share high quality photos of the studio if someone wants to see more photos?
*Decide when to use Rails vs NLP
Think of Rails as preset paths for conversation that help the user move sequentially through stages, with buttons for available options.
Content → Option A B or C → Content → Option A B or C
NLP (Natural Language Processing) is when the bot analyzes free text input to determine intent, and then delivers the relevant content or action.
“I want to book studio time at Electric Feel Studios in Los Angeles.”
Studiotime Sam would know that this sentence includes ;
Intent to book studio time
The music studio is Electric Feel Studios
The location of the studio is in Los Angeles, CA
Step 3 : Building the Chatbot
“Words are the new UI/UX.”
Map out Conversation Flow
In order to actually build the chatbot, I started to map out the conversation flow using Scapple. It helped me quickly create something visual to get an idea of how the chatbot experience would feel for the end user.Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist for the White House and chairman of President Trump's campaign, sat down with Charlie Rose of CBS News's "60 Minutes" for his first-ever television interview, which was long and candid.
Since he left the White House in August, Bannon has resumed running the right-wing news site, Breitbart News. During his interview he shared his opinions on the firing of James Comey, working with the Republicacn establishment, the "Access Hollywood" tape, and Hillary Clinton, among other topics.
Here are some of the key takeaways from Bannon's "60 Minutes" interview:
Taking on the GOP establishment
Steve Bannon: GOP establishment "trying to nullify the 2016 election"
"The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election. That's a brutal fact we have to face," Bannon told Rose.
The former chief of staff cited Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, claiming that "they do not want Donald Trump's populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented."
"They're gonna be held accountable if they do not support the president of the United States. Right now there's no accountability," he later added.
GOP failure to repeal Obamacare
Bannon expanded on what he sees as a significant failure on the part of GOP leadership: they couldn't repeal and replace Obamacare.
The very first meetings we had with the Republican establishment, here was the plan that was laid out. The plan was to do Obamacare because, remember, Paul Ryan and these guys come in and said, 'We've done this for seven years. We've voted on this 50 times. We understand this issue better than anybody. We know how to repeal and we know how to replace, and this is ours. That's what we're going to start with day one, and we will have something on your desk by Easter. By the Easter break, we'll do repeal and replace. Come back from Easter, and all the way up to the August break, taxes. Come back from the summer break, on Labor Day, and we drive home to the end of the year on infrastructure. We accomplish all three big legislative goals in the first year.'
As Bannon put it, "There is wide discrepancy in the Republican party, as we know today, now that we're in it. But I will tell you, leadership didn't know it at the time. They didn't know it 'til the very end."
It's now September, and the Affordable Care Act remains in place, after the Senate failed to repeal the bill. Last week, Mr. Trump forged a deal with Democrats for the debt ceiling, funding the government and Harvey aid. It was a move that stunned Republican leadership, but the president wanted to be able to move on to work on the tax code.
Gary Cohn should have resigned
In the aftermath of the racially motivated violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, when President Trump seemed to blame white supremacists and counterprotesters equally, Bannon told Rose, "I was the only guy that came out and tried to defend him," saying that he tried "taking it up to a higher level. He said he wondered, "Where does this end? Does it end in taking down the Washington Monument?"
While he called neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates and KKK members "absolutely awful" and said "there's no room in American politics for that," Bannon declared that his problem was, "When you side with a man, you side with him."
"If you're going to break, then resign," Bannon said, adding, "If you find it unacceptable, you should resign."
Rose asked who he was talking about.
"I'm talking about obviously, about Gary Cohn and some other people," Bannon replied, in reference to a Financial Times interview in which the chief economic adviser expressed concern over the violence. "That if you don't like what he's doing and you don't agree with it, you have an obligation to resign."
When asked if he believes Cohn should have resigned, Bannon replied "Absolutely."
Trump's firing of Comey was the biggest mistake in "modern political history"
Rose asked whether it was true that Bannon had described President Trump's termination of former FBI Director James Comey as the biggest mistake in political history.
Why Steve Bannon was against Trump firing FBI's James Comey
"That probably would be too bombastic even for me, but maybe modern political history," replied Bannon.
Rose then asked Bannon to confirm what he was suggesting: "So the firing of James Comey was the biggest mistake in modern political history?"
"I think, if you're saying that that's associated with me, then I'll leave it at that," Bannon conceded.
He also told Rose that "I don't think there's any doubt that if James Comey had not been fired, we would not have a special counsel." Asked whether he thought Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the Russia probe, should be fired, Bannon replied, "No, I do not."
Bannon calls Russia investigations "a total and complete farce"
Bannon: "There's nothing to the Russia investigation"
"There's nothing to the Russia investigation," Bannon said, calling the multiple investigations in the House and Senate as well as the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election "a waste of time."
"It's a total and complete farce. Russian collusion is a farce," Bannon said.
When asked about specific documents relating to the CIA and FBI intelligence, Bannon replied that he "would never devolve classified information on this show, but that "it's far from conclusive that the Russians had any impact on this election."
"Hillary Clinton's not very bright"
"Hillary Clinton's not very bright," says Steve Bannon
Bannon called the former Democratic presidential candidate "not very bright."
"She doesn't really have a grasp, she doesn't have a grasp on what's important and what's not," Bannon said. "And that's essential in a leader. Donald Trump has a grasp on what's important and what's marginalia."
He alluded to a speech she gave during the campaign about Breitbart, in which she attacked Breitbart for giving white supremacists a platform.
"That speech of hers is an embarrassment. Breitbart -- alt-right, ethno-nationalism, white supremacist. It landed flat," |
been president, Americans’ perceptions of his intelligence have sunk by about 10 percentage points. Only a little more than half the country now uses the word “intelligent” to describe him, according to polling from Quinnipiac University.
But, then, what do I know? I’m just a low-IQ Washington Post reporter.Here are some of the highlights from Neyer's 728-word essay that was shared on a friend's Tumblr account:
You shouldn’t sleep train at all, before a year, before 6 months, or before 4 months, but if you wait too late, your baby will never be able to sleep without you. (...) Naps should only be taken in the bed, never in a swing, carseat, stroller, or when worn. Letting them sleep in the carseat or swing will damage their skulls. If your baby has trouble falling asleep in the bed, put them in a swing, carseat, stroller, or wear them.
Put the baby in a nursery, bed in your room, in your bed. Cosleeping is the best way to get sleep, except that it can kill your baby, so never, ever do it. If your baby doesn’t die, you will need to bedshare until college.
Swaddle the baby tightly, but not too tightly. Put them on their back to sleep, but don’t let them be on their backs too long or they will be developmentally delayed. Give them a pacifier to reduce SIDS. Be careful about pacifiers because they can cause nursing problems and stop your baby from sleeping soundly. If your baby sleeps too soundly, they’ll die of SIDS.
Don’t let your baby sleep too long, except when they’ve been napping too much, then you should wake them. Never wake a sleeping baby.
Using CIO will make them think they’ve been abandoned and will be eaten by a lion shortly. It also causes brain damage. Not getting enough sleep will cause behavior and mental problems, so be sure to put them to sleep by any means necessary, especially CIO, which is the most effective form. Extinction CIO is cruel beyond belief and the only thing that truly works because parents are a distraction. The Sleep Lady Shuffle and Ferber method are really CIO in disguise or Controlled Crying and so much better than Extinction. All three of these will prevent your child from ever bonding with you in a healthy way. Bedsharing and gentler forms of settling will cause your child to become too dependent on you.
Sleep when the baby sleeps. Clean when the baby cleans. Don’t worry. Stress causes your baby stress and a stressed baby won’t sleep.Common Lisp in the desire to be as cool as possible includes in its specification the Common Lisp Object System, or CLOS, which itself can be introspected and altered in great detail using the MetaObject Protocol, or MOP, as described in The Art of the Metaobject Protocol. Unfortunately, MOP didn’t make it into the ANSI standard, but most implementations include MOP as it is described in the book, and a compatibility package :closer-mop (available in Quicklisp) makes using the symbols described seamless between implementations.
One of the features of MOP is the ability to make an instance of a CLOS class funcallable, that is allow a class instance to be a valid first argument to funcall. This behavior in a lot of ways can resemble the traditional method model from other languages, but that’s not how I intend use it here.
The Idea
I’m going to show and tell an implementation of a generic finite state machine that uses the MOP concepts of funcallable-standard-object and funcallable-standard-class to marshal the flow of incoming events to the machine and the concept of CLOS generic method dispatch to handle the execution of transition handlers for any given state of the machine.
These features will allow us to build a structure that lets us focus solely on the problem at hand and defer features like event data binding, state-dependent method selection and unexpected state handling entirely to the language without pushing the boundaries of any specific feature.
The Design
The design we’re going for is such that we can define a class with a state slot that will hold :keyword name of a state. We’ll make instances of this class funcallable so that when we make an instance we will be able to simply (funcall fsm-instance fsm-evemt) repeatedly and have the machine dispatch to the correct event, perform any logic, and transition to the next state based on the input.
We would be able to query the state of the machine with (state fsm-instance) and receive a keyword, and we should be able to drive events into the machine until we’re in a desired or unexpected state. Any attempt to feed the machine an event while the machine is in an invalid state should result in an error.
Setup
Dependencies in Common Lisp these days should come from Quicklisp. Install it now before even reading the next paragraph, and during the installation phase ask it to write itself to your lisp configuration’s init file.
The code samples below, as should any code using MOP intending to run more than once, uses the :closer-mop package. Fetch it from Quicklisp before attempting these examples by evaluating:
(ql:quickload :closer-mop)
At the REPL before attempting to evaluate any example code.
Implementation
We’ll first declare the base of our state machine. We’ll call the base standard-state-machine to follow the convention CL seems to have of sticking the standard- prefix to base classes.
(defclass standard-state-machine (c2mop:funcallable-standard-object) ((state :initform :initial :initarg :state :accessor state) (last-event :initform (get-internal-real-time) :accessor last-event)) (:metaclass c2mop:funcallable-standard-class))
This grants us the majority of our desired features from the design. The resulting class holds a :keyword state name in a state slot, and is declared to be funcallable by the inclusion of the funcallable-standard-object base and the funcallable-standard-class metaclass for the class itself.
When events fire through this state machine we will need to invoke a method that we can use to dispatch to various handlers in the machine depending on the state we happen to be in. We can use the CLOS generic method feature called eql specializers to distinguish which method should be invoked based on the name of the state a machine happens to be in. EQL specializers are just like type specializers for method parameters, but instead of the comparison of the parameter to the specialization happening based on the type of the parameter, it happens as if an (eql parameter-value parameter-specialization) test is performed to determine if a given method is applicable to an invocation.
With this in mind we can design a generic method that is aware of three things as parameters that we can choose to specialize: The current state machine, the state of the current state machine, and the event that was received by the machine.
(defgeneric standard-state-machine-event (machine state event))
We won’t define any such methods now, because right now we have no state machine to model, and as such have no state handing methods to define.
To actually invoke a function when the funcallable instance is called as a function a lambda must be bound to be the funcallable instance function of a given instance of a class. Since there is no mandate for an inherent this pointer in CL, the best place to bind this function is often in one of the specializations of initialize-instance and close over the current instance in the process. The attachment of a function to an instance is done with the MOP function set-funcallable-instance-function, which places no special requirements on the args list of the attached function.
We’ll bind our driver to the state machine instance in the :before specializer of its initialize-instance method, and use an args list that expects only the event that is being delivered to the state machine:
(defmethod initialize-instance :before ((machine standard-state-machine) &key) (c2mop:set-funcallable-instance-function machine #'(lambda (event) (multiple-value-bind (next-state recur-p) (standard-state-machine-event machine (state machine) event) (setf (last-event machine) (get-internal-real-time) (state machine) (or next-state (state machine))) (if recur-p (funcall machine event) (values machine (state machine)))))))
Now when we have instance of the state machine invoked with (funcall fsm-instance event), the inner lambda expression will get passed the event and compute a return. This function despite having some length does very little.
First, it dispatches the event to our previous standard-state-machine-event method using the instance of the state machine we closed over as the first parameter, the state of the state machine as the second parameter and the event that the machine was called with.
It expects a multi-value return, but if the method only returns one value, no error is raised and the second value, recur-p is left bound to nil. Its meaning will become abundant in a moment.
Once the state handler is called the new state returned by the handler is stored as the current state of the state machine, and if a second value was returned, the machine is invoked again with the same event it had just received before returning from the handler the value of the current machine instance for chaining and the value of the current state.
The second, recur-p value is a hook that can be used from a state handler to force the machine to retry handling the event in a new state. This is useful when the same event should loop through the machine a second time before the transition is complete, and the optional second value return from a state handler allows that without additional external plumbing.
Functionally, the implementation of the state machine is complete. It can now cycle through a graph of events, provided that those events are defined as specialized methods. But, in its current state, the API leaves very much to be desired.
The Polish
As the state machine stands now, to implement one that for all inputs remains in the default :initial state, one would have to be defined explicitly by specializing the standard-state-machine event.
(defmethod standard-state-machine-event ((fsm standard-state-machine) (state (eql :initial)) event) nil)
The trailing nil makes the return value explicit, due to the length of the specializations. This makes the structure of the dispatch clear, and the nil return value could be traced through the driver above to determine that this machine would do absolutely nothing given any kind of input. Remaining eternally in the :initial state.
To make the task of defining states for a given type of state machine we can write a simple macro to write the above form for us. After all, the majority of it is filler.
(defmacro defstate (machine-type state-name (machine-sym event-sym) &body body) `(defmethod standard-state-machine-event ((,machine-sym,machine-type) (state (eql,state-name)),event-sym),@body))
Using the macro above we can now declare an identical looping :initial state for the standard-state-machine as follows:
(defstate standard-state-machine :initial (fsm event) nil)
Which results in identical code to the one we wrote previously. The symbols given in the argument list of the defstate forms are bound to the machine evaluating the event and the event that is being sent through the machine. The remaining forms will be evaluated just as in any other defun/defmethod with the return value treated as either next state for the machine to enter, nil to stay in the same state, or a multivalue return with one of the previous and a non-nil second value to indicate the event should be fired through the machine a second time before the final state is stored.
To create subclasses of the standard state machine, we again run into a similar situation as before with boilerplate requirements. Each subclass of standard-state-machine must not only include the standard-state-machine class in the list of parents, it must also include funcallable-standard-class as its metaclass, as in:
(defclass my-fsm (standard-state-machine) () (:metaclass c2mop:standard-funcallable-class))
This peculiarity could be documented a thousand times in a thousand places, but that will make it no less ugly or difficult to remember. It would be much easier to provide a familiar tasting API to consumers that results in the same code. For example, using a structure like this to generate code equivalent to the above
(deffsm my-fsm () ())
This leaves the consumer free to do whatever their heart desires with CLOS without disturbing the requirements of our function. Such a construct can be stated simply as another tiny macro.
(defmacro deffsm (name parents slots &rest options) `(defclass,name,(append (list'standard-state-machine) parents),slots (:metaclass c2mop:funcallable-standard-class),@options))
The Result
If we were to put all of that code together in one place with a bunch of documentation strings for the methods, classes and slots in a slightly more condensed form than this article, it might look something like this. Which is actually a minimal extraction of the state machine that drives the HTTP parser in Hinge. If this article gets enough interest, I will extract standard-state-machine into a QuickLisp compatible package for even easier reuse.
The Demo
Let’s construct an FSM for determining if a sequence of characters contains the string “Hi”, but before the character “!” appears. Once a string contains “Hi” it can contain “!” characters again.
We’ll model this as a machine of three states, with events being single characters of input. The states will be :initial, :want-i and :done.
In the :initial state, we’ll accept any input without transitioning except for “!” which will cause the machine to transition into an error state so that no more input can pass, and “H” will cause the machine to transition to the :want-i state.
Any event other than “i” in the :want-i state will transition back to :initial and the event “i” will cause the machine to enter the state :done, which will be a no-op looping state that allows input to pass through uninspected. The implementation for such a machine would look like this, assuming we have previously defined the :fsm package.
(fsm:deffsm hi-fsm () ()) (fsm:defstate hi-fsm :initial (fsm c) (case c (#\! :error) (#\H :want-i))) (fsm:defstate hi-fsm :want-i (fsm c) (if (char-equal c #\i) :done (values :initial t))) (fsm:defstate hi-fsm :done (fsm c)
We can observe it in action by running it through a couple of strings and measuring the terminal state of the machine:
(let ((fsm (make-instance 'hi-fsm)) (input "Oh? Hello there. Hi. How are you!?")) (map 'list (lambda (c) (if (eql :error (fsm:state fsm)) (format t "Skipping: ~S~%" c) (funcall fsm c))) input) (fsm:state fsm))
Resulting in :DONE as the final state of hi-fsm.
This will iterate the string character by character through the machine we just defined, and unless the machine is in an error state, it will submit each token, then return the state of the machine when it has completed its run.
If we change the string to one where neither “Hi” nor “!” appear at all, the machine will remain in :initial and if “!” appears before “Hi”, then the machine will leave the loop in an :error state, and any tokens after the “!” won’t even be sent into the machine. Changing the binding of input in the above to “Go away! Now.” results in the value of :ERROR and the printing of the lines
Skipping: #\ Skipping: #\N Skipping: #\o Skipping: #\w Skipping: #\.
So there you have it. You now know how to leverage the powers of Common Lisp and MOP to build a pretty cool and useful abstraction for a pretty common algorithm.Attention rock crawlers! One of our newest and most well received sliding ragtop kits for a specific body style, our Jeep Cherokee XJ Special is awesome! Jeep Cherokees from 1984-1996 have a ribbed roof and this sliding ragtop is sized specifically to work with the stock roof ribs. If you like sunshine and crowd reaction, you can't beat our Jeep Cherokee XJ sliding ragtop sunroof.
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For vintage or muscle cars, many came with an early version of Britax or Sunway sliding ragtop. We carry those here.
Jeep XJ Special Sliding Ragtop SunroofAs we’d previously heard, Google’s event — where it’s expected to unveil the upcoming Nexuses (Nexii?) — will take place in San Francisco on September 29th. Doors will open at 8am, with the event due to kick off at 9am and followed by hands-on time with the new devices…
As part of the presentation, Google is expected to take the wraps off two new Nexus smartphones. One made by LG and the other, larger model, manufactured by Huawei. Recent rumors suggested they’ll be called the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P respectively. Although different sizes and specifications, they’ll likely both feature USB Type-C connectors and fingerprint sensors. What’s more, they’ll be the first phones on the market to run stock Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box.
As well as those, 9to5Google exclusively heard that the company is working on a some new Chromecast devices with revamped software, and a “Fast Play” feature. Chromecast Audio, code-named ‘Hendrix’ will likely join the new Chromecast as an audio-specific product, enabling users to have multi-room audio without spending a fortune on Sonos systems. You’ll be able to plug it in to any audio device that accepts a 3.5mm jack, and stream musically directly to it.
Although we have a good idea of specs and features for most of Google’s upcoming hardware announcements, we’re still eager to hear when they all go on sale and for how much. Thankfully, we know we don’t have long to wait now.The Enemies of Reason is a two-part television documentary, written and presented by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Is it rational that the dead can communicate with the living and give sound advice on how they should live their lives? What about sticking pins into your body to free the flow of Chi energy and cure your illness?
Or the bending of spoons using your mind alone? Is that rational? Richard Dawkins doesn’t think so, and feels it is his duty to expose those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell. He will take on the world’s leading proponents in their field of expertise, meet the victims who have used them and expose the history of the movements – from the charlatans who have milked these practices to the experiments and testing that have failed to produce conclusive results.
Dawkins points to some of science’s achievements and describes it as freeing most people from superstition and dogma. Picking up from his superstition-reason distinction in The Root of All Evil? (while recycling some footage from it), he then says reason is facing an “epidemic of superstition” that “impoverishes our culture” and introduces gurus that persuade us “to run away from reality”. He calls the present day dangerous times. He returns to science’s achievements, including the fact that, by extending peoples lifespan, it helps them to take more advantage of live. He turns his attention to astrology, which he criticizes for stereotyping without evidence.
Richard Dawkins examines the growing suspicion the public has for science based medicine, despite its track record of successes like the germ theory of disease, vaccines, antibiotics and increased lifespan. He notes a fifth of British children are currently not immunized against measles, mumps and rubella, attributing it to fears arising from a highly controversial report linking the vaccine with autism. Dawkins criticizes the growing field of alternative medicine which does not pass the same objective and statistical rigor as scientifically derived treatments using controlled double-blind studies.The Cowboy Bebop anime series was accompanied by a number of soundtrack albums composed by Yoko Kanno and Seatbelts, a diverse band Kanno formed to create the music for the series, with a principal focus in jazz. The recordings were an international effort with many notable names attached, including that of recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder.[citation needed][1] The soundtrack was released in the American market by Victor Entertainment, a subsidiary of JVC Kenwood.
Theme songs [ edit ]
"Tank!" is the series' opening song. The song, written by Yoko Kanno and performed by Seatbelts, has an extensive alto saxophone solo played by Masato Honda, as well as a fill part at the end. The song is a big band jazz piece in a Latin-infused hard bop style with a rhythm section that combines a double bass and bongo drums.
"Tank!" is primarily an instrumental piece, though it does feature some spoken male vocals (provided by long-time collaborator with Kanno, Tim Jensen) in the introductory portion of the song, thematically jazz in style. The vocal portion provides a lead-in to the instrumental portion, and its final lyrics, "I think it's time we blow this scene. Get everybody and the stuff together. Okay, three, two, one let's jam", signal the beginning bursts of the majority, purely instrumental end of the song.
It has been featured on the soundtracks to the series and was used on the preview for TV series My Own Worst Enemy.[citation needed] Figure skater Kevin Reynolds performed his solo routine for the 2016 Canadian National Figure Skating Championships to “Tank,” and did it dressed as Spike Spiegel.[2]
"The Real Folk Blues" [ edit ]
"The Real Folk Blues" is the first ending theme for Cowboy Bebop. The song was performed by Seatbelts, featuring vocals by Mai Yamane. The song was composed and arranged by Yoko Kanno, with lyrics by Yūho Iwasato. The track appears on the series-related album Cowboy Bebop Vitaminless (カウボーイビバップ ビタミンレス, Kaubōi Bibappu Bitaminresu). The song is one of few songs in the series to be sung in Japanese.
The song is not used for the end credits in "Jupiter Jazz, Pt. II" (the song used for the end credits in "Jupiter Jazz, Pt. II" is "Space Lion") and the finale "The Real Folk Blues". However, an alternate version of the song entitled "See You Space Cowboy..." plays during the final episode as the prelude to the climax. It appears on the Cowboy Bebop Blue album as a bonus track.
Studio recordings [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop is the first album created for the series, and the most easily categorized in terms of genre, as an outlet for many of the trademark bebop tracks. It begins with the show's theme song, "Tank!". The track "Bad Dog No Biscuits" opens with a cover of the Tom Waits composition "Midtown" before diverting in its interpretation.
The album received a 5/5 rating from Allmusic.[4]
Track Listing No. Title Lyrics Artist Length 1. "Tank!" 3:30 2. "Rush" 3:34 3. "Spokey Dokey" 4:04 4. "Bad Dog No Biscuits" 4:09 5. "Cat Blues" 2:35 6. "Cosmos" 1:36 7. "Space Lion" 7:10 8. "Waltz for Zizi" 3:29 9. "Piano Black" 2:47 10. "Pot City" 2:14 11. "Too Good Too Bad" 2:34 12. "Car24" 2:49 13. "The Egg and I" 2:42 14. "Felt Tip Pen" 2:39 15. "Rain" Tim Jensen Steve Conte 3:23 16. "Digging My Potato" 2:24 17. "Memory" (Music box overdubbed) 1:31 Total length: 53:25
Cowboy Bebop Vitaminless [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop Vitaminless (カウボーイビバップ ビタミンレス, Kaubōi Bibappu Bitaminresu) is the first mini-album. It features the end credits theme from the series, "The Real Folk Blues".
The middle section of "Spy" was later reprised in "You Make Me Cool", which appears on the No Disc album.
Track Listing No. Title Lyrics Artist Length 1. "The Real Folk Blues" Yūho Iwasato Mai Yamane 6:16 2. "Odd Ones" New York Musicians 3:09 3. "Doggy Dog" Philippe Nalry 3:14 4. "Cats on Mars" Gabriela Robin Gabriela Robin 2:44 5. "Spy" Seatbelts 2:01 6. "Fantaisie Sign" Carla Vallet Carla Vallet 4:57 7. "Piano Bar I" Mark Soskin 3:04 8. "Black Coffee" (Bonus Track) New York Musicians 3:14 Total length: 28:27
Cowboy Bebop No Disc [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop No Disc (カウボーイビバップ ノーディスク, Kaubōi Bibappu No Disuku) is the second soundtrack album, which has more stylistic variety than its predecessor, incorporating bluegrassy banjo, heavy metal, Japanese pop, lounge, swing, chorale and scat-singing, among other styles, as well as the usual blues and jazz pieces.
Cowboy Bebop Blue [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop Blue Soundtrack album by Seatbelts Released May 1, 1999 Length 71 : 18 Label Victor Entertainment
Cowboy Bebop Blue is the third soundtrack album, featuring many vocal pieces, including a setting of the Ave Maria text, performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Anthony Inglis.[citation needed][5]
It was released on May 1, 1999. Regarding the album, AllMusic wrote: "Of the more than ten discs released in conjunction with Cowboy Bebop, Blue is undoubtedly the best, representing the widest variety of genres."[6]
Ask DNA [ edit ]
Ask DNA is a maxi single released in 2001, an accompaniment to Cowboy Bebop Future Blues. It consists of a few highlights from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, including the title theme, "Ask DNA".
Track Listing No. Title Lyrics Artist Length 1. "What Planet Is This?!" 2:45 2. "Ask DNA" Tim Jensen Raj Ramayya 4:52 3. "Cosmic Dare (Pretty with a Pistol)" Raj Ramayya Reynada Hill 4:28 4. "Hamduche" Hassan Bohmide Hassan Bohmide 1:54 5. "Is It Real?" Tim Jensen Scott Matthew 4:40 Total length: 18:37
Future Blues [ edit ]
Future Blues is the main soundtrack from Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. It explores styles such as country-western and Arabic music.
The song "3.14" features Aoi Tada reciting the first 53 digits of pi to a tune.
Cowboy Bebop Tank! THE! BEST! [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop Tank! THE! BEST! compiles previously released material, mostly vocal pieces, with three all-new songs written for the 2005 PlayStation 2 game Cowboy Bebop: Tsuioku no Serenade, featuring the vocals of Ilaria Graziano. The first pressing of the CD included a bonus sticker.[citation needed] These songs were the last new material released by Seatbelts.
Track Listing No. Title Lyrics Artist Length 1. "Tank! (TV stretch)" 3:30 2. "What Planet Is This?!" 3:31 3. "Cosmic Dare (Pretty with a Pistol)" Raj Ramayya Reynada Hill 4:29 4. "Diamonds" Ilaria Graziano 4:01 5. "Don't Bother None (TV edit)" Tim Jensen Mai Yamane 2:55 6. "Piano Black" 2:47 7. "Mushroom Hunting" Tulivu-Donna Cumberbatch 3:19 8. "No Reply" Tim Jensen Steve Conte 6:01 9. "Blue" Tim Jensen Mai Yamane 5:04 10. "Einstein Groovin'" Ilaria Graziano Ilaria Graziano 6:19 11. "Pearls" Ilaria Graziano Ilaria Graziano 4:44 12. "Gotta Knock a Little Harder" Tim Jensen Mai Yamane 5:24 Total length: 51:59
Miscellaneous [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop Remixes: Music for Freelance [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop Remixes: Music for Freelance (カウボーイ ビバップ リミキシーズ ミュージック フォー フリーランス, Kaubōi Bibappu Rimikishīzu Myūjikku Fō Furīransu) is a collection of songs remixed by popular American and British DJs, including many from the popular Ninja Tune label. Mr. Scruff spoke to British magazine Impact of his remix of Cat Blues, telling Andrez Bergen that he chose it "as it was a great, old sounding tune, simple with loads of personality. The parts were so well recorded that it was a pleasure to remix! I chopped it up into a kind of stuttering drumbox jazz wobbler".[15]
The premise of the album is that the CD is a recording of a pirate radio station, and each song is humorously introduced by the DJ (Watanabe), in English. These tracks are called the "Radio Free Mars Talks". They are credited as follows:
Script: Shinichirō Watanabe, Dai Sato
Translation: Agnes S. Kaku
Narration: Peter Duimstra
Cowgirl Ed [ edit ]
Cowgirl Ed is a limited edition Mini-CD. This single came packaged with the first pressing of Future Blues and is currently out of print.
Track Listing No. Title Length 1. "Goodnight Julia" 1:56 2. "PAPA Plastic" 4:11 3. "Telephone Shopping" 0:18 4. "Kabutoga ni Kodai no Sakana" (The Horseshoe Crab, The Ancient Fish) 3:42 5. "Slipper Sleaze" 3:32 6. "23 Hanashi" (Episode 23) 4:51 Total length: 18:30
Cowboy Bebop Boxed Set [ edit ]
Cowboy Bebop Boxed Set Box set by Seatbelts Released June 21, 2002
The Cowboy Bebop Boxed Set includes four regular size CDs, one bonus Mini CD, and a 52-page booklet (in Japanese). The booklet includes interesting trivia, track listing, interviews, and lyrics. Disks 1, 2 and 3 contain new and previously released tracks from the series, performed by Seatbelts. Disk 4 contains live tracks from Seatbelts on tour, as well as some unreleased movie tracks. The dialogue tracks are not songs, rather, they are vocal samples taken directly from the Japanese version of the series. It was released on June 21, 2002, and is now out of production.
The boxed set received an enthusiastic 4/5 review from Allmusic, citing its eclectic blend of genres and an appeal going beyond anime fans to "any adventurous listener", but also mentioned that the spoken dialogue tracks detracted from its accessibility.[16]
The scripts for the dialogue tracks are credited to Shinichiro Watanabe and Dai Sato and the translation was done by Agnes S. Kaku.
Tracks in bold are exclusive to this boxed set.
Disc 1 No. Title Lyrics Vocals Length 1. "Dialogue 1-1" 00:30 2. "Tank! (TV Edit)" 01:32 3. "Dialogue 1-2" 00:16 4. "Want It All Back (clavinet hater version)" Tim Jensen 山根麻衣 (Mai Yamane) 04:01 5. "Sax Quartet" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 04:01 6. "Dialogue 1-3" 00:27 7. "Encore un Verre" Valentin Coupeau Valentin Coupeau 02:49 8. "March For Koala" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 01:01 9. "Dialogue 1-4" 00:23 10. "Felt Tip Pen" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 02:39 11. "The Egg and You" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 03:39 12. "Dialogue 1-5" 00:24 13. "Pot City II (Yab's Dub)" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 02:18 14. "Dialogue 1-6" 00:37 15. "N.Y. Rush" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 05:03 16. "Dialogue 1-7" 00:09 17. "Fe" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 01:58 18. "Piano Black" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 02:47 19. "Dialogue 1-8" 00:11 20. "Spokey Dokey (alternate take)" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 04:33 21. "Forever Broke" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 03:14 22. "Dialogue 1-9" 00:10 23. "Road to the West (with rhythm)" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 02:53 24. "Dialogue 1-10" 00:29 25. "Meteor" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 01:51 26. "Dialogue 1-11" 00:09 27. "Digging My Potato" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 04:15 28. "Dialogue 1-12" 00:11 29. "Rain (demo version)" Tim Jensen 山根麻衣 (Mai Yamane) 03:24 30. "Dialogue 1-13" 00:20 31. "Green Bird" Gabriela Robin Gabriela Robin 01:54
Disc 2 No. Title Lyrics Vocals Length 1. "Dialogue 2-1" 00:34 2. "Cats on Mars" Gabriela Robin Gabriela Robin 02:45 3. "Doggy Dog II" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 03:47 4. "Doggy Dog III" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 01:50 5. "Dialogue 2-2" 00:18 6. "Piano Bar I" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 03:04 7. "Give And Take" Sydney Thiam Sydney Thiam 05:12 8. "Dialogue 2-3" 00:04 9. "Cat Blues" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 02:35 10. "Dialogue 2-4" 00:31 11. "The Singing Sea II" Cris Mosdell Tulivu-Donna Cumberbatch 04:23 12. "Dialogue 2-5" 00:25 13. "ELM" Pierre Bensusan 05:04 14. "Waltz for Zizi" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 03:30 15. "Dialogue 2-6" 00:08 16. "Poor Faye (High Socks)" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 01:07 17. "Farewell Blues (alternate take)" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 04:30 18. "Dialogue 2-7" 00:51 19. "Words That We Couldn't Say" Tim Jensen Steve Conte 03:28 20. "Dialogue 2-8" 00:09 21. "Space Lion (orgel version)" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 01:34 22. "Waste Land" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 01:52 23. "Dialogue 2-9" 00:44 24. "Goodnight Julia" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 01:49 25. "Space Lion" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 07:07
Disc 3 No. Title Lyrics Vocals Length 1. "Dialogue 3-1" 00:09 2. "Go Go Cactus Man (guitar version)" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 00:55 3. "Dialogue 3-2" 00:13 4. "Too Good Too Bad" (Yoko Kanno & Seatbelts) 02:35 5. "Dialogue 3-3" 00:07 6. "Eyeball" (Yoko Kanno & |
event was attended by around 800 people of all ages.
We were able to prevail upon UBC to allow the presence of science within the morass of apologetics by reminding them of their obligation to present information that is consistent with the policies of the university. While creationism might be entertaining, evolution is a fact. We were lucky to be able to borrow on the heft and credibility of our colleagues within the UBC biology department.
The Vancouver lecture was not quite as well-attended, perhaps due to the fact that people in a university environment know a bit more about science than the general public. Many of the students we encountered there attended out of sheer curiosity – having heard about the evolution vs. creation “controversy” (only controversial to those within the creationist camp). They thanked us for being there to present the evidence, rather than… well, we’ll get to that later.
The UBC Okanagan lecture was again not quite as popular as the one held by the Pentecostal Church in Surrey. Our volunteers were present to provide some information to those who might not have a background in biology. Feeling a bit cheeky, some of us wore t-shirts that said “Creationism: a Philosophy of Ignorance”, referring to the argument from ignorance that Creationism is based on (“I don’t know how this works, therefore it must be God’s doing”). Our esteemed presenter wasn’t particularly pleased about that, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
Overall, our presence was welcomed by audience members. We were careful not to force information on people, preferring instead to wait for curious parties to come to us. We were not there to sell anything or to force an agenda, merely to make information available and give people a chance to pre-empt some of the more egregious lies inherent to creationism.
What happened at the lecture?
While the bar for creationist lecturers isn’t set particularly high, either in terms of evidence or persuasive arguments, Dr. Sarfati did his utmost not to clear it. Instead of presenting evidence for the truth of creation (which would be impressive, because there isn’t any), he instead presented a series of shallow, recycled and easily- (and oft-) refuted arguments. Some of the highlights:
The second law of thermodynamics says that organization can’t increase in a closed system, therefore beneficial mutations cannot happen and evolution cannot occur. Never mind that the Earth is not a closed system, gets regular energy from the sun, and beneficial mutations have been observed to occur (a PhD in Chemistry really should know this)…
Science comes from Christianity (therefore… God?). Never mind that the Christian church repeatedly blocked scientific progress that was contrary to dogma, that science has explained many things that were supposedly divine “mysteries”, and that during the Dark Ages – when the church was at its height of power – it was the Muslim world that made the greatest contributions to science…
Noah’s flood explains everything, from the Grand Canyon to the divergence of species. Never mind the fact that contemporary floods don’t seem to have the magical properties of Noah’s flood, that building a ship capable of holding 2 of every animal in the world would require a level of technology we don’t even have today, and that there is no evidence anywhere of a flood that covered the entire world and then carefully planted specific types of animals only in certain places…
Fish float when they die, therefore they can’t fossilize, therefore fish fossils are evidence of being buried by mud slides from Noah’s flood. Never mind the fact that you do not need Noah’s flood to create mud slides that bury fish. It happens all the time. Never mind the fact that fish sink after their air bladders lose integrity, or that fish without bladders sink right away, or that fossil records are not the only – or even the strongest – evidence we have for evolution…
If you put a frog in a blender and turn it on, you’ll never see a live frog be reassembled. I’m not even sure if this one is worth taking on, and someone should probably call the SPCA.
After the lecture there was a Q&A session. Dr. Safarti wasn’t too pleased to see our volunteers in the first place (someone put a copy of Biology for Dummies on the podium – perhaps not polite, but certainly funny), and mentioned our insouciant t-shirts a few times in Kelowna. He became even more hostile when we pointed out some of the more egregious fallacies in his argument, interrupting the questioners, accusing us of trying to convert people to atheism (a big scary deal to Dr. Safarti), and assuring us that the answers were in one of his books, but he couldn’t answer it right now. The Vancouver event was attended predominantly by students and evolutionists, who did not respond well to these evasive tactics and cheered on those who took the creationist presenter to task for them.
Our reception was somewhat frostier in Kelowna, where the crowd was not quite as pro-science as in Vancouver. Our questions, rather than being met with tacit approval, were the cause of some consternation to the audience. One attendee, a professor of philosophy, attempted to demonstrate some of the logical problems with Sarfati’s arguments – an audience member threatened to put the professor in a head lock. Perhaps it goes without saying that we didn’t win any popularity contests there. Hopefully we got mentioned in a few church sermons the following Sunday.
Needless to say, Dr. Sarfati was not pleased to have people present who are aware of history, science, and basic logic. His hostility was not saved for skeptics either: he made many disparaging comments about atheists, Muslims, and made disparaging remarks about other Christians who believed in evolution. Perhaps being a jerk and a buffoon isn’t relevant to the fact that his presentation was frankly a big steamy pile of BS, but it certainly didn’t help his cause.
What did we learn?
The British Columbia branches of CFI are working on our “skeptivist” approach – bringing the tools of skepticism out into the open and engaging the public. We were lucky to have partners at UBC, as well as the support of the national branch of CFI. We were once again received positively by most of the audience at the event we attended – a reception we can at least partially attribute to being polite and non-pushy (being a good-looking group of ladies and gents probably didn’t hurt either).
People are understandably curious when someone tells them “the thing you’ve been taught is a hoax”. I’m sure that many of the attendees were either confirmed creationists for whom science is blasphemy, and more than a few were science-literate skeptics present at the lecture for a chuckle. Our mission was not and has not been, to convert the whole audience to one way of thinking; it was to present the actual evidence and allow people to make their own decisions. We are confident that after hearing “both sides” of the creation/evolution issue, reasonable people will choose the side with the evidence on its side over the one that relies on distortions and outright falsehoods to make its point.
Our information tables were visited predominantly by the people we were hoping to attract – science-weak university students who were there out of curiosity. They thanked us for being there, knowing that evolution is embraced by the scientific community but not being too sure about why. While skeptics and atheists are often accused of “preaching to the converted”, we were glad to have an opportunity to “preach” to those whose understanding of biology is less than full.
Dr. Sarfati is perhaps not the greatest challenge facing us in the creationist camp. While folks like Ken Ham at least have some kind of charisma, Dr. Sarfati has pictures of blended frogs and slander against non-believers. However, it is important to counter pseudoscience and fraud whenever it appears, particularly when it’s on our university campuses, no matter how unimpressive the speaker may be. We are happy to have been a part of this, and optimistic that we may have given people some things to think about.GLENDALE — The city of Glendale unveiled a $175 million dining and entertainment development that officials say will return the small city to the destination it was in decades past.
Glendale 180 — formerly referred to as the Glendale Riverwalk project — will bring in 300,000 square feet of leasable space and more than 2,200 parking spaces to 42 acres of land between Colorado Boulevard and Cherry Street on the south side of Virginia Avenue, abutting the Cherry Creek waterway.
“This is the next phase in the rebranding of Glendale,” Glendale deputy city manager Linda Cassady said at the unveiling reception. “It’s going to bring Glendale back to the dynamic area it was 40 years ago. It’s designed to complement the Cherry Creek Shopping Center.”
The site will feature 151,725 square feet of food and beverage, 109,000 square feet of entertainment and 42,500 square feet of retail.
The hope is to allow for common consumption at bars and restaurants, meaning that patrons could buy a drink at one bar and bring it with them to another, according to Michael Gross, project representative for Glendale 180.
Parking will consist of one underground level of parking, about 500 spaces of surface parking and a large parking garage.
The project is scheduled to break ground this fall with an opening planned in the fall of 2017.
“The hope is that it’s the ultimate entertainment destination in Colorado,” said David Glover, principal architect for Gensler, the architecture firm working on the project.
The city also announced that Houston-based Wulfe & Co. would be the developer for the site. The Laramie Company is handling leasing and anchor tenants should be announced soon. The project will be funded with both private and public partnerships and include the city selling bonds to help pay for some of the infrastructure work needed.
In 2012 a variation of the Riverwalk plan was turned down for regional tourism funds.
Glendale has seen a development resurgence recently with the City Set development on the south side of Cherry Creek Drive and Colorado Boulevard, anchored by the Hilton Garden Inn hotel and the surrounding restaurants and bars.
The city is also an international destination, according to Mayor Mike Dunafon, thanks to its label as Rugbytown USA and the success of Infinity Park. He said this new development will complement that.
The original strategic planning for a project near the river took place in 1998 and the ideas have changed over the course of that time, but the goal of Glendale 180 has always been to recapture when Glendale was a natural attraction with sites such as the Colorado Mining Company, Cooper Theater, the Lift dance club and Celebrity Sports Center.
“Our desire is to get back to entertainment district of ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s that matriculated out of here,” Gross said. “The main reason for the name Glendale 180 is that we’re going back to our roots.”
Joe Vaccarelli: 303-954-2396, jvaccarelli@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joe_vaccFor 4000 years since the breakdown of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, almost every major societal collapse has featured five trends: spiralling migration, state collapse, food shortages, epidemic disease and climate change.[1] What makes the present era distinct is that whilst previous collapses have been geographically contained, the globalisation of carbon-intensive industry since the 1800s and particularly over the last four decades means that the relationship between cause and effect has been obscured. Many of the people worst impacted by human-caused climate change today are also the least responsible for it. The Climate Stories project believes that averting further damage and building a different future means being led by those who are the first to hear the earth rise up in protest, have considered the causes and are innovating solutions. In this spirit, this article documents reflections from a series of conversations with members of the Kurdish movement on climate change.
Exploring the roots of a 21st century ‘climate crisis’
Historically, two key opposing trends have run through environmental movements. The first is reformist and favours environmental engineering. This approach still views nature in terms of how it can serve human needs through “environmentally-friendly” reforms and technologies. For the Kurdish movement, this avoids the question of who has profited from environmental damage and delays an effective solution to the problem. The second is a deep ecology approach, which tends to be anti-technological and anti-human. This is also limited because like it or not, it is humans who have, over time, developed most capability to shape nature. This power can be used to renew and protect nature, or to destroy it. So when a deep ecologist says “humans are responsible for everything” they imply that the chiefs of the fossil fuel industries are no more guilty than our Kurdish grandmothers who live in their villages tending the land.
To move beyond these two approaches, we need to understand the positive role human technologies have played – and could play again – in the reciprocal relationship between biological nature and human society. Do we really need to have a bird inside a cage in our house to show our love to it, when it is its nature to fly outside?
We also need to understand the roots of today’s climate crisis. How did the idea of controlling nature arise in the first place? Can humans control ‘external’ nature if they don’t first create structures of domination among themselves? Our views on this are based on studying our 5000-year history. Imprisoned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan has written about how hierarchy began to be institutionalised for the first time in the temple complexes of ancient Mesopotamia, beginning with the rise of the male priest and the institutionalisation of patriarchy. From here followed the state, slavery, the standing army, private property; features of many societies we know even today.[2]
For Öcalan, two civilisational tendencies run side-by-side. Towards the end of the Neolithic Age, structures based on hierarchy, violence and subjugation became more prominent. Yet in the same era, around 2,300 B.C, the first word to express the concept of freedom – amargi - literally “the return to mother”, also emerged. This is the foundation of what he describes as “democratic civilisation”, which runs through many historic struggles and continues today, especially in indigenous societies that still practice communal politics; in Rojava, our most well-known model of what we can call “ecological society”, many talk about “a return to our nature”. In other words, returning to a society based on women’s freedom, ecology and democracy in all spheres of life.
Women and land
“In Kurdish, the word Jin has dual significance: it means woman, but also comes from the root Jiyan, meaning life. So for us, oppressing Woman inevitably means oppressing life itself.”
In Kurdish, the word Jin has dual significance: it means woman, but also comes from the root Jiyan, meaning life. So for us, oppressing Woman inevitably means oppressing life itself.
This takes a central place in our theory of liberation, and women’s science, named jineology, has become a fundamental tenet of the Kurdish movement. For centuries, Woman was the keeper of knowledge about food, nature, growing, medicine, healing. She was vital to the system of agricultural production in which crops were shared equally among communities and held important social power.
Today, according to the World Food Organisation, women still make up the majority of the world’s farmers, cultivating more than half of all the world’s food. In Kurdistan too women are central to the rural economy. Many Kurdish households in rural Turkey are headed by the mother, with fathers and sons often lost to war or disappeared. Our local examples make us wonder about the social contradictions we observe: today’s global agricultural output can feed one and half times the world’s population, and yet roughly 800 million people are chronically undernourished. In our view, this is a symptom of how capitalist modernity has functioned over time, with very particular kinds of political infrastructures and social processes being institutionalised.[3] These have privileged moving resources to a minority, even across great distance, impoverishing many in the process. This has its roots in the earliest form of domination, of men over women.
The Kurdish context today
Understanding the echoes of the past in the present is crucial to understanding the Kurdish context. Kurds are one of the oldest peoples living in Mesopotamia. We number 40 million but have never had our identity as people attached to a nation-state. Kurds are also among the earliest practitioners of Zoroastrianism, based on harmony with nature and revolving around four elements: water, air, fire and earth. From these roots Kurdish culture developed, connected to the lands we inhabit – literally, agri-culture. The region’s rich biodiversity gave rise to some of human civilisation’s earliest settled agricultural societies. Millions of hectares of irrigated land in the Tigris-Euphrates river basin produced barley, wheat, cotton, livestock, fruits and vegetables and the Kurdish regions of both Syria and Iraq were often referred to as the ‘breadbasket’ of those countries.
These areas also contain some of the largest regional oil reserves and thirst for fossil fuels has made Kurdistan a prize geostrategic region. Since the 19th century, British and French interests have circulated around Mosul and Kirkuk, influencing deals between international powers, demarcating Kurdistan’s boundaries and complicating access to the region’s natural resources. International oil companies and the wealth they’ve accumulated dominate the cities of Iraq in the form of skyscrapers, the symbol of international finance capital, while agricultural production has dropped as conflict has raged across the region.
In Turkey, agricultural mechanisation of the 50’s and 60’s (financed in part by US Marshall aid money), pushed Kurds away from their ancestral home to the shanty areas of cities in the west of Turkey and forced assimilation policies severed them from the land. To simultaneously undermine the identity of those that remained, historical and cultural sites were destroyed. Nuclear plants and radioactive sites were built in rural Kurdistan threatening crops, animals and livelihoods. When the latest wave of Kurdish resistance began in the 1980s, the Turkish state’s response included burning 5000 villages and hundreds of acres of forests. That violence continues today. Between July 2015 and April 2016, nearly 400 civilians were killed by Turkish special forces and 300,000 people displaced during curfews and military attacks across southeast Turkey. Once again, reports are that the army targeted not only cities but also the surrounding forests. Just recently, on November 4th elected Kurdish officials were detained and continue to be held in solitary confinement, as part of an ongoing crackdown on the movement.
Displacing Kurds from their land has destroyed life, land and culture, which is the basis of identity. Our experiences have made clear to us how closely culture, identity, and so well-being, are influenced by the environment a people live in.
If agriculture was the foundation of our society, water was its mother. Today, the Euphrates and Tigris rivers – vital sources of life that flow through Kurdish areas across Turkey, Syria and Iraq – have taken on added geopolitical significance with water scarcity, like food scarcity, becoming a driver of regional conflict. Rivers know no borders and ignore the map of states. Observing this reasoning of the earth’s arteries, peoples, nations and governments should work jointly for the preservation and equitable use of the water, which belongs to the earth. This has not been the case, however. Water development projects have on several occasions brought Turkey, Syria and Iraq to the brink of war, with the unrecognised people of Kurdistan, living where the rivers pass, caught in the middle. Today, the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) is being rolled out across the Kurdish regions of Turkey, where 22 dams will be built. The Ilisu dam on the Tigris river will reduce water flow to Iraq and Syria and displace hundreds and thousands of people from places like Hasankeyf, one of the oldest continually inhabited towns in the world. Whilst projects such are these are almost always justified as ‘development and progress’, for many locals, the GAP project is a deliberate attempt to depopulate the area, force locals into the cities, undermine the social fabric of Kurdistan, and create a sort of ‘natural’ barricade against the PKK guerrillas.
Moving towards ‘Ecological Society’
As the natural environment shapes human identity and culture, so human society shapes nature. Devotion to profit-making through overproduction has pushed global society towards self-destruction, resulting in a world where one of the most profitable industries is the weapons industry; where economies empower monopoly and the colonisation of other countries directly or indirectly; where agriculture has lost its value through resource-intensive technologies, irresponsible genetic engineering and loss of seed diversity. We have arrived at a point in which humans must act to make democratic changes in all aspects of our lives, otherwise we will separate ourselves from nature completely.
For the Kurdish movement, ecological society starts with breaking down the patriarchal system. The western press has made much of the fact that Kurdish women have organised themselves in the armed struggle, including recently in the self-defence forces of the YPJ forces in Rojava and YJA-STAR forces in other parts of Kurdistan. The dehumanising orientalism of these stories obscures the full picture: that women's self-determination is central to the success of our struggle and our vision of a liberated, democratic and ecological society. Women are now running academies across Kurdistan, establishing women-only villages for victims of abuse, and are the most active members of civic and political life, in councils, communes and as representatives in political parties. At least 40% of each gender must be elected to political office at every level of society, through a co-presidential system in which only women have the right to elect the female co-chair whilst everyone elects the male co-chair. This shares power, has an educational impact and promotes a fair consensus in all political decisions.
Ecological society is based on democratic confederalism within democratic nations rather than representative democracy within nation-states. Most states were founded through divisive nation-building projects – including war – sometimes exploiting existing tensions, other times creating them, driving apart families and long-standing communities and drawing the highly militarised, yet artificial borders that prevent humanity from taking collective responsibility for today’s problems.[4] This is a legacy of 19th century white-supremacist science that ‘proved’ the existence of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ races, which European political philosophy tied to the nation-state as having a singular ethnic or cultural identity. In contemporary times, this echoes in many ways, including through the belief that it is more difficult for people of different cultures to co-exist within the same state, rather than seeing that the problem lies in the exclusionary principles of modern statehood.
In contrast, we believe and have experienced that the more diverse a nation is, the stronger its democracy. This is why the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP in Turkey is the most diverse party in the Turkish Parliament, with representation from all the communities of Mesopotamia and Anatolia; Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Arabs, Assyrians, Muslims, Alevis, Christians and Yazidis. In Turkey’s 2015 elections, the HDP gained a historic victory, winning 59 seats. Yet on Nov 4th 2016, 11 of the elected officials, including the two co-chairs, were detained by the Turkish state.
Why is this so significant? We have to remember that if different ethnic and religious groups in the Middle East are unified, it would be more difficult to divide and rule the region. As one Arab member of the Rojava administration explained to Kurdish academic and activist Dilar Dirik:
‘The democratic autonomy system in our three cantons shakes and upsets the whole world because the capitalist system does not want freedom and democracy for the Middle East, despite all its pretensions. That is why everyone attacks Rojava. The different forms of state exemplified by the Syrian Arab Republic under Assad and the Islamic State are two sides of the same coin as they deny and destroy the diversity mosaic of our region. But more and more Arabs from the rest of Syria come to Rojava to learn about democratic autonomy because they see a perspective for freedom here.’
Most nation-states centralise decision-making power so that little political activity happens where it is most needed. Democratic confederalism, however, is based on direct democracy. With the codification of the “Social Contract” in Rojava, people from various nations and faiths come together to run politics through direct participation in commissions, committees, councils, communes from street-level, to areas, to regions, to cities and so on. This also takes place in Turkey, where, for example, the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement was recently restructured into local and provincial councils. Each council is autonomous, but is networked with others as part of a confederation that forms the political structure of the Kurdish movement.
Democratic confederalism challenges capitalist modernity’s ideas of ownership, a challenge taken up by indigenous movements whose experience of violence during modern state-formation led them to depart from this route and work towards self-determination beyond borders. Much like the Zapatistas in Mexico, in Rojava, decisions on social issues, from infrastructure and energy to education and domestic violence are all discussed and resolved together. Here, a national ‘managerial’ or ‘owning’ government becomes redundant – the aim is for people themselves to manage the society they live in together.
This does not mean that there are no tensions, disagreements and sometimes even conflict, especially since internalised oppression and authoritarian structures run deep, leading to both political apathy and abuse of political power. But this is why re-educating ourselves is vital. Our education academies promote a more conscious mentality; while our commitment to regenerating a co-operative society means that this approach is reinforced through people making and witnessing real changes on the ground.
For example, we are building a collective economy through co-operatives. This not only creates non-hierarchical relations between workers, but also with the earth. This is in direct contrast to today’s globalised economic system, which favours over-exploiting nature for the short-term interests of a few, rather than economic justice. In Rojava, hundreds of co-operatives have been established. Both need and the historical economy of the region mean prioritising agricultural co-ops, with local lands tended to by local people – many of them women – with the communes ensuring its equitable distribution, allocation and use. But this applies across all sectors in Rojava; workers cooperatives manage the economy, including small textile, oil and food-processing sectors, while doctors committees are working to design a free healthcare system.
Ecological society serves nature and humans in constructive ways, using appropriate technologies. For example, renewable energy like solar panels, wind and hydro turbines or biogas digesters – responding to the diversity of gifts nature offers us in our local regions – are better alternatives than oil or dams and nuclear plants. With much of the region destroyed by recent conflict, a space has opened for experimenting with approaches that reduce the ecological burden through sustainable building methods and communal principles. A project to build a new health and social centre in Kobane, for example, will use thermal insulation, an integrated biological wastewater treatment, and solar energy. This is not a superficial nod towards ‘sustainability’; if the roots of the climate crisis lie within capitalist modernity’s own destructive nature, ecological economics must challenge the idea of growth itself and move towards a re(constructive), cyclical relationship with nature.
Whilst the movement’s approach developed through conversation with like-minded people from across the world, it speaks to the history, culture and natural landscapes of the Kurdish people, which is why it comes to life here, even under the most repressive of circumstances. Our mothers remember times without borders, when life was nomadic and barter and exchange were common practice. For them, forming cooperatives with other women to make bread is both a reclamation of their past as well as a vision for their future, liberated from patriarchal feudal structures that denied them full rights. And not just patriarchy. In July, fighters from the YPJ sent a message of solidarity to the Black Lives Matter movement, recognising that sexism developed together with racism and capitalism and until we end all forms of domination, no one can say they are truly free.
To build an ecological world, we need new mindsets, cultures and strong institutions to protect it. We mustn’t deny those people already laying down the stones on this path.
[1] See Foragers, Farmers, Fossil Fuels by Ian Morris for a partial discussion of this.
[2] See oD’s Beyond Trafficking and Slavery section for discussions of contemporary slavery.
[3] See this overview of the development of industrial versus ecological agriculture as well as groups such as the Institute for Ecology and Culture for discussions on the urgent need for contemporary ‘localisation’.
[4] See for example, Mahmood Mamdani’s Citizen and Subject (whose significance is commented on in the link) and Benedict Andersons’ Imagined Communities for some discussion of this.At the Hoops' hotel in Moscow a local journalist, in the most offbeat way, engaged the bemused Parkhead manager in discussion about various topics including Rangers, Sir Sean Connery and former Celtic midfielder Aiden McGeady, who now plies his trade for the Russian outfit, before a Uefa official eventually stepped in to prevent it all becoming too silly.
The Northern Irishman posted on his Twitter account afterwards "Well that was one of the more bizarre press conferences I've had to do."
Lennon was asked if he would help Old Firm rivals Rangers, who relaunched in the Irn-Bru Third Division this season after descending into administration, if he had 100 million euros to spend.
The former Celtic captain jokingly responded: "Would I help Rangers? If I had that money you wouldn't see me again, I would be in Las Vegas or somewhere like that!
"I have no idea how I would spend the money, I would invest it in the club and team and keep a little for myself."
Lennon was also asked, on the theme of benevolent club presidents and owners, if he would approach Sir Sean Connery if Celtic had any financial problems.
Almost incredulous at the random link between the Scottish actor and the Parkhead club, he replied: "You've done your homework, haven't you?
"We don't see us having too many financial problems. The club is run very well and we have to work within our means.
"We don't have the finances of English clubs or a super-rich owner who is quite happy to plough loads of money in.
"We run the club as a business, we have a budget and a strategy set and we work within that and it has been very successful for us in terms of building a team for the future - but if you have Sean Connery's number I will take it off you."
Lennon - who at one point asked the Uefa interpreter of his Russian inquisitor, "is he a real journalist?" - was asked if a monument should be built in honour of McGeady for earning the Parkhead club a reported £9 million when he joined Spartak in 2010.
"A statue?" said the Celtic manager. "You need to do a little bit more at a club like ours to get a statue. Only people like Jock Stein and the great Jimmy Johnstone are worthy of that so far.
"Aiden is a tremendous player, very talented and definitely one to watch tomorrow and I'm sure he will be even more motivated than usual against his old club.
"He was a great servant to Celtic and is still held in high esteem at the club.
"In terms of bringing in players for the money, it was around about eight to 10, I couldn't tell you the exact number. We had a rebuilding job to do with the squad and we managed to do that."
Lennon made clear that he was not being detrimental in any way towards his former team-mate.
"He has improved since his days at Celtic," he said. "In the games I have watched Spartak play, Aiden has probably been their best attacking player.
"He looks in good condition. We all know how good he is on the ball but his movement off the ball is excellent. He covers the ground very quickly and he will be a threat.
"He will want to win the game and he will want to play well.
"I think there is an extra edge when you are playing against your former club and he will want to show everyone how his all-round game has improved since he left."
Scott Brown joins in fun
Scott Brown teased one rather enthusiastic local journalist who asked if the Celtic players watched the movie Braveheart before games.
He said: "Yes, we watch Braveheart and we put our kilts on, just before we go out to warm up and we all dance together."
Key clashes
Gary Hooper v Juan Insaurralde
Hooper has six goals from his last three outings and notching again in the Luzhniki Stadium will certainly enhance his prospects of an England call-up. However, Insaurralde, the Argentina defender signed from Boca Juniors during the summer, enjoys a reputation for taking no prisoners so Hooper can expect a bruising encounter on Spartak’s plastic pitch.
Charlie Mulgrew v Aiden McGeady
Emilio Izaguirre will be tasked with shutting down the former Celtic winger but the Honduran looks short of confidence and will need extra protection from Mulgrew, who is expected to adopt a wide midfield role. Mulgrew is also well aware that McGeady, whose £9.5m move two years ago effectively subsidised Neil Lennon’s team rebuilding, can be devastating on his day.
Celtic (4-4-1-1, probable): Forster; Lustig, Ambrose, Rogne, Izaguirre; Commons, Brown, Wanyama, Mulgrew; Samaras; Hooper.
Previous meetings
2007/08 Champions League third qualifying round
Spartak Moscow 1 (Pavlyuchenko) Celtic 1 (Hartley)
Celtic 1 (McDonald) Spartak Moscow 1 (Pavlyuchenko)
Celtic win 4-3 on penalties.Over the last few years, the rise of microtransactions in video games has made consumers fear that their games will be ruined by corporate greed. There's only a handful of publishers still pumping out solid single player games while others move towards an online centric market which allows for more money to be made after the initial $59.99 purchase of the core game.
Many gamers became really fed up with this new trend in 2017 leading to huge controversies surrounding games like Star Wars Battlefront II which ended up completely removing its microtransactions after tons of players threatened to boycot the game completely. With that said, many have begun inquiring about upcoming games to see how other developers/publishers will approach this situation.
Take-Two has already confirmed that games like Red Dead Redemption 2 will have a revenue stream supported by microtransactions after seeing Rockstar's massive success with Grand Theft Auto V's Shark Cards. One developer who won't be incorperating microtransactions is the very independent, player driven studio known for The Witcher series, CD Projekt Red.
Aside from two substantial expansions, all of the additional content for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was completely free and it sounds like CD Projekt intends to do something similar with their next game, Cyberpunk 2077. The company responded to a curious fan with a firey response that throws shade at various game companies like EA by saying they plan to ignore microtransactions and will "leave greed to others".
.@PrettyBadTweets Worry not. When thinking CP2077, think nothing less than TW3 — huge single player, open world, story-driven RPG. No hidden catch, you get what you pay for — no bullshit, just honest gaming like with Wild Hunt. We leave greed to others. — CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) November 19, 2017
Cyberpunk 2077 has no release date or any significant details but is rumored to have online components, destructible cities, social hubs, and more.A DUBLIN COMMUNITY is reeling from news that a local man was savagely attacked and murdered by a gang of men in their area.
Neil Reilly, known to gardaí for drugs and burglary offences, was killed in the early hours of yesterday morning. His death is believed to be connected to shots fired at a house in Clondalkin at around 4am.
Source: Sam Boal
A number of cars left the scene of the shooting incident and a chase ensued to Esker Glebe in Lucan where one car was rammed. Gardaí have received reports of knives and a machete being used to injure the 36-year-old in the altercation that followed. They have also been told that he was run over with a car.
Yesterday Superintendent Dermot Mann described the victim’s injuries as “substantial”.
Source: Facebook
Reilly, who was himself a father, was murdered within 100 metres of two schools and local Fine Gael councillor William Lavelle said many parents learned of the frightening incident as they passed by the scene in the morning with their children.
“People are really shocked that a person lost their life in what was an absolutely horrific crime. To be beaten up, stabbed, slashed, run over – all on a public road – it’s just horrific,” he said.
There could have been innocent bystanders caught up in it, that’s what scares people.
Source: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie
The area has been no stranger to violent crime in recent months. On Halloween night, Robert Ellis was chased through Neilstown and stabbed to death. And just before Christmas, Noel Kirwan, who was an associate of Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch, was shot dead in Clondalkin as he sat in a car with his partner.
Liona O’Toole, another local councillor, said people in the area are concerned about the increasing level of violence recently.
“It’s happening far too often. It was happening quietly for sometime and now it has started to come to the top, it’s spilling out onto the streets.”
Though local representatives acknowledged gardaí do their best, they pointed out that resources had been cut and claimed this has added to problems with crime in the area.
“They’ve cut the number of community guards in Ronanstown – I’ve written to Frances Fitzgerald about this – and they’re badly missed,” Ruth Nolan, Independents 4 Change councillor, told TheJournal.ie.
Source: Sam Boal
Yesterday, Superintendent Mann said a number of people came out of their homes at Esker Glebe when the cars crashed outside. Gardaí believe they may have witnessed the altercation and they are asking people to help them piece together what happened and establish who was responsible.
“People just want to live their lives and rear their family in peace, no one likes to see such a violent murder happen where they live,” she said. “It must have been like something from a movie if anybody saw it – it must have been terrifying.”
William Lavelle stressed this kind of violent crime cannot be allowed to continue.
“To kill a |
with which they especially differed, and to explain what that point of difference meant to them.
Stephanie Zacharek, the long-time Salon reviewer who’s now at Movieline, knew Kael well (see, for instance, this lovely tribute she wrote after Kael’s death in 2001). She told me she probably “disagreed most strongly with Pauline’s take on Vertigo, and with her view of Hitchcock in general.”
She distrusts Hitchcock’s mechanics—the whirring of the gears at work always bothered her. But I think he gets poetry out of those gears—albeit a kind of stark, manicured poetry—particularly in Vertigo. It’s the most wistful of all his films, even if it’s a rather cold wistfulness; I think all the emotion he can muster is right there in the craftsmanship.
That said, I don’t think I really struggled much with any review by Pauline that I disagreed with. I do feel that movies we love are worth arguing about, and I prefer those arguments to be fiery and passionate rather than calm and meticulous and reasoned. Because movies reach us in places that are beyond the reach of language—that’s what makes talking about them, and writing about them, so damn hard and so fulfilling. So when I read Pauline, I don’t feel I’m entering some boxing ring in which taste, determined movie by movie, is ultimately the great arbiter. I don’t think criticism is about taste at all. It’s wonderful when you share a sensibility with a critic, a similar set of basic likes and dislikes, or a consonant way of looking at things. But ultimately, I think that what attracts me to a critic—any critic, not just Pauline—is some electrical current of enthusiasm and love, a way of looking at movies that connects them to life instead of holding them at arm’s length for our careful, measured scrutiny. And a sense of humor, too. The thing about Pauline’s work is that her arguments are so forceful and airtight—her detractors have often seen that as a kind of arrogance. I prefer to call it confidence, and I’ve always loved the challenge of her confidence. Agreement or disagreement is barely an issue.
J. Hoberman would, I suspect, take issue with that argument; when I asked him to name a review he disagreed with, his first reply was, “Wow—there are so many!” He continued:
That piece does not appear to be online, but it’s included in Hoberman’s 1991 anthology Vulgar Modernism.
Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club pointed to Kael’s 1969 essay for Harper’s, “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” which Phipps describes as the closest thing Kael wrote to a mission statement.
It’s a must-read, filled with quotable lines like “The critic shouldn’t need to tear a work apart to demonstrate that he knows how it was put together” and “Kicked in the ribs, the press says ‘art’ when ‘ouch’ would be more appropriate.” It’s also head-noddingly right in general and spectacularly wrong when it gets to particulars. Kael takes a potshot at a film I love—The Red Shoes—then thoroughly beats up three films I consider all-time favorites: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Graduate, and Petulia, a tragic romance directed by Richard Lester against the backdrop of San Francisco in full counterculture swing. Her thoughts on the latter two feel off to me, talking about the blankness of Dustin Hoffman’s Graduate protagonist as if that were a failing instead of the point of the character and calling Petulia a “hate letter to America” when, to my eyes, what she calls “hate” simply feels like the temperature of the times. But there is something to her attack on 2001. ”The secondary title of Dr. Strangelove, which we took to be satiric, ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb,’ was not, it now appears, altogether satiric for Kubrick,” Kael writes. ”2001 celebrates the invention of tools of death, as an evolutionary route to a higher order of non-human life. Kubrick literally learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.” That’s not my reading of the film, but it’s one anyone who loves the movie has to at least consider. Even when she’s wrong, she’s worth reading. I can’t think of any higher praise for a film critic.
Lastly, Michelle Orange, a colleague of Stephanie Zacharek’s at Movieline, pointed me to Kael’s 1970 review of Gimme Shelter “as an example of the tricky parts of both Pauline Kael’s reviewing and film criticism in general.” The questions Kael raises about the line between “news and art or entertainment, the actual and the arranged,” are, according to Orange, “strikingly prescient,” but Kael reduces the film “to little more than a platform.”
Kael’s clearly deeply felt response to Gimme Shelter is dispersed too freely over too much ground. Framed as a moral argument about the uses of vérité, she questions the orchestration of the event itself, suggesting everything from the fact that the stage for the Altamont concert was lit like a stage to the Mick Jagger-ness of Mick Jagger as inducements to murder. For every gotcha (she accuses the Maysles brothers of hiring an actor for their earlier vérité doc Salesman, a charge they denied) there is a corresponding overreach or flight of quaint fancy, like framing a rock concert in the language of satanic ritual.
Her confidence is overwhelming, as it’s meant to be, but in a review like that one it strikes me as a weakness, where the language of certainty undercuts a critic’s public grappling with the issues raised by a relatively new concern—what is (good/bad/sham) cinema vérité and where might it lead us? Kael’s review of Frederick Wiseman’s Hospital that same year gives a sense of how unsettled she was on vérité’s questions of truth and manipulation, exposure and exploitation. She wrote the kind of glowingly urgent review of Wiseman’s look at the patients and workers at a New York City hospital that critics sometimes do when well-made films might double as a work of social activism (or as news, as Wiseman’s previous film, the mental hospital exposé Titicut Follies, did more plainly). More friendly to vérité in her review, Kael found Hospital superior to “the habitual cant and concealments” of most “conventional, guided documentaries,” which seem “chintzy and puritanical and fundamentally insulting” by contrast, and praised the fact that the material “does not appear to have been transformed in the editing process.” It’s a revealing call, especially when applied to her endorsement of the film as a challenge to “middle-class good taste.”
Curious praise from someone who derided Gimme Shelter for being, among other things, the same exact thing. Though her contradictions can be frustrating if you’re into being frustrated by contradiction, ultimately they are what make me feel for Kael most—her greatest consistence was in rising to interesting times with a pounding heart, and without backing down. Ever: I recently read that after being told that her Gimme Shelter review still ate at Albert Maysles’s thirty years later, Kael made a chipper reply: “Tough shit!”Hurray! Drum roll… cymbal crash + orchestral hit! We’ve beaten yet another US patent troll! The enemy is defeated, demoralized, and on the run! Churchill was right: “Never give up!” We’ve followed his advice in our fight against a particular troll. As a result the troll gave up and ran away with nothing and its tail between its legs.
“Shock, happiness, joy and adrenaline – all in one”
– That’s how N.K. (our Chief Intellectual Property Counsel) described this victory. For this time the troll was of a higher caliber and its ‘connections’ were way more heavyweight.
Shock, happiness, joy and adrenaline all in one – I couldn’t agree more. Our 18-month court case with Lodsys (one of the ‘tentacles’ of the world’s largest and most notorious of patent trolls – Intellectual Ventures (“IV”)) was brought to a sudden halt by a full and unconditional capitulation by this abominable patent parasite. As per the norm, we won once again alone, with another 54 defendant companies deciding to settle with the extortionist, while others shamefully fled the battlefield altogether. In all the patent troll has shaken down more than 400 IT companies!
Now for the details…
In 1992 an inventor came up with an idea regarding methods for improving products through feedback from user to developer, which he later patented (7222078 & 7620565).
In 2004 the patent fell into the clutches of the mega patent troll IV through one of its numerous shells, where it stayed up until 2010 – when it ended up being owned by Lodsys, IV‘s subsidiary. It was found that this patent not only covered the ecosystem of mobile applications and their In-App Purchase function, but the whole software industry! How? Well, if a product allows the user to provide feedback, for example by pressing the ‘report error’ button, that’s a patent violation! No; really! It’s a bit like patenting the idea of the Internet without its practical implementation. Alas, this is how the American system works (sic!).
In March 2011 we and dozens of other companies received letters from Lodsys in which we were kindly asked for a modest fee to license their patents – otherwise there would be trouble. In the letter to us it was claimed the patent covered (i) standard notifications about new security updates, (ii) assistance given users in downloading and installing security updates, (iii) our cloud technologies (KSN), (iv) in-product purchasing and renewing of licenses, (v) even our interactive support site, and yet more besides – in fact, almost any front-end interaction with users. Yep, these guys would try to patent the creation of the world!
Then in May 2012 we and all the other dissenters were invited to the East Texas court (an old favorite venue of the trolls) to hear Lodsys’s arguments in a more formal setting. Here, it turned out that we’d ‘infringed’ Lodsys’s patent to the amount of no less than $25 million – the price of the lawsuit brought against us.
I won’t bore you with the details of the proceedings. I will say that this isn’t the first time we’ve done battle with trolls, so we’re up to speed on how to deal with this vermin. The main thing is to have a strategy and tactics, to immediately supply all information requested (including source code!), to quickly respond to complaints, and to demonstrate to the court both openness and a readiness to solve the matter. And of course to also exude calmness, confidence, and firmness in one’s position.
Trolls, on the other hand, do everything to make things difficult; for example, we had to analyze more than 2,000 documents that formed the basis of the troll’s case in a very short period of time. Based on our analysis we had to come up with crushing counter-arguments. And it was those counter-arguments that actually did finally crush our opponent, seeing Lodsys not even having the courage to show up in court! We maintained that we did not infringe any of Lodsys’s patents and that their claims were invalid.
And finally: the culmination!
51 out of the 55 defendant companies settled the claim before going to court. At the finish line with us were just Symantec, HP and Samsung – but they also dropped out of the race and settled a few weeks before appearing in court. Tensions grew, knees trembled… and then boom! Our lawyers in the court reported that Lodsys has withdrawn its lawsuit and the judge dismissed the case ‘with prejudice’, meaning they can’t bring a similar case against us again.
And now for the conclusions:
This case has shown once again that patent trolls can be resisted and defeated.
be resisted and defeated. Patent trolls must be defeated, otherwise the blood suckers will be back and into your wallet big time.
be defeated otherwise the blood suckers will be back and into your wallet big time. The IT industry does not have a common position on combatting trolls; the absolute majority prefers feeding the parasites.
The ‘big boys’ of the IT industry are indirectly involved in the development of the patent trolling industry, and facilitate the extortion of smaller companies.
Trolls continue to be really underhand and nasty, bombarding potential victims with nonsense actions – and without incurring liability in case of withdrawal of a claim.
Earlier, patent showdowns were the lot of major vendors. Now, even small developers of mobile applications are involved in this vicious circle. The continuation of the trend is fraught with scandalous transfers of mega funds from innovators to social parasites, provoking the collapse of the IT industry.
Governments need to move to resolute, specific and systemic action against trolls, including things like on the list here.
So it’s with all my heart that I congratulate and thank our team and our court counsels from Patterson Thuente IP for protecting our intellectual property! The victory has already had one curious consequence: it caused slight though wholly irreparable damage to the world’s reserves of 18-year-old Chivas Regal :).
UPDATE: prior art that can be used to invalidate Lodsys’ patents.Coined in 2010, ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) is a relaxing, often sedative sensation that begins on the scalp and moves down the body. Also known as "brain massage," it's triggered by placid sights and sounds such as whispers, accents, and crackles.
"Basically, it feels like the amazing chills you get when someone plays with your hair or traces your back with their fingertips," says Heather Feather, a popular "ASMRtist" with nearly 400,000 YouTube subscribers. The dulcet tones of famed soft-spoken painter Bob Ross are among the most common ASMR triggers. Indeed, "Bob Ross" is among the terms most frequently associated with ASMR—and so are "Heather Feather" and "GentleWhispering," another top ASMRtist on YouTube.
Creators like Heather Feather are making videos that create the tingly ASMR effect. In fact, there are currently about 5.2 million ASMR videos on YouTube, and there is interest coming from all corners of the globe (see chart below). YouTube searches for ASMR grew over 200% YoY in 2015 and are consistently growing.3 On its own, a top ASMR video can garner over 16 million views.To all who are part of the long distance hiking community, the term “Hiker Trash” is affectionately used to describe a hiker or group of hikers who have sunk down to a lower standard of living. For example, if one comes upon a group of hikers sprawled out under the shade of a tree by a roadside store filling their bellies with whoopee pies and ice cream, taking advantage of a real toilet and seeking out potable water, you may turn and say to your friend, “Hey man, look at that Hiker Trash over there.” A hiker can gain the status of Hiker Trash by exemplifying several, if not most, of the things listed below that have been compiled by me and several of my fellow Hiker Trash friends from my 2013 thru-hike.
35 Warning Signs That You Might Be Hiker Trash…
1. You choose restaurants in town based off free WiFi and electrical outlets
2. You’ve ever had to lie down for a few hours after eating a meal in town
3. “You wear $20 socks but wash them in the Dunkin Donuts bathroom” – Jean Geanie
4. You share a hot tub with several other naked strangers because no one wants to sacrifice a dry change of clothes
5. Your shirt changes colors from all the dirt, sweat and grime
6. Your shirt disintegrates and falls off your back
7. “You’ve ever hiked with a shirt on but no pants or underwear because of chaffing” – Duffle Miner
8. You wear spare clothes left in a laundry mat with out even hesitating
9. “Even after you return to regular life you don’t shower unless you EARN it” – Clever Girl
10. You count summer down pours as a shower
11. You can smell clean clothes on day hikers well before you ever see them
12. “Your shoes are ‘holier’ than your religion” – River Gaurd
13. “Crocs are your ‘nice’ shoes” – Timber
14. You have a code name for Dollar General within your hiking group (“Check out this new Pringle flavor I got at the DG, man.”)
15. “You spend more time unpacking food outside the grocery store than you spend shopping” – Jean Genie
16. You and a hiking partner make a game of racing for all the fallen pop tart crumbles while eating breakfast in the shelter (first one to mistake dirt for pop tart obviously looses)
17. “You meet someone who admits to eating out of trashcans and doesn’t seem weird” – Spider Web
18. You eat enough Sour Patch Kids to talk about them within your hiking circle like they’re drugs (“You Patchin’, bro? Let me get some!”)
19. “A pint of Ben & Jerry’s is a normal serving of ice cream” – Spider Web
20. You break your titanium spoon on Nuetella in cold weather
21. “You try to fry a Honey Bun in butter” – Duffle Miner
22. “You know the calorie content of foods off the top of your head (ex. Poptarts, 400 cal per cellophane wrapper)” – The Roosta (He was right!)
23. “You know not only the calorie content, but how much each item weighs” – Spider Web
24. “You’ve been excited to sleep in a stranger’s garage” – Timber
25. “You sleep on the shoulder of the road ten feet from a hostel in order to prove a point” – Duffle Miner
26. You have ever put down consecutive big mile days to make it to a hiker party or a hiker feed
27. “You appear to be indistinguishable from a hobo to the untrained eye EXCEPT for Silnylon and maybe some Cuben Fiber” – Yard Sale
28. “You’ve been mistaken for a homeless person by an actual homeless person and you’re too embarrassed to tell them that you’re only on vacation” – Duffle Miner
29. “You’ve been given money because some thought you were homeless” – River Gaurd
30. You think you must be in a big, fancy city when there is a Wal-Mart to shop at
31. You fit in really nicely at Wal-Mart
32. “You don’t smoke cigarettes but still carry them for their ability to be traded for anything” – The Roosta
33. “You have ever yelled ridiculous obscenities at plant life, when by yourself, alone in the woods” – Heart Rock
34. “You completely forget what an ‘inside voice’ sounds like” – Clever Girl
35. “You can relate to everything else on the list” – Spider Web
Don’t be shy. Share your Hiker Trash warning signs in the comments below.VANCOUVER, BC – Vancouver Whitecaps FC midfielder Bryce Alderson has joined English club Queens Park Rangers F.C. for a two-week off-season training spell, the club confirmed today.
Alderson said he will look to use this off-season, including the experience in White City, London, to serve to his advantage when he reports back to Vancouver for training camp in January.
“A new coach is coming in and when a new coach comes in it’s a clean slate for everybody,” Alderson told whitecapsfc.com. “When pre-season rolls around, he’ll be looking at all new faces and it will be up to the players to impress and try to make an impression.”
Alderson arrived in London earlier this week and will begin training with QPR’s U-21 side, whose head coach Marc Bircham is familiar with the ‘Caps midfielder through his ties with the Canadian Soccer Association, once the neccessary paperwork has been finalized.
The Whitecaps FC Residency graduate will be available for selection in QPR's next two matches, against the Crystal Palace U-21s on November 19 and Reading U-21s on November 26.
Canadian midfielders Dylan Carreiro and Michael Petrasso, who Alderson grew up playing with as part of Canada’s youth system, are also members of QPR’s U-21 squad. The Canadian duo will be hosting Alderson at their apartment during his short stint in London.
“It was just a good fit for me to come here and train for a couple weeks,” Alderson said. "Knowing a few guys makes it really easy for me."
Alderson, 19, joined Whitecaps FC’s Major League Soccer roster as a Generation adidas Homegrown player in November 2011 after coming through the club’s Residency program. He spent this past season on loan with United Soccer Leagues PRO side Charleston Battery, recording one assist in 15 appearances.
The Kitchener, Ontario native returned to Vancouver in September after representing the Canadian men's U-21 team at the Francophone Games. It’s been over two months since Alderson has played in an actual match, which is part of the reason why both he and the club felt a training stint abroad would be in his best interest.
“We’re on the same page,” said Alderson, a two-time Canadian U-17 Player of the Year. “Ultimately, they want what’s best for me. And what’s best for me is what’s best for them.”
After two seasons in the English Premier League, QPR was relegated to the Football League Championship – the second-highest tier of England’s professional soccer system – at the end of last season. The Hoops currently sit third in the Championship with a 9W-1L-5D record.
Whitecaps FC 2014 season tickets are now on sale and start at just $349, subject to applicable fees. The club is also offering a flexible range of additional products, including half-season packs, 5-packs, student season tickets, and a youth soccer half-season ticket. For more information on all Whitecaps FC ticket options, call 604.669.9283 ext. 2 or visit whitecapsfc.com/tickets.Congress MLA Nabakishore Das has been suspended from Odisha Assembly on Tuesday for allegedly watching porn during house proceeding. This comes a day after a TV channel caught him on camera watching porn video inside the assembly.
Das has admitted that he accessed the internet inside the house but denied watching porn and clarified that the page opened suddenly while browsing.
"I have never seen such video clips. While I was trying to open a web page in my mobile, the video clip on Youtube inadvertently opened," Das said.
He said he will give a clarification to the speaker over the issue.
"I have done nothing wrong. It is a conspiracy against me to tarnish my image," Das added.
He also said that he was ready to face a probe.
However, the ruling Biju Janata Dal demanded a probe and action against the leader.
BJD member Pramila Mallick said she will urge the speaker to order an investigation into the matter and take action against the MLA as she alleged that the Congress member was watching porn during question hour.
"It is very shameful that the MLA was watching obscene clips in the august house. Tomorrow (Tuesday), we will urge the speaker to take strong action against the legislator," said Mallick.History and heritage are powerful words in American politics. In the United States, the Founding Fathers are second only to the apostles; the Constitution comes just after the Bible on the bookshelf and the Declaration of Independence is nearly as important an origin story as Genesis.
Just days after bloody white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville last month, Donald Trump argued that a growing chorus of voices calling for the removal of Confederate statues would inevitably lead to the removal of monuments honoring the Founding Fathers – tantamount to heresy.
But not all heritage and history is holy in these United States. While Trump is quick to defend his Confederate forefathers, he has been equally swift to desecrate places held sacred by Native Americans.
Just weeks into his presidency, Trump hamfisted the Dakota Access Pipeline through the graves and homelands of the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota.
Now, thanks to a leaked memo from interior secretary Ryan Zinke, we know the president plans to shrink protected areas and lift restrictions on extractive developments at 10 national monuments across the country – including the sacred Bears Ears national monument in southern Utah.
Bears Ears is one of the most powerful and historic cultural and spiritual centers of the first peoples of the south-west. The monument, established in the twilight of the Obama administration, stands just next door to Canyonlands national park, north of the San Juan river and east of the Colorado.
The rock formation after which the monument is named comprises twin buttes standing high above the piñon-juniper treetops, carved canyons, and majestic mesas – like the head of a bear emerging from the south-west landscape.
The area is revered by a full five Native nations in the south-west: the Navajo, Hopi, Uintah & Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni.
This land was the birthplace of Chief Manuelito of the Bít’aa’níí or “Folded Arms People Clan”. Manuelito led the Navajo, the second-largest tribal nation in the United States, in a valiant struggle against removal to internment camps in desolate Bosque Redondo, present-day New Mexico.
The Navajo were removed from their homes by gunpoint in 1864 – a dark chapter in Navajo and American history now known simply as the “Long Walk”. Manuelito, the warrior and leader, signed an 1868 treaty that ended this forced exodus, allowing the Navajo to return to a reservation established on homelands spanning parts of Arizona and New Mexico.
To this day, the Navajo Nation is the largest Indian reservation in the United States –larger by landmass than many states.
Historical analogies are always imperfect, but for all intents and purposes, Manuelito was the Navajo equivalent of a Founding Father. He is, rightly, a legendary figure in the pantheon of the Navajo and south-west. Moreover, Manuelito’s story is but one of many that emanate from Bears Ears.
There are a full five nations and dozens more clans and families with roots in the area. Utah Diné Bikéyah, a coalition created to protect Bears Ears, estimates that there are more than 100,000 cultural and archaeological sites protected within the current boundaries of the monument.
The Trump administration has not bothered to learn any of that history. Zinke only spared one hour to meet with tribal officials when he visited Salt Lake City in May.
“What we are asking for is just a small acreage compared to what was taken away from us.” Utah Diné Bikéyah board chairman Willie Grayeyes said in a press release. “We ask for this simple honor to be given by the President and Secretary: do not alter or change our Proclamation.”
But Indigenous calls to honor this sacred place have been ignored. Evidently, history and heritage are only important when invoked to defend alabaster monuments to slaveholders.The death this week of another Puget Sound killer whale makes 2016 one of the worst in recent history for the endangered marine mammals. At least five orcas in the family group J-pod have died in the past year.
The death this week of another Puget Sound killer whale makes 2016 one of the worst in recent history for the endangered marine mammals.
The carcass of an 18-year-old male, designated J34, was seen floating Dec. 20, near the town of Sechelt north of Vancouver, B.C., according to the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor. The carcass was towed to land and necropsied on Dec. 21. Canadian officials said the whale suffered blunt-force trauma to the head and may have been struck by a boat while still alive.
Observers this summer noted that the animal was looking thin, said center Director Ken Balcomb.
Including the latest loss, at least five members of the famous family group called J-pod died this year, Balcomb said. The pod is part of what’s called the southern-resident killer-whale population, which was listed as endangered in 2005.
The southern residents range throughout the inland marine waters of Washington and southern British Columbia. The latest death means the total population has dropped to 79 animals.
The other deaths this year include a mother and calf that disappeared in October, and are suspected of having been malnourished. Another adult whale perished from an infection likely caused by an unsterilized research tag.
Balcomb and his colleagues suspect the decline of chinook salmon, the animals’ main prey, is largely to blame for the deaths. But other researchers say many factors could be responsible, including vessel noise and traffic, and chemical pollution.Neuron is a super small IMU and Hub is a data logger with WIFI connection (hopefully with local storage function too). Neurons and Hub do not make a complete mocap / VR system without accessories like straps and gloves and all the connector and cables. The hardware and software give us functionality but the accessories give us experience.
Brian Wang, Sr. Software Engineer, Perception Axis Team Leader
Our designers and and engineers are working very hard on the strap and glove design. They just finished one more iteration and made some prototypes here. They were using soft fabrics for strap prototyping and probably will switch to silicon rubber for the final product. I tried it on and it feels really good.
The 'Mid-Autumn Festival' is coming, and your support on this project is our best gift.
Thank you, backers. We wish you all the best.
Team Perception NeuronForensic science and data-collection began in response to reforms in French law in 1832, which prevented the branding of criminals (like cattle). First-time offenders were given an indelible mark heretofore and the practise was followed in much of the world (a scarlet letter or compare the punishment of dismembering of some parts of the world).
Absent these visible signs, there was no way to identify a criminal—and likely recidivist, so copyist for the Paris police Alphonse Bertillon, out of frustration and a calling to contain especially anarchists, political hot-heads, conceived of the idea of profiling and a registry (French,) of transgressors and invented the field of biometrics. Adopted world-wide, Bertillon's methods involved the newly invented photographic-documentation with a rigourous regime of weights and measures of different body parts, like the elaboration of the ears and length of the forearm, which projected points of(useful for the police) to remember. Although contributing significantly to the burgeoning industry of photography with the establishment of mug-shots and unending galleries of those to look out for, the method for identity verification was overtaken by the technique of, finger-printing, for practical reasons as the demands of Bertillon's way were too high, and it was not until the advent of closed-circuit television and facial-recognition software that could automate the cataloging of distinguishing markers that this kind of attention to detail is becoming en vogue again.Got a few bucks to spare? It’s never been easier to buy a booster shot of social influence on Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms.
“It’s somewhat of a taboo topic, yet everyone does it,” Gilad Lotan, chief data scientist at Betaworks, told Co.Design over email, reflecting on the gray area between “enhanced” credibility and digital deception.
Curious to better understand who shells out for social clout, and whether the resulting halo of popularity has staying power, Lotan decided to buy 4,000 Twitter followers on Fiverr and analyze the friendly bots who appeared in the no-frills visualization you see here.
“I remember feeling a rush of excitement as I saw notifications fly by showing more and more users following me,” he writes in a Medium post explaining his experiment, “even though I knew this was 100% fake.”
Acquiring just the right amount of Twitter followers may have a positive long-term effect on acceleration of growth and visibility.
Lotan’s visualization is a data snapshot from the end of the experiment showing his organic network of followers alongside the mercenaries. The two groups are easy to spot. His initial 2,600 followers, represented by the blues and greens in the top cluster, are part of close-knit communities of interest that mirror Lotan’s professional and personal life. Circle size represents “in-degree within my network of followers”–in other words, overlap between the user’s followers and Lotan’s followers. The Fiverr newbies, shown in purple, are set apart from those original communities, and from one another. Their machine-generated likes and dislikes are nearly random.
With the data mapping complete, Lotan created an aggregate list of the Twitter users his bots followed–in other words, buyers like him. “I found DJs, musicians, fashion designers, comedians, politicians, real estate services, banks, marketers, and brands,” he writes on Medium. If Google trend data is any indication (see script below), buying followers is increasingly standard practice for entrepreneurs and freelancers looking to appear “above the fold” in search results and build a business.John Kerry meets counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva despite lack of prior progress as US officials say ‘we’re not going to go on forever’ seeking a deal
Syrian ceasefire deal between US and Russia could come'very soon'
US-Russian negotiations on a Syrian peace plan reached a critical moment in Geneva on Friday night as diplomats wrestled with details of a proposed ceasefire.
The Russian foreign minister told journalists that the talks had been paused for several hours while his US counterpart, John Kerry, consulted with Washington.
“It’s going to be announced very soon, I think. I hope before Washington goes to sleep. My appeal to you is to be patient. Same as me,” Sergei Lavrov said.
The negotiating session in a Geneva lakeside hotel was the fourth meeting between the two men in two weeks, in an atmosphere US officials described as “businesslike”.
But it was clear that the sort of progress state department officials had previously insisted was essential for Kerry to make the trip from Washington had failed to materialise, while the Syrian regime made military gains at high civilian cost around the besieged city of Aleppo.
“All I can say is we can’t guarantee in any way at this point that we are on the cusp of finishing. This is an iterative process. It is highly technical,” a senior administration official told reporters on the plane to Switzerland. “And there are a number of areas that we’re going to continue to have to discuss with the Russians tomorrow and potentially beyond tomorrow.”
Could the US and Russia be about to strike a deal on Syria? Read more
The peace plan on the table focuses first on achieving a ceasefire in Aleppo and opening up routes for humanitarian relief to reach the city, and then a widening of the truce with an end to regime airstrikes, and a joint US-Russian air campaign against al-Qaida-linked extremists.
Since the current series of ceasefire talks with Lavrov began, a US official said that Kerry had made clear “Aleppo would have to be resolved before we move forward” with the wider ceasefire.
Even as Kerry and Lavrov met in Geneva, however, reports came in of a regime offensive in Aleppo, recapturing a strategically important district in the southern suburbs and bombing encircled eastern neighbourhoods, where 250,000 people are cut off. Civil society groups in the city said that barrel bombs dropped by helicopter on Friday had killed at least nine people, including four children.
Meanwhile, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebel shelling of a government-held district in the frontline Salah al-Din district had killed at least eight people, four of whom were children.
It won’t be easy, but there may still be a way to end Syria’s agony | Jonathan Freedland Read more
On the night flight from Washington to Geneva, Kerry’s aides were asked repeatedly by reporters whether he was allowing the Russians to play for time while Moscow’s ally in Damascus made military gains.
“We need to get moving close, very close to a deal, and then at some point we need to reach that deal,” one senior official said. “We need to see a situation where it’s clear from whatever is being agreed with the Russians that there will not be a siege of Aleppo. And if we conclude that we can get there, we’ll keep going. If we conclude that it’s just a waste of time and that … it’s being dragged on for no other purpose than to gain time, then there’ll be no purpose for us to [continue].”
The state department had previously insisted Kerry would not return to Geneva until there was a breakthrough on the last points. By Thursday afternoon, that had still not materialised but the secretary of state decided there was a better chance of progress face-to-face with Lavrov in Switzerland than staying in Washington.
A senior official said: “We got to the point where we thought it would be useful for them to sit down again, so we decided to get on a plane and go to Geneva.”
Another official suggested that one of the reasons that Kerry had returned to Geneva despite misgivings was that Syrian opposition groups had urged him to make the last-ditch effort.
“They want us to try,” the official said. “So that’s why we’re trying. And if we reach a deal, then that’s great; and if we don’t, we’re not going to go on forever for the sake of pursuing a deal.”
Moscow and Washington agree that progress has been made over the past fortnight, with several elements of the plan settled and taken off the table, but the state department has repeatedly said this week that there are a few “technical issues” that remained unresolved before Kerry’s return to Geneva.
One of those involved the delineation of territory held by the Front for the Conquest of Syria (Jabhat Fateh al-Sham), formerly the al-Qaida affiliate known as the Nusra Front. Both Washington and Moscow see the group as irreconcilable terrorists and have agreed to coordinate airstrikes against it, but the US is anxious to prevent the Russians from using the joint campaign as a pretext to bomb other anti-regime groups.Scientists have known for a while that stereotypes warp our perceptions of things. Implicit biases — those unconscious assumptions that worm their way into our brains, without our full awareness and sometimes against our better judgment — can influence grading choices from teachers, split-second decisions by police officers and outcomes in online dating.
We can't even see the world without filtering it through the lens of our assumptions, scientists say. In a study published Monday in |
have increased. Crime in India’s 53 cities with a population of more than a million saw an almost 10% jump to 676,086 in 2015. Kollam saw the highest rate of crime, surging past New Delhi, which was highest in 2014. New Delhi also constituted the highest share of crime in India at 25.7% up from 22.7% in 2014, among the mega cities.
3. CCI imposes Rs6,715 crore fine on 11 cement firms
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Wednesday confirmed penalties of Rs6,715 crore on 11 cement firms and the Cement Manufacturers Association (CMA) for cartelization. CCI asked cement companies to “cease and desist" from activities related to “agreement, understanding or arrangement on prices, production and supply of cement in the market". It also restrained CMA from collecting wholesale and retail prices, details of production and dispatch from its member firms. CCI said that this was a fit case for imposing penalties under the law because the activities of the cement firms caused huge losses to consumers, even as the firms profited by acting in concert.
4. Zee sells TEN Sports to Sony for $385 million
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) announced the sale of its sports network TEN Sports to Sony Pictures Network (SPN) on Wednesday in an all-cash deal worth $385 million. TEN Sports’ portfolio includes TEN 1, TEN 1 HD, TEN 2, TEN 3, TEN Golf HD, TEN Cricket and TEN Sports. These channels are operated across India, the Maldives, Singapore, Hong Kong, West Asia and the Caribbean. In a filing to the BSE on Wednesday, ZEEL said the board of directors of the company had approved the sale and transfer of Zee’s sports broadcasting business to SPN. The TEN Sports network is currently held by two ZEEL subsidiaries—Taj Television Ltd, Mauritius; and Taj Television (India) Pvt. Ltd.
5. India household financial savings rise
Indian households are putting a larger part of their financial savings into shares and bonds, shows data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Gross financial savings of households in fiscal year 2016 increased to 10.8% of gross national disposable income (GNDI) from 10% in the previous year. Within financial products, households are picking up more shares and bonds than before as savings rose to 0.7% of GNDI in FY16 from 0.4% in the previous year. Savings into bank deposits fell to 4.7% of GNDI in FY16 from 4.9% in the previous year and 6% in FY13. Part of this could be due to banks paring deposit rates at a faster pace than lending rates.
6. SC declares Singur land acquisition illegal
The Supreme Court on Wednesday termed the 2006 acquisition of nearly 1,000 acres of land in West Bengal’s Singur illegal and void. The land, acquired by the state government, was meant for Tata Motors Ltd’s plant to build the world’s cheapest car, the Nano. The acquisition triggered violence, leading to relocation of the factory to Gujarat. The agitation also led to the downfall of the 37-year-old Left Front government. A bench of justices V. Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra said the acquisition of 997 acres failed to meet the requirements of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and directed the state government to return the land to its owners in 12 weeks.
7. Brazil’s senate removes President Rouseff
Brazil’s senate on Wednesday voted to remove President Dilma Rouseff from office, the culmination of a year-long fight that paralysed Latin America’s most powerful economy and exposed deep rifts among its people on everything from race relations to social spending. Rouseff was Brazil’s first female president, with a storied career that includes a stint as a Marxist guerrilla jailed and tortured in the 1970s. She was accused of breaking fiscal laws in her management of the federal budget. Opposition lawmakers argued that this exacerbated the recession in a nation that has long enjoyed a high status among emerging economies.
8. Mukesh Ambani unveils Jio services
Reliances Industries Ltd’s Jio phone service will offer the cheapest data rates and free calls to lure users from rivals Bharti Airtel Ltd and Vodafone India Ltd—a move that is likely to kick off another long and bruising tariff war. Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd will allow users to try its 4G service for free till December and offer mobile phone data rates of as low as Rs50 per GB, chairman Mukesh Ambani said at the company’s 42nd annual general meeting in Mumbai on Thursday. Investors dumped shares of Bharti Airtel, the country’s biggest mobile phone service provider, Idea Cellular Ltd, and Reliance Communication Ltd on fears of a prolonged price war following the aggressive tariff rates announced by Ambani.
9. RBL Bank makes a stellar debut
Shares of RBL Bank Ltd debuted at a premium of 33.02% on Wednesday, after the private sector lender received a strong response to its Rs1,211 crore initial public offering (IPO) last week. The listing pegged the bank’s market capitalization at Rs11,068.38 crore, which is higher than that of 16 state-owned lenders and 10 private sector banks, including Bank of India, Indian Bank, Union Bank of India and DCB Bank Ltd. RBL Bank shares closed 33.02% higher on BSE at Rs299.30 apiece compared with its issue price of Rs225. The stock opened at Rs273.70 and touched a high and a low of Rs305 and Rs273.70, respectively.
10. Trade unions rally in nationwide strike
At least 10 of the 12 national trade unions and hundreds of their affiliates began a day-long strike across India on Friday, with union chiefs claiming that up to 180 million workers have deserted factories and offices to join the protest, seeking better wage and job and social security, among other issues. Though metros like New Delhi and Mumbai did not see many disruptions except those in their industrial belts, the impact was severe in states like Kerala, Tripura, parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Bihar.
Graphics by Prajakta Patil/Mint
Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.comLords of Thunder is supposedly the follow-up to the TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM/TurboDuo world famous, critically acclaimed, super mega hit, fan-favorite, and ultra intense shooter Gate of Thunder. Of course, the only real thing they seem to have in common is that they are both horizontal shooters that have the word “Thunder” in the title. By this logic Gate of Thunder could be a follow-up to Thunder Force III. Anyway, the games are not directly related to each other and if you want to insist that they are, well more power to you I guess. Lords was released first for the Turbo (the term this article will use to refer to both the TurboDuo and the TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM with the upgrade card, which I personally prefer over the Duo), and after awhile Hudson released a version for the world-renowned and much loved Sega CD. How do they compare? Which version should you buy? Let’s find out!
The Differences
Presentation: They both have approximately the same presentation. The stages are presented the same way and the levels and whatnot all have the same design. You can choose which level and which armor you want and other such nonsense. Each has an opening cinematic cut scene, although on the Sega CD it is presented after the title screen instead of before like on the Turbo. After you beat the first six stages, you’re presented with another cut scene on both systems. The loading time is approximately the same on both systems as well. In the Sega CD version, the mid-bosses do not flash when you hit them in their weak point, not like it matters much in the long run. I am under the impression the Sega CD version was a quick and sloppy port and had very little new 68000 code programmed for it. Want me to go into more detail? Fine, read the stuff about graphics, sound, and gameplay below!
Edge: Draw
Graphics: To the untrained eye, both the Sega CD and Turbo versions will look extremely similar. They both run in low resolution (256×224) and each system is capable of better resolution than that. However the Turbo version generally has almost twice as many colors onscreen at any given time during the game, but not necessarily always. In the animation-style cut scenes, both systems display the exact same amount of colors and they both look 100% identical. Both versions have multiple overlapping layers of scrolling, which is always amazing to see on the Turbo. Since the Turbo is only capable of displaying a single background layer onscreen, sprites must be used for any of the overlapping parts. That’s a lot of sprites, and sometimes the scrolling layers will flicker in the Turbo version as a result of this. It seems some of the backgrounds in the Sega CD version are also made up of sprites (you’ll see the occasional flicker), which reinforces my opinion that this was a quick and sloppy port based on the Turbo code. But there are a couple of spots where the Sega CD has an extra layer or two of scrolling, so I guess they spent ten minutes doing this port instead of five. All in all, the Turbo version has better graphics due to more color, even though it is limited to wimpy composite video which results in the hated rainbow effect in certain parts of the scrolling. I have my Sega CD hooked up with component video and that made the comparison a bit unfair. But soon my Turbo will join my Genesis in the component world and I can’t wait to see this game then, and it’ll clearly stand above the Sega CD version.
Edge: Super CD-ROM2
Sound and Music: Oh man, where do I start? First of all it is widely known that Lords of Thunder has some of the most kick-ass guitar-thrashing music around, period. Both versions feature the same musical soundtrack… kind of. For some reason beyond my comprehension, they rearranged the music for the Sega CD version. It received new, louder drums and more reverb, as well as a few other touches here and there. The guitar is also re-performed, mostly in the same manner as the Turbo version. First of all, the drums on the Sega CD are a bit too loud and they kind of sound annoying after awhile. And even though the original Turbo music already had some synth here and there, they added a bit more for the Sega CD version. It doesn’t ruin anything, but it can sound a bit weird if you’re used to listening to the Turbo version all of the time. The music in the Sega CD version is in no way bad by any means, it just sounds different. I have heard some people praise how great the music is in on the Turbo Grafx and then turn around and say how much the music sucks in the Sega CD version. This makes little sense, as the Sega CD soundtrack is almost like a “live” version of the Turbo music… not a ton of difference. There was also some cool-sounding narration added to the opening sequence and the cut scene before the final stage on the Sega CD. It sounds cool and I kind of like it, but it in no way make the Turbo game less cool without it. The shop keeper on the Sega CD also talks and she sounds like she wants you.
As for the sound effects, the Turbo original has loud, cool screams and yells whenever a large enemy is defeated along with lots of other cool sounds. The Sega CD has a quiet yell when a boss or large enemy is defeated but not a lot of sound during the stages, despite the Genesis/Sega CD combination having about three times as many sound channels as the Turbo and also three times the RAM. Quick and sloppy. Speaking of sloppy, I must mention the shooting sound effects which are made whenever you fire most weapons. They sound bad. And I mean BAD! Most are super loud… enough to overpower the music completely, like the level two fire armor. The Turbo does not suffer from any problems like this. Instead, the weapons sound like quiet buzzes and hums.
Check out these short samples of the music and sound I have provided specifically for you and nobody else below! First is an example of the gameplay sounds in stage one from each version. Both are at the same exact point in the game with the same weapon (fire armor powered up to the second level) and doing the same thing. No, that’s not distorted music in the Sega CD file, that’s the fire weapon firing! On the model one Genesis, you can turn this sound down without affecting the music or voices, thankfully. If you have a a model two Genesis, you’re screwed.
Sega CD Gameplay Sounds (MP3 318kb) Super CD-ROM2 Gameplay Sounds (MP3 281kb)
Sega CD Stage 1 Theme (MP3 978kb) Super CD-ROM2 Stage 1 Theme (MP3 975kb)
Edge: Super CD-ROM2
Gameplay: Both games play almost exactly the same. The Sega CD port has some slowdown for some odd reason (quick and sloppy, remember), and it can be very annoying. Also when you get hit in the Sega CD game, you cannot control your character for nearly a second as he hovers there, paralyzed. You retain full control at all times on the Turbo. And although both versions are super easy to complete, I’d have to say that the Sega CD one is much easier. The game is super-baby-easy on the Sega CD, whereas it might take a toddler to beat the Turbo version. The Sega CD rendition provides you with many more crystals (re: money) and offers much larger bonuses at the end of the stage for some reason. Did they feel that the Turbo game was too hard? What gives? Be sure to go into the options and increase the difficulty if you plan on playing this on the Sega CD. The final stage seems to run at a quicker pace on the Sega CD, but maybe that’s just me.
Edge: Super CD-ROM2
Other: There’s not much to write about in this category, except that I think Hudson handed the Sega CD version off to a company called Eleven to do the quick and sloppy port, whereas Hudson had Red (of Tempo 32X fame) do the Turbo original. You always get a crappier version when someone else does the work. Lesson learned: Don’t trust other people! I guess the packaging would fit into this category as well. I certainly like the Turbo game much better here as it comes in a CD jewel case with some nice artwork, whereas the Sega CD version comes in a retardo-sized giant case with worse artwork, by far.
Edge: Super CD-ROM2
Final Assessment
Don’t listen to the goofballs out there who say that the Turbo version is miles above the Sega CD in graphics and especially music. It isn’t. But it is better in just about every area, that’s for sure. The differences just aren’t as super-extreme as some people would have you believe. The music is still completely awesome in the Sega CD version. And if you don’t have a Turbo (why not?) I suggest you pick that one up. But if you have both, go for the Turbo version.
Discuss this article in our forum.The United States Military Commissions Act of 2006,[1] also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress[2] signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. The Act's stated purpose was "to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes".[3]
It was drafted following the Supreme Court's decision on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006),[4] which ruled that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT), as established by the United States Department of Defense, were procedurally flawed and unconstitutional, and did not provide protections under the Geneva Conventions. It prohibited detainees who had been classified as enemy combatants or were awaiting hearings on their status from using habeas corpus to petition federal courts in challenges to their detention. All pending habeas corpus cases at the federal district court were stayed.
In Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the US Supreme Court held that section 7 of the MCA was unconstitutional because of its restrictions of detainee rights. It determined that detainees had the right to petition federal courts for habeas corpus challenges.
Scope of the Act [ edit ]
Sec. 948b. Military commissions generally (a) Purpose— This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission.
(b) Authority for Military Commissions Under This Chapter— The President is authorized to establish military commissions under this chapter for offenses triable by military commission as provided in this chapter.
(c) Construction of Provisions— The procedures for military commissions set forth in this chapter are based upon the procedures for trial by general court-martial under chapter 47 of this title (the Uniform Code of Military Justice). Chapter 47 of this title does not, by its terms, apply to trial by military commission except as specifically provided in this chapter. The judicial construction and application of that chapter are not binding on military commissions established under this chapter.
(d) Inapplicability of Certain Provisions—
(1) The following provisions of this title shall not apply to trial by military commission under this chapter:
(A) Section 810 (article 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to speedy trial, including any rule of courts-martial relating to speedy trial.
(B) Sections 831(a), (b), and (d) (articles 31(a), (b), and (d) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to compulsory self-incrimination.
(C) Section 832 (article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to pretrial investigation.
(2) Other provisions of chapter 47 of this title shall apply to trial by military commission under this chapter only to the extent provided by this chapter.
(e) Treatment of Rulings and Precedents— The findings, holdings, interpretations, and other precedents of military commissions under this chapter may not be introduced or considered in any hearing, trial, or other proceeding of a court-martial convened under chapter 47 of this title. The findings, holdings, interpretations, and other precedents of military commissions under this chapter may not form the basis of any holding, decision, or other determination of a court-martial convened under that chapter.
(f) Status of Commissions Under Common Article 3— A military commission established under this chapter is a regularly constituted court, affording all the necessary `judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples' for purposes of common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
(g) Geneva Conventions Not Establishing Source of Rights— No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.
Sec. 948c. Persons subject to military commissions Any alien unlawful enemy combatant is subject to trial by military commission under this chapter.
Sec. 948d. Jurisdiction of military commissions (a) Jurisdiction— A military commission under this chapter shall have jurisdiction to try any offense made punishable by this chapter or the law of war when committed by an alien unlawful enemy combatant before, on, or after September 11, 2001.
(b) Lawful Enemy Combatants— Military commissions under this chapter shall not have jurisdiction over lawful enemy combatants. Lawful enemy combatants who violate the law of war are subject to chapter 47 of this title. Courts-martial established under that chapter shall have jurisdiction to try a lawful enemy combatant for any offense made punishable under this chapter.
(c) Determination of Unlawful Enemy Combatant Status Dispositive— A finding, whether before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense that a person is an unlawful enemy combatant is dispositive for purposes of jurisdiction for trial by military commission under this chapter.
(d) Punishments— A military commission under this chapter may, under such limitations as the Secretary of Defense may prescribe, adjudge any punishment not forbidden by this chapter, including the penalty of death when authorized under this chapter or the law of war.
The term "competent tribunal" is not defined in the Act itself. It is defined in the US Army Field Manual, section 27–10, for the purpose of determining whether a person is or is not entitled to prisoner of war status, and consists of a board of not less than three officers. It is also a term used in Article five of the third Geneva Convention.[5] However, the rights guaranteed by the third Geneva Convention to lawful combatants are expressly denied to unlawful military combatants for the purposes of this Act by Section 948b (see above).
Unlawful and lawful enemy combatant [ edit ]
"Any alien unlawful enemy combatant is subject to trial by military commission under chapter 47A — Military Commissions (of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (10 U.S.C. 948a (Section 1, Subchapter I))). The definition of unlawful and lawful enemy combatant is given in Chapter 47A—Military commission: Subchapter I--General provisions: Sec. 948a. Definitions
The term 'unlawful enemy combatant' means — (i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces); or (ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.... The term 'lawful enemy combatant' means a person who is — (A) a member of the regular forces of a State party engaged in hostilities against the United States; (B) a member of a militia, volunteer corps, or organized resistance movement belonging to a State party engaged in such hostilities, which are under responsible command, wear a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, carry their arms openly, and abide by the law of war; or (C) a member of a regular armed force who professes allegiance to a government engaged in such hostilities, but not recognized by the United States." Law No: 109-366 (summary)
The Act also defines an alien as "a person who is not a citizen of the United States", and a co-belligerent to mean "any State or armed force joining and directly engaged with the United States in hostilities or directly supporting hostilities against a common enemy."
Provisions [ edit ]
The Act changes pre-existing law to forbid explicitly the invocation of the Geneva Conventions when executing the writ of habeas corpus or in other civil actions [Act sec. 5(a)]. This provision applies to all cases pending at the time the Act is enacted, as well as to all such future cases.
If the government chooses to bring a prosecution against the detainee, a military commission is convened for this purpose. The following rules are some of those established for trying alien unlawful enemy combatants.
(b) NOTICE TO ACCUSED—Upon the swearing of the charges and specifications in accordance with subsection (a), the accused shall be informed of the charges against him as soon as practicable. A civilian defense attorney may not be used unless the attorney has been determined to be eligible for access to classified information that is classified at the level Secret or higher. [ 10 U.S.C. sec. 949c(b)(3)(D) ]
] A finding of Guilty by a particular commission requires only a two-thirds majority of the members of the commission present at the time the vote is taken [ 10 U.S.C. sec. 949m(a) ]
] In General— No person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any protocols thereto in any habeas corpus or other civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States is a party as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its States or territories. [ Act sec. 5(a) ]
or other civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States is a party as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its States or territories. [ ] As provided by the Constitution and by this section, the President has the authority for the United States to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and to promulgate higher standards and administrative regulations for violations of treaty obligations which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. [ Act sec. 6(a)(3)(A) ]
] No person may, without his consent, be tried by a military commission under this chapter a second time for the same offense. [ 10 U.S.C. sec. 949h(a) ].
The Act also contains provisions (often referred to as the "habeas provisions") removing access to the courts for any alien detained by the United States government who is determined to be an enemy combatant, or who is 'awaiting determination' regarding enemy combatant status. This allows the United States government to detain such aliens indefinitely without prosecuting them in any manner.
These provisions are as follows:[6]
(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination. (2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
Among other things, the MCA created the position of Chief Defense Counsel (United States).
Boumediene v. Bush (2008) [ edit ]
In Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the US Supreme Court held that the MCA was unconstitutional as it restricted detainees' use of habeas corpus and access to the federal courts. It determined that detainees could have access to federal courts to hear habeas corpus petitions, to restore the protection of the Constitution.
Amendment in 2009 [ edit ]
The Military Commissions Act of 2009 amended some of the provisions of the 2006 Act to improve protections for defendants. The American Civil Liberties Union summarized the positive aspects as "restricting coerced and hearsay evidence and providing greater defense counsel resources." Overall, it argued that the law as amended still fell "short of providing the due process required by the Constitution."[7]
Applicability [ edit ]
There is a controversy over whether this law affects the rights of habeas corpus for United States citizens.
The text of the law states that its "purpose" is to "establish procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission." While the most controversial provisions in the law refer to "alien unlawful enemy combatants", section 948a refers to "unlawful enemy combatants" (not explicitly excluding US citizens).
Cato Institute legal scholar Robert A. Levy writes that the Act denies habeas rights only to aliens, and that US citizens detained as "unlawful combatants" would still have habeas rights with which to challenge their indefinite detention.[8] While formally opposed to the Act, Human Rights Watch has also concluded that the new law limits the scope of trials by military commissions to non-US citizens including all legal aliens.[9] CBS legal commentator Andrew Cohen, commenting on this question, writes that the "suspension of the writ of habeas corpus—the ability of an imprisoned person to challenge their confinement in court—applies only to resident aliens within the United States as well as other foreign nationals captured here and abroad" and that "it does not restrict the rights and freedoms and liberties of U.S. citizens anymore than they already have been restricted."[10]
On the other hand, congressman David Wu (D–OR) stated in the debate over the bill on the floor of the House of Representatives that "by so restricting habeas corpus, this bill does not just apply to enemy aliens. It applies to all Americans because, while the provision on page 93 has the word "alien in it, the provision on page 61 does not have the word alien in it." For more on this interpretation, see criticism.
Legislative history [ edit ]
The bill, S. 3930, passed the Senate, 65–34, on September 28, 2006.[11]
The bill passed in the House, 250–170–12, on September 29, 2006.[12]
Bush signed the bill into law on October 17, 2006.
Legislative actions in the Senate [ edit ]
Several amendments were proposed before final passage of the bill by the Senate; all were defeated. Among them were an amendment by Robert Byrd which would have added a sunset provision after five years, an amendment by Ted Kennedy directing the Secretary of State to notify other countries that the U.S. considered waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques to be grave breaches of the Geneva Convention (SA.5088[13]), and an amendment by Arlen Specter (R–PA) and Patrick Leahy (D–VT) preserving habeas corpus. The Kennedy amendment was defeated on separation of powers grounds although the Republican manager of the bill and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner (R-VA), noted that he agreed with Sen. Kennedy that the techniques were grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and "clearly prohibited by the bill." Specter's amendment was rejected by a vote of 51–48. Specter voted for the bill despite the defeat of his amendment. The bill was finally passed by the House on September 29, 2006 and presented to the President for signing on October 10, 2006.[14]
Final passage in the Senate [ edit ]
Party AYE NAY ABS Republicans 53 1 1 Democrats 12 32 0 Independent 0 1 0 Total 65 34 1
Final passage in the House [ edit ]
Party AYE NAY ABS Republicans 218 7 5 Democrats 32 162 7 Independent 0 1 0 Total 250 170 12
AYE = Votes for the act
= Votes for the act NAY = Votes against the act
= Votes against the act ABS = Abstentions
Support [ edit ]
Supporters of the act say that the Constitutional provision guaranteeing habeas corpus does not apply to alien enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States, and that the provisions of the Act removing habeas corpus do not apply to United States citizens; they conclude that therefore the law does not conflict with the Constitution.
National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy argued that since the law applies to "aliens with no immigration status who are captured and held outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and whose only connection to our country is to wage a barbaric war against it" they do not have a constitutional right to habeas corpus. McCarthy also wrote that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, while not allowing a standard habeas corpus review, provides that each detainee "has a right to appeal to our civilian-justice system. — specifically, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. And if that appeal is unsuccessful, the terrorist may also seek certiorari review by the Supreme Court."[15]
John Yoo, a former Bush Administration Justice Department official and current professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, called the Act a "stinging rebuke" of the Supreme Court's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling, calling that ruling "an unprecedented attempt by the court to rewrite the law of war and intrude into war policy." Yoo cited Johnson v. Eisentrager, in which the court decided that it would not hear habeas claims brought by alien enemy prisoners held outside the US and refused to interpret the Geneva Conventions to give rights in civilian court against the government.[16]
Formerly Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Judge Advocate General's Corps and current professor at St. Mary's University School of Law, Jeffrey Addicott wrote "the new Military Commissions Act reflects a clear and much-needed Congressional commitment to the war on terror, which to this point has been largely conducted in legal terms by the executive branch with occasional interjections from the judiciary".[17]
George W. Bush, President of the United States:
Today, the Senate sent a strong signal to the terrorists that we will continue using every element of national power to pursue our enemies and to prevent attacks on America. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 will allow the continuation of a CIA program that has been one of America's most potent tools in fighting the War on Terror. Under this program, suspected terrorists have been detained and questioned about threats against our country. Information we have learned from the program has helped save lives at home and abroad. By authorizing the creation of military commissions, the Act will also allow us to prosecute suspected terrorists for war crimes.[18]
John McCain, United States Senator:
Simply put, this legislation ensures that we respect our obligations under Geneva, recognizes the President's constitutional authority to interpret treaties, and brings accountability and transparency to the process of interpretation by ensuring that the executive's interpretation is made public. I would note that there has been opposition to this legislation from some quarters, including the New York Times editorial page. Without getting into a point-by-point rebuttal here on the floor, I would simply say that I have been reading the Congressional Record trying to find the bill that page so vociferously denounced. The hyperbolic attack is aimed not at any bill this body is today debating, nor even at the Administration's original position. I can only presume that some would prefer that Congress simply ignore the Hamdan decision, and pass no legislation at all. That, I suggest to my colleagues, would be a travesty.[19]
Criticism [ edit ]
MCA ruled unconstitutional re: suspension of habeas corpus [ edit ]
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Boumediene v. Bush (2008) that the MCA constituted an unconstitutional encroachment of habeas corpus rights, and established jurisdiction for federal courts to hear petitions for habeas corpus from Guantanamo detainees tried under the Act.[20] As such, the provisions of MCA suspending Habeas Corpus are no longer in effect.
A number of legal scholars and Congressional members—including Senator Arlen Specter, who was a Republican and the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee—previously criticized the habeas provision of the Act as violating a clause of the Constitution that says the right to challenge detention "shall not be suspended" except in cases of "rebellion or invasion".[21]
In the House debate, Representative David Wu of Oregon offered this scenario:
Let us say that my wife, who is here in the gallery with us tonight, a sixth generation Oregonian, is walking by the friendly, local military base and is picked up as an unlawful enemy combatant. What is her recourse? She says, “I am a U.S. citizen”. That is a jurisdictional fact under this statute, and she will not have recourse to the courts? She can take it to Donald Rumsfeld, but she cannot take it across the street to an article 3 court.[22]
Following debate in the House and Senate, the final law revoked Habeas Corpus protections only for non-citizens:
(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
Hence in the preceding example, if Wu's wife, a citizen, were picked up outside a military base, Wu could walk across the street and file a habeas corpus petition with the courts. Since the Supreme Court in 2008 ruled the restrictions on habeas corpus provisions invalid, in Boumediene v. Bush, non-citizens can also request the courts review the legality of their arrest and imprisonment.
Broad definition of enemy combatant [ edit ]
According to Bill Goodman, past Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Joanne Mariner, from FindLaw, this bill redefines unlawful enemy combatant in such a broad way[23] that it refers to any person who is
engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.
From Section 950q. Principals:
Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission.
This makes it possible for US citizens to be designated unlawful enemy combatant[24] because
it could be read to include anyone who has donated money to a charity for orphans in Afghanistan that turns out to have some connection to the Taliban or a person organizing an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C.[23]
Jennifer Van Bergen, a journalist with a law degree, responds to the comment that habeas corpus has never been afforded to foreign combatants with the suggestion that, using the current sweeping definition of war on terror and unlawful combatant, it is impossible to know where the battlefield is and who combatants are. Also, she notes that most of the detentions are already unlawful.[25]
The Act also suggests that unlawful enemy combatant refers to any person
who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.
Some commentators have interpreted this to mean that if the President says you are an enemy combatant, then you effectively are.[26]
Passing laws that remove the few checks against mistreatment of prisoners will not help us win the battle |
company Friday under Janeen Painter in 1:40 flat, with fractions of 26, 38.60, 51 and 1:28.40. Stablemate Atypique went seven furlongs in 1:29.40.
“I was happy. She looked good. It went a little slow the first part but that was because of a traffic jam,” said Hughes, on hand from his Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky. “The second half was perfect.”
Added Mandella: “It was a nice, steady mile. She went very good and everything’s in good shape.”
Hughes plans to head back to Kentucky Sunday and attend the Kentucky Derby a week from tomorrow. “Then we’ll fly home (in a private jet) the next day and bring Gary Stevens with us, so that he has to show up (laughing aloud). We’ll have him locked in the plane.”
Stevens, the regular rider of Beholder, seeks his fourth triumph in the Run for the Roses when he rides Mor Spirit in the mile and a quarter classic.
Source: Santa Anita ParkChris Pietsch for The New York Times
Score one for humans and their subtle, quirky, pattern-matching brains.
Over the weekend, an impressive crossword-solving computer program, called Dr. Fill, which I wrote about earlier, matched its digital wits against the wetware of 600 of the nation’s best human solvers at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn.
Before the tournament, Matthew Ginsberg, the creator of Dr. Fill and an expert in artificial intelligence, predicted a range of likely outcomes for his clever code. In simulations of 15 past tournaments, Dr. Fill finished on top three times. But at other times it stumbled.
Dr. Ginsberg said the program would probably finish in the top 50, among the 600 contestants. With only seven puzzles, the range of possible outcomes was wide. “If I’m lucky, I’ll win,” he said, “If I’m unlucky, I’ll end up 150th,” but still in the top fourth.
In the weekend tournament, Dr. Fill finished 141st, or would have (only human solvers got official rankings). “It was within the range, but I wish it had done better,” Dr. Ginsberg said on Sunday. “I’ll be back next year.”
Dr. Fill typically thrives on conventional crosswords, even ones with arcane clues and answers. Indeed, the seventh puzzle, a difficult one, it got perfectly.
But the computer program is literal minded, and tends to struggle on puzzles with humor, and puzzles with unusual themes or letter arrangements.
“Two of the puzzles were bizarre in ways that were bad for it,” Dr. Ginsberg explained.
One included several words that had to be spelled backwards. And another puzzle required correct answers, not just across and down, but some words arrayed diagonally as well. Those were the second and fifth puzzles in the tournament.
“Dr. Fill got killed on puzzles two and five,” said Will Shortz, director of the tournament, who is also the crossword puzzle editor of The New York Times.
Mr. Shortz commissions and edits the puzzles in the contest. Dan Feyer, last year’s winner, said before the tournament began that he figured Mr. Shortz would include a puzzle or two that involved innovative twists or patterns to trip up Dr. Fill.
Did Mr. Shortz choose puzzles with foiling the computer program in mind? Mr. Shortz shook his head no, and smiled, when asked that question after the tournament ended Sunday afternoon.
“I have no reason to believe that’s the case,” Dr. Ginsberg said. “But people did say the puzzles were particularly innovative this year. If so, that’s good for the crossword puzzle community” — though a greater programming challenge for Dr. Fill’s creator.
Dr. Ginsberg himself constructs crossword puzzles as a hobby, with more than two dozen published in The New York Times.
In a further sign of crossword continuity, this year’s winner was Mr. Feyer, once again, for the third straight time.Republicans are accelerating efforts to fill in key details of their plan for massive tax cuts, but as lawmakers work to turn their proposal into legislation, President Trump's numerous tax promises are proving difficult to keep.
On Monday, Trump promised the party would not touch tax benefits for 401(k) retirement plans, protecting a popular benefit for more than 50 million Americans but also further limiting the areas where Republicans could seek to raise new revenue.
His vow to protect 401(k) plans, made in a Twitter post, comes just days before House Republicans are planning to introduce a bill that would dramatically slash corporate tax rates, consolidate tax brackets for families and individuals, and eliminate the alternative minimum tax and estate tax.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee and is leading initial drafting of the tax legislation, is expected to release the bill as soon as next week and told reporters it remains on track. But he declined to make a firm commitment on timing and said Republicans had not yet made key decisions, such as whether to add an additional income tax bracket for high earners and on how to implement a planned estate tax repeal.
"I want to get this to the president's desk by the end of the year, and we're on a schedule to do that," Brady said.
The remaining indecision shows the competing pressures tax writers face as they attempt to deliver the massive tax cuts Trump has promised while also minimizing the effect of the tax cuts on the deficit.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) is leading initial drafting of the tax legislation. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
The challenge has become particularly acute now that the Senate has passed its budget resolution, which the House of Representatives is expected to approve by Thursday. This procedural step allows them to eventually pass a tax bill in the Senate with just 50 votes, instead of the 60 typically required to advance major bills.
They must now write legislation that can pass the House and Senate, something they still haven't done despite dozens of meetings in the White House and on Capitol Hill. They remain unable to reconcile all of Trump's assurances that there will be massive tax cuts benefiting everyone with Senate rules that limit how much they can do.
House Republicans hope to introduce a bill as soon as next week, but they are still working through key details that could derail the bill if mishandled. Still, GOP congressional aides on Monday expressed confidence that their bill was coming together rapidly.
The budget resolutions allow the tax bills to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, a large amount nonetheless far outstripped by the more than $5 trillion in promised tax changes Trump has laid out so far.
Now Republican negotiators are looking at cutting back on many of the deductions families and businesses use to limit their taxes to offset the lower rates, but Republicans and the White House are under pressure to back away from some of the demands.
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One of the changes Republicans had floated was simplifying the tax benefits tied to retirement benefits, fueling concerns that they could make changes to 401(k) plans. Americans are allowed to contribute up to $18,000 pretax into their 401(k) plans each year as a way to incentivize saving for retirement. Lowering that pretax threshold could raise more revenue but face a backlash from many Americans who use the accounts to save for retirement.
After several news reports in recent days saying the changes were possible, Trump weighed in on Monday and said no changes would occur. Now the tax writers must look for other areas where they can raise money, and their options appear to be dwindling.
"You are trying to stuff a $4 trillion or $5 trillion tax cut in a $1.5 trillion box," said Steve Moore, who was one of President Trump's top economic advisers during the 2016 campaign. "That means something has to give here."
Senate rules will prevent Republicans from passing a tax bill with a simple majority if it adds to the deficit after 2027. Republicans have already promised not to jettison Americans' ability to deduct their mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and now income for 401(k) contributions, limiting the number of other changes they could make to raise revenue.
Party leaders now believe they will only be able to make some of the tax cut changes permanent, and others temporary, expiring after 10 or fewer years.
Business groups are lobbying Republicans to ensure that the corporate tax cuts are permanent, but this could put Republicans in an awkward position of promising companies better tax treatment than families, particularly as Trump has said the plan will primarily be a middle-class tax cut.
"They have probably overpromised and are trying to find a way to fit the plan into whatever constraints they have," said Mark Mazur, director of the Tax Policy Center, who was a senior official in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration.
And there are numerous parts of the tax package that will be difficult to enforce, leading to concerns that wealthy individuals could try to game the changes to further lessen their tax bill.
Chief among the problems is finding a way to prevent upper-income households from taking advantage of Trump's vow to slash the rate certain businesses pay.
Lawmakers are concerned the wealthy could take advantage of this change to lower their taxes, even though the rate is supposed to apply to businesses, not individuals. Republicans haven't settled on a way to prevent such abuse even though they've known it was a problem for months, though competing House and Senate proposals could emerge within days.
Negotiators have run into huge problems sorting out several of the White House's promises.
The biggest one is Trump's insistence on lowering the rate for millions of businesses that pay taxes through the individual income side of the code. Many of these companies now face a top rate of 39.6 percent, and Trump has promised to lower it to 25 percent. But negotiators fear that upper-income people could try to reclassify themselves as a certain type of corporation to pay a lower tax rate than typical households pay.
The White House has not provided any estimates for how it would enforce this or prevent people from improperly taking advantage of the changes. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank that advocates for deficit reduction, has estimated lowering the rate for these companies would lead the government to lose approximately $500 billion in revenue over 10 years.
The GOP tax plan calls for collapsing the seven income tax brackets individuals and families now pay down to three brackets of 12 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent. But congressional Republicans and the White House continued debating whether they should add an even higher rate for upper-income Americans as a way to ensure the wealthy don't disproportionately benefit from the plan. They have not decided how to proceed and are waiting for other details of the plan to come together before they decide whether to pursue the higher rate.
Even with a higher rate, there are numerous other provisions of the package that are expected to disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and they would still pay a lower tax rate on all of their income up to whatever new limit is put in place.
The White House and lawmakers are also trying to decide how to treat income U.S. companies earn abroad. Currently, companies must pay taxes on that income, but they can defer paying if they keep the earnings overseas. Trump has said companies keep more than $5 trillion in earnings overseas in order to avoid paying taxes, and he wants that money brought back to the United States.
To remove the incentive from earning profits overseas, the White House and Republicans are considering the imposition of a foreign "minimum tax," which could require companies to pay the U.S. government a portion of their global income, regardless of where it is earned.
Presently, companies can indefinitely defer paying taxes on income earned overseas, so long as they don't try to repatriate those earnings back to the U.S. parent company.
This could have a major impact on multinational firms, particularly technology and pharmaceutical companies, which are organized in such a way that a lot of their income is channeled through overseas subsidiaries in low-tax countries such as Ireland. It is unclear what the rate might be or whether the taxation will be applied differently if income is earned in different countries.
Similarly, the White House and Republicans have not decided whether to impose any restrictions on income that multinational companies bring back to the United States at a lower tax rate.
In 2004, the Bush administration and Congress agreed to a temporary "tax holiday" that allowed companies to bring foreign earnings back to the U.S. at a low rate, but studies have found that this money did not go toward hiring and new investment. Rather, some of the companies that benefited from the repatriated earnings proceeded to cut jobs, raise dividends, and boost executive compensation.
Some Republican negotiators are considering whether to add some kinds of restrictions to this part of the tax package that requires companies to reinvest some of the earnings back in a way that grows U.S. jobs or wages, people familiar with the planning said.
Despite the lingering differences, Trump administration officials and congressional aides said that months of negotiations, particularly in the past few weeks, have allowed them to make progress in a number of areas.
For example, they believe they have largely addressed complaints raised by Republicans in states like New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois. The lawmakers had complained that taxes for people in their states might actually go up if the new plan prohibits people from deducting their state and local taxes from their taxable federal income. After a number of meetings with concerned lawmakers, GOP leaders think they have found a way to minimize the impact of middle-class residents in these states, though precise details of how this would work could not be learned.
There are a number of other decisions that still need to be made. Negotiators have yet to detail what income levels will qualify for each tax bracket and how an expanded child tax credit will work. These are details that will be necessary for them to try to convince voters of the potential benefits for the middle class, as much of the discussion so far has focused on how businesses will be able to pay less in taxes.
After spending months insisting that the tax-cut plan would not benefit the wealthy, the White House is now giving conflicting assessments of whether this would be the case. Trump has said repeatedly that the wealthy have nothing to gain from the tax changes, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said otherwise in a recent interview with Politico.
"When you're cutting taxes across the board, it's very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy with tax cuts to the middle class," Mnuchin told Politico last week. "The math, given how much you are collecting, is just hard to do."
Brady is holding meetings with Republican colleagues this week as they try to narrow differences and create their first version of the tax bill, which they hope will pass the House next month.
If it passes, the Senate would have to deliberate on their own version through a similar process. Lawmakers are hopeful they can complete the votes by the end of December, but they will need to sort through all of these decisions before then.
"There is a lot of desperation on the part of Republicans, and desperation is what will get us over the hump ultimately," Moore said.Thickness aside, the watch looks great on the wrist. It has the cool factor you want, and the brushed steel works well. The watch comes with a few dial options – silver and blue for stainless steel and champagne for the rose gold version – and the second time zone is nicely displayed by a fourth hand anchored in the center of the dial. It is changed by the second crown located at four o’clock There is also a subsidiary dial for the date display, which is a nice touch (read: no date window) and the AM/PM indicator. Now I know that the AM/PM indicator is practical, I do, but I wish this weren’t there. To me, this dial would be so perfect if it was just the subsidiary seconds and the fourth hand, because simple is best. But to circle back, practicality is what we are going for here, so I am going to let it slide.Hi, crawlers! Trunk has changed. It will never be the same, unless we perform a truly remarkable and unprecedented series of reverts. Barring that, here’s what you might want to know:
Sif Muna: Channel Energy is gone. Replacing it at 1* is Divine Energy, a toggleable ability that lets the player cast spells without having enough mp. Using this effect causes a -Cast status for several turns, depending on how many MP the player was short by. New 3* ability: Channel Magic, a Trog’s Hand-like invocation that trades piety for a brief, but significant, MP regeneration boost. Book gifts now appear starting from 5*, not 6*. Sif now gives partial piety for kills, in addition to (slightly reduced) piety from skill training.
Players wielding long blades can now ‘riposte’. After dodging a melee attack, users have a 50% chance to launch a free counterattack. This does not trigger retaliation effects, such as porcupine spines or hydra head growth, but functions as a normal attack otherwise. Long blade base damage has been lowered to compensate.
The Fencer’s Gloves no longer give bonuses to Sbl & Lbl skill; instead, they let the user riposte with any weapon. This stacks with long blades’ innate riposte.
Various unrands have had their stats tweaked; the most notable change is to Eos, which trades its sInv -Tele for Brilliance’s halo. (Wyrmbane also trades +Rage for rC+.)
Removed unrands: Sword of the Doom Knight, Amulet of Cekugob, and Brilliance (except for the bits Eos took).
Ammo acquirement is no more.
The last mountain dwarf has finally been removed; please, pour one out for our dear, departed Wiglaf. Donald got his Haste and Might, and Joseph stole his hat.
Urug and Maud have merged into one very smelly, well-armed unique.
Nergalle can no longer enter Death’s Door.
Various monster spellsets have been reworked; notably, wizards’, ogre mages’, ancient champions’, and Kirke’s.
The Vaults branch monster set has been partially reworked; among other changes, vampire mosquitoes have been buzzed off, fire crabs have clattered away, and entropy weavers are… in.
“Special rooms” (rare rooms completely packed with monsters) have had their sets adjusted, and can now appear in Pan.
rPois now gives immunity to green draconians’ mephitic breath. (It was previously resisted by nothing, not even by the undead!)
Summoned monsters now vanish immediately when their summoner dies.
Allies no longer mark fireballed plants as priority targets.
Friendly monsters will no longer open doors. (This was generally either irrelevant or a bad thing for the player.)
Giving orders to allies no longer makes noise, and can be done while silenced. Hand signals or telepathy? You decide…
Sickness no longer has a chance of causing attribute damage.
The interface for eating food from the floor has been made somewhat more consistent with other floor-item use.
Kiku no longer gives the player extra HP while under Death’s Door.
Good gods no longer mind the player drinking a little blood, here and there.
Elyvilon’s no longer even pretends to care about the player letting their allies die.
Pakellas’s Quick Charge is no longer more powerful at 0 evocations than at 27.
Stoned creatures no longer stumble.
Happy crawling! Don’t let the death scarabs bite :)Liza Loop,Technical Writer
Liza Loop wrote the first users manuals for the Atari 400 and 800 computers. She was a Consultant/Technical Writer for Atari from June 1979 through April 1980, sometimes writing documentation for interfaces that had not been designed yet -- so her description became the de facto interface specification. Liza also worked for Personal Software, where she wrote the reference manual for the original VisiCalc program. And in an interesting Atari-related note, she and her husband Steve Smith were married by Atari 400/800 designer Jay Miner -- she talks about that in the interview, too.
This interview was conducted January 28, 2015. As of the day I'm recording this in April 2015, Liza hasn't been able to find the manuals and newsletters that we discuss to scan them -- but she says she's still on the lookout. When she finds them and we get them scanned, they'll be added to the show notes atAtariPodcast.com.
LINK
History of Computing for Learning and Education: A Virtual Museum
Teaser quotes:
"There was no way that this machine [the Atari 800] would be accepted by a touch typist if you had to shift to get lower case."
"I met Steve Wozniak...I was the first person that he had ever met who was taking computers into schools so he gave me the first Apple... So we have Apple I number 1 and Apple II number 10."
"One of the things very few people know about Jay [Miner] is that he was interested in nudism. The local nudist group used to have their parties at his house."
"So I would have to go and stand in the accounting office...and say 'It's a week after my pay date and I have not received my check... write me a hand check, and put it in the system later... And I'm going to stand here until you do it."
"The guys who started Activision were at Atari.... Somebody asked me how much I was being paid. I told them... And they said, '$40 an hour! We're in the wrong business.' And they all quit, and they said 'If you want us to work for you, hire us back at consultants for $40 an hour.'"A stream buffer is the vegetated land adjacent to a streambank.
Stream buffers are strips of trees and other vegetation that improve water quality by filtering pollutants from stormwater runoff such as oil, fertilizers, pesticides; reduce flooding and erosion by stabilizing stream banks; moderate stream temperature and sunlight, keeping fish and other aquatic life healthy; provide nesting and foraging habitat for many species of birds and animals.
Yeah, OK - not those stream buffers. I’d like to talk a bit about the beloved, intuitive, C++ standard library kind, the ones everybody loves (to hate) and understands (not).
When I was a wee C++ apprentice (pre-C++98), I was taught that when designing your API don’t take a file-name or assume a standard input/output stream. Instead, take a std::istream& or std::ostream& (or std::iostream ) and thus support any such (derived) stream.
Recently, while working on integrating two libraries, I came across an interesting challenge.
One library, Encoder, the encoding library, expected an std::ostream& to write data too (it thus naturally supported file serialization given a std::ofstream ): Encoder::encode(std::ostream& os);
The other library, call it the device library, provided a C-style write function such as int device_write_callback(const char* buf, int sz).
I needed to get the encoding library to encode my data and write the encoded data into the device using this API. The easiest solution is of course:
Encoder encoder ; // fill encoder with data... std :: ostringstream ostr ; encoder. encode ( ostr ); auto buf_str = ostr. str (); // makes another COPY! device_write_callback ( buf_str. c_str (), buf_str. size ());
This works, but has a major drawback: the encoder will first encode all the data into an internal in-memory buffer. Only after this is allocated and done, will the entire thing be written to the device. If our encoded data is very large, this can consume copious amounts of memory.
To make matters worse, ostr.str() returns an additional copy of that giant buffer!
What we’d like is to create a std::ostream that instead of writing to a memory buffer, directly calls the device-writer function.
One option is to use Boost.Iostreams. If you already have Boost in your project that is a valid way to go, but if you don’t, or don’t want the extra power and complexity that it brings, it turns out we can get the same benefit by rolling our own little streambuf.
Custom Stream Buffers
The standard provides two ready made stream buffers std::basic_filebuf and std::basic_stringbuf which are the basis of std::basic_fstream and std:: basic_stringstream respectively.
We will create our own class derived from std::streambuf and pass that to a generic std::ostream.
A thorough review of iostreams and stream-buffers is way beyond the scope of this post (or my knowledge for that matter). So here’s how to create a simple little streambuf to avoid the extraneous memory allocations (at least on your side) and just call the callback with whatever data is ready to be written:
template < typename Callback > struct callback_ostreambuf : public std :: streambuf { using callback_t = Callback ; callback_ostreambuf ( Callback cb, void * user_data = nullptr ) : callback_ ( cb ), user_data_ ( user_data ) {} protected : std :: streamsize xsputn ( const char_type * s, std :: streamsize n ) override { return callback_ ( s, n, user_data_ ); // returns the number of characters successfully written. }; int_type overflow ( int_type ch ) override { return callback_ ( & ch, 1, user_data_ ); // returns the number of characters successfully written. } private : Callback callback_ ; void * user_data_ ; };
Basically, we derive our class from std::streambuf and override the two virtual functions xsputn() and overflow(). The default (base) implementations of the rest of the streambuf methods will eventually reach these two functions: one writes a single character and the other several (in fact, the default implementation of std::streambuf::xsputn() calls std::streambuf::overflow() n -times).
A few things to note:
The class is templated on a Callback type. Although we know the desired signature of the write callback (since we have to call it in the methods and they must return the number of characters successfully written), we use a template type parameter as the callback type so we can also pass capturing lambdas as our callbacks. In the code above, I made the write function be a callback that also accepts a void* user_data argument. This is useful with C-style APIs but not always necessary (and not really relevant for the discussion here).
We can also add a little helper make function:
template < typename Callback > auto make_callback_ostreambuf ( Callback cb, void * user_data = nullptr ) { return callback_ostreambuf < Callback > ( cb, user_data ); }
We can now use our class like this:
auto cbsbuf = make_callback_ostreambuf ([]( const void * buf, std :: streamsize sz, void * user_data ) { std :: cout. write ( reinterpret_cast < const char *> ( buf ), sz ); return sz ; // return the numbers of characters written. }); std :: ostream ostr ( & cbsbuf ); ostr << "TEST " << 42 ; // Write string and integer
Although somewhat contrived, this will print TEST 42 to the console. In fact in such a lambda we can call any other device writing API regardless of the actual signature of that API.
Sweet 17 and beyond
The code above should work with C++11 and C++14 (up to some minor fixes). In fact, without the lambdas it’ll should also work with pre-C++11 compilers (the iostream library is pre-C++98!).
However, there are a few issues with the code above that make it less modern and type safe than it could be.
For starters, make_callback_ostreambuf() is an ugly API wart. The only reason we need it is so that we don’t need to write callback_ostreambuf<decltype(callback_fun)> my_streambuf(callback_fun); where we must specify the type to the template class (i.e. <decltype(callback_fun)> ).
C++17 will bring us class template deduction so with a C++17 conforming compiler we will be able to declare callback_ostreambuf my_streambuf(callback_fun); and the callback type will be deduced automatically just like with make_callback_ostreambuf().
A more subtle annoyance is that there is actually no static type enforcement on the callback type. It is called Callable but it is only assumed that:
it is a callable; it has the correct arity (number of args); it has the correct return type; all the args have the correct types.
Duck typing galore!
Any deviation from these will be rewarded with a compilation error or various wanrnings. However, to make matters worse, these errors and warnings will be shown at the point of duck-type usage, i.e. inside the method implementations of our class and not at the point of call at the class ctor.
Ironically, had we made our class non-template and decided to support only function-pointer callbacks, the compiler would have warned us of a type mismatch at the ctor call.
Using SFINAE it is, in fact, possible to decompose the Callable type into various types of callables (e.g. function pointers, class member operator(), etc.) and static_assert correct conversions. While demonstrating some very clever template meta programming (TMP) techniques is appealing, the resulting code would be several times larger and many more times more obscure than our current 20 line class.
There is however a glimmer of hope. Part of the raison-d’être of C++ concepts, which may be available as soon as C++20, is to allow more powerful and expressive static type checking and allow the compiler to warn at the point of usage. Concepts would allow us to precisely describe the callback type for proper type checking. I quiver in anticipation.
TL;DR
To create a custom streambuf : Derive your class from std::streambuf ; Override the two virtual functions xsputn() and overflow().
(You can even get away with overriding only overflow() and the default xsputn() will call it n times). (see what I did? put the TL;DR at the end… mwahahaha)
🦆
Custom Stream Buffer View
So we have a buffer with our encoded data. Maybe we saved it, maybe we sent it over the network. At some point we’d like to decode from such a buffer. We have a large contiguous memory buffer and we’d like to read from it. Our decoding library, again, sports a std::istream interface for decoding. How can we provide it with such a stream?
As before, the obvious option is to create a std::istringstream initialized with our buffer. However, inspecting the docs for std::istringstream shows that both the ctor and the std::istringstream::str(<string>) methods create copies of the data, something we’d like to avoid for very large buffers.
What we want is an “ istring_viewstream ” that will stream a view of our buffer just like C++17 std::string_view is to std::string.
Fortunately, that’s pretty short work:
template < typename Byte = char > class istreambuf_view : public std :: streambuf { public : using byte = Byte ; static_assert ( 1 == sizeof ( byte ), "sizeof buffer element type 1." ); istreambuf_view ( const byte * data, size_t len ) : // ptr + size begin_ ( data ), end_ ( data + len ), current_ ( data ) {} istreambuf_view ( const byte * beg, const byte * end ) : // begin + end begin_ ( beg ), end_ ( end ), current_ ( beg ) {} protected : int_type underflow () override { return ( current_ == end_? traits_type :: eof () : traits_type :: to_int_type ( * current_ )); } int_type uflow () override { return ( current_ == end_? traits_type :: eof () : traits_type :: to_int_type ( * current_ ++ )); } int_type pbackfail ( int_type ch ) override { if ( current_ == begin_ || ( ch!= traits_type :: eof () && ch!= current_ [ - 1 ])) return traits_type :: eof (); return traits_type :: to_int_type ( *-- current_ ); } std :: streamsize showmanyc () override { return end_ - current_ ; } const byte * const begin_ ; const byte * const end_ ; const byte * current_ ; };
Again, we derive our class istreambuf_view from std::streambuf and this time override a different set of virtual functions. All this class really does is manage 3 pointers.
The usage is quite straight forward:
auto buffer = "TEST 42" s ; auto view_buf = istreambuf_view <> ( buffer. data (), buffer. size ()); std :: istream istr ( & view_buf ); std :: string str ; int v = 0 ; istr >> str >> v ; // Read string and then integer assert ( "TEST" == str && 42 == v );
A few things to note:
The class is templated on a Byte type. Any 1-byte type should work and this is static_assert ed. The default character type is char. Using that we get the aptly named “diamond operator” <>. For convenience I added two constructors, one for pointer+size and the other for a begin+end.
Sweet 17
In this case too, C++17 will come to our aid and slightly simplify our code. With either class template deduction or user-defined deduction guides we will be able to drop the diamond operator in the default case and remain with the cleaner auto view_buf = istreambuf_view(buffer.data(), buffer.size());
A natural extension to this class would be to also accept a std::string_view or GSL’s various span flavors.
💎
Update
In the Feb. 2017 ISO C++ mailing, Peter Sommerlad proposes:
P0408R1 - Efficient Access to basic stringbuf’s Buffer. From the paper:
Streams have been the oldest part of the C++ standard library and their specification doesn’t take into account many things introduced since C++11. One of the oversights is that there is no non-copying access to the internal buffer of a basic_stringbuf which makes at least the obtaining of the output results from an ostringstream inefficient, because a copy is always made… This paper proposes to adjust the API of basic_stringbuf and the corresponding stream class templates to allow accessing the underlying string more efficiently. If accepted this would allow direct access, a-la string_view, to a streambuf ’s underlying buffer and avoid the additional copy created by calling str() as mentioned in the Custom Stream Buffers section above. Alternatively, Peter Sommerlad points me to another proposal of his: P0448R0 - A strstream replacement using span<charT> as buffer which proposes “a class template basic_spanbuf and the corresponding stream class templates to enable the use of streams on externally provided memory buffers. No ownership or re-allocation support is given. For those features we have string-based streams.” If accepted this would allow creating a streambuf object basic_spanbuf as a direct view over our external buffer in the Custom Stream Buffer View example. Good luck Peter!
💎
Summary
Iostreams are much maligned, but they go back a long way and for better or worse they shall remain with us for a while yet. Many idioms build upon them and occasionally one needs to dip a toe into these frigid waters. This post is not intended as a comprehensive tutorial but mostly as a public pasteboard where I can come and remember how to do these things in a few years instead of rummaging and collecting this info again elsewhere. I hope you find it useful too.
Acknowledgments:
If you found this post helpful, or you have more thoughts on this subject, please leave a message in the comments, Twitter or Reddit. You can also follow me on Twitter.
Credit: bannerThe banjo is a four-, five-, or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head, which is typically circular. The membrane is typically made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Africans in the United States, adapted from African instruments of similar design.[1][2] The banjo is frequently associated with folk, Irish traditional, and country music. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in African-American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century.[3][4][5][6] The banjo, along with the fiddle, is a mainstay of American old-time music. It is also very frequently used in traditional ("trad") jazz.
History [ edit ]
Note: This article uses Helmholtz pitch notation to define banjo tunings.
The Old Plantation, ca. 1785 - 1795, the earliest known American painting to picture a banjo-like instrument; thought to depict a plantation in, ca. 1785 - 1795, the earliest known American painting to picture a banjo-like instrument; thought to depict a plantation in Beaufort County, South Carolina
The modern banjo derives from instruments that had been used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, and the instrument became increasingly available commercially from around the second quarter of the 19th century.[2]
Several claims as to the etymology of the name "banjo" have been made. It may derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza,[7] which is an African string instrument modeled after the Portuguese banza: a vihuela with five two-string courses and a further two short strings. The Oxford English Dictionary states that it comes from a dialectal pronunciation of Portuguese bandore or from an early anglicisation of Spanish bandurria.[8] The name may also derive from a traditional Afro-Caribbean folk dance called "banya", which incorporates several cultural elements found throughout the African diaspora.[9]
The Portuguese banza: a possible ancestor of the modern banjo
Various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd (or similar shell) body.[10][11] The African instruments differ from early African American banjos in that the necks do not possess a Western-style fingerboard and tuning pegs, instead having stick necks, with strings attached to the neck with loops for tuning.[10] Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century.[10] Some 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza, bonjaw,[12] banjer[13] and banjar. Instruments similar to the banjo (e.g., the Japanese shamisen, Persian tar |
. More after the jump.
As it was mentioned in the Sunrise article, Studio BONES was founded in 1998 when a few members of Sunrise decided to leave and form their own studio. Specifically Masahiko Minami, Hiroshi Ōsaka and Toshihiro Kawamoto. Masahiko Minami was a producer at Sunrise Studio 2 and he co-produced shows like G Gundam, The Vision of Escaflowne and Cowboy Bebop. Hiroshi Ōsaka & Toshihiro Kawamoto were the talented animators who came along with Minami. The majority of the staff that left Sunrise originated from Sunrise Studio 2 especially those that worked on Cowboy Bebop.
Bones Studio A
-Studio A is currently lead by producer Naoki Amano.
-Their works include: Hiwou War Chronicles(00-01)*, Angelic Layer(01)*, Wolf’s Rain(03), Kurau Phantom Memory(04), Jyu-Oh-Sei(06)*, Ghost Slayers Ayashi(06-07), Heroman(10) and Gosick(11).
-Their current work is the sequel to Eureka Seven named Eureka AO(12).
-This studio is known for keeping to their schedules very well when dealing with original works. This is the sub-studio that is often called upon when some outsourcing is needed by other animation studios.
-I’m not sure why there was a seemingly long break between the end of Ayashi in ’07 and Heroman’s start in ’10. It is possible the failure of Ayashi had something to do with this. Ayashi began airing in a very popular Saturday afternoon time slot, one that shows like Gundam SEED and Fullmetal Alchemist once held. Going into this slot with an original show was always a risky plan, however the show was meant to run for an entire year, but the ratings were very low and soon the show was given the axe.
-Regarding Heroman however, the show was first announced in March of 2008. There were reports that show was being animated over 2008 and 2009 so that when the show began airing in 2010, the majority of the animation work had already been completed.
–Edit: Thank you to Duckroll in the comments for filling in the blanks in my knowledge, as he mentions, Heroman was in production for 2 whole years and was completed entirely before it went on air, so that is the reason for the big gap between Ayashi and Heroman.
-He also mentions Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief was in fact a production shared between Bones Studio A and Telecom Animation Film.
The intro to Ghost Slayers Ayashi
Bones Studio B
-Studio B is lead by producer Watanabe Makoto
-Their works include: Escaflowne the Movie(00), Cowboy Bebop Movie: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door(01), RahXephon(02), RahXephon Movie: Pluralitas Concentio(03), Scrapped Princess(03)*, Mars Daybreak(04)*, Eureka Seven(05-06), Skullman(07)*, Sword of Stranger(Movie)(07), Xam’d Lost Memories(08), Halo Legends episode 4(OVA)(10) and their most recent work being Towa no Quon(Movie series)(11).
-Many of their productions have sci-fi themes and often include mecha. This studio is where some of BONES’s best animators work and the shows they produce are known to have some of the best production values.
-With regard to Sword of the Stranger, the first clips of it showed up around 2003 at various trade fairs, it was unknown if it would be a TV show or a movie for a few years, however around the middle of 2006, the go ahead was given and full movie production for it began.
The intro to Xam’d Lost Memories
Bones Studio C
-Studio C is lead by producer Ooyabu Yoshihiro
-Works include: Fullmetal Alchemist(03-04), Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa(05), Ouran High School Host Club(06), Darker than Black(07), Soul Eater(08-09), Darker than Black: Gemini of the Meteor(09), Darker than Black Gaiden(OVA)(10), Star Driver(10-11) and UN-GO(11).
-This studio works on a variety of different genres.
-While the first two studios were founded roughly as the main studio was born, this one came to life before Fullmetal Alchemist went on air in 2003.
The 2nd intro to Darker than Black
Bones Studio D
-Studio D is lead by producer Norai Yorimoto
-Works include: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood(09-10), Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos(Movie)(11) and No. 6(11).
-A seemingly young studio, I had read this studio was created to handle the animation for the various FMA games, but I can no longer find the same text to back this up.
–Edit: This studio was formed to handle the task of producing FMA Brotherhood. The production of the new FMA would last a long period of time and other studios were busy with their own works so a new Studio was formed instead.
-I have a feeling Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief from 2008 was one of the first shows produced by this studio, or at least partially as this show was a joint production between studio Bones and Telecom Animation Film. The producer for Chiko on the BONES end was Norai Yorimoto and there are other staff that are shared between Chiko and FMA Bortherhood. I have little else to go on so this may just be a wild guess.
–Chiko was in fact a Studio A production, thanks to Duckroll for the correction.
The intro to FMA Brotherhood
Related studio: Kinema Citrus
This studio is not directly under BONES, however it was formed when one of their producers, Ogasawara Munenori left with individuals from Production IG and Beetrain to form their own studio. Their initial productions were joints with BONES.
Joint works include: Tokyo Magnitude 8.0(09) and Eureka Seven – good night, sleep tight, young lovers(Movie)(09).
The intro to Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
Notes: Titles marked with ‘*’ were hard to pin to a studio given I couldn’t initially find much information regarding which sub-studio produced them. A little bit of searching netted me BONES’s own webpages that told me which studios worked for Mars Daybreak, Jyu-Oh-Sei and Skullman, however I had no luck in finding something similar for Angelic Layer and Scrapped Princess. I ended up having to draw out a chart in photoshop that plotted the airing dates of the various shows and movies in chronological order and make an educated guess where a show could have fitted in to their early schedule. If anyone actually knows or spots any mistakes please drop a line in the comments.
Finally, here’s a great picture including every character animated by Studio BONES drawn by Toshihiro Kawamoto for the 10th Anniversary special that featured in an issue of Newtype a couple of years ago. Thanks for reading!
Sources: [1], [2]For a political hopeful in Alabama, it could be the ultimate endorsement -- a show of support from University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban
Bessemer Councilwoman Dorothy Davidson, who is running for mayor of the city, claims she secured Saban's endorsement of her campaign three weeks ago. Davidson printed it on a color campaign flier that shows her and the coach smiling side by side on a golf course.
But University of Alabama athletics officials on Tuesday said there is no such endorsement. And the photo of Davidson and Saban together is not real, but digitally altered from another photo.
"Coach Saban has not been contacted for a political endorsement of any kind," Associate Athletics Director Jeff Purinton wrote in an e-mail response to questions from The Birmingham News.
Davidson, when contacted about the campaign ad and photo on Tuesday afternoon, at first said the image of her and Saban together was real and taken about three weeks ago. However, when presented later with a 2007 photo of Saban and his wife that appears to be the base photo onto which Davidson's image was added, the candidate acknowledged that her image was digitally added to the 2007 photo.
"They said we could do it this way," Davidson said.
Davidson's part of the picture is what was taken three weeks ago, she said Tuesday night.
While the photo is fake, the support of Saban is real, Davidson and her campaign manager, Kevin Morris, maintain.
"My dad, Larry Morris, and coach Saban are friends," Morris said Tuesday. "We were on the golf course one day, and I asked him myself if this would be OK."
Morris said Saban agreed. Morris said he would not have created the campaign flier, which has the upcoming football schedules for the University of Alabama, Auburn University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham on the back side, if Saban's endorsement was not legitimate.
Efforts to reach Saban for comment were unsuccessful, but university officials contend no endorsement was given.
Davidson said she does not know how many of the fliers were printed, but her campaign workers have been handing them out. She is one of six candidates vying to be Bessemer's mayor. The election is Tuesday.
Update: Campaign manager admits he lied about endorsement from Alabama Coach Nick Saban
News staff writer Don Kausler contributed to this article.
Join the conversation by commenting below or e-mailing adebro@bhamnews.com.MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. - An endangered gopher tortoise is feeling a little less blue after Florida Fish and Wildlife officers were able to capture it and remove the paint that covered its entire body.
FWC officers were called to a residential property in Martin County in reference to an injured tortoise, and when they arrived, they found the reptile painted blue.
Tortoises absorb vitamins from the sun’s UV rays through their shells, so having paint or anything else on their shells can inhibit their ability to do that. Additionally, paint can cause respiratory problems and harmful chemicals can be absorbed into the animal’s bloodstream, FWC said.
It’s difficult to remove paint without harming the tortoise, but officials at an animal rehabilitation facility were able to do it and release the tortoise back to its burrow.
FWC urged anyone who sees a painted tortoise or any other vandalized wildlife to contact the Wildlife Alert Hotline at 888-404-FWCC.
Copyright 2016 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (c. 490–430 BC) to support Parmenides' doctrine that contrary to the evidence of one's senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion. It is usually assumed, based on Plato's Parmenides (128a–d), that Zeno took on the project of creating these paradoxes because other philosophers had created paradoxes against Parmenides' view. Thus Plato has Zeno say the purpose of the paradoxes "is to show that their hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one."[1] Plato has Socrates claim that Zeno and Parmenides were essentially arguing exactly the same point.[2]
Some of Zeno's nine surviving paradoxes (preserved in Aristotle's Physics[3][4] and Simplicius's commentary thereon) are essentially equivalent to one another. Aristotle offered a refutation of some of them.[3] Three of the strongest and most famous—that of Achilles and the tortoise, the Dichotomy argument, and that of an arrow in flight—are presented in detail below.
Zeno's arguments are perhaps the first examples of a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum also known as proof by contradiction. They are also credited as a source of the dialectic method used by Socrates.[5]
Some mathematicians and historians, such as Carl Boyer, hold that Zeno's paradoxes are simply mathematical problems, for which modern calculus provides a mathematical solution.[6] Some philosophers, however, say that Zeno's paradoxes and their variations (see Thomson's lamp) remain relevant metaphysical problems.[7][8][9]
The origins of the paradoxes are somewhat unclear. Diogenes Laërtius, a fourth source for information about Zeno and his teachings, citing Favorinus, says that Zeno's teacher Parmenides was the first to introduce the Achilles and the tortoise paradox. But in a later passage, Laërtius attributes the origin of the paradox to Zeno, explaining that Favorinus disagrees.[10]
Paradoxes of motion [ edit ]
Achilles and the tortoise [ edit ]
Distance vs. time, assuming the tortoise to run at Achilles' half speed
Achilles and the tortoise
In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead. as recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b15
In the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 meters, for example. Supposing that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 meters, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 meters. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles arrives somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has some distance to go before he can even reach the tortoise.[11]
Dichotomy paradox [ edit ]
That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. as recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b10
Suppose Homer wishes to walk to the end of a path. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on.
The dichotomy, both versions
The resulting sequence can be represented as:
{ ⋯, 1 16, 1 8, 1 4, 1 2, 1 } {\displaystyle \left\{\cdots,{\frac {1}{16}},{\frac {1}{8}},{\frac {1}{4}},{\frac {1}{2}},1\right\}}
This description requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility.[12]
This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any possible (finite) first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. Hence, the trip cannot even begin. The paradoxical conclusion then would be that travel over any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion. An alternative conclusion, proposed by Henri Bergson, is that motion (time and distance) is not actually divisible.
This argument is called the Dichotomy because it involves repeatedly splitting a distance into two parts. It contains some of the same elements as the Achilles and the Tortoise paradox, but with a more apparent conclusion of motionlessness. It is also known as the Race Course paradox. Some, like Aristotle, regard the Dichotomy as really just another version of Achilles and the Tortoise.[13]
Arrow paradox [ edit ]
The arrow
If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.[14] as recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b5
In the arrow paradox, Zeno states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that in any one (duration-less) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor to where it is not.[15] It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.
Whereas the first two paradoxes divide space, this paradox starts by dividing time—and not into segments, but into points.[16]
Three other paradoxes as given by Aristotle [ edit ]
Paradox of Place [ edit ]
From Aristotle:
If everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place, and so on ad infinitum.[17]
Paradox of the Grain of Millet [ edit ]
Description of the paradox from the Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy:
The argument is that a single grain of millet makes no sound upon falling, but a thousand grains make a sound. Hence a thousand nothings become something, an absurd conclusion.[18]
Aristotle's refutation:
Zeno is wrong in saying that there is no part of the millet that does not make a sound: for there is no reason why any such part should not in any length of time fail to move the air that the whole bushel moves in falling. In fact it does not of itself move even such a quantity of the air as it would move if this part were by itself: for no part even exists otherwise than potentially.[19]
Description from Nick Huggett:
This is a Parmenidean argument that one cannot trust one's sense of hearing. Aristotle's response seems to be that even inaudible sounds can add to an audible sound.[20]
The Moving Rows (or Stadium) [ edit ]
The moving rows
From Aristotle:
... concerning the two rows of bodies, each row being composed of an equal number of bodies of equal size, passing each other on a race-course as they proceed with equal velocity in opposite directions, the one row originally occupying the space between the goal and the middle point of the course and the other that between the middle point and the starting-post. This...involves the conclusion that half a given time is equal to double that time.[21]
For an expanded account of Zeno's arguments as presented by Aristotle, see Simplicius' commentary On Aristotle's Physics.
Proposed solutions [ edit ]
Diogenes the Cynic [ edit ]
According to Simplicius, Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked, in order to demonstrate the falsity of Zeno's conclusions (see solvitur ambulando). To fully solve any of the paradoxes, however, one needs to show what is wrong with the argument, not just the conclusions. Through history, several solutions have been proposed, among the earliest recorded being those of Aristotle and Archimedes.
Aristotle [ edit ]
Aristotle (384 BC−322 BC) remarked that as the distance decreases, the time needed to cover those distances also decreases, so that the time needed also becomes increasingly small.[22][23] Aristotle also distinguished "things infinite in respect of divisibility" (such as a unit of space that can be mentally divided into ever smaller units while remaining spatially the same) from things (or distances) that are infinite in extension ("with respect to their extremities").[24] Aristotle's objection to the arrow paradox was that "Time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles."[25]
Thomas Aquinas [ edit ]
Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Aristotle's objection, wrote "Instants are not parts of time, for time is not made up of instants any more than a magnitude is made of points, as we have already proved. Hence it does not follow that a thing is not in motion in a given time, just because it is not in motion in any instant of that time."[26]
Archimedes [ edit ]
Before 212 BC, Archimedes had developed a method to derive a finite answer for the sum of infinitely many terms that get progressively smaller. (See: Geometric series, 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 + 1/256 + · · ·, The Quadrature of the Parabola.) Modern calculus achieves the same result, using more rigorous methods (see convergent series, where the "reciprocals of powers of 2" series, equivalent to the Dichotomy Paradox, is listed as convergent). These methods allow the construction of solutions based on the conditions stipulated by Zeno, i.e. the amount of time taken at each step is geometrically decreasing.[6][27]
Bertrand Russell [ edit ]
Bertrand Russell offered what is known as the "at-at theory of motion". It agrees that there can be no motion "during" a durationless instant, and contends that all that is required for motion is that the arrow be at one point at one time, at another point another time, and at appropriate points between those two points for intervening times. In this view motion is a function of position with respect to time.[28][29]
Nick Huggett [ edit ]
Nick Huggett argues that Zeno is assuming the conclusion when he says that objects that occupy the same space as they do at rest must be at rest.[16]
Peter Lynds [ edit ]
Peter Lynds has argued that all of Zeno's motion paradoxes are resolved by the conclusion that instants in time and instantaneous magnitudes do not physically exist.[30][31][32] Lynds argues that an object in relative motion cannot have an instantaneous or determined relative position (for if it did, it could not be in motion), and so cannot have its motion fractionally dissected as if it does, as is assumed by the paradoxes. For more about the inability to know both speed and location, see Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Hermann Weyl [ edit ]
Another proposed solution is to question one of the assumptions Zeno used in his paradoxes (particularly the Dichotomy), which is that between any two different points in space (or time), there is always another point. Without this assumption there are only a finite number of distances between two points, hence there is no infinite sequence of movements, and the paradox is resolved. The ideas of Planck length and Planck time in modern physics place a limit on the measurement of time and space, if not on time and space themselves. According to Hermann Weyl, the assumption that space is made of finite and discrete units is subject to a further problem, given by the "tile argument" or "distance function problem".[33][34] According to this, the length of the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle in discretized space is always equal to the length of one of the two sides, in contradiction to geometry. Jean Paul Van Bendegem has argued that the Tile Argument can be resolved, and that discretization can therefore remove the paradox.[6][35]
The paradoxes in modern times [ edit ]
Infinite processes remained theoretically troublesome in mathematics until the late 19th century. The epsilon-delta version of Weierstrass and Cauchy developed a rigorous formulation of the logic and calculus involved. These works resolved the mathematics involving infinite processes.[36][37]
While mathematics can calculate where and when the moving Achilles will overtake the Tortoise of Zeno's paradox, philosophers such as Kevin Brown[7] and Moorcroft[8] claim that mathematics does not address the central point in Zeno's argument, and that solving the mathematical issues does not solve every issue the paradoxes raise.
Popular literature often misrepresents Zeno's arguments. For example, Zeno is often said to have argued that the sum of an infinite number of terms must itself be infinite–with the result that not only the time, but also the distance to be travelled, become infinite.[38] A humorous take is offered by Tom Stoppard in his play Jumpers (1972), in which the principal protagonist, the philosophy professor George Moore, suggests that according to Zeno’s paradox, Saint Sebastian, a 3rd Century Christian saint supposedly martyred by being shot with arrows, died of fright. However, none of the original ancient sources has Zeno discussing the sum of any infinite series. Simplicius has Zeno saying "it is impossible to traverse an infinite number of things in a finite time". This presents Zeno's problem not with finding the sum, but rather with finishing a task with an infinite number of steps: how can one ever get from A to B, if an infinite number of (non-instantaneous) events can be identified that need to precede the arrival at B, and one cannot reach even the beginning of a "last event"?[7][8][9][39]
Debate continues on the question of whether or not Zeno's paradoxes have been resolved. In The History of Mathematics: An Introduction (2010) Burton writes, "Although Zeno's argument confounded his contemporaries, a satisfactory explanation incorporates a now-familiar idea, the notion of a 'convergent infinite series.'".[40]
Bertrand Russell offered a "solution" to the paradoxes based on the work of Georg Cantor,[41] but Brown concludes "Given the history of 'final resolutions', from Aristotle onwards, it's probably foolhardy to think we've reached the end. It may be that Zeno's arguments on motion, because of their simplicity and universality, will always serve as a kind of 'Rorschach image' onto which people can project their most fundamental phenomenological concerns (if they have any)."[7]
A similar ancient Chinese philosophic consideration [ edit ]
Ancient Chinese philosophers from the Mohist School of Names during the Warring States period of China (479-221 BCE) independently developed equivalents to some of Zeno's paradoxes. The scientist and historian Sir Joseph Needham, in his Science and Civilisation in China, describes an ancient Chinese paradox from the surviving Mohist School of Names book of logic which states, in the archaic ancient Chinese script, "a one-foot stick, every day take away half of it, in a myriad ages it will not be exhausted." Several other paradoxes from this philosophical school (more precisely, movement) are known, but their modern interpretation is more speculative.
Quantum Zeno effect [ edit ]
In 1977,[42] physicists E. C. George Sudarshan and B. Misra discovered that the dynamical evolution (motion) of a quantum system can be hindered (or even inhibited) through observation of the system.[43] This effect is usually called the "quantum Zeno effect" as it is strongly reminiscent of Zeno's arrow paradox. This effect was first theorized in 1958.[44]
Zeno behaviour [ edit ]
In the field of verification and design of timed and hybrid systems, the system behaviour is called Zeno if it includes an infinite number of discrete steps in a finite amount of time.[45] Some formal verification techniques exclude these behaviours from analysis, if they are not equivalent to non-Zeno behaviour.[46][47]
In systems design these behaviours will also often be excluded from system models, since they cannot be implemented with a digital controller.[48]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]Another entitled student group is making demands to university leadership. Will yet another institution cave?
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A student group of undocumented immigrants attending Columbia University has released a list of demands on their Facebook page, calling on the university to take immediate action. The Undocumented Students Initiative at Columbia University, which was created last year, made a lengthy Facebook post outlining demands they will refuse to “amend or change.” According to the group, Columbia has a “lack of intrinsic interest in its undocumented students.”
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Chief among the demands is free healthcare. They acknowledge that while the International Students & Scholars Office reimburses a portion of the fees, they want the remaining cost of their health insurance to be given back to them as well. Failure to do so will leave undocumented immigrants unable to receive their transcripts until the balance is paid in full.
The group is also demanding that the university refrain from designating undocumented students as international students—subject to a fee each semester in the amount of $70. Since this puts them on the Department of Homeland Security’s radar, they would rather be designated as domestic students to remain in hiding. Oh, and they also want their $70 back.
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Going down the list, the demands become more outlandish. “Specialized fundraising for undocumented students. We want the university as a whole and individual schools to raise funding to specifically support undocumented students in both undergrad and grad schools with the objective of creating undocumented student-specific scholarships and grants. Need-based funding must be available for undocumented students at all Columbia University and affiliate schools.” What? So undocumented immigrants are demanding free education. Got it.
They also want sensitivity training for all faculty and staff on “immigration language and rhetoric,” and the group finds it “unacceptable for students to be called ‘illegal’ in their own classrooms or for professors to tell us to ‘get legal.’” They compared the necessity for sensitivity training to sexual health training because somehow they are one and the same. I won’t even pretend to understand the correlation. They also want counseling services provided to them beyond what has already been made available.
Basically, an organized group of undocumented immigrants has banded together and realized that secondary education in the United States carries a hefty price tag. Who knew? While actual citizens of the United States struggle to make ends meet while receiving an education and tackling the inevitable repayment of student loans, this lovely group of students has the audacity to publish a wish list they truly feel entitled to. They want to fly under the radar in the United States, they want free healthcare, they want to censor ideas and words that hurt their undocumented feelings, and they want it now.
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Of course, the group has censored any response in their comment section on the post, pointing out the irrelevance of non-Columbia-affiliated individuals having something to say about their demands. I guess they fail to grasp the concept of fundraising and where the money for all their expenses would be coming from. The anonymous poster continues to liken the group to Freedom Riders, MLK, and other activists, ending their lovely tirade with, “I’d rather be a third-world, undocumented person of color than a deluded white nationalist.”Sometimes, when you’re faced with the choice of a side salad or french fries, the hot, salty, crispy option is the only viable one.
Or at least, that’s how it seems. Even though most people have a pretty good idea of what’s considered healthy and what makes them feel good (fruits and veggies, protein, whole grains, healthy fats), it’s still pretty easy to get blown off course by a particularly delicious-looking doughnut or plate of fresh-out-of-the-fryer calamari.
It’s OK. Slip-ups happen, and it’s not the end of the world or even the end of your diet. Instead of beating yourself up about it, do your body a favor and undo some of the damage. These hacks won’t totally undo your poor food choices, but they can certainly help you feel a little better after one too many slices of cheesecake.
You ate: Sugar. Lots of sugar.
Now eat: Apple cider vinegar and probiotic-rich foods
Excess sugar can cause some serious problems in your body, and unfortunately it’s hiding in all types of processed foods and drinks these days. Eating it not only contributes to weight gain thanks to the extra calories, but also spikes your blood glucose levels. In an attempt to stabilize blood sugar, hormones go kind of haywire, resulting in breakouts, mood swings, and belly fat. Plus, too much sugar can throw off healthy gut bacteria and mess with your digestion.
Avoid that nasty situation by sipping on an apple cider vinegar drink (or taking a shot of ACV straight up) directly after indulging in sugary foods. Yes, it’s tart and kind of tastes like salad dressing, but it’s been scientifically proven to stabilize blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. Then, toss back a probiotic or chow down on some fermented foods like kimchi or kefir to support the bacteria in your gut.
You ate: Salt
Now eat: Hydrating foods
The USDA recommends no more than 2,300 mg of sodium per day, about one teaspoon. Most of us eat more than that in just one meal. Too much salt does two things simultaneously: dehydrates cells and encourages water retention. In other words, it sucks you dry and leaves you feeling bloated—yuck. To counteract those effects, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Drink lots of water. Then, snack on hydrating, fiber-rich foods to reduce bloating:
Bell peppers
Celery
Cucumber
Cauliflower
Strawberries
Spinach
Watermelon
You ate: Dairy
Now eat: Berries and chia seeds
More than 75 percent of people worldwide are unable to digest lactose after infancy. If you’re among them, eating dairy products could leave you feeling bloated and sick. Milk and its byproducts can cause inflammation in body, which manifests itself as aches, pain, brain fog, and even pimples. That means even those who don’t have an intolerance might notice that dairy makes them break out or feel sluggish.
After devouring the entire cheese plate or pint of ice cream, the best thing that you can do to clear out your system is eat meals rich in anti-inflammatory foods like those on this list. Berries in particular will calm inflammation in the body quickly, between their high antioxidant levels and fiber.
The day after a dairy-binge is also a great time for chia seeds, which are chock-full of omega-3 fatty acids and anti-inflammatory powers as well. But chia are especially treasured for their effect on digestion—two tablespoons has 11 grams of fiber, which is enough to get things moving ASAP.
You drank: Alcohol
Now eat: Activated charcoal and brassica vegetables
Even if you somehow avoided a hangover, if you indulged in a little booze last night, you’re probably not feeling 100 percent. Drinking makes your poor liver work overtime for two reasons. First, alcohol tends to have the same effect on your body as white sugar (see above), causing blood glucose levels to go haywire. Second, when you drink, you’re quite literally sucking down poison—as alcohol reaches the liver, it produces a toxic enzyme called acetaldehyde that causes cellular damage.
If you can remember, take activated charcoal immediately after drinking and right when you wake up in the morning. It’s not the same stuff that goes in the barbeque—it actually absorbs toxins and helps the body eliminate them more quickly. Then, apologize to your liver with a hearty helping of brassica veggies. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, and kale are all members of the brassica family, and encourage detoxification of the liver. Or make a batch of these salt and vinegar Brussels sprouts chips, which should satisfy lingering cravings for junk food and help you feel better.
Finally, just remember that if you made a couple of poor food choices, it’s OK. Just because you enjoyed the cheese plate a little too much doesn’t mean you need to punish yourself later with a grueling workout session or fast for days. Treat your body kindly, eat nourishing food, and drink lots of water, and you’ll be back to feeling great (and choosing the salad over fries) in no time.
Photo credit: Alicia ChoALEPPO, Syria — The Islamic State (IS), arguably the most dangerous and brutal terrorist group in modern history, now controls more than a third of Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a prominent opposition nongovernmental organization. The group’s stunning victories in Iraq have been repeated in Syria, though to a lesser extent and to even less media attention. IS now controls nearly all of the oil-rich eastern province of Deir ez-Zor, with regime forces controlling only a few pockets. Crucially, after ousting its rival, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, from the provincial capital, IS is now face to face with regime forces, the two sitting opposite one another on the front lines that divide this largely devastated city.
The undeclared truce between the regime and IS seems to have run its course after both sides achieved all they could in their marriage of convenience. Nothing better illustrates this than the devastating assault launched by IS on the al-Shaer gas field in Homs on July 16 that may have left up to 300 regime troops and civilian employees dead. Meanwhile, the regime continues to launch airstrikes on IS headquarters and training camps in Raqqa, an indication that the gloves are now definitely off.
As IS consolidated its grip on Deir ez-Zor, after a humiliating rout of Jabhat al-Nusra that saw its leader, Safwan al-Hant, captured and killed July 14 while trying to escape disguised as a woman — his own men having reportedly turned him over after defecting — it quickly turned its expansionist intentions elsewhere. IS has also resurfaced in rebel-controlled areas near Damascus, including the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, and threatens to derail fragile and painstakingly negotiated local cease-fires and agreements.
It is also launching its own campaign in Ghouta against the Islamic Front, headed by the Saudi-backed Jaish al-Islam, whose leader, Zahran Alloush, said that fighting IS is more important than fighting the regime.
IS has not yet attacked regime positions in Aleppo. It is likely waiting for an opportune moment — either after the regime roots out rebels or when it has other fronts under control and can send substantial reinforcements. It is guaranteed, however, that a confrontation is coming soon.
First Lt. Majed, an officer in the Syrian army who has been stationed in Aleppo for a while, spoke with Al-Monitor about the imminent showdown between the regime and IS. “We are ready for them, and we are prepared. We have some of our best military units now in Aleppo that have specifically been trained to combat them and have experience with the tactics they use. And of course, we have our friends, too,” he added with a smile, meaning Hezbollah and Iraqi militias.
The Syrian regime will find in IS a much tougher opponent than the rebel factions it has been fighting. IS fighters are well trained, well armed, ideologically motivated and disciplined — a far cry from some of |
Titans (which they used to get a cornerstone offensive lineman), the Browns have acquired an astonishing amount of draft ammo for the coming years. They have Philadelphia’s first-round pick and Tennessee’s second-round pick this year; Philadelphia’s second-round pick and Houston’s second-round pick next year; and even Carolina’s fourth-round pick in 2018 because they traded a punter. A punter!
Related How to Spend Smart in NFL Free Agency
So sure, the Browns traded for a quarterback who is the living embodiment of their recurring failures, but don’t focus on that. Focus on how shrewd this move really is. If it wasn’t already clear, it is now: The Browns are open for business, willing to take on (even if only temporarily) crappy salaries in exchange for picks. This deal isn’t really about Osweiler; whether he stays or goes, he’s just a bonus (to the extent that a really bad quarterback can be a bonus). This is about starting the Romo watch in Houston — and starting the clock on Bryan Colangelo joining Cleveland in three years.Former Supreme Court judge, Justice Markandey Katju, has stoked a new controversy by saying that he supported his fellow Brahmin Ravana.
Taking to Facebook, the former Press Council of India chairman said, “I am a Brahmin, and, therefore, I support Ravana, my fellow Brahmin. Just as Yadavs support Mulayam Singh and Laloo, dalits support Mayawati, and Muslims of Hyderabad support Owaisi. How can I support someone who cut off my fellow Brahmin’s head?
“Brahmins of India unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win. Brahmin unity zindabad!”
In a tweet, Katju said that Ravana was a much vilified man in his opinion.
He tweeted, “I think Ravana was a much villified man. If someone cuts off your sister’s nose, will you not get enraged?”
I think Ravana was a much villified man. If someone cuts off your sister's nose, will you not get enraged? — Markandey Katju (@mkatju) September 20, 2016
Known for his plainspeak, Justice Katju was in news recently for his comments on the Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who had described as somebody with nothing in his head.
Bachchan had then responded by agreeing with him saying that indeed he had nothing in his head.
“He (Katju) is right I don’t have anything inside my mind. He is right…My head is ‘khalas’ (finished),” Bachchan said when asked about the comment made on him by the former Supreme Court Judge, known for his hard-hitting and often controversial views on a rash of issues.
At a time when the veteran actor is receiving praise for his performance in “Pink”, a social thriller which revolves around the issue of women’s empowerment, Justice Katju had a different take on his on-screen talent.
On September 17, the ex-Judge posted on his his social media page, “Amitabh Bachchan is a man with nothing in his head, and since most mediapersons praise him, I doubt there is anything in their heads too.”
“We were in same school. He was my senior. There is no rivalry,” said the 73-year-old actor in response to a question at a press conference.Nick Kyrgios hurt his shoulder early in the third set
US Open Venue: Flushing Meadows, New York Dates: 28 Aug-10 Sept BBC coverage: Live radio and text commentary on selected matches every day.
Australia's Nick Kyrgios struggled with a shoulder injury as he lost to compatriot John Millman at the US Open - admitting: "I don't know what to do."
The 22-year-old 14th seed went down 6-3 1-6 6-4 6-1 in the first round in New York.
Kyrgios looked to have taken control of the match before he hurt his shoulder in the third set.
"One serve and my arm's totally dead," he told the physio while receiving treatment.
"I don't know what to do. It's so dead and numb, it's incredibly weak. I wasn't feeling it at all, and all of a sudden, bang, with one serve."
Kyrgios retired from three consecutive tournaments earlier this summer and has struggled with his shoulder, hip and elbow in 2017 alone.
"I keep letting people down," he said, before suggesting that he was "not good enough" for coach Sebastien Grosjean.
"I'm not dedicated to the game at all," added Kyrgios. "He's helped me a lot, especially in training sessions.
"There are players out there that are more dedicated, that want to get better, that strive to get better every day, the one-percenters. I'm not that guy."
'I was less dedicated in Cincinnati'
Nick Kyrgios reached the Cincinnati Open final earlier this month, losing to Grigor Dimitrov
After dropping the first set to Millman, the world number 235, it appeared as though Kyrgios was on his way to victory when he took the second 6-1.
However, the contest changed dramatically with Kyrgios serving at 1-1 in the third, at one point asking a ball boy to help him stretch his right arm.
To add to his frustration, Kyrgios was given a warning for an audible obscenity and, after losing the third set, penalised a point for violently smashing his racquet.
"My forehand's painful, it's just so annoying," he told the trainer.
When fully fit, Kyrgios has shown the kind of form this year that has made him tipped as a possible Grand Slam champion, taking a rampant Federer to a final set tie-break in Miami and reaching his first Masters final in Cincinnati this month.
"In Cincinnati, I was not doing anything different," said Kyrgios.
"I was probably less dedicated than I was this week. I was playing basketball at Lifetime Fitness every day for two hours.
"Like I played an hour of basketball before I played David Ferrer in the semi-final. I was going to eat ice cream, like this Graeter's place getting a milkshake every day. I was less dedicated.
"And this week I was dedicated, and my shoulder starts hurting. I don't know."
Millman goes on to face Tunisia's Malek Jaziri or Thiago Monteiro of Brazil in the second round.
"I know Nick's shoulder deteriorated as the match went on, so it's a victory, but slightly hollow," said Millman. "I feel for him."Rand Paul’s campaign is unloading on ABC News over new rules that would likely exclude him—and several other Republican candidates—from a crucial debate on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.
The network announced that its Feb. 6 debate in Manchester will be limited to candidates who poll in the top six nationally or in New Hampshire—but only the top three finishers in the Iowa caucuses. That approach would eliminate the undercard debate.
“It’s a little bit irresponsible,” Paul spokesman Sergio Gor said in an interview in Iowa, before the Fox News/Google debate Thursday night. “Voters should be the ones making these decisions and not network executives in New York.”
Gor said he is appealing to ABC and also pressing his case with the Republican National Committee, which oversees the debates.
Paul boycotted the Fox Business debate in South Carolina when he was relegated to the undercard, but his showing in the Iowa polls landed him a spot on the main stage tonight.
In recent debates hosted by Fox News, Fox Business and CNN, a top-six finish in polls in Iowa (as well as New Hampshire and nationally) was enough to earn a ticket to the prime-time stage. Under ABC’s approach, Paul, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum would likely be excluded, based on current polling, from the debate moderated by David Muir.
“It’s unfortunate because you’re discounting anything that happened in Iowa,” Gor said. “They’re dismissing the importance of the early states. Are they really going to exclude the fourth-place finisher in Iowa? We’re hoping they reconsider.”
The Paul campaign has something of a history with ABC based on objections to the role of George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton White House official who is the co-anchor of “Good Morning America” and hosts “This Week.” The Kentucky senator has avoided interviews with Stephanopoulos, saying last year, “We’ve made the decision that he’s too close to the Clintons to really give an objective interview.”
Stephanopoulos withdrew from any role in the GOP debates after apologizing for his failure to disclose $75,000 in donations to the Clinton Foundation.Agario is a game where players spawn as a small dot in a large, two-dimensional grid environment. The goal of the game is to survive by consuming smaller dots, which consequently make you larger. These smaller dots are scattered throughout the map, and may or may not be one of the other hundred people playing along with you. If you're interested in learning more about the game I encourage you to try it out for yourself.
What I find most interesting about Agario is how it undeniably resembles the artificial societies used to study human behavior. Data from these societies can be quite telling; for example, a 1986 study used such a model to learn that hunters-gatherers could pool resources to significantly mitigate risks in the form of variation.1 A more recent study used a similar model to find that risk-averse agents, on average, went on to live much longer lives than their shorter-lived counterparts.2
If you're like me, and wonder if there might be some evolutionary reasons or benefits to our risk-averse predilections3, the above studies may offer key insights. The difference between these simulation-based artificial societies and Agario, is that the latter uses actual humans to control the agents. I personally think it would be interesting to see how the data compare.
Do risk-averse players live longer (on average) than risk takers? Does sharing, or teaming up help with longevity? What are some interesting questions that you might have for such data?It's not just the usual suspects who are opposing the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700 mile oil spill waiting to happen. A key group that is organizing against the pipeline are landowners who don't like a Canadian company, TransCanada, threatening their land and access to safe, clean water. In Nebraska, the pipeline would cross over the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies groundwater for irrigation to 30 percent of the US. That's part of the reason why Randy Thompson, a Nebraska landowner from Merrick County has been fighting TransCanada for years. Yesterday Randy wrote to Nebraska's attorney general and asked him to investigate TransCanada for alleged "deceptive and perhaps fraudulent" tactics used to bully him off his land.
As Nebraska citizens we are asking you, our State Attorney General, to launch a full and comprehensive investigation into the trade practices of TransCanada, a foreign corporation that has been seeking easements for a massive tar sands oil pipeline across our state. It is our opinion that TransCanada has used deceptive and perhaps fraudulent tactics trying to convince landowners to grant such easements to their company. TransCanada does not have a permit from the U.S. government to build this pipeline in our country, and yet they have been aggressively pursuing easements from Nebraska landowners. They have sent letters to many landowners threatening to use eminent domain to acquire these easements if the owners would not agree to accept the terms set forth by TransCanada. These letters have caused a lot of anguish for landowners and their families who don't want to have this pipeline on their land, but don't have the resources to fight a multi-billion dollar foreign corporation. Senator Johanns and other legal authorities have expressed the opinion that TransCanada has been operating way out-of-bounds regarding their authority when claiming to possess the powers of eminent domain at this stage of the permitting process. We believe that TransCanada has used these false claims of eminent domain powers to intimidate landowners into signing unwanted easement agreements.
Last week, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, sent a letter to the president asking him to deny a permit for the project. You can find out more about Randy's fight at www.standwithrandy.com.
It remains to be seen what President Obama will do. The State department is now in its "National Interest" phase of its decision, in which it will seek to determine if the pipeline is in the national interest. It's certainly not in Randy Thompson's.MIAMI (CBSMiami) — Moving men say a road rage incident left one of them shot in the face while they were driving to work in Miami.
The Miami-Dade Fire Department responded to the shooting call Friday afternoon at 20911 S.W. 244th Street, to find the victim sitting on the ground being treated by co-workers with ‘Two Men and a Truck.’
“We were on the way to our job,” said one of the movers. “And the guy ran the stop sign, and he was flicking us off and all that, and all we did was beep the horn at him. And we tried to keep going but he followed us and fired off a shot at us, at first, when he sped by us.”
“My friend just honked the truck and the other guy stopped the truck and started screaming,” said co-worker Jeffrey Mesa.
The gunman then parked his truck up the road, they said.
“And as we were coming through the next stop sign, he was parked, and just aimed and shot in the window, and shot my friend while he was driving,” the mover continued.
The victim was suffering from a wound to the face, as well as his shoulder, but was alert and talking. His co-worker used the shirt off his back to help stop the bleeding as paramedics arrived.
They described the gunman as a Hispanic male with shoulder-length hair, driving a box truck.The Champions League final perfectly portrayed Isco and James’ constrasting fortunes. While Isco played an integral role in the demolition job on Juventus, James couldn’t even make the bench. Both players like to play in an attacking role. Zidane clearly favours Isco with James reportedly heading for the door. Two world-class attacking midfielder but who do you think is better? It’s Isco V James.
Isco V James: The case for Isco
Zidane is proving that his genius also extends to the touch-line. Isco has become a crucial part of the Madrid team that has blown away all comers this season. The Spaniard’s stats this campaign are impressive. In just 30 domestic appearances (12 as a sub), Isco managed 10 goals and 8 assists. His passing success rate was 89.4%. While he also secured five man of the match awards.
Offensively, Isco contributed 1.2 key passes and 1.8 dribbles per match. In the Champions League, his average for key passes during a game was 1 while he upped his dribbling to 2.7 per match. Isco actually only played 386 minutes of Champions League football this season, and he managed one goal during these games.
While James’s season went from bad to diabolical, Isco’s trajectory went in the opposite direction. He ended up as a star player for Real and was a major reason they lifted the Champions League trophy for the second consecutive year.
Isco v James: the case for James
Perhaps the formation doesn’t suit James’ play? Or maybe Zidane doesn’t trust the defensive side of his game. It does appear that the Colombian magician is being criminally underused at the Bernabeu. In just 22 league appearances this season, 9 of those coming as a substitute, James racked up 8 goals and 6 assists. His passing completion was at 89.1%, his highest since he arrived at Real. He took 1.5 shots per game and most impressively, managed to contribute 2 key passes every match.
James did not light up the Champions League this season, playing a total of 318 minutes. The midfielder still managed to create 2 assists and have 1.7 key passes per match. His successful dribbles per game sat at an astonishingly low 0.3 which probably reflects his unsuitability for Zidane’s preferred formation.
When James scored that wonder goal at the 2014 World Cup, it wasn’t long before Madrid signed him. 13 goals plus 13 assists in just 29 games during his first season showed what a talent he is. James shouldn’t be judged on this wretched season. When comparing Isco and James, there can only be one winner.
What do you think? Zidane has clearly made up his mind already, but is Isco really better than James? Let us know by voting below:RUSSIAVILLE, Ind. (AP) _ Twenty-one youngsters whose parents don’t want them in class with AIDS victim Ryan White began attending an alternative school Tuesday in a former American Legion hall.
″The presence of Ryan makes me very nervous,″ said Chad Gabbard, 12, a seventh-grader who said he had two classes with Ryan at Western Middle School.
″I’m afraid if I go to (public) school - they don’t know much about AIDS - I might get it,″ said Jennifer Byers, whose father, Charles, is one of the alternative program’s organizers.
Byers and Dean Leicht established the Russiaville Home Study School for sixth- and seventh-grade pupils after a judge dissolved an injunction on April 10 and allowed Ryan to return to the seventh grade.
Ryan, who contracted acquired immune deficiency syndrome through blood products used to treat his hemophilia, is from Kokomo but is assigned to Western Middle School in rural Russiaville.
Health officials have said repeatedly that AIDS cannot be transmitted through casual contact, but some parents believe there is no guarantee against that.
Things were normal Tuesday at Western Middle School, said Principal Ronald Colby. ″I’m sure there’s some psychological or emotional thing for some of the kids because they may have a friend who is no longer in the school,″ he said.
″I feel a lot of compassion for those people,″ Colby said. ″I know some of those kids. And they are afraid.... I’m glad they have been able to help those children who were afraid.″
He said 20 of 364 students had been officially withdrawn from his school, but he had no concrete attendance figures for Tuesday. Six weeks remain on the current term.
Also Tuesday, attorney David Rosselot, who represents parents opposed to Ryan’s presence in the classroom, filed a notice of appeal asking Clinton Circuit Judge Jack R. O’Neill to stay the order returning Ryan to class.
Leicht said the alternative school was ″not a protest″ but ″a very positive action.″ He said the children will get more personal attention at the new school, which has two teachers, and the atmosphere will be more conducive to learning.
The cost and trouble ″is not much,″ said Leicht, ″if you weigh that against your kid contracting AIDS and possibly dying.″
The two instructors at the school have not been identified and reporters were not permitted inside the building, the former Floyd Marshall American Legion Post, located between an auto parts store and a pizza restaurant.
Joe DiLaura of the state Department of Education said nothing under state law prevented the parents from starting their school, as long as they ″receive equivalent instruction to what they would receive in the public schools.″
″We do not have any authority under the law to monitor the program,″ said DiLaura, adding that it was up to local officials to make sure attendance laws are followed.
Colby said teachers at his school have been helping the two instructors by providing information on programs that would be taught over the next six weeks. ″We’ll provide them with as much help as possible without serving as a tutorial for them,″ he said.
″We’re just interested in the kids’ education and well being,″ he said.
Ryan spent one day at school on Feb. 21 after a county health officer certified him healthy enough to return to school, ending a legal fight that began last summer when Western Schools Superintendent J.O. Smith said he would not allow the boy back in school.
But a temporary restraining order sought by the parents was issued later that day, keeping Ryan from attending until O’Neill overturned it.
AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is an affliction in which a virus attacks the body’s immune system, leaving victims susceptible to a wide variety of infections and cancers.
As of Monday, it had struck 19,818 people in the United States and claimed 10,408 lives, according to the government’s Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.Alberto Sicilia / MOSUL (IRAK)
[Mosul es la capital del ISIS. Fue en la Gran Mezquita de esta ciudad donde Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi proclamó el “Califato” en la primavera de 2014. Una coalición formada por el ejercito iraquí, tropas kurdas y grupos paramilitares chiíes lucha desde hace meses por recuperar Mosul.]
Durante las dos últimas semanas, ISIS ha ejecutado cada día a decenas de civiles que trataban de escapar del territorio bajo su control en la ciudad de Mosul.
Tras las ejecuciones, los cadáveres son mutilados y colgados en postes de electricidad como advertencia a quienes estén pensando en escapar.
Los barrios que controla ISIS en Mosul están ya completamente rodeados por unidades del ejército iraquí. Hace 6 meses que no entra comida allí. El avance de las tropas es extremadamente lento, ya que la Ciudad Vieja está llena de callejuelas en las que no pueden entrar los blindados. Los combates son a pie, cuerpo a cuerpo. Además, ISIS ha tenido meses para preparar trampas explosivas y posiciones de francotiradores.
ISIS no quiere que los civiles escapen porque les sirven como escudos humanos ante los bombardeos aéreos y las incursiones del ejército iraquí.
Los testimonios del horror llegan al mundo exterior gracias a personas que sí han conseguido escapar de Mosul bajo la oscuridad de la noche.
[En este link podéis encontrar todas las entradas de la serie, “La Batalla por Mosul”]
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FacebookTHE government, half way through its term, is now focusing on the next election. That was clear from the two political stories that dominated the rentrée: the cabinet reshuffle and the revocation of London Metropolitan University’s licence to teach foreign students. The first illustrates some sensible ways in which the government is reacting to voters’ concerns (see article). The second is a nasty piece of populism.
Hostility to immigrants is rising all over Europe, but opinion polls suggest it is worse in Britain than in any other rich country. David Cameron’s government came to power promising to cut net migration to “tens of thousands” by the next election. This was not only wrong, in terms of both Britain’s obligations and its economic needs, but also impractical, since last year the number was 216,000. Since many immigrants are entitled to entry—because, for instance, they come from the EU—turning away students, who account for about 40% of the total, is pretty much the only way of cutting numbers significantly. So Mr Cameron has had to curtail the right to work after graduation—especially tough for students from poor countries, who need to work to repay the median annual cost of courses of £11,200 ($17,800). And universities have been required to keep an ever-closer watch on foreign students to ensure that they are in Britain to study, not to work. That is the policy of which London Metropolitan (LMU) fell foul.
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What will happen to LMU is unclear, since it is taking the government to court. It blames its problems in part on the rules requiring universities to monitor students which, it says, have changed 14 times in the past three years. A report by a parliamentary committee, published this week but written before the revocation of LMU’s licence, describes the system as “poorly planned and ill thought out”. What will happen to LMU’s bona fide foreign students is equally uncertain. The government is helping them find places at other universities, but there is no guarantee they will get them, nor is any system in place to compensate them. They have been cruelly treated.
The many benefits of teaching foreigners
It is right for the government to keep a watch on colleges and universities to ensure that they are not being used as conduits for workers pretending to be students. When aspiring migrants outnumber society’s ability to absorb them, immigration should be restricted. But the desire for social stability needs to be balanced against other goods, such as prosperity.
In the wake of the economic crisis, the government is keen to foster industries other than financial services with export potential. Higher education is one. A government report estimates earnings from foreign students at around £7 billion a year, and suggests that could double by 2025. And there are far broader potential gains. Foreigners who study in Britain are likelier to create wealth in the country later on. Education is the most effective way of wielding the “soft power” that is voguish in foreign-policy circles—bringing people round to your point of view without training your guns on them, in other words. All that is jeopardised by using universities as an arm of the UK Border Agency. The job of universities is to teach students, not to police the country’s frontiers.
If Mr Cameron insists on capping migrant numbers, he should exempt students, who contribute not just to the country’s coffers but also to its intellectual wealth, and who stay for a limited time. Better still, adopt a more liberal approach, and remember how Britain first became great: through openness to the world, not through xenophobia and isolationism.Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that uses additional HTTP headers to tell a browser to let a web application running at one origin (domain) have permission to access selected resources from a server at a different origin. A web application executes a cross-origin HTTP request when it requests a resource that has a different origin (domain, protocol, and port) than its own origin.
An example of a cross-origin request: The frontend JavaScript code for a web application served from http://domain-a.com uses XMLHttpRequest to make a request for http://api.domain-b.com/data.json.
For security reasons, browsers restrict cross-origin HTTP requests initiated from within scripts. For example, XMLHttpRequest and the Fetch API follow the same-origin policy. This means that a web application using those APIs can only request HTTP resources from the same origin the application was loaded from, unless the response from the other origin includes the right CORS headers.
The CORS mechanism supports secure cross-origin requests and data transfers between browsers and web servers. Modern browsers use CORS in an API container such as XMLHttpRequest or Fetch to help mitigate the risks of cross-origin HTTP requests.
Who should read this article?
Everyone, really.
More specifically, this article is for web administrators, server developers, and front-end developers. Modern browsers handle the client-side components of cross-origin sharing, including headers and policy enforcement. But this new standard means servers have to handle new request and response headers. Another article for server developers discussing cross-origin sharing from a server perspective (with PHP code snippets) is supplementary reading.
What requests use CORS?
This cross-origin sharing standard is used to enable cross-site HTTP requests for:
This article is a general discussion of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing and includes a discussion of the necessary HTTP headers.
Functional overview
The Cross-Origin Resource Sharing standard works by adding new HTTP headers that allow servers to describe the set of origins that are permitted to read that information using a web browser. Additionally, for HTTP request methods that can cause side-effects on server's data (in particular, for HTTP methods other than GET, or for POST usage with certain MIME types), the specification mandates that browsers "preflight" the request, soliciting supported methods from the server with an HTTP OPTIONS request method, and then, upon "approval" from the server, sending the actual request with the actual HTTP request method. Servers can also notify clients whether "credentials" (including Cookies and HTTP Authentication data) should be sent with requests.
CORS failures result in errors, but for security reasons, specifics about what went wrong are not available to JavaScript code. All the code knows is that an error occurred. The only way to determine what specifically went wrong is to look at the browser's console for details.
Subsequent sections discuss scenarios, as well as provide a breakdown of the HTTP headers used.
Examples of access control scenarios
Here, we present three scenarios that illustrate how Cross-Origin Resource Sharing works. All of these examples use the XMLHttpRequest object, which can be used to make cross-site invocations in any supporting browser.
The JavaScript snippets included in these sections (and running instances of the server-code that correctly handles these cross-site requests) can be found "in action" at http://arunranga.com/examples/access-control/, and will work in browsers that support cross-site XMLHttpRequest.
A discussion of Cross-Origin Resource Sharing from a server perspective (including PHP code snippets) can be found in the Server-Side Access Control (CORS) article.
Simple requests
Some requests don’t trigger a CORS preflight. Those are called “simple requests” in this article, though the Fetch spec (which defines CORS) doesn’t use that term. A request that doesn’t trigger a CORS preflight—a so-called “simple request” — is one that meets all the following conditions:
Note: These are the same kinds of cross-site requests that web content can already issue, and no response data is released to the requester unless the server sends an appropriate header. Therefore, sites that prevent cross-site request forgery have nothing new to fear from HTTP access control.
For example, suppose web content on domain http://foo.example wishes to invoke content on domain http://bar.other. Code of this sort might be used within JavaScript deployed on foo.example:
const invocation = new XMLHttpRequest(); const url = 'http://bar.other/resources/public-data/'; function callOtherDomain() { if(invocation) { invocation.open('GET', url, true); invocation.onreadystatechange = handler; invocation.send(); } }
This will lead to a simple exchange between the client and the server, using CORS headers to handle the privileges:
Let us look at what the browser will send to the server in this case, and let's see how the server responds:
GET /resources/public-data/ HTTP/1.1 Host: bar.other User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081130 Minefield/3.1b3pre Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://foo.example/examples/access-control/simpleXSInvocation.html Origin: http://foo.example HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:23:53 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.61 Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: application/xml [XML Data]
Lines 1 - 10 are headers sent. The main HTTP request header of note here is the Origin header on line 10 above, which shows that the invocation is coming from content on the domain http://foo.example.
Lines 13 - 22 show the HTTP response from the server on domain http://bar.other. In response, the server sends back an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header, shown above in line 16. The use of the Origin header and of Access-Control-Allow-Origin show the access control protocol in its simplest use. In this case, the server responds with a Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * which means that the resource can be accessed by any domain in a cross-site manner. If the resource owners at http://bar.other wished to restrict access to the resource to requests only from http://foo.example, they would send back:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://foo.example
Note that now, no domain other than http://foo.example (identified by the ORIGIN: header in the request, as in line 10 above) can access the resource in a cross-site manner. The Access-Control-Allow-Origin header should contain the value that was sent in the request's Origin header.
Preflighted requests
Unlike “simple requests” (discussed above), "preflighted" requests first send an HTTP request by the OPTIONS method to the resource on the other domain, in order to determine whether the actual request is safe to send. Cross-site requests are preflighted like this since they may have implications to user data.
In particular, a request is preflighted if any of the following conditions is true:
The following is an example of a request that will be preflighted.
const invocation = new XMLHttpRequest(); const url = 'http://bar.other/resources/post-here/'; const body = '<?xml version="1.0"?><person><name>Arun</name></person>'; function callOtherDomain(){ if(invocation) { invocation.open('POST', url, true); invocation.setRequestHeader('X-PINGOTHER', 'pingpong'); invocation.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/xml'); invocation.onreadystatechange = handler; invocation.send(body); } }......
In the example above, line 3 creates an XML body to send with the POST request in line 8. Also, on line 9, a "customized" (non-standard) HTTP request header is set ( X-PINGOTHER: pingpong ). Such headers are not part of the HTTP/1.1 protocol, but are generally useful to web applications. Since the request uses a Content-Type of application/xml, and since a custom header is set, this request is preflighted.
(Note: as described below, the actual POST request does not include the Access-Control-Request-* headers; they are needed only for the OPTIONS request.)
Let's take a look at the full exchange between client and server. The first exchange is the preflight request/response:
OPTIONS /resources/post-here/ HTTP/1.1 Host: bar.other User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081130 Minefield/3.1b3pre Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Connection: keep-alive Origin: http://foo.example Access-Control-Request-Method: POST Access-Control-Request-Headers: X-PINGOTHER, Content-Type HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:15:39 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.61 (Unix) Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://foo.example Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST, GET, OPTIONS Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-PINGOTHER, Content-Type Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400 Vary: Accept-Encoding, Origin Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 0 Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/plain
Once the preflight request is complete, the real request is sent:
POST /resources/post-here/ HTTP/1.1 Host: bar.other User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081130 Minefield/3.1b3pre Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Connection: keep-alive X-PINGOTHER: pingpong Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8 Referer: http://foo.example/examples/preflightInvocation.html Content-Length: 55 Origin: http://foo.example Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cache <?xml version="1.0"?><person><name>Arun</name></person> HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:15:40 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.61 (Unix) Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://foo.example Vary: Accept-Encoding, Origin Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 235 Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=99 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/plain [Some GZIP'd payload]
Lines 1 - 12 above represent the preflight request with the OPTIONS method. The browser determines that it needs to send this based on the request parameters that the JavaScript code snippet above was using, so that the server can respond whether it is acceptable to send the request with the actual request parameters. OPTIONS is an HTTP/1.1 method that is used to determine further information from servers, and is a safe method, meaning that it can't be used to change the resource. Note that along with the OPTIONS request, two other request headers are sent (lines 10 and 11 respectively):
Access-Control-Request-Method: POST Access-Control-Request-Headers: X-PINGOTHER, Content-Type
The Access-Control-Request-Method header notifies the server as part of a preflight request that when the actual request is sent, it will be sent with a POST request method. The Access-Control-Request-Headers header notifies the server that when the actual request is sent, it will be sent with a X-PINGOTHER and Content-Type custom headers. The server now has an opportunity to determine whether it wishes to accept a request under these circumstances.
Lines 14 - 26 above are the response that the server sends back indicating that the request method ( POST ) and request headers ( X-PINGOTHER ) are acceptable. In particular, let's look at lines 17-20:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://foo.example Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST, GET Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-PINGOTHER, Content-Type Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400
The server responds with Access-Control-Allow-Methods and says that POST and GET are viable methods to query the resource in |
(No. 75) to round out a robust package.
Video: LAA@TEX: Trout doubles to plate Escobar in the 8th
Rangers
The Rangers' front office made a major trade at the Trade Deadline last July when they acquired Cole Hamels from the Phillies for four of Texas' top 15 prospects, including outfielder Nick Williams, catcher Jorge Alfaro, and right-handers Jake Thompson and Jerad Eickhoff. Trading for Trout would require more overall talent than that, but the Rangers certainly possess the system and aggressive mindset to pull off such a deal.
Jurickson Profar, who is fully healed from shoulder issues, and top prospect Nomar Mazara, who just won AL Rookie of the Month honors for April, would both need to be a part of any deal. Profar would fit perfectly in Anaheim, as the former shortstop's arm woes make him better suited for second base at this point, and he would pair nicely with Andrelton Simmons in the middle of the diamond.
To complete the deal, Texas would need to include a third piece, either Joey Gallo (Pipeline's No. 7 overall prospect) or outfielder Lewis Brinson (No. 13). The Rangers certainly have the talent, and the biggest obstacle here might be the fact that these two clubs are division rivals.
Video: KC@LAA: Trout connects for a two-run dinger to center
Dodgers
The Dodgers have put a premium on acquiring top young players through the Draft and internationally, and they have the depth necessary to make a deal for Trout.
Now, a Trout trade between the two L.A. teams would take significant nerve and patience on both sides to pull off, but the Angels could certainly deepen their roster and reload with an eye toward the 2018 free-agent class, which could include the likes of Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.
The Dodgers would need to include outfielder Joc Pederson -- who Trout would replace in center -- and Julio Urias -- the top left-handed pitching prospect in the game -- and one other upper-level prospect like righty Jose De Leon (L.A.'s No. 2 prospect) or Frankie Montas (No. 4), who could be an impact closer down the line. There's also Austin Barnes, a catcher who could probably start for a number of teams right now but is sitting in Triple-A behind Yasmani Grandal and A.J. Ellis.
It would be a heavy price for the Dodgers, but acquiring a superstar like Trout would be the baseball equivalent of the Lakers signing Shaquille O'Neal in 1996.
Jim Duquette is an analyst for MLB.com.Having got up close and personal with this icy Pole yesterday on the practice courts here at SW19, let me warn you, Andy Murray, I don't recommend it.
1 Number Naming tool has four different components, one of which related to bundling of icy pole sticks.
Using felt, icy pole sticks, dishcloths, discarded plastic containers, magazines and glue this boat is a cross between an Indonesian fishing boat and an Australian ferry,updated with GPS satellite,radar unit, beds, rest rooms and eating areas.
In the TV ad a boy bumps into an icy pole and gets his tongue stuck.
In these cold winter days spare a thought for those in the forty-or-so scientific missions clustered around the icy pole of Antarctica.
Other paintings in the bottle series, such as School Boy with an Icy Pole (not every popsicle is phallic, but.October 3, 2016
We’ve been working hard getting the Ecosystem update ready for Eco Alpha 5 and looking forward to getting feedback from our early backers.
We’ve decided to give it a few more weeks of polish and bug-fixing before we send it out, so we’re moving the Alpha 5 date to Oct 24th. Alpha 4 is available now at strangeloopgames.com/eco however, and all buyers will get all future versions (including a Steam key).
Here’s a look at a few of the new things coming in Eco Alpha 5. Dynamically growing plants: New biomes, including desert: Biomes are driven by the underlying ecosystem simulation, which is composed of dozens of individually simulated layers that interact: Biomes will actually change depending on the climate, and a world wracked with CO2 pollution will have sprawling deserts that take over farmlands.
We’re building ways to view and understand all the connections in this simulation, as doing so will be required in order to successfully build a civilization in the game without bringing the world to ruin. Beyond understanding it yourself, you’ll need to convince others of what is happening and the right course of action for the player-run governments to take. In Eco, climate is not just a scientific challenge but a social one.
Thanks to all our supporters and can’t wait to share what we’re working on in Alpha 5 and on towards beta and launch. Feel free to email with any questions or feedback.
— Team EcoHowdy, Tahalden here with the next installment of The 6 Design Values.
Ever heard of cookie-cutter builds? That’s exactly what Riot is trying to avoid by defining Meaningful Choice as a staple for League. All gameplay aspects have to adhere to this aspect of design: Champions, items, runes & masteries, team compositions, strategies, and so on.
The champion that truly embodies this particular design value is Kha’Zix, who has seen a lot of changes since he was first introduced in September 2012. Most of those changes deal with Kha’Zix’s evolutions, in order to balance them to be equally viable, but with different applications. Needless to say, this has not been an easy task.
Let’s dive in. Welcome to Design 101!
(Artwork by kkako )
Introduction
The second design value Riot holds dear is an essentially simple concept: it makes no sense to offer a choice for something that isn’t really a choice by virtue of being one-sided. If two options are offered and one is significantly better, typically no one will pick the other. While straightforward conceptually, achieving meaningful choice in a competitive game such as League of Legends is actually a very complex problem.
RPG players know the phenomenon of cookie-cutter builds. Spending skill points on a mastery tree in League is very similar to character customization in RPGs but are you truly customizing if you pull up Google to look for builds for every new character you play? Customization should always reflect either personal preference or a certain goal through which you want to achieve victory.
“A meaningful choice requires tradeoffs. If it’s a no-brainer, it’s not interesting. If nobody understands the consequences of their decision, it’s not engaging. If there’s a better choice rather than a different choice, players become followers rather than pioneers. We support new strategies by ensuring that tradeoffs exist for the game as a whole.” (source)
So then why offer choice? Would it not be easier to just lock down the options that make the most sense for each case? Well, choice is what makes the game fun. Without choice the game would be rather dull and it’s human nature to want to try things out, experiment, figure out optimal ways of playing a game.
In fact, choice defines a game. In League this is immediately obvious when you consider there’s 119 champions (Gnar-ly 120, in the next patch) to choose from.
But that choice must be meaningful. There’s a very interesting article over at Gamasutra.com discussing this topic in the context of RPGs. While vastly different in design and goals, MOBAs can take away a few perks from RPGs and their vast pool of techniques to offer meaningful choice.
Meaningful choice requires the following four components (source): Awareness – The player must be somewhat aware they are making a choice (perceive options) Gameplay Consequences – The choice must have consequences that are both gameplay and aesthetically oriented Reminders – The player must be reminded of the choice they made after they made it Permanence – The player cannot go back and undo their choice after exploring the consequences
These four components can be applied to almost anything in League that requires a player’s choice, but whether or not the implementation is successful in each and every case can spawn many articles such as this one. Let’s focus on one gameplay aspect that applies Meaningful Choice most obviously: the evolutions of Kha’Zix.
Meaningful Choice – Applied to Kha’Zix
As a reminder of what those four evolutions entail, as of Patch 4.9:
Q – Evolved Enlarged Claws: Additional bonus damage to isolated targets, as well as slightly increased range for auto attacks and Taste Their Fear. W – Evolved Spike Racks: Number of Void Spike projectiles increased to three and fired in a cone, as well as a more powerful slow. Grants vision of nonstealthed units for a short while. E – Evolved Wings: Drastically increases Leap range and resets the cooldown on kill or assist. R – Evolved Active Camouflage: Adds an additional charge to Void Assault and doubles stealth duration per charge.
Excellent! Kha’Zix gets to enhance his abilities by a significant margin. So what’s the catch? Well, players get to choose only three evolution meaning they’ll miss out on one of them.
As indicated in the tool tip for Void Assault evolving an ability is part of leveling up Void Assault, i.e. up to three times. Hence they are aware of having to make a choice and the options are clearly lined out. Evolutions enhance specific abilities and visually change Kha’Zix but lock out one enhancement. These are important gameplay consequences that can make a difference during a late-game team fight. Ever chose not to evolve Kha’Zix’ Leap? In that particular game, did you encounter a team fight that ended with every enemy team member at low health bars? Sucks to be reminded that you did not evolve Leap. There’s no save button in a game of League. Any evolution you choose is permanent.
As elaborately explained in the Gamasutra article, the third aspect of reminders actually concerns the emotional impact a choice might have on the long term in an RPG. This emotional aspect is less relevant in League but can still be related to the joy or pride you might feel when pulling off an amazing play.
Or… yes, the anger and rage players feel when things go bad (don’t use chat when that happens!)
The other components of making a choice meaningful are readily translatable from RPGs into League and it looks like Kha’Zix’ evolutions are a great example of that under the assumption that the choices are not one-sided. If one of the four evolutions is sub-par, it will always be left unevolved thereby defeating the point of offering the choice.
Ideally, each evolution grants Kha’Zix a new tool to adapt to the situation. If you start the game as Kha’Zix and already know which abilities you will evolve, something’s wrong with the offered choice.
Balancing Kha’Zix’ evolutions have proven to be quite a challenge and this showcases how difficult it is to successfully implement Meaningful Choice.
Change…is good
Kha’Zix is arguably the champion that’s seen the most balance changes since his introduction to the League without seeing his kit reworked entirely. His identity has swung from an assassin to a fighter and back a few times. While not necessarily a problem to allow Kha’Zix to fulfill both roles, it does become an issue when he can fulfill both at the same time.
Kha’Zix’ primary role has always been to assassinate key targets during skirmishes or before a team fight even starts. Prior to Patch 4.9, Kha’Zix’ Void Assault reduced incoming damage by 50% turning him into a tanky late-game fighter that could:
Get in.
Kill squishies.
Play hide and seek in the heat of the battle.
Kill tanks.
And survive.
Unhealthy pattern for the game. Like, really.
In the end, Kha’Zix saw the removal of damage reduction on Evolved Active Camouflage, and no more execution damage or additional damage to nonisolated targets on Evolved Enlarged Claws. As compensation, Evolved Spike Rack now slows more, grants vision of targets hit and does more damage to jungle monsters.
Interestingly this unhealthy pattern came to be because Riot tried to make Evolved Active Camouflage as viable as the alternative evolutions. They had been funneling power into the evolved ultimate from Evolved Spike Rack (and Void Spike with it) in earlier patches, because of the over-the-top poke potential of the latter. It took a while before players caught on to the different play style, but they eventually did and that caused the changes to Kha’Zix in Patch 4.9.
And so came to be the assassin-fighter pendulum of Kha’Zix because buffed/nerfed evolutions continuously pushed the champion into niches that he didn’t belong in. Riot‘s valiant attempt to introduce meaningful choice in a different way (and successfully at that!) did cause quite a bit of headaches for the live-balance team.
Much Variables, Such Balancing, Wow
With as many variables as League has, there are bound to be certain aspects that just boil down to being “cookie-cutter”. Any change aimed at tackling these particular aspects can trivialize other choices in the game, which makes this problem a tough nut to crack. Champions, itemization, masteries, runes… A huge amount of possible combinations exist and none of them can be the ultimate choice to achieve victory. If one combination starts to dominate, it must be dealt with.
This is especially relevant for the overall game plan a team is going to follow to achieve victory. Team compositions typically focus on a few gameplay aspects rather than being jack-of-all-trades; master-of-none. As an example, a poke composition focuses on sustained ranged skirmishes with the potential for disengaging a premature team fight. If the enemy team realizes the goal of your team composition during champion select, they can adapt their own composition to include hard engage and hence disallow your team to poke your enemies down before engaging in a team fight.
Live balance thus also means making sure there is no all-powerful strategy that trumps all others. Due to the competitive nature of League such a strategy would be the prime focus of every team. This makes balancing the game so complex: if a given strategy becomes too dominant in the scene, it has to be reined in, but not to such a degree that it becomes unviable. This requires designers to figure out the key aspects of a strategy for some targeted rebalancing.
A great example from the professional scene is the omnipresence of lane swaps in the early-game. If a match-up with the opposing bot-lane duo is too unfavorable, many teams choose to swap their bot-lane duo to the top lane. While definitely an interesting strategy with many far-going consequences, it should not be the only way to approach the early-game. Too few trade-offs existed for lane swapping, and Riot has been working carefully to correct for this absence. Among other changes, the early-game value of Dragon has gradually increased over the patches. If your marksman-support duo are top lane you cannot realistically contest an early Dragon.
Every choice must have a trade-off or it is simply not meaningful.
Perfect Balance vs. Perfect Imbalance
Ideally, no one choice holds an upper hand with respect to alternatives. Perfect balance would imply that any champion can be played into any composition regardless of macro strategy or item choices. Frankly, that would make for a rather boring game.
The beauty of a game like League is actually in its imbalance.
This includes the existence of various strategies and ways to approach a match, all of which have advantages and disadvantages. The balancing act game designers perform in this case is to achieve an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages for every possible choice such that none of the choices are better; just different. Over the years, Riot’s balancing has become increasingly more careful and calculated, which is why it can sometimes take a few patches before a solution is found for a given problem while also increasing/maintaining diversity.
This allows players to devise strategies on a macro-level, complemented by their strengths with certain champions on a micro-level. However, this is always balanced out by the plans of the opposing team and the champions they pick. If you make a choice in a match (does Kha’Zix go for jungle clear speed or for dueling power at level 6 — i.e. Evolved Enlarged Claws or Evolved Spike Racks?) there should always be a way for the opposing team to react to that choice (invade Kha’Zix’ jungle or not?). This leads to the next design value, counterplay, and will be discussed in the next article!
Conclusion
Meaningful Choice in League is about offering different options without being one-sided. Drawing from the design of RPGs — the ultimate games of free choice — these options should have four particular properties:
Players should be aware they are making the choice. There have to be significant gameplay consequences for every choice. Throughout a game players should be reminded of the choice they made. Choices are permanent : there is no undo button for everything!
Most gameplay aspects in League do try to include these properties. Kha’Zix’ evolution system is an excellent example of a well-implemented meaningful choice. However such systems are notoriously difficult to balance and can take a lot of iterations before they are optimized. The assassin-fighter pendulum that defined Kha’Zix’ role in League over the last two years illustrates this.
Meaningful Choice is what drives game balance in terms of diversity. If only one strategy is considered viable or if only a handful champions are considered top-tier the game would be rather stale and boring. Balancing a diverse game, however, is a complex exercise that should be approached with care, rather than by wildly swinging the nerf hammer.
Where do you think Riot implemented a great set of meaningful choices? Or where do you believe Riot could do better to ensure there’s no cookiecutter builds in League? Drop a comment below!
To end, a big shout-out to Denise for providing the amazing splash arts to these articles, and to Fridgecake and Valkyrie for their editing!
Music Discovery of The Day:Microsoft has been steadily expanding into the realm of hardware in recent years with the Surface, the Nokia handset deal and the Xbox One. Now, the tech giant is taking its first tentative steps into the world of lingerie.
The smart bra was revealed in a new paper (.PDF) from a team of five scientists at Microsoft Research, titled "Food and Mood: Just-in-Time Support for Emotional Eating." The idea is to measure your emotional state via sensors built into the bra, cross reference that with your feelings when overeating in the past, and send a warning to your smartphone if the system thinks you're likely to reach for the jar of cookies at any minute.
"This is the first study, that we are aware of, that makes use of wearable, mobile sensors for detecting emotions," the team wrote. "The bra form-factor was ideal because it allowed us to collect EKG [activity] near the heart."
The women participating in the study had to remove and recharge their bras every three to four hours, in what the researchers described as a "very tedious process." The results, which were uploaded to Microsoft's Azure Cloud, naturally, were fairly impressive: The bra could predict their emerging emotional states with roughly 75% accuracy. (The women reported their moods every hour in smartphone diaries.)
One thing the researchers haven't tested yet is whether an alert informing you that you're in an overeating mood — which the paper describes as an "appropriately timed, personalized intervention" — will actually make much of a difference.
Microsoft is pressing ahead with the device anyway. The team's next challenge, according to their paper, is how to build a robust, real-world system that "stands up to everyday challenges with regards to battery life, comfortability and suitability for both men and women."
That's right: Microsoft doesn't want to leave men out of the equation. The team explored whether boxers or briefs might do the trick, but found male underwear to be too far away from the heart. Perhaps we will see the rise of the Microsoft smart bra for men on a diet.
Image: MicrosoftThe National Institute of Standards and Technology is preparing to fund up to $10 million in projects geared at coming up with a better way to manage identities online than the traditional user name and password system.
Companies, universities, nonprofits and state and local government bodies, among others, are being invited to submit applications for a pilot program that will fund potential solutions.
“Study after study shows [that] our reliance on passwords continues to be one of the most commonly used vectors of attack from cyber criminals or fraudsters,” said Jeremy Grant, NIST’s senior executive adviser for identity management.
While there are other technologies used, such as smartcards or tokens that generate passwords, Grant said they typically haven’t caught on.
Proposals may suggest implementing new technology but will likely also have to consider different standards and policies, according to Grant.
“We’re not really hindered today by the lack of technology,” he said. “What we have not really seen [are]... policies and operating rules that would govern how the technology would be used.”
For instance, if a credential provider wanted to ensure a user could make the credential work at multiple businesses or government bodies, there are no rules that govern how that would work, Grant said.
According to the federal funding opportunity notice released by NIST, the agency is seeking “identity solutions” that improve privacy, are voluntary and interoperable and are cost-effective and easy to use. The idea is to test ideas or frameworks that are not available today.
NIST plans to fund five to eight awards, each of which is expected to range from $1.25 million to $2 million a year for periods as long as two years, according to the notice. Grant said actual proposals and funding could fall outside that range.
NIST is expecting companies and organizations to partner on the pilots.
Applicants will be expected to submit short proposals by March 7. The government will select finalists who will then be asked to submit full proposals, and Grant said NIST plans to select the winners this summer.
Andy Purdy, chief cyber strategist at Falls Church-based Computer Sciences Corp., said NIST’s identity management efforts — of which the pilot program is a part — is one of the key elements of the government’s cybersecurity vision.
He said CSC is taking a role in the effort to improve identity management online and will look at the pilot effort.wreaked havoc in Mumbai +
no early respite +
In the wake of warnings issued by #IMD people in Mumbai and areas around #Mumbai are advised to stay back home unless there is an emergency. — CMO Maharashtra (@CMOMaharashtra) 1504018023000
Urge the people of Mumbai and surrounding areas to stay safe & take all essential precautions in the wake of the heavy rain. — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) 1504009709000
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Torrential rain accompanied by strong windsand its adjoining areas on Tuesday. The heavy downpour disrupted rail, road and air services, uprooted trees, swamped homes, and led to heavy waterlogging in many parts of the city.People's woes were compounded by the high tide that prevented natural drainage of water into the sea. Meteorological department sources said Mumbai recorded copious rain of 65 mm in just three hours.And there seems to befrom this with the Met department predicting heavy rainfall for Mumbai and the surrounding areas over the next 2-3 days.People stranded at railway station amid heavy rain showers in Mumbai. (TOI photo)Charan Singh, Director, India Meteorological Department, said a 'Red' warning has been issued for the next 24 hours for the city and adjoining areas, indicating there could be very heavy rainfall."Areas such as Mumbai, south Gujarat, Konkan, Goa and west Vidarbha will get extremely heavy rainfall in the next 24 to 48 hours. It is a serious situation. We have issued necessary warnings to the departments concerned, including airports," AK Srivastav, head of climate monitoring and analysis at IMD Pune told PTI."The status of the weather system, which has brought heavy showers over the Mumbai region, has been upgraded from 'well marked low pressure' to 'depression'. It means it is set to bring more rains. Hence, we have predicted an extremely heavy rainfall," he said.As a precautionary measure, the Fadnavis government has advised people to stay indoors tomorrow.However the CMO made it clear that essential services and critical staff in the government will remain on duty on Wednesday.The state government also announced closure of all schools and colleges in Mumbai for tomorrow."With today's heavy downpour and predictions for heavier rainfall; schools, college authorities instructed to remained closed tomorrow," Maharashtra Education Minister Vinod Tawde tweeted.(TOI photo)In the morning, commuters bound for offices were stranded at several suburban stations.In absence of train services, major suburban stations were overcrowded. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus was chock-a-block with commuters anxiously waiting for trains to head home.Thousands of vehicles were stranded on arterial roads in Lower Parel, Dadar, Kurla, Andheri, Khar West, Ghatkopar, Sion and Hindmata areas that were under knee to waist deep water for several hours, many having broken down.Suburban rail services, the lifeline of the metropolis, were thrown out of gear.Train services on all three suburban railway lines-- Central, Western and Harbour lines--have been paralysed.Commuters were seen standing under knee deep water on the steps of buses in low lying areas like Parel. Traffic crawled at snail's pace on important roads, including the Eastern and Western Express Highway, Sion-Panvel highway and LBS Marg.Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis visited the State Disaster Management Control (SDMC) room and took stock of the situation.He said the situation was being monitored closely and necessary advisories would be issued from time to time.According to the civic body's disaster management cell, at least 20 incidents of trees fall and one of wall collapse were reported from across the city but there were no casualties.A Navy spokesperson said helicopters have been kept on standby to meet any eventuality and flood rescue teams and divers are also ready for deployment."Seaking 42 C ready for day/night Search and Rescue. Medical teams and Divers ready for immediate deployment," the spokesperson tweeted.Five flood rescue teams and two diving teams are also ready to render assistance at different locations across Mumbai, the spokesperson said.Prime Narendra Modi spoke to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on the situation arising due to incessant rains and promised all possible support from the Centre.The heavy rainfall affeted flight operations in a big way.Flight operations at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport saw delay and disruptions since morning.Till evening, the airport saw 10 flight cancellations, 23 go-arounds and 7 diversions, airport sources said.Aircraft stopped landing at the city airport after 4pm but were taking off, airport officials said.While the main runway of the the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Aiport (CSIA) is operational, the nearby aerodrome at Juhu has been shut as it is very close to the Arabian Sea, sources said.The airport officials said on an average all the flights were delayed by over 45 minutes."Heavy rain and strong winds have drastically reduced visibility leading to diversions and go arounds even though the main runway is open," a Mumbai airport source told PTI.Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis ordered suspension of toll collection from vehicles at the entry points of the rain-pounded city and at the Bandra-Worli Sealink till the situation normalised."The chief minister has instructed that toll collection should be suspended at all the entry points of Mumbai and at the sealink until the situation in the city gets back to normal," an official from the chief minister's office said.Vehicles coming from Goa and Pune have been advised not to enter the rain-battered Mumbai as a precautionary measure to avoid a grid-locked situation in the megapolis, the police said.The Navi Mumbai Police has issued directives to its traffic wing to send back cars, buses, trucks and other heavy vehicles and not allow them until the traffic situation in Mumbai normalises.(With inputs from PTI, ANI)Tournament Handbook
This page details the standardized rules and conduct for competitive TowerFall play. Tournament organizers may make any exceptions to these rules though they are advised to detail specific changes and conditions for their event ahead of time so that competitors may be prepared.
Stations
Each play station must be equipped for competitive play, preferably running the most up-to-date available version of the game with all content unlocked (see the Secrets page for an Unlock All code). Gameplay can be on either a PlayStation 4 console or PC setup; the Ouya version is now superseded and not recommended for competitive play.
Controllers may be supplied, though accommodations should be made for competitors who wish to use their own personally supplied controller with exceptions made at the tournament organizer's discretion.
All stations should run the game without modifications and using the default settings with the following exceptions:
Hold to Pause set to On
set to On Gamepad Rumble generally disabled
Pools, Brackets and Seeding
Brackets can be easily created and maintained online using Challonge.
In tournaments players compete in sets. A set is comprised of x number of in-game matches, which in turn are comprised of y number of in-game rounds. Tournament sets are generally played best of 3 matches in pools and pre-finals and best of 5 matches in finals, though the number of matches may be adjusted according to time constraints.
Pools can be utilized if there is a large number of players at a single tournament. Players are separated into one or more even sized pools where they play round robin sets against each other (every player will face every other player in their pool once). Multiple rounds of pools may be utilized. When all the pools sets are finished players are seeded into a double elimination bracket based on rank determined by the number of sets they won. Pools can be used to eliminate the lowest ranking before entering into the main bracket play.
In bracketed tournaments without pools, players may be seeded randomly or according to preexisting league standings.
Double elimination is the most preferred bracket style which sees all players seeded into a winner's bracket to be moved to the loser's bracket on their first defeat, and a subsequent defeat in the loser's bracket resulting in elimination from the tournament.
Grand finals sees the overall victor of the winner's bracket compete against the remaining victor of the loser's bracket in 2 sets. If the player from the winner's bracket wins the first set then they are declared the champion with the loser's bracket player eliminated due to double elimination rules. Conversely, the player from the loser's bracket must win the first grand finals set, knocking the winner's bracket player into the loser's bracket (known as "resetting the bracket") after which the final set is played to determine the champion.
Game Rules
Standard tournament play uses only the Tournament Rules and Team Tournament Rules variants. These variants enable No Autobalance and Symmetrical Treasure, along with Team Revive in the case of Team Tournament Rules.
1 vs. 1 matches are played in Last Man Standing with the Tournament Rules variant enabled.
2 vs. 2 matches are played in Team Deathmatch with the Team Tournament Rules variant enabled.
Free-for-all matches of 3-4 players are not typically employed in competitive play, though they may be used in pools or in more casual round robin tournaments with points awarded to each player based on their end of match placement. Free-for-all matches are played in Headhunters with the Tournament Rules variant enabled.
The in-game match length (number of rounds) can vary according to time constraints, though Standard Match length is most often applied.
Stage Selection
Stage selection for the first match of a set is typically random, with successive stage selection (also known as counterpicking) given to the losing player(s) of the previous match. Free-for-all play may be limited to random only for the sake of expedience, or give stage selection to the lowest ranking player of each round.
Tournament organizers are free to specify additional stage selection rules which may include the following among others:
A subset of starter stages
Stage striking rules
Outright banning certain stages
Allowing specified custom stages
Limiting the number of times a given stage may be selected per game
Rules specific for Cataclysm selection, such as limiting it to counterpicks only, or using a predetermined seed as standard
Note that stages can be eliminated from the random selection pool by pressing the Left Trigger button when highlighted. This may be useful as indication of stage striking or banning. All random select eliminations persist until the game is reset and may be manually reset to default by pressing the Left Trigger button on the Random Stage icon.
Archer Selection
All archers and their alternates are legal as standard. In the event that two or more players wish to play as the same color archer it is common courtesy to have all conflicting players choose a different color archer in order to minimize character confusion.
Competitor's Clause
Exceptions to the game rules and settings may be made if all players in a match agree unanimously. Such exceptions defer to the tournament organizer's discretion as for final rulings.Yesterday, in the midst of hotly defending the idea of Vince Vaughn in True Detective, we wondered when we would hear news about actresses being considered for a lead role. Well, today is that day. The Wrap is not only reporting that Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men, Top of the Lake) is being considered for the female lead, but that they also have an informative breakdown of the main characters who will try to make us forget all about Rust Cohle and Marty Hart. The information here lines up with creator Nic Pizzolatto’s earlier claim that his cast “ballooned a little bit. I would say there are four central roles.” Here are the character descriptions and the actors currently in the running for the roles.
Ani Bezzerides (Elisabeth Moss): Monterey sheriff with a troubled past that has led her to a gambling and alcohol addiction. Many people are drawing comparisons to Moss’s role in the under-the-radar Sundance series Top of the Lake. If you’ve only seen Moss play Peggy Olsen, you can watch Top of the Lake for yourself on Netflix to get a better sense of her range.
Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell): Another damaged detective character. This could give Farrell a chance to go way, way out there.
Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch): Possibly our third detective, a young, handsome veteran who is, no doubt, also quite damaged. If this is Kitsch doing his Heathcliff of Texas Friday Night Lights thing filtered through Lone Survivor, we’re in for a treat.
Frank Semyon (Vince Vaughn): The central antagonist. Not a murderer, per se, but a shady businessman and former thug who is trying to use his influence with local politicians to put a railway in place between Northern and Southern California and reap the financial benefits. The California setting and the idea of a businessman using public works for corrupt financial gain calls to mind John Huston’s great villainous character in Chinatown. The idea of Vaughn using his patented charm offensive for nefarious purposes is downright delicious.
Though it’s hard to imagine Season 2 of True Detective topping Season 1 (which had the advantage of premiering without such heavy expectations) this rundown is very alluring. It also seems clear that Pizzolatto took some of the gender-specific criticism levied at the first season to heart. Not just because he’s eyeballing Moss for a lead role, but because the victim this time around won’t be a luridly naked female. It might be a luridly naked male: Ben Caspar, the corrupt city manager who was embroiled in Semyon’s transportation deal, is found dead with Satanic symbols etched on his chest. Yes, get ready for the next season to kick off with an image as disturbing as the one that launched the series, and for the next “Who Is the Yellow King?” mystery to dominate your life sometime next year.2015 film directed by S. Shankar
I is a 2015 Indian Tamil-language film written and directed by S. Shankar. Produced and distributed by V. Ravichandran under his production company, Aascar Films, the film features Vikram, Amy Jackson and Suresh Gopi in lead roles while Upen Patel, Santhanam and Ramkumar Ganesan portray pivotal roles. The film tells the story of a body builder turned supermodel, played by Vikram, who after being deformed, exacts revenge upon those who were responsible for his predicament.[4] The soundtrack and film score were composed by A. R. Rahman.
Production design was handled by T. Muthuraj. P. C. Sreeram was the film's cinematographer and editing was done by Anthony. The visual effects were designed by V. Srinivas Mohan through Rising Sun Pictures. Weta Workshop had worked on the digital and prosthetic make-up and background arts for the film. Principal photography commenced on 15 July 2012. The filming lasted for two years and eight months, during which shooting was done extensively in China.[5] Further schedules were filmed in locations in Chennai, Bangkok, Jodhpur, Kodaikanal, Pollachi, Bangalore and Mysore. The climax train fight scene was shot in the railway stations of Chengalpattu, Odisha and Vishakhapatnam. The film was dubbed and released in Telugu and Hindi along with the Tamil version.[6][7]
I was released on 14 January 2015; Critics praised Vikram's performance, the technical aspects of the film - especially the costume design and makeup, and A.R. Rahman's soundtrack and score but criticised the 'wafer-thin' writing and screenplay and the film's 188 minute running time.[8] However, the film was a commercial success, grossing ₹2.25 billion (US$31 million) worldwide, becoming the fifth-highest grossing Tamil film and Vikram's highest-grossing film at the time. Vikram won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor – Tamil for the movie.[9]
Plot
Lingesan (Vikram) is a bodybuilder from Chennai, whose main ambition is to become Mr. India. He wins the title of Mr. Tamil Nadu, which gives him direct entry to the Mr. India pageant. He is infatuated with Diya (Amy Jackson), a leading supermodel. Diya is soon blacklisted, with all her advertisement film contracts cancelled by John (Upen Patel), her co-star in all her advertisements, after she constantly rejected his sexual advances. To save her career, Diya decides to replace John with Lingesan, whom she had earlier met at one of her shoots, as her co-star for her next advertisement. The shooting is to take place in China at the same time when the Mr. India paegant is to take place |
that fire is also under investigation.
Follow @CBSBaltimore on Twitter and like WJZ-TV | CBS Baltimore on FacebookFinally! Baseball is back! I am pumped about this series, mostly just because baseball is finally returning, but also because this will be a good test to see just how ready the Dbacks are, playing the defending World Champs and all. So, let us begin...
Injury Report
The Giants are without Hunter Pence, who broke his forearm on March 5. He will be back in a couple of weeks. Centerfielder Angel Pagan's status is also up in the air, as he has been experiencing some back spasms. He returned to Cactus League action on March 25 though, so he should be good to go.
Diamondbacks' catcher Oscar Hernandez will start off the season on the DL with a hamate bone fracture in his left hand. Reliever Matt Stites is also expected to miss this series, with soreness in his right arm.
Offense
The Diamondbacks offense, as you probably know, is filled with question marks. The only sure things we have are Goldy and Pollock, and everybody else is a toss up. Will Trumbo find his power? Will Owings' shoulder continue to bother him? How will left field do? Can Nick Ahmed hit? We're about to find out the answer to these questions. I'm predicting that this offense fares well this series, mostly due to the fact that beyond Bumgarner, everyone in the rotation has big red flags.
Looking at the Giants lineup, there isn't a whole lot that scares me. I've heard that they have a catcher who is pretty good, by the name of Buster Posey, but that's where my fear stops. The losses of their two big power bats to free agency (Pablo Sandoval and Michael Morse), and the loss of Hunter Pence to injury certainly didn't help them in the home run department, and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't hit one out over the course of these three games. The Giants will need to accumulate a lot of hits from the likes of second baseman Joe Panik (2014 OBP of.343), third baseman Casey McGehee (2014 OBP of.355) and many others to have a chance in this series.
Pitching
Bullpen Status
Both 'pens are at full strength, as this is the first game of the season.
Pitching Matchups
Game 1: Josh Collmenter, RHP (2014 stats: 11-9, 3.46 ERA, 1.13 WHIP) vs Madison Bumgarner, LHP (2014 stats: 18-10, 2.98 ERA, 1.09 WHIP)
Mad Bum had a huge 2014 season, leading the Giants to their third world series title in 5 years. Jerk. His heroics late in the season and in the postseason led to people throwing his name around with a certain Dodgers pitcher. The good news for Dbacks fans is that April was his 2nd worst month last month, where he posted a 3.74 ERA. That's about the only good news I can give you. The fact is, this guy is good, really good. Josh Collmenter on the other hand, while good, is not Madison Bumgarner. Last year Josh was one of the Dbacks biggest surprises, going from long reliever to the top of the rotation. He features a cut fastball hovering around 87 MPH, a nasty changeup, and a curve which is still developing. The fact he is a fly ball pitcher should help him against the Giants, as they don't have anyone with much power. I'm expecting a pitching duel in this one.
Game 2: Rubby de la Rosa, RHP (2014 stats: 4-8, 4.43 ERA, 1.49 WHIP) vs Ryan Vogelsong, RHP (2014 stats: 8-13, 4.00 ERA, 1.28 WHIP)
de la Rosa is one of the most unpredictable guys out there. He's got some great stuff, with a fastball which can get into the mid-high 90s, a slider, and a changeup. His problem throughout the years has been control, with a 3.1 walks per 9 innings last year. If he can throw his pitches accurately, the Giants should have a hard time getting anything going. If he's wild, this will be a walk fest. Vogelsong was very meh last year. He went out there, ate up some innings, but was nothing special. He was actually supposed to start the year in the bullpen, but due to some injuries he moved into the 2 spot. Don't expect much from him.
Game 3: Jeremy Hellickson, RHP (2014 stats: 1-5, 4.52 ERA, 1.45 WHIP) vs TBD
Hellickson is coming off a rough 2014. He missed the first 91 games due to elbow surgery, and was terrible in 13 starts after returning. His primary pitches are his fastball, which hovers around 90 MPH, and his changeup. If he is not locating his pitches well, this will be a long game. As with game 2, there is nobody currently listed to pitch for the Giants.
The X-Factors
For the Dbacks, you could make the case for many guys as the x-factor. For this series, I'd say it's Mark Trumbo. This is mainly because of his great power. Sorry in advance for using this cliche, but he has the ability to change a game with one swing. The guy can rake.
I'm gonna go with Brandon Belt as the Giants' x-factor. Other than Posey, he is pretty much the only guy with any pop in his bat. In fact, Belt and Posey are the only guys on the Giants roster who hit 10 homers last year. He will need to find that pop, or else this series could consist of very few runs for the Giants.
My Prediction
The Dbacks start off the season right and take 2 of 3 from the Giants. The Giants score a total of 8 runs or less this series.(Photo: EssG; Edited: JR / TO)Do you support Truthout’s reporting and analysis? Click here to help fund it this week!
While trying to survive (as opposed to thrive) is the new normal, increasing numbers of people still debate the nature of happiness. I am not a gloomy person, but I don’t spend a single minute working at being happy. Nonetheless, I understand the impulse, which has become a national obsession, the central topic in a plethora of best-selling books, the darling of big business and the media and a boon for motivational speakers and self-help entrepreneurs. In a world as complicated and disheartening as ours, who wouldn’t want to have a method for feeling better?
The problem is that this happiness quest is, at its core, an inherently solipsistic and hedonistic enterprise – me feeling better. I like feeling good as much as the next person, but the pursuit of happiness alone is a narrow and ultimately unrewarding vision of a full human life – as even Martin Seligman, the founder of the positive psychology movement that helped spawn the happiness industry – now admits. “Happiness” is “so overused,” he writes in his book, “Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being,” “that it has become almost meaningless. It is an unworkable term for science, or any other practical goal such as education, therapy, public policy, or just changing yourself.”
I couldn’t agree more.
In “Flourish,” Seligman seeks a better alternative. There are eight elements in his new model of well-being: happiness, flow, meaning, love, gratitude, accomplishment, growth and better relationships. We flourish, according to Seligman, by increasing – and having more of – each element. Seligman has brought this model to elementary schools, the mental health community and the Army. His goal is to “build well-being on the planet.”
I’m glad that Seligman now recognizes that happiness is a flawed foundation for a meaningful theory and has revised his original model. Still, his “new” view of flourishing is based on one of the core assumptions of his work on happiness, namely a relentless privileging of positive emotions and an aversion to, and consequently an avoidance of, negative ones. This is fatal to his theory of thriving, his strategies for helping us flourish and the foundation of the positive psychology movement. Seligman’s one-sided emphasis on positive emotions and relationships ignores, if not outright neglects, vital elements: the inescapable challenges, suffering and deprivation that periodically afflict us all and the darker aspects of human beings and their relationships. The best piece of advice to come out of the positive psychology movement, according to one of its founders, Christopher Peterson, is the importance of strong relationships. Yet, you can’t have a psychology of intimacy – clearly a central ingredient in a theory of flourishing – while neglecting, as Seligman and most positive psychologists do, the challenges people in relationships encounter, including conflict, anger and sadness.
Nietzsche recognized that every philosophy is disguised autobiography; a “personal confession … and an unconscious memoir.” I think this provides a clue as to why Seligman remains stuck in his misguided model. The patriarch of a movement devoted to feeling better, Seligman is, by his own admission in “Authentic Happiness,” a “dyed-in-the-wool pessimist,” a “grouch,” even a “walking nimbus cloud.”
Seligman comes by his pessimism and grumpiness honestly. He tells us that he idealized his strong, brilliant father, who suffered a stroke at the “height of his powers” when Seligman was thirteen and became “permanently paralyzed” and “physically and emotionally helpless” for the rest of his life. I imagine that young Seligman identified with his father and felt devastated and helpless. I also wonder if his subsequent theories of happiness, and now flourishing, were built on the faulty foundation of a flight from suffering.
The subject of Seligman’s early research in the 1960s at the University of Pennsylvania was “learned helplessness,” the passivity induced by feeling that your actions are futile, that nothing you do matters. Seligman and Dr. Steven Maier exposed dogs to, in Seligman’s words, “inescapable shocks.” The vulnerable pups – perhaps like Seligman in the face of his father’s illness – felt depressed and helpless in relation to the trauma they experienced and couldn’t escape.
“I have been a psychotherapist for thirty-five years,” writes Seligman. “I am not a very good one – I confess that I’m better at talking than listening.” The approach Seligman uses to attempt to manage his learned helplessness and to help other people flourish – cognitive-behavioral theories and techniques – focuses on changing faulty and catastrophic thinking rather than understanding and coming to grips with the disturbing feelings that give rise to such thinking. If practicing psychotherapy for over three decades has taught me one thing, it’s this: doing an end run around one’s vulnerability and pain – instead of going into it and healing it – leaves it relatively untouched, creating what Freud called “the return of the repressed.” In other words, if you don’t deal with your feelings, they will deal with you.
Neglecting human vulnerability and self-blindness not only provides a lopsided view of life; it profoundly compromises the very strategies Seligman and other proponents of positive psychology, like Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of “The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want,” recommend for change. It’s life enhancing to focus on the positive potential we all have, to identify and increase our character strengths, to celebrate what went well in our day, savor good memories, keep gratitude journals and perform unexpected acts of kindness, as positive psychologists propose. But without also addressing scary and troubling feelings and confronting our remarkable capacity for self-deception and our hidden strategies for self-protection, even the most earnest “happiness interventions” will be undermined. Seligman illustrates this when he recounts how his daughter still complains about his negativity. As does Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project,” who writes: “I am happy, but I’m not as happy as I should be.” She admits that despite her yearlong “happiness project,” with its charts and resolutions, in “some ways I’d made myself less happy.” Focusing on the positive by itself will not heal deeper psychological wounds; they must be addressed on an emotional and somatic level. And this is why I am doubtful the Army resilience training program will succeed.
There is another way of thinking about what helps people thrive. Sane living involves giving full credence to negative and positive emotions – sadness and joy, shame and compassion, fear and resilience. We flourish when we cultivate our potential without losing sight of our vulnerability. The two objectives should neither be separated, as they were in the first hundred years of Western psychology, nor pursued one-sidedly, as Seligman, and many of his colleagues, do.
Flourishing involves how we live more than what we feel: engaging life whole-heartedly – which includes responding to adversity to the best of our ability – and treating other people honorably. We thrive when we realize the best within ourselves, while enriching the lives of other people.
The first stage of flourishing is to cultivate clarity and equanimity in the face of the frenzied pace of life and the digital overload that threatens to bury us alive. I call this expanding inner space. Reading, meditation and music are my favorite ways of getting there, but your entry might be through exercise, walking in nature or gardening. When we have a more centered and spacious perspective, we can access our untapped capacity for creativity, appreciate the beauty in the world and imaginatively address the challenges that confront us.
Sometimes we must confront painful options or make difficult choices. On occasion, flourishing is playing the hand we are dealt as well as we can, given imperfect and even undesirable circumstances such as family crises or financial distress, job loss or illness – the new reality for increasing numbers of people.
Flourishing is different from happiness and it doesn’t always feel good. Behavior that might not immediately make us happy – scrubbing a sick person’s bathroom or diving into a freezing lake to save a drowning dog – ultimately enriches us and the world. Many of our most painful experiences – unrequited love, loss of a beloved relative, professional failure – clarify our values, sharpen our determination and deepen our compassion. After his tragic accident, the actor Christopher Reeve said, “I didn’t appreciate others nearly as much as I do now.”
When we expand inner space we are also in a better position to discover our passions and purposes – what we cherish and what gives our lives meaning. Values are crucial to flourishing – they define the ideas and beliefs we care about to which we are committed. Embodying our highest ideals and having moral accountability are crucial to my vision of flourishing. Seligman emphasizes the importance of seeking meaning and purpose by belonging to and serving something bigger than ourselves, but unless we integrate that quest with ethics and life-affirming values – another topic not included in Seligman’s conception of flourishing – there is a danger that one’s purpose could be aligned with unethical enterprises, as scandals in American politics and corporations demonstrate on nearly a daily basis.
Seligman’s work on learned helplessness “heavily influenced the psychological aspects of the Bush administration’s torture program,” wrote Jason Leopold in Truthout in 2011. While Seligman denies condoning torture, in May 2002 – when the CIA began to employ brutal torture techniques against several detainees – Seligman spoke about his learned helplessness experiments at one of the US military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ) schools, (as Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker, July 11, 2005). Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell – who have been called the “architects of the Bush administration torture program” – were in attendance. Five months earlier, Seligman had met at his home with Mitchell and the CIA’s then-Director of Behavioral Science Research, Kirk Hubbard. Seligman claims he was completely unaware his theory of learned helplessness was used against detainees and he denied ever engaging in discussions about the torture program with Mitchell, Jessen or any Bush administration official. “There is no way I could ethically give trauma to other human beings,” Seligman wrote in 1990. Still, after 9/11, his theories were used to devise new types of torture for suspected terrorists.
In 2009, Seligman’s Positive Psychology Center received a “$31 million, no bid, sole-source Army contract” for training service members “to be psychologically resilient and resist ‘catastrophizing’ traumatic events” (Leopold, Truthout, January 5, 2011). Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, notes Jim Rendon in an article in the March 25, 2012, New York Times Magazine, was “designed for quick implementation, not research,” and has not been tested by even one pilot or study. Individual soldiers and civil rights groups have voiced growing concern about the constitutionality and efficacy of these initiatives. Because it is based on dubious assumptions of positive psychology, I am doubtful the Army resilience training program will succeed.
As with his experimentation with dogs, Seligman’s complicity in questionable ethical activities raises troubling concerns about a theory that purports to illuminate and embody human flourishing.
The final aspect of flourishing is treating people (and animals) more humanely and deepening friendships and intimacy. Lasting intimacy – a close and enduring relationship with someone we love who cherishes us – is an indispensable source of strength, resilience and hope. Loving other people and caring for ourselves are not separate and opposed; they are inextricably linked. Genuine self-care is the foundation of intimacy and intimacy is the culmination of self-care. Such intimacy widens our horizon of possibility, deepens our humanity and helps us flourish, which is a priceless gift to the world.
The quest to live a good life has a venerable history. It’s the central concern of Aristotle, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, the prophets, Montaigne, Maslow and now positive psychologists. Such a focus on humans at their best is a useful corrective to Western psychology’s imbalanced emphasis on pathology and illness in its first hundred years. But the conception of flourishing we need in the twentieth-first century must embrace, not ignore, the full spectrum of human experience, from how we live to what we feel, to loving deeply and living ethically.
Now that would make me happy.Flintlock is a general term for any firearm that uses a flint striking ignition mechanism. The term may also apply to a particular form of the mechanism itself, also known as the true flintlock, that was introduced in the early 17th century, and rapidly replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the matchlock, the wheellock, and the earlier flintlock mechanisms.
The true flintlock continued to be in common use for over two centuries, replaced by percussion cap and, later, the cartridge-based systems in the early-to-mid 19th century. Although long superseded by modern firearms, flintlock weapons enjoy continuing popularity with black-powder shooting enthusiasts.
History [ edit ]
An English gentleman circa 1750 with his flintlock muzzle-loading sporting rifle, in a painting by Thomas Gainsborough
French court gunsmith Marin le Bourgeoys made a firearm incorporating a flintlock mechanism for King Louis XIII shortly after his accession to the throne in 1610.[1] However, firearms using some form of flint ignition mechanism had already been in use for over half a century. The development of firearm lock mechanisms had proceeded from the matchlock to wheellock to the earlier flintlocks (snaplock, snaphance, miquelet, and doglock) in the previous two centuries, and each type had been an improvement, contributing design features to later firearms which were useful. Le Bourgeoys fitted these various features together to create what became known as the flintlock or true flintlock.
The new flintlock system quickly became popular, and was known and used in various forms throughout Europe by 1630, although older flintlock systems continued to be used for some time. Examples of early flintlock muskets can be seen in the painting "Marie de' Medici as Bellona" by Rubens (painted around 1622-25).
Various breech-loading flintlocks were developed starting around 1650. The most popular action has a barrel which was unscrewed from the rest of the gun. Obviously this is more practical on pistols because of the shorter barrel length. This type is known as a Queen Anne pistol because it was during her reign that it became popular (although it was actually introduced in the reign of King William III). Another type has a removable screw plug set into the side or top or bottom of the barrel. A large number of sporting rifles were made with this system, as it allowed easier loading compared with muzzle loading with a tight fitting bullet and patch.
One of the more successful was the system built by Isaac de la Chaumette starting in 1704. The barrel could be opened by 3 revolutions of the triggerguard, to which it was attached. The plug stayed attached to the barrel and the ball and powder were loaded from the top. This system was improved in the 1770s by Colonel Patrick Ferguson and 100 experimental rifles used in the American Revolutionary War. The only two flintlock breechloaders to be produced in quantity were the Hall and the Crespi. The first was invented by John Hall and patented c. 1817.[2] It was issued to the U.S. Army as the Model 1819 Hall Breech Loading Rifle.[3]
The Hall rifles and carbines were loaded using a combustible paper cartridge inserted into the upward tilting breechblock. Hall rifles leaked gas from the often poorly fitted action. The same problem affected the muskets produced by Giuseppe Crespi and adopted by the Austrian Army in 1771. Nonetheless, the Crespi System was experimented with by the British during the Napoleonic Wars, and percussion Halls guns saw service in the American Civil War.
Flintlock weapons were commonly used until the mid 19th century, when they were replaced by percussion lock systems. Even though they have long been considered obsolete, flintlock weapons continue to be produced today by manufacturers such as Pedersoli, Euroarms, and Armi Sport. Not only are these weapons used by modern re-enactors, but they are also used for hunting, as many U.S. states have dedicated hunting seasons for black-powder weapons, which includes both flintlock and percussion lock weapons.
Subtypes [ edit ]
Flintlocks may be any type of small arm: long gun or pistol, smoothbore or rifle, muzzleloader or breechloader.
Pistols [ edit ]
French flintlock pistol circa 1790–1795.
A flintlock pistol circa 1700–1730
Ketland brass barrel smooth bore pistol common in Colonial America.
Flintlock pistols were used as self-defense weapons and as a military arm. Their effective range was short, and they were frequently used as an adjunct to a sword or cutlass. Pistols were usually smoothbore although some rifled pistols were produced.
Flintlock pistols came in a variety of sizes and styles which often overlap and are not well defined, many of the names we use having been applied by collectors and dealers long after the pistols were obsolete. The smallest were less than 6 inches (15 cm) long and the largest were over 20 inches (51 cm). From around the beginning of the 1700s the larger pistols got shorter, so that by the late 1700s the largest would be more like 16 inches (41 cm) long. The smallest would fit into a typical pocket or a hand warming muff and could easily be carried by women.
The largest sizes would be carried in holsters across a horse's back just ahead of the saddle. In-between sizes included the coat pocket pistol, or coat pistol, which would fit into a large pocket, the coach pistol, meant to be carried on or under the seat of a coach in a bag or box, and belt pistols, sometimes equipped with a hook designed to slip over a belt or waistband. Larger pistols were called horse pistols. Arguably the most elegant of the pistol designs was the Queen Anne pistol, which was made in all sizes.
Probably the high point of the mechanical development of the flintlock pistol was the British duelling pistol; it was highly reliable, water resistant and accurate. External decoration was minimal but craftsmanship was evident, and the internal works were often finished to a higher degree of craftsmanship than the exterior. Dueling pistols were the size of the horse pistols of the late 1700s, around 16 inches (41 cm) long and were usually sold in pairs along with accessories in a wooden case with compartments for each piece.
Muskets [ edit ]
Flintlock mechanism
Flintlock muskets were the mainstay of European armies between 1660 and 1840. A musket was a muzzle-loading smoothbore long gun that was loaded with a round lead ball, but it could also be loaded with shot for hunting. For military purposes, the weapon was loaded with ball, or a mixture of ball with several large shot (called buck and ball), and had an effective range of about 75 to 100 metres. Smoothbore weapons that were designed for hunting birds were called "fowlers." Flintlock muskets tended to be of large caliber and usually had no choke, allowing them to fire full-caliber balls.
Military flintlock muskets tended to weigh approximately ten pounds, as heavier weapons were found to be too cumbersome, and lighter weapons were not rugged or heavy enough to be used in hand-to-hand combat. They were usually designed to be fitted with a bayonet. On flintlocks, the bayonet played a much more significant role, often accounting for a third or more of all battlefield casualties. This is a rather controversial topic in history though, given that casualties list from several battles in the 18th century showed that less than 2% of wounds were caused by bayonets.[4]
Antoine-Henri Jomini, a celebrated military author of the Napoleonic period who served in numerous armies during that period, stated that the majority of bayonet charges in the open resulted with one side fleeing before any contacts were made.[5] Flintlock weapons were not used like modern rifles. They tended to be fired in mass volleys, followed by bayonet charges in which the weapons were used much like the pikes that they replaced.[dubious – discuss] Because they were also used as pikes, military flintlocks tended to be approximately 5–6 feet (150–180 cm) in length (without the bayonet attached), and used bayonets that were approximately 18–22 inches (46–56 cm) in length.
Rifles [ edit ]
Russian flintlock rifle made in 1654 by master Grigory Viatkin.
Some flintlocks were rifled. The spiral grooves of rifling make rifles more accurate and give a longer effective range – but on a muzzle-loading firearm they take more time to load due to the tight-fitting ball, and after repeated shots black powder tended to foul the barrels. Military musketeers couldn't afford to take the time to clean the rifles' barrels in between shots and the rifle's greater accuracy was unnecessary when tactics were based on mass volleys. Most military flintlocks were therefore smoothbore. Rifled flintlocks did see some military use by sharpshooters, skirmishers, and other support units; but most rifled flintlocks were used for hunting.
By the late 18th century there were increasing efforts to take advantage of the rifle for military purposes, with specialist rifle units such as the King's Royal Rifle Corps of 1756 and Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own) of 1800. Despite this, smoothbores predominated until the advent of the Minié ball – by which time the percussion cap had made the flintlock obsolete.
In the United States, modifications to small game rifles originally designed in Europe led to the long rifle ("Pennsylvania Rifle" or "Kentucky Rifle,") which due to their long barrels were exceptionally accurate for their time, with an effective range of approximately 250 meters.[6] Since Pennsylvania/Kentucky rifles were used primarily for hunting, they tended to fire smaller caliber rounds, with calibers in the range of.32 to.45 being common. This type of rifle was sometimes referred to as a "pea rifle" since the round ball was approximately the same size as a pea.[7]
The jezail was another example of a long flintlock rifle, but its use in Afghanistan, India, Central Asia and parts of the Middle East was primarily as a military weapon, so tended to fire a larger and heavier round.
Multishot flintlock weapons [ edit ]
Multiple barrels [ edit ]
A three barrel flintlock pistol.
Because of the time needed to reload (even experts needed 15 seconds to reload a smooth-bore, muzzle-loading musket[8]), flintlocks were sometimes produced with two, three, four or more barrels for multiple shots. These designs tended to be costly to make and were often unreliable and dangerous. While weapons like double barreled shotguns were reasonably safe, weapons like the pepperbox revolver would sometimes fire all barrels simultaneously, or would sometimes just explode in the user's hand. It was often less expensive, safer, and more reliable to carry several single-shot weapons instead.
Single barrel [ edit ]
Some repeater rifles, multishot single barrel pistols, and multishot single barrel revolvers were also made. Notable are the Puckle gun, Mortimer,[9] Kalthoff, Michele Lorenzoni, Abraham Hill, Cookson pistols,[10] the Jennings repeater and the Elisha Collier revolver.[citation needed]
Drawbacks [ edit ]
Scottish Flintlock pistol: David McKenzie, a Dundee gunsmith made this pistol. The heart shaped butt is commonly found on pistols made in Scotland. The gun is steel with silver inlay showing Celtic designs.
Flintlocks were prone to many problems, compared to modern weapons. Misfires were common. The flint had to be properly maintained, as a dull or poorly napped piece of flint would not make as much of a spark and would increase the misfire rate dramatically. Moisture was a problem, since moisture on the frizzen or damp powder would prevent the weapon from firing. This meant that flintlock weapons could not be used in rainy or damp weather. Some armies attempted to remedy this by using a leather cover over the lock mechanism, but this proved to have only limited success.[11]
Accidental firing was also a problem for flintlocks. A burning ember left in the barrel could ignite the next powder charge as it was loaded. This could be avoided by waiting between shots for any leftover residue to completely burn. Running a lubricated cleaning patch down the barrel with the ramrod would also extinguish any embers, and would clean out some of the barrel fouling as well. Soldiers on the battlefield could not take these precautions though. They had to fire as quickly as possible, often firing three to four rounds per minute. Loading and firing at such a pace dramatically increased the risk of an accidental discharge.
When a flintlock was fired it sprayed a shower of sparks forwards from the muzzle and another sideways out of the flash-hole. One reason for firing in volleys was to ensure that one man's sparks didn't ignite the next man's powder as he was in the act of loading.
An accidental frizzen strike could also ignite the main powder charge, even if the pan had not yet been primed. Some modern flintlock users will still place a leather cover over the frizzen while loading as a safety measure to prevent this from happening. However, this does slow down the loading time, which prevented safety practices such as this from being used on the battlefields of the past.
The black powder used in flintlocks would quickly foul the barrel, which was a problem for rifles and for smooth bore weapons that fired a tighter fitting round for greater accuracy. Each shot would add more fouling to the barrel, making the weapon more and more difficult to load. Even if the barrel was badly fouled, the flintlock user still had to properly seat the round all the way to the breech of the barrel. Leaving an air gap in between the powder and the round (known as "short starting") was very dangerous, and could cause the barrel to explode.
Handling loose black powder was also dangerous, for obvious reasons. Powder measures, funnels, and other pieces of equipment were usually made out of brass to reduce the risk of creating a spark, which could ignite the powder. Soldiers often used pre-made "cartridges", which unlike modern cartridges were not inserted whole into the weapon. Instead, they were tubes of paper that contained a pre-measured amount of powder and a lead ball. Although paper cartridges were safer to handle than loose powder, their primary purpose was not safety related at all. Instead, paper cartridges were used mainly because they sped up the loading process. A soldier did not have to take the time to measure out powder when using a paper cartridge. He simply tore open the cartridge, used a small amount of powder to prime the pan, then dumped the remaining powder from the cartridge into the barrel.
The black powder used in flintlocks contained sulfur. If the weapon was not cleaned after use, the powder residue would absorb moisture from the air and would combine it with the sulfur to produce sulfuric acid. This acid would erode the inside of the gun barrel and the lock mechanism. Flintlock weapons that were not properly cleaned and maintained would corrode to the point of being destroyed.
Most flintlocks were produced at a time before modern manufacturing processes became common. Even in mass-produced weapons, parts were often handmade. If a flintlock became damaged, or parts wore out due to age, the damaged parts were not easily replaced. Parts would often have to be filed down, hammered into shape, or otherwise modified so that they would fit, making repairs much more difficult. Machine-made, interchangeable parts began to be used only shortly before flintlocks were replaced by caplocks.
The flint for flintlock – 17th century
Method of operation [ edit ]
Flintlock firing
Sparks generated by a flintlock mechanism
A cock tightly holding a sharp piece of flint is rotated to half-cock, where the sear falls into a safety notch on the tumbler, preventing an accidental discharge.
The operator loads the gun, usually from the muzzle end, with black powder from a powder flask, followed by lead shot, a round lead ball, usually wrapped in a piece of paper or a cloth patch, all rammed down with a ramrod that is usually stored on the underside of the barrel. Wadding between the charge and the ball was often used in earlier guns.
The flash pan is primed with a small amount of very finely ground gunpowder, and the flashpan lid or frizzen is closed.
The gun is now in a "primed and loaded" state, and this is how it would typically be carried while hunting or if going into battle.
To fire:
The cock is further rotated from half-cock to full-cock, releasing the safety lock on the cock.
The gun is leveled and the trigger is pulled, releasing the cock holding the flint.
The flint strikes the frizzen, a piece of steel on the priming pan lid, opening it and exposing the priming powder.
The contact between flint and frizzen produces a shower of sparks (burning pieces of the metal) that is directed into the gunpowder in the flashpan.
The powder ignites, and the flash passes through a small hole in the barrel (called a vent or touchhole) that leads to the combustion chamber where it ignites the main powder charge, and the gun discharges.
The Royal Infantry and Continental Army used paper cartridges to load their weapons.[12] The powder charge and ball were instantly available to the soldier inside this small paper envelope. To load a flintlock weapon using a paper cartridge, a soldier would
move the cock to the half-cock position;
tear the cartridge open with his teeth;
fill the flashpan half-full with powder, directing it toward the vent;
close the frizzen to keep the priming charge in the pan;
pour the rest of the powder down the muzzle and stuff the cartridge in after it;
take out the ramrod and ram the ball and cartridge all the way to the breech;
replace the ramrod;
shoulder the weapon.
The weapon can then be cocked and fired.
Cultural impact [ edit ]
Firearms using some form of flintlock mechanism were the main form of firearm for over 200 years. It was not until Reverend Alexander John Forsyth invented a rudimentary percussion cap system in 1807 that the flintlock system began to decline in popularity. The percussion ignition system was more weatherproof and reliable than the flintlock, but the transition from flintlock to percussion cap was a slow one, and the percussion system was not widely used until around 1830. The Model 1840 U.S. musket was the last flintlock firearm produced for the U.S. military.[13] However, obsolete flintlocks saw action in the earliest days of the American Civil War. For example, in 1861, the Army of Tennessee had over 2,000 flintlock muskets in service.
As a result of the flintlock's long active life, it left lasting marks on the language and on drill and parade. Terms such as: "lock, stock and barrel", "going off half-cocked" and "flash in the pan" remain current in English. In addition, the weapon positions and drill commands that were originally devised to standardize carrying, loading and firing a flintlock weapon remain the standard for drill and display (see manual of arms).
A flintlock musket being fired
Reproduction flintlock musket detail
Flintlock firearm ignition sequence
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Flayderman's Guide to Antique Firearms and Their Values 7th Edition, by Norm Flayderman 1998 Krause Publications ISBN 0-87349-313-3, ISBN 978-0-87349-313-0
7th Edition, by Norm Flayderman 1998 Krause Publications ISBN 0-87349-313-3, ISBN 978-0-87349-313-0 Blackmore, Howard L., Guns and Rifles of the World. Viking Press, New York, 1965
Bl |
Document: Intelligence Memorandum – Special Drawing Rights: Paper Gold In Action – September 1970
The gold standard under Bretton Woods Agreement was showing cracks in 1970. The CIA memorandum notes: “the only available means of increasing reserves abroad was through continued deficits in the US balance of payments, But the US no longer had excess gold reserves and other countries had become reluctant to accept large additions to their dollar holdings.”
The CIA memorandum reflects the tenuous position of the gold market and the inclusion of gold in the international monetary system just prior to the break up of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971. The CIA viewed the newly created SDR as a potential replacement for gold calling it: “a new type of liquidity as permanent as gold it self – to insure increases in liquidity”... “The SDR is a form of money and credit”
“SDRs can not be extinguished by being exchanged by gold -they can only be traded among central banks. And unlike gold, there are no private uses for SDRs that compete with their use as an international currency.”
CIA however concludes that “Nevertheless, SDRs are not soon likely to supplant the dollar in the international monetary system. Foreign central banks need working balances which are presently denominated largely in dollars.”
* * *
CIA Worries of Substantially Higher Gold Prices (link) - Document: Intelligence Memorandum Recent Trends in the Gold Market – October 1970
This memorandum grapples with the question; Why has there been a sharp rise in the price of gold? “in the absence of any monetary crisis there seems to be no obvious explanation for the recent substantial price in gold.”
“There is however strong circumstantial evidence that Zurich bullion dealers, under the leadership of the Union Bank of Switzerland are again manipulating the gold markets”
“London bullion dealers had hoped that the 1969 agreement between the IMF and South Africa would restore London as the focal point of the world gold market. It has not.”
“The present situation implies effective control of free market supplies by the Swiss commercial banks.”
The memo also cited a study that says “gold demand from industrial users and hoarders already exceed free world output…and several – less than interested individuals point to the inevitability of the free market gold price rising to as much as $100 per ounce by 1980.” That would represent a three-fold increase to the then prevalent price.
* * *
More in the video belowJERUSALEM (Reuters) - The body of an abducted Palestinian youth was found in Jerusalem on Wednesday, raising suspicions he had been killed by Israelis avenging the deaths of three abducted Jewish teens.
News of the discovery of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair, who was last seen being bundled into a van earlier in the day, triggered clashes between rock-throwing Palestinians and Israeli police in the city.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Jewish settlers of killing Abu Khudair and demanded that Israel “mete out the strongest punishment against the murderers if it truly wants peace”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged police “to swiftly investigate who was behind the loathsome murder and its motive”. He called on all sides “not to take the law into their own hands”.
Police said they had found a body in the wooded outskirts of Jerusalem. Abu Khudair’s father told Reuters the force had told him the body was his son.
An Israeli security source said Israel suspected the youth had been kidnapped and murdered, possibly in retribution for the killings of the Israeli teens. Their bodies were discovered on Monday, nearly three weeks after they were abducted in the occupied West Bank.
Related Coverage Israel demolishes home of Palestinian charged with killing Israeli
Israel says Palestinian Hamas militants killed them. The Islamist group has neither confirmed nor denied the allegation.
The White House condemned the killing of Abu Khudair and called on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to “take all necessary steps to prevent an atmosphere of revenge and retribution.”
Netanyahu convened his security cabinet later on Wednesday as violence also flared up across the Israel-Gaza border, with Palestinians firing at least a dozen rockets and mortars, and Israel’s military carrying out an air strike.
WHITE VAN
Abu Khudair’s cousin said the 16-year-old was grabbed off the street after leaving his home in Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhood of Shuafat to go to morning prayers with friends.
“Somebody ran into the house to say one of the boys had been dragged into a white van, so (Mohammed’s) mother called the police,” the cousin, Naima, said.
Israeli riot police take position behind a car during clashes with Palestinian stone-throwers in Shuafat, an Arab suburb of Jerusalem July 2, 2014. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The abduction came a day after the three Jewish seminary students - Gil-Ad Shaer and U.S.-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19 - were buried in a funeral attended by tens of thousands of mourners.
While the teenagers were laid to rest in the city of Modi’in, several hundreds Israeli demonstrators, some chanting “Death to Arabs”, blocked the main entrance to Jerusalem.
Cries for revenge have echoed throughout the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
They can be heard at the emotionally charged funerals of Palestinians killed by Israel, and the phrase “May God avenge his death” is often invoked at the burials of Israelis slain by Palestinians.
But deadly Israeli vigilante attacks, in declared retribution for Palestinian assaults, have been rare in recent years.
More common are the so-called “price tag” incidents in which mosques and Palestinian property are torched or damaged - originally a reference by ultra-nationalist Jews to making the government “pay” for any curbs on Jewish settlement on land Palestinians seek for a state.
Hebrew graffiti found on a building in the West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday read: “Price tag, Jewish revenge.”
Slideshow (7 Images)
Tensions were high in the West Bank, where around 40 Palestinians were arrested in raids on Tuesday, the latest in a campaign by Israel to cripple Hamas there.
Four people were wounded by live bullets early on Wednesday in an Israeli raid in the Palestinian city of Jenin.
Near Hebron, Israeli forces destroyed the home of a Palestinian arrested on charges of shooting dead an off-duty police officer in the West Bank in April.
Israel, which suspended the demolition policy in 2005 as a Palestinian uprising waned, says destroying the homes of Palestinians involved in attacks on Israelis has a deterrent effect. Rights groups have condemned the practice as collective punishment.After last week’s New York Times reported “rout” of pro-autonomy protesters in eastern Ukraine’s port city of Mariupol didn’t pan out, billionaire Rinat Akhmetov decided to take another shot at it this week.
Akhmetov sees his business interests at risk in the event of Mariupol’s secession, and continues to rail against the “economic ruin” the protesters would bring, urging his hundreds of thousands of employees to attend counter-rallies.
Yet despite continued media reports of Akhmetov’s counter-secession moving being a fait accompli, the rallies have been sparsely attended, to say the least, and don’t seem to have seriously stalled the protest movement anywhere.
Akhmetov organized a “peace rally” against secession for noon today, urging his 300,000 employees to take to the streets of Mariupol in support of Kiev’s central government. Instead of a few hundred thousand, the rally saw a few hundred turn out, as virtually no one left his factories at lunch to attend.
Though Akhmetov’s own business interests are somewhat imperiled by a potential loss of export markets in western Europe, the reality is that eastern Ukraine is an economic basketcase to begin with, so his admonitions not to rock the boat are ringing pretty hollow to the man on the street.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzSenior - QB - 6'6 225 - Pembroke Pines, Fl (Miramar H.S.)
Williams completed 22/32 passes last season for 369 yards with 3/1 TD/INT, mostly in mop up time.
As a freshman at Memphis way back in 2010, completed 56.9% of his attempts for 2,075 yards and 13 TDS/10 INTs in 10 starts.
Has patiently waited behind Stephen Morris the past two seasons to, and appeared on his way to finally getting his shot before tearing his ACL during the spring.
Underwent successful surgery on April 9, and his recovery has gone so well there has even been some talk he could be ready for the opener.
Whenever Williams is healthy, look for him to take over as the starting QB, as his combination of accuracy, experience, size, and touch give the 'Canes their best chance to win.
Is not a particularly mobile QB, and does not possess the same arm strength as Morris, but given UM's talent at the skill positions might actually has a better suited skill set for what Miami needs in a signal caller.
Here's a look at some of what he can do (good and bad) in game action from last season Vs USF:
Summary: Williams is not your prototypical NFL 1st round draft pick type of QB. But he can do more than enough to be a good college QB. He gets rid of the ball quickly when needed, and makes nice reads for the most part. I don't like how he throws when his feet aren't set, but behind a good O line he can definitely move an offense. I am not a physician, but I don't see him coming back by Labor Day. The conservative estimate for his return is more likely Week 4 Vs Nebraska. Until then Jake Heaps/Kevin Olsen will likely keep the seat warm. At that point, with the exception of the Louisville opener, UM will not have played any ACC foes. So if this prognostication is correct, Williams will still have time to lead the Hurricanes to a Coastal Division Crown, and a berth in the ACC Championship Game. When he gets back to full strength, 2,000 + yards and 12-15 TD's are very much within his grasp. More importantly he should give Miami its' best chance at victory in any game he starts.The record came from a stalagmite found in Wanxiang Cave, China The demise of some of China's ruling dynasties may have been linked to changes in the strength of monsoon rains, a new study suggests. The findings come from 1,800-year record of the Asian monsoon preserved in a stalagmite from a Chinese cave. Weak - and therefore dry - monsoon periods coincided with the demise of the Tang, Yuan and Ming imperial dynasties, the scientists said. A US-Chinese team report their work in the journal Science. Stalagmites are largely made up of calcium carbonate, which precipitates from groundwater dripping from the ceiling of a cave. Chemical analysis of a 118mm-long stalagmite from Wangxiang Cave, in Gansu province, north-west China, told the history of strong and weak cycles in the monsoon - the rains that water crops to feed millions of people in Asia. It also shows that, over the last 50 years, greenhouse gases and aerosols have taken over from natural variability to become the dominant influence on the monsoon. Death of dynasties Small variations in the forms, or isotopes, of the stalagmite's oxygen composition reflected variations in rainfall near the cave. Proportions of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium in the deposit allowed the researchers to date the stalagmite layers to within an average of two-and-a-half years. The stalagmite grew continuously from 190AD to 2003 By comparing the rain record with Chinese historical records, Pingzhong Zhang of Lanzhou University in China, and colleagues, found three out of five "multi-century" dynasties - the Tang, the Yuan and the Ming - ended after several decades of weaker summer monsoons with drier conditions. "Summer monsoon winds originate in the Indian Ocean and sweep into China," said Hai Cheng, co-author from the University of Minnesota, US. "When the summer monsoon is stronger, it pushes farther north-west into China." These moisture-laden winds bring rain necessary for cultivating rice. But when the monsoon is weak, the rains stall farther south and east, depriving northern and western parts of China of summer rains. This could have led to poor rice harvests and civil unrest, the researchers speculate. "Whereas other factors would certainly have affected these chapters of Chinese cultural history, our correlations suggest that climate played a key role," the researchers write in Science. But a weak monsoon could also be linked to changes further afield. The researchers say a dry period between 850AD and 940AD coincides not only with the decline of the Chinese Tang dynasty but also with the fall of the Mayan civilization in America. Human influence Subsequent strengthening of the monsoon may have contributed to the rapid increase in rice cultivation, a dramatic increase in population and general stability at the beginning of China's Northern Song Dynasty. The monsoon record also matched up nicely with the advance and retreat of Swiss glaciers. Scientists say the natural archive shows that climate change can have devastating effects on local populations - even when this change is mild when averaged across the globe. In the cave record, the monsoon followed trends in solar activity over many centuries, suggesting the Sun played an important role in the variability of this weather system. To a lesser extent, it also followed northern hemisphere temperatures on a millennial and centennial scale. As temperatures went up, the monsoon became stronger and, as they dropped, it weakened. However, over the last 50 years, this relationship has switched. The researchers attribute this to the influence of greenhouse gas emissions and sulphate aerosols released by human activities.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionA miffed Scott Brown yesterday shot down reports that he parted ways with Fox News — pointing to his freshly inked deal with the conservative network and tweaking the Boston Globe for failing to double-check its story.
“Globe should have checked with someone who had authority to speak for Fox and/or me. They did not,” wrote the former U.S. senator in a text to the Herald. He did not disclose any details of his Fox pact.
Globe Senior Deputy Managing Editor for Local News Jen Peters said a Fox News spokeswoman told the paper Tuesday night that Brown was “out of contract.”
“We reached out to Brown himself repeatedly Tuesday night and Wednesday and he did not return our calls. We stand by our story,” Peters said in a statement.
The suggestion that Brown broke with Fox fueled speculation yesterday that the Republican — who recently moved to Rye, N.H. — was moving to challenge New Hampshire Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
But a Fox News executive quickly squelched the rumors.
“Senator Brown has renewed his contributor agreement with Fox News,” Bill Shine, the cable station’s executive vice president of programming, said in a statement released hours after the Globe reported Brown was no longer working for the network. “The previous year-long agreement expired on February 11th and was never terminated — this was purely administrative. We look forward to his continuing political analysis and insight across the network.”
The former Wrentham pol — who nabbed national headlines after his surprise 2010 U.S. Senate win for the late Edward M. Kennedy’s seat — remained tight-lipped about his political future yesterday.
“Will keep you posted on plans when I make them,” he said.
Brown has been increasingly active in the Granite State’s GOP events, raising money and speaking at several fundraisers. The former Bay State senator was also added just this week to a list of high-profile guests speaking at the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference in Nashua. Other speakers at the March 14 and 15 event include U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and former presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
“We are expecting him to be one of the general session speakers on Saturday afternoon,” said New Hampshire GOP chairwoman Jennifer Horn.
Horn said, however, she has no insights into Brown’s potential Senate ambitions, adding: “I expect he will be welcomed warmly by the Republicans gathered there.”(The Dow is down 350 as of 1:44PM Eastern)
If only the US was the only country experiencing stock market problems. China’s Shanghai exchange is about one third of its peak number last November. Russia had been experiencing a big boom in recent years courtesy of the oil run but they may be coming to an end, which could mean instability in Russia.
Russia halted stock and bond trading on Wednesday amid the worst market falls since the country’s 1998 financial collapse and the Finance Ministry pledged a total of $60 billion of funds to help local banks.
Trading in shares, bonds and mutual funds on Russia’s MICEX and RTS exchanges was suspended after less than two hours, preventing further selling on top of Tuesday’s record-breaking falls.
It was not clear when the bourses would reopen.
“The crisis has a shade of panic to it. The decision to stop trading was motivated by the desire to remove this panic element,” said Stanislav Ponomarenko, head of research for Russia at ING bank.
Russian stocks, once touted by the government as a safe haven, have now plunged around 60 percent since May.
Traders say global financial turmoil mixed with falling oil prices and Moscow’s war with Georgia have formed a lethal cocktail.
“We don’t give a damn anymore as to what happens in the West. The market is falling as people are in dire need for cash,” said Maxim Gulevich, director of equities trading at UBS.
The Kremlin was silent on the crisis on Wednesday but Deputy Finance Minister Pyotr Kazakevich, announcing new measures to boost liquidity, said there was no fundamental problem.
“What we have on the market is mainly a confidence crisis and only secondly a liquidity crisis,” Kazakevich said.Across the country, a charity has painted walls as places where passersby are invited to ‘leave what you don’t need’ or ‘take it if you need’
With the addition of a few hooks and a splash of paint, walls across Iran are being reinvented as part of an outdoor charity initiative in which strangers leave goods they no longer want for those who need them.
The message above a row of hooks reads “Wall of Kindness”. It is a place where passersby are invited to “leave what you do not need” or “take it if you need”. Similar messages have turned up throughout the country as Iranians take matters into their own hands to help homeless people.
In the southern city of Shiraz’s Ghadamgah street, a few coats, jackets and a pair of jeans are hung on the hooks of a wall of kindness painted blue. In Kermanshah, in the west of the country, a wall full of women’s clothes has been covered with plastic to protect them from rain, and beneath the clothes is a shelf of shoes. In the eastern town of Birjand, a young girl wearing worn-out shoes returns smiling with a new pair, albeit second-hand.
Hamed Latifi (@Hamed_KOP) دیوار مهربانی در خیابان قدمگاه شیراز نیاز نداری بذار، نیاز داری بردار pic.twitter.com/Tw14SM2XDn
It is not clear who started the trend, but in a country where use of social media networks is widespread, it has swiftly caught on. In the capital, Tehran, local municipalities have welcomed the move, promising to set up more kindness walls.
Iranian media have published pictures of walls in various provinces. “The old tales of kindness about people of old cities have come to reality today in a century struck by brutality and indifference,” said the reformist Shargh daily.
In Tehran alone more than 15,000 people are homeless, often referred to as kartonkhab – those who sleep in cardboard boxes. According to Reza Jahangiri, a Tehran municipality official, 80% of them are drug addicts and at least 15% are women. Iran neighbours Afghanistan, a leading producer and supplier of drugs, and its young population, hit hard by unemployment and inflation, has easy access to a wide variety of illicit substances.
In Tehran, some shops have reportedly put out refrigerators and invited people to leave food they do not want for homeless people to take. At least one bakery has put out a box of bread for those who cannot afford it. “Bread is free for those who can’t pay,” reads a sign on the box.
عمه ِالام (@3LiDry) دیوار مهربانی به نانوایی مهربانیم رسید.... pic.twitter.com/WEvHOQqeEv
Civil society in Iran is strong, and a number of non-governmental charities have had a significant impact recently, including the Mahak society, a Tehran-based organisation founded by the philanthropist Saeedeh Ghods that supports children with cancer.
Some charitable organisations have been hampered by sanctions imposed by the west on Iran. One unintended consequence was that imports of life-saving medicine were made difficult as international banks refused to handle any money associated with the country.
With sanctions expected to be lifted this weekend, there are rising hopes that such charities will once again be able to work as normal.Story highlights Every 30 minutes a child is born who will develop mitochondrial disease by age 10
Mitochondria are responsible for creating more than 90% of our body's energy
The disease primarily affects children, but adult onset is becoming more common
On July 5, 2011, my husband and I were told that our 2-year-old son has an invisible killer living inside his body.
Just a few short years ago, I was happily pregnant. Now, suddenly: Why? What? When? All these questions came with so few answers about a disease that few know about or understand.
That invisible killer is called mitochondrial disease. Our son's specific mutation is called Leigh's Disease.
We're one of the lucky ones. It took us only a year to get a diagnosis -- a year filled with anesthesia, a CAT scan, a muscle biopsy, a lumbar puncture, an MRI, an echocardiogram, an EKG, specialists and so on. Most families spend years attempting to find a diagnosis because of the complexities of DNA sequencing.
This silent killer is attacking our nation's children at an appalling rate. According to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, every 30 minutes a child is born who will develop a mitochondrial disease by age 10.
As a first-time mom, I had no idea that I should have been scared of mitochondria. All I knew was some fuzzy science from high school biology about mitochondria being the powerhouse cells of our body.
Mitochondria are responsible for creating more than 90% of the energy needed by the body to sustain life and support growth. When they fail, less and less energy is generated within the cell. Cell injury and even cell death follow.
If this process is repeated throughout the body, whole systems begin to fail, and that person's life is severely compromised. The disease primarily affects children, but adult onset is becoming more common.
We were told that diseases of the mitochondria appear to primarily damage cells of the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscles, kidney and the endocrine and respiratory systems. (Excuse me, but what's left?)
Symptoms may include loss of motor control, muscle weakness and pain, gastrointestinal disorders and swallowing difficulties, poor growth, cardiac disease, liver disease, diabetes, respiratory complications, seizures, visual or hearing problems, lactic acidosis, developmental delays and susceptibility to infection.
Mitochondrial disease is similar to cancer in the way it presents itself -- it can manifest in many forms.
Our son currently presents classic Leigh's symptoms: He has four brain lesions near the deep cerebellum. As his body is attacked with viral infections, fever or even as he gets overheated, he is at risk for additional brain damage that ultimately will result in system failures.
My husband and I were told on July 5, 2011, that our son will die an early death. There are no treatments; there is no cure. We left the doctor's office with instructions to start the "mito cocktail" of supplements, continue with therapy and keep him from getting sick.
We also left the doctor's office with a huge, gaping hole in our hearts. Within a matter of seconds, this huge piece was ripped out and we still haven't quite figured out how to put it back together. Our hearts are bigger now -- we can accept more and give more -- but I don't think the hole will ever mend.
It's National Mitochondrial Disease Awareness week. For us, every day we're deeply aware -- our son is lucky.
Our doctor says he has a mild case of what will one day kill him. We get to hear him say, "I love you" and watch him laugh with friends. So many other "mito" kids can't even roll over, swallow their food or see their favorite "Veggie Tales" character on TV.
There are a lot of days I don't feel so lucky. But then this tow-headed goofball comes barreling at me wanting to give me a bear hug (complete with sound effects) and it snaps me out of my sadness.
My son is my hero. He pushes us to keep going. He is the one enduring endless blood draws, hospital stays and experimental drugs.
There is no cure, but there is hope. Recently, Edison Pharmaceuticals received orphan status for the drug EPI-743. We're one of 128 people in the world who somehow managed to get a spot in their research program.
Essentially, the drug is supposed to help Will's mitochondria function better, giving him increased energy and a chance at a better quality of life.
I often find myself feeling guilty that we're on it when there are so many others who should be. Likely, by the time the Food and Drug Administration approves it, many of these children will perish. It's not a cure, but it is a sign of hope.
You might be wondering how you can help. The first thing I would suggest is to get informed. Organizations like the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation or websites like Mitoaction.org are good starting places.
Second, get involved. Find your local UMDF chapter and join one of the Energy for Life walksWhere does Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government get off trying to micromanage the Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner’s day-timer?
Newly-installed Commissioner Bob Paulson has just been told that he can’t meet with Members of Parliament or senators without getting a green light from Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ office. In their hubris, the Tories have decided that they alone will book the chief’s get-togethers with parliamentarians.
This follows hard on Harper’s demand that the Mounties check with Toews’ office before making any public statements that might “garner national media attention,” as the Star reported last year. To some, that looked like a gag option.
As Liberal Senator Colin Kenny puts it, not only is the RCMP chief not allowed to speak without a chaperone, he’s not even allowed to listen without one.
These are nasty precedents, and they threaten the credibility and independence of the force. No RCMP commissioner can function with a political bit in his mouth, yanked by the Conservatives or any other party. No commissioner worth his salt would accept it. Certainly not one who aspires to restore the force’s credibility, badly shaken by the death of Robert Dziekanski, claims of sexual harassment and allegations of physical assault. Paulson needs to affirm the force’s independence and rebuff such meddling.Disciples, war mongers and liars. Meet the inner circle of Donald Trump
DONALD Trump says he never asked former FBI director James Comey to stop investigating his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Mr Flynn has become the first member of Mr Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence last year’s US presidential election.
Mr Flynn was charged with lying to the FBI.
I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017
Mr Trump fired Mr Comey from his job as FBI director in May, sparking a political firestorm as critics claimed he was trying to meddle in the Russia investigation. That led directly to the appointment of Mr Mueller.
“I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” Mr Trump tweeted.
Mr Trump also attacked his own FBI in a series of tweets, saying the law enforcement agency’s reputation is “in tatters — worst in history!” He also promised to “bring it back to greatness”.
Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI “agent’s role in Clinton probe under review.” Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017
People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused - many millions of dollars! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017
Report: “ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE” Now it all starts to make sense! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017
The president was responding to reports that a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian election meddling because of anti-Trump text messages.
“Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI ‘agent’s role in Clinton probe under review.’ Led Clinton Email probe,” Mr Trump tweeted.
The agent had also worked on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
The president also retweeted a tweet suggesting FBI director Chris Wray “needs to clean house”.
It comes as Mr Trump’s personal lawyer has taken responsibility for a tweet about the firing Michael Flynn, which raised more questions about whether there had been attempts to impede the Russia investigation.
Mr Comey claims Mr Trump asked him to “go easy” on Mr Flynn when he was still FBI director. Importantly, the tweet in question suggests Mr Trump knew Mr Flynn had lied to the FBI - i.e. committed a crime - when he made that request.
Mr Trump says he never asked Mr Comey to ease up on Mr Flynn.
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017
In an interview in the US on Sunday, Mr Trump’s lawyer John Dowd said he had drafted the tweet and it was “my mistake”.
“I’m out of the tweeting business,” Dowd told Axios. “I did not mean to break news.”
Trump’s tweets have raised alarm among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, with warnings Trump could be wading into “peril” with his comments.
“I would just say this with the president: There’s an ongoing criminal investigation,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on the CBS program Face the Nation.
“You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril,” he added.
The Russia matter has dogged Trump’s first year in office, and this weekend overshadowed his first big legislative win when the Senate approved a tax cuts bill.
Flynn was the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 US election and potential collusion by Trump aides.
Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion.
Comey, who had been investigating the Russia allegations, was fired by Trump in May. He told the US Senate Intelligence Committee in June he believed his dismissal was related to the Russia probe, and said Trump asked him to end the investigation of Flynn.I don’t remember a lot about Glitch. I remember the side-scrolling. I remember the cartoonish art direction and colour scheme. I remember wearing a fez and a bathrobe and walking around the world collecting allspice because I wanted to guide my skill tree to making my avatar into a great chef. I don’t really remember many of the quests, specifically. I just remember little, meaningful moments. I remember thinking that this was the only MMO I’d probably ever like.
There was one quest that stands out, though, called Notice the Unnoticeable. It strikes me now because it encapsulates so many of the problems Stewart Butterfield, founder of developer Tiny Speck, remarked while reflecting to Gamasutra on the shuttering of the unusual MMO – citing content that lacked enough of a “game context,” among other things.
The quest was about death. It was about finding ghosts of a bygone time that you would spot in randomized locations. It was about collecting a useless artefact—a petrified Faded Heart—and about keeping it with you, sacred, forever, so that you might remember the ghost of the Half-Forgotten Glitch. It was about loss, remembrance, monument.
The quest didn’t strike me as much at the time. I felt awkward and inaccessible and esoteric—almost impossible to complete without a FAQ or a streak of luck. It felt strange, foreign, and a little out-of-place: this morbid thing in a happy-go-lucky world. It was the bubbling of inevitability underneath a rose-coloured surface.
Chris Whitman, former Game Engineer at Tiny Speck who now works with Gaslamp on Dungeons of Dredmor and Clockwork Empires, worked on Glitch for about a year between May 2011 and April 2012. His relationship to the game was far more intimate than mine, having worked on game content programming, including (scenario and character programming, skill and item programming and so on), game design and writing.
He remembers details I couldn’t, about the game’s quests and lore, its world. He lists for me the instance quests he worked on, the in-joke surrounding the Purple Flower content, scripting he did for the Jethimadh Tower end quest…
He remembers the flexible work environment, the welcoming of ideas from anybody who had them.
“Most of this was working in small, ad hoc teams, so I wore the design hat on some of these. Sometimes I just wrote some dialogue, sometimes I was implementing someone else’s design proposal,” he recalls.
And he remembers the choice he made to leave, after moving from full-time employee to part-time contractor to make room for his own independent projects.
“[Tiny Speck] were happy to accommodate the change, but unfortunately when the initial launch didn’t go well, I’d more or less moved myself to the non-essential personnel list. I stayed on for a bit to train other developers, but there just wasn’t the space for a lot of contractors there anymore.”
Now Whitman, upon reflection, thinks Butterfield “pretty much nailed it” on describing the downfall of Glitch:
“Casual games basically live and die by engagement mechanics and very tight pacing. Our open design philosophy resulted in a lot of really good content, but it was frequently distributed in pockets rather than presented in a steady drip feed,” he says.
He admits that there was an ambition and a heart there that didn’t always fit congruously into Glitch’s F2P MMO model.
“Everyone complains that every MMO plays the same—a steady feed of predictable, measurable content (pick 20 berries; kill 10 Orcs; collect 15 wolf pelts)—but very few people seem to accept (or maybe even grasp) that there’s a reason for it,” he says.
In fact, Whitman reminds me, the seeming inaccessibility of things like Notice the Unnoticeable was a common complaint for many gamers, and the “pocket” distribution of content made it feel like there was a dearth of explicit gameplay goals. Often, the game wrestled between an emergent, explorative approach and a conventional mission-based one that was never really reconciled. Similarly, many players struggled with the game’s lateral approach to problem-solving and its sometime-snubbing of conventional design even for simple tasks, even spawning a “Where Can I Get Salt” web page. (The answer was, obviously, by grinding allspice.)
But, “I feel sort of guilty,” I tell him, “for not supporting it more.” This is because by the time I heard that Glitch had been shuttered, I had already stopped playing the game for the better part of a year. I had loved its subversively cooperative approach to the MMO genre, its emphasis on exploration rather than mere stat augmentation. I loved that skills seemed to have whimsy and flavour that made them charming to use and observe. I loved that every world had its own character—and yet, I found myself running out of things to do. I found myself running up against the inevitabilities of Glitch; my fatal inability to find more things to explore or accomplish; my grinding and FAQ-ing quests like Notice the Unnoticeable just to get them checked off. I found myself coming up against the illness in Glitch and taking it for granted.
I felt guilty because I was feeling loss. I felt a tinge of something like what the Faded Heart represented—a gloomy reminder of a thing half-forgotten.
But we all have our own ways of dealing with loss. The only time I felt grief sharply—and can sharply recall the feeling—was when my childhood pet died. Her name was Hobbes. She was a cat. She died about a year-and-a-half ago after suffering a paralyzing blood clot due to a previously unknown heart condition.
And I wasn’t there for her enough. And I spent too much time out of the house. And the pictures of her won’t fade because they’re digital, but my memory of her fur and meow will. And only little punctuated moments will stand out to me, half-forgotten but looming like a ghost under the rosy surface of my world that has to keep turning anyway until that gets shuttered too.
Like lots of former players, I wasn’t there for Glitch but Whitman doesn’t hold that against me. There are things, according to Whitman, that we can notice hidden in the failure of Glitch. There are things we can take away.
“If it wouldn’t be certainly the end of my career in this industry, I might suggest we start embracing failure,” he tells me. Because this will allow us to take more risks, or learn from our mistakes, I ask?
“Yes and no!” he tells me, “I mean, iterating on unsuccessful designs is definitely important for success, if that’s your bag. I mean something more in line with the old, but true, cliché that you like someone for their virtues but love them for their faults.”
Whitman takes this away from Glitch because, he tells me, what you get from any game personally is “what justifies it,” regardless of the game’s success, or recognition, or even the fatal flaw |
a new way to evade law enforcement.
We live in a nation wherein criminal, illegal aliens are getting assistance from public figures and entire state governments and now a new app called “Notifica” is making it easier for these criminals to escape ICE agents while they do their job.
The app is essentially a “panic button” with useful little tidbits on how to evade ICE and break the law further. The app was created by 25-year-old illegal alien Adrian Reyna whose app, as reported by Breitbart Texas, already has 8,000 people pre-registered for the impending launch:
The app is designed to allow the user to preload 15 SMS text messages that they can send to family, friends, attorneys, doctors, bosses, and other important contacts notifying them that they’ve been caught in a raid. The recipients of the SMS text message do not need the app to receive the message.
Rather than putting their efforts into becoming legal citizens and doing things the right way, these criminals have decided to put their efforts into evading justice further. The app was backed by United We Dream, which asserts that is the, “largest immigrant youth-led organization in the nation … made up of over 100,000 immigrant youth and allies and 55 affiliate organizations in 26 states.”
All the while the leftist media outlets like CNN promote these types of tools for criminals and are aiding in the dissemination of information that goes against U.S. law blatantly.It's been a very long time since I made some new artwork.I guess I also changed my own style a bit during this time. The reason was probably me fiddling with graphic design on a bit more professional level as I worked on a friend's company design.Also I have to admit I wasn't watching anything pony-related too much in past months. But when my school semester ended, I finally had more free time so I finally managed to watch Rainbow Rocks. I personally enjoyed it more than the first movie and also couldn't resist Sonata's cutenessThis whole pic was painted only with a mouse in PS CS6. It was so frustrating to find out my graphic tablet stopped workingSo I had to find another way to draw more complex pictures. The key tool used in this pic was the Pen tool in Photoshop and LOTS of layers (approx. 100 layers were used here).After finishing this one I'm really happy with the final result.And also, comments and suggestions are more than welcome!He went out on his own terms.
That's the assessment we keep hearing this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway as it pertains to Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s final race as a full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver. He announced his decision to hang up his helmet back in April, after having made the decision at least a couple of weeks earlier. He's thoroughly enjoyed the seven-month #Appreci88ion farewell tour that followed. Everyone has.
We've also all used that same phrase. I wrote it into a column the day he announced his retirement. He's going out on his own terms.
But, he's not.
That's the thought that crossed my mind as I watched Earnhardt, a future NASCAR Hall of Famer, address the media on Friday morning. It crossed my mind again when Danica Patrick broke down crying, repeatedly, while trying to explain why she also would be stepping away from full-time stock car racing after Sunday night.
And I thought of it again as Matt Kenseth, another shoo-in Hall of Fame racer, worked a small line of autograph-seeking fans, taking in their shouts of "We'll miss you, Matt!"
No racer ever goes out on their own terms. Heck, no professional athlete ever does.
I felt guilty for thinking it. I thought, maybe I've become too cynical. I thought, maybe I'm just an overreaching sportswriter.
Then I talked to actual racers and professional athletes.
"Who's ever really done that?" Richard Petty asked me. It was 25 years this week that The King ran his final race, capping a season-long Fan Appreciation Tour (not #Appreci88ion Tour) that is still studied by sports marketing classes. But the owner of 200 wins and seven championships, at 54 years old, was awful. He was showered with gifts and had a sold-out Alabama concert held in the Georgia Dome in his honor.
Matt Kenseth, left, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. decided they would celebrate the final race of their fulltime careers together on Friday. Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images
But he finished outside the top 20 of the championship standings for the fifth straight year, went winless for the eighth straight season, and wrecked out early, his car on fire and was caught screaming at the safety crews on live TV.
"Going out on your own terms would be winning the race, or winning the championship, and then riding off into the sunset like John Wayne," he said. "But again, who has ever done that?"
At this very race two years ago, Jeff Gordon was one of the four finalists competing for the Cup title. The car was good, but not great. He came up just short.
"This was almost a Cinderella finish, wasn't it?" he said to me that night. "But almost just makes me mad."
Michael Jordan stroked the shot that won his sixth NBA title with the Chicago Bulls and waved goodbye -- and then waved hello. He returned (for a second time) to be a Washington Wizard. His last two teams didn't even make the playoffs.
Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl and retired shortly thereafter, leaving the game a victor but also a former passing machine who was limited to tossing semi-accurate downfield passes.
"I have no regrets with anything about that night, but there's still those little things that kept you from doing like you picture in your mind, like you know, actually throwing a touchdown pass," Manning says, chuckling as he recalls the night his Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50. He was 13-of-23 passing with an interception and was sacked five times. "But I also think that's the nature of being a professional athlete, of being a winner. You're never satisfied. It always could have been better."
On Friday, Earnhardt initially sounded pretty satisfied. There is no doubt that he's ready to move on. But he also talked about what he'd left on the table. He said he should have taken his craft more seriously early in his career, and that it would have led to more wins. He admitted spending a lot of time contemplating a long list of what-ifs.
The biggest of those will always be what if he hadn't suffered all those concussions scattered throughout the years, or what if he had at least taken better care of himself after the earliest ones.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was named the National Motorsports Press Association Most Popular Driver award for the 15th consecutive year. Chris Graythen/Getty Images
"I don't need to reconsider. This is great timing for me," Earnhardt said Friday. "It's time for somebody else to get in that car and get out of it what they can. And with Alex [Bowman] coming in behind, it's just a great opportunity for him. It's his time. It's now his moment going into next season to take his career wherever he can go.>/p>
"And mine, in my heart, has ran its course. I've felt very good about that decision before the race in Daytona started in February, that this was it. And I was more thankful to be able to compete this year than I was to ever question whether I should go farther."
Asking "can I go further?" is not going out on one's terms. Neither is being told you no longer have a ride. Or, not being told and finding out via hearsay. That's how it went down for Kenseth, who celebrated his 39th career victory less than one week ago. And no one authors an exit for themselves that starts with a sponsor controversy and legal fight, followed by the news that, hey, while you were once a can't-miss cash machines, that support has vanished, and we no longer have a place for you here.
Patrick confessed to being puzzled by it all, especially the uncharted territory of sponsor issues. She looked back on her five-plus seasons at NASCAR's top level, scoring seven top-10 finishes in 189 races. She talked about the frustration of never gaining ground, despite changing her approach to driving stock cars. It wasn't an admission of defeat, but it was an explanation for retreat.
"I love racing, but I love certain parts of racing," Patrick said. "I'm not driven to just go get in the car and drive. That's not what I do it for. I have other interests."
Earnhardt, like Patrick, has his next chapter mapped out. He will still be a NASCAR team owner, a broadcaster, and in spring will become a father. Kenseth has no extensive future plans on the books, at least none that he has shared publicly. On some level, that's as we should expect from one of NASCAR's all-time purveyors of "race softly but carry a big kick."
They have all set up nice exits. But all are leaving earlier than they expected. Certainly, earlier than they would have dreamed at the height of their powers. Perhaps they can take solace in the fact that not only are they not alone; they are following in the tire tracks of everyone who proceeded them and likely everyone who will ever follow.
I'm not sure who's terms it was they all went out on, but it wasn't their own.AVB (Audio Video Bridging, also known as Time Sensitive Networking, or TSN) is a collection of IEEE 802.1 networking standards that define a single digital network for transmitting audio, video, and other forms of data via “smart” switches that manage AVB traffic without compromising network integrity.
AVB networking allows you to connect many digital audio devices over long distances using CAT5e or CAT6 Ethernet cable and route your audio anywhere on the AVB network with extremely low latency. A high-precision clock significantly reduces harmonic distortion and phasing, ensuring your audio stays clear and clean.
AVB Switches (such as the PreSonus SW5E PoE AVB switch) are an active part of the AVB network, throttling non-AVB traffic to ensure you always have enough bandwidth to carry your audio with extremely low latency. This means you get guaranteed low-latency audio performance regardless of other network traffic. These important benefits are only available with AVB networking.
Still curious about AVB networking? Check out our Learn section.Gerald Lougheed faces criminal charges in a Sudbury election probe, the OPP said Thursday ( Sudbury Police Services Board )
Ontario Provincial Police have laid bribery charges against a top Sudbury Liberal activist after the byelection scandal that rocked Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government last winter. But police on Thursday cleared Pat Sorbara, Wynne’s deputy chief of staff, of any criminal wrongdoing in the Feb. 5 vote won by the Liberals. Gerry Lougheed, chair of the Greater Sudbury Police Services Board and a wealthy funeral director, was charged with one count of counselling an offence not committed and one count of unlawfully influencing or negotiating appointments.
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Lougheed will appear in Sudbury court on Nov. 18. If convicted, he could face a prison sentence of up to five years for one offence and seven years for the other, according to the Criminal Code of Canada. Wynne expressed relief about Sorbara, saying, “I never believed my staff did anything wrong.” “Of course, it’s a serious situation,” she said of the charges against Lougheed, a top Liberal fundraiser. “It’s upsetting.” Asked if anyone in her government directed him do anything untoward, Wynne replied: “It is now for the court system to ask those questions.” In a statement to CBC Sudbury, Lougheed, 61, said he would “be vigorously defending these charges in the courts.
“As I have previously indicated, if charged, I would step aside from the Sudbury Regional Police Services Board and my position as chancellor of Huntington University until this matter is resolved. I have no further comments at this time as this matter is now before the courts,” he said.
Sorbara declined to comment.
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OPP Det.-Supt. Dave Truax said a parallel investigation continues into less serious allegations that the provincial Elections Act was violated. Truax said the criminal probe took more than eight months because it was “a very uncommon investigation.” “These are sections of the Criminal Code that are not commonly enforced and as a result that increases the complexity of the matter and we wanted to ensure that we were professional and thorough,” he said. Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said Wynne should step aside until the case, based on a taped conversation Lougheed had with former Liberal candidate Andrew Olivier, is resolved. “Allegedly, Gerry Lougheed was her spokesman... Gerry Lougheed wasn’t freelancing here,” Brown charged.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said someone must have directed Lougheed. “Was it the premier? Was it somebody in her office? Who gave the order to Mr. Lougheed to offer incentives for Mr. Olivier not to run?” she said. The controversy began when New Democrat MPP Joe Cimino resigned on Nov. 20, just five months after winning the riding of Sudbury in the 2014 provincial election. Olivier, runner-up by 980 votes in that campaign, wanted, again, to be the Liberal candidate in pursuit of his goal of being the first quadriplegic MPP. That dream was shattered after Wynne lured away popular local NDP MP Glenn Thibeault from federal politics to run provincially as a Liberal. The premier, Lougheed and Sorbara each personally appealed to Olivier to rally behind Thibeault’s appointment for the good of the party. Because he often tapes conversations for note-taking purposes, his talks with Lougheed in his office and Sorbara by phone were recorded. (His call from Wynne came while he was in an elevator and wasn’t taped.)
“The premier wants to talk. They would like to present you options in terms of appointments, jobs, whatever, that you and her and Pat Sorbara could talk about,” Lougheed told Olivier on Dec. 11. On Dec. 12, Sorbara emphasized that “we should have the broader discussion about what is it that you’d be most interested in doing... whether it’s a full-time or part-time job in a constit. office, whether it is appointments, supports or commissions, whether it is also going on the exec., there are lots....” Those were references to positions in an MPP’s constituency office and on the Liberal party executive. A few weeks later, Olivier, who eventually ran as independent in the byelection and finished third, took his concerns public. “Although I did not initiate this investigation, I will co-operate as I have from the outset with the authorities in any way I can,” he said Thursday, declining further comment. Even before Olivier released the recordings, the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats called the OPP and Elections Ontario to investigate. Greg Essensa, the province’s chief electoral officer, found the Liberals were in “apparent contravention” of bribery laws. On Thursday, Thibeault told reporters he did not feel in any way responsible for the scandal. “I don’t think there’s anything tainting my work that I’m doing for the people of Sudbury,” he said.
Read more about:Chief Justice John Roberts
A forlorn marker on a great nation’s descent into decline and decay.
Three months ago, I quoted George Jonas on the 30th anniversary of Canada’s ghastly “Charter of Rights and Freedoms”: “There seems to be an inverse relationship between written instruments of freedom, such as a Charter, and freedom itself,” wrote Jonas. “It’s as if freedom were too fragile to be put into words: If you write down your rights and freedoms, you lose them.”
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For longer than one might have expected, the U.S. Constitution was a happy exception to that general rule — until, that is, the contortions required to reconcile a republic of limited government with the ambitions of statism rendered U.S. constitutionalism increasingly absurd. As I also wrote three months ago (yes, yes, don’t worry, there’s a couple of sentences of new material in amongst all the I-told-you-so stuff), “The United States is the only Western nation in which our rulers invoke the Constitution for the purpose of overriding it — or, at any rate, torturing its language beyond repair.”
Thus, the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision. No one could seriously argue that the Framers’ vision of the Constitution intended to provide philosophical license for a national government (“federal” hardly seems le mot juste) whose treasury could fine you for declining to make provision for a chest infection that meets the approval of the Commissar of Ailments. Yet on Thursday Chief Justice Roberts did just that. And conservatives are supposed to be encouraged that he did so by appeal to the Constitution’s taxing authority rather than by a massive expansion of the Commerce Clause. Indeed, several respected commentators portrayed the Chief Justice’s majority vote as a finely calibrated act of constitutional seemliness.
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#ad#Great. That and $4.95 will get you a decaf macchiato in the Supreme Court snack bar. There’s nothing constitutionally seemly about a Court decision that says this law is only legal because the people’s representatives flat-out lied to the people when they passed it. Throughout the Obamacare debates, Democrats explicitly denied it was a massive tax hike: “You reject that it’s a tax increase?” George Stephanopoulos demanded to know on ABC. “I absolutely reject that notion,” replied the president. Yet “that notion” is the only one that would fly at the Supreme Court. The jurists found the individual mandate constitutional by declining to recognize it as a mandate at all. For Roberts’ defenders on the right, this is apparently a daring rout of Big Government: Like Nelson contemplating the Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen, the chief justice held the telescope to his blind eye and declared, “I see no ships.”
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but a handful of judges rule that it’s a rare breed of elk, then all’s well. The chief justice, on the other hand, looks, quacks, and walks like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland: “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.” The Obama administration sentences you to a $695 fine, and a couple of years later the queens of the Supreme Court explain what it is you’re guilty of. A. V. Dicey’s famous antipathy to written constitutions and preference for what he called (in a then largely unfamiliar coinage) the “rule of law” has never looked better.
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Instead, constitutionalists argue that Chief Roberts has won a Nelson-like victory over the ever-expanding Commerce Clause. Big deal — for is his new, approved, enhanced taxing power not equally expandable? And, in attempting to pass off a confiscatory penalty as a legitimate tax, Roberts inflicts damage on the most basic legal principles.
#page#Still, quibbling over whose pretzel argument is more ingeniously twisted — the government’s or the Court’s — is to debate, in Samuel Johnson’s words, the precedence between a louse and a flea. I have great respect for George Will, but his assertion that the Supreme Court decision is a “huge victory” that will “help revive a venerable tradition” of “viewing congressional actions with a skeptical constitutional squint” and lead to a “sharpening” of “many Americans’ constitutional consciousness” is sufficiently delusional that one trusts mental health is not grounds for priority check-in at the death panel. Back in the real world, it is a melancholy fact that tens of millions of Americans are far more European in their view of government than the nation’s self-mythologizing would suggest. Indeed, citizens of many Continental countries now have more — what’s the word? — liberty in matters of health care than Americans. That’s to say, they have genuinely universal government systems alongside genuinely private-system alternatives. Only in America does “health” “care” “reform” begin with the hiring of 16,500 new IRS agents tasked with determining whether your insurance policy merits a fine. It is the perverse genius of Obamacare that it will kill off what’s left of a truly private health sector without leading to a truly universal system. However, it will be catastrophically unaffordable, hideously bureaucratic, and ever more coercive. So what’s not to like?
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To give Chief Justice Roberts’ argument more credit than it deserves, governments use taxes as a form of incentive. There is mortgage tax relief because the state feels home ownership is generally a good thing. Conversely, not buying health insurance is a bad thing, so such anti-social behavior should be liable to a kind of anti-social tax. But, as presently constituted, the Supreme Court’s new “tax” is a steal — $695 is cheaper than most annual health-insurance policies. Especially when, under Obamacare, you’re allowed to wait till you get ill to take out health insurance, and you can’t be turned down. Which is why the cost of insurance is already rising, and will rise higher still down the road. Which means that in a few years’ time paying the penalty will look even more of a bargain, at least until you fall off the roof or acquire an uncooperative polyp. Right now, many Americans are, by any rational measure, over-insured. That will be far less affordable in the future. Some are already downgrading to less lavish policies. Those with barebones policies might likewise find it makes more sense to downgrade to the $695 penalty. What Chief Justice Roberts sees as the Alternative Mandate Tax, millions of Americans will see as a de facto Alternative Minimum Health Plan.
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#ad#Who knows? Chances are I’m wrong, and the justices are wrong, and the government’s wrong, and the consequences of Obamacare will be of a nature none of us has foreseen. But we already know Obama’s been wrong about pretty much everything — you can keep your own doc, your premiums won’t go up, it’s not a tax, etc. — and in the Republic of Paperwork multi-trillion-dollar cost overruns and ever greater bureaucratic sclerosis seem the very least you can bet on. It should also be a given that this decision is a forlorn marker on a great nation’s descent into steep decline and decay. Granted the dysfunctionalism of Canadian health care, there’s at least the consolation of an equality of crappiness for all except cabinet ministers and NHL players. Here, it’s 2,800 unread pages of opt-outs, favors, cronyism, and a $695 fine for those guilty of no crime except wanting to live their lives without putting their bladder under the jurisdiction of Commissar Sebelius.
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And the Constitution is apparently cool with all that.
So be it. It’s down to the people now — as it should be. But, meanwhile, a little less deference to judges wouldn’t go amiss. The U.S. Supreme Court is starting to look like Britain’s National Health Service — you wait two years to get in, and then they tell you there’s nothing wrong. And you can’t get a second opinion.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn6 years ago
Washington (CNN) – President Obama says his most embarrassing moment is when he runs into a wall. It is "par for the course for me…I'm running into doors and desks all the time."
The comments came as he answered kids' questions for the Nickelodeon special: "Kids Pick the President: The Candidates."
You can follow Kevin Bohn on Twitter @KevinBohnCNN.
Nickelodeon videotaped kids posing the questions around the country, and the president answered them during an interview session at the White House. He also responded to questions about gun control, illegal immigration, jobs, outsourcing and bullying, according to a release from the network.
The responses are part of a special airing next week after which kids will vote for the candidate they think should be president. The network says in five of the last six elections the kids have correctly chosen the winner.
In a release, the network says Mitt Romney declined to participate after numerous attempts. The program will include file sound bites of Romney addressing the subjects.
The president's re-election campaign wasted no time in hitting its opponent over not participating. "It's no surprise Romney decided to play hookey. Kids demand details, and I'm sure they want some answers on why Romney could increase their class sizes, eliminate their teacher's jobs, raise taxes on their families and slash funding for Big Bird. Unfortunately for Mitt Romney, 'The dog ate my homework' just doesn't cut it when you're running for President," Obama campaign deputy press secretary Adam Fetcher said in a statement.
The Romney campaign refused to comment on its decision beyond saying it was unable to fit it into the candidate's schedule.
Both Obama and Sen. John McCain participated in the Nickelodeon 2008 kids special. Neither Sen. John Kerry nor President George W. Bush did an interview for it in 2004.
- Check out the CNN Electoral Map and Calculator and game out your own strategy for November.Free Admission * Free Parking Keep Up to Date +Like Us on Facebook
Stop by an information booth for a Self Guided Tour Map or click below to view
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Free Parking: Enter lot on Bundy/Centinela to the Santa Monica Community College Bundy Campus lot.
Pedestrian entrance to Airport is on the West side of parking lot
Museum of Flying will be FREE to kids 12 and and $5 for adults
Airside guided Bus tours leave every 1/2 hour. Sign up in advance in person at the Observation Deck. Seating is limited.
Canvas to Art kids eco- art workshop- free- 3200 Airport Ave - look for the tents!
Food Trucks:
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TyphoonOver the last few months here at Unity, we have been hard at work on, amongst many other cool things, the ability to publish from Unity to the Flash Player. This means that next to the already existing build targets of a Unity project, one will be able to target Flash with Stage3D, announced for Flash Player 11.
Since our initial announcement, there has been a great deal of interest and many people have questions on what Unity supporting Flash means. Today we lift the veil for a sneak peek.
Unity for Flash Developers
We are organizing a Flash day on September 27th, the day before the Unite conference, aimed at getting Flash developers up to speed with Unity development. On this day we’ll be showing and telling about the Flash support functionality and giving entry level overviews of Unity to get you started.
If you are a Flash developer or designer interested in getting started with Unity, this is a great kick-start to enjoy the Unite Conference following the days after.
If you are interested in learning more about our Flash support, meeting the Flash team at Unity, asking us questions about it or just look at the demos we’ll be showing, we are looking forward to see you there!
The Unity Flash day is free (please do register though), and right now, there are still tickets available for the Unite conference.
Can’t make it out for Flash day? Sad panda? Well, we have some good news! Let us shed some light on our work with a sneak peek right now….it includes a video and it is the first time we are showing our work publicly.
A sneak preview
This video preview shows the Shadowgun game demo by Madfinger Games, a highly anticipated iOS & Android Unity built game. Except now, it is exported for and running in the Flash Player!
While we are not quite ready to ship with Flash support yet, we just couldn’t resist sharing this video with you, as this has been a major milestone for us. We’ve taken the project, changed the build platform to Flash, hit build; magic happens…and the game runs in the Flash Player.
Performance is great and things are looking very promising. Keep in mind, this is a sneak peek; many things are still rough around the edges. Rest assured we are working hard to ship this, there is nobody who likes to see this in your hands as soon as possible more than we do.
Features, features, features.
Many of the features available in Unity today and in the future will be directly available for Flash when we release our Flash export feature. For all of you that are interested in, but less familiar with Unity we’d like to highlight some features that currently already work for the Flash export of our internal Unity build right now.
Unity has an integrated physics solution powered by NVIDIA PhysX. Used for things like rigidbody, ragdoll and realistic car physics, this will make your world come alive with fast and accurate physics. We’ve been testing it out on Flash with some complex scenes and it runs smooth and fast! For the initial release of our Flash support we will probably not be supporting cloth and soft bodies. All in all this feature combined with the ease of Unity’s editor is hugely powerful to build rich and realistic dynamic worlds.
Adding atmosphere to your scene with advanced and beautiful lighting, can be done from within the Unity editor, using the built in Beast lightmapper. Since the lightmapping is done offline in the editor, it has very little impact on the runtime performance of your game, while adding much more visual depth and atmosphere to it.
With built-in Umbra Occlusion Culling, Unity adds a performance optimization to render only what’s actually visible for the viewer. Visually, the result is the same, but now optimized and faster rendering, with little effort needed to do so.
Everything rendered in Unity is done so with shaders. While Unity ships with 60+ shaders, you can also build your own. The best thing? Our Flash port automatically converts this to Stage3D AGAL assembly and does all the hard work for you, no extra work involved.
This feature, planned for Unity 3.5, adds really nice and fast dynamic lighting. As the ShadowGun demo shows, lightprobes have a great effect on your scene’s lighting. It renders at a relatively little performance cost and adds lighting details to your scene and it’s dynamic objects, adding to both realism of lighting and visual beauty.
Fire, explosion, debris, fireflies; particle systems add many types of animated detail to your scenes; the current particle system as well as the up and coming new ones, planned for 3.5, fully work for Flash.
Unity can build your games for many different platforms already; and the scripting is portable from platform to platform. With a dash of magic (read : blood, sweat and tears) by our dev team, we support the exact same functionality for Flash. If you script your game with C# or strict JavaScript, everything gets converted to and compiled as ActionScript. This keeps your games portable between platforms and allows existing users using C# to easily target the Flash platform. For the first release we will also support most basic.NET library functionality.
Unity will automatically generate navigation meshes from your level geometry.
Beautiful, natural-looking crowd simulation using RVO and PLE algorithms wrapped in a simple API. Agents can find paths to target locations with built-in crowd simulation, or can be moved directly on the NavMesh in a similar way to the character controller.
Adding audio to to 3D positions and having your player experience the audio of that point in space adds another layer of depth to your game. For the first release of the Flash support we will only support the basics, without effects. However, all normal editor features are retained, allowing you to easily add immersive audio to your game.
Unity supports seamless import and modification of your assets using 3D modellers and Photoshop. With the addition of Flash support, this means that getting from a set of assets to making it interactive with the Unity editor to publishing it for Flash will be as smooth as it is already. We think getting this kind of ease of use for your production is currently unseen for the Flash Platform.
Specifically for Flash support, you’ll be able to communicate between the project and other ActionScript code. This means that you don’t lose any Flash functionality and it allows for tight integration between Flash and Unity. It allows embedding the Unity exported content within your existing Flash project and communicate between your Unity and Flash content.
Preparing now to build for Flash
The above is just a short list of highlights that work out of the box, amongst many more. We are still hard at work on Flash support, however there are some things that are not likely to work in the first release. We’d like to point them so you can start working on preparing your projects for Flash.
Anything requiring mouselock (unfortunately this is a Flash Player API limitation, it has no mouselock)
Scripting your project with non-strict javascript (if you have #pragma strict in your js file, you’re good)
Raknet networking (networking could still be achieved through ActionScript messaging & Flash networking)
“Complicated” things from the.NET class library (for example; BinaryFormatter, Crypto, WebRequest, Reflection)
Advanced Audio filters (Reverb zones, Doppler, etc)
Video (however, flash video can be controlled using ActionScript messaging)
Terrain engine
Deferred rendering
Over time this list will get shorter, but we do not plan on holding back a first release for the lack of any of those features. As for the question “when is it done”; at this point we are not able to give you an exact shipping date yet. We’ll follow up with another post when we know more.
We hope you enjoyed this little sneak, are looking forward to hear what you think and will hopefully see you at our Flash day or Unite!An excerpt from a document released last year by the National Archives at Kew, west London, which reveals how officials helped former prime minister Margaret Thatcher carefully manage negotiations with the Saudis to land the UK's biggest ever arms deal (Photo by Dominic Harris/PA Archive/PA Images)
Last week the government released thousands of old files to the National Archives, where you can now go to see them. This Great British tradition takes place whenever government documents become 30 years old, and they are generally released at New Year or in "silly season" – AKA the summer, when political journalists have so little to do they get sent to cover the tennis.
The press are invited to have a sneak preview before they are released. Generally, the idea is to find anything vaguely related to the Second World War and write articles about that – after all, this is the only period of British history that gets a proper airing. So with the recent release, the BBC, Guardian and Mail all had stories about the Nazi Rudolf Hess, who committed suicide in a British-run prison in 1987.
The real story, though, is about pervasive state censorship and the hundreds of files that the government did not release to the Archives. Three decades later, they are still deemed too sensitive, and could expose a side of British history that today's politicians do not want the public to properly understand. They are alluded to in National Archive spreadsheets, but are not actually released.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told VICE that "overall we only redact around 1 percent of content across all historic files that we review". If that's the case, then in countries where they're refusing to publish lots of files, there must really be something they want to hide.
Here are nine cover-ups VICE has found:
A Royal Saudi Airforce Tornado during Operation Desert Storm
1) SAUDI ARMS DEALS
Almost half of the Foreign Office's files about Saudi Arabia – 17 out of 35 – from 1986 are not being published. These include four files about the "Sale of Tornado and Hawk aircraft to Saudi Arabia". These files would shed light on the relationship between Britain's most controversial ally, the House of Saud, and Britain's largest arms dealer, BAE Systems. Recently, Amnesty claimed that the Saudi bombing of Yemen, including schools, medical facilities, mosques and markets, was helping BAE make more sales – something the company denied. And following the Manchester terrorist attacks, questions were raised about maintaining relations with a country that funds terrorism around the world.
In the 1980s, the company secured the £43 billion "Al-Yamamah" arms deal with Saudi to sell the Kingdom fighter jets. The deal has long been marred by allegations of bribery and corruption, and new information is being hidden from us. Other missing files include one titled, "Training for Saudi Arabian special security forces".
2) TOTAL SHUT DOWN ON PRINCESS DIANA'S VISITS TO THE MIDDLE EAST
One function of British Royals is to kiss the figurative butts of Royal families in parts of the world where monarchies still call the shots. The Foreign Office has 28 files about Royal visits to the Middle East in 1986. None of these – zero – are being made public.
Most of them are about a trip Charles and Diana made to staunch British allies Saudi, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain in November of 1986. Then, as now, these places were no shining beacons of human rights. Two Bahraini opposition activists, Radhi Mahdi Ibrahim and Dr Hashim al-Alawi, were reportedly tortured to death in the months before Princess Diana visited that small country. The Bahraini King's "terror campaign" against the Bahrain National Liberation Front saw around 100 people swept up during the year. Many of them were tortured by the Security and Intelligence Service, which was run by a British officer Colonel Ian Henderson, dubbed the "Butcher of Bahrain". A file called "Internal political affairs in Bahrain", which could perhaps shed more light on this episode, is being withheld from the public.
3) BRITISH INVOLVEMENT IN MODERN INDIA'S DARKEST DAYS
As VICE exclusively revealed last week, the Foreign Office is hiding almost a third of its files about India from 1985. Sikh MPs have called it a "cover-up" and demanded an inquiry. It matters because, back then, India was carrying out a decade-long crack-down on Sikhs, starting with the "Golden Temple" massacre in Amritsar in 1984. One of the missing files is about India's National Security Guard, an elite commando force that raided the Sikh faith's holiest site in 1986 and 1988, and may have received SAS training.
WATCH: This Is What Winning Looks Like
4) AFGHAN REVERSAL
Britain's foreign policy on Afghanistan has changed beyond recognition in the last three decades. Today, the Taliban are our sworn enemy. The Ministry of Defence say that 456 UK personnel died while serving in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2015.
Back in the 1980s, however, Margaret Thatcher visited an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan and told the assembled crowd, many of them |
answer is not checked and counts as failure. The final score is simply a number of wrong answers, less is better. Quiz requires Javascript to be enabled.
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Let's see the score!
I hope you liked it. Please leave your score in the comments. I'll try to explain these questions sometime in a near future, unless someone else does it before me. Meanwhile, you can take a look at my articles on function expressions and delete operator, understanding which would help you answer some of these questions, and more importantly, explain their answers.For 2015, Mazda offered its Mazda3S Touring models with the larger, 2.5-liter engine with a manual six-speed transmission. If you were waiting for that combination, we hope you jumped at the chance because for 2016 it is going away. Buyers will still be able to get the manual in the Grand Touring version though. The award-winning Mazda3 will continue on in 2016 with many other small changes. In our earlier report, we detailed how the new 2016 model Mazda3 will package more content into the vehicle and how prices are basically unchanged. The 2016 Mazda3 will start at $17,845. Note that Mazda3i indicates the smaller, 2.0 liter engine (155 hp), and Mazda3S indicates the larger 2.5-liter (184 hp) engine.
2016 Mazda3 Changes
The first notable change is that Mazda is dropping one of its trim levels. The Mazda 3i SV goes away. The Sport will be the base model going into 2016. In terms of basic content, all Mazda3 cars will now have rear-view cameras. The auto-dimming mirror has been made standard on all Mazda3i Grand Touring and Mazda3S Touring models. All Mazda3i Touring models also now come with moon-roof, illuminated vanity mirrors, and overhead console with sunglasses holder.
2016 Mazda3 Package Changes
For 2016, Mazda will offer the Sport with the Preferred Equipment Package containing the following:
• Alloy wheels
• Heated body-color dual power door mirrors with integrated turn signal lamps
• Rear seat armrest with cupholders
• Auto on/off headlights
• Rain-sensing windshield wipers
• Blind Spot Monitoring with Rear Cross Traffic Alert
The Mazda3 Touring Popular Equipment Package will consist of:
• Auto-dimming interior mirror
• Dual-zone (driver and front passenger) automatic climate control system
• BOSE® nine-speaker surround sound system with Centerpoint® 2 and AutoPilot® 2
• SiriusXM satellite radio with four-month subscription
• CD player
• Shark fin antenna
• Auto on/off headlights and rain-sensing windshield wipers standard on all Mazda3 Touring and Grand Touring four- and five-door models
The new, 2016 Mazda3 goes on sale in late summer 2015.
Note: This story was updated a few hours after publication.So I’ve been wanting to do ‘the loop’ (aka Pacific Marine Circle Route) since getting my insured bike a couple Summers ago, but was apprehensive to do it by myself being that the majority is outside of cell range and my tank gets me just around the distance between Cowichan Lake and Sooke.. Running out of gas, breaking down or worse yet – crashing sounds much worse alone! But the sun drew me out solo and next thing you know I was sitting at Cowichan Lake in the sun aaaand – fuck it. It was on. 🙂
View Larger Map
The road between Lake Cowichan and Port Renfrew is amazing. Twisties like you’ve never seen and long straight sections of old growth forest perfect for letting it all hang out between the tight corners. Just be careful of random smatterings of gravel in all the wrong spots! I was surprised to only pass a handful of other bikes along the way given the beautiful weather… Those that did pass me were doing the police sign as they passed so I tried to keep it somewhat light on the throttle (that’s a lie, but in theory). Never did see any cops… I think I was being messed with by the old cruiser crowd. First stop was a random pool along an unknown river.
I continued on and hit Ferry and Lizard lakes. Great time for it because the campgrounds aren’t open yet, but the stealth DRZ was happy to loop around a gate or two. No pics, no evidence. 🙂
A note of caution – if you’ve never done the loop the road feels like riding on an ocean coming in to Renfew from Cowichan… It was a workout on my DRZ, but it would potentially launch you on a sports bike!
Made a couple stops once I got closer to Port Renfew. Here’s some random pics around there.
Once I got through Renfrew I started hitting every trail going West in hopes of finding a nice little ocean side place to relax, but they’ve done a decent job of keeping folks like us out. I did make a stop at a formal view point as shown below.
Then I found one wonderful trail through some serious old growth forest and according to my GPS I was within 100 meters of the coast, but the trail was tight and I was starting to worry about running out of gas before making it down to Sooke… We will go back to this trail for sure. Found a sweet old van covered in moss where I turned around.
By the time I made it to Jordan River I was remembering just how uncomfortable a stock DRZ seat can be. Have you ever had your balls go to sleep? Pins and needles? Try to walk that shit off like it’s not happening – not easy. Nonetheless, Jordan River was alive with surfers and just about as beautiful as a rest stop can be.
By the time I rolled in to Sooke I was deep in to my reserve tank, but I made it in one piece! If you’ve never made the loop, I highly recommend it. It’s about as close as you’ll get to a legit road trip without leaving the island if you’re in Victoria. My only advice is have enough gas, bring some munchies and if you can do it with some friends, views and rides like this are best shared.
Somehow I still had enough energy to rip in to Victoria to hooligan ride with Karl all night until heading back up to Shawnigan Lake. Man, did I ever sleep like a baby! 3 full tanks of gas on a DRZ is my new record ha!
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loading...On Feb. 8, there was an anti-parallel-trading protest in Tuen Mun, during which police used pepper spray and arrested 13 demonstrators.
Hongkongers, particularly in the Northern District, are becoming increasingly disgruntled with the growing number of smugglers who cross back and forth between the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border.
Sean, an American who has lived in Hong Kong for 10 years and currently resides in Sha Tin, joined the crowds gathering at the starting point of the protest, the Tuen Mun MTR Station, at 3pm.
He said that he was concerned with how the government has no intention to address the issue, a common complaint.
Everyday life has been affected by the overflow of shoppers, he claimed.
Another man, aged 30, has lived in Tuen Mun for most of his life. He says he has witnessed the transformation of his neighbourhood since parallel trading began.
“I have lived here for 24 years,” he said. “The development of drugstores and the flow of travellers have disfigured our everyday lives”.
He’s referring to the recent phenomenon of a high number of drugstores opening in the area. They cater to parallel traders by selling the goods that are in high demand by smugglers.
“I don’t unwelcome tourists from other regions, but these shoppers or smugglers really have no respect for the community at all. It makes sense that if they come, they should at the very least respect our culture”.
“The shops in the district are no longer catered for the local community, and prices for everything kept going up”.
Yet the young man is hopeful.
“Like in the Umbrella Revolution, people became aware and start questioning. Eventually the government will be pressured to solve the issue.”
The day after the protests, bus company KMB announced tighter luggage restrictions on their border-bound bus routes.
As the crowds neared a street now infamous for being “taken over” by drugstores, the demonstrators chanted, “Stop grey market smugglers, cancel multi-entry permits”, and called drugstore owners “traitors”.
One local gave an impromptu speech about being shoved by people rolling suitcases every time he went home after work, and how his living expenses were skyrocketing. The drugstores were thus their partners in crime, he concluded.
With emotions starting to run high, clashes began to occur as a few elderly pro-China men started to cause a scene.
The police reacted quickly and cordoned off the area.
Some anti-parallel-trade protesters accused the police of protecting the fofenders. The crowd started chanting “Black police!” – a chant often heard during the pro-democracy protests.
Through the march officially ended when they reached Tuen Mun Town Plaza, many protesters moved inside the mall, which they claim has been affected by the parallel traders.
The police quickly dispersed the crowds by wielding batons and sealing off entrances to malls.
One old man complained to his companion about how he believed the government “no longer represented the people”, and that the shops in the area were not for them.
He added that he felt marginalised in his own home and Hong Kong was losing its identity.
One woman, named Heidi and aged 22, claimed to see the police using pepper spray indiscriminately and without warning.
Also a Shatin resident, the young woman said she was here to show her support as her life was also affected by the growing number of mainland Chinese shoppers and smugglers.
The crowds started to turn their focus from the smugglers to the police.
One young man, yelling at the police through a loudspeaker, said. “You lot are paid by us taxpayers, and now you hit us instead and protect [the smugglers], shouldn’t you be protecting us from harm instead?”
The next morning, Heidi sent me a text message about another anti-smuggling protest in Sha Tin the following weekend. It was clear that as long as people perceive the government to be indifferent to the issue, these protests will go on for a long time.
Words/Photos: Thomas ChanThe following may be attributed to AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson:
"It is unthinkable that the United States could default on its financial commitments, and it would be the height of irresponsibility for any public official to consider such a course. In fact, even the discussion of default poses great risk to our economy and to our country. It is imperative to our Nation that the overwhelming majority of our public officials who recognize this reality unite their efforts, regardless of party, to bring a responsible solution forward."
About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company and one of the most honored companies in the world. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and internationally. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation’s fastest and most reliable 4G LTE network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services. A leader in mobile Internet, AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide of any U.S. carrier, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries. It also offers advanced TV service with the AT&T U-verse® brand. The company’s suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world.
Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com/aboutus or follow our news on Twitter at @ATT, on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/att and YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/att.
© 2013 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the AT&T logo and all other marks contained herein are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
4G LTE speed claim based on national carriers’ average 4G LTE download speeds. Reliability claim based on data transfer completion rates on nationwide 4G LTE networks. 4G LTE availability varies.Samsung Pay: Part 1
Commerce has come a long way since the days of bartering and trade. Cattle and grain were some of the first forms of what we would call money today. It wasn’t until around the 5th or 6th century that coins came into wide usage, allowing consumers to leave their cows at home when they went shopping. Paper money emerged in China in the 11th century, and credit cards came along in the early 20th century, both ushering in unprecedented eras of convenience.
Of course, the most recent developments in the consumer shopping experience has come with the explosion of online shopping over the last two decades. However, the way people pay when they shop in-store is about to see yet another innovation, which could revolutionize consumer culture.
Mobile payment is a burgeoning phenomenon in the world of retail and commerce, which appears set to change the way people shop for goods and services and will combine all physical cards into one neat digital package. Mobile payments allow users to pay at points of sale using their phones, with just a quick tap, using credit card information encrypted into Samsung Pay. Up until now, competing mobile payment services have been accepted by only a very small number of participating retailers. That is all about to change. With the popularity in mobile payments heating up, Samsung is set to make a huge splash with Samsung Pay.
Starting this summer, Samsung Pay will be available free of charge in the United States and South Korea for users of Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge after a firmware update. Europe and China are slated to follow.
What really sets Samsung Pay apart from the existing services is that it can be used almost anywhere credit cards are accepted. Most existing mobile payment services can only be used at retail locations with Near Field Communication point of sale systems. While steadily growing, Near Field Communication (NFC) is still only available at a limited number of US retailers.
Samsung Pay, in addition to being compatible with NFC, will also work on regular magstripe credit card readers – the standard credit card payment terminals found at most shops and restaurants thanks to a technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST). Nearly all retailers with magstripe readers will not need to upgrade their terminals to accept Samsung Pay. This represents a major breakthrough in the world of mobile payments, and means that Samsung Pay has the potential to be accepted at majority of retailers, giving it a massive advantage over the competition.
Whether NFC or MST, the payment process is the same. Users pull up the Samsung Pay app by swiping up from the home button, select a card in Samsung Pay, authenticate the transaction with the fingerprint sensor, and tap to pay.
In effect, Samsung Pay will allow users to keep all their credit and debit cards on their mobile device. Samsung has already partnered with an ever expanding list of banks and credit companies, including Visa and MasterCard. Because Samsung Pay replaces sensitive card data with a unique, secure token to prevent fraud and because transactions cannot be completed without fingerprint verification, Samsung Pay is more secure than using physical cards.
Samsung Pay’s combination of widespread availability and security features make it the most enticing mobile payment service yet. When Americans and South Koreans go shopping this summer, more and more will surely be leaving their wallets at home.A woman who has anonymously accused NBA player Derrick Rose of sexually assaulting her in Los Angeles three years ago will have her name made public in court.
A federal judge ruled Monday that the woman, who filed suit under the name ‘Jane Doe,’ that her name would be put on record in the courtroom. “The public does, of course, have some interest in [her] true identity, especially in light of the publicity surrounding this action,” U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald wrote in his ruling. “The public has an equally strong interest, however, in encouraging victims of sexual assault to bring claims against their assailants.”
It’s not uncommon for plaintiffs to file complaints anonymously, and in the past judges have allowed certain people in certain types of cases to remain unidentified during trial. But keeping the accusers’ name secret is difficult, especially considering how fast information spreads and that the Internet isn’t necessarily bound by the same rules as major news organizations, which usually don’t release the names of rape accusers. In this case, the argument is complicated even more by Rose’s celebrity status as a pro athlete. The accuser and her attorneys worry that if her name were made public, Rose’s fans might harass or even threaten her and her family.
The allegations stem from a night in August 2013 during which the accuser says Rose and two of his friends drugged her, then drove to her apartment after she left and had sex with her while she was incapacitated. Rose and the other two men say they did have sex, but that it was consensual.
Guests:
William Weinberg, criminal defense lawyer based in Irvine, California
Laura Dunn, Esq., victims’ rights attorney and executive director of SurvJustice, an organization based in Washington, D.C. advocating justice for survivors of sexual assaultBefore we talk about the alternatives of the Raspberry pi, let’s take a look on the features of Raspberry. The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B packs a quad-core 900 MHz processor, 4 USB ports, a full HDMI port, 1 GB of RAM, camera and display interfaces, Ethernet port, micro SD card slot, and a GPU for graphics. It can run Linux as well as Windows 10, and costs about $35.
The first-generation Raspberry Pi is still available, but the specs are conspicuously step down from the Pi-2. Early models don’t have Ethernet ports, so users won’t be able to plug them into an internet connection. The Pi 2 is a step up in every way. Raspberry Pi is also a great board for making robots and you can find many good raspberry pi robot kit to get started.
The main reason that we look for alternatives is that a lot of boards out there that give more power. They have more ram, faster processors, more connectors, and better GPUs. Moreover, some have wifi built-in and some offer gigabit Ethernet, and a few even offer a solid amount of onboard storage.
So, if you are working on a project and you know your project will need more than the bare bones of a computer, in that case, going with another board might be a good idea. And, obviously, it’s always fun to use something that’s not monotonous.
Best Raspberry Pi Alternatives
Here are the five alternatives of Raspberry Pi that people can use.
1. Beagle Bone Black
Beagle Bone Black computer system has hardware which is open-source, low-powered, and single-board. IT is developed by Texas Instruments. It was designed with a mind of open-source development. The board comes with an AM335x 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 with 512MB DDR3 RAM, 4GB 8-bit eMMC onboard flash storage, 3D graphics accelerator, NEON floating-point accelerator,2x PRU 32-bit microcontroller a micro SD slot, and a USB host port and multipurpose device port which includes low-level serial control and JTAG hardware debugs connections.
2. The ODROID
The ODROID is a single-board computer built and designed by the Hardkernel Co Ltd, which is an open-source hardware company works in South Korea. The name ODROID is derived from Open + Android; however, the hardware is not actually open source since the design rights are held by the company. Primarily, the ODROID systems are created to run the Android OS; however, they are also able to run Linux.
Its features include a Amlogic Cortex-A5 (ARMv7) 1.5GHz quad-core CPUs, Mali-450 MP2 GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0/1.1 enabled for Linux and Android), 1Gbyte DDR3 SDRAM, Gigabit Ethernet, 40pin GPIOs, eMMC4.5 HS200 Flash Storage slot / UHS-1 SDR50 Micro SD Card slot, USB 2.0 Host x 4, USB OTG x 1, Infrared (IR) Receiver and can run Ubuntu 14.04 or Android KitKat.
3. Banana Pi
Banana Pi is often mentioned as a close alternative to the Raspberry Pi. It is a single-board computer made in China. It is flexible; it can run on Android, Ubuntu and Debian. Raspbian OS can also run, but the CPU is obliged by the requirements of the Debian Armhf port instead.
It is a quad core version of Banana Pi and a good alternative to the Raspberry Pi 2. It has support for WIFI on board. It uses a 1Ghz ARM7 quad-core processor with 1GB DDR3 SDRAM, comes with a Gigabit Ethernet port, and one of the most mentioned points is that it can easily run 1080P high-definition video output, so equally good if you are using it for home entertainment.
4. Minnow Board Max
The Minnow Board Max is for those who are looking for spec, however; it will cost you a lot more than the alternatives listed here.
The Minnow Board Max is powered by a 64-bit Atom processor, a version with a single-core 1.46GHz Atom E3815 with 1GB of DDR3 RAM is available, and a dual-core 1.33GHz Atom E3825 version with 2GB, both are 22nm parts with the code-name “Bay Trail”, and are clocked at 400MHz and the E3825’s at 533MHz in terms of Intel HD graphical support.
5. NanoPC-T1
NanoPC-T1 is for those who are looking for a low-cost way to get into micro-computing. Its main features include, a 1.5 GHz Samsung quad-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of onboard storage, HDMI and audio ports, three USB ports, an Ethernet port, an SD card slot, and support for Linux and Android. It means it’s very unlikely that you come up with a project to which this system does not support.Wearing a helmet emblazoned with the Oath Keepers insignia, goggles, padded gloves and knee pads, Stewart Rhodes jabbed his finger in the air and yelled into the microphone. Normally fixated with the federal government’s tyrannical reach to violate the constitution, at the University of California, Berkeley last week, his focus had changed.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes addresses a protest at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley, California, on April 27, 2017. (Credit: Ryan Lenz)
Rhodes wasn’t there to defend gun rights or the public’s right to access federal lands, both battles that have put the group into the center of issues that animate the radical right. This time, it was the right of racists to speak in public.
“This is ground zero in the defense of the Constitution and the most important part of it — the First Amendment,” Rhodes said, addressing the audience over a public announcement system. “If you don’t have the right to free speech and assembly, you are not free.”
Rhodes was one of a dozen speakers who gathered last Thursday at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, in the heart of Berkeley after the university cancelled a speaking engagement from conservative firebrand Ann Coulter, whose commentary on topics as varied as immigration and Islam earned her a cherished place in the alt-right. Coulter had vowed to make an appearance, regardless of the school's wishes, but cancelled when two student groups supporting her speech pulled their support amid concerns of more violence.
That didn’t stop a ragtag mix of far-right extremists and conservative student supporters, many donning helmets, carrying medical kits and clubs in expectation of another riot like three previous instances that have shaken the campus and put it in the national spotlight as the alt-right wages a war for the minds of America’s collegiate youth. They call it the “Battle of Berkeley.”
A college student during last week's protest at Berkeley wears a helmet adorned with Pepe the Frog. (Credit: Ryan Lenz)
Other schools have seen similar turmoil in the aftermath of President Trump’s successful political campaign, which succeeded by blowing repeated dog whistles to white Americans and, effectively, did more to advance racist ideologies than any politician in decades.
In March, at Middlebury College in Vermont, social scientist Charles Murray, who uses misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by genetic inferiority, gave a speech that was disrupted by students and left one professor injured and 30 students facing disciplinary action. Last month, at Auburn University, Richard Spencer, one of the nation’s leading alt-right leaders, took the school to federal court after officials cancelled a planned speech.
But, perhaps more than any other school, Berkeley — the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in 1964 and home to a historically liberal student body — has been a white-hot target in a growing effort to recruit students.
“Berkeley. I only need to say that one word and you know exactly what I am talking about,” Spencer said recently. “It has become the battlefield for all of these forces that are part of the intensification and polarization of American politics, the fragmentation of the nation.”
Those forces — the alt-right and a growing antifascist movement of left-wing extremists vowing to meet white nationalists on campus — have repeatedly clashed at Berkeley, beginning earlier this year when protests erupted ahead of a Feb. 1 appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart tech editor. Protesters caused more than $100,000 worth of damage to the campus, the school said.
Then, on April 15, a rally on campus dubbed "the Next Battle of Berkeley" devolved into a riot when the far right — alt-right figures, antigovernment movement leaders, and a conglomeration of conspiracy theorists and extremists ranging from anti-feminists to nativists — came itching for a fight and angrily voicing their support for Donald Trump. By the day’s end, 11 people were injured and six hospitalized. Police arrested 21 people on a variety of charges.
But the radical right was hardly finished with the campus. It was only the beginning.
Last week’s event was a turning point of sorts for alt-right figures who have focused on the campus. Unlike previous speeches that have been met with violence from the left, the day was remarkable for its calm.
Alt-Right mouthpiece Tim Treadstone, also known as "Baked Alaska."
"The fake news, the mainstream media, was there, and they wanted to paint this picture that the Trump supporters were there for violence. And it was completely wrong," Tim Treadstone, a former BuzzFeed social media strategist who goes by the name "Baked Alaska," told Infowars. Treadstone painted the event as a protest for constitutional rights, not that unlike efforts of a generation ago.
"Everyone should be standing up for free speech, even if you're a liberal,” Treadstone said. “We felt we had to go and not only defend Ann, but defend everyone's right to free speech."
But that question of free speech, and the fear of violence as a movement of antifascist protesters calling itself the “Black Bloc,” poses a challenge for colleges and universities, traditionally hotbeds of left-wing activists.
Lawrence Rosenthal, Chair of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, which examines right-wing movements in the United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America, declined to comment for this report, but issued a written statement stressing that in a polarized political environment brought on by the election of President Trump, one that pits fascist movements against their opposition, right wing extremists are seeking to capitalize on a turn of tides.
“Spencer argues that the fragmentation in American politic is moving toward a polarization where people will be forced to choose one or another armed side,” Rosenthal wrote. “This situation has not developed in the USA, even in this period of extreme political confrontation. But it is Richard Spencer’s goal.”
Spencer’s goal of targeting college campuses to recruit students to the alt-right, and bring a movement that gained momentum online into the physical space, is not unique to a post-Trump era, though.
In 2006, while an undergraduate at Michigan State University, white nationalist attorney Kyle Bristow pushed the school’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom toward a more racist identity, inviting a number of white nationalists to campus. That same year, Kevin Deanna, then a graduate student at American University, founded Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) to defend “Western culture” from the perils of “radical multiculturalism.” Others, including Patrick Sharp and Matthew Heimbach, both former YWC members, started White Student Unions at Georgia State University and Towson University in Baltimore.
But as much as President Trump’s campaign dog whistles normalized the movement of extremist ideologies into the mainstream of American politics, his campaign also excited conservative students who, like anti-Muslim extremist David Horowitz, rail against political correctness and argue that college campuses are “indoctrinating” the youth.
What’s left is a political climate on campus, complicated by forces outside the university wishing to confront the alt-right with physical violence, that favors people like Spencer, who late last year launched a “get them while they’re young” effort to recruit college students.
“People in college are at this point in their lives where they are actually open to alternative perspectives, for better or for worse,” Spencer told Mother Jones at the time. “I think rewiring the neurons of someone over 50 is effectively impossible.”
To that end, Spencer has won fans and acolytes from surprising corners by standing up to university officials in defense of his First Amendment rights.
Last month, just days before he was to give a speech at Auburn University’s Foy Hall, the university cancelled “based on legitimate concerns and credible evidence that it will jeopardize the safety of students, faculty, staff and visitors,” school officials said in a written statement. Spencer quickly enlisted the help of Sam Dickson, a former Ku Klux Klan attorney, and forced the school to let his speech proceed.
Richard Spencer
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago where Spencer finished his undergraduate studies, compared Auburn’s fight to efforts four decades earlier in Skokie, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, to ban the neo-Nazi National Socialist Party of America from marching. Criticizing the university for canceling Spencer’s speech, while acknowledging that its concern of violence was legitimate, Stone explained that the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that a threat of violence for people other than a speaker gives “power to a speaker’s opponents” and “would encourage opponents of others speakers to make similar threats.”
That case was “a landmark victory for the First Amendment,” Stone said, and proof that “the rule of law must and can prevail” for people like Spencer. After Berkeley's cancelation of Coulter’s speech, Spencer excoriated Coulter an in effort to celebrate his own legal victory as a “model that could be replicated.”
“When you have everyone on your side, you just can’t back down,” Spencer said. “Sometimes you need to seize the momentum, and you need to pile on. You need to just jump on that wave and take advantage of it and just win now. That is what I did.”
The approach has proven incredibly effective in inspiring college students, who find an age-old appeal in Spencer’s challenge of authority.
Two alt-right college students walk away after declining to be interviewed during last week's free speech protest in Berkeley, California.
At the Berkeley rally last week, two bearded students wearing baseball helmets covered in Pepe the Frog stickers paraded through the crowd, one wearing an American flag as a cape and the other an alt-right flag for the fictional nation of “Kekistan,” a flag modeled after flags produced by Hitler’s Third Reich. When asked what the flag meant, a student who declined to give his name laughed and said, “The Kekistani flag is based on rustling jimmies.”
“Rustling Jimmies” — a meme born from 4Chan that means to doing something to inspire a feeling of discomfort in those around you — speaks to the unique motivations of those who fall under the banner of the alt-right. While the movement remains comprised of a hodgepodge of ideologies on the far-right, and its hard-core ideologues leaders, those carrying the banner on the ground are increasingly young people inspired by Trump and reacting to what they are told is the oppressive overreach of a politically correct left.
In his announcement that he would turn his focus to college campuses last year to recruit posted to the website of his journal Radix, Spencer provided a form for students to request his presence on campus, free of charge. There was a message, one the students at Berkeley seem to have read.
“Richard Spencer — the originator of the term ‘Alt Right’ and one of the most politically incorrect men alive — is coming to your college! He’ll debate your favorite feminist professor … make the SJWs (social justice warriors) cry … and rustle the jimmies of the campus, if not the world,” the announcement read.
The marketing of Spencer’s message is part of a trend targeting youth that argues, in the aftermath of decades of left-wing dominance on college campuses, conservatism is cool. It is a message that others have piggy backed on.
For weeks, Alex Jones' Infowars has hyped a new T-shirt. Silver with black letters advertising Infowars url, the shirt has a picture of conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson, a growing presence on Jones network of radio, television and online channels, and a message a growing number of college students seem willing to advertise.
It reads simply, “Conservatism is the new counterculture.”Recently, the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch said in an interview that he only wanted “thin and beautiful” people to wear his clothes, which is why the largest woman’s size their stores carry is a 10.
The outcry has been predictable, and loud, and well deserved.
One of the more popular responses is a video titled “Abercrombie & Fitch gets a Brand Readjustment”(above). The video consists of a man handing out Abercrombie and Fitch clothing to persons who are homeless, as a ‘snub’ to the clothing brand. Because, after all, what could be worse than seeing clothes made for the beautiful people on poor people?
The only reason this “works” as humor is because we see people who are experiencing homelessness as “the other”, as someone who is different than us, and not only different, but offensive. It should, we are saying, offend Abercrombie and Fitch that “these” people are wearing our clothes.
If you doubt this, consider how you would feel about this story if, instead of “homeless people”, the story was that a man shot a video that sought to offend the brand by giving its clothes to black people or gay people. The internet would be in an outrage, rightfully calling the video racist or homophobic.
But give the clothes to homeless people and the Huffington Post calls it a “funny and creative way to readjust the Abercrombie & Fitch brand.”
Sigh.
This is wrong. It is, to use a word I do not use lightly, evil. It is stigmatizing an already stigmatized group in order to “strike back” at a brand that let you down. One of our idols failed us, and so we critique them by shooting video of vulnerable people wearing their clothes in order to lampoon the brand.
Also by Hugh: Do I Deny the Resurrection?
I mentioned on Social Media that I have a problem with the video, and several folks implied I was being overly sensitive. After all, the narrative, the story, is that A & F is bad, and they must be punished. And after all, homeless folks need clothes, right? The guy meant well, after all.
No. This is really a story about us. About our wanting to believe that we are just and good and, dare I say it, holy. And that any cause we champion is just and good and holy as well, and after all, we are helping out some homeless folks who need clothes…
It is never okay to stigmatize people in the defense of your cause – no matter how just or good it is. It is never okay to use poor people – or, in fact, any people, as props or object lessons or teaching tools. Ever.
People who are experiencing homelessness are people. They are not extras in a movie about you.
—
Hugh Hollowell is a minister in the Mennonite Church USA based in Raleigh, N.C. He is the founder and director of Love Wins Ministries, which tackles the problems of homelessness by focusing on relationships, not outcomes.
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President Obama, after spending most of his |
the president of CAP, warned John Podesta to “keep tabs on Doug Band who she thought was the insider who told NBC to “follow the money and the find the real HRC scandal”.
John Podesta quickly wrote back to identify the real source as f ormer Clinton Foundation CEO Eric Braverman which shocks Tanden who replies, “Holy Moses.”
This was in Email 25357:
During his tenure, he uncovered issues that worried him. In Email 25770, Eric is a “bit at wits”.
A POLITICO article stated that he tried to change the Clinton Foundation and then quit:
Already, a spate of recent news stories in Politico and elsewhere have highlighted questions about the foundation’s aggressive fundraising both before and during Braverman’s tenure, including the news that the foundation had been accepting contributions from foreign governments with lax oversight from the State Department when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. The foundation has been Clinton’s main public platform since she left State in February 2013.
The hiring a few months later of Braverman, who had been a partner in McKinsey’s Washington office, was seen as validation of Chelsea Clinton’s view that the foundation needed to address recommendations from a 2011 audit for tighter governance and budgeting, as well as more comprehensive policies to vet donors and avoid conflicts of interest.
When Braverman arrived to replace Lindsey as CEO, he moved quickly to adopt the auditor’s recommendations, and then some.
No public explanation was offered for Braverman’s resignation.
That takes us to today and reports that Eric Braverman asked for asylum in Russia on October 23rd. He allegedly walked into the Russian embassy and asked for immediate asylum.
A lot of people around the Clintons do die.
The English translation of a Russian article about it can be found on this link.
You can google: сорок рискует остаться без хвоста and you will get the following:
Сорока рискует остаться без хвоста.: alexey43
alexey43.livejournal.com/2464106.html
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23 hours ago – Сорока рискует остаться без хвоста. Но, рискнула. Скажем ей “спасибо” и пожелаем спрятаться хорошо. Информационное ожирение …
The Sentinel does not know if Braverman fled and sought asylum, however, the emails are accurate. Zerohedge posted the story first we believe. but has not reported about the asylum seeking.About The Author Lea is currently busy doing research in Human-Computer Interaction at MIT CSAIL. She has previously written an advanced CSS book for O’Reilly (CSS Secrets) and … More about Lea…
Introducing Mavo: Create Web Apps Entirely By Writing HTML!
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Have you ever wanted to make a website that non-technical folks can edit right in the browser? Or have you ever wanted to make a website that presents an editable collection of items (e.g. your portfolio)? Or simply upload images to a website you made, right from the browser? Well, what if I told you, that you can do these things (and more!), just with HTML and CSS? No programming code to write, no servers to manage. You can make any element editable and saveable just by adding one HTML attribute to it. In fact, you can store your data locally in the browser, on Github, on Dropbox, or any other service just by changing an HTML attribute.
Make a website that non-technical folks (clients? family members?) can edit right in the browser
Make a website that presents an editable collection of items (your portfolio?)
Upload images to a website you made, right from the browser
Make an app to track and/or share an aspect of your life
Make a website that lets other people suggest edits to your data
Make an app that calculates something and presents the results in a custom way.
You can put your hand down now, it will get tired up there.
What if I told you, that you can do these things (and more!), just with HTML and CSS? No programming code to write, no servers to manage. You can make any element editable and saveable just by adding one HTML attribute to it. In fact, you can store your data locally in the browser, on Github, on Dropbox, or any other service just by changing an HTML attribute.
Meet Smashing Book 6 — our brand new book focused on real challenges and real front-end solutions in the real world: from design systems and accessible single-page apps to CSS Custom Properties, CSS Grid, Service Workers, performance, AR/VR and responsive art direction. With Marcy Sutton, Yoav Weiss, Lyza D. Gardner, Laura Elizabeth and many others. Table of Contents →
You can also turn any HTML element into a collection, with customizable controls for adding items, deleting items, and rearranging items via drag and drop. And your website visitors could suggest edits to your data that create Github pull requests behind the scenes, straight from your website.
What if I told you can dynamically display the results of calculations on this data anywhere in your UI with a syntax that is engineered to be easy to read and write, even by non-programmers? And that you can create dynamic, interactive websites with the same processes and hosting providers you use for static websites?
These are only some of the things you can do with Mavo, the project I’ve been working on for the past two years at MIT CSAIL and am excited to release today. Mavo is a language that extends HTML to describe applications that manage, store, and transform data. All you need to do to use Mavo in any HTML page is to include its two files. Yup, that’s it.
But how does it all work? Let’s look at a few examples.
Editable Homepage
Assume we have a run-of-the-mill static homepage, with the following HTML inside <body> :
<main> <h1> <img src="images/photo.jpg" alt=""> <span>Grumpy Cat</span> </h1> <p> <strong>Tardar Sauce</strong> (born April 4, 2012), commonly known as <strong>Grumpy Cat</strong>, is a cat, Internet and media personality and actress... </p> <div class="links"> <a class="twitter" href="https://twitter.com/RealGrumpyCat" target="_blank" title="Twitter">?</a> <a class="facebook" href="https://www.facebook.com/TheOfficialGrumpyCat" target="_blank" title="Facebook">f</a> <a class="wikipedia" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumpy_Cat" target="_blank" title="Wikipedia">W</a> </div> </main>
_Photos and text taken from Grumpy Cat’s Wikipedia page._
Which, when styled looks like this:
By adding a few Mavo attributes, we can make it editable, and save its data to the cloud via Github (Github is only one of the supported services):
<main mv-app="homepage" mv-storage="https://github.com/mavoweb/data/homepage" mv-plugins="tinymce"> <h1> <img property="image" src="images/photo.jpg" alt=""> <span property="name">Grumpy Cat</span> </h1> <p property="description" class="tinymce"> <strong>Tardar Sauce</strong> (born April 4, 2012), commonly known as <strong>Grumpy Cat</strong>, is a cat, Internet and media personality and actress... </p> <div class="links"> <a property class="twitter" href="https://twitter.com/RealGrumpyCat" target="_blank" title="Twitter">?</a> <a property class="facebook" href="https://www.facebook.com/TheOfficialGrumpyCat" target="_blank" title="Facebook">f</a> <a property class="wikipedia" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumpy_Cat" target="_blank" title="Wikipedia">W</a> </div> </main>
You can see the result in the video below or play with the live demo here.
But how did it work? What did we just do with all these attributes? Here is a breakdown:
[mv-app="homepage"](http://mavo.io/docs/primer/#mv-app) gives our app a name and tells Mavo to be active on this portion of the page.
gives our app a name and tells Mavo to be active on this portion of the page. [property](http://mavo.io/docs/primer/#property) attributes name important elements. By default, these elements will become editable and will be saved. The editing UI is generated based on the type of element, e.g. note that img is edited very differently from <a> or span. Of course, any generated UI is fully customizable.
attributes name important elements. By default, these elements will become editable and will be saved. The editing UI is generated based on the type of element, e.g. note that is edited very differently from or. Of course, any generated UI is fully customizable. The [mv-storage](http://mavo.io/docs/primer/#mv-storage) attribute tells Mavo where to store the data. Here its value is a (fuzzy) Github URL, so any data and uploads are stored on Github.
attribute tells Mavo where to store the data. Here its value is a (fuzzy) Github URL, so any data and uploads are stored on Github. mv-plugins="tinymce" loads the Mavo TinyMCE plugin for rich text editing, and class="tinymce" tells Mavo to edit this element via TinyMCE. Mavo is designed for extensibility, so developers that do know JavaScript can write Plugins that extend Mavo’s functionality or even completely change how it works. Using these plugins is as easy as adding an mv-plugins attribute to any element in your page.
Besides editability and persistence, one of Mavo’s cool features when used in conjunction with Github is that you can let visitors log in to send “edit suggestions” to your data, entirely via the same graphical interface you use for editing said data. These “edit suggestions” create pull requests behind the scenes that you can easily approve or reject.
To-Do List
At this point, we have demonstrated how Mavo can help get rid of CMSes for very simple websites. However, it can do a lot more. Let’s look at a very different example, a to-do app!
As before, we start with a static HTML mockup:
<main> <header> <h1>My tasks</h1> <p><strong>0</strong> done out of <strong>1</strong> total</p> </header> <ul> <li> <label> <input type="checkbox" /> Do stuff </label> </li> </ul> </main>
Which looks like this after some styling:
Can we use Mavo to turn this into a fully functional to-do list? You probably suspect what the answer is by now: Indeed we can! These are the changes we would need to make to our markup:
<main mv-app="todo" mv-storage="local" mv-mode="edit"> <header> <h1>My tasks</h1> <p><strong>[count(done)]</strong> done out of <strong>[count(task)]</strong> total</p> </header> <ul> <li property="task" mv-multiple> <label> <input property="done" type="checkbox" /> <span property="taskTitle">Do stuff</span> </label> </li> </ul> </main>
You can see the result in the video below or play with the live demo here.
So, what did we do here?
mv-storage="local" tells Mavo to store the data locally in the browser.
tells Mavo to store the data locally in the browser. You already know about property from the previous example. Note that it can also be used to group other properties.
from the previous example. Note that it can also be used to group other properties. [mv-multiple](http://mavo.io/docs/primer/#mv-multiple) is the Mavo feature that seems to excite people the most. It converts the element it’s on to an editable collection of items, full with controls to add and delete items, reorder items via drag and drop, and even keyboard shortcuts for all these!
is the Mavo feature that seems to excite people the most. It converts the element it’s on to an editable collection of items, full with controls to add and delete items, reorder items via drag and drop, and even keyboard shortcuts for all these! mv-mode="edit" tells Mavo that everything should be editable immediately, and does not need a separate read mode.
tells Mavo that everything should be editable immediately, and does not need a separate read mode. [count(done)] and [count(task)] are expressions, similar to those you may have used in spreadsheets. Expressions are written in MavoScript, an expression language designed to be readable, forgiving, and easy to use even by non-programmers. Experienced developers can also use JavaScript in Mavo Expressions.
Mavo does not treat HTML as merely a shortcut to JavaScript, but as the primary language for creating web applications. We have done actual user studies to prove that Mavo can be successfully used even by people with no programming experience, the results of which are published at ACM UIST 2016, one of the top academic venues for Human-Computer Interaction research. Our vision is that JavaScript, server backends, and databases should become the “Assembly of the Web”, mainly needed for specialized or high performance tasks. For everything else, HTML and CSS should suffice.
Want to know more? Go over to mavo.io, look at the Demos and read the Docs to understand more about the language.
Is Mavo perfect yet? Far from it. As with every project of this magnitude, there is much more work to be done than what has already been done, in every front. But it’s at a state where it can be useful, and demonstrate our vision for the future of Web development. We hope that others share that vision too, and (why not?) want to help us get there.Israel’s Propaganda and Diaspora Minister, Yuli Edelstein, said the Arabs are a “deplorable nation.” His spokesman: He meant every one of them
Israel’s Propaganda and Diaspora Minister, Yuli Edelstein, told a crowd in a public diplomacy event in Or Yehuda that “as long as the Arab nation continues to be a deplorable nation, which continues investing in infrastructure for terrorism, education to hate, and welfare for the families of shaheeds (martyrs), there will be no peace.” It can be seen in his Facebook page, here (Hebrew). The Hebrew epithet used by Edelstein to describe Arabs – נפסד – is rather difficult to translate: I put it as “deplorable” but it can also mean “morally bankrupt.”
I phoned the minister’s office for comment, and asked his spokesman: “Are you aware of the fact there are some 80 million Arabs in the world, from Sudan to Syria?” He replied: “Yes, there are – and the minister meant them all.”
So there you have it: Israel’s Propaganda Minister (in Hebrew, he is called the Minister of Hasbara) believes each and every Arab is involved in rather deplorable actions. Seems that’s all you do, if you’re born an Arab. Why did his spokesman go an extra mile in confirming Edelstein’s comment? Possibly because Edelstein is a Yisrael Beitenu minister, and such comments play well with that base.
During the same event, Edelstein openly deplored racism – at least, some sort of racism. He was very angry about calls made by extreme ultra-Orthodox in Beit Shemesh towards policemen, displaying the tact and broad-mindedness we have came to expect of our ultra-Orthodox brethren: “Nazis, go back to Russia.” Edelstein, himself a Russian immigrant, noted that he was jailed in Russia for Zionist activities and said, “That’s not what I sat in prison with my Zion prisoners brothers for! That’s not what I made aliyah for! We will not let anyone exclude others – neither because of gender or intra-Jewish ethnicity! The land of Israel belongs to us all.” It’s a good bet that Edelstein would not realize his comments contradict each other.‘Blockchains’ – this is a word that, since its emergence in 2008, has transformed business as we know it. Say John needs to pay Jill for an item or service: he could do this by paying cash through a bank into Jill’s account, or by making an online transfer to the same destination.
What is noteworthy is that in these payment scenarios, there is a platform, a ‘middleman’, which connects the two interacting parties. For both cases, a bank was used as the platform for the transaction. The bank oversees John’s account, possesses records of the transactions he has made and has sole responsibility for updating those records.
In other words, every day we put our faith in these financial institutions and hope that they keep their word. This is where blockchains come in.
The Benefit of Blockchains
Blockchains are a unique way of carrying out transactions without central oversight. A blockchain is a digital electronic ledger that is distributed publicly, connecting all traders (or miners) through the transfer of assets and all data that may so relate. It is inherently decentralized in its system of making transactions – there are no intermediaries or middlemen.
The blockchain system creates ledgers of transactions that are spread about nodes (these are basically groups of computers), with each node being a computer that keeps a copy of the information about the ledger on its storage units. It is the speed, security and above all ease of making transactions that have lead to the enormous popularity of blockchains around the world.
But how does this translate into benefits for your business? Here are three ways the blockchain could potentially boost your business.
✓ Financial Gains
A decentralized ledger is really beneficial in equity trading. An estimated 10% of all equity trades involve some kind of error, and often a manual, one-at-a-time approach is used to reduce the chance of error.
This approach means transactions are more costly and take longer to complete! No one likes to pay extra for a service they could get for less.
The worries of extra cost and time triple when trades take place across state lines or internationally, not to mention the related legal and logistical implications. These problems can be eliminated to a considerable extent with the help of the logging and confirming functions of the blockchain.
✓ Privacy when you search
Using a traditional search engine like Google involves giving up some or all of your privacy online. Google uses the information you provide it – including in terms of what keywords you use, as well as other information – in order to serve you ads that it think will be relevant to you. For many of us, the lack of control we have over what data is gathered and how is extremely concerning.
If you are likewise at all concerned by this, then you will be greatly relieved to know that the blockchain has got you covered. Using a private search engine like BitClave means complete online privacy: the search engine is based on Ethereum, a decentralized platform that is very careful with customer information and is designed with privacy in mind.
✓ Insurance
Analysing insurance claims is a rigorous task that can benefit greatly from the innovation of the blockchain. Insurers frequently have to skim through multiple claims for the ones that are fraudulent, a cumbersome task that they carry out manually. A lot of the analysis relies on human efficiency and is done by making use of the firm’s resources, thereby increasing the general operation costs.
If the blockchain were used instead, each segment of the whole industry would be well accounted for by the digital ledger. In that way, the entire system would be optimized automatically and, with the blockchain’s encryption, a higher degree of security as well as efficiency could be achieved.
A promising prospect
These various possible uses of the blockchain are among the most likely in the not-so-distant future. One important thing to note is that for the concept of the blockchain to realize its full potential, the members involved have to behave ethically.
Rewards should be made available to everyone who act ethically and in good character, while unethical persons should be penalized. The blockchain is, in fact, a promising prospect on its own, one that has the potential to put complex industries out of business.Farming machinery and bullock carts and lots of holding heavy things with your teeth — that's what the Kila Raipur Sports Festival is made of
AP An Indian man participates in the bullock-cart race at the rural Olympics in Kila Raipur, India, on Jan. 31, 2012
Getting run over by a tractor, carrying a bicycle in your teeth and standing on top of two horses as they gallop down a field — welcome to India’s rural Olympics, which gives a new meaning to the term extreme sports.
Formally known as the Kila Raipur Sports Festival, the event takes place every year and attracts more than 4,000 men and women, according to the British newspaper the Daily Mail.
The festival first began in 1933 and is a celebration of rural life in India’s farming belt, according to the Wall Street Journal.
This year’s four-day event was held in Kila Raipur, India, from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3, and featured major Punjabi rural sports like bullock-chariot racing, tug-of-war and tractor racing, according to NBC Sports.
(MORE: Extreme Yak Sports)
The rural Olympics are a test of strength, skill and endurance for participants who, according to the Daily Mail, range in age “from teenagers to pensioners.”
And like track and field, which tends to be a fan favorite at the Summer Olympic Games, the bullock-cart race is the main attraction at the Rural Olympics, which according to the Daily Mail, comes with a cash prize.
(MORE: Extreme Trampoline: If You Build It, They Will Jump)1818 novel by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley (1797–1851) that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a hideous, sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition of the novel was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20.[2] Her name first appeared on the second edition, published in 1823.
Shelley travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim, which is 17 kilometres (11 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where, two centuries before, an alchemist was engaged in experiments.[3][4][5] Later, she travelled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)—where much of the story takes place—and the topic of galvanism and occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Mary, Percy and Lord Byron decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made; her dream later evolved into the novel's story.[6]
Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. At the same time, it is an early example of science fiction. Brian Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story because, in contrast to previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, the central character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results.[7] It has had a considerable influence in literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films and plays.
Since the novel's publication, the name "Frankenstein" has often been used to refer to the monster itself. This usage is considered erroneous, but some usage commentators regard it as well-established and acceptable.[8][9][10] In the novel, the monster is identified by words such as "creature", "monster", "daemon", "wretch", "abortion", "fiend" and "it". Speaking to Victor Frankenstein, the monster says "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel" (which ties to Lucifer in Paradise Lost, which the monster reads, and which relates to the disobedience of Prometheus in the book's subtitle).
Summary [ edit ]
Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame story that starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister. It takes place at an unspecified time in the 18th century, as the letters' dates are given as "17—". In the story following the letters by Walton, the readers find that Victor Frankenstein creates a monster that brings tragedy to his life.
Captain Walton's introductory frame narrative [ edit ]
The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton is a failed writer and captain who sets out to explore the North Pole and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame. During the voyage, the crew spots a dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him, and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. The recounted story serves as the frame for Frankenstein's narrative.
Victor Frankenstein's narrative [ edit ]
Victor begins by telling of his childhood. Born in Naples, Italy, into a wealthy Genevan family, Victor and his brothers, Ernest and William, all three being sons of Alphonse Frankenstein by the former Caroline Beaufort, are encouraged to seek a greater understanding of the world through chemistry. As a young boy, Victor is obsessed with studying outdated theories that focus on simulating natural wonders. When Victor is five years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza, the orphaned daughter of an expropriated Italian nobleman, with whom Victor (allegedly) later falls in love. During this period, Victor's parents, Alphonse and Caroline, take in yet another orphan, Justine Moritz, who becomes William's nanny.
Weeks before he leaves for the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, his mother dies of scarlet fever; Victor buries himself in his experiments to deal with the grief. At the university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences, soon developing a secret technique to impart life to non-living matter. Eventually, he undertakes the creation of a humanoid, but due to the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body, Victor makes the Creature tall, about 8 feet (2.4 m) in height and proportionally large. Despite Victor selecting its features as beautiful, upon animation the creature is instead hideous, with watery white eyes and yellow skin that barely conceals the muscles and blood vessels underneath. Repulsed by his work, Victor flees when it awakens. While wandering the streets, he meets his childhood friend, Henry Clerval, and takes Henry back to his apartment, fearful of Henry's reaction if he sees the monster. However, the Creature has escaped.
Victor falls ill from the experience and is nursed back to health by Henry. After a four-month recovery, he receives a letter from his father notifying him of the murder of his brother William. Upon arriving in Geneva, Victor sees the Creature near the crime scene and climbing a mountain, leading him to believe his creation is responsible. Justine Moritz, William's nanny, is convicted of the crime after William's locket, which had contained a miniature portrait of Caroline, is found in her pocket. Victor is helpless to stop her from being hanged, as he knows no one would believe his story.
Ravaged by grief and guilt, Victor retreats into the mountains. The Creature finds him and pleads for Victor to hear his tale.
The Creature's narrative [ edit ]
Intelligent and articulate, the Creature relates his first days of life, living alone in the wilderness and finding that people were afraid of and hated him due to his appearance, which led him to fear and hide from them. While living in an abandoned structure connected to a cottage, he grew fond of the poor family living there, and discreetly collected firewood for them. Secretly living among the family for months, the Creature learned to speak by listening to them and he taught himself to read after discovering a lost satchel of books in the woods. When he saw his reflection in a pool, he realized his physical appearance was hideous, and it terrified him as it terrifies normal humans. Nevertheless, he approached the family in hopes of becoming their friend. Initially he was able to befriend the blind father figure of the family, but the rest of them were frightened and they all fled their home, resulting in the Creature leaving, disappointed. He traveled to Victor's family estate using details from Victor's journal, murdered William, and framed Justine.
The Creature demands that Victor create a female companion like himself. He argues that as a living being, he has a right to happiness. The Creature promises that he and his mate will vanish into the South American wilderness, never to reappear, if Victor grants his request. Should Victor refuse his request, The Creature also threatens to kill Victor's remaining friends and loved ones and not stop until he completely ruins him.
Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees. The Creature says he will watch over Victor's progress.
Victor Frankenstein's narrative resumes [ edit ]
Clerval accompanies him to England, but they separate at Victor's insistence at Perth, Scotland. Victor suspects that the Creature is following him. Working on the female creature on the Orkney Islands, he is plagued by premonitions of disaster, such as the female hating the Creature or becoming more evil than him, but more particularly the two creatures might lead to the breeding of a race that could plague mankind. He tears apart the unfinished female creature after he sees the Creature, who had indeed followed Victor, watching through a window. The Creature later confronts and tries to threaten Victor into working again, but Victor is convinced that the Creature is evil and that its mate would be evil as well, and the pair would threaten all humanity. Victor destroys his work and the Creature vows that he will "be with [him] on [his] wedding night". Victor interprets this as a threat upon his life, believing that the Creature will kill him after he finally becomes happy. When Victor lands in Ireland, he is soon imprisoned for Clerval's murder, as the Creature had strangled Clerval to death and left the corpse to be found where his creator had arrived, causing the latter to suffer another mental breakdown in prison. After being acquitted, Victor returns home with his father, who has restored to Elizabeth some of her father's fortune.
In Geneva, Victor is about to marry Elizabeth and prepares to fight the Creature to the death, arming himself with pistols and a dagger. The night following their wedding, Victor asks Elizabeth to stay in her room while he looks for "the fiend". While Victor searches the house and grounds, the Creature strangles Elizabeth to death. From the window, Victor sees the Creature, who tauntingly points at Elizabeth's corpse; Victor tries to shoot him, but the Creature escapes. After Victor gets back to Geneva, Victor's father, weakened by age and by the death of his precious Elizabeth, dies a few days later. Seeking revenge, Victor pursues the Creature to the North Pole, but collapses from exhaustion and hypothermia before he can find his quarry.
Captain Walton's conclusion [ edit ]
At the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes the telling of the story, closing the frame around Victor's recounting. A few days after the Creature vanished, the ship becomes trapped in pack ice and multiple crewmen die in the cold, before the rest of Walton's crew insists on returning south once it is freed. Upon hearing the crew's pleas to their captain, Victor, angered, lectures them with a powerful speech: it is hardship, not comfort and easiness, that defines a glorious undertaking such as theirs; he urges them to be men, not cowards. The ship is freed and Walton, owing it to the will of his men, albeit regretfully, decides to return South. Victor, even though in very weak condition, states that he will go on by himself.
Victor dies shortly thereafter, telling Walton, with his last words, to seek "happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition". Walton discovers the Creature on his ship, mourning over Victor's body. The Creature tells Walton that Victor's death has not brought him peace; rather, his crimes have left him completely alone. The Creature vows to kill himself so that no others will ever know of his existence. Walton watches as the Creature drifts away on an ice raft that is soon "lost in darkness and distance", never to be seen again.
Background [ edit ]
The author, Mary Shelley, had a tragic life from the beginning. Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died shortly after giving birth to her. Since Shelley did not know her mother, she had a close attachment to her father. Shelley's father, William Godwin, hired a nurse to care for her and her half sister but she left and her father ended up remarrying. Shelley's stepmother did not like the close bond Shelley had with her father. This caused Godwin to favor his other two daughters and sons.
Her father was a famous author himself and her education was of great importance. Shelley grew up surrounded by many different writers and persons of political importance because of her father. This inspired her authorship at an early age. Shelley met Percy Bysshe Shelley, who later became her husband, at the age of sixteen while he was visiting with her father at their home. Her father did not agree with their relationship so they fled to France along with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont. Later, she gave birth to their first child and soon after lost the child.
Both Mary and Percy went away with Claire to visit her lover Lord Byron, in Geneva during the summer of 1816, the infamous Year Without a Summer. Percy and Mary became good friends with Byron and used their time with him to discuss literature, politics, and science. One evening after being trapped in the house because of storms Byron suggested they all have a competition of writing the best ghost story. This is how Frankenstein was brought to life. Mary was eighteen years old when she wrote this novel. Shelley won the contest by her creation of the novel, Frankenstein.[11][12]
Literary Influences [ edit ]
Shelley was heavily influenced by both of her parents works. Her father was famous for Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and her mother famous for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her father's novels also influenced her writing of Frankenstein. These novels included Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, St. Leon, and Fleetwood. All of these books were set in Switzerland, similar to the setting in Frankenstein. Some major themes of social affections and the renewal of life that appear in Shelley's novel stem from these works she had in her possession. Other literary influences that appear in Frankenstein are Pygmalion (play) and Ovid with the use of an individual lacking intelligence and those individuals identifying the problems with society. Ovid also inspires the use of Prometheus in Shelley's title.[13]
Her time spent with Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, her baby, and her sister Jane influenced her creation of Frankenstein as well. Percy and Byron's discussion on life and death surrounded many scientific geniuses of the time. They discussed ideas from Erasmus Darwin and the experiments from Luigi Galvani. Mary listened intently to these conversations and the ideas of Darwin and Galvani were both present in her novel. The horrors of not being able to write a story for the contest and her hard life also influenced the themes within Frankenstein. The themes of loss, guilt, and the consequences of defying nature present in the novel all developed from Mary Shelley's own life. The loss of her mother, the relationship with her father, and the death of her first child created the monster and his separation from parental guidance. Guilt stemmed from her not feeling good enough for Percy because of the loss of their child.[12]
Characters [ edit ]
Victor Frankenstein – Protagonist and narrator of most of the story. Creates the monster.
– Protagonist and narrator of most of the story. Creates the monster. The creature (Frankenstein's monster) – The hideous creature created by Victor Frankenstein.
– The hideous creature created by Victor Frankenstein. Mrs. Margaret Saville – Resident of England. Sister of Robert Walton. Addressee of letters written by him.
– Resident of England. Sister of Robert Walton. Addressee of letters written by him. Captain Robert Walton – Captain of the boat which picked up Victor. Brother of Mrs. Margaret Saville, and writer of letters addressed to her.
– Captain of the boat which picked up Victor. Brother of Mrs. Margaret Saville, and writer of letters addressed to her. Beaufort – A Merchant. Caroline Beaufort's father. One of the most intimate friends of Victor's father.
– A Merchant. Caroline Beaufort's father. One of the most intimate friends of Victor's father. Caroline Beaufort – Beaufort's daughter, Victor's mother.
– Beaufort's daughter, Victor's mother. Ernest – Victor's brother. Seven years younger than Victor.
– Victor's brother. Seven years younger than Victor. Henry Clerval – Victor's best friend from childhood. The son of a merchant of Geneva.
– Victor's best friend from childhood. The son of a merchant of Geneva. Justine Moritz – Daughter of Madame Moritz. Moved in with the Frankenstein family at age of 12, and hanged for the murder of William.
– Daughter of Madame Moritz. Moved in with the Frankenstein family at age of 12, and hanged for the murder of William. Elizabeth Lavenza – Daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German and had died on giving birth to her. Raised as Victor's “cousin” in the Frankenstein home.
– Daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German and had died on giving birth to her. Raised as Victor's “cousin” in the Frankenstein home. William – Victor's youngest brother.
– Victor's youngest brother. M. Krempe – professor of natural philosophy at university of Ingolstadt. He was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in |
- E, A Harp (2nd Position)
6. I Asked for Water - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
7. Who's Been Talking? - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
8. Sitting on Top of the World - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
9. Howlin' for My Darling - G, No Harp
10. Wang Dang Doodle - E, No Harp
11. Back Door Man - E, No Harp
12. Spoonful - Em, No Harp
13. Shake for Me - B, No Harp
14. The Red Rooster - A, No Harp
15. I Ain't Superstitious - D, No Harp
16. Goin' Down Slow - A, No Harp
17. Three Hundred Pounds of Joy - G, No Harp
18. Hidden Charms - D, No Harp
19. Built for Comfort - A, No Harp
20. Killing Floor - A, No Harp
Howlin’ Wolf Box Set - Disc 1 (Chess, 1951 – 1955)
1. Moanin' At Midnight – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
2. How Many More Years – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
3. Howlin' Wolf Boogie – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
4. The Wolf Is At Your Door – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
5. Mr. Highway Man - G, C Harp (2nd Position)
6. Howlin’ Wolf Talks
7. Bluebird – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
8. Saddle My Pony – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
9. (Well) That's All Right – F#, B Harp (2nd Position)
10. My Last Affair – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
11. Just My Kind – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
12. Work For Your Money – Eb, No Harp
13. Mama Died And Left Me – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
14. All Night Boogie (All Night Long) – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
15. Streamline Woman – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
16. Crazy About You Baby – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
17. You Gonna Wreck My Life – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
18. Neighbors E, No Harp
19. Howlin’ Wolf Talks #2
20. I'm The Wolf – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
21. Rockin' Daddy – G, No Harp
22. Baby How Long – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
23. Evil – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
24. I'll Be Around – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
25. Forty Four – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
26. Who Will Be Next– A, D Harp (2nd Position)
*Some Tracks may be flat or sharp
*James Cotton On Harp on Track 8
Howlin’ Wolf Box Set - Disc 2 (Chess, 1955 – 1962)
1. Don't Mess With My Baby – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. Smokestack Lightnin' – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
3. You Can't Be Beat – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
4. Howlin’ Wolf Talks #3
5. I Asked For Water - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
6. The Natchez Burnin' – G, No Harp
7. Who's Been Talkin' – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
8. Tell Me – C, F Harp (2nd Position)
9. Sittin' On Top Of The World – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
10. I Didn't Know – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
11. Moaning For My Baby – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
12. Change My Way – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
13. I Better Go Now – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
14. Howlin' For My Darling – G, No Harp
15. I've Been Abused – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
16. Mr. Airplane Man – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
17. Wang Dang Doodle – E, No Harp
18. Back Door Man – E, No Harp
19. Howlin’ Wolf Talks #4
20. Spoonful – Em, No Harp
21. Down In The Bottom –A, No Harp
22. Shake For Me – B, No Harp
23. The Red Rooster – A, No Harp
24. You'll Be Mine – D, No Harp
25. Just Like I Treat You – G, No Harp
26. I Ain't Superstitious –D, No Harp
27. Goin' Down Slow – A, No Harp
28. Tail Dragger – D, No Harp
Howlin’ Wolf Box Set - Disc 3 (1963 – 1973)
1. Hidden Charms – D, No Harp
2. Three Hundred Pounds of Joy – G, No Harp
3. Built for Comfort – A, No Harp
4. Love Me Darlin' – G, No Harp
5. Killing Floor – A, No Harp
6. My Country Sugar Mama – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
7. Louise – A, No Harp
8. I Walked From Dallas – A, No Harp
9. Tell Me What I've Done – G, No Harp
10. Don't Laugh At Me – A, No Harp
11. Ooh Baby (Hold Me) - A, No Harp
12. New Crawlin' King Snake – A, No Harp
13. My Mind Is Ramblin' – D, No Harp
14. Commit A Crime – E, No Harp
15. Dust My Broom – D, No Harp
16. I'm The Wolf – A, No Harp
17. Ain't Goin' Down That Dirt Road – E, No Harp
18. Mary Sue – D, No Harp
19. Hard Luck – D, No Harp
20. Red Rooster – A, No Harp
21 Moving - Bb, No Harp
Live And Cookin’ At Alice’s Revisited [Import] (Chess, 1992)
1. When I Laid Down I Was Troubled – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
2. I Didn't Know - G, C Harp (2nd Position)
3. Mean Mistreater - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. I Had A Dream – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
5. Call Me The Wolf – F, No Harp
6. Don't Laugh At Me – G, No Harp
7. Just Passing By – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
8. Sitting On Top Of The World – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
9. Big House – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. Mr. Airplane Man – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions (Chess, 1971/1989)
1. Rockin' Daddy – G, No Harp
2. I Ain't Superstitious – G, No Harp
3. Sitting on Top of the World (Carp) – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. Worried About My Baby (Burnett) – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
5. What A Woman! (Carp)– E, A Harp (2nd Position)
6. Poor Boy (Carp) – C, C Harp (1st Position)
7. Built For Comfort – Bb, No Harp
8. Who's Been Talking? – A, No Harp
9. Red Rooster Intro (Spoken)
10. Red Rooster – A, No Harp
11. Do The Do – E, No Harp
12. Highway 49 (Carp) – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
13. Wang Dang Doodle (Carp) – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
Chester Burnett (Howlin’ Wolf) & Jeffrey Carp on Harmonica
The Real Folk Blues (Chess/MCA, 1995)
1. Killing Floor - A, No Harp
2. Louise - A, No Harp
3. Poor Boy – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
4. Sitting On Top Of The World - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
5. Nature – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
6. My Country Sugar Mama - G, C Harp (2nd Position)
7. Tail Dragger - D, No Harp
8. Three Hundred Pounds Of Joy - G, No Harp
9. Natchez Burning - G, No Harp
10. Built For Comfort - A, No Harp
11. Ooh Baby (Hold Me) - A, No Harp
12. Tell Me What I've Done - G, No Harp
*Bonus Tracks
13. Smokestack Lightning [Mobile Fidelity Only] - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
14. Hidden Charms [Mobile Fidelity Only] - D, No Harp
Super Super Blues Band (Chess, 1968)
1. Long Distance Call - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
2. Ooh Baby/Wrecking My Love Life – A, No Harp
3. Sweet Little Angel – E, No Harp
4. Spoonful – E, No Harp
5. Diddley Daddy - E, No Harp
6. Red Rooster – A, No Harp
7. Goin' Down Slow – E, No Harp
Howlin’ Wolf also appears on:
Blues Masters, vol. 16: More Harmonica Classics (Rhino Records, 1998)
Blues Masters, vol. 4: Harmonica Classics (Rhino Records, 1992)
Paul Butterfield (December 17th, 1942 – May 4th, 1987)
An Offer You Can’t Refuse – Big Walter Horton/Paul Butterfield (1999)
1. Easy (Horton) [Inst.] - Ab, Db Harp (2nd Position)
2. Have A Good Time (Horton) - Eb, Ab Harp (2nd Position)
3. Mean Mistreater (Horton) – Ab, Ab Harp (1st Position)
4. In The Mood (Horton) - Eb, Ab Harp (2nd Position)
5. West Side Blues (Horton) [Inst.] - Eb, Ab Harp (2nd Position)
6. Louise (Horton) - Eb, Ab Harp (2nd Position)
7. Tin Pan Alley (Horton) - Db, Low F# (2nd Position)
8. Walters Boogie, This Is It (Horton) [Inst.] – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
9. Everything's Gonna Be Alright (Butterfield) – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
10. Poor Boy (Butterfield) – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
11. Got My Mojo Working (Butterfield) [Inst.] – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
12. Last Night (Butterfield) – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
13. Loaded (Butterfield) – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
14. One Room Country Shack (Butterfield) - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
*The order of the songs titles on this CD is wrong.
Better Days (1973)
1. New Walkin' Blues – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. Please Send Me Someone To Love – Ab, Db Harp (2nd Position)
3. Broke My Baby's Heart - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
4. Done A Lot of Wrong Things - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
5. Baby Please Don't Go – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
6. Buried Alive In The Blues – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
7. Rule The Road – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
8. Nobody's Fault But Mine – C, F Harp (2nd Position)
9. Highway 28 – C, C Harp (1st Position)
East-West (Elektra/Asylum, 1966/1990)
1. Walking Blues – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
2. Get Out of My Life, Woman – C, No Harp
3. I Got a Mind to Give up Living – Cm, No Harp
4. All These Blues – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
5. Work Song [Inst.] – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
6. Mary, Mary – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
7. Two Trains Running – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
8. Never Say No – Fm, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
9. East West [Inst.] - D, Fills: G Harp (2nd Position), Solo: C Harp (3rd Position)
The Original Lost Electra Sessions (Rhino Records, 1995)
1. Good Morning Little School Girl – B, E Harp (2nd Position)
2. Just To Be With You – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
3. Help Me – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
4. Hate To See You Go – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
5. Poor Boy – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
6. Nut Popper #1 [Inst.] – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
7. Everything's Gonna Be All Right – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
8. Lovin' Cup – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
9. Rock Me – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
10. It Hurts Me Too – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
11. Our Love Is Driftin' – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
12. Take Me Back Baby – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
13. Mellow Down Easy – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
14. Ain't No Need To Go No Further – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
15. Love Her With A Feeling – Bb, Eb Harp (2nd Position)
16. Piney Brown Blues – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
17. Spoonful – A, No Harp
18. That's All Right – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
19. Goin' Down Slow – C, No Harp
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Elektra, 1965)
1. Born In Chicago – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
2. Shake Your Moneymaker – E, No Harp
3. Blues With A Feeling – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
4. Thank You Mr. Poobah – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
5. I Got My Mojo Working – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
6. Mellow Down Easy – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
7. Screamin' – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
8. Our Love Is Drifting – C, No Harp
9. Mystery Train – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. Last Night – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
11. Look Over Yonders Wall – D, No Harp
The Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw (Elektra/Asylum, 1967/1989)
1. One More Heartache – D, C Harp (3rd Position)
2. Driftin' And Driftin' – Bb, Eb Harp (2nd Position)
3. Pity The Fool – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
4. Born Under A Bad Sign – D, No Harp
5. Run Out Of Time – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
6. Double Trouble – Em, A Harp (2nd Position)
7. Drivin' Wheel – D, No Harp
8. Droppin' Out – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
9. Tollin' Bells – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
Paul Butterfield also appears on:
Blues Masters, vol. 16: More Harmonica Classics (Rhino Records, 1998)
Blues Masters, vol. 4: Harmonica Classics (Rhino Records, 1992)
Muddy Waters - Fathers and Sons (MCA, 1969)
Muddy Waters - The Woodstock Album (Chess, 1975/2003)
Lester Butler - The Red Devils – King King [Live] (Sony, 1998)
1. Automatic - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
2. Goin' To The Church - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
3. She's Dangerous - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. I Wish You Would - A, D Harp (2nd Position)
5. Cross Your Heart – Bb, Bb Harp (1st Position)
6. Tail Dragger – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
7. Devil Woman - D, G Harp (2nd Position)
8. No Fightin' - B, E Harp (2nd Position)
9. Mr. Highway Man - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. I'm Ready - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
11. Quarter To Twelve [Inst.] - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
12. Cut That Out - B, E Harp (2nd Position)
Lester Butler - Thirteen (Hightone, 1997)
1. So Low Down – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
2. HNC – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
3. Sweet Tooth – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. Black Hearted Woman – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
5. Close To You – C, F Harp (2nd Position)
6. Smoke Stack Lightning – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
7. Pray For Me – E, D Harp (2nd Position)
8. So Mean To Me – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
9. Way Down South – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. Boogie Disease – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
11. Plague Of Madness – A, No Harp
12. Down In The Alley [Inst.] – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
13. Baby Please Don't Go – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
Also Appears On:
1) King Ernest – King Of Hearts (Evidence, 1997) See Various Albums
George “Wild Child” Buttler (October 1st, 1936 - )
Stranger (Bullseye Blues, 1994)
1. Face It Baby – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. Weak in the Knees – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
3. Treat Me Just Like I Treat You – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
4. Wedding Ring Blues – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
5. Rent Money Gone Again – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
6. Stranger – Am, D Harp (2nd Position)
7. You Can Have It If You Want It - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
8. I'm Not Guilty – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
9. I Just Can't Please Her – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. High I.Q. – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
11. Roll and Squeeze - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
*The song titles are printed incorrectly on the CD.
William Clarke (March 29th, 1951 – November 2nd, 1996)
Blowin’ Like Hell (Alligator, 1990)
1. Lollipop Mama - G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. Lonesome Bedroom Blues - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
3. Gambling For My Bread - F, No Harp
4. Greasy Gravy - D, C Chromatic (3rd Position)
5. Trying So Hard – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
6. Cash Money – D, G Harp (2nd Position)
7. Must Be Jelly – D,
Intro and 2nd solo: G Harp (2nd Position)
1st solo: C Harp (3rd Position)
8. Sweet Angel's Gone – G, No Harp
9. Looking To The Future – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. Drinking By Myself – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
11. Blowin' Like Hell – C, Bb Chromatic (3rd Position)
Deluxe Edition (Alligator, 1999)
1. Pawnshop Bound – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. Fishing Blues – G, F Chromatic (3rd Position)
3. Trying So Hard – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. This Is My Last Goodbye – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
*5. Easter Bunny Boogie – C, Bb Chromatic (3rd Position)
6. Broke And Hungry – A, Intro & Outro: Chromatic - Solo: D Harp (2nd Position)
7. It's Been A Long Time – G, Intro & 1st solo: F Chromatic (3rd Position), 2nd Solo: Low F Harp (3rd Position)
8. Educated Fool – G, No Harp
*9. Lose Your Life – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
10. Going Down This Highway – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
11. The Boss [Inst.] – G, F Chromatic (3rd Position)
12. Evil – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
13. Must Be Jelly – D, Intro and 2nd solo: G Harp (2nd Position), 1st solo: C Harp (3rd Position)
14. Blowin' The Family Jewels [Inst.] – A, G Harp (3rd Position)
*15. Somebody Is Calling Me Home – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
*16. I Got A Feeling – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
* Previously Unreleased material
The Early Years, Vol. 1 (Watch Dog Records, 2006)
1. Hittin’ Heavy [Inst.] – F#, B Harp (2nd Position)
2. Blues Afterwhile [Inst.] – D, G Harp (2nd Position) Outro: C Harp (3rd Position)
3. Diggin’ My Potatoes – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. Teenage Girl – G, Fills (William Clarke): C Harp (2nd Position) Solo (Smith): G Harp (1st Position)
5. So All Alone – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
6. Come On Baby – A, No Harp
7. Keep It To Yourself – B, E Harp (2nd Position)
8. Teardrops Fallin’ – D, Intro (Smith): C Chromatic (3rd Position), Fills & Outro (William Clarke): G Harp (2nd Position)
9. Blowin’ My Nuts [Inst.] – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
10. The Little Girl I’m Lovin’ – A, G Chromatic (3rd Position)
11. Fine Little Mama – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
12. Give Me Back That Wig – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
13. I Miss You So – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
14. Gina’s Groove [Inst.] – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
The Early Years (1985 – 1991), Vol. 2 (Watch Dog Records,2006)
1. Early In The Mornin’ – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. The Feeling’s Gone – A, G Harp (3rd Position)
3. Give Me Mine Now – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. Untitled Tune – D, (Smith): C Chromatic (3rd Position), (Clarke): G Harp (2nd Position)
5. Shoulda Kept On Runnin’ – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
6. Lookin’ For Trouble – A, Intro: A Harp (1st Position) Solo & Outro: D Harp (2nd Position)
7. Bloody Tears On My Pillow – D, Intro & Solo: C Chromatic (3rd Position), Outro: G Harp (2nd Position)
8. Ice Cream Man – A, Intro & Outro: A Harp (1st Position), Solo: D Harp (2nd Position)
9. So Glad I’m Livin’ – E, A Harps (2nd Position)
10. Horn Of Plenty [Inst.] – E, A Harps (2nd Position)
11. I Had My Fun – C, Intro: Bb Chromatic (3rd Position) Outro: Low F Harp (2nd Position)
12. Deal The Cards – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
13. Boogie Woogie Woman – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
Groove Time (Alligator, 1994)
1. Daddy Pinnochio - G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. Saturday Night Blues - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
3. Complainer’s Boogie Woogie – G, F Chromatic (3rd Position)
4. This Is My Last Goodbye – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
5. Telephone Is Ringing - G, No Harp
6. A Good Girl Is Hard to Find [Inst.] - C, Bb Chromatic
7. War Is Over - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
8. Broke And Hungry – A, Intro & Outro: Chromatic - Solo: D Harp (2nd Position)
9. Somebody Is Calling Me Home – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. Blowin' the Family Jewels [Inst.] - A, G Harp (3rd Position)
11. Watch Dog - G, Fills & 1st solo: C Harp (2nd Position), 2nd solo: F Chromatic (3rd Position)
12. Saint or Sinner - A, D Harp (2nd Position)
13. Chicago Blues - G, Intro: G Harp (1st Position), Solo: G Harp (1st Position), Low F Harp (3rd Position), C Harp (2nd Position)
14. Bedroom Boogie [Inst.] - G, F Chromatic (3rd Position)
15. Your Love Is Real - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
The Hard Way (Alligator, 1996)
1. The Boss [Inst.] – G, F Chromatic (3rd Position)
2. Five Card Hand – A, Solo & Fills: D Harp (2nd Position), Outro: G Harp (3rd Position)
3. Fishing Blues – G, F Chromatic (3rd Position)
4. Evil – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
5. Letter From Home – F, Bb (2nd Position)
6. My Mind Is Working Overtime - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
7. Last Monday Morning - D, C Chromatic (3rd Position)
8. Moten Swing [Inst.] - G, F Chromatic (3rd Position)
9. Blues Is Killing Me - A, Solo #1: A Harp (1st Position), Solo #2: G Harp (3rd Position)
10. Don't Treat Me Wrong - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
11. Respect Me, Baby - D, G Harp (2nd Position)
12. Other Side Of Town - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
13. Walkin' [Inst.] - C, Bb Chromatic (3rd Position)
Live in Germany (Watchdog Records, 2005)
1. Blowin’ Like Hell [Inst.] - C, Bb Chromatic (3rd Position)
2. She’s Dynamite – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
3. Lookin’ To The Future – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. I Cried All Last Night – F, No Harp
5. All Night Long – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
6. Iodine In My Coffee – C, Bb Chromatic (3rd Position)
7. Educated Fool – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
8. Been Around The World – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
9. One Room County Shack – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
10. Lollipop Mama – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
Now That You’re Gone (Watch Dog Records, 2003)
1. Now That You’re Gone – A, A Harp (1st Position)
2. Feel Like A King – Bb, Eb Harp (2nd Position)
3. Love You, Yes I Do – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. Give Me Mine Now – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
5. She’s Gone – G, No Harp
6. When I Get Drunk – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
7. Bite Again – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
8. Can’t You Hear Me Callin’ – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
9. Let’s Celebrate Life – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
10. She’s Dynamite – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
11. Find A New Place To Live – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
12. Watson, I Presume [Inst.] – C, Bb Chromatic (3rd Position)
*Mitch Kashmar Harmonica track #1
*George Harmonica Smith Harmonica tracks # 2 & 3
*Joe Lodovici Harmonica track #8
Serious Intentions (Alligator, 1992)
1. Pawnshop Bound – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. Trying To Stretch My Money – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
3. Educated Fool – G, No Harp
4. Going Down This Highway – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
5. I Know You're Fine – F, No Harp
6. Driving My Life Away – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
7. Chasin' The Gator – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
8. With A Tear In My Eye – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
9. It's Been A Long Time – G, Intro & 1st solo: F Chromatic (3rd Position), 2nd Solo: Low F Harp (3rd Position)
10. The Work Song – D, Chromatic Harp
11. I Feel Like Jumping – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
12. Soon Forgotten – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
Tip of the Top (King Ace Music, 2000)
1. Drinkin' Beer – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
2. Just A Dream – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
3. Take A Walk With Me – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. Tribute To George Smith [Inst.] – D, C Chromatic (3rd Position)
5. Charlie's Blues - G, C Harp (2nd Position)
6. Goin' Steady [Inst.] – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
7. Hot Dog And A Beer – G, No Harp
8. Chromatic Jump [Inst.] – D, C Chromatic (3rd Position)
9. Hard Times – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. Blowin' The Family Jewels [Inst.] – A, G Harp (3rd Position)
11. Drinkin' Straight Whiskey – A, Fills: A Harp (1st Position), Solo: G Harp (3rd Position)
12. Party Party – G, No Harp
13. Got My Brand On You – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
14. My Dog Don't Bark - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
15. My Wife Got Mad - F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
Other:
Smokey Wilson & The William Clarke Band (Black Magic, 1997)
1. Down in Virginia – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
2. I Wish I Was Single – G, No Harp
3. Howling Wolf – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. Tell Me What Do You See – B, No Harp
5. Bar Room Blues – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
6. Cold Chills – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
7. Ghetto Woman – A, No Harp
8. Dimples – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
9. Lein On My Body – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
10. The Things I Used To Do – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
11. Truckload Of Love – G, No Harp
*William Clarke on Harmonica
William Clarke also appears on:
Blues Masters, vol. 16: More Harmonica Classics (Rhino Records, 1998)
Got Harp, If You Want It (Blue Rock'It Records, 1993)
George Harmonica Smith - Blowing the Blues (El Segundo Records)
The Alligator Records Christmas Collection (Alligator, 1992)
Cal Green - White Pearl (Double Trouble Records, 1988) See Various Albums
Randy Chortkoff
Appears On: (See Various Albums)
King Ernest – King Of Hearts (Evidence, 1997)
The Mannish Boys – That Represent Man (Detla Groove Productions, 2004)
Mannish Boys – Live And In Demand (Delta Grove Productions, 2005)
Willie Cobbs (July 15th, 1932 - )
Jukin’ (Bullseye Bluse & Jazz, 2000)
1. Jukin' – G, G Harp (1st Position)
2. Black Night – F, Eb Chromatic
3. Feeling Good – G, No Harp
4. Mean Old World – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
5. Poison Ivy – F, No Harp
6. Reconsider Baby – G, G Harp (1st Position)
7. Five Long Years - A, A Harp (1st Position)
8. You're So Fine – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
9. Please Send Me Someone to Love – G, No Harp
10. I Don't Know – G, G Harp (1st Position)
James Cotton, aka Jimmy Cotton (July 1st, 1935 - )
100% Cotton (Universe, 2004)
1. Boogie Thing - A, D Harp (2nd Position)
2. One More Mile - A, D Harp (2nd Position)
3. All Walks Of Life – B, E Harp (2nd Position)
4. Creeper Creeps Again [Inst.] – E, A Harp (2nd Position)
5. Rocket 88 - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
6. How Long Can A Fool Go Wrong – A, A Harp (1st)
7. I Don't Know – G, No Harp
8. Burner [Inst.] – D, C Chromatic (3rd Position), After drum break: C Harp (3rd Position), Key change F, Bb Harp (2nd Harp) D, C Chromatic (3rd Position)
9. Fatuation – A, No Harp
10. Fever – Ab, No Harp
Baby Don’t You Tear My Clothes (Telarc, 2004)
1. Coach's Better Days [Inst.] – F, Bb Harp (2nd Position)
2. Baby, Don't You Tear My Clothes – A, D Harp (2nd Position)
3. When You Got A Good Friend - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
4. Stealin', Stealin' – C, F Harp (2nd Position)
5. Key To The Highway – G, C Harp (2nd Position)
6. I Almost Lost My Mind [Inst.] - E, A Harp (2nd Position)
7. Rainin' In My Heart – G |
games.
"I'd watch for about a quarter," he said, "and then went and did some other stuff."
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Other stuff for Coleman included track and field. He was twice a Class 2A state runner-up in the long jump and finished fourth in the 100 meters. He had such a strong arm that McDonough, the throws coach, tried to persuade him to try the discus.
Coleman set school records of 10.5 and 21.4 seconds in the 100 and 200 meters, respectively, and 24 feet, 3 ¼ inches in the long jump. Track coach Tom Monahan recalled spectators surrounding the long jump pit and responding with "a lot of oohs and aahs" on each attempt.
As a senior, Coleman didn't have a chance to win what his coach thought could be three state titles. A family trip coincided with the dates, so he went on a cruise instead of to the state finals.
"That was the first time I really saw emotion come out of him, honestly," Monahan said. "When he realized he wasn't going to get that state championship."
Buy Photo Indiana University junior Tevin Coleman (6) looks for a hole in the Maryland defense as he runs the ball past the line of scrimmage during second half action. (Photo: Doug McSchooler/for The Star)
FATHER AND SON
Coleman was recruited, but some schools were waiting on grades and others wanted him as a defensive back. Oklahoma offered him a scholarship, but he didn't want to be that far from home. Michigan State had location and tradition. Indiana had Deland McCullough.
McCullough, 41, a Miami (Ohio) graduate who played in the NFL and Canadian Football League, is the Indiana running backs coach. He built rapport with Coleman and, perhaps as importantly, with Wister. Father and son have an "extraordinary bond," Wister said. Father and son both called McCullough a father figure, and they can call or text the coach at any time.
"With how many coaches can you do that?" Coleman's father said.
Moreover, the father said he didn't want his son to attend a school that wanted him. He steered him to a school that needed him. McCullough said Coleman is "more on a mission" this year, but he is as he has always been.
"Since the moment he got here, he kind of was low-key, saying, 'Look, I want to do great things at Indiana and for Indiana,' " McCullough said.
Indiana coach Kevin Wilson said Coleman had the best practice habits of a freshman running back he had witnessed since Adrian Peterson, who was a freshman at Oklahoma in 2004 when Wilson was there. Coleman conceded he had trouble learning Indiana's offense that first year. But he showed a glimpse of what was to come when he returned a kickoff 96 yards for a TD at Northwestern, delighting a busload of former classmates in attendance.
Irrespective of nickname, Coleman sculpted himself to resemble a rock. He and teammate D'Angelo Roberts use FaceTime on Mondays, each doing 500 push-ups so they know the other is training. Coleman has done a clean – moving a barbell from floor to rack – of 365 pounds, an IU record for all positions. He has set running back records by bench-pressing 405 pounds once and 225 pounds for 24 repetitions.
That explosiveness is manifested in Coleman's 14 gains of 40 or more yards since the start of the 2013 season, most in the nation. Thompson said Indiana has never featured a back who can accelerate like that.
"When you're talking explosiveness and quickness, I think he can separate as quickly as anyone in this country," offensive coordinator Kevin Johns said.
NFL: STAY OR GO?
Coleman has the burst desirable to the NFL, and he inevitably would be chosen in the 2015 draft. But running backs aren't as valued as they once were, and various rankings suggest he wouldn't be drafted as high as wide receiver Cody Latimer was a year ago. Latimer left IU after his junior season and was selected in the second round, No. 56 overall, by the Denver Broncos.
McCullough and Coleman haven't addressed leaving school early, focusing on the present. Coleman's mother said she would support whatever her son decides but wants him to graduate. The father said resolution would come later and that he would "let the Lord guide us in that direction."
After the season, Coleman was going to travel to Liberia for the first time and spend Christmas with family, but the Ebola outbreak canceled those plans. There are no reports of relatives stricken, but so far more than 2,000 have died from the infectious disease.
Coleman forges ahead with the work ethic ingrained in him by his Liberian heritage, affirming his pledge to make a difference at Indiana. He doesn't need reminders of how hard it is to make it big. His life started small.
Call Star reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195.
INDIANA (3-2, 0-1) at IOWA (4-1, 1-0)
Noon Saturday, Kinnick Stadium, Iowa City, Iowa
ESPNU
IU radio network (107.5 FM and 1070-WFNI)
Line: Iowa by 3 ½.
Three storylines:
>> Indiana is seeking an elusive successive victory. The Hoosiers haven't won on back-to-back Saturdays since 2012, beating Illinois 31-17 on Oct. 27 and Iowa 24-21 on Nov. 3. The Hoosiers have been 4-2 or better through six games only three times in 19 years.
>> Jake Rudock's streak of 17 consecutive quarterback starts for Iowa ended Sept. 27 at Purdue because of a hip injury. Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz hasn't said who will start but that Rudock (67 percent, 798 yards, 5 TDs) and C.J. Beathard (54 percent, 363 yards, 1 TD) both will play.
>> Although the Hoosiers are third in the Big Ten in rushing offense (300.0 yards), they might have to pass to loosen the defense. Tevin Coleman is second in the nation in rushing (168.2). Iowa is third in the Big Ten in rushing defense (93.2).
Key stats: Indiana has five turnovers, fewest in the Big Ten, but is last in penalties and penalty yards per game (seven for 63.6). … Iowa is second in the Big Ten in third-down conversions (45.6 percent). Indiana is fourth in third-down defense (32.5 percent). … Iowa is 3-0 when trailing or tied at halftime. … Iowa is 11-3 on homecoming since 2000. … Iowa kicker Marshall Koehn leads the nation with a.792 touchback percentage (19-of-24).
Coaches: Indiana, Kevin Wilson (fourth year, 13-28); Iowa, Kirk Ferentz, 16th year, 112-80).Words have the power to inform, embolden, and inspire. But very few have the power to send a cold shiver up your spine quite like the word “moist.” Thanks to a new piece of research, scientists might have uncovered what makes this word so uncomfortable to hear.
First of all, you’re not alone if you find the word aversive. The study, recently published online in PLOS One, found that around 18 percent of people have a “categorical aversion” to the word “moist.”
Paul Thibodeau, a cognitive psychologist from Oberlin College, considered three different hypotheses for why the word makes so many people’s skin crawl. These possible explanations were the sound of the word, the word's connotation, and the social transmission of the idea that the word is disgusting.
Within a series of five experiments, Thibodeau investigated American English-speaking participants' opinion of the word “moist,” among other words. These included words related to bodily function (such as phlegm, puke, and vomit), clusters of words related to sex (such as f*ck, horny, and p*ssy), and words that sounded similar to “moist” (such as foist, hoist, and rejoiced).
His study found that people who said they were averse to the word "moist" often pointed to the sound of the word as the source of their disgust. People who weren’t averse to the word said it was its connotations to sex. However, people who didn't like the word had no problem with similar-sounding words.
The study found that people who identified as categorically averse to “moist” also found words such as “phlegm” and “vomit” more aversive, although not words such as “vagina,” “horny,” or “penis.” This suggests that the word's association with bodily fluid is a strong reason for why it is so gross to so many people.
The researchers also found a social element to people's aversion to the word “moist.” They showed one group of participants a hilarious video by People Magazine (below) that had “the sexiest men alive” saying the word “moist” in an purposely cringe-inducing and awkward context. Another group watched a “control” video that showed people saying “moist” to describe the taste of cake. People who watched the video with the word being said in a socially cringe-worthy context later expressed more disgust for the word. This suggests that our perception of the word is strongly tied to how those around us also perceive it.
Due to these findings, the study concluded that our uncomfortable reaction to the word stems from our natural disgust of bodily functions. Importantly, this is strongly reinforced by social cues.
While understanding this horrifically awkward word is important, there is a greater point to the study. As Thibodeau explains, the study hopes to understand how we process emotional words, as opposed to neutral words, and how this is affected by our external environment.
“Disgust is adaptive. If we didn’t have an instinct to run away from vomit and diarrhea, disease would spread more easily," writes Thibodeau. "But is this instinct biological or do we learn it? Does our culture shape what we find disgusting? This is a complex and nuanced question. Significant work is needed to answer it definitively. But the present studies suggest that, when it comes to the disgust that is elicited by words like'moist,' there is an important cultural component – the symbols we use to communicate with one another can become contaminated and elicit disgust by virtue of their association with bodily functions.”NEW DELHI: India is getting set to provide to Singapore naval practice and logistics facilities, which will include live firing drills in the Andamans, to add to the ones already being provided to the army and air force of the city-state for the last 10 years.Visiting Singapore defence minister Ng Eng Hen, who reached New Delhi from Kalaikunda airbase in West Bengal on Tuesday, will hold delegation-level talks with his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman in South Block on Wednesday.The bilateral naval agreement is also slated to be inked during the talks. With land and airspace being a scarce commodity in Singapore, the city state has been utilising Indian military facilities to train its own small but high-tech armed forces under special agreements first signed in 2007 and 2008.India, for instance, provides facilities to Singapore for exercises of mechanised forces at Babina and artillery at Deolali ranges as well as for fighters at the Kalaikunda airbase. The two countries also regularly hold the Simbex naval wargames, which have graduated from being purely anti-submarine warfare exercises to complex ones involving multiple facets of operations at sea.With an eye firmly on China, India has over the last several years worked towards deepening military ties with Asean countries like Singapore, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia in accordance with its “Act East” policy.India, for instance, provides military supplies and submarine training to sailors from Vietnam, and will soon begin to also train its fighter pilots on Sukhoi jets. Moreover, it has also offered BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles and Akash area defence missile systems to Vietnam.Similarly, India has also offered to train Indonesian Navy in submarine warfare, in addition to holding joint combat exercises with the country.Random Just For Fun or Blitz Quiz
Find the Missing Colors in TV Shows
Countries With Most Remote Islands
Try Again
Try Again
You got
An undead creature that drinks blood and only comes out at night.
An otherwise normal man that turns into a beast during the full moon.
A dead body, often Egyptian, wrapped in bandages and returned from the dead.
A makeshift body and brain brought to life by a bolt of lightning.
A beautiful woman that lures sailors to their deaths with song.
A one-eyed giant.
A creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion, often depicted with wings.
A creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull.
A snake-like creature with many heads. Destroying a head causes two more to grow.
A three-headed dog.
A reanimated human corpse that shambles in pursuit of brains.
An evil spirit sent from the Underworld.
A shape-shifting water spirit.
A spirit of death known for its horrible scream.
A mischievous spirit that causes trouble by making noise and moving objects.The past few decades have seen enormous progress being made in synthetic biology—the idea that simple biological parts can be tweaked to do our bidding. One of the main targets has been hacking the biological machinery that nature uses to produce chemicals. The hope is that,once we understand enough, we might be able to design processes that convert cheap feedstock, such as sugar and amino acids, into drugs or fuels. These production lines can then be installed into microbes, effectively turning living cells into factories.
Taking a leap in that direction, researchers from Stanford University have created a version of baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) that contains genetic material from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), bringing the morphine microbial factory one step closer to reality. These results, published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, represent a significant scientific success, but eliminating the need to grow poppies may still be years away.
More than bread and booze
If dog has been man’s best friend for thousands of years, the humble yeast has long been man’s second-best friend. The single-cell organism has been exploited by human societies to produce alcoholic beverages and bread for more than 4,000 years.
Like any animal or plant that mankind domesticated, there has been a particular interest in the study and optimisation of yeast. When breeding turned into a scientific discipline, it quickly became a model organism for biological experiments. And in 1996, its complete genome was the first sequenced from a eukaryotic organism—the more complex domain of the tree of life. Our extensive knowledge of yeast biology makes it an attractive platform for synthetic biology.
In the new study, Christina Smolke and her team show that yeast could be a good candidate for the production of opioids, a class of drugs that includes morphine. To achieve this transformation, Smolke would need to engineer the yeast with the complete biological pathway required to produce complex opioids. In 2008 she made the first step by having yeast successfully ferment simple sugars to make salutaridine, an opioid precursor.
Then in 2010, a Canadian team identified the last two missing pieces of the morphine puzzle in the genome of opium poppy. Using these biological parts from plants, together with some from bacteria, Smolke has now created yeast that can produce many natural and unnatural opioids. All it takes is to feed the microbes an intermediary molecule (called thebaine) extracted from the poppy plant.
These results bring the technology one step closer to where microbial factories that can produce pharmaceutical molecules in a tank rather than leaving us reliant on plants in the field. What is left now is for Smolke to find a way to turn salutaridine into thebaine efficiently. Filling this gap should allow her to create a yeast strain producing opioids directly from sugars.
Teaching yeast new tricks
There have been other synthetic biology landmarks in the past. In 2006, chemical engineer Jay Keasling of the University of California at Berkeley and his team successfully introduced genetic material from the sweet wormwood plant (Artemisia annual) into yeast. Their microbial factory was able to produce artemisinic acid, which is only one chemical step away from artemisinin, the most effective drug for treating Plasmodium falciparum malaria.
The success of Keasling’s artemisinic acid microbial factory drew a lot of attention and, in 2008, pharmaceutical giant Sanofi licensed the engineered yeast to bring the microbe from the lab into real-life factories. Eight years and a great deal of improvement later, the first doses of the drug produced using this method are hitting the market. Using a process that lasts less than three months and without cutting a single plant, the French company has now produced tons of artemisinic acid—the equivalent of millions of treatments.
Away from the spotlight, others have followed similar routes and spent time teaching yeast how to produce various chemicals and commodities, in particular fragrance molecules or polymer precursors. Evolva, a synthetic-biology company based in Switzerland, has a ten-year history of synthetic biology development and is hoping to soon make a profit with its vanillin-producing microbes.
A fermented reality
Engineered yeast has a significant advantage over traditional crops or their genetically modified siblings. It does not require any land beyond that needed for the production of simple raw materials. And the final products, such as Evolva’s vanillin, are chemically identical to the one isolated from natural sources, so they do not need to be labelled as “GM”. Finally, microbial factories are contained in reactors, effectively removing the risk of environmental contamination from open-field plants, genetically modified or not.
But there are other risks that are rarely considered, and a cautionary approach will be necessary. The artemisinin market is highly subsidized and volatile, and removing the need for wormwood plant cultivation could put a whole population of African patients and Asian farmers at risk. So far, the costs of producing the synthetic version are still similar to extracting the drug from natural sources.
Similar to artemisinin, opioids are manufactured from natural precursors that come from opium poppy fields found in few regulated areas in Turkey and on the island of Tasmania. (Lots of poppy fields exist elsewhere to feed the contraband opioid trade.) Because of their use as recreational drug, their production is under the supervision of the International Narcotics Control Board.
Using microbial factories to produce morphine will need to be tightly regulated. Possible consequences on price, supply chain upsets, and narcotics oversight will have to be considered seriously. This mean that the technology may be delayed even further. But it could also make regulators' lives easier if opium doesn’t need to be grown on farms.
Nature Chemical Biology, 2014. DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.1613 (About DOIs).0
Created by Damon Lindelof and acclaimed novelist Tom Perrotta, the HBO series The Leftovers, about what happens after 140 million people vanished from the face of the earth, is currently in its final season. With the seventh anniversary of the Sudden Departure approaching, everyone is desperately trying to grasp for a system of belief to not only better explain what happened, but to help them deal with what could still be to come. Throughout its three-season run, The Leftovers has taken risks and done things outside of the typical storytelling box, which has made the series nothing less than compelling.
After seeing seven of the eight episodes of Season 3 (they were understandably withholding the final episode of the series), Collider sat down with showrunner Damon Lindelof and executive producer Tom Perrotta (who wrote the book the series is adapted from) to talk about all things The Leftovers. During the interview, we talked about when they started working towards their ending, resolving most of what audiences will want a resolution for, by the end of the series, why the final season is eight episodes instead of their usual 10, deciding which crazy ideas to incorporate and which not to, and how Reddit’s ability to crack “puzzlebox TV” has to change the approach to storytelling.
Collider: Did you know, roughly, what the end point of this show was, when you started Season 1, or was that something that evolved throughout?
TOM PERROTTA: We did not know the end of the show, in Season 1. We didn’t know until this year that we would have a chance to end the show. We certainly hadn’t gotten much ahead of ourselves, in terms of the writing of the show.
DAMON LINDELOF: I think one of the problems in determining the ending for a television series is that you don’t know how long the show is gonna last. Particularly because we were in the unique position of adapting Tom’s novel, it always felt like the first season was gonna end with the end of Tom’s novel, and then we would figure things out from there and look back. Vince Gilligan has talked about this a lot with Breaking Bad, but that show was so intricately designed, they only took on one season at a time. Then, all you have to worry about is the season that’s right in front of you. I was like, “You can do it that way?!” And it ended up being incredibly refreshing.
When the second season ended, we didn’t know if there was gonna be a third season. If we had held anything back, we would have lost a lot of sleep because maybe there wouldn’t be a third season of the show, and maybe Season 2 wouldn’t have felt as complete. There were ideas that we had for the third season, and we probably also knew, mid-way through Season 2, that it started to feel like we were coming down the hill vs. going up the hill. We knew that we were working towards and ending. We were closer to the end than we were to the beginning, but we were totally prepared, although we wanted a third season, for the show to be over with Season 2. When they said, “We want there to be more,” we were the ones who said, “Season 3 is it.” And HBO, fortunately, said yes. And then, before we even started writing the first episode of Season 3, we talked, at great length, about what the final scene was gonna be. We knew that we’d fail miserably, if we didn’t focus entirely on how the series was gonna end.
Having seen seven of the eight episodes of Season 3, I have no idea how you’re going to end the series with only one more episode.
LINDELOF: At least it’s 70 minutes long, the final episode, so it’s packed. I think that’s good, though. I wouldn’t want you feeling the opposite, which is, “I feel like, at the end of the seventh episode, I’m done!” I’d say, what are the things you need to be resolved in the final episode? And I’d guess that we probably check most of those boxes, in the eighth episode. I felt that way going into [the finale] of Big Little Lies. I was like, “Oh, my God, how are they gonna do this all in an hour?!” And I loved it! I thought it was fantastic!
How did you decide on eight episodes?
LINDELOF: We’ve done 10 episodes, every season, and HBO was like, “We’re gonna give you eight episodes.” We felt like, “We’re lucky to get a third season, so we’re not gonna push our luck.” At that point, they already knew, but they weren’t telling us, that Game of Thrones wasn’t gonna be on in April, so they had this space where the finale of Girls was gonna overlap with the beginning of Veep and Silicon Valley, so we just had to move a little faster than we traditionally do. It would have been great to have 10 episodes, but there wasn’t any story we didn’t get to tell, I don’t think.
PERROTTA: Yeah, I don’t think so. It felt like we were sprinting.
LINDELOF: We probably would have maybe had a little bit more storytelling about the Murphys, or certainly the kids, Jill and Tom. But once we realized that we had eight, we had to push those characters a little bit aside and focus on others. And Regina [King] was not available to us because she was doing American Crime and directing a bunch of other shows, so that forced us to make certain creative decisions. But I look back on it, and eight feels good.
PERROTTA: It feels good. Where we’re different from Breaking Bad is that the show is kind of diffuse, in some ways. It’s a family show and it’s an ensemble show, but it forced us to say, “What is the core of this show? What is the essential question that we need to answer to end it?” One of the questions is a big philosophical question, and the actual apocalyptic question, is the world gonna end? But then, it’s also, what are the core relationships that this show has been about?
Tom, what has this experience been like for you, to not only take your novel and have a hand in turning it into a TV show, but to really get to go beyond that, in a way that you probably never thought you’d do?
PERROTTA: It’s turned out to be an exhilarating experience. I got the experience I thought I’d have, which is that we adapted the book that I wrote. But then, these last two seasons, we got to move into this space that is not necessarily a space I ever would have gotten on my own, which is really big, really bold and very weird, in a great way. I got to have my cake and eat it too, meaning that we adapted the book, and then I got to be a part of this project that was something bigger than I ever thought it would be.
You’ve gotten to take chances, experiment, and do a lot of interesting things with this show. Did the positive response to a hugely ambitious episode like “International Assassin” in Season 2, give you the confidence to do more weird or out there moments, or episodes like Episode 7 in Season 3?
LINDELOF: I think that we, as writers, get excited by risk. When we are feeling comfortable and familiar, I wouldn’t say that we get bored, but the energy in the room gets flat. When we’re most excited and when the show is the most fun, it’s when we’re duking things out. If I tell you that there were crazy ideas that we did not do in Season 3, you’d be like, “What were those?!” But, you have to find what your threshold is. If there is one criticism of Season 1 that I have, as a viewer, it’s not that the show is too sad and depressing, or bleak. I don’t disagree with that sentiment, but that was very much by design. It’s just that the show wasn’t taking any risks. It wasn’t exciting. When it started saying, “Let’s start an episode with watching someone get stoned to death,” although that’s potentially off-putting, it suddenly made my heart race. I was like, if my heart is racing in the writers’ room when somebody pitches an idea, then won’t the audience’s heart be racing when they watch it? Particularly because there’s so much great television out there right now, there’s this idea of, what is the show going to do in its dance battle? You can’t just come out and do the same moves that you always do because someone just basically came into the center of the ring and spun around on their head and did a back flip.
So, we come into the writers’ room and we’re talking about what happened last night on Fargo, or what happened three nights ago on Mr. Robot, or how Jon Snow is back to life (on Game of Thrones), and then we talk about how we’re going to do the coming back to life story different. It’s about what are move will be in the dance battle. I think the existence of these other television shows forces us to up our game, but also, we started having fun in the writers’ room. If you can get somebody to laugh with your crazy idea, half the time, those ideas ended up in the show.
As we were talking about Nora getting a tattoo of her children’s names, but then she feels embarrassed for herself and she needs a tattoo to cover it up, everyone’s homework was to say what tattoo Nora gets to cover it up. One of the writers, Tamara Carter, said that she should get the Wu-Tang emblem, but that she doesn’t know it’s the Wu-Tang emblem, and we were like, “God, what a great idea! That’s hilarious!” And then, it just snowballs from there. Some people will watch the episode and go, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” but when you’re taking risks, you can really only write for yourself.
PERROTTA: It’s a funny idea, but when Nora shows that tattoo to Erika and tells the story of it, you feel her pain. It doesn’t work just as a joke. That scene is amazing!
LINDELOF: The best jokes on The Leftovers are the ones that make you feel a little sick to your stomach.
When you can do things that are out there and weird, how does something end up being too out there or too weird? How do you determine that?
LINDELOF: I think you just asked the pivotal question, which is that you have to circle back from the crazy idea and make it emotional. So, how do you take the idea of Kevin as an international assassin who has to kill Senator Patti Levin and build it towards an emotional breaking point? Somewhere in that process, we were like, “There should be a little girl, and that’s Patti, as a little girl, and Kevin should have to kill that little girl.” Once we get to that scene, even inside of a dream construct, that’s going to be excruciating for him, and he’s going to be really vulnerable and emotional. Even the Wu-Tang idea has an emotional idea at its center, which is that there’s a part of Nora that needs people to know what she lost, but then she feels pathetic for wanting to share that. It’s about what she’s doing to cover up her shame. So, if there’s an emotional idea at the center of the craziness, it sells. But then, there were other ideas where we’d all laugh, but then we couldn’t make an argument to earn it emotionally and it would go by the wayside.
PERROTTA: We’re lucky to have somebody like Carrie [Coon], where you can put her on a journey like that. She’s having this emotion and she’s covering it with that emotion, and then she’s doing this crazy thing in reaction to what she perceives is her own emotional weakness, and is all the while broadcasting this idea of being totally in control. To watch her journey in Episode 2, just balancing through those scenes, is amazing.
LINDELOF: For Episode 2, we were like, “What if Mark Linn-Baker is the one who pitches her the idea of the ladder?” That started as just a crazy idea. We kind of earned it because we set up this gag, way back in Season 1, when Kevin Sr. is talking about Perfect Strangers. And then, in Season 2, there’s a beat of Mark Linn-Baker being arrested in Mexico because he faked his own Departure. But now, if he’s going to actually show up in this episode, he has to be an emotional being, too. He has to have lost something. If it’s just a con story, it’s not as interesting, but what if Mark Linn-Baker really believes this thing that he’s pitching to her, to the point where she’s actually considering doing it? That just sounds crazy, on every level. And hell, let’s just throw the Perfect Strangers theme song over our opening titles and see what happens. And then, it was called “Perfect Strangers.” Mark Linn-Baker is this tragic figure, in that everybody always talks about the crazy cousin, but he was the straight man. So, we called him up and were like, “Will you do this?” And he was like, “I’m so in!” But, you just don’t know until the episode airs. You just don’t know.
PERROTTA: Mark Linn-Baker did an amazing job. We had these actors come in and do the testimonial videos (that Nora watches on her laptop) and I happened to be on set when they did that, and I just thought that was an incredibly powerful thing. That really lends credence to what Mark Linn-Baker is talking about. You watch Nora watch them and something shifts in her, and that started as just a little grace note, but it added this real sense of this thing that sounded like a con or a bad joke has weight in this world.
LINDELOF: The thing that unlocked the episode for us was that she only wants to go to St. Louis because it’s driving distance to where Lily is. She wouldn’t fall for this, if there wasn’t an ulterior motive. That was the way that we ended up learning it. The audience was like, “She went all the way to St. Louis to meet with Mark Linn-Baker?!” But then, you realize that she’s actually there to do something else. And then, at the end of the episode, she’s going to Australia. That, to me, was the most exciting idea when it was pitched. Everyone is assuming the show is going to Australia because Scott Glenn is already down there having his own TV show and we’re just going to catch up with it, but what if Nora is the reason that everybody goes? We liked that idea.
PERROTTA: And we also answered the question of, where’s Lily? That was just a cluster of ideas that scared me, as a writer. I was like, “Oh, god, how are we gonna pull this off, and why is Damon bringing Mark Linn-Baker back into this?”
Damon, when you see how Reddit was able to crack “puzzlebox TV” like Westworld, do you think it would have changed how you had to have approached writing something like Lost, or even The Leftovers?
LINDELOF: That’s a great question. I feel like the big twist shows are now off the table. I think Westworld was probably the last one to Trojan horse this idea of the young man in black. They were doing non-linear storytelling, but disguising it. Jonah [Nolan] and Lisa [Joy] have spoken openly about how they just didn’t think people were going to figure it out that fast. And in a post Mr. Robot world, where people were like, “Oh, Christian Slater isn’t real?,” what was great was that that worked for a smokescreen for other twists, like the brother-sister turn. I think that storytellers are going to have to evolve. For a streaming show, you can still do twists because all the episodes dump at one time and Reddit can’t do its work. But for a weekly show, for any kind of mystery, someone in the audience out there is gonna get it.
What’s amazing for The Leftovers is that, probably largely because nobody was watching the show, nobody guessed that Evie had joined the Guilty Remnant in Season 2. We were watching Reddit, and nobody had figured it out. It played as a twist reveal, and I think the only reason that it did work was because the audience didn’t feel like The Leftovers was a twisty show. Because the Departure was on the table, and because Tom and I have said, from the get-go, that we may never answer that, when Evie disappeared in the premiere of Season 2, the audience was like, “They’re probably never gonna tell us what happened to her.” So, the idea that they got any answer, let alone that answer, was itself a twist.
PERROTTA: That’s out strength. I don’t think people are even sure what questions they’re supposed to be asking about The Leftovers, which makes it sometimes hard to write because the story doesn’t tell us, in a very direct way, what to do next. That’s what’s been interesting for us, as writers, and for the people who are willing to live in this space of uncertainty, it makes a really interesting show.
The Leftovers airs on Sunday nights on HBO.After the Panthers had ended the 2011 season in a tie for the sixth-most penalized team in the NFL, Ron Rivera's clubs were better behaved his following four seasons. From 2012-2015, Carolina was among the top-10 fewest penalized teams in the NFL.
That discipline's disappeared during this year's 1-4 start.
Flagged seven times in Monday night's loss to the Bucs, the Panthers' have now been penalized 39 times, a total that ties them with the Colts for fifth-most through Week Five.
"Last year we had penalties and won football games," Rivera said. "This year we have penalties and it's costing us."
The Panthers picked up 103 penalties last year, but those were the 10th-fewest in the league and averaged out to 6.4 per game. This season, the average is 7.8.
That may not seem like a big difference, but think about it this way:
Rivera's teams totaled 477 penalties his first five seasons. That's an average of 95.4 per year. But if the Panthers keep up their current pace, they'll finish this season somewhere around 125 penalties.
No flag was more costly Monday night than a 15-yard face mask penalty against defensive end Kony Ealy on the Bucs' final drive. Replays show running back Jacquizz Rodgers's face mask twisted enough to warrant the call, but Rivera wasn't convinced.
"(Ealy) hits the guy's face mask, OK. But he didn't grab it," Rivera said. "I don't get it. It's the referee's call, so that was a costly one right there.
"It moved |
magical about making a simple, intuitive, and composable CLI. There’s also nothing more beautiful than chaining together a series of CLI programs to solve a complex problem quickly.
Here at Stormpath, we’ve built our entire product CLI in Python to create / manage / edit users for your applications, and have been really happy with the result.
Most of this is thanks to the wonderful docopt library, which provides automatic CLI argument parsing and makes building complicated CLIs incredibly simple. And the best part? It works across more than 20 different programming languages! This means that even if you’re building a new CLI app in Go, Rust, or something in between, chances are you can use docopt, too!
If you want to know how to structure your next CLI-based app to minimize complexity and maximize awesomeness, keep reading.
For the purposes of this article, we’re going to be building a really simple CLI called skele that works via subcommands.
There are typically two types of CLI tools that people build: single and multi-command. A good example of a single command CLI tool would be the grep command.
This is because the grep tool takes various options, but does only one thing:
match text.
For instance, if I wanted to search a file for my name, I might run the following command:
$ grep 'Randall' some-file.txt 1 2 $ grep 'Randall' some - file. txt
On the other hand, there are CLI tools that operate via sub-commands, and do many things. These tools are typically harder to build as they have more complexity.
A good example of sub-command driven CLI tool would be the Heroku CLI tool. This tool allows you to create new web applications, deploy them live, and provision resources for these applications — all via sub-commands.
For instance, if I wanted to create a new Heroku application, I might run the following command:
$ heroku applications:create my-new-app 1 2 $ heroku applications : create my - new - app
In the example above, applications:create is the name of a sub-command.
If I wanted to later remove my application from Heroku, I could then say:
$ heroku applications:destroy my-new-app 1 2 $ heroku applications : destroy my - new - app
See how the one CLI tool can perform different actions? Well, that’s what we’ll be building today. A CLI tool that is capable of simply running sub-commands and handling them in a graceful way.
The specific CLI tool I’ve built as reference material for this article is called skele, and can be found on this Github page.
This tool ships with a single sub-command hello, that just prints some text to the console. It also includes a manual page, help information, and version information in a standard UNIX-compliant manner.
So, on with the show!
Structuring a CLI Project in Python
Before we dive into all the specifics regarding how to build good CLI-based applications, let’s first talk about structuring your project properly. If you want to skip ahead and just look at the source code to figure out how things work, here’s a link to the Github page.
There is an infinite number of ways to structure Python projects, but for CLI apps in particular, I like the following approach the best as it is straightforward, and keeps things simple:
skele-cli ├── MANIFEST.in ├── README.rst ├── setup.cfg ├── setup.py └── skele ├── __init__.py ├── cli.py └── commands ├── __init__.py ├── base.py └── hello.py 2 directories, 9 files 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 skele - cli ├── MANIFEST. in ├── README. rst ├── setup. cfg ├── setup. py └── skele ├── __init__. py ├── cli. py └── commands ├── __init__. py ├── base. py └── hello. py 2 directories, 9 files
At the very top-level, you’ve got the project folder, which in this case is called skele-cli. This will be your main code repository.
Python Packaging Files
Inside of the top-level project folder, you’ve got a few Python packaging files that I’ll explain below.
Firstly, you’ve got MANIFEST.in. This tells the Python build tool what files to include when you ship your package to the world.
# MANIFEST.in exclude.gitignore exclude.coverage exclude.travis.yml include README.rst include setup.cfg prune.cache prune.git prune build prune dist recursive-exclude *.egg-info * recursive-include tests * 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 # MANIFEST.in exclude. gitignore exclude. coverage exclude. travis. yml include README. rst include setup. cfg prune. cache prune. git prune build prune dist recursive - exclude *. egg - info * recursive - include tests *
As you’ll notice above, I’m pro-actively removing and excluding a lot of unnecessary files that would otherwise get included in the package.
Whenever you build your Python package, this file will be scanned by the Python build tool, and these rules will be used to remove or add files in your package accordingly.
In particular, I don’t like including private git folders, build folders, coverage reports, etc. in my package builds, as it unnecessarily clutters up a user’s system.
Next up, you’ve got the setup.cfg file. This file just tells the Python build tool that your program should run on all platforms when building the binary. If this isn’t true for your specific project, you can remove this file.
NOTE: For 99.99% of people, you’ll want to leave this file alone =)
# setup.cfg [bdist_wheel] universal=1 1 2 3 4 # setup.cfg [ bdist_wheel ] universal = 1
Finally, you’ve got the setup.py file. This is where you tell Python all about your CLI tool and how it is packaged up.
Now, the next file we’re going to look at is quite large ( setup.py ), so I won’t copy / paste all the contents here, if you want to view the entire thing, check it out on Github: https://github.com/rdegges/skele-cli/blob/master/setup.py
Here’s the important / cool bits you should know about:
This setup script will automatically use your README.rst file for documentation. This is nice because when you deploy your package to PyPI, it will have legitimate looking documentation:
this_dir = abspath(dirname(__file__)) with open(join(this_dir, 'README.rst'), encoding='utf-8') as file: long_description = file.read() 1 2 3 4 this_dir = abspath ( dirname ( __file__ ) ) with open ( join ( this_dir, 'README.rst' ), encoding = 'utf-8' ) as file : long_description = file. read ( )
This setup script includes testing support via the popular py.test library (and coverage reporting, too!). This means that if you run the $ python setup.py test command, your entire package will be tested nicely (assuming you write tests, that is). Here’s the code that makes this possible:
class RunTests(Command): """Run all tests.""" description = 'run tests' user_options = [] def initialize_options(self): pass def finalize_options(self): pass def run(self): """Run all tests!""" errno = call(['py.test', '--cov=skele', '--cov-report=term-missing']) raise SystemExit(errno) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 class RunTests ( Command ) : "" "Run all tests." "" description = 'run tests' user_options = [ ] def initialize_options ( self ) : pass def finalize_options ( self ) : pass def run ( self ) : "" "Run all tests!" "" errno = call ( [ 'py.test', '--cov=skele', '--cov-report=term-missing' ] ) raise SystemExit ( errno )
This setup script won’t accidentally install your documentation or tests on the user’s system as actual packages. This happens quite frequently, and causes nasty namespace collisions. The relevant bit of code that prevents
this from happening can be seen below:
packages = find_packages(exclude=['docs', 'tests*']), 1 2 packages = find_packages ( exclude = [ 'docs', 'tests*' ] ),
This setup script can install all development dependencies easily — this means that if you’re cloning this project fresh, and want to work on it for development purposes, you can run the $ pip install -e.[test] command and the entire CLI program as well as all test dependencies will be installed!
extras_require = { 'test': ['coverage', 'pytest', 'pytest-cov'], }, 1 2 3 4 extras_require = { 'test' : [ 'coverage', 'pytest', 'pytest-cov' ], },
Lastly, this script ensures that your CLI program is started correctly when run from the command line. If a user installs your CLI program, they’ll be able to run it by simply typing the program name, in this case, $ skele in the terminal:
entry_points = { 'console_scripts': ['skele=skele.cli:main', ], }, 1 2 3 4 5 6 entry_points = { 'console_scripts' : ['skele=skele.cli:main', ], },
The CLI Package
Now that we’ve covered the Python packaging files, let’s talk about the actual CLI package itself! How do we structure our actual Python code?
The first thing we’ll need is a package (a folder in this case) called skele — as this is our application’s name.
Inside of this folder there are two files we need to quickly discuss.
First, the __init__.py file. The only thing this file contains is our program’s version number:
# __init__.py __version__ = '1.0.0' 1 2 3 # __init__.py __version__ = '1.0.0'
This version number is what you’ll update when you make new releases.
Second, we’ve got our cli.py file — this is where most of the magic happens. This file contains a function named main which is the code that will actually run when a user types $ skele in the command line.
The reason this function is the one that runs is because of the code we setup previously in our setup.py file: https://github.com/rdegges/skele-cli/blob/master/setup.py#L64-L68 (these lines of code tell Python to execute this particular function when our program is run).
So, next up we’ve got our commands module (another folder). This module contains the actual implementation of our CLI commands.
If you take a look in this folder, you’ll see the following files defined:
__init__.py – This contains our import statements.
– This contains our import statements. base.py – A base command class that all other classes will extend.
– A base command class that all other classes will extend. hello.py – This is an example command implementation.
If I was building a CLI app that could be used by typing:
$ skele hi $ skele bye 1 2 3 $ skele hi $ skele bye
Then I’d have two new Python files in my commands folder: hi.py and bye.py. This is how I like to structure things to keep them as simple as possible.
So now that we’ve covered the basic layout, let’s talk about the actual
implementation.
Using docopt to Build a Simple CLI
I love the docopt library. It makes defining CLI interfaces incredibly simple.
The way docopt works is pretty magical: instead of writing rules and telling your program what options to look for, you instead just define the manual page for your CLI program, and docopt will automatically parse this string for you, and generate all the option parsing code too!
Here’s how it works in the skele example application I’ve built. This is the cli.py file source code (notice the big docstring at the top of the file):
""" skele Usage: skele hello skele -h | --help skele --version Options: -h --help Show this screen. --version Show version. Examples: skele hello Help: For help using this tool, please open an issue on the Github repository: https://github.com/rdegges/skele-cli """ from inspect import getmembers, isclass from docopt import docopt from. import __version__ as VERSION def main(): """Main CLI entrypoint.""" import commands options = docopt(__doc__, version=VERSION) # Here we'll try to dynamically match the command the user is trying to run # with a pre-defined command class we've already created. for k, v in options.iteritems(): if hasattr(commands, k): module = getattr(commands, k) commands = getmembers(module, isclass) command = [command[1] for command in commands if command[0]!= 'Base'][0] command = command(options) command.run() 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 "" " skele Usage: skele hello skele -h | --help skele --version Options: -h --help Show this screen. --version Show version. Examples: skele hello Help: For help using this tool, please open an issue on the Github repository: https://github.com/rdegges/skele-cli " "" from inspect import getmembers, isclass from docopt import docopt from. import __version__ as VERSION def main ( ) : "" "Main CLI entrypoint." "" import commands options = docopt ( __doc__, version = VERSION ) # Here we'll try to dynamically match the command the user is trying to run # with a pre-defined command class we've already created. for k, v in options. iteritems ( ) : if hasattr ( commands, k ) : module = getattr ( commands, k ) commands = getmembers ( module, isclass ) command = [ command [ 1 ] for command in commands if command [ 0 ]!= 'Base' ] [ 0 ] command = command ( options ) command. run ( )
That huge docstring at the top of the file is standard CLI documentation, right? It looks like the output you see when you run a CLI program. It lists how to use the program, how it works, and what options are available.
Well, what happens here is that down below, in the main function, I’m using the docopt library to parse that huge docstring and generate a list of options automatically:
# __doc__ is a special variable that references this file's docstring. options = docopt(__doc__, version=VERSION) 1 2 3 # __doc__ is a special variable that references this file's docstring. options = docopt ( __doc__, version = VERSION )
If you go ahead and print out the options variable, you’ll see something similar to the following (depending on how you run the program):
# `$ skele hello` is the command I ran to output these options. {'--help': False, '--version': False, 'hello': True} 1 2 3 4 5 # `$ skele hello` is the command I ran to output these options. { '--help' : False, '--version' : False, 'hello' : True }
Pretty amazing, right? docopt generated a dictionary of options that have already been parsed and validated automatically.
Notice how the hello variable is set to True? This means that the user typed the $ skele hello command =)
Now, since we know that docopt is already handling the hard stuff:
Parsing our CLI documentation into real options.
Generating a dictionary of options.
All we have to do is call the appropriate code to run, right?
In the above example, we’re running the $ skele hello command on the CLI — so in the next section, we’ll take a look at how to hook that logic into our app.
Defining Commands in the CLI Program
When building a CLI program, most of the time your program is going to do different things based on what sub-commands are being run.
For instance, in our example skele application, I might want to define several sub-commands that a user can run:
$ skele hello # say hello, world! $ skele bye # say bye! # etc... 1 2 3 4 $ skele hello # say hello, world! $ skele bye # say bye! # etc...
In the example above, I’m referring to both hello and bye as sub-commands.
The way I’ve structured the skele sample app is such that you can define a Python file for each sub-command you want to support, and it will get run automatically when the user specifies that command.
Let’s take a look at how a command works. We’ll start by looking at the hello.py file:
# skele/commands/hello.py """The hello command.""" from json import dumps from.base import Base class Hello(Base): """Say hello, world!""" def run(self): print 'Hello, world!' print 'You supplied the following options:', dumps(self.options, indent=2, sort_keys=True) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 # skele/commands/hello.py "" "The hello command." "" from json import dumps from. base import Base class Hello ( Base ) : "" "Say hello, world!" "" def run ( self ) : print 'Hello, world!' print 'You supplied the following options:', dumps ( self. options, indent = 2, sort_keys = True )
The idea is that each command will have a class inside of it that extends from Base. Here’s what base.py looks like:
# skele/commands/base.py """The base command.""" class Base(object): """A base command.""" def __init__(self, options, *args, **kwargs): self.options = options self.args = args self.kwargs = kwargs def run(self): raise NotImplementedError('You must implement the run() method yourself!') 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 # skele/commands/base.py "" "The base command." "" class Base ( object ) : "" "A base command." "" def __init__ ( self, options, * args, * * kwargs ) : self. options = options self. args = args self. kwargs = kwargs def run ( self ) : raise NotImplementedError ( 'You must implement the run() method yourself!' )
Whenever we construct a new instance of a command class, we’ll pass in the options that were generated using docopt. This way, each sub-command has access to all the user supplied CLI information.
Finally, we’ll define a run method on each command class, and this is what we’ll call to actually do something that the user wants. This is where we’ll put our logic.
In the hello.py example, we’re simply going to say “Hello, world!” and output the options.
Now, going back to the cli.py file, let’s take a look at how we actually use these command classes to get stuff done:
# skele/cli.py def main(): """Main CLI entrypoint.""" import commands options = docopt(__doc__, version=VERSION) # Here we'll try to dynamically match the command the user is trying to run # with a pre-defined command class we've already created. for k, v in options.iteritems(): if hasattr(commands, k): module = getattr(commands, k) commands = getmembers(module, isclass) command = [command[1] for command in commands if command[0]!= 'Base'][0] command = command(options) command.run() 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 # skele/cli.py def main ( ) : "" "Main CLI entrypoint." "" import commands options = docopt ( __doc__, version = VERSION ) # Here we'll try to dynamically match the command the user is trying to run # with a pre-defined command class we've already created. for k, v in options. iteritems ( ) : if hasattr ( commands, k ) : module = getattr ( commands, k ) commands = getmembers ( module, isclass ) command = [ command [ 1 ] for command in commands if command [ 0 ]!= 'Base' ] [ 0 ] command = command ( options ) command. run ( )
What we’re doing here is this:
We parse the CLI options from the user via docopt.
We loop through the CLI options.
If there is a command module whose name matches a CLI option, then we’ll dynamically figure out the name of the command class.
After getting the command class, we’ll create an instance of it, passing along the user supplied options from docopt.
Finally, we’ll call the run method on our class, which will actually make stuff happen.
If we were to say $ skele hello, for instance, here’s what would happen:
We’d loop through the commands module and find that commands.hello is a valid Python module.
is a valid Python module. We’d then figure out that Hello is the name of the class we’ve defined inside that file.
is the name of the class we’ve defined inside that file. Finally, we’ll create a new instance of a Hello class, and call the run method.
All together now, this is what makes our CLI program work!
This is pretty cool because it means that adding or changing our CLI interface is as simple as modifying the docstring we’ve defined in skele/cli.py, as well as creating a proper command in our commands directory.
Simple, right?
Building CLIs Made Simple
By utilizing the awesome docopt module, and structuring your project the right way, building simple CLI programs can be really easy!
Be sure to check out skele-cli on Github for reference, and if you’re looking for more information about Python packaging best practices, be sure to check out the official Python packaging guide.There are several reasons for this slowdown. For one thing, after decades of decolonization and ethnic sorting, there are simply fewer separatist movements clamoring for their own countries. But one major reason is that the world’s great powers, including the United States, don’t really want to see the map changed.
This emphasis on sovereignty has, of course, often been motivated by power politics and self-interest. But there are also some good reasons to be concerned about normalizing secessionism: Peaceful separations of countries are exceedingly rare. More commonly they are catastrophic, as in the slaughter and mass displacement that accompanied the partitions of India and Yugoslavia.
The problem is, as it was in Wilson’s day, that people don’t live in neatly ordered clusters. However national boundaries are drawn, some are likely to find themselves on the wrong side of them — and genocide is as likely an outcome as peaceful coexistence.
Still, few would argue that the current map of the world is perfect. And recent events suggest it may be hard to preserve indefinitely.
In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, President Vladimir Putin justified the absorption of a largely Russian-speaking region with near-Wilsonian language of self-determination. The United States and Europe responded to what Secretary of State John Kerry called “19th century” behavior with condemnations and sanctions, but they could do little to stop or reverse it. That same year, the Islamic State claimed it was bringing about the end of the Sykes-Picot borders drawn in the Middle East after World War I. China, meanwhile, has been bolstering its territorial claims in the South China Sea with the construction of more than 3,200 acres of new land in the form of artificial islands. More changes to the map loom: By the end of the century, rising sea levels could render some small island states uninhabitable, raising the question of whether a country can continue to exist as a political entity if the piece of land it is associated with no longer does.
Our current period of cartographical stasis might turn out to be a brief anomaly. Rather than seeking to preserve the current map at all costs, American efforts might be better spent trying to ensure that these changes happen peacefully. One idea would be to push international institutions to allow more than a one-size-fits-all definition of statehood, allowing some form of international representation for places that are largely autonomous but not fully states.
Another would be to reconsider America’s reflexive opposition to new bids for statehood. It might be helpful if there were more precedents for peaceful, orderly, democratic separations, rather than violent, chaotic ones. I’m not arguing in favor of independence for Kurdistan, Catalonia, Scotland or anyplace else. When the shapes of new countries have been drawn by people who don’t live in them, it hasn’t usually worked out very well. There are very real reasons for skepticism about all of these independence movements. But that doesn’t mean that maintaining the world’s current arrangement of countries within their existing borders needs to be a guiding principle.
Above all, the preservation of existing countries ought to guide our thinking less than the well-being of the people who live within them.Two pastors are no longer listed on a Reformed evangelical group’s leadership after a different pastor from their church confessed to covering up sex abuse claims. Pastors Joshua Harris and C.J. Mahaney have left the Gospel Coalition council after a trial involving child abuse in the church they have both overseen.
A criminal trial that concluded last week has raised questions about which pastors at Covenant Life Church, a megachurch in Gaithersburg, Md., knew what about the abuse in which years.
Nathaniel Morales, 56, was convicted Thursday of sexually abusing three young boys between 1983 and 1991 when he was a youth leader.
Former Covenant Life pastor Grant Layman suggested while testifying about allegations against Morales that he withheld information from the police about the abuse.
“Did you have an obligation to report the alleged abuse?” public defender Alan Drew, who represented Morales, asked during cross-examination. “I believe so,” Layman said. “And you didn’t,” Drew responded. “No,” Layman said.
Layman, who is Mahaney’s brother-in-law, stepped down from his role at Covenant Life in March.
Mahaney founded Covenant Life in 1977 before passing the leadership of the church in 2004 to Harris, author of the once bestselling “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” book. Mahaney now leads Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville.
Mahaney and Harris are no longer listed on The Gospel Coalition website, which boasts of leaders such as Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City; and Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.
An employee of TGC said it will not be putting out a statement on the matter. Initial attempts to reach Mahaney and Harris were unsuccessful.
Harris, the current head pastor of Covenant Life, said in a tearful sermon Sunday that he has asked the church’s board to consider placing him on administrative leave while the church continues to investigate the issue. “We have a zero tolerance policy of abuse of any kind,” Harris said, urging people to go to the police if they know of any abuse.
Harris said that because of a separate civil lawsuit, church leaders are unable to speak openly about what pastors who knew what when. “Right now, we’re still getting conflicting information,” Harris said. In a statement released last year, church leaders said they didn’t know about the abuse until “many years later.”
Nearly a year ago, several leading evangelical pastors and authors came to the defense of Mahaney who was accused in a lawsuit for covering up sexual abuse of children. Mahaney announced that he would pull out of a conference called Together 4 the Gospel due to ongoing lawsuits, though he was seated in the front of the audience with conference leaders.
Mahaney’s Covenant Life was the flagship for Sovereign Grace Ministries, an association of 80 Reformed evangelical churches, based in Louisville, Ky.
Mahaney took a leave of absence from the ministry in 2011 after other pastors in the Sovereign Grace network charged him with “expressions of pride, unentreatability, deceit, sinful judgment, and hypocrisy.” Six months later, the group reinstated Mahaney, declaring full confidence in him.
The same month that a lawsuit was filed, Mahaney told the Sovereign Grace board that he would step down to focus on pastoral ministry. Two months later, Covenant Life voted to leave Sovereign Grace.
In a sermon a year ago, Harris acknowledged that he had been sexually abused as a child, telling the congregation amid the ongoing lawsuit, “Please don’t allow the circumstance to draw you away from faith in Jesus.”
Sarah Pulliam Bailey writes for Religion News Service. Via RNS.
Image: C.J. Mahaney, who has left the Gospel Coalition council after a trial involving child abuse in the church, in a 2006 photo. Courtesy james.thompson, via Wikimedia CommonsAfter its May 24 release, Total War: WARHAMMER quickly became the Creative Assembly’s fastest-selling Total War title ever — according to SteamSpy, more than 742,000 players have purchased the game. We awarded it a 9/10. In the month it’s been out, modders and YouTubers have been busily creating content for it, showcasing massive battles, tweaking game mechanics, and even adding wholly new units and factions.
We got a chance to talk with Al Bickham, Creative Assembly’s studio communications manager, about the game’s reception and where the team plans on taking players in the future.
Total War: WARHAMMER has met pretty universal praise from critics and high sales numbers. Was the move away from recorded, real history something you worried about for the franchise? What’s been the team’s feeling about its reception? Relief? Joy? Validation?
All of the above to be honest! There’s always an element of risk when you try something new, and high fantasy is, fair to say, something of a departure from the kinds of scenarios we’ve traditionally tackled. But one thing we knew instinctively and right from the start was that Warhammer and Total War would be the perfect marriage. Plus, we’re an ambitious bunch. And we absolutely believed that the Warhammer Fantasy Battles universe hadn’t yet had its definitive PC strategy game. That’s what we set out to make, and we’ve made a good start with part 1. There’s so much more of the world to explore, and we’re cracking on with that right now.
Total War has featured DLC expansions for a while now – are you ready to talk about any of the additions you’ll be offering to the game? Will there be a blood and gore pack for Warhammer?
We’re basing the game and its DLC and follow-ups on the 8th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. That gives us a massive scope for expanding the game, and in that regard the gloves are off – there’s so much we’re planning to do. We’ve always said that if there’s an army book in 8th Edition, then we’re going to build that race into the game at some stage. And I think we’ll add to that whenever we see an opportunity to do so. As for the red stuff… I believe the state of Estalia, just to the south of Bretonnia, serves up a particularly good Claret. To spill it would be positively… barbarous.
WARHAMMER introduces monstrous and flying units to the Total War mix. What kinds of surprises have you seen from the player community in terms of how these new kinds of units are used?
There are some prolific, enormously skilled YouTubers making Total War content out there, and some of the videos we’ve seen made using TW:WH have been nothing short of riotous. Armies composed of nothing but Giants, swatting guys aside like ten-pins; 40-unit bat swarms blocking out the sun; multitudes of Goblin Doom Divers raining down like a storm of giggling bombs. People have been creating scenes of pure insanity, and having so much fun with what they’re doing, it’s a joy for us to see.
Talk a bit about the community engagement strategy you’ve used for this game. I’ve enjoyed watching Total War videos for a while now, and with Warhammer, you guys are creating videos that feature fan-made game mods. How important are modders, streamers, and YouTubers to your games’ lifecycles, and what do they offer your business model? How has this changed since Total War first began?
On a basic (and somewhat obvious) level, our community is our life-blood. If they weren’t buying and playing our games, we’d be looking for different job. But our community is also staggeringly diverse in the ways it looks at our games, and the desires it has around them. Modders aren’t afraid to ‘break’ the game – to change things so far beyond the given or intended design that it becomes something new, and often, that’s something that other players will find desirable.
After all, people make mods because they want to change a specific thing to suit their gameplay desires. This results in some amazing mods, and that gives us a more diverse view about what we can do, or what we should be doing. Most importantly, mods make the game itself more diverse… only without our input and the development-cost implications that would have on the price of the game. In short, it’s free, new content or features that people can install to modify the game to suit their tastes, and that can only be a good thing for players.We'd like to thank Team Liquid and Sean "Day[9]" Plott for their huge roles with the global stream and our Irvine community event. Thanks also go out to all who contributed content for broadcast on the stream; your creativity was much appreciated. And of course, we'd like to recognize OGN, GomTV, ESL, Twitch, the pro players, casters, hosts, sponsors, and others who helped make the event so successful. The spirit of collaboration was unprecedented and amazing, making this a launch we will remember for years to come.
But that’s not all. The weekend following the launch of Heart of the Swarm, more than 1.1 million people tuned in to watch StarCraft II eSports at MLG Pro Circuit Winter Championship in Dallas. Peak concurrency reached over 157,000 viewers on championship Sunday.
Our deepest thanks go out to everyone in the StarCraft II community. Your enthusiasm has fueled an amazing kickoff for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm.
We can’t wait to see what the coming year holds for StarCraft II, and we’re grateful to have such a passionate community to share it with. For the Swarm!You wonder if Alexander Medvedev is at some point going to realize that silence is a better option.
The KHL president’s continued criticism of the NHL over the past week, in the wake of Russian star players having to leave his league and head back to the lockout-free NHL, lacks judgment, to say the least.
Has it ever occurred to Medvedev that the NHL and NHL Players’ Association have yet to commit to the Sochi 2014 Olympics?
Why is he stirring up the KHL-NHL animosity pot before getting official assurance that the NHL is a go for your Olympics?
The latest Medvedev anti-NHL comments came over the weekend.
"Not all the people who govern NHL teams have a hockey heart," Medvedev was quoted as saying in some Russian media reports.
Their hearts, he added, are made "from another material and has money signs stuck to it."
He was upset that Russian stars such as Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin weren’t allowed to stay and play in Sunday’s KHL All-Star Game, although fellow NHL stars Ilya Kovalchuk and Pavel Datsyuk did.
"Several clubs look down on the international aspects of hockey development and think that it's better to stew in your own stock. They could have released the players without any harm, but greed has strangled them and they didn't allow it," Medvedev was quoted as saying.
Never mind that Medvedev has enjoyed, since September, having 40-plus NHLers in his league because of the lockout, including the very best of his homegrown superstars.
This reminds me a bit of my soon-to-be four-year-old daughter. If I allow her to watch one extra "Dora the Explorer" episode before bedtime, she’s already forgotten that little bonus when crying that I’m turning off the TV.
Medvedev got used to having his Russian NHL stars in his league and forgot about that little reality of the NHL lockout ending.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for what he’s accomplished with his league. The KHL is a bona-fide alternative to the NHL in terms of top-notch hockey and the conditions in the league have improved greatly over the past few years, as has the product itself.
And I have no doubt that young Russian players will continue to opt to stay home and play in the KHL if not in their development years from age 18 through 23 but perhaps for their entire careers. I’ve got no problem with that. Like European soccer, I believe it’s healthy for the NHL to have real competition and to spread some of the talent more around the world.
But the way Medvedev is acting doesn’t cut it. The NHL is back, and the Russian stars under NHL contract have to come back as well. Doesn’t Medvedev remember signing that Memo of Understanding with the NHL a few years ago regarding respecting signed player contracts between leagues? Or was that just a legal document that would come in handy for Medvedev when it suited him?
After speaking with a few Russian hockey observers Monday, it was also suggested to me that perhaps Medvedev's anti-NHL rants over the past week were mostly for public consumption -- to feed the KHL fan base -- but in reality he understands how the dominoes really fall and always expected to lose his Russian NHL stars once the lockout ended.
Nonetheless, Medvedev needs to keep his focus on the big prize.
The world’s greatest hockey tournament is coming to his country next February and he will want the best players in the world to be there.
Oh, sure, I believe the likes of Ovechkin, Kovalchuk and Datsyuk would risk NHL suspension and try to |
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ATTACKING TUTORIALS & MORE! Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and we will send you fresh attacking strategies every week. How To Play The Bandit The Bandit is a new Card and this is one advantage you have. If you can take the Bandit, I encourage you to do it! Your opponent very likely don’t know how to play the Bandit if he gets her
Your opponent most likely don’t know how to counter the Bandit properly So you need to know how you can play the Bandit (in case you can take her) or know how to counter her in case your opponent gets the Bandit! The Bandit has a fair amount if hitpoints, deals some nice damage to a single target and has a charging effect that makes her invincible for the time of moving charged! Yes, she won’t take any damage while moving around charged! She is perfect to counter single troops or move fast towards the Arena Tower of your opponent. Don’t play her against groups of smaller hitpoint troops like Goblins etc. Always try to counter her by either deploying something next to here, so she can’t use her Dash ability or with groups like Skeletons, Goblins etc. Make sure to check out my guide about playing the Bandit here: Read It! Bandit Strategy Guide & Decks Best Deck Choices & Cards for the Bandit Draft Challenge Winning the Draft Challenge is not that hard, simply because everyone gets weird decks with little balance – it’s primarily about handling situations. I would say that 30% is choosing the right cards for you (or your opponent) and the rest is just about knowing how to counter your opponent with the cards you have. I often see people doing the same mistake when choosing their cards, here are the things you have to prevent at any cost: Don’t choose the cards you like most, choose the ones for your opponent! Never give your opponent nice counters or good combos One simple example, when I choose the Barbarians, I don’t want my opponent to get a Fireball or the Fire Spirits since he can counter me for a positive Elixir trade all the time. There are many situations where you need to make decisions like that, so I wrote them all up in my guide about the general Draft Challenge here: Read It! Win the Draft Challenge Here’s, by the way, an interesting guide how streaks will make an influence on the strength of your opponents: Read It! Win More Challenges in Clash Royale Loading...
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Best Lumberjack Decks & StrategiesThe winner
Marvel took top spot at the worldwide box office for the second year running, with a $1.215bn sweep for Iron Man 3 (No 5 in the all-time list). It's still unclear if it's the series' final instalment, or whether Robert Downey Jr will go Starkers on a full-time basis again. Nevertheless, seizing the momentum of The Avengers last year, Marvel's cross-fertilising approach to its IP has put it – or its paymasters, Disney – in pole position among the studios. (Thor 2 finished in eighth.) If the Chinese cut of Iron Man 3 wasn't quite the Mandarin-fluent blockbuster for a new red dawn promised early on by co-producers DMG, the big Beijing promotional push did give a potentially rote threequel the allure of a global jetsetter.
Shane Black and Ben Kingsley were praised for Iron Man 3's red-herring twist, an opportunity for the director to sprinkle his postmodern dust over the SFX blockbuster genre. But was Black's treatise on terrorism-as-global-panto-for-the-masses – and where that dovetails with the cinema industry – a case of dressing up old iron? Yet another CGI-grouted brick in the franchise wall tops the yearly list – and one that arguably benefitted from unusually lacklustre competition this time, with the not-exactly-earthshaking Despicable Me 2 ($918.6m) and Fast & Furious 6 ($788.7m) in second and third place. 2013 looks like a weaker 12 months for the upper echelons of the global box office, with just one film crossing the vaunted $1bn line (compared to four in 2012 and three in 2011; though Peter Jackson's Desolation of Smaug is still in with a shout), and a noticeably shrunken spread of grosses in the top 10. Sony, after a triumphant 2012 led by Skyfall, looked particularly wan, with just the underperforming Smurfs followup near the top 20 – and an embarrassing bomb in Will and Jaden Smith's $130m After Earth (31st, $243.8m).
The desolation of brands
I noted in last year's global box office report that 2012 was a transitional year, with many long-running franchises taking their final bow, and some newbies stepping in. It's still far from clear which will have the kind of legs (perennial guilty pleasure Fast & Furious apart) that let a certain speccy wizard cling to the top spot for so long. The Lone Ranger (29th; $260.5m) is dead wood. World War Z (11th; $540m), Oz the Great and Powerful (12th; $493.3m) and Pacific Rim (16th; $407.6m) were all putative franchise-starters that didn't fully ignite; the execs' fingers presumably hovered over the greenlight button for sequels there. Pacific Rim, especially, was only saved by its impressive $111.9m Chinese take – validating Guillermo del Toro's eastern-centric canvas and casting in the end. Man of Steel (6th; $662.8m) was airborne, but not quite in speeding-bullet territory yet.
The Hunger Games and The Hobbit are definitely going concerns, showing the strong/expanding overseas base de rigueur for sequels these days. That movement is also true of Star Trek Into Darkness (14th; $467.4m) – but it remains an enigmatically US-centric divertissement, and still hasn't yielded megabucks. All in all, 2013 suffered a lack of anything new, piquant and resounding in the franchise world; the amount of critic-proof kids' fare (Despicable Me 2, Monsters University, The Croods, Frozen) plumping out the box office was telling. Maleficent, Guardians of the Galaxy and Jupiter Ascending step up to the plate for their shot next year. Anyone waiting for the implosion of the blockbuster-franchise paradigm will have to treasure Gravity's 7th place ($653.3m) for now – a stunning result for a bona fide one-off, old-fashioned spectacular with absolutely no thoughts of a prequel, sequel or spin-off (apart from that Inuit thing).
Check your currency
Getting excited about a $1bn gross is so 2008. One billion yuan ($160m) is the box-office benchmark that movie stat heads should get goosebumps over now. That was the threshold breached at the beginning of the year in China by Stephen Chow's mythological romp Journey to the West – hard on the heels of 2012's Hangover rip-off Lost in Thailand, the first to achieve the feat. If any more proof was needed of the maturing Chinese market and the Chinese film industry's growing ability to feed it, then sentimental drama So Young and sleuth prequel Young Detective Dee came within touching distance of 1bn yuan, and three other films posted strong results that ushered them into the top 10. One more: Feng Xiaogang's fantasy-fulfilment satire Personal Tailor, now in cinemas, looks a good bet to outstrip Journey to the West and hit 10 digits, too.
With six of China's top 10 grossing films of 2013 homegrown (compared to three in 2012), the Chinese are showing signs of finally understanding how to turn their domestic market into a fortress – a crucial first step if they are to eventually go toe-to-toe with Hollywood. The Americans have their own bastion, of course, but US box office – despite early reports projecting a $10.9bn record for 2013 – is stagnant where it really matters: admissions. The reverse is true – spectacularly so – in China. Even using the most conservative growth projections, it will be the world's biggest movie market by the end of 2018. If the 1bn-yuan club packing them in stays predominantly Chinese, multiplex lineups in every time zone could start looking very different.
The rest of the world
Reading on mobile? Click here to watch Snowpiercer trailer
Of course, for the moment, Chinese cinema has a big export problem – and few of its class of 2013 looked like mainstream-botherers abroad. Journey to the West gets a US release on 7 March, but only Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster ($64m) has registered at international level lately. Crossovers from anywhere else were equally scarce, with no sign of an Intouchables-style foreign-language ambush on the global mainstream, and Studio Ghibli's brand clout making it the one predictable fixture: Goro Miyazaki's From Up on Poppy Hill did a respectable global run ($56m) and his dad's swansong, The Wind Rises, is certain – on the back on $119m in Japan – to surpass it next year.
Les Misérables's $441.8 haul through the first few months of the year gave British film big lungs, and Philomena ($33m) is travelling passably. The big local hits in France, Germany and Italy, meanwhile, didn't get a look-in outside their countries of origin. But there are a few other hopefuls on the breakout front: Russia's No 1 film, the numinous 3D war film Stalingrad ($52m domestic), has already opened its account well in China, and been picked up by Sony for release in the UK on 21 February. In the last few weeks, Aamir Khan's buddy-cop movie Dhoom 3 has reminded us, with some of the strongest overseas business since My Name is Khan and 3 Idiots, that Bollywood can be a global player.
And then there's Bong Joon-ho's South Korean locomotive-based barnstormer Snowpiercer, currently in agonising Han Solo-style carbonite freeze in Anglophone markets as the Weinsteins dig their heels in over the English-language cut. Considering that, at $40m, it's the country's most expensive film ever, it could be said to have disappointed at home (it wound up at No 4, taking $59m). But with its mostly English-speaking cast (including Tilda Swinton fielding the fruitiest Yorkshire accent since Geoff Boycott), it was built for international transit – and its quirky interpretation of dystopic sci-fi's operating manual could see it do runaway box office in the right hands. Harvey and Bob, do the decent thing: take off the brakes.Republican Governor Rick Snyder OK’d switching the water supply from the Detroit system which gets it’s water from Lake Huron (the Great Lakes) to the Flint River in April 2014 to save money. The Flint River water being more corrosive, caused high levels of lead in the drinking water. As a result, children who drank this contaminated water will likely suffer life long brain damage from lead poisoning.
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UPDATE: As of 1-5-2016, The US Department of Justice in Michigan has indicated that they will be launching an investigation into the Flint Water issue.
MICHIGAN REPUBLICANS SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY
The reason why Republicans are responsible for Lead Poisoning in Flint Michigan is because Michigan Republicans created a law which allows Gov Rick Snyder to appoint Emergency Managers who he can install in any city he wants. These Emergency Managers can bypass and circumvent the power of elected officials and do practically anything they want.
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This video shows how Michigan Republicans are ramming legislation through which is going into immediate effect, even though they don’t have the 2/3 majority vote required by law. Note how Republican Michigan Speaker of the House Subverts Democracy by NOT counting the votes. This is a OUTRAGE and goes against everything democracy is supposed to stand for.
Since Republican Gov Rick Snyder installed a Emergency Manager in Flint MI and over-rode the elected officials ability to make any decisions, it was ultimately Republican Gov Rick Snyder’s decision to switch the water supply from the Detroit system which gets it water from Lake Huron (the Great Lakes) to the Flint River in April 2014 to save money. Therefore he and his Republican majority is responsible for this outrage.
If you want to tell Gov. Rick Snyder what you think, here’s his phone number; 517-373-3400
This is what you get when you elect Republicans to office. They have proven time and time again that they don’t care about Democracy or the American people.
Please share this page with as many people as possible to help expose this outrage.
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Food that has been dropped on the floor is usually safe to eat under the "five-second rule", a scientist has said.
Safely eating items which fall on to the ground within five seconds has often been dismissed as an urban myth.
But germ expert Professor Anthony Hilton, from Aston University, said that although retrieving these morsels can never be completely without risk, there is little to be concerned about if the food is only there momentarily.
Prof Hilton will be demonstrating how the five-second rule works at The Big Bang Fair - a celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) for young people - which opens on Wednesday at the NEC in Birmingham.
He said: "Eating food that has spent a few moments on the floor can never be entirely risk-free.
"Obviously, food covered in visible dirt shouldn't be eaten, but as long as it's not obviously contaminated, the science shows that food is unlikely to have picked up harmful bacteria from a few seconds spent on an indoor floor.
"That is not to say that germs can't transfer from the floor to the food.
"Our research has shown that the nature of the floor surface, the type of food dropped on the floor and the length of time it spends on the floor can all have an impact on the number that can transfer."
It comes as a survey of 2,000 people found 79% admitted to eating food that had fallen on the floor.
Paul Jackson, chief executive of EngineeringUK, organisers of The Big Bang Fair, said: "This is a simple example of how science is present in everyday life.
"From testing how safe food is to inventing new food and drink, the limits of how we can apply science and engineering are endless."“…it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. ”
–The Red Queen, Alice in Wonderland
During the Cold War, the threat from the Soviets was quantifiable and often predictable. We could specify requirements, budget and acquire weapons based on a known foe. We could design warfighting tactics based on knowing the tactics of our opponent. Our Defense Department and intelligence community owned proprietary advanced tools and technology. We and our contractors had the best technology domain experts. We could design and manufacture the best systems. We used these tools to keep pace with the Soviet threats and eventually used silicon, semiconductors, and stealth to create an offset strategy to leapfrog their military.
That approach doesn’t work anymore. In the 21st century, you need a scorecard to keep track of the threats: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, ISIL in places as far-ranging as Yemen, Libya, and the Philippines, Taliban, al Qaeda, hackers for hire, etc. Some are strategic peers, some are near peers in specific areas, and some are threats as non-state disrupters operating with no rules.
In addition to the proliferation of threats, most of the tools and technologies that were uniquely held by the Department of Defense/intelligence community or only within the reach of large nation-states are now commercially available (cyber, semiconductors, analytics, centrifuges, drones, genetic engineering, etc.). In most industries, manufacturing is no longer a core competence of the United States.
The result is that our systems, organizations, head count, and budget – designed for 20th-century weapons procurements and warfighting tactics on a predictable basis – can’t scale to meet all these simultaneous and unpredictable challenges. Today, our Department of Defense and intelligence agencies are running as hard as they can just to stay in place, but our adversaries are continually innovating faster than our traditional systems can respond. They have gotten inside our OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act).
We believe that continuous disruption can only be met with a commitment to continuous innovation.
Pete Newell and I have spent a lot of time bringing continuous innovation to government organizations. Newell ran the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan finding and deploying technology solutions against agile insurgents. He’s spent the last four years in Silicon Valley out of uniform continuing that work. I’ve spent the last six years teaching our country’s scientists how to rapidly turn scientific breakthroughs into deliverable products by creating the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps – now taught in 53 universities. Together Pete and I created Hacking for Defense, a nationwide program to teach university students how use Lean methodologies to solve defense and intelligence problems.
Here are our thoughts about how to confront the Red Queen trap and adapt a government agency to infuse continuous innovation in its culture and practices.
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Problem 1: Regardless of a high-level understanding that business as usual can’t go on, all agencies are given “guidance and metrics” (what they are supposed to do (their “mission”) and how they are supposed to measure success). To no one’s surprise, the guidance is “business as usual but more of it.” And to fulfill that guidance, agencies create structure (divisions, directorates, etc.) designed to execute repeatable processes and procedures to deliver solutions that meet the requirements of the overall guidance.
Inevitably, while all of our defense and intelligence agencies will tell you that innovation is one of their pillars, innovation actually is an ill-defined and amorphous aspirational goal, while the people, budget and organization continue to flow to execution of mission (as per guidance.)
There is no guidance or acknowledgement that in our intelligence agencies, even as we execute our current mission, our capabilities decline every year due to security breaches, technology timing out, tradecraft obsolescence, etc. And there is no explicit requirement to create new capabilities that give us the advantage.
Solution 1: Extend agency guidance to include the requirements to create a continuous innovation process that a) resupplies the continual attrition of capabilities and b) creates new capabilities that gives us a mission advantage. The result will be agency leadership creating new organizational structures that make innovation a continual process rather than an ad hoc series of heroic efforts.
Problem 2: The word “innovation” actually describes three very different types of activities.
Solution 2: Use the McKinsey Three Horizons Model to differentiate among the three types. Horizon 1 ideas provide continuous innovation to a company’s existing mission model and core capabilities. Horizon 2 ideas extend a company’s existing mission model and core capabilities to new stakeholders, customers, or targets. Horizon 3 is the creation of new capabilities to take advantage of or respond to disruptive technologies/opportunities or to counter disruption.
We’d add a new category, Horizon 0, which kills ideas that are not viable or feasible (something that Silicon Valley is tremendously efficient at doing).
These Horizons also apply to government agencies and other large organizations. Agencies and commands need to support all three horizons.
Problem 3: Risk equals failure and failure is to be avoided as it indicates a lack of competence.
Solution 3: The three-horizon model allows everyone to understand that failure in a Horizon 1 existing mission activity is different than failure in a Horizon 3 “never been done before” activity. We want to take risks in Horizon 3. If we aren’t failing with some efforts, we aren’t trying hard enough. An innovation process embraces and understands the different types of failure and risk.
Problem 4: Innovators tend to create activities rather than deployable solutions that can be used on the battlefield or by the mission. Accelerators, hubs, cafes, open-sourcing, crowd-sourcing, maker spaces, chief innovation officers, etc. are all great but they tend to create innovation theater – lots of motion but no action. Great demos are shown and there are lots of coffee cups and posters, but if you look at the deliverables for the mission over a period of years, the result is disappointing. Most of the executors and operators have seen little or no value from any of these activities. While the activities individually produce things of value, they aren’t valued within the communities they serve because they aren’t connected to a complete pipeline that harnesses that value and turns it into a deliverable on the battlefield where it matters.
Solution 4: What we have been missing is an innovation pipeline focused on deployment, not demos.
The Lean Innovation process is a self-regulating, evidence-based innovation pipeline. It is a process that operates with speed and urgency, where innovators and stakeholders curate and prioritize their own problems, challenges, ideas and technology. It is evidence-based, data-driven, accountable, disciplined, rapid, and mission- and deployment-focused.
The process recognizes that innovation isn’t a single activity (an incubator, a class, etc.) – it is a process from start to deployment.
As you see in the diagram, there are 6 steps to the innovation pipeline: sourcing, challenge/curation, prioritization, solution exploration and hypothesis testing, incubation, and integration.
Innovation sourcing: a list of problems/challenges, ideas, and technologies that might be worth investing in. These can come from hackathons, research groups, needs from operators in the field, etc.
Challenge/Curation: innovators get out of their own offices and talk to colleagues and customers with the goal of finding other places in the Defense Department where a problem or challenge might exist in a slightly different form, to identify related internal projects already in existence, and to find commercially available solutions to problems. It also seeks to identify legal issues, security issues, and support issues.
This process also helps identify who the customers for possible solutions would be, who the internal stakeholders would be, and even what initial minimum viable products might look like.
This phase also includes building initial minimal viable products. Some ideas drop out when the team recognizes that they may be technically, financially, or legally unfeasible or they may discover that other groups have already built a similar product.
Prioritization: Once a list of innovation ideas has been refined by curation, it needs to be prioritized using the McKinsey Three Horizons Model.
Once projects have been classified, the team prioritizes them, starting by asking: Is this project worth pursing for another few months, full time? This prioritization is not done by a committee of executives, but by the innovation teams themselves.
Solution exploration and hypotheses testing: The ideas that pass through the prioritization filter enter an incubation process like Hacking for Defense/I-Corps, the system adopted by all U.S. government federal research agencies to turn ideas into products.
This six- to ten-week process delivers evidence for defensible, data-based decisions. For each idea, the innovation team fills out a mission model canvas. Everything on that canvas is a hypothesis. This not only includes the obvious – is there solution/mission fit? — but the other “gotchas” that innovators always seem to forget. The framework has the team talking not just to potential customers but also to people responsible for legal, support, contracting, policy, and finance. It also requires that they think through compatibility, scalability and deployment long before this gets presented to engineering. There is now another major milestone for the team: to show compelling evidence that this project deserves to be a new mainstream capability. Alternatively, the team might decide that it should be spun into its own organization or that it should be killed.
Incubation: Once hypothesis testing is complete, many projects will still need a period of incubation as the teams championing the projects gather additional data about the application, further build the minimum viable product, and get used to working together. Incubation requires dedicated leadership oversight from the Horizon 1 organization to insure the fledgling project does not die of malnutrition (a lack of access to resources) or become an orphan (continue to work with no parent to guide it).
Integration and refactoring: At this point, if the innovation is Horizon 1 or 2, its time to integrate it into the existing organization. (Horizon 3 innovations are more likely set up as their own entities or at least divisions.) Trying to integrate new, unbudgeted, and unscheduled innovation projects into an engineering organization that has line-item budgets for people and resources results in chaos and frustration. In addition, innovation projects carry both technical and organizational debt. This creates an impedance mismatch between the organizations that can be easily be resolved with a small dedicated refactoring team. Innovation then becomes a continuous cycle rather than a bottleneck.
Problem 5: The question being asked across the Department of Defense and intelligence community is, “Can we innovate like startups in Silicon Valley” and insert speed, urgency and agility into our work?
Solution 5: The reality is that the defense and intelligence community is not Silicon Valley. In fact, it’s much more like a large company with existing customers, existing products and the organizations built to support and service them. And much like large companies, they are being disrupted by forces outside their control.
But what’s unique is that unlike a large company that doesn’t know how to move rapidly, on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan our combatant commands and intelligence community were more agile, creative and lean than any startup. They wrote the book on how to collaborate (read Team of Teams ) and adopt new technologies (see the Rapid Equipping Force.) The problem isn’t that these agencies and commands don’t know how to be innovative. The problem is they don’t know how to be innovative in peacetime when innovation succumbs to the daily demands of execution. Part of the reason is that large agencies are run by leaders who tend to be excellent Horizon 1 managers of existing people, process and resources but have no experience in building and leading Horizon 3 organizations.
The solution is to understand that an innovation pipeline requires different people, processes, procedures, and metrics, then execution.
Problem 6: How to get started? How to get leadership behind continuous innovation?
Solution 6: To leadership, incubators, cafes, accelerators and hackathons appear to be just background noise unrelated to their guidance and mission. Part of the problem lies with the innovators themselves. Lots of innovation activities celebrate the creation of demos, funding, new makerspaces, etc. but there is little accountability for the actual rapid deployment of useful tools. Once we can convince leadership that continuous innovation can solve the Red Queen problem, we’ll have their attention and support.
We know how to do this. Our country requires it.
Let’s get started.
Lessons Learned
Organizations must constantly adapt and evolve, to survive when pitted against ever-evolving opposition in an ever-changing environment
Government agencies need to both innovate and execute
In peacetime innovation succumbs to the demands of execution
We need explicit guidance on innovation for agencies and their leadership requiring an innovation organization and process, that operates in parallel with the execution of current mission
We need an innovation pipeline that delivers rapid results, not separate, disconnected innovation activities
Entrepreneur-turned-educator Steve Blank is credited with launching the Lean Startup movement. He’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate. Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, The Startup Owner’s Manual — and his May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story defined the Lean Startup movement. He teaches at Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley and NYU; and created the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps — now the standard for science commercialization in the United States. His Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community can deploy innovation with speed and urgency.
Image: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine via U.S. ArmyWhat is Telemarketing?
Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or Web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing.
There are 2 types of telemarketing:
Outbound is proactively contacting both the prospective and existing customers
Inbound is the reception of incoming calls/orders.
Telemarketing is categorized according to target audience:
B2B or Business to Business which means that one business makes a commercial transaction with another.
B2C or Business to Consumer which targets individuals or residential customers. Consumer goods and/or services to customers through multiple channels of distribution to earn a profit.
Telemarketing provides the following services:
Lead Generation which is gathering of information
Appointment Setting either by phone or office meeting between a client and an interested prospect
Data Profiling includes cleansing, verification, deduplication and management of contact details
Call-to-Invite is inviting and registering prospects to an event
Check out our latest Case Study! Multi-Channel Lead Generation Campaign Fused Powerhouse Sales Leads and Wider Market Share Results for Managed Telecommunications Provider
Setbacks
After over a couple of decades of success, Telemarketing started to face setbacks as regulatory bodies like the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority), and Singapore’s PDPC (Personal Data Protection Commission) imposed DNC (Do Not Call) and DNE (Do Not Email) policies. A list of contact details in a secure database where individuals and organisations can register, check or remove their telephone, mobile and fax numbers to opt out of receiving most unsolicited telemarketing calls and faxes.
Scams and frauds, robocalls, spamming emails, high pressure sales techniques (being too pushy), telephone slamming (swapping service without the customer’s knowledge) and off-timing calls (calling prospects early in the morning, late in the evening or even during weekends) were common complaints among prospects which caused implementation of the said restrictions.
Related: Lessons Learned from a Robot Telemarketer: Samantha West
Is Telemarketing still at its best?
Improved processes and technologies helped telemarketing surmount challenges and made it still one of the many preferred marketing strategies by businesses. The prospecting process has grown into a smarter scheme, designed to help you get at the foot door of your target prospects at the best time – when he is most ready and interested.
Technology advancements like platforms integration of marketing automation tool and the crm, auto dialers, and data washing tools effectively deliver multi-touch, multi-channel marketing programs that could power up efficient lead management, campaign monitoring and lead nurturing.
While seasoned and skilled sales and marketing people continue to acquire new experiences and learn new knowledge to stay competitive in the field. Below are simple, condensed reminders they tell themselves before making telemarketing calls:
Have the target list washed to get rid of dnc and dne listed contacts
Set up an automation scheme that will deliver the right message to the right prospect at the right time
Maximize all the marketing channels like voice, email, social, web and mobile to generate sales-ready leads to scale up sales numbers.
Each call offers an opportunity to succeed.
10 years ago, telemarketing was predicted to disappear from the business realm
Callbox Shares Lead Qualification Secrets Through Answering 4Ws and 1H
Reference:
Wikipedia, www.donotcall.gov.au, www.pdpc.gov.sg
About Rona GumbanWhen Neill Blomkamp's Chappie opens in theaters on March 6, anime fans might find themselves experiencing a little déjà vu from the film's robotic star. After all, he does look a little familiar.
Turns out, it's completely intentional. According to Blomkamp, Chappie is an homage to Appleseed's Briareos:
" Masamune Shirow, he has one robot called Briareos that has these rabbit ears. I just love that as a design feature, so I put that on the robot in the short... When I made Chappie, I was like, 'Obviously, the robot will be based on that robot, and the fictional company that made that robot will make the fictional robots in the full feature film.'"
Chappie's design first came to life in 2003 in one of Blomkamp's shorts. It coincided with a time in the director's life when he was interested in manga and anime.
Here's the trailer for those who haven't seen it:
Source: The Star Online; images from Chappie Facebook, Chappie Official
Thanks to Daniel Zelter for the tip!Sydney commuters will get the chance to book shuttle buses from or near their homes to a local transport hub within the next few months as part of a state government trial of on-demand public transport.
Pricing for a standard trip will range from $2.60 to $5.60, and customers will be able to book online, by phone or via an app on their smart device.
The eight trials of on-demand services starting as early as October will be carried out in Sydney's north west, south west and west, the eastern suburbs, northern beaches, Sutherland Shire and the Central Coast.
Ride-sharing legislation that passed early last year deregulated the booking market for buses of 12 seats or less. The latest trials will be run by private operators such as Keolis Downer, Transdev and Transit Systems.Microorganisms influence the occurrence and mobilization of arsenic in natural waters. They mobilize or immobilize arsenic by dissolving or precipitating arsenic-bearing minerals9. Despite the toxicity of arsenic, diverse prokaryotes obtain their energy from the oxidation of arsenite or reduction of arsenate2. Microbes also detoxify arsenic by oxidizing arsenite to less toxic arsenate, or by reducing arsenate and then expelling arsenite out of the cytoplasm5. In addition, they can methylate inorganic arsenic to methylarsenic, or reconvert methylarsenic to inorganic forms3,10.
Microbial oxidation, reduction, methylation and demethylation drive the global cycle of arsenic1,11. In surface waters and soils, arsenic is cycled through arsenite, arsenate, methylarsenicals and other organic forms. In aquifers, however, microbial methylation is often considered insignificant and the aquifer arsenic cycle is assumed to be limited to redox transformations between inorganic arsenite and arsenate4,5,6,7. This perception persists, despite the fact that methylarsenicals have been reported in groundwater worldwide—in aquifers of West Bengal12,13, China14,15, Taiwan16, Cyprus17, Argentina18, Mexico19 and the USA20,21.
Here, we analyse the occurrence and significance of arsenic biomethylation in a volcaniclastic aquifer; compare the results with previous reports of groundwater methylarsenicals; and synthesize these results to estimate the potential magnitude of global arsenic flux by aquifer biomethylation. Our study site was in the southern Willamette Basin, Oregon, USA (Supplementary Fig. 1). The primary bedrock aquifer consists of late Eocene to Oligocene felsic volcanic sandstone, tuff and silicic ash, overlaid by lava flows and fine-grained alluvial sediments22. We sampled groundwater from 23 wells of 20–40 m depth. Field analyses show that, from the shallow to relatively deep portion of the aquifer, the pH of the groundwater decreased from about 8.0 to 7.0, the concentration of dissolved O 2 decreased from more than 1.0 mg l−1 to less than 0.1 mg l−1, the specific conductance increased from about 200 μS cm−1 to more than 2,000 μS cm−1 and the alkalinity increased from less than 3 meq l−1 to more than 10 meq l−1 (Supplementary Table 1).
We analysed total arsenic and arsenic speciation, including arsenite, arsenate and two intermediate products of biomethylation—monomethylarsonate (MMA(V)) and dimethylarsinate (DMA(V)). Both total arsenic and arsenic speciation exhibit strong vertical gradients in this aquifer. From the shallow to relatively deep groundwater, total dissolved arsenic increased from less than 10 parts per billion (ppb) to more than 3,000 ppb. Most of the dissolved arsenic occurred as inorganic forms: arsenate prevailed in the groundwater of high dissolved O 2, whereas arsenite dominated at low dissolved O 2. Monomethylarsonate was absent from most sampling wells, but dimethylarsinate appeared in 10 wells and its concentration reached as high as 16.5 ppb of arsenic.
Spearman’s correlation test showed that, in the bedrock aquifer, dimethylarsinate concentration strongly correlated with the concentration of arsenite (ρ = 0.99, P < 10−3, see Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 2). Dimethylarsinate concentration also correlated, but to a lesser extent, with the temperature and specific conductance of the groundwater. We attribute the strong correlation between arsenite and dimethylarsinate to the biomethylation pathway of inorganic arsenic. A key step of the pathway is the transfer of methyl groups from S-adenosylmethionine or other methyl donors by arsenite S-adenosylmethyltransferase (ArsM) and the expression of the gene coding for ArsM is transcriptionally regulated by arsenite10. Hence we hypothesized that dimethylarsinate in the groundwater was produced by indigenous prokaryotes of the bedrock aquifer.
Figure 1: Correlation between DMA(V) and arsenite in the bed |
NIH-supported comprehensive cancer centers in the US include “integrative medicine” in their services and patient information. And in recent years, the centers’ inclusion of dubious treatments has only grown, according to a new article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs.
For instance, the number of centers providing patients with information on “healing touch”—a type of “energy medicine”—increased nearly 30 percent between 2009 and 2016. Cancer patients at 26 of the 45 government-designated comprehensive centers around the country can now learn about that hocus-pocus along with actual cancer therapies. Likewise, inclusion of Ayurveda—a pseudoscience involving herbal, mineral, and metal treatments—increased by 10 percent in the same timeframe. Now, 18 of 45 cancer centers supported by the National Cancer Institute provide patients with information on that sorcery.
While the data may alarm evidence-based physicians and health experts, an accompanying article on the semantics of “integrative medicine” may be of more concern. In it, advocates of “integrative medicine” try to define what “integrative medicine” is, exactly. But rather than a clear definition, they create a vague and broad one that includes “mind and body practices.” It involves everything from the “medicalized” components of a healthy lifestyle (such as simple exercise) to what can charitably be described as magic.
Such a large range of treatments—some reasonable, some not—may add legitimacy to the idea of integrative medicine while concealing quackery. As critic David Gorski, a blogger and oncology professor and surgeon at Wayne State University, puts it:
Basically, if you’ve ever had a massage or done art or music while being treated for cancer, by definition you’ve used integrative medicine. If you’ve ever meditated or prayed while being treated for cancer, you’ve used integrative medicine. If you’ve done Tai Chi, yoga, or Qi Gong (or even just exercise) while being treated for cancer, you’ve used integrative medicine.
But, as Dr. Gorski continues, advocates of integrative medicine aren’t just into harmless endeavors like art, meditation, and exercise. They’re also into outright unproven and disproven mumbo-jumbo, including homeopathy.
An easier pill to swallow
The senior author on both the cancer center article and the semantics article is Dr. Jun Mao, a family physician and chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering. He’s also the past president of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO), which embraces naturopaths and, by extension, homeopaths. The SIO also advocates for the inclusion of “alternative” or “complementary” treatments in cancer care, alongside conventional methods.
Dr. Mao and his colleagues argue that as conventional treatments get better and better at keeping cancer patients alive, there’s more need for “natural” approaches to improve quality of life—particularly when dealing with the side effects of potent cancer drugs. This is an “unmet” need, they write.
As Gorski points out, this is a common argument made by peddlers of unproven notions and potions. Essentially, the argument is “that, to treat the ‘whole patient’ and to address ‘unmet needs,’ doctors must embrace the quackery in integrative medicine,” he writes.
While neither of the articles co-authored by Mao even mention the terms “naturopathy” or “homeopathy,” the SIO considers naturopaths on equal footing with trained and licensed physicians. Naturopaths can be members of SIO, and several past presidents of the organization have been licensed naturopaths. Naturopaths rely on a variety of “alternative” medicines and debunked pseudosciences while eschewing evidence-based medicine. Many naturopaths oppose vaccination, for instance. They also embrace homeopathy, which is based on the erroneous idea that “like cures like.” That is, heavy dilutions of a substance that creates symptoms similar to a particular disease can cure that disease. Most homeopathic remedies are simply water, which has led many to consider homeopaths charlatans over the years.
To earn a license in naturopathy from the North American Board of Naturopathic Examiners (NABNE), naturopaths must be trained in homeopathy and pass the Naturopathic Physicians Licensing Examinations (NPLEX), which tests knowledge of homeopathic remedies.
Yet, a reader might not pick up on the connection between homeopathy and naturopathy from the SIO’s description and discussion of “integrative oncology.” This, Dr. Gorski speculates, is on purpose. He writes:
I really can’t help but suspect that, in its effort to persuade medical academia that integrative oncology is rigorously science- and evidence-based, whether intentionally or not, the SIO leadership is focusing all its attention on promoting the evidence-based modalities that have been “rebranded” as “integrative,” such as diet, exercise, and the like, and the patient-support modalities that have been medicalized into “integrative medicine,” such as massage, art therapy, music therapy, and the like. Pay no attention to the quackery that integrative oncology and medicine lump together with the diet, exercise, and the like, the SIO seems to be saying by the absence of focus on naturopathy (and the homeopathy that nearly all naturopaths practice).
Whether on purpose or not, the pitch for integrative medicine seems to be working. As Mao and colleagues report in their article of NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers, more doctors seem to be including alternative therapies.
Meanwhile, Mao and his colleagues have their sights set on expanding integrative medicine’s use further. The authors conclude:
As these centers lead the way in cancer research and clinical innovation, we need to ensure that integrative medicine can be cohesively incorporated into the continuum of cancer treatment and survivorship care using a financially sustainable structure. In addition, evidence-informed integrative medicine needs to expand beyond the walls of academic medical centers into community cancer centers and clinics to benefit patients from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.
JNCI Monographs, 2017. DOI: 10.1093/jncimonographs/lgx004.
JNCI Monographs, 2017. DOI: 10.1093/jncimonographs/lgx012 (About DOIs).Director Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Red Hook Summer) responded on Saturday to a reported casting call for his planned Oldboy remake that lists one character of Asian lineage. The Angry Asian Man blog posted an unverified casting call with one character listed as "Asian," although it also has another character of "open ethnicity."
A Twitter follower asked Lee to comment on the reported casting call's ethnicity listings, and Lee responded:
People You Need To Relax.The Cast Of OLD BOY Will Be Diverse.If You Think Otherwise You Do Not Know My Work.Bother Other Directors 'Bout Dat
Actor Josh Brolin (Milk, Men in Black 3), actor Sharlto Copley (District 9, The A-Team), and actress Elizabeth Olsen (Silent House, Martha Marcy May Marlene) have been attached to this planned remake of Park Chan-Wook's live-action film Oldboy, which is itself an adaptation of Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi's manga.
Thanks to Daniel Zelter for the news tip.
Update: Lee specifically addressed the reported casting call's character descriptions of "women of color [as] 'drug addicted nutcases' and'mysterious exotic beauties'":
All That Stuff Has Been Changed.
Thanks, Daniel ZelterObama stumps for Sick Hillary in Philly–
The Trump Campaign whacked Barack Obama today after his rally in Philadelphia for Sick Hillary.
“Shouldn’t You Be At Work?”
The Washington Examiner reported:
In a statement, Team Trump listed the efforts by Obama to leave the White House to spend hours helping the limping Clinton while major issues go untouched in Washington. Today, Obama flew to Philadelphia for a Clinton rally and fundraiser where co-chairs wrote a $100,000 check.
Turning his attention to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief surrogate, Republican Donald Trump ripped President Obama who is on the campaign trail again for his hoped for successor, asking, “Shouldn’t you be at work?
Here’s the Trump Campaign’s statement on Obama’s jaunt to Philadelphia:
– SEPTEMBER 13, 2016 –
SHOULDN’T YOU BE AT WORK?
President Obama Would Rather Campaign For Hillary Clinton Than Solve Major Problems Facing The Country
Today President Obama Will Be Campaigning For Clinton In Pennsylvania. “President Barack Obama will hit the campaign trail Tuesday to rally support for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, a state that has served as a firewall for her party in the past six general elections but is now viewed as competitive.” (Kevin Freking And Kathleen Hennessey, “Obama Hits Campaign Trail For Clinton In Philadelphia,” The Associated Press, 9/13/16)
PROBLEM ONE: Obamacare Is In “Deep Trouble,” With Premiums Rising And Large Insurers Pulling Out Of Exchanges. “Obamacare is in deep trouble. The exchanges created by Barack Obama’s signature achievement are attracting millions fewer customers than predicted. The makeup of the system’s risk pool is older, sicker and costlier than anticipated. Some of the largest insurers in the nation have pulled out of the exchanges. Premiums are going up and expected to jump right before November’s election. Perhaps more burdensome, deductibles have soared so high that some Americans who purchased coverage through the system are essentially self-financing their care.” (Byron York, “Byron York: Obamacare Is Failing. Why Isn’t Donald Trump Talking About It?,” Washington Examiner, 8/28/16)
PROBLEM TWO: This Weekend Iran Threatened To Shoot Down Two Navy Aircraft Flying In International Airspace. “Iran threatened to shoot down two US Navy aircraft over the weekend as they were flying just inside the Strait of Hormuz, a US defense official said. The EP-3 and P-8 planes were in international airspace but ‘near Iranian airspace.’” (Barbara Starr, “US Official: Navy Aircraft Threatened With Shoot Down By Iran,” CNN, 9/12/16)
PROBLEM THREE: Last Week North Korea Tested Their “Potentially Most Powerful” Nuclear Weapon, Which State Media Said Could Be Mounted On A Ballistic Missile. “North Korea said it has hit the button on its fifth and potentially most powerful nuclear test Friday morning, claiming to have successfully tested a nuclear warhead. State media said the warhead could be mounted on ballistic rockets and would enable North Korea to produce ‘a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power.’” (Katie Hunt And KJ Kwon, “North Korea Claims Successful Test Of Nuclear Warhead,” CNN, 9/9/16)
PROBLEM FOUR: Last Month The U.S. GDP For The Second Quarter Was Revised Down To A 1.1 Percent Annualized Rate. “America’s economic growth was even weaker than previously believed in the second quarter of the year, as the country’s gross domestic product ticked up an underwhelming 1.1 percent in April, May and June. U.S. GDP was revised down slightly from a previously reported 1.2 percent annualized rate, according to a report published Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.” (Andrew Soergel, “GDP Sinks Lower Despite Spending Uptick,” US News, 8/26/16)
PROBLEM FIVE: The September 2 Jobs Report “Whiffed On Market Expectations,” Showing An Increase Of Just 151,000 Nonfarm Jobs In The Month Of August. “August traditionally has been a difficult month for jobs numbers, and 2016 proved no exception, likely putting the Federal Reserve on hold for a rate hike anytime soon. Nonfarm payrolls increased just 151,000 for the month, extending the futility August has experienced over the years. This is now the 10th time in the past 13 years the month whiffed on market expectations.” (Jeff Cox, “US Created 151,000 Jobs In August Vs. 180,000 Jobs Expected,” CNBC, 9/2/16)Birdseye map of Kansas City by Koch – 1895
US40 #29 KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI (Birdseye Map, 1895, Koch) Date: 1895 Author: Koch Dwnld: Full Size (19mb) Source: Library of Congress Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff
This map is part of a series depicting the 40 largest cities in the United States (as ranked by CBSA). This series will run through the month of July.
When you see a map as beautiful as this Kansas City, Missouri [gmap] birdseye in such rough shape, it really hurts the heart.
This late-century Koch is singular in its composition and color -- I can't think of another like it. The site's other K.C. birdseye map is a handsome one; but this one borders on "amazing". It's so sad to see it in this tattered and hopeless and neglected state.
Speaking of the Royals: it did occur to me that the destruction of this beautiful map might in some way be karmic blowback from Don Denkinger. But upon reflection, that's a stretch.
(Just joshin', guys. It's like Tupac said... I Ain't Mad at Cha. Y'all got some good fans, and you deserve to have a contender.)
User disgruntledNarwhal over on Reddit tells me that this map depicts the area of K.C. known as the West Bottoms [gmap]. One of my favorite parts about running this blog is the chance to learn from folks about their 'hood; so I thank you for that.
For more map resources and imagery from this period in Kansas City's history, check out the State Historical Society of Missouri's website.When I was in graduate school, I was looking for a scenic, quiet place to live. My university was on Long Island, 50 miles east of New York City, and I decided to explore communities that were farther out on the eastern tip. It wasn’t the fashionable part, with the Hamptons and Montauk Point, but the North Fork, made up of mostly agricultural communities and small towns. By early in the winter I’d found a wonderful old farmhouse tucked away along a bluff. From there, I could make my way through blackberry thickets and down the 70 steps leading to the beach.
The realtor had been hesitant to even show me the property. Though structurally sound, it obviously hadn’t been used in ages. The bathroom still worked, but there was no shower, and during the entire year I was there, the water ran brown from decades of rusting pipes. Exiting the bathtub was like emerging from a tanning salon. It was beyond rustic; I might have called it uninhabitable if it weren’t for my imagination and daily access to the breathtaking, endless beach. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that it had no refrigerator because I figured it would surely be cold enough most of the year to store things on the windowsill. Sure enough, when I aired out the place, I actually found a stick of margarine on the windowsill. At first glance, I thought it might have dropped off the assembly line recently, but after reading the label, I realized, to my amazement, that it dated back to the beginning of World War II—the last time the house had been occupied.
I had more surprises in the spring. My house was sitting on acres of deep purple—purple cauliflower, which I had never seen before. Long Island was rich in food production in those days, and this land was leased to a local farmer. Small farmers thrived by growing a diversity of foods that have since virtually disappeared from our mainstream food system. Purple cauliflower, a centuries-old heirloom from South Africa, flourished in this nutrient-rich soil and bathed in moist sea air. To my delight, this hardy companion was a healthy food. I would cut it fresh and sauté it whenever I prepared a meal—from farm to table before it came into fashion—in perhaps half an hour. It had a delicious, delicate flavor—and it didn’t require margarine.
So, I had the two extremes at my home—the dream of purple cauliflower and the nightmare of 30 year-old, still “perfect” margarine. As someone who loves to cook and entertain, I enjoyed watching friends’ reactions to these two marvels. The margarine inevitably produced shock and dismay, taking away people’s appetites. The cauliflower, on the other hand, had a way of perking up a dish and lifting moods, owing greatly to its vibrant color. The full purple effect started in the fields. Seeing my home tucked in the rolling violet blankets, friends would wonder about its taste and texture as they approached, wanting to know the story behind it, where it came from, how it got here.
***
Food is an everyday expression of our culture, and every cultural identity is partly tied to a unique way of preparing it. Since our survival requires consumption of food, our culinary traditions have reflected our history, both in terms of the land where our ancestors lived and what that land produced. Human ingenuity and community traditions added these basic materials, still reflecting a local ecosystem and its resources. As food cultures have been passed down through the generations, families and communities inherited their knowledge and rituals, which have had an enduring personal and shared significance.
So how, then, did the modern U.S. food system move toward the bionic margarine? From cultivation and processing to marketing and transportation, modern-day food consumption patterns have been re-shaped by corporate food production. In a relatively short time span, with developments in technology, aided by agricultural policies, industry changed its emphasis from the marketing of whole foods to manufacturing highly processed food products. Initial innovations, like frozen fruits and vegetables or tomato sauce had significant benefits, but the drive for profit has led to much greater and more extensive changes, including reduced standards for what constitutes “food.”
Consumers welcomed the food industry’s innovations, in part, because they lowered prices, reduced risks from spoilage, and extended availability beyond the growing seasons. Meals could be prepared more quickly, so women (in traditional roles) were able to spend less time in the kitchen. And for women who continued to work, there was still the expectation that they prepare meals, so convenience was perhaps even more important. Snappy marketing campaigns capitalized on consumer interest in ease and thrift.
Over time, industry and retailers altered the types of available foods and shifted national eating habits, concocting handy foods that were fun, fast, cheap, and tasty. But behind the alluring novelties and happy marketing is a reductionist science that breaks down food into nutrients infused with addictive additives and treats our food like a jigsaw puzzle—with the hubris to assume industry can out-do nature and put all the pieces back together again. Subsidized additives—by-products of corn and soy—have allowed manufacturers to modify “recipes” for greater profit. Instead of nature, health, and culture guiding food decisions, business interests became the driver. These changes have caused a radical shift in norms and a host of food-related health impacts.
Nutrient-dense, whole foods—like fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes—that have sustained people for generations have been replaced by the three additives selected to make us buy and consume more: sugar, salt, and fat. Michael Jacobson, head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and author of terms like liquid candy, coined the term junk food. Dr. Wendel Brunner, the public health director I worked for in Contra Costa County, goes even further by calling this food toxic waste.
I wasn’t surprised when the National Cancer Institute announced recently that nearly 40 percent of the calories U.S. youth consume are empty ones, coming from things like soda, pizza, and desserts. In fact, few U.S. youth eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables. The predictable results of these trends have included epidemics of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, all of which have roots in unhealthy eating and inactivity and have seen their onset of illness occurring increasingly in children and adolescents.
In a U.S. health care model in which disease is treated rather than prevented, the costs associated with these trends have, of course, been astronomical. As the former chief CDC medical coroner Dr. Beverly Coleman Miller once told me, even the organs of children and adolescents are changing: in examining the bodies of inner-city youth who died early—too often from violence—she was shocked to find that their internal organs were damaged to an extent she had previously only seen with older adults.
Reprinted with the permission of Oxford University Press, Prevention Diaries: The Practice and Pursuit of Health for All (copyright 2017).
Larry Cohen is founder and Executive Director of the Prevention Institute; a leading authority in developing practical prevention strategies for communities. Cohen’s accomplishments include catalyzing the nation’s first multi-city no-smoking laws; helping define violence as a preventable health issue; advancing chronic disease prevention through physical activity and healthy eating; and promoting better understanding of the underlying causes of illness, injury, and health inequities. He lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.About
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NOTE: Payments by Kickstarters anywhere will be transacted in local currency. You will be told the amount in your local currency before payment is requested.
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Official Teaser Trailer #1
Summary
Adapted from the Dark Horse [300, Hellboy, Sin City] graphic novel by Peter Bagge, APOCALYPSE NERD is a buddy-comedy about a couple of chronically adolescent friends about to turn 40. A week in the countryside has them dealing with their assorted personal issues, as well as an inconveniently timed cataclysm.
Underground comic-book legend Peter Bagge and writer-director Tupaq Felber have collaborated on this feature-film, and now have a script and crew ready to go into pre-production for an Autumn 2013 shoot. The script has been called "The Road meets Withnail and I" or "Old Joy meets Time of the Wolf". A classic graphic-novel made into a wonderful piece of British Independent Cinema, is what it is.
The market and the way films are made is changing. As a group of established filmmakers we live this every day. We think that you and Kickstarter have the potential to be a positive part of this change. The potential to become a creative part of the independent filmmaking process for the future. There's a revolution waiting to happen, and we hope APOCALYPSE NERD and you can help Kickstart it.
Why Kickstarter?
Doing this independently means we can do it how we want it done. Doing this independently means you get to choose the films that are made. And doing this independently has never been easier or more exciting. Lets help Kickstart the future of independent filmmaking.
The talent and resources at hand are exactly the same used to produce films at a much higher budget: The APOCALYPSE NERD team already make a living in the film and television industries, our actors will be world-class [keep an eye on here for updates!], we have amazing locations [photos coming soon] and the Red EPIC camera we're filming on is an industry standard [used to shoot films including The Amazing Spiderman, Prometheus and Rust & Bone].
It's basically our attitude to the finance that's different.
1 of the 6 original covers hand drawn and painted by Peter Bagge. The 2 remaining originals [including this one from issue 6] are available exclusively to APOCALYPSE NERD Kickstarter collaborators.
Where your money goes
The script was designed to be made at a low cost. Like Withnail and I or Old Joy, it's pretty much a couple of guys in the countryside [only it happens to be the end of the world!].
This budget is enough to make the exact movie we have visualized. The reason the budget is so much lower than other films of it's type, comes down to what the filmmakers get: Rather than raising enough money to pay ourselves salaries [people would normally get paid for each day they work on the film], we're only trying to raise enough money to make the film [people on-set still need to be fed, sheltered, transported. Certain pieces of equipment still need to be hired in, etc]. In return for our work, we'll each own a piece of this film all of us have created.
It's like we're all starting-up a little business together because we love the idea and know we can make it work. Investing our time and resources, and so putting every penny of your money on the screen. And we're going to work our hardest to make this the film you want to see, because then we'll be able to make more. Making movies is all we've ever wanted to do anyway!
What You Get
You're so amazing for supporting us, we thought you deserved some pretty amazing stuff to show our appreciation. You can see it all down the right hand side. We hope you agree that it makes for a pretty awesome list!
Award-winning design agency Bunch Design is doing all the graphics for the movie. They're already designers of the iconic film posters you can see on their website. Their work for APOCALYPSE NERD promises to be simply the best thing ever! Get your hands on this beautiful stuff, a lot of it exclusive to Kickstarter and some of it limited edition that won't be available anywhere else, ever.
Not only do we have the few remaining pieces of original art from the APOCALYPSE NERD comic-book, but Peter Bagge has been kind enough to produce some original artwork for this Kickstarter too! He will even be producing original drawings for some of you.
If you like movies, comics and art, please read through the list. Once again, a lot of this is limited edition and so will have to go to the first people to snap them up.
For members of the filmmaking community there are also some pro-level rewards to boost your profile on IMDb and in the industry as a whole.
One of the original hand drawn and inked pages from the APOCALYPSE NERD comic book by Peter Bagge. A unique piece of art we'll send to you for helping us Kickstart the APOCALYPSE NERD movie.
About Us
Here's a little of our past work, produced independently and together.
Car Advert for FORD MOTOR COMPANY by APOCALYPSE NERD Director Tupaq Felber and Cinematographer Paul O'Callaghan
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Short Film shot by APOCALYPSE NERD Cinematographer Paul O'Callaghan.
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Music video for TURBOGEIST by APOCALYPSE NERD Director Tupaq Felber.
We love movies, we love comics and between us we've made hundreds of Films, TV shows, Music Videos, and Commercials. We know what we're doing and the amount of money we're asking for represents a professional calculation as to what's needed to make the beautiful, funny, soulful film we've planned.
You can learn more about the cast and crew on the APOCALYPSE NERD IMDb page, but at the core we are a BAFTA nominated Cinematographer, a commercial director, a producer with huge amounts of feature film experience, a US indie-film editor, and a Mercury nominated band doing the soundtrack. We are also in talks with a first-rate cast of British actors with amazing movie credentials. Keep an eye on the Kickstarter page; we'll be updating you on developments soon!
In addition to this we of course have the amazing book APOCALYPSE NERD, published by Dark Horse in 2011. Peter Bagge is an important figure in the history of U.S. underground comics. From his work with Robert Crumb in the 1970s and 80s to his hugely influential series Hate in the 1990s, through to books like APOCALYPSE NERD, and his contributions to the libertarian magazine Reason in the 2000s. He is one of America's most respected comic-book artists working for pretty much every publisher including Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Fantagraphics. If you get nothing else from this campaign, we hope you'll at least check out his work. It's brilliant, hilarious and important.
We envision a film which retains the underground spirit of Peter Bagge’s original book. We see the intelligent, profound, relevant comic-book film we've all been waiting for. We don't just want your support, we want your involvement: To help us make a film we will all love, to support a shift in the industry and to help bring about APOCALYPSE NERD.
What Else Can You Do To Help?
Kickstarter is a social machine. The more people know about this project, the better chance we have of seeing it made, and there are lots of ways you can help us spread the word!
We know this movie is a great idea. We know that if you can get enough people to hear about it, we will get to make it: So basically just get the word out! Get people talking about this! Please spend 5 minutes Tweeting, Facebook and embedding this page wherever you can [see links at top of page]. 'Like' and share our Facebook Page, follow us on Twitter, paint/draw/tag our logo anywhere you can find then Instagram it, encourage others to do the same and help us create a buzz so cool it will make film-companies feel stupid about spending all that money on bus-stop posters. We're promoting the end of the world here, and you know it's about time!Spread the love
The US is once again attempting to justify another deadly blunder in which dozens of innocent people were murdered in the name of the war on terror.
From their teleprompter fed pulpits, detached bureaucrats discuss this war in terms of numbers only. The notion of humanity is completely absent from any and all decisions made by the state in their quest for empire.
The murder of innocent children is renamed collateral damage. Real terrorism, in which entire countries are kept in a constant state of fear of bombs raining down from the sky fired by US drones is renamed asymmetrical warfare.
This simple play on semantics allows most Americans to sit back in their recliners and thank God that the troops are out there keeping them safe from terrorism. Remaining in their mainstream media controlled bubble, most Americans are shielded from the horrid atrocities committed by the US military in the name of “keeping you safe.”
The photos of dead children, blown to bits by hellfire missiles fired from US predator drones aren’t allowed on television. The grim reality of the warfare state is but a blip on American media. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is watching as history’s largest empire is violently expanding its special interest owned tentacles into countries across the globe.
In America’s latest attempt to “protect the citizens of the US,” an aerial bombing in the Afghan city of Kunduz was conducted. The target? A hospital.
Many of the innocent civilians injured and killed in the bombing were staff members with the charity group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the French charitable organization, “Doctors Without Borders.”
According to the Guardian:
An MSF source told the Guardian that up to 20 Afghan members of staff and patients were killed and dozens more injured. They said the death toll could rise further. Among the killed were nine MSF staff and seven patients from the intensive care unit, including three children.
To keep you safe from “terrorists” the US blew up a hospital and killed people who’ve selflessly devoted their lives to helping others. This is what spreading democracy looks like.
Almost immediately, the play on semantics began with Col Brian Tribus, spokesman for international forces in Afghanistan releasing the following statement noting the “collateral damage.”
“US forces conducted an airstrike in Kunduz city at 2:15am [local time] on 3 October against individuals threatening the force. The strike may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility. This incident is under investigation.”
What Tribus means when he says “under investigation” is that the story will be swept under the rug so we do not wake the American people up to our murderous actions.
PRESS RELEASE: We condemn #Kunduz attacks. This horrific loss of life cannot be dismissed as ‘collateral damage’. https://t.co/EqjIHB6GAv — MSF International (@MSF) October 3, 2015
According to the MSF, their GPS coordinates of the hospital were widely broadcast to all parties fighting in the conflict. Despite this warning, the bombing continued.
Precise location of our #Kunduz hospital communicated to all parties on multiple occasions over past months, including on 9/29 — MSF International (@MSF) October 3, 2015
Bombing continued for >30 minutes after American & Afghan military officials in Kabul & Washington first informed of proximity to hospital. — MSF International (@MSF) October 3, 2015
Patricia Gossman, a senior researcher at the NGO, said: “The bombing of the hospital is a shocking development for Kunduz, where civilians and aid workers are already at grave risk from the fighting. All forces are obligated to do their utmost to avoid causing civilian harm.”
An MSF staff member, who was on duty at the time, told the Guardian: “I was inside my office. Around 2 am, the plane started bombing the main building of MSF. It lasted one and a half hours. After 3.30am, I came out from my office and saw all of the hospital was on fire.”
How many innocent men, women, and children must die before the United States can declare a victory on the war on terror? A hundred, a thousand, a million, ten million? What number will be enough to satisfy the blood-thirsty politicians in their perpetual expansion of the military industrial complex?
The hospital, it has been my workplace and home for several months. Yes, it is just a building. But it is so much more than that. It is healthcare for Kunduz. Now it is gone. What is in my heart since this morning is that this is completely unacceptable. How can this happen? What is the benefit of this? Destroying a hospital and so many lives, for nothing. I cannot find words for this,” MSF nurse Lajos Zoltan Jecs said of the atrocity.
Please share this article with your friends and family who may not know about these brutal acts of violence that are being conducted in their name.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world.
Follow @MattAgoristEveryone has an opinion on who should start as the New York Jets' quarterback.
Few of those opinions matter.
While Joe Namath might not have the ear of the coaches, the Jets legend offered his view on the road Gang Green should take in 2017.
"I would like to see [Christian] Hackenberg," Namath said, via NJ.com. "I think we need someone for the future."
Josh McCown was signed as the bridge quarterback and appears set to earn the opening day gig. Given the 37-year-old veteran's injury history, even if coach Todd Bowles goes with the "safe" option out of the gate, it's likely we'll see Hackenberg and/or Bryce Petty at some point in 2017.
Namath is among Jets fans who think the team should just roll with Hackenberg and give the second-year pro a chance to sink or swim. McCown has a clear ceiling. Hackenberg is a complete unknown.
"This is no reflection on Josh," Namath said. "He's a proven veteran and brings a lot to the team. But realistically, you want to make the playoffs, win a Super Bowl. We have to get the guy who can do that."
If Hackenberg is that guy, the Jets finally solved the problem. If it's not, #ScamForSam -- an attempt to position itself to draft USC quarterback Sam Darnold -- is in full effect. Before the Jets can finally find the franchise QB to lift them past the Patriots, first they need to determine whether second-round pick Hackenberg can be that answer.Following on from an explosive debut a year ago, the 2017 edition of the men’s Canada Sevens is nearing a sellout.
Last year, demand was so strong that organizers re-set their ticket goals at least twice.
For this year’s event (March 11-12, BC Place) a firm 33,000 target was set from the outset and after a late fall sales lull, it looks like those tickets are now about to sell out following a strong Christmas period. Just five per cent of tickets remain.
If they do hit their sellout target with still two months to go, they’ll now be faced with a true dilemma: can they maintain the atmosphere they know they’ll have if they open up another ticket door to fans.
“Atmosphere for the fans is a huge priority so capacity will be kept to what we are confident will deliver a full house,” Canada Sevens CEO Bill Cooper said way back in September after nearly 60 per cent of tickets were scooped up almost immediately.
One of the notable features last March was the noise level in the stadium. People from all areas of the travelling roadshow that is the series — players, coaches, series officials and TV commentators — noted the noise level as being unlikely nearly any other venue. “Louder than Hong Kong,” insisted Sky Sports’ Rupert Cox.
It was loud, and everyone loved it. So if the target of 33,000 tickets for each day is hit, would Cooper and company consider dropping another section of false-roof draper, which is credited for much of the noise? That’s the challenging question.
WELLINGTON SALES SLUGGISH FOR SECOND YEAR RUNNING
An eyebrow-raising report last week from New Zealand: heading into Christmas, a paltry 1,300 tickets had been sold for the Wellington 7s, which go in just over two weeks time. Organizers say figures are well above that figure now, but still it gives pause.
That’s a shocking fall from grace. Wellington was once an instant sellout, with crowds of 30,000 fans swelling the stands year upon year.
But the move two years ago to make it a dry event — following a couple years of highly intoxicated fans which caused some embarassment to organizers — appears to have driven a good segment of fan interest away. Last year’s stadium was only half full on both days.
The city has always put on a good show, with a pre-event parade through downtown streets and a generally colourful atmosphere. Nonetheless, there seems a clear need for a bit of a reinvention over the next couple years. |
good enough to contend, but not bad enough to slide to the top of the lottery standings. The team will have to grind its way back into respectability by taking it one game at a time, but it’s exactly that kind of shortsightedness by the Grizzlies that has led the franchise to the edge of NBA purgatory.
It wasn’t like this in the beginning. “I’m here to build a championship team. I want to see a parade one day down Beale Street. This city deserves it,” Chris Wallace said in June 2007 when he was hired as Grizzlies general manager. “That’s what we’re in the game for, to win championships.” Memphis hasn’t seen that parade yet, but they’ve had memorable times that Grizzlies fans will cherish forever. The best decision Wallace made was his first: selecting Mike Conley with the fourth pick in 2007. The other came seven months later in 2008 when he pulled the plug on the franchise’s former crown jewel, Pau Gasol, and dealt him for his brother Marc Gasol.
The Gasol deal set the team up for the future, as Wallace once claimed. He was right. But times have changed and their run is almost over. Things have come to a head. Grit ’n’ Grind is dead. Zach Randolph and Tony Allen, two grizzled vets both 35 and older, are gone but the team isn’t getting much younger. The team is largely composed of unproven players on cheap, short-term contracts, but the cap situation in Memphis isn’t getting any less costly. Gasol was nearly in tears on Sunday after he was benched for the entire fourth quarter of Memphis’s 98-88 home loss to the Nets. “If I’m not on the floor, then I’m not valued,” Gasol told reporters after the game. Gasol’s discontent isn’t new. Toward the latter half of last season, Gasol wasn’t defending or boxing out with the same intensity that earned him All-NBA honors. It wasn’t clear if he was tired or if the team situation was weighing on him. Something wasn’t right. Gasol said this summer that the “atmosphere” of the Spanish national team was different from Memphis since the team was a “family” with “mentors and leaders” who gave “pause and tranquility.”
Gasol has gotten off to a slow start scoring the ball; he’s averaging 19.1 points, but it's come on a near career-worst 46.7 effective field goal percentage. All season, Gasol’s defense has slipped, and Sunday was one of his most lethargic performances. Fizdale was right to bench Gasol, frankly. The incident highlighted tensions between the coach and player, effectively pushing the issues into the public. ESPN’s Jonathan Givony reported Monday that Fizdale and Gasol were “on very poor terms after some confrontations in practice.” The Grizzlies’ front office essentially had to choose between their cornerstone center or their head coach who is more acclaimed for his catchphrases than for his coaching tactics. Easy choice. Less than 24 hours after Gasol’s public complaints, the Grizzlies ousted Fizdale and promoted associate head coach J.B. Bickerstaff as interim head coach. Bickerstaff is Memphis’s sixth coach in the past 10 years.
It isn’t clear what happens next. Firing Fizdale doesn’t guarantee a happier Gasol. A dark day may get darker. Bickerstaff’s first stint as a head coach in Houston in 2015–16 was disastrous; his game management was plagued by both ineptitude and inexperience. After an underwhelming season with Bickerstaff, Rockets ownership conducted a “comprehensive evaluation of all facets of the organization,” which put general manager Daryl Morey “under the microscope.”
Wallace might also find himself in the crosshairs if the Grizzlies continue to slide. Fizdale didn’t sign Chandler Parsons for $94 million. Fizdale didn’t add retreads like Ben McLemore and Mario Chalmers. Fizdale didn’t trade first-rounders for rentals (Ronnie Brewer, Shane Battier, and Jeff Green). Fizdale didn’t draft Kevin Love and trade him for O.J. Mayo. Fizdale didn’t draft Hasheem Thabeet, Xavier Henry, Jordan Adams, and Jarell Martin. Fizdale didn’t draft Wade Baldwin and Rade Zagorac then cut them both one year later. That was all Wallace’s doing.
Wallace’s tenure started out beautifully when the front office took a long view in 2008 dealing Pau Gasol. But with a focus on the playoffs, their moves this decade have largely fixated on the short term. Their decisions were understandable, but it’s gotten them into trouble. They have one of the oldest cores in the NBA. Gasol, Conley, and Parsons are on the books for roughly $80 million combined annually in 2018–19 and 2019–20. They won’t have cap space until 2020, when Conley will be 33 and making $34.5 million. Conley himself has suffered numerous Achilles injuries over the past year, which currently has him sidelined. Gasol turns 33 in two months and is under two years removed from major foot surgery on his navicular bone. Parsons is basketball’s Mr. Glass.
None of their young players have shown long-term upside, aside from 2017 second-rounder Dillon Brooks, who still projects as a role player. That’s problematic because their draft-pick situation is murky. They owe a first-rounder to the Celtics (top-eight protected in 2019, top-six protected in 2020, and unprotected in 2021, should it take that long to convey) and don’t have any incoming first-rounders. Memphis’s core is old and its future is fucked.
“Coach Fizdale worked tirelessly to achieve on-court success, and for that, we are grateful. We wish him and his family all the best in the future,” Grizzlies controlling owner Robert J. Pera said in a statement. “We remain focused on achieving sustainable, long-term success.” If Pera is truly thinking long term, then it’s time to direct the front office to do the same.
But what exactly are their options? The time to blow it up, tank, and maximize a return passed them by in 2016. Gasol is healthy now, so, despite his age, he still retains some value. But he doesn’t retain the same value he did before. Conley is great, but few teams need a point guard, especially one that’s older, exorbitantly expensive, and currently injured. Even if the Grizzlies took what they could get, draft lottery reform begins next season and lessens the odds for teams at the bottom of the barrel. Not to mention that the Grizzlies franchise lost nearly $40 million in revenue this past season, according to ESPN. Bottoming out would likely cut further into their bottom line while alienating a fan base that has spent the past seven years expecting postseason basketball.
I’d still blow it up. It’s worth the risk. The top prospects in the 2018 class are enough of a good reason to do it. Marvin Bagley III, DeAndre Ayton, and Luka Doncic could all be cornerstones for the next decade. Michael Porter Jr. is likely out for the season but has similar upside. The 2019 draft will be similarly loaded if current 2020 high school prospects are allowed to enter the draft. As previously reported, NBA executives expect draft reform to begin in 2019, if the one-and-done rule is extinguished. So even if they end up with pick no. 6 or 7, a tantalizing prospect might be available given a wider talent pool.
The argument against pressing reset is understandable. The draft offers no guarantees, as evidenced by the Grizzlies’ recent run of selections. They’re in a small market, making them an unlikely free-agent destination. If things get really bad, fans and sponsors could abandon them. Instead of installing a rebuild, they can wait for the contracts of Gasol, Conley, and Parsons to expire and hope the three can stay healthy enough in the next two seasons to enjoy a couple of more playoff pushes in the meantime. It certainly looks like that’s the route the team is taking after firing a young, well-respected coach in Fizdale to appease an unhappy, aging star in Gasol.
Rebuilding is all about timing and commitment to a plan. We know for a fact that the 2018 and 2019 draft classes are looking strong up top, while 2020 and beyond could more closely resemble the class of 2013. The return for two 30-plus stars in Gasol or Conley will never be as good as it was yesterday, and will only continue to corrode into tomorrow.
There’s a risk in reshuffling a roster before it’s too late. Sometimes it’s worth it. Wallace knows how well it can work. So do Grizzlies fans. Wallace blew it up when he dealt Pau Gasol in 2008. Wallace screwed up a long list of draft picks and trades, but the Gasol deal still led to the greatest era in Grizzlies history. This time around, they could have better luck with their draft picks, whether or not Wallace is in charge. Losing Gasol and Conley would be a shock. Many fans would be furious. But the hard-core fans will understand the big picture. They can root for Gasol and Conley on their new teams. The laundry they wear doesn’t change who they are as people and what they did for the city of Memphis.
The Grizzlies need change. It will come in waves sooner rather than later. The best thing Wallace can do for the city is return to his original dream of building a champion from scratch.Attorney General Jeff Sessions refused to confirm or deny whether President Trump brought up the federal Russia investigation as a reason to fire FBI Director James Comey.
“That calls for a communication that I have had with the president, and I believe it remains confidential,” Sessions said, in response to questioning from top Judiciary Committee Democrat Dianne Feinstein (CA) at committee hearing Wednesday.
Asked again by Feinstein if he was denying that the Russia probe was part of the discussions about firing Comey, Session said he wasn’t confirming or denying anything about the hypothetical conversation because he considered those conversations confidential.
Earlier in the hearing, Sessions signaled that he was going to disregard a request previously issued by committee Democrats — via a letter to him last week — to clear up in what areas of potential questioning the President intended to invoke executive privilege.
“I can neither assert executive privilege, nor can I disclose today the content of my confidential conversations with the President,” Sessions said during his opening statement.
That did not stop Feinstein from asking Sessions to go through the reasoning and timeline in the decision to oust Comey. Sessions clung to the rationale given in memos to the President Trump authored by him and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in which they were critical of how Comey handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use.
“I don’t think it’s been fully understood the significance of the errors that Comey made on the Clinton matter,” Sessions said.
Trump has on multiple occasions undercut that logic.We’re less than a week away from this year’s NBA draft, the first of many big days and nights of the offseason that usually kicks off the waiting game until next year’s tip-off in style. With no sure-fire No. 1 pick as the anchor of this rookie class, speculation as to the identity of these picks will remain rampant right up until the moment many teams make their selections. There are also many more trade possibilities heating up the rumor mill, as several GMs are jockeying for salary cap flexibility to (hopefully) hit the ground running come July 1st and the start of free agency.
So, without further ado, let’s try and make sense of it all in this year’s LWOS NBA Mock Draft for 2013.
Pick #1, Cleveland Cavaliers
Nerlens Noel (PF, Kentucky; 6-11, 220 lbs)
The skinny on Noel is that his recovery from a serious knee surgery, as determined by team doctors, will be a major factor in deciding this pick. If red flags begin to fly, don’t be surprised if Cleveland pick Maryland center Alex Len instead.
Pick #2, Orlando Magic
Ben McLemore (SG, Kansas; 6-4, 195 lbs)
With no strong point guard available with this pick, the Magic’s likely course of action is to package either the pick or McLemore and use it as trade bait to fill their need at point guard. I highly expect this pick/prospect to move on draft night.
Pick #3, Washington Wizards
Otto Porter (SF, Georgetown; 6-8, 200 lbs)
Local DC kid fills a major need for the Wizards, who had widely inconsistent play from the swingman spot last year. While he lacks star power, Porter is a solid, all-around player who is built like a rock and will do well during the long, grinding NBA season.
Pick #4, Charlotte Bobcats
Anthony Bennett (PF, UNLV; 6-7, 240 lbs)
With the league-wide trend of “small ball” catching on in a big way, the Bobcats selection of Bennett won’t scorned as it might have five or so years ago. Undersized at the four but probably not defensively polished enough to guard the three at the NBA level, he is nonetheless a diverse scorer with tremendous upside.
Pick #5, Phoenix Suns
Victor Oladipo (SG, Indiana; 6-5, 210 lbs)
In a draft that will be kind to teams looking to replenish the two-guard spot, Oladipo could potentially be the steal of the first round at No. 5. After increasing his range and developing a knock-down shooting stroke to go along with his abilities as a lockdown defender, the Suns may have finally found a perfect complement to Goran Dragic in the backcourt.
Pick #6, New Orleans Pelicans
Alex Len (C, Alex Len; 7-1, 255 lbs)
The Pelicans (I can’t believe I’m actually calling them by that name now) will select Len for two reasons: he’ll be the best prospect available on board, and the idea of pairing him and Anthony Davis as a 1-2 punch under the basket is too tantalizing to pass up. Detroit took that same gamble last year with Andre Drummond, and I’d say it worked out well for them.
Pick #7, Sacramento Kings
Michael Carter-Williams (PG, Syracuse; 6-5, 175 lbs)
Would you look at that – a point guard in Sacramento who shares the ball instead of taking bad three-point shots all the time? Who knew…
Pick #8, Detroit Pistons
Trey Burke (PG, Michigan; 6-1, 175 lbs)
The reigning college Player of the Year is undersized by NBA standards and not particularly athletic in order to compensate for this fact, but scouts really like his tenacity and ability to rise to the challenge in big games. I’d expect Detroit to also explore the possibility of moving Rodney Stuckey come draft night to continue the roster rebuild.
Pick #9, Minnesota Timberwolves
C.J. McCollum (PG-SG, Lehigh; 6-3, 190 lbs)
The most recent scoring phenom to come out of Damian Lillard’s alma mater, Minnesota will look to bolster their poor shooting from last season with a player who averaged nearly 25 points per game last season in college, albeit against weaker competition. If they can, the Timberwolves would also like to shed some of their depth at the position, with Ridnour or Barea likely on the chopping block.
Pick #10, Portland Trailblazers
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (SG, Georgia; 6-5, 205 lbs)
This is one of the picks with the most uncertainty, since the players that are likely to be available aren’t the ideal fit for the Blazers’ needs. If they don’t end up flipping this pick for experienced role players, look for Caldwell-Pope to upgrade their bench production in a big way.
Pick #11, Philadelphia 76ers
Steven Adams (C, Pittsburgh; 6-11, 235 lbs)
A bit of a “project” pick for the 76ers, who will probably look to go big given the dark cloud hanging over Andrew Bynum’s return, Adams is a beast of middle man, with a wingspan measuring 7’4”. Tremendous raw upside that could pay off eventually.
Pick #12, Oklahoma City Thunder
Cody Zeller (PF-C, Indiana; 7-0, 240 lbs)
The Thunder are without any glaring holes to fill on their roster and will continue their trend of the last few years and continue to stockpile high-end prospects. Zeller was initially projected to go in the Top 5 of this draft, so he would be a great get a No. 12. That being said, you might see this pick on the move in an attempt to replace James Harden’s production off the bench.
Pick #13, Dallas Mavericks
Giannnis Adetokoubo (SF, Greece; 6-9, 215 lbs)
The first of several internationals likely to be drafted in mid-to-late stages of the first round, scouts and execs are raving of Adetokoubo’s skill set while at the Adidas Eurocamp. The Mavericks can also afford to let him play another year or two overseas for extra seasoning.
Pick #14, Utah Jazz
Dennis Schroeder (PG, Germany; 6-1, 180 lbs)
His all-world performance at the Nike Hoop Summit in April saw his draft stock rise considerably over the past two months. The Jazz will be very happy to have him fall into their lap and take over the floor general duties in Utah. Think of a faster version of George Hill.
Pick #15, Milwaukee Bucks
Shabazz Muhammad (SG, UCLA; 6-6, 225 lbs)
With the potential departures of both Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings on the horizon, the Bucks will look to add some instant offence, which Muhammad is certainly capable of.
Pick #16, Boston Celtics
Sergey Karasev (SF, Russia; 6-7, 205 lbs)
It’s still unclear what Boston’s team will look like next year – yet another go-around for Garnett, Pierce and company, or perhaps a completely new outfit after Danny Ainge (finally) presses the reset button. Either way, Boston will probably opt for the skilled 19-year-old who has played big minutes at a high level in Russia’s pro league.
Pick #17, Atlanta Hawks
Mason Plumlee (PF, Duke; 6-11, 245 lbs)
Speaking of a team hitting the reset button, the Hawks are going into full-on makeover mode this offseason. The order on draft day will be for size and lots of it, and it starts with the athletic Plumlee who has a good, developing offensive game.
Pick #18, Atlanta Hawks
Rudy Gobert (PF–C, France; 7-1, 235 lbs)
His draft stock has fallen off since midseason, but not enough to scare the Hawks away from the mammoth French prospect. With a 7’9” wingspan, scouts see solid defensive potential with such size. He’ll need to get in better shape before camp however.
Pick #19, Cleveland Cavaliers
Tony Mitchell (SF-PF, North Texas; 6-8, 235 lbs)
Despite a glut of big men available in the lower half of the first round, I see Cleveland going for an athletic wingman, and Mitchell certainly fits that bill. There have been rumblings about attitude problems after his disappointing sophomore year in college, but a second pick in the first round could be used on a player who needs a lot of work.
Pick #20, Chicago Bulls
Gorgui Dieng (C, Louisville; 6-11, 245 lbs)
An NBA-ready big man with the size and speed to be a playmaker on defense right away, Dieng seems like a perfect fit a team like Chicago that is built to win immediately, assuming Derrick Rose is back and healthy. His mobility and maturity make him a sought-after prospect.
Pick #21, Utah Jazz
Kelly Olynyk (PF-C, Gonzaga; 7-0, 235 lbs)
A stretch five in the mold of a Mehmet Okur (a former Jazz standout), the Jazz will be highly interested on drafting Olynyk to maintain their height advantage in the frontcourt. Plus, having a 7-footer who can come off the bench and create his own shot is a rare commodity these days.
Pick #22, Brooklyn Nets
Lucas Nogueira (PF-C, Brazil; 7-0, 220 lbs)
An older prospect who has made a name for himself overseas, the Nets could either let him develop abroad for another season to further build up his skill set (with their luxury tax issues, this might be the ideal scenario), or he could learn the tricks of the NBA trade behind an All-Star in Brook Lopez; either way, a good pick for Brooklyn.
Pick #23, Indiana Pacers
Allen Crabbe (SG, California; 6-6, 205 lbs)
One reason Indiana wasn’t able to overcome the Heat and push their playoff run even further was their struggles shooting the ball off the bench. Crabbe is a bigger two-guard who has good accuracy from three who could be a solid role player behind Paul George.
Pick #24, New York Knicks
Shane Larkin (PG, Miami; 6-0, 170 lbs)
The Knicks would be wise to draft Larkin (son of baseball Hall of Famer Barry Larkin), who is very athletic and excels in a pick-and-roll type of offense. The lack of size might hurt him initially as a role player in the NBA, but he’s a nice long-term replacement for the departed Jason Kidd.
Pick #25, Los Angeles Clippers
Jamaal Franklin (SG, San Diego St.; 6-5, 205 lbs)
An explosive offensive talent, Franklin should mesh well with the up-tempo style of play in Lob City. He’ll have to adapt to the new position, having been an undersized small forward in college, but if the Clippers felt comfortable starting Willie Green last year, they should have no qualms about drafting this young man.
Pick #26, Minnesota Timberwolves
Ricky Ledo (SG, Providence; 6-6, 195 lbs)
A risky maneuver because of questions surrounding his off-court maturity, Minnesota will still make the leap of faith hoping that Ledo can become a dependable scorer from the outside. Indiana worked wonders with former bad-apple-turned-playoff-starter Lance Stephenson, so it’s not an unprecedented storyline either.
Pick #27, Denver Nuggets
Glen Rice Jr. (SG, NBA D-League; 6-6, 210 lbs)
After shooting the lights out in the D-League playoffs this past year, it seems like the son of the former NBA All-Star is ready to keep his NBA aspirations on track after a tumultuous foray and abrupt exit from the college ranks. He’ll be right at home in the run-and-gun Denver offense.
Pick #28, San Antonio Spurs
Isaiah Canaan (PF-C, Gonzaga; 7-0, 235 lbs)
The almost-champs will happy with Canaan, who some are calling the most NBA-ready point guard in the draft. With the deft touch of the San Antonio organization, odds are that a career as a dependable backup point is definitely in this prospect’s future.
Pick #29, Oklahoma City Thunder
Archie Goodwin (SG, Kentucky; 6-5, 190 lbs)
Like Muhammad, he was a one-and-done college player plagued with inconsistency. In spite of that, he’s still only 18 years old, with the physical tools and potential to be yet another great get for OKC late in the first round. A D-League stash that will eventually see time in the NBA.
Pick #30, Phoenix Suns
Tim Hardaway Jr. (SF-SG, Michigan; 6-6, 200 lbs)
A competitive player that can score in bunches, Hardaway Jr. will bring a much-needed scoring boost to Phoenix’s arid reserve troupe. His ability as a passer is an underrated part of his game that will help him transition well to the pros.
For a listing of NHL Mock drafts around the internet, please check out our friends at the NBA mock database.
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Interested in writing for LastWordOnSports? If so, check out our “Join Our Team” page to find out how.A letter requesting that a university’s sociology department rescind an offer to hire a professor because she was white was deleted sometime between Monday evening and the early morning hours Tuesday.
Nearly 130 “Sociology students, alumni, and allies” of Pomona College in California signed the letter. They argued that since 56.7 percent of sociology students at the school are black, hiring Alice Goffman, who is white, represents “anti-blackness,” reports Campus Reform.
“The Sociology Department at Pomona College has not consistently had enough full-time faculty members of color to support its marginalized students,” assert the signatories. “The vast majority of Sociology majors are students of color (and most are women of color), but the faculty are not at all representative of their students’ diversity.”
The authors insist that Pomona’s choice to hire Goffman is an “egregious” example of “anti-blackness” and counterintuitive to “holding institutions of higher education accountable for the violence they enact on marginalized groups.”
The authors of the letter also take issue with Goffman’s book, On The Run, which documents policing and incarceration in black communities. The book has drawn criticism from journalists and scholars such as Steven Lubet, a Northwestern University law professor. Lubet questions Goffman’s reliability — particularly Goffman’s decision to destroy notes containing information that could identify the subjects of her book.
“[Goffman’s] methods have endangered her research participants, encouraged the hyper-policing of Black communities, and continue to perpetuate anti-Blackness,” the authors of the Pomona letter write.
“We follow a rigorous process when hiring faculty,” said Pomona’s News Director Mark Kendall. “We are pleased that this process resulted in an offer and an acceptance, and we look forward to her joining our vibrant academic community in the fall as a visiting professor.”
But as of Tuesday morning, the letter has been deleted.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Kendall, as well as Sheri Sardinas, Pomona Sociology’s academic coordinator, to inquire about the letter’s deletion, but received no comment in time for publication.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.The white lady asked her two black maids, “Do you like Robert Mugabe?” This was in Harare, about 13 years ago when the Cricket World Cup was underway. I was staying in the sprawling home of an athletic couple. The lady of the house, minutes before she asked the maids the question, had told me that even the blacks hated Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe then as he is now. But, as an Indian I was confident that the poor would despise their elites more than their despot. The hostess found that hard to accept because she treated her maids very well; she gave them good clothes and paid them good salaries while Mugabe was destroying the nation apart from driving away white landlords. So she decided to ask the maids. “Don’t think I will be offended by your answer…just speak the truth. Do you like Robert Mugabe?” The maids giggled a lot, which was wise, but eventually they said they liked him. One of them delivered a devastating analysis, “He is for us.” Soon after creating serious domestic discord, I left.
Do Kashmir’s poor, too, hate their elite more than their despot, India? It would appear that they don’t. The Indian government may have ensured, through exceptional financial pampering, that the average Kashmiri is not as impoverished as the average Indian, but it does not have the racial qualities to delude him into believing that it is “for us”. As a result the elite and the rest of Kashmir have similar views about the Indian occupation of their home.
Read | Young minds are under siege in Kashmir
Anywhere in the world, the rich and the poor very rarely hold the same strong opinions, but sometimes they do. It is usually a consequence of one indoctrinating the other. Common gods, we know, are a triumph of elite evangelism. The gods of the losers were demoted as evil. Cricket, too, was a transmission. So were Modi, “Development” and Amitabh Bachchan. India’s freedom struggle began as an upper class grouse against their white Brahmins, which tried to enlist the poor through the ruse of nationalism, a notion that it is the duty of the poor to lend their bodies to their native historical oppressors to fight the new white oppressors. Naturally, it was never a convincing idea. Even today, a Dalit community celebrates the day when their ancestors fought under the British flag against the Peshwas.
Kashmir’s nationalism, too, was herded by local and Pakistani elites, but it really does not matter now because after a point indoctrination becomes ‘the way things are’. Even so, there is a strong but underrated resentment among the poor and the new educated lower middleclass youth towards the economic and cultural elite, especially the Kashmiris who live outside Kashmir — in affluent First World suburbs, Dubai, even Delhi; Kashmiris who do not require peace in valley to enjoy a good life; who are horrified at the words ‘peace returns to the valley’; in whose view violence keeps the revolution going while peace, brisk tourism and a healing economy that helps the majority of Kashmiris eke out a living are vulgar signs of defeat to despicable India.
Read | Kashmir’s disturbing new reality
“These are the upper caste, Peers, the Brahmans of Kashmir, fake intellectuals, biased journalists, street smarts,” a young Kashmiri wrote to me, “They dominate the narrative of Kashmir, any view opposing theirs is dealt with harshly. And you’re not a true Kashmiri if you oppose them.” It is a common opinion I get in my inbox from a class of Kashmiris, but most of them would not state this openly because they would be shamed by people who have powerful tools of shaming.
The non-resident Kashmiri patriot is identical to the non-resident Hindu patriot. Wallowing in a facile long-distance love they try to influence events whose consequence they do not have to face.
Shah Faesal, who had topped the civil services examination in 2009 and is a civil servant in Kashmir, recently posted on Facebook an amused portrait of “Kashmiris not living in Kashmir” and their patriotism. “Using worldwideweb for online nation-building is a carbon-neutral, non-bureaucratic method of doing things.” He invited them “to participate in offline nation-building by coming back and either work in remote hospitals and schools of Kashmir or join their brothers in jungle. But since it needs sacrifice and courage, it will never be convenient to them.” Then he arrives at the core of the issue. “Online nation building is a defective model because it allows the elite to hide behind digital windows and fake profiles while outsourcing actual fighting to emotionally-immature children of the poor and dispossessed.”
Read | Kashmir unrest: Cops face their ‘own people’ in line of duty
The upper class use of other bodies — same old story. In recent months they glorified a boy in his early twenties, Burhan Wani, as he used the social media to become a militant folkhero, which is a method of digging one’s own grave. Instead of beseeching him to choose life over death, they egged him on to die. And they celebrated his inevitable glorious death through trauma prose.
In a Marquez novel, mothers who have had enough of war go out into the streets and drag their militant sons back home by their ears. That was what those who cared about Wani should have done. But then the freedom movement has to be outsourced to suckers.
To the question what constitutes a nation, scholars often have very sophisticated cultural explanations. But, South Indians would tell you being an Indian is merely a habit. You are told from childhood to love an enclosed space and you love it forever. Kashmiris have not acquired that habit. But most of them have lost the habit of imagining they are a part of Pakistan. Most of them, it appears, now like the idea of a sovereign Islamic republic of Kashmir. In India’s view such a fantasy kingdom lodged between India, Pakistan and China would disintegrated when Kashmiris rise from the happy dream. So India continues its morally indefensible occupation and on good days tries to lure Kashmiris into seeing the truth — that they must ideally mistrust their elites more than their despot.
First Published: Jul 17, 2016 21:07 ISTIn both cases, the government argued that the searches were permissible under a long-established exception to the Fourth Amendment, which generally requires the police to get a warrant before searching “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” After a lawful arrest, however, the police may search a person’s body and immediate surroundings without a warrant, both for their own protection and to prevent the destruction of evidence.
Cellphones have upset that balance, as the court rightly recognized. First, nearly everyone has one and uses it daily. They have become so prevalent so fast that, as Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” More important, they contain “vast quantities of personal information,” from financial and medical records to archives over many years of private correspondence and records of places the owner has been. They are “minicomputers,” the court said, that contain more information than entire houses once did.
In short, the expectation of privacy in a phone’s contents outweighs the immediate needs of law enforcement.
Particularly since police officers may still conduct a warrantless search of a phone in a true emergency, the court was equally unconvinced by the government’s other arguments — that a phone’s incriminating data could be remotely wiped, for instance, or that it could alert an officer to approaching accomplices who might threaten his safety. These scenarios were hypothetical, the court said, or they could be addressed by existing technology.
The court acknowledged that cellphones are widely used by criminals, and that its ruling would have an impact on law enforcement’s ability to fight crime. But it said the warrant requirement is “not merely an inconvenience to be somehow weighed against the claims of police efficiency.”It is common to talk about how the teenage years are a time of risky behavior. And, when we talk about why teens engage in risky behavior, there is a tendency to focus on the development of the frontal lobes. We know that there are mechanisms that involve the frontal lobes of the brain that stop behavior that has been engaged. In Smart Change, I call these mechanisms the Stop System. The frontal lobes do not mature fully until early adulthood, and so that is part of the reason why teens do risky things.
If it was just that the Stop System hasn’t matured yet, then even young children should engage in lots of risky behavior. Instead, there is another component. Adolescents also engage lots of behaviors that they perceive to be rewarding. I call the mechanisms that drive people toward behaviors the Go System.
This view suggests that adolescents have a perfect storm of a Go System that is driven to pursue rewards despite potential risks and a Stop System that is not capable of stopping a behavior that is risky.
An interesting paper in the November, 2014 issue of Psychological Science by Zachary Roper, Shaun Vecera, and Jatin Vaidya provides some evidence for this view of adolescent risky behavior.
These researchers suggest that if adolescents are drawn toward rewards, then they should persist in paying to rewarding items in, even when they are no longer rewarding.
To test this possibility, 40 teens (ranging in age from 13-16) and 40 adults (with an average age of 27) were run in a study. In the first part of the study, participants saw a number of colored circles on a computer screen. Inside of each circle was a line. There was always one red or green circle on the screen, and the rest were other colors. Participants had to press one of two buttons to indicate whether the line inside the target circle was horizontal or vertical. When they responded correctly, they were rewarded. For each participant, one color was generally associated with a larger reward (10 cents) than the other (2 cents). So, for a particular participant, the red circle might generally lead to a 10 cent reward and the green circle might lead to a 2 cent reward.
After doing 240 trials like this, the task was changed. Now, participants did another 240 trials in which they had to find a blue diamond and report the orientation of the line inside that shape. The rest of the objects on the screen during these test trials (which are called distractor items) were colored circles. On some trials, one of those distractor circles was a red or green, which had been associated with a reward in the first part of the study.
The key question was whether the amount of time it took participants to respond correctly on the test trials was affected by the presence of circles that had been rewarded in the first part of the study. If it takes longer for participants to respond in the presence of a distractor that had been rewarded in the past, it suggests that distractor is attracting attention from the real goal of the task.
Adults are not strongly affected by the initial training. In the first group of test trials, they are a little slower at responding when one of the distractors had been rewarded in the first group of trials. After about 60 trials, though, adults are no longer affected by what had been rewarded before. That is, the Go System no longer drives adults toward old rewards.
The teens act quite differently. They are much slower to respond when one of the distracting circles had been rewarded in the past. They are slowest when the distractor was color that got the large reward. They are fastest when none of the distractors had been rewarded. The circle that got the small reward came out in between. This effect persisted over the entire set of 240 test trials.
Finally, the effect was strongest in the 13- and 14-year-olds who were tested. |
doubt that morality was of central importance to Locke, a fact we can discern from the Essay itself; there are two important features of the Essay that serve to enlighten us regarding the significance of this work in the development of Locke's moral views. First of all, morality seems to have inspired Locke to write the Essay in the first place. In recounting his original inclination to embark on the project, he recalls a discussion with “five or six friends”, at which they discoursed “on a Subject very remote from this” (Locke 1700, 7). According to Locke, the discussion eventually hit a standstill, at which point it was agreed that in order to settle the issue at hand it would first be necessary to, as Locke puts it, “examine our own Abilities, and see, what Objects our Understandings were, or were not fitted to deal with” (Locke 1700, 7). This was, he explains, his first entrance into the problems that inspired the Essay itself. But, what is most interesting for our purposes is just what the remote subject was that first got Locke and his friends thinking about fundamental questions of epistemology. James Tyrell, one of those who attended that evening, is a source of enlightenment on this matter—he later recalled that the discussion concerned morality and revealed religion. But, Locke himself refers to the subjects they discussed that fateful evening as ‘very remote’ from the matters of the Essay. That may well be, but it is also true that Locke, in the Essay, identifies morality as a central feature of human intellectual and practical life, which brings us to the second important fact about Locke's view of morality. Locke writes, in the Essay, that “Morality is the proper Science, and Business of Mankind in general” (Essay, 4.12.11; these number are, book, chapter and section, respectively, from Locke's Essay). For a book aiming to set out the limits and extent of human knowledge, this comes as no small claim. We must, Locke writes, “know our own Strength” (Essay, 1.1.6) and turn our attention to those areas in which we can have certainty, i.e., “those [things] which concern our Conduct” (Essay, 1.1.6). The amount of attention given to the question of morality itself would seem to belie its primacy for Locke. The Essay is certainly not intended as a work of moral philosophy; it is a work of epistemology, laying the foundations for knowledge. However, a very big part of the programme involves identifying what true knowledge is and what it is we as humans can have knowledge about, and morality is accorded a distinctive and fairly exclusive status in Locke's epistemology as one of “the Sciences capable of Demonstration” (Essay, 4.3.18). The only other area of inquiry accorded this status is mathematics; clearly, for Locke, morality represents a unique and defining aspect of what it means to be human. We have to conclude, then, that the Essay is strongly motivated by an interest in establishing the groundwork for moral reasoning. However, while morality clearly has a position of the highest regard in his epistemological system, his promise of a demonstrable moral science is never realized here, or in later works.
It seems we can safely say that the subject of morality was a weighty one for Locke. However, just what Locke takes morality to involve is substantially more complicated an issue. There are two broad lines of interpretation of Locke's moral views, which I will briefly outline here.
The first interpretation of Locke's moral theory is what we might call an incompatibility thesis: Locke scholars Laslett, Aaron, von Leyden, among others, hold that Locke's natural law theory is nothing more than a relic from Locke's early years, when he wrote the Essays on the Law of Nature, and represents a rogue element in the mature empiricistic framework of the Essay. For these commentators, the two elements found in the Essay seem not only incommensurable, but the hedonism seems the obvious and straightforward fit with Locke's generally empiricistic epistemology. The general view is that Locke's rationalism seems, for all intents and purposes, to have no significant role to play, either in the acquisition of moral knowledge or in the recognition of the obligatory force of moral rules. These fundamental aspects of morality seem to be taken care of by Locke's hedonism. Worse than this, however, is that the two views rely on radically different epistemological principles. The conclusion tends to be that Locke is holding on to moral rationalism in the face of serious incoherence. The incompatibility thesis is supported by the fact that Locke seems to emphasize the role of pleasure and pain in moral decision-making, however it has difficulty making sense of the presence of Locke's moral rationalism in the Essay and other of Locke's later works (not to mention the exalted role he gives to rationally-deduced moral law). Added to this, even in Locke's early work, he seems to hold both positions simultaneously. Aaron and von Leyden both throw up their hands. According to von Leyden, in the introduction to his 1954 edition of Locke's Essays on the Law of Nature,
the development of [Locke's] hedonism and certain other views held by him in later years made it indeed difficult for him to adhere whole-heartedly to his doctrine of natural law. (Locke 1954, 14)
In a similar vein, Aaron writes:
Two theories compete with each other in [Locke's] mind. Both are retained; yet their retention means that a consistent moral theory becomes difficult to find. (Aaron 1971, 257)
Yet, it is curious that Locke neither claimed to find these strands incompatible, nor ever abandoned his rationalistic natural law view. It seems unlikely that this view would be nothing more than a confusing hangover from earlier days. Taking seriously Locke's commitment to both is therefore a much more charitable approach, and one that takes seriously Locke's clear commitment to the benefits of rationally-apprehending our moral duties. An approach along these lines is one we might call a compatibility approach to the question of Locke's moral commitments. John Colman and Stephen Darwall are two Locke scholars who have argued that Locke's view is neither plagued with tensions nor incoherent. Their common view is that the two elements of Locke's theory are doing different work. Locke's hedonism, on this compatibility account, is intended as a theory of moral motivation, and serves to fill a motivational gap between knowing moral law and having reasons to obey moral law. Locke introduces hedonism in order to account for the practical force of the obligations arising from natural law. As Darwall writes,
what makes God's commands morally obligatory [i.e., God's authority] appears…to have nothing intrinsically to do with what makes them rationally compelling. (Darwall 1995, 37).
Thus, on this account, reason deduces natural law, but it is hedonistic considerations alone that offer agents the motivating reasons to act in accordance with its dictates.
This interpretation convincingly makes room for both elements in Locke's view. A central feature of this interpretation is its attention to the legalistic aspect of Locke's natural law theory. For Locke, the very notion of law presupposes an authority structure as the basis for its institution and its enforcement. The law carries obligatory weight by virtue of its reflecting the will of a rightful superior. That it also carries the threat of sanctions lends motivational force to the law.
A slight modification of the compatibility account, however, better captures the motivational aspect of Locke's rationalistic account: Locke does, at times suggest that rational agents are not only obligated, but motivated, by sheer recognition of the divine authority of moral law. It is helpful to think of morality as carrying both intrinsic and extrinsic obligatory force for Locke. On the one hand moral rules obligate by dint of their divine righteousness, and on the other hand by the threat of rewards and punishments. The suggestion that morality has an intrinsic motivational force appears in the Essays on the Law of Nature and is retained by Locke in some of his final published works. It is, however, a feature of his view that gets somewhat underappreciated in the secondary literature, and for understandable reasons—Locke tends to emphasize hedonistic motivations. Why this is will be discussed in section 4. At this point, however, it suffices to say that Locke's theory does not have the motivational gap that the compatibility thesis suggests—hedonism serves as a ‘back-up’ motivational tool in the absence of the right degree of rational intuition of one's moral duty.
In order to get a complete understanding of Locke's moral theory, it is useful to begin with a look at Locke's natural law view, articulated most fully in his Essays on the Law of Nature (written as series of lectures he delivered as Censor of Moral Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford). Two predominant features of Locke's natural law theory are already well-developed in this work: the rationalism and the legalism. According to Locke, reason is the primary avenue by which humans come to understand moral rules, and it is via reason we can draw two distinct but related conclusions regarding the grounds for our moral obligations: we can appreciate the divine, and thereby righteous, nature of morality and we can perceive that morality is the expression of a law-making authority.
In the Essays on the Law of Nature, Locke writes that “all the requisites of a law are found in natural law” (Locke 1663–4, 82). But, what, for Locke, is required for something to be a law? Locke takes stock of what constitutes law in order to establish the legalistic framework for morality: First, law must be founded on the will of a superior. Second, it must perform the function of establishing rules of behavior. Third, it must be binding on humans, since there is a duty of compliance owed to the superior authority that institutes the laws (Locke 1663–4, 83). Natural law is rightly called law because it satisfies these conditions. For Locke, the concept of morality is best understood by reference to a law-like authority structure, for without this, he argues, moral rules would be indistinguishable from social conventions. In one his later essays, “Of Ethic in General”, Locke writes
[w]ithout showing a law that commands or forbids [people], moral goodness will be but an empty sound, and those actions which the schools here call virtues or vices may by the same authority be called by contrary names in another country; and if there be nothing more than their decisions and determinations in the case, they will be still nevertheless indifferent as to any man's practice, which will by such kind of determinations be under no obligation to observe them. (Locke 1687–88, 302)
For Locke, then, moral law is, by definition, an obligatory set of rules, because it is reflects the will of a superior authority.
Moral rules are obligatory because of the authority structure out of which they arise. But, this is not the only story Locke has to tell regarding the nature of our obligation to divine moral dictates. The set of moral rules that reason deduces are taken by Locke to be reflective of human nature. The rules that govern human conduct are specifically tailored to human nature, and our duty to God involves realizing our natures to the fullest degree. There is a noticeable degree of teleology in Locke's theory, which is worth pausing to consider in its content and its implications.
In the Essays on the Law of Nature, Locke draws a connection between the natural law governing human action and the laws of nature that govern all other things in the natural world; just as all natural things seem nomologically determined, so human beings are likewise law-governed. Humans are not determined to the same degree as other physical and biological entities, but we are beholden to God to ensure that our lives follow a certain path. Natural law is, Locke writes, a “plan, rule, or … pattern” of life (Locke 1663–64, 81). Locke's early view has a teleological strain typical of the Aquinian (and thus Aristotelian) tradition. In fact, Locke does not shy away from this teleological angle, acknowledging this inheritance when he writes of Aristotle's that he
rightly concludes that the proper function of man is acting in conformity with reason, so much so that man must of necessity perform what reason prescribes. (Locke 1663–64, 83)
Locke considers moral duty to be tailored to human nature, a set of laws specific to humanity and governing our actions according to God's will. These laws are not only discoverable by reason, but in order to fulfill our function, humans are required to make use of reason to this very end. This view resurfaces in the Essay, where Locke writes the following:
it will become us, as rational Creatures, to imploy those Faculties we have about what they are most adapted to, and follow the direction of Nature, where it seems to point us out the way. (Essay, 4.12.11)
The way it points us, he goes on to explain, is in the direction of our “greatest interests, i.e., the Condition of our eternal Estate” (Essay, 4.12.11). The greater effort we each make in refining our rational faculty, the more clearly each of us will discern the proper path to eternal salvation.
This teleological element may seem somewhat out of step with Locke's unqualified empiricistic rejection of teleological metaphysics in the Essay. However, it is important to bear in mind that the teleological aspects of Locke's moral theory do seem to be serving a very specific purpose. Locke seems to be aiming to establish a natural-theological basis for natural law. Why would this be so crucial for Locke?
Locke is grounding human conduct within a general framework of laws originating in God's divine command. This is not just a nomologically-ordered universe, but one, as we have seen, that reflects the interests of “a powerful and wise creator…who has made and built this whole universe and us mortals” (Locke 1663–64, 103) Humans are obligated to obey God's laws since God is a superior to whom we owe “both our being and our work” (Locke 1663–64, 105) As such, we are obligated to show obedience to the “limits he prescribes” (Locke 1663–64, 105). The laws governing our nature are discovered by reason and their content is specifically suited to human nature. Thus, for Locke morality is clearly and necessarily anthropocentric, understood by reference to human nature. But moral rules are, above all, an expression of God's will. It is this latter aspect of morality that binds us to abide by the dictates of morality. Moral obligation is a matter, for Locke, of obedience to the rightful authority of God.
There are two baseline assumptions of Locke's moral thinking: morality is universal and it is something that can be understood clearly and unequivocally by human reason—when Locke imagines us rationally-discovering natural law, he envisions us applying a rigorous set of logical principles to a set of clear and well-defined ideas about human nature, God, and society. But, how exactly is this done?
For one thing, this process looks a great deal like mathematical reasoning. For Locke, moral rules are founded on a fundamental set of principles, much like mathematical axioms. The fundamental principles can be deduced rationally, and it is from these that we can further derive all of our moral duties. Morality is, therefore, demonstrable, a term indicating mathematical-style proofs wherein conclusions are derived from axiomatic foundations. The moral status of any action is then determined by comparing our behaviour against these demonstrated rules. But, we might ask, what kinds of ideas are moral ideas, and what sort of rationalist could Locke possibly be? Locke is a well-known empiricist; for Locke, the mind is a blank slate, the content of which is supplied exclusively from sensory or reflective experience. Locke famously espouses this empiricistic view in the Essay, but holds it quite clearly also in Essays on the Law of Nature. In fact, however, Locke's moral rationalism takes this empiricistic theory of ideas as its starting point. Moral ideas, for Locke, are fundamentally experiential in origin. They are not directly so, of course, since we do not perceive something like justice or honesty directly. Moral ideas are experiential, in the special Lockean sense that they are complex ideas—products of the mind's ability to form complex constructions from its simple directly-experiential contents. For Locke, the interplay of reason and sensation works as follows:
reason is … taken to mean the discursive faculty of the mind, which advances from things known to things unknown and argues from one thing to another in a definite and fixed order of propositions… The foundations, however, on which rests the whole of that knowledge which reason builds … are the objects of sense-experience; for the senses primarily supply the entire as well as the chief subject-matter of discourse and introduce it into the deep recesses of the mind. (Locke 1663–64, 101)
From perceptual simple ideas, we can generate complex moral propositions. This seems like a tall order, and Locke offers very little, in any of his works, by way of actually putting this moral reasoning process to work. However, that is not to say that Locke is silent in this regard. There are places in his writings where Locke takes us through some moral demonstrations.
In the Essays on the Law of Nature, for example, Locke claims that, based on sensory experience, we can assert the extra-mental existence of perceptible objects and all their perceptible qualities. All such qualities can be explained by reference to matter in motion. What is also clear to the senses, Locke argues, is that this world of moving objects exhibits a nomological regularity, or as Locke puts it, a “wonderful art and regularity” (Locke 1663–64, 103). Such regularity and beauty leads the contemplative mind to consider how such a world could have come about. Such contemplation would lead any rational being to the conclusion that the world cannot be the result of chance, and must therefore be the product of a creative will. Note that Locke is here trying to demonstrate for us just how sensation and reason work together. The mind moves from ideas of sensation to what Locke considers logical conclusions regarding the creative force behind the world we experience. But, our understanding of natural law is not founded solely in sensory experience. Through reflection, which is an introspective kind of perceptual experience for Locke, humans can gain ideas of our own nature and faculties that serve to complete our understanding both of God and of God's creative will. This reasoning goes as follows—the creative being, which sensation indicates must exist, cannot be less perfect than human will, nor can it be human, because our ideas of reflection tell us that humans are not, and cannot be, self-causing. Reason must conclude, then, that the world is created by a divine will—a superior power, which can bring us into existence, maintain us, or take us away, give us great joy or render us in great pain. Locke concludes as follows:
with sense-perception showing the way, reason can lead us to knowledge of a lawmaker or of some superior power to which we are necessarily subject. (Locke 1663–4, 104)
From this deduction regarding divine purpose and authority, humans can conclude that they are obligated to render “praise, honour, and glory” to God. Beyond this, the rational agent can deduce, through reflection upon her own constitution and faculties, that her natural impulses to protect and preserve her life, and to enter into society with others are faculties with which she has been uniquely equipped by God and by which she is considered specifically human. These must constitute the basis of the principles and duties governing her conduct—her “function appears to be that which nature has prepared … [her] to perform” (Locke 1663–64, 105). Thus, by a series of steps from perception to reasoning about that perceptual experience, we are, Locke concludes, able to define our moral duties and regulate our conduct accordingly.
In the Essay, Locke develops this idea of the rational deduction of natural law somewhat further, setting it in the context of a more mature and coherent theory of ideas than we find in the Essays on the Law of Nature. In the Essay, moral ideas assume a particular significance owing to their place in Locke's general taxonomy of ideas. For Locke, all the basic contents of the mind are simple ideas. These are formed by the mind into what Locke terms complex ideas, which are combinations of simple ideas made in the pattern of our perceptions of things in the extra mental world, or according to a pattern created by reason alone. Moral ideas fall into the second category of complex idea, falling under the technical heading complex ideas of modes. Modes are a specific kind of complex ideas, created by the mind from simple ideas of sensation or reflection, but referring to no extra-mental reality. They are not intended as natural kinds, but are products of the mind alone, referring to purely conceptual archetypes. They are best understood in contradistinction to ideas of substances, which are created by the mind but aim to mirror the real essences of extra-mental things—for example, the idea cat is intended to capture a kind of thing in the world that has a specific set of perceivable characteristics. Ideas of substances fail in mirroring reality, however, as they can never be complete representations of the world outside the mind. Modal ideas, on the other hand, are a special kind of idea for Locke, and actually hold out the promise for real knowledge. Modal ideas are ideas by which we fully grasp the real essence of things, because the mind, in some sense, is the originator of them (I will return to this in the next paragraph). The idea of a triangle is a modal idea, made by reason and knowable in its essence with complete accuracy. The idea of a triangle is a product of the mind, and does not refer to anything outside the mind—i.e., any external archetype. The kinds of ideas that fall into this category are the idea of God, mathematical concepts, and, most importantly for our present purposes, moral concepts. Locke writes,
I am bold to think, that Morality is capable of Demonstration, as well as Mathematicks: since the precise real Essence of the things moral Words stand for, may be perfectly known; and so the Congruity, or Incongruity of the Things themselves, be certainly discovered, in which consists perfect knowledge. (Essay, 3.11.16)
Moral rules, for Locke, are knowable with the same degree of certainty as “any Demonstration in Euclid” (Essay, 4.3.18).
This might seem to be a tall order when considering the controversy generated by beliefs about moral rules, yet Locke clearly believes that moral rules can, with the right mental effort, yield indisputable universal laws. Locke offers an example of how this might work, by analyzing the moral proposition Where there is no property, there is no injustice. In order to see the demonstrable certainty of this claim, we have to examine the composite ideas and how those agree or disagree with one another. The idea of property, first of all, is a right to something. The idea of injustice, considered next, is a violation of that right. Given these definitions, which Locke thinks are arrived at by careful attention to definition, it is a rational deduction that injustice cannot exist if there is no property to be violated. Injustice and property must, by definition agree. This is a clearly demonstrable rule, according to Locke, deduced from clear and adequately conceived ideas. The only other example Locke offers is the proposition No Government allows absolute Liberty. Government, according to Locke, is the establishment of society upon certain laws, requiring conformity. Absolute liberty is allowing anyone to do as they please. These are modal ideas, according to Locke, and thus known with complete adequacy. As such, it is possible for the rational individual to see clearly that the ideas of absolute liberty and government cannot agree. Of course, most people will argue that these rational deductions rely upon definitions that are debatable. This would not seem to be helped by the fact that, for Locke, modal ideas, like all complex ideas, are put together by the mind; while complex ideas of substance are constructed on the pattern of perceivable objects, modal ideas are, Locke explains, “put together at the pleasure of our Thoughts, without any real pattern they were taken from” (Essay, 4.4.12). This might seem to pose a problem for Locke's moral theory, according to which moral laws are just as necessary as mathematical principles. However, Locke is not worried about any relativistic implications. For Locke, any disagreement about definitions of concepts like property, justice or murder, result from insufficient reasoning about the simple ideas that comprise our moral ideas, as well as bias, prejudice and other irrational influences. For Locke, it is precisely because these ideas refer to nothing outside the mind that they can be universally-conceived and adequately understood. Just as the notion of triangularity is known perfectly because it does not depend upon the existence of triangles outside the mind, so justice is understood perfectly because it is not using some extramental archetype as its inspiration. He writes,
the Truth and Certainty of moral Discourses abstracts from the Lives of Men, and the Existence of those Vertues in the World whereof they treat. (Essay, 4.4.8)
Mathematical concepts are impervious to bias, prejudice or otherwise-idiosyncratic definitions and their relative properties are clear to anyone who understands them perfectly. While many would contend that moral ideas are simply too controversial to fit a proto-mathematical picture, Locke would respond that they seem controversial only because many of us have not taken the time to consider moral ideas in an objective and analytical light. If we were to do so, he argues, we could come to know moral rules with certainty.
Locke, in fact, adds something of a meta-moral dimension to this epistemological point by suggesting that as rational beings it is our “proper Imployment” to contemplate morality. In Book IV of the Essay, where Locke concludes that morality is, like mathematics, a human science (and, properly-speaking, knowledge), Locke draws a teleological lesson—since we are clearly fitted with the capacity for discerning our moral duty, then that is what we ought to do: “I think I may conclude, that Morality is the proper Science and Business of Mankind in general.” (Essay, 4.12.11) Humans must, he argues, employ reason in the pursuit of that which “they are most adapted to, and follow the direction of Nature, where it seems to point us out the way” (Essay, 4.12.11). The fact that many people do not or cannot devote contemplative hours to their moral duties is something Locke will consider in his account of moral motivation, however, the key point here is that humans have a teleological makeup that allows for rational certainty with regard to divine moral law.
Is having this degree of knowledge enough to motivate humans to act accordingly—that is, does the sheer recognition of one's duty have any sway in one's practical deliberations?
Locke's hedonism has a dual function in Locke's moral theory. It accounts both for how we acquire the ideas of moral good and evil that lie at the root of moral law and for the motivation to comply with moral rules. A prominent feature of Locke's moral legalism is his view that a law needs to carry the threat of sanctions for it to have normative force. Locke holds this view on the basis of his hedonistic theory of human motivation.
Locke develops his hedonistic account most extensively in the Essay. According to this account, pleasure and pain are the primary motivating factors for all human action and human thought. Feelings of pleasure and pain accompany all our ideas, for Locke, prompting us to act in response to our perceptual experiences, and to move, in thought, from one idea to another. If we had no accompanying feeling of delight or pain in the face certain stimuli we would be unmoved to create music, eat when hungry, or even shift our attention from one idea to any other—the perception of rain would raise in us no different response than a sunny day, the idea of one's children would inspire no related thoughts of home or family, nor any discernibly different response from the idea of children one does not know. Locke writes,
we should have no reason to preferr [sic] one Thought or Action, to another; Negligence, to Attention; or Motion, to Rest. And so we should neither stir our Bodies, nor employ our Minds; but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run a drift, without any direction or design; and suffer the Ideas of our Minds, like unregarded shadows to make their appearances there, as it happen'd, without attending to them. (Essay, 2.7.3)
Pleasure and pain are the engines that make decisions, thoughts, and actions happen. This is not merely coincidence, or chance, for Locke, but yet another example of God's divine design. God has attached feelings of pleasure and pain to our ideas, so the natural faculties with which humans are endowed “might not remain wholly idle, and unemploy'd by us” (Essay, 2.7.3).
Pleasure and pain form the basis of Locke's general theory of motivation, but they are also the bedrock upon which our moral ideas, and the motivation to moral goodness arise. Good and evil reduce, for Locke, to “nothing but Pleasure or Pain, or that which occasions or procures Pleasure and Pain to us” (Essay, 2.28.5). A flower is good, because its beauty raises feeling of affection or pleasure in us. Illness, on the other hand, is an evil since it raises feelings of aversion in those who have experienced illness in any of its many forms. A good is whatever produces pleasure in us, or diminishes evil, and an evil is whatever produces pain or diminishes pleasure. In this way, for Locke, the ideas of good and evil arise from natural emotive responses to our various ideas. Now, these are not moral goods and evils, but for Locke moral ideas are founded in the general ideas we have of natural pleasures and pains. Locke designates no special faculty by which we acquire the basic moral concepts of good and evil, since these are merely a modification of our ideas of natural good and evil; moral good and evil gain their special significance from considering ideas of pleasure and pain in specific contexts.
Our ideas of moral good and evil do not, therefore, differ qualitatively from natural good or evil. If this is the case, however, one might ask what makes smelling a rose different from helping those in need. For Locke, the answer lies in the different context for pleasures and pains that distinguishes the moral from the natural. While a natural good involves the physical pleasure that arises from the scent of a rose, moral good is a pleasure arising from one's conformity to moral dictates, and moral evil is pain arising from the failure to conform. The pleasure and pain are not qualitatively distinct, in these cases, but they take on a special significance as a result of the considerations that bring them about. Locke explains this in the Essay, making sure to emphasize the purely contextual distinction between moral and natural feelings:
Morally Good and Evil then, is only the Conformity or Disagreement of our voluntary Actions to some Law, whereby Good and Evil is drawn on us, from the Will and Power of the Law-maker; which Good and Evil, Pleasure or Pain, attending our observance or breach of the law, by the Decree of the Law-maker, is that we call Reward or Punishment. (Essay, 2.28.5)
Reward and punishment are a distinct species of pleasure and pain, specifying the outcomes attending the decrees of a rightful legislator. In this way, Locke's is a straightforwardly legalistic account of the concepts of moral good and evil. The practical force of moral laws arises when we compare our actions against these laws, determine the degree to which they do or do not conform to the law and consider the pleasure of pain we will privately experience. In fact, for Locke, the very idea that one being has rightful legislative power over another is predicated on the degree to which the former being can effectively impose sanctions on the latter:
It would be in vain for one intelligent Being, to set a Rule to the Actions of another, if he had not in his Power, to reward the compliance with, and punish deviation from his Rule, by some Good and Evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action itself. (Essay, 2.28.6)
God, according to Locke, is just such a rightful superior with the
Goodness and Wisdom to direct our Actions to that which is best: and he has the Power to enforce it by Rewards and Punishments, of infinite weight and duration, in another Life. (Essay, 2.28.8)
Locke is clearly committed to the idea that hedonistically-construed outcomes are a necessary condition of any system of law and of legislative authority itself. In this regard, Locke's views are consistent throughout his corpus. It is worth noting that Locke holds the same view in the early work, the Essays on the Law of Nature, as he does in the more mature works quoted above. In the Essays on the Law of Nature, Essay V, Locke asserts that both God and the soul's immortality “must necessarily be presupposed if natural law is to exist” (Locke 1663–64, 113). The inclusion of the immortality of the soul would seem to suggest the centrality of rewards and punishments in the afterlife. Locke continues by asserting that “law is to no purpose without punishment” (Locke 1663–64, 113). For Locke, then, an agent may well know the moral law, and that they are obligated to a superior authority, but the obligatory force—i.e., what gives the agent a reason for acting—is the structure of rewards and punishments built into the system.
The question that has plagued Locke scholarship has been how, if at all, the hedonistic elements of Locke's moral philosophy can be reconciled with his rationalistic account, which suggests that reason can discern morality's inherent righteousness and motivate accordingly. Some scholars have concluded that Locke effectively abandons the rationalism of his earlier writings by the time he is writing the Essay, and that any such elements found therein are mere holdovers of an earlier position. Von Leyden expresses this view when he writes,
the development of [Locke's] hedonism and certain other views held by him in later years make it indeed difficult for him to adhere whole-heartedly to his doctrine of natural law. (von Leyden, 1954, 14)
But does it? What I earlier called the compatibilist thesis is held most prominently by scholars John Colman and Stephen Darwall, according to whom Locke's hedonism does not supplant the rationalist account of natural law and moral obligation, but is, rather, intended to account for the motivational force of moral law. In this way, the two views work together for a complete moral picture. Darwall identifies the distinction between rationally-derived versus legalistically-construed moral obligation when he writes
what makes God's commands morally obligatory [i.e., God's authority] appears…to have nothing intrinsically to do with what makes them rationally compelling. (Darwall 1995, 37)
Colman makes a similar point:
Right is the central concept in Locke's natural law doctrine, but the law could have no purchase on human conduct unless doing that which is right were in some way productive of good. ‘Good’ is the central concept in his moral psychology. (Colman 1983, 49)
Both Darwall and Colman understand Locke as equating moral good and evil with rewards and punishments, such that good and evil are the operative notions that turn moral rules into moral imperatives for rational agents. Agents do not have reasons for acting until they are aware of the rewards and punishments that accompany natural law. On this interpretation, rational insight regarding the righteousness of morality cannot, on its own, motivate humans to act.
Divine sanctions are a constant feature of Locke's moral philosophy, as we've seen, and the compatibilist interpretation goes much further than the incompatibilist interpretation in capturing the nuances in Locke's moral philosophy. However, there are passages in Locke's work that suggest that moral rules carry an obligatory force that can motivate rational agents irrespective of rewards and punishments. When this further aspect of Locke's view is taken into account, we can see that, for Locke, rewards and punishments do not exhaust our reasons for obeying divine moral rules.
In the Essays on the Law of Nature, Locke argues that there are two different kinds of obedience to the law of a superior authority, and that these are founded upon two distinct kinds of obligation. The example is as follows:
Anyone would easily … perceive that there was one ground of his obedience when as a captive he was constrained to the service of a pirate, and that there was another ground when as a subject he was giving obedience to a ruler; he would judge in one way about disregarding allegiance to a king, in another about wittingly transgressing the orders of a pirate or robber. (Locke 1663–64, 118)
At this point, Locke might be understood to be distinguishing laws backed by a rightful authority and laws that are not, in which the point is simply that there is no obligation to the pirate, since his are not strictly laws at all on Locke's definition of the term. However, Locke continues this passage as follows:
in the latter case [subject to a pirate or robber], with the approval of conscience, he rightly had regard only for his well-being, but in the former [subject to a king], though conscience condemned him, he would violate the right of another. (Locke 1663–64, 118)
Locke identifies two distinct grounds of obedience. Recognizing that one's obligation to the king arises from his rightful authority provides a grounds for obedience that is absent in the case of obeying the pirate. My reasons for obeying the pirate are hedonistic, but my reasons for obeying the king involve my recognition of his rightful authority. Further on in the same Essay, Locke explains that
We should not obey a king just out of fear, because, being more powerful he can constrain (this in fact would be to establish firmly the authority of tyrants, robbers, and pirates), but for conscience' sake, because a king has command over us by right; that is to say, because the law of nature decrees that princes and a lawmaker, or a superior by whatever name you call him, should be obeyed. (Locke 1663–64, 120)
Thus, sanctions are not the sole motivating factor for Locke. The contrast Locke draws here is an important but commonly |
are making kitchen electrics for singles. You can buy a toaster with only one slot, a stylish coffee maker that saves counter space, and a blender that’s barely big enough for a single smoothie.
The tiny toaster might be too cute by half—literally. Even folks who live alone might want two slices of perfectly browned pumpernickel. But the other small, small appliances make sense.
After all, how often do you need to make raclette? You might as well save valuable cabinet space and pick the tiniest kitchen electrics you can find.Soon after Sjakie was born on May 19, the baby sloth began making noises that indicated it was hungry. Zookeepers at the Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands, quickly figured out that the mother wasn't producing enough milk, and that the baby would need to be fed with a syringe.
The only problem is that baby sloths cling to their mother's fur while feeding, so they needed a cuddly substitute.
"We tried to find something that resembled the fur of the mother," zoo biologist Wineke Schoo told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Thursday. "In the zoo, we have lots of shops with teddy bears, so we tried some."
Baby Sjakie, however, didn't care for any of them. But then the 2-year-old daughter of one of the zookeepers heard the story and offered up her own teddy bear.
The infant took to the unnamed bear and now grasps it while zookeepers feed her extra milk as well as pureed vegetables, such as carrots, fennel and zucchini.
The toddler "likes it very much that the sloth is using her bear," Schoo said.
Tip from Germany
Zookeepers got the idea after Sjakie's parents lost a baby in 2011, just a week after it was born. Even though the mother was "doing the right things," Schoo said, "it didn't go well."
They contacted zoos in Germany to find an answer and realized that Sjakie's mother, who is from a zoo in Zurich, may not be able to produce enough milk. A zoo in the western German city of Dortmund gave them the idea of using a teddy bear, sending pictures of the practice to the Dutch zoo. In 2008, the Frankfurt Zoological Garden also used the same technique to feed their new sloth baby, Oskar.
Since sloth baby Sjakie sometimes urinates on the stuffed animal, its handlers got it a second similar teddy they can put in the washing machine.
Sjakie's mother still takes care of her baby, too. The sloth "hangs with her mother, she is really relaxed," Schoo said.
Keepers still don't know, however, whether Sjakie is a male or a female. Schoo says that because sloths' genitals are inside their bodies, they will need a sonogram to determine its gender.
"But, for now, that is not important," Schoo said.MANILA,Philippines—A look-alike of Senator Ramon Revilla Jr. went to the Sandiganbayan on Friday to express his support for his idol.
Efren Valencerina said he would even be willing to replace Revilla in jail.
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“Siguro wala naman siyang kasalanan. Napagbintangan lang,” said Valencerina, who is a grand finalist in the “Kalokalike” contest of “It’s Showtime.”
(I do not think he is guilty. He was just accused.)
He called Revilla his “idol.”
“Nandito ako para palakasin ang kanyang loob,” Valencerina added.
The real Revilla is in the Sandiganbayan’s sheriff division for the processing of his “submission” to the court.
Revilla arrived at the Sandiganbayan on Friday to surrender himself over the plunder charges in connection with the pork barrel scam.
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MOST READThis was not your average father-and-son hockey game.
The dad was Jacques Beaulieu, 45, shown at right, the ex-coach and GM of the Sarnia Sting, who was out for golf and drinks with his son Nathan Beaulieu, 20 — a top Montreal Canadiens prospect — and a group of friends.
A few hours later, the father-son team pummelled a couple of acquaintances after Nathan Beaulieu had smashed a goalie stick during a friendly game in a friend’s garage.
All this caused the Beaulieus, a prominent Strathroy hockey family, black eyes for handing out black eyes.
On Wednesday, the father and son pleaded guilty to one count of assault. Each was assessed penalties of conditional discharges with nine months’ probation — a joint recommendation from the Crown and the defence.
A conditional discharge means a conviction is not registered as long as the offender abides by conditions set by the court.
The discharge will allow Nathan Beaulieu to continue his hockey career and freely move back and forth across the international border. He is training with the NHL team and is likely to be assigned to its farm organization.
The same goes for his dad, who, the court heard, is working as a hockey scout.
Their lawyer, Patrick Ducharme, told Ontario Court Justice Eleanor Schnall that what happened that night was “an isolated incident.”
Assistant Crown attorney Steve Monaghan set out what happened when golf, hockey and booze clashed with the Beaulieus.
The two men assaulted were brothers-in-law David VanGeffen and Wesley Vanderwal.
The Beaulieus, Van Geffen, Denton Hackney and two other men were together at the Caradoc Sands Golf club in Strathroy-Caradoc on April 27.
Vanderwal arrived to meet his brother-in-law for a meal and drinks. It seemed to Vanderwal that the entire party had been drinking, Monaghan said.
At about 10:30 p.m., the group retired to Hackney’s home where they played hockey in the large detached garage.
Both Beaulieus were seen damaging some of Hackney’s property. Nathan Beaulieu used a goalie stick to smash a net and break some hockey sticks belonging to Hackney’s kids.
Vanderwal thought this was wrong and told the Beaulieus they should stop.
That suggestion, Monaghan said, “seemed to enrage Jacques Beaulieu.” He walked up to Vanderwal and said “who the (expletive) do you think you are?”
And with that, Jacques Beaulieu grabbed Vanderwal by the left shirt sleeve and ripped it off. Both Beaulieus attacked Vanderwal, who tried to leave, but not before he was punched eight times in the face, Monaghan said.
He was chased to his pickup truck by the father and son and had to lock the doors to get away from them.
Vanderwal was home shortly after 11 p.m. and immediately got a call from VanGeffen, who was still at Hackney’s, Monaghan said.
VanGeffen reported he was assaulted by the Beaulieus because “he would not tell them Vanderwal’s address.”
Jacques Beaulieu had grabbed VanGeffen’s shirt and “rag-dolled him around the garage,” tearing it, Monaghan said. Nathan Beaulieu joined in and punched VanGeffen under the right eye.
Police were called and the Beaulieus were charged at the Strathroy-Caradoc police station the next day.
Vanderwal was bruised under the left eye and had a broken blood vessel in the eye. He also had a sore neck and scratches to his neck. VanGeffen was scratched under the right eye, and experienced soreness to his chest and wrist and scratches to both hands.
Outside the courtroom, Ducharme said his clients wouldn’t be commenting on the case.
The Montreal Canadiens aren’t commenting on what happened in court, a team spokesperson said.
“Nathan Beaulieu will be at our training camp as planned,” said spokesperson Donald Beauchamp.
The camp is slated to begin next month.
— With files from Kelly Pedro, Free Press reporter
jane.sims@sunmedia.ca
twitter.com/JaneatLFPressIt’s been hard to find silver linings anywhere within Santa Clara’s NFL team. The 49ers have lost six straight and the season’s prognosis looks incredibly bleak even before the halfway point of the schedule.
Chip Kelly’s crew has the NFL’s least productive offense and a defense that can’t stop the run even when it knows it’s coming.
And while we’ve spent most of the bye week lamenting all things red and gold thanks to San Francisco’s brutal start, we decided to figure out what the team is good at. Hey, maybe there are areas the 49ers CAN build upon going the second half of the season and into 2017.
The running game
The 49ers’ have the NFL’s fourth-ranked rushing offense average 129 yards per game. That’s pretty good.
But Kelly’s offense ranks just 19th average 4.1 yards per carry. The mass running stats are good because the 49ers are averaging the second-most running plays in the NFL. Additionally, 322 of the team’s 900 yards rushing came from quarterbacks.
Related Draft Wire hits on three needs for 49ers in latest mock draft
Carlos Hyde put together a decent start to his season before suffering his shoulder injury in Buffalo that kept him from playing against the Buccaneers. Even with that one-game absence, he’s tied for second in the league with six touchdown runs.
The 49ers would like to get more out of Hyde from a yardage perspective, however. He’s averaging just 3.9 yards per carry (25th among qualified backs) and 72 yards per game. If he maintains that clip and returns to play against the Saints following the bye, Hyde would be on pace to have his first 1,000-yard season.
If the passing game were to improve, it would lighten the box and allow more running room for Hyde and Co. If Kelly lasts into a second season, he’ll point to the running game as the strength of his offense to build around.
Pass protection
The 49ers’ offensive line got off to a good start when it came to protecting Blaine Gabbert. It allowed just three sacks in the first four games combined. If Gabbert had a strength, it was getting rid of the ball quickly to negate the pass rush.
But then Week 5 happened and Gabbert was sacked seven times on the Thursday night loss to the Cardinals. And since Colin Kaepernick was put in the starting lineup, he took seven more over the next two weeks, giving the 49ers’ offense 17 allowed for the season.
Related Someone should tell the 49ers drafting a receiver early is smart
Allowing 14 sacks over the last three games ties the 49ers for the fifth-most allowed in the league – which is disappointing after the promising start.
The line will have a chance to rebound against a bad Saints defense after the bye week. If it does, and gets back to protecting the quarterback like it did early in the season, the 49ers should feel pretty good about their ability to stave off a pass rush after allowing the second-most sacks in the NFL (53) in 2015.
Trent Brown looks like the real deal and Joshua Garnett should be a starter for at least the next four years. Hooray, optimism.
Pass defense
For as often as we criticize general manager Trent Baalke’s team building, he’s put together a pretty good secondary.
The 49ers are allowing quarterbacks to complete 59 percent of their passes, ranking ninth in the league, while allowing 222 yards per game through the air. That ranks eighth.
Before his injury, Jimmie Ward was off to a good start at his new position playing cornerback on the outside. In his place while dealing with the quadriceps injury, rookie fourth-round pick Rashard Robinson showed a lot of promise before getting picked on by Jameis Winston and Mike Evans Sunday, when he allowed two touchdowns in coverage.
Related The early problem with Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner
The stats are skewed some because teams don’t have any reason to pass against the 49ers. They have the league’s worst run defense, by far, and are only getting thrown on during 48 percent of plays, which is the lowest in the league.
But as the corners continue to develop, San Francisco should feel pretty good about the secondary heading into 2017. It’s one of the team’s only positions that doesn’t need a serious influx of talent.
On the other hand, Baalke’s invested so much draft capital in the secondary lately that it would be hugely disappointing if it wasn’t the team’s strength.
We’re willing to surmise the pass defense would be even better if the run defense was worth a lick, because play action would be less effective.
Looking ahead, let’s be cautiously optimistic about the highly drafted secondary featuring Eric Reid, Ward, Jaquiski Tartt, Will Redmond (who hasn’t played), Robinson, Dontae Johnson and Keith Reaser. It might be good enough to last.In her quest for the federal Liberal leadership, Martha Hall Findlay wants to reach the wonks. And she's looking for them on reddit.com.
Social news site reddit is home to everything from funny dog photos to substantive debate. The site has become famous in recent years for hosting live Q&As with celebrities and politicians, including one with President Barack Obama while he was running for re-election.
The platform allows users to ask questions of well-known people without a middleman, such as the news media. Questions are sorted by up or down votes from users.
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But while Mr. Obama's appearance was aimed to energize the youth vote, Ms. Hall Findlay says her campaign is targeting the kind of hyper-engaged online users who hang out on /r/CanadaPolitics, one of reddit's more civilized corners.
It's the wonks, interested in talking about serious ideas, whom Ms. Hall Findlay says she can get interested in her campaign and spread the word virally across their online networks.
"We can't underestimate Canadians' interest in politics when we're discussing issues in a substantive way," Ms. Hall Findlay's social-media strategist, Richard Einarson, said in an interview.
The CanadaPolitics subreddit (as a section is known) has hosted Ask Me Anything (AMA) chats with such people as journalist Andrew Coyne, former Reform leader Preston Manning, NDP MP Dan Harris and fellow Liberal leadership candidate Deborah Coyne.
Ms. Hall Findlay's AMA takes place Thursday afternoon and she is likely the highest profile national Canadian politician to conduct an AMA so far. She was a Toronto Member of Parliament from 2008 to 2011 and is now based in Calgary. She ran unsuccessfully for the party leadership in 2006.
Ms. Hall Findlay's social media strategy follows the kind of influencer-targeting successfully used by Naheed Nenshi's campaign for Calgary mayor in the fall of 2010. Members of Mr. Nenshi's campaign, including Stephen Carter and Mr. Einarson, are now working for her. Mr. Carter helped guide Alison Redford to the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives and through her successful 2012 provincial election.
The Nenshi campaign was a lesson in how to run a successful political race on a budget. Without the money to buy television advertising (a position Ms. Hall Findlay finds herself in), Mr. Nenshi's team relied on social media and web-data analysis. Tools, such as those available on YouTube, allow campaigners to track what videos worked and at what point viewers stopped watching. Mr. Nenshi has been an active tweeter before and after the campaign.
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She's already recruited one supporter: Dillon McGuire, 19, who moderates /r/CanadaPolitics and helps schedule most of the AMAs. Mr. McGuire is a business student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.
He says he was nervous at first to bring politicians' attention to his corner of the Internet. But most of those invited have said yes.
"It was a lot easier than I thought it would be," Mr. McGuire says.
Like the other moderators, he displays his political leanings next to his username: dmcg12, Liberal|ON|Hall Findlay. He admits most users of reddit are left-leaning, but says his section of the site has tried hard to keep out the trolls.
"Our community has been successful in creating a culture where we can all come together and share opinions and not be ridiculed," he says.
In her race for the Liberal leadership, Ms. Hall Findlay has some serious competition. Montreal MP Justin Trudeau, one of her competitors, is one of Canada's most popular politicians online.
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But, Ms. Hall Findlay says, "a Twitter follower is not necessarily someone who is engaged in the political world."
(Mr. Trudeau has about 179,000 Twitter followers to Ms. Hall Findlay's 6,452. Marc Garneau, another frontrunner, has more than 10,000. Reddit's CanadaPolitics section has more than 5,200 subscribers, with five to 10 times as many who visit the site, but aren't registered.)
Ms. Hall Findlay says her fundraising has also been given a boost through social media, but declined to give exact numbers. Mr. Trudeau's campaign announced earlier this week it has raised almost $600,000 so far, a number the other campaigns may struggle to match.
Ms. Hall Findlay said in an interview she's looking forward to the quick and unfiltered nature of reddit AMAs.
"I don't usually hold back," she said, adding with a laugh: "I could say something really stupid."Songs We Love: Clams Casino, 'A Breath Away (Feat. Kelela)'
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"The mind is so complex when you're based. Thirty-two levels. Welcome to my world." When rapper Lil B uttered those words on his 2009 track "I'm God," he couldn't have known that the song; its producer Michael Volpe, a.k.a. Clams Casino; and the dreamy sound of the "cloud rap" subgenre it spawned would influence hip-hop, R&B and even pop music in the 2010s.
Nearly seven years after the release of that seminal song, Lil B has gone from internet phenomenon to cultural icon and curser of basketball players — a character who has transcended his own music. Clams Casino, on the other hand, has gone from bedroom producer to professional musician, lending the experimental production style he developed in a Nutley, N.J., basement to artists like A$AP Rocky, The Weeknd, Blood Orange, FKA Twigs and Vince Staples.
Clams' debut album is appropriately titled 32 Levels, a nod to the song that put him on the map. The track "A Breath Away," featuring Kelela, is a testament to his growth as a musician and his ability to make a great pop song without sacrificing any of the quirks that make him an interesting electronic and hip-hop producer.
Clams' specialty is creating dramatic, minimalist instrumentals that envelop the listener in pure mood. Meanwhile, Kelela brings R&B sensibilities to electronic music, her infusion of soul leaving no room for sterility. When it comes to subject matter, her realm is the relationship (see Cut 4 Me and the Hallucinogen EP): the emotions, the intimacy, the sexuality and, very importantly, the vulnerability of lovers. In the song's verses, over Clams' murky backdrop, Kelela describes a romance on the rocks: "Why are you complaining? / Keep making a fuss / Like I said, it's built on broken trust." But just as it seems that the couple is doomed, Clams delivers a soaring synth crescendo while a hopeful Kelela sings:
We are A breath away from heaven If we just face this together We could drift away in the same boat Chase the light in the rainbow Hit 'em like a tornado.
The song is beautiful, relatable, repeat-play material. Thank you, Clams and Kelela – and, of course, thank you, #BasedGod.
32 Levels comes out July 15 on Columbia.Earlier Ukrainian media reported that an
outbreak of the H1N1 swine flu virus has killed more than 50 people in towns
and cities across Ukraine.
“We haven’t exceeded the epidemic threshold,
and every year January is the peak of the flu season,” Kvitashvili told
ministers during the televised cabinet session.
He said most of those who had died had sought
treatment too late – six or seven days after becoming ill. He said people
suffering from a high temperature should immediately consult a doctor, and not
attempt to self-medicate, as some common over-the-counter flu treatments would
not be effective after 48 hours.
Writing on her page on Facebook on Jan. 12,
Samopomich lawmaker Irina Sysoyenko, the deputy chairman of the health
committee of the country’s parliament, said the areas worst affected by the flu
included Kyiv city and oblast, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, and Odesa.
“As of today, 5.7 percent of the population is ill
with the flu,” Sysoyenko wrote. “Of these, 70 percent are children and pregnant women.
“Compared to last year, the number of deaths
(from flu) has increased by 10%. In Odesa, 28 people have died from flu, and 25
(have died) in Vinnytsya.”
Sysoyenko did not say over which time period
the deaths had occurred. She gave no figures for the number of deaths from flu
in the capital Kyiv.
She said Ukraine’s Health Ministry had
determined that most of the deaths had occurred because people ill with the flu
– mainly the dangerous H1N1 strain – had delayed seeking treatment, and that
urgent work was required to educate the population on how to respond to the
outbreak. Five of those who had died in Vinnytsya had been infected with a less
dangerous Influenza B virus strain, she said, adding that the Health Ministry
was investigating why these deaths had occurred.
Speaking at a news conference at the Health
Ministry on Jan. 12, the chief of the infectious diseases department at the
Health Ministry, Olha Holubovska, said the Influenza A type virus H1N1 was more
dangerous because it was capable of provoking severe viral pneumonia, which is
often a cause of death. She advised people with symptoms of the virus not to
delay seeking treatment.
“Ukraine has specific treatments influenza,
but they are effective only in the first 48 hours of illness,” Holubovska said.
“So, in the case of dangerous symptoms – a high fever, headache, muscle pain,
sore throat, cough, runny nose, people in high risk groups must go to be
examined and, if necessary, receive treatment within two days of the onset of
influenza symptoms.”
Holubovska said the groups at highest risk were
children under five (especially the under twos), pregnant women, people over
65, overweight people, diabetes suffers, and those with chronic heart or lung
disease.
Health workers, teachers and educators,
vendors, drivers of public transport, and all of those who work in crowded
places are also at heightened risk from flu viruses, she said.
Kyiv Post editor Euan MacDonald can be reached at euan@hotmail.comKATHMANDU, June 18: The government is preparing to construct dry port and international standard exhibition hall in Chobhar. The estimated budget of the project is around Rs 1.5 billion.
Prior to the construction of the project, Nepal Intermodal Transportation Development Committee under Ministry of Commerce has started to demolish the physical structures of Himal Cement Factory.
During the presentation of the annual budget for fiscal year 2013/14, the then government had announced to establish the international standard of exhibition hall and dry port at the unused land of Himal Cement Factory, citing that the current exhibition hall at Bhrikuti Mandap is small. It took almost two years for the government to finalize the papers of the land.
Following which Full Bright Consultancy was assigned, through the tender, to study and to present the DPR to the government. However, due to the delay of the consultancy, the further process was halted.
“We will call for the tender within mid-July”, said Laxman Bahadur Basnet of Nepal Intermodal Transportation Development Committee. With the financial assistance of Rs 1.50 billion of World Bank, the ministry is preparing to start the project in 816 Ropanis land of the cement factory.
“The construction of the dry port and the exhibition halls will be done simultaneously. Two hundred out of 816 Ropanis of total land will be used for the dry port where as the rest will be used for the exhibition halls”, informed Basnet.
After the completion of the project, the sealed imported containers shipped from Kolkata will be screened in this dry port and similarly, the export items will also be dispatched from here only.
There will be separate terminals for import and export. Each terminal will have capacity of 6 hundred cargo trucks.
Likewise, there will be two exhibition halls with the capacity of one thousand people at one time with parking capacity of 12 hundred vehicles.
The center will also have conference hall, theater, park, Kids corner, food stall, meeting hall, etc. According to the agreement paper with the World Bank in 2010, the project should be completed by 2019. However, the government has informed that the project duration will be extended with the mutual consent between two groups.Early morning light hits the U.S. Capitol building on June 6, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The biggest challenge facing Democratic lawmakers in the 2018 congressional elections may lie in motivating their base to vote, rather than simply rally against the president, according to a new Washington Post-ABC poll.
A small majority, 51 percent, of registered voters said they are not considering Trump a factor in the congressional elections despite a continuation of anti-Trump protests since the president took office, according to the poll.
The random survey of 1,001 Americans found that a slight majority of registered voters – 52 percent – would prefer Democratic control of Congress to instill a stronger checks-and-balances system on President Donald Trump. Yet the poll also shows that more Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they are absolutely going to cast their vote than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
The poll, conducted last week, took place before the Republican health care push to overthrow Obamacare failed.
Meanwhile, the president's approval rating has continued to decline since April, dropping to 36 percent. That said, he remains more popular than Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in last year's presidential election, according to a poll released on Tuesday.On 16 February 1886, Lord Randolph Churchill confided a plan to destroy his Liberal opponents to the Conservative lawyer Gerald FitzGibbon. It was a risk, he implied. But if William Gladstone’s Liberal administration proposed home rule for Ireland, “the Orange card would be the one to play. Please God it may turn out to be the ace of trumps and not the two”.
Before tobacco and alcohol killed him – possibly with the help of tertiary syphilis (historians differ on whether he added the pox to his wages of sin) – Churchill was one of the most formidable and unscrupulous Conservative politicians of his age. The doubts in his letter – “please God it may turn out to be the ace” – suggest even he paused before appealing to Protestant sectarianism. From the point of view of the self-interest of the Tory party, Churchill’s tactic, inciting the Protestants of Ulster to reject a Catholic-dominated all-Ireland parliament, was a dazzling success.
Gladstone beseeched the Commons to be generous and remember there was a difference between “giving with freedom and dignity” and “giving under compulsion – giving with disgrace, giving with resentment dogging you at every step”. But respectable English opinion did not feel the inferior Irish could govern themselves. Imperial British nationalism, and religious and racial contempt, drove 93 Liberal MPs to vote down home rule. They left their party and formed an alliance with the Tories, which went on to govern Britain for 17 of the next 20 years.
History vindicated Gladstone, however, and damned Churchill. What wasn’t given freely was taken under compulsion. After the Easter Rising, the Irish Free State eventually left the United Kingdom and the wars in Ireland continued until the Good Friday agreement of 1998. Maybe given the sectarian tensions between Protestant and Catholic they would have happened anyway. But no one can deny that the Tories inflamed tensions that tore the old kingdom of Britain and Ireland apart.
David Cameron is as unscrupulous as Churchill, if nowhere near as formidable. He is trying to sneak an election victory by inflaming English nationalism. In the process he is inflaming Scottish nationalism. It is a truth nowhere nearly as widely acknowledged as it should be that English and Scottish nationalists are like brawling drunks leaning on each other for support. They need each other. The better the Scottish nationalists do, the worse Labour will do and the better able the Conservatives will be to cling to power. If Cameron loses, Scottish nationalism will allow his party to say that an incoming Labour government is controlled by “alien” Scots, who have no right to vote in Westminster. Likewise, if the Conservatives win, the SNP wins too. It will be able to push for independence for Scotland from the rule of “alien” Tories.
To use the only piece of sociological jargon that has enriched the language, the Tories need the Scots to be their “other” and the SNP need the Tories to perform the same useful task for them. Without the “other”, how will they whip “their” people into line and scare them into marching to the polling booths and crossing the right boxes?
The heirs of the Ulster Orangemen Churchill incited to rebel against home rule see the dangers better than half the commentators in London. Of course Scottish nationalist MPs have the right to support what government they please, said Nigel Dodds, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party in Westminster. “Glib and lazy talk about SNP MPs somehow not being as entitled to vote in every division in the Commons, as any other British MP, simply fuels nationalist paranoia.”
The DUP, you will remember, is the political wing of “Dr” Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. When Paisley was alive, it incited hatred against Catholics and came within a whisker of inciting violence. It remains a party of biblical literalists. A large proportion of its members have trouble with the existence of dinosaurs.
It is a measure of Cameron’s cynicism that a sect of Protestant ultra-fundamentalists are more responsible than the supposedly sensible and moderate leader of the British Conservative party.
I am not sure that all members of the English left sense the dangers of nationalism either. If the Tory press runs the absurd fantasy that the SNP will bring socialism to Westminster, I meet many equally absurd English leftists, who hope and believe the Tories are right. Unlike their French and Scottish counterparts, they have always distrusted patriotic feelings about their own country. With good cause, you might say, as borders divide humanity. The worst, however, respect everyone’s borders but their own. Like sex tourists, they search the world for countries where they can enjoy the radical fantasies they can’t get at home. After the Soviet Union, Cuba and Venezuela, we now have the English left, or at least a vocal element within it, seeing Scotland as their dreamland.
The “leftwing” Nicola Sturgeon won the endorsement of Rupert Murdoch’s Scottish Sun. I wasn’t surprised. Alex Salmond’s willingness to lobby on Murdoch’s behalf was so brazen, it became a subject for the Leveson inquiry. The Scottish Labour party has been trying without success to persuade reporters to ask whether the price for Murdoch’s continuing support is a promise from Sturgeon to order nationalist members of parliament not to support Labour’s plans to break up his media empire.
It’s a good question, and when leftists have asked it, they should ask whether they understand that the first concern of any nationalism is to erect barriers, not build social democracy. I don’t think many do. If they did, English leftwing politicians would be bellowing out their plans to stop the growth of an ugly and resentful English nationalism by giving greater power to English cities. That they are not shows they are as blind as Cameron to future dangers.
Churchill did not want to help push Ireland into a conflict that would last a century. But those who came after him had to live with it. I am sure that Cameron does not want to break up the union. He’s not good enough to think beyond the next news cycle. He merely wants to scramble through the next few days and cobble together a deal that will somehow keep him in power. But petty mediocrities can bring calamities as surely as grand villains. All that remains constant is that the rest of us must live with the consequences.IPv6 is Classless
draft-bourbaki-6man-classless-ipv6-04
6man N. Bourbaki Internet-Draft The Intertubes Updates: 4291 (if approved) September 15, 2018 Intended status: Standards Track Expires: March 19, 2019 IPv6 is Classless draft-bourbaki-6man-classless-ipv6-04 Abstract Over the history of IPv6, various classful address models have been proposed, none of which has withstood the test of time. The last remnant of IPv6 classful addressing is a rigid network interface identifier boundary at /64. This document removes the fixed position of that boundary for interface addressing. Status of This Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on March 19, 2019. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of Bourbaki Expires March 19, 2019 [Page 1] Internet-Draft IPv6 is Classless September 2018 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction........................ 2 2. Suggested Reading...................... 2 3. Problems Reinforced by Classful Addressing......... 3 4. Identifier and Subnet Length Statements........... 4 5. Recommendations....................... 4 6. Security Considerations................... 5 7. IANA Considerations..................... 5 8. Authors........................... 5 9. References......................... 5 9.1. Normative References.................. 5 9.2. Informative References................. 6 Author's Address........................ 7 1. Introduction Over the history of the IPv6 protocol, several classful addressing models have been proposed. The most notable example recommended Top- Level Aggregation (TLA) and Next-Level Aggregation (NLA) Identifiers [RFC2450], but was obsoleted by [RFC3587], leaving a single remnant of classful addressing in IPv6: a rigid network interface identifier boundary at /64. This document removes the fixed position of that boundary for interface addressing. Recent proposed changes to the IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture specification [RFC4291] have caused controversy. While link prefixes of varied lengths, e.g. /127, /126, /124, /120,... /64 have been successfully deployed for many years, glaring mismatches between a formal specification and long-standing field deployment practices are never wise, not least because of the strong risk of mis- implementation, which can easily result in serious operational problems. This document also clarifies that IPv6 routing subnets may be of any length up to 128. 2. Suggested Reading It is assumed that the reader understands the history of classful addressing in IPv4 and why it was abolished [RFC4632]. Of course, the acute need to conserve address space that forced the adoption of classless addressing for IPv4 does not apply to IPv6, but the arguments for operational flexibility in address assignment remain compelling. Bourbaki Expires March 19, 2019 [Page 2] Internet-Draft IPv6 is Classless September 2018 It is also assumed that the reader understands IPv6 [RFC2460], the IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture [RFC4291], the proposed changes to RFC4291 [I-D.ietf-6man-rfc4291bis] and RFC2464 [I-D.hinden-6man-rfc2464bis], [RFC7608] an IPv6 Prefix Length |
which is any situation where there is one offensive and one defensive player in the endzone. We just trusted the thrower to do the right thing, and, despite a few errors, it generally worked out for us. Players More often seen at college level, or during finals when lines get shortened, this is just the principle of using your playmakers and letting them make plays, as well as adapting the cuts to the current thrower. When John Hassell has the disc, you can cut pretty much anywhere. Likewise, if you have a player who has a reliable, unusual throw, then use it. To paraphrase Ben Wiggins in his talk about getting more from your D line’s offense, you know that person on your team, with the weird high-release that looks really wobbly but no-one seems able to stop? Why not use it to your advantage? You can also use this strategy to run strings of cutters: “Bart to Beau” seems to have been a popular combo for Team USA / Revolver for a number of years, and it seems that DoG was relying on this when they were the most dominant team in the game. If you give great players space and time, they will get the job done; why restrict them into cutting in a particular way?
These can be the start of a sensible offense, so long as the defense doesn’t know what you’re going to do or can’t stop all of the options even if they do know what’s coming.
The best teams rely on a combination of these to maintain the element of surprise. Compare USA and Canada open teams from their WUGC semifinal and you’ll see USA utilizing principle-based offense which allows space for one cutter at a time, with everyone else staying out of the way, while Canada’s cutters run a flood play to one half of the field to achieve the same effect. Both throw in a hefty dose of just allowing their dominant handlers licence to take control whenever they like, effectively combining all of the above. This is a really important point, as having multiple methods of scoring means you can maintain the ability to be adaptive.
The ability to be adaptive is hugely important. You may have a 6′ 2″ sprinter on your team who just keeps going deep, but what are you going to do when you play a team with a taller / faster player, or if the weather makes this option too unreliable, or maybe just when they are having a bad game? What is your game plan then? Many teams fall into the trap of overconfidence in a specific connection; even very good ones. In short, play to your strengths, but don’t ignore your weaknesses.
Some examples of adaptive teams:
Sockeye 2010: Having lost their main offensive receivers, Sockeye were no longer able to use their usual offensive strategy of relying on dominant athletes to get open; creating large amounts of space to get open was actually working to their disadvantage. Rather than trying to fit their new players into an old system, they reworked their systems to focus on moving the disc at blistering pace, and were able to take a relatively inexperienced team all the way to the final at WUCC. This is a fantastic example of picking something suitable for their team.
Having lost their main offensive receivers, Sockeye were no longer able to use their usual offensive strategy of relying on dominant athletes to get open; creating large amounts of space to get open was actually working to their disadvantage. Rather than trying to fit their new players into an old system, they reworked their systems to focus on moving the disc at blistering pace, and were able to take a relatively inexperienced team all the way to the final at WUCC. This is a fantastic example of picking something suitable for their team. Buzz Bullets 2006: Buzz were comprised of some very athletic players, but a lack of height made them vulnerable in the air. The thing that made the difference for them was the speed with which they moved the disc. All throws were thrown hard and fast, and they hit receivers in stride when throwing deep. Their game plan was that anything that hung in the air was likely to be a turnover, so they kept the disc low and threw it hard. Sometimes they missed those aggressive throws, but they all bought into a game plan and knew what to expect. They won WUCC 2006 and came third in 2010.
So, how do you use all of this?
think about what your team does well
think about what your team likes to do (not necessarily the same as what they do well!)
think about what is difficult to defend
train and play with those things in mind
it is also worth noting that your O line can play a completely different offense to your D line; D line has fewer reps, so probably needs something less “perfect” and more “just let us get on with doing our thing”. Having a few simple plays can really work well.
Know what to expect
Tying into ‘Toolbox’: Your team knows to expect it, the opposition will not. That gives you an advantage. Will it work every time? No. But you don’t need it to. Have a few little tricks and put together combinations of patterns.
How do you practice for your new method of playing? Firstly, you might not need to reinvent the wheel; look to existing resources that you can borrow ideas, patterns or drills from. If you enjoy handler cuts, then focus on that aspect of your offense. You would do well to review the RiseUP handler offense videos, and watch a bit of Sockeye playing catch for inspiration. If you enjoy hucking and catching goals, then practice until you have the best long game in the country. Be sure to vary up the places that your cutters go deep from, the distance between thrower & cutter, the force, and the angles of the cut if you want to truly be able to hit the deep shot consistently from anywhere. Challenge yourselves at practice. You may need to re-train your cutters as much as your throwers; Buzz became famous for their slicing, crossfield deep throws which seemed to surprise defenders, yet the cutters themselves seemed to know exactly where that throw was going.
Don’t be concerned if your brand of ultimate is unusual. Certainly don’t be afraid to play ugly ultimate; remember that a catch in the endzone is worth a goal, no matter how pretty you make that happen. This has particular relevance for defensive line offense, who are likely to play against far more simple defenses. If you have a simple game plan when you get a turn, it can be very effective if you use the element of surprise.
Example — Sweden 2012: In the WUGC quarter final, Sweden played a very different game than they had previously. They used their height (both on zone D & man O) to beat the Japan team who were predicted to go all the way to the Open final. Knowing the conditions favoured an ugly yardage game rather than a ‘pretty’, high percentage one, Sweden threw directly to the endzone as soon as possible on offense, outmuscling Buzz Bullets’ offense which was centered around crisp, fast disc movement. They were unable to adapt to the conditions.
It’s natural that any new offensive strategy will invite opponents to try a variety of defensive looks to see what is effective. You should therefore expect some attempts to stop your offense with new tactical innovation. At practices, actively get your D line to come up with things that make your offense difficult to execute; consider your O & D lines as two competitors in an evolutionary battle against one another.
Different defensive looks encourages your offense to learn on their feet, while different offensive strategies forces your defense to learn new styles of defending. Don’t keep hitting your head against that brick wall — adapt! And equally, don’t cheat yourselves at practice by not allowing people to do things that stop your offense dead in its tracks; if your teammates worked it out, you can be sure that your opponents will too, eventually. If anything, choose drills that make practices more difficult than the real games, and ones that continue to force you to improve every practice.
Some general tips:
Put the disc where the defender can’t get it; even with an athletic mismatch, if you can break the mark then you will have success. Develop a good long game; it doesn’t have to be pitch length throwing, you just need to be able to hit cutters running away from you, in stride, and this could be 20-30m throws
Minimize hang time; the disc should be in the air for the exact amount of time it takes to get to the receiver, and no more. Extra hang time just gives the defender a chance to close. Practice by marking out a target area for the reception, and get the disc is sit in that area. This is one of those really basic drills that is done with complete beginners over very short distances, but actually can scale really well. When you can huck and get the disc to sit at a catchable height in a 10m x 10m box anywhere on the pitch during drills, you’re not going to struggle to hit your targets in a game
Develop a solid zone offense; if you can score against zones, then you can effectively force the other team to play man against you; use 8+ defenders if you need to
Learn to tweak in real-time; get your D line to come up with small changes to their defense in between points at practice. Not only does this teach your D line to analyze and respond to threats in real-time, but your O line gets to play against a few more unpredictable opponent
Breaking the mark gives you lots more options, enables you to maintain field space, and can set up some really easy assists. 3
Avoid your opponent’s strengths; if they like to punt to their athletes, and those athletes are better than yours, then their defenders are likely to be very, very good against deep cutters. You should therefore avoid throwing big throws to your outmatched receivers. Have practices where you assume that your targets are mismatched athletically; combat this by only throwing deep if they have good separation, and throw much shorter passes to minimize hang time that your imaginary athletic opponent might have the chance to catch up to. Then add a defender; if the defender is able to (safely) tap the offensive player before the disc is caught, it’s deemed to be a turnover.
Periodically go back to the beginning; which throws are most useful in your new offense? Make sure everyone’s toolbox is kept up to date. Which bits are not effective and can be scrapped? Keep your own house tidy and you’ll save a lot of heartache down the road. There are no pride points here; the number of times I’ve said to my captains “I’m not sure if this is going to work, but let’s try it and see…”. Some worked, some didn’t. Challenge the status quo.
Conclusion:Matt Damon: Let's Just Ban All Guns "In One Fell Swoop" Except for his team of bodyguards.
Hollywood actor Matt Damon used a press conference in Australia over the Fourth of July weekend to discuss his desire for a massive confiscation of U.S. guns. �You guys did it here in one fell swoop [in 1996] and I wish that could happen in my country, but it�s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly,� Mr. Damon said during a promotional engagement in Sydney for the movie �Jason Bourne.� The action star went on to say people get too �emotional� when it comes to �not selling AK47s to people on terror watchlists.� In related news, Matt Damon is a fucking retard. In related news, Matt Damon is a fucking retard. Posted by: Ace at 05:10 PM
MuNuvians MeeNuvians Polls! Polls! Polls! Frequently Asked Questions The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick Top Top Tens Greatest Hitjobs News/ChatI’ll start by quoting my Facebook status update from just last May:
“Dear decent white people on the interwebs,
Get your cousins.
Get your cousins, get your friends, get your fo’ folk, your aunties, your great grand uncles, your sister’s cousin baby momma’s auntie friend Sally, Jessie AND Raphael. Get your neighbor. Get your neighbor’s neighbor. Get your whoooooole neighborhood watch. Shit, get the whole damn white delegation.
GET YO PEOPLE!!!!!!
Thanks with love,
Black management”
Of course the post gave a bunch of my followers a good chuckle, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t recognize and examine the fact that it came much more from a place of frustration than levity.
I was tired…
I was tired from sacrificing a few million once perfectly healthy brain cells reading through the comment sections of race-based web articles – thread after thread, chock full of black folks trying to navigate oblivious whiteness. At some point we really need to ask ourselves why we even bother. Why are we losing solid hours out of our day, wearing our fingertips numb on keyboards and touch screens in attempt to explain to some dense ass dude-bro why “All lives matter” is a fucked up and functionally redundant response to “Black lives matter”?
My people, please trust me when I tell you, we’ve spelled it out for white America a hundred different ways that their beloved police forces, all over this nation, are abounding with officers who are simply more volatile, fearful and prone to harassment and abuse of power when dealing with us – and it’s costing us our lives. We’ve laid out all the statistics and all of our millions of personal testimonies and we have made it amply clear that, while the subject of police brutality, as a sensationalized national discussion covered by mainstream media, is a relatively new phenomenon, it is an issue as old our involuntary occupation of this country. With all of this information readily available and reiterated ad nauseam, it’s beyond ridiculous that the simple words “black lives matter” require any added explanation at all. And yet, here we are coming up with a dozen analogies trying to, even further, simplify it.
We out here like…
“Uh… uh, hey man,
You wouldn’t go to a cancer rally shouting ‘All diseases matter’ would ya?”
“Uhh hey Scottie,
‘Save the rain forest’ doesn’t mean ‘fuck all the other forests'”
“Hey…hey, wait a minute Kip… Greg… Jon… Connor… Pattie… Mayonnaise…
When a house is burning you don’t turn the fire hose on some non burning house because #AllHousesMatter”
Y’all, can we please STOP THIS SHIT?!
Never mind the fact that we are now juxtaposing the fate of inanimate objects with the fate of black lives in hopes that it’ll aid us in garnering empathy – We need to stop acting like white people don’t take the same reading comprehension portions of standardized tests all through middle and high school that we do – they know how the fuck analogies work. They got it the first time – they just didn’t care.
If they really considered the affirmation of one life mattering to be a denial of the same for all others, then they would consider “Blue Lives Matter” to be just as offensive as “Black Lives Matter” – but they don’t.
Not only are they unoffended by #BlueLivesMatter, but – while they consider any concession or policy change aimed at countering black vulnerability to be unearned special treatment (oh, the irony) – they actively advocate giving police officers protected class status, completely oblivious of the fact that they already have it.
Only, I’m not sure they’re legitimately oblivious. I mean, these mother fuckers live here too, right?
They know damn well there isn’t a state, city or county in this country where the penalties for crimes committed against cops aren’t a hell of a lot steeper than they are for civilians. They know they don’t need a protest, riot or hash tag to ensure that thorough investigations will be done to bring cop killers to justice. They’re not worried about dead cops being put on trial for their own murders. They’re not worried about a not guilty verdict for the murderers of police officers or even a reluctance to bring charges. No one’s looking into a dead cops record fishing for reasons to justify his/her demise. They know good and well that cops have the federal and local governments, the “blue wall” and the delusional admiration of the vast majority of (white) America in their corner.
So how could anyone possibly believe that we, as a society and as a system, don’t already do everything in our collective powers to ensure that value be placed on police lives?
Could it be that white people actually aren’t as concerned with supporting the police as they are in maintaining a counter narrative to black complaints about racist police misconduct? Could it be that their counter narratives to race issues in general are largely disingenuous and, often, just fucking spiteful?
Could it be… and I’m just spit-balling here…
But, could white folks just be… like… completely full of shit?
This is why I submit that black people should simply disengage with white America in discussions about race all together. Let them have their little Klan-esque circle-jerks in the Yahoo and USA Today comment sections. We need to stop arguing with them because, in the end, they aren’t invested like we are. They aren’t paying attention to these stories out of fear for their lives and the lives of their children and spouses, they are only tuned in out of black and brown contempt. This shit is trivial to them. It’s all a pissing contest to see who can be the most smug and condescending – and ultimately dismissive. When we debate these issues, we do so passionately – albeit, not always very articulate and often without a whole lot of depth to our arguments – but we always come from a place of genuine frustration, outrage and fear. When most white people debate the very same issues from an opposing stance, they do so from a place of perpetual obtuseness and indifference and their arguments always pretty much boil down to “If it isn’t my experience it couldn’t possibly be yours.” Even “well meaning” white folks tend to center them-fragile ass-selves in the discussion (#NotAllWhitePeopleOnFleek #IDontSeeColor #IveAlwaysBeenGoodToYouPeople #KumbayaMyLordKumbayaBitches). The fact is, they, both figuratively and literally, have no skin in the game.
Don’t get me wrong, white people are mad. They’ve gone their whole lives being the default for social and cultural normalcy and never really had to think critically about race at all. Now, social media comes along and suddenly their micro-aggressions are constantly being identified and challenged and their privilege is being shoved back down their unsuspecting throats. They’re getting the tint snatched off of their rose color glasses and that “Shiny City on the Hill” they know as America is starting to lose some of it’s gloss. And they ain’t here for that shit – but we are.
So we need to let them cry. Let them gripe about how white is the new black and they are now the true victims of racism because their black coworkers don’t invite them to lunch or some black guy on the train called them a cracker or, of course, because black people on the interwebs hurt…their…little…irrelevant ass… feelings. How nice it must be to have the option of simply loging off of your oppression.
We need to let them cry because, let’s face it people, white tears are delicious. They’re the most perfect blend of sweet and salty since fuckin’ Sour Patch Kids. But we need to learn how to just sit our intellectual selves back and enjoy them.
When Rachel Dolezal got her counterfeit ass black card snatched along with her counterfeit ass edges, we struck comedy gold for black meme makers all over the web. The “Ask Rachel” hashtag was born and scrolling through your Black Twitter feed became something like running a marathon. Only, the people on the sidelines were handing out little paper cups full of white tears instead of regular ol’ drinking water. But instead of enjoying ourselves, far too many of us were arguing with smug fucking white people about why this is completely different from Caitlyn Jenner and why this doesn’t, in any way, make “black privilege” a thing.
When Beyoncé released the video for Formation, featuring a black kid in a hoodie, a “Hands up, don’t shoot” banner and a sinking police car – then performed the song while paying homage to the Black Panther Party during the Super Bowl halftime show (and thus right smack in the face of white America) – she provided us with a bottomless open bar of white tears. But, instead of getting good and damn drunk like we should’ve been, too many of us were arguing with white folks about why nothing she did was racist, “reverse racist” or anti cop. We should’ve just took the win and let their asses cry.
Just a few weeks ago during the RNC, Melania Trump plagiarized a chunk of Michelle Obama’s DNC speech. And a lot of y’all were out here arguing with Trump supporters and other assorted delusional white folks who had the audacity to claim there was never any plagiarism at all. What you should’ve been doing was joining me, Jesse Williams and our beloved Black Twitter in intentionally misattributing black quotes to her dumbass… because… duh… it was fun.
Shit, I had a field day:
“Until you do right by me, everything you even think about gonna crumble” – Melania Trump
“When he fuck me good I take his ass to Red Lobster, cuz I slay” – Melania Trump
“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” – Melania Trump
Right now we have George Zimmerman getting knocked the fuck out in the street, Dylan Roof getting the dog shit beat out of him in prison, viral video of a black woman stomping the hell out of a white man for calling her a “nigger bitch” and black girl magic oozing all over the 2016 Olympics – And we have a sea of white spectators watching us celebrate ourselves and getting aggravated. And to all of this, I say “cheers”.
The fact is, we can fight systemic racism without white validation. We can continue shutting down bridges and highways every time there’s a new Alton Sterling, Philando Castile or Korryn Gaines in the news and let white folks complain about the intrusion on there lives. We can continue moving our black dollars into black banks and take steps towards removing ourselves from the mainstream economy altogether and keeping our money in our businesses and communities. We don’t need them to “get it” for us to keep fighting.
And likewise, white people who truly want to be allies can find their path to ally-ship without black validation and without us having to take time out of our days to educate them. They can find their own curriculum and figure out for themselves how they can do their part in fighting the good fight. And, again, they can do so without the promise of black praise. I’m no longer asking decent white people to “get their cousins”, I’m only expecting them to “get” themselves. And, I’m not even about to keep checking to see if they’re doing that much. Because it’s not my goddamn job – and it’s not yours either.
Black people, it is long past time for us to start practicing in self care. And if that means completely disengaging with white America altogether, then so be it.
.I just sent this broadcast out on Goonswarm jabber.
Warning: Marivauder, who joined Bat Country after stealing the contents of his previous wormhole corp’s POS, is a dirty thief. He put an alt in droneland pets BCA*, who welcomed him with open arms, and how does he repay them? He warps to a POS, finds the pos shields set to alliance access, finds their XLSMA set to alliance access, peers inside and finds an Aeon. You or I would have discreetly informed a senior member of BCA of this ghastly oversight. But not this untrustworthy ingrate. So he popped it out, jumped it to a cyno lit by his alt, jumped that into the Aeon and made his way back to BCA to await further gifts. Plus one GSF aeon and the GIA sends its regards. Be sure to shun this wicked malfeasant. *We kicked BCA out of Deklein for being useless, almost four years ago. Nothing much has changed, obviously.
Background
This theft took place in the last few days. I can’t tell you the exact day because we don’t want to risk burning the spy. But it is very recent.
To clarify, Marivauder is a member of Bat Country, and one I’ve met and drunk with. I am not actually angry with him. Not today, anyway. You should totally let his alts into your alliance.
He has an agent in BCA. That’s not unusual: Bat Country run the GIA (the Goonfleet Intelligence Agency), and have done for years, and a lot of its members have agents in hostile alliances.
That has its downsides, too: with so many senior members playing Eve Online on two sets of accounts, burnout is a bit more common than in most corps, and at any given time we have a few people who just play DotA or other bad-but-not-as-bad-as-Eve Online games on Teamspeak, but we do try to get together for roams and corp ops to keep people from missing the company of their own corp too much.
We also host spies from other alliances, such as Vince Draken, whose time as a spy here ended in jollity and with whom we like to think we’re still on good terms. There is certainly a home for him here when this whole NCdot nonsense blows over.
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Toronto's Port Lands could be set for a dramatic transformation. With representatives of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) in town to build support for the City's prospective bid for the 2025 World Expo, the Port Lands have been at the forefront of prospective plans for the event. During an event held at the Toronto Region Board of Trade (TRBOT) yesterday, a panel discussion foregrounded the Port Lands as a viable site for the event, while the socio-economic and cultural benefits of hosting the Expo were widely touted.
The panel discussion featured the Toronto Port Lands Company's CFO Winston Young alongside BIE's Deputy Secretary General Dimitri Kerkentzes, Greenland Group's CEO Henry Cao, and the Canadian Ambassador to Colombia Carmen Sylvain. Moderated by TRBOT's Jan De Silva, the conversation outlined the benefits of a well-hosted event, which can range from immediate profit to long-term economic growth, as well as the somewhat intangible effect of civic "branding" that can help establish a cultural sense of place.
Kerkentsez, Sylvain, De Silva, Cao, and Young (l-r), image by Craig White
Unlike many international events, Kerkentzes told the audience that many Expos "can turn a profit" based on high numbers of visitors and (comparatively) low costs. Kerkentzes and Cao noted that Shanghai was able to profit on hosting the 2010 Expo, and Kerkentzes added that the "numbers from Milan's 2015 expo also look promising." Cao also argued that the the Shanghai Expo was instrumental in delivering accelerated transit and infrastructure upgrades, while the panel also discussed how the creation Lisbon's new central business district was facilitated by Expo 98.
For Toronto, the panel argued that hosting the event would be a boon to regenerating the Port Lands and establishing the city as a more prominent business and tourism destination. According to Young, the Port Lands were first identified as a potential site for the Expo two years ago. Since Toronto's underutilized Port Lands are "relatively isolated geographically," Young believes that an "urban revitalization" of the site would not entail "not too much disruption and congestion." As with past events, most infrastructural projects and improvements are likely to be concentrated on the Expo site itself.
Looking southeast across Toronto's Port Lands, image by Marcus Mitanis
Sylvain also told the assembled audience—which included local business leaders, development professionals, and public sector figures—that a successful bid (and an economically productive event) would require co-operation from the Federal government, which would likely entail an influx of infrastructure spending. In addition, the theme of the event and the long-term potential of the chosen site were also cited as important factors.
Following the panel discussion, BIE Secretary General Vicente Loscertales closed out the event with a speech that underlined the importance of integrating the business community into the planning and execution of the event. Citing Tsukuba's Expo 85 as a precedent, Loscertales noted that "corporations like Mitsui and Sony invested a lot," helping create a nascent high-tech hub in the region.
Vicente Loscerates speaks at the Toronto Region Board of Trade, image by Craig White
Though yesterday's event amounted to a sort of high-concept pep rally for the Toronto Expo, realistically weighing the risks and benefits of hosting the event is certain to prove significantly more complex. For one thing, many past Expos have left behind legacies of debt, while global interest in the event has waned in recent decades.
Voicing another concern, the Urban Land Institute's Executive Director Richard Joy asked the panel whether it's still fair to compare the cultural reach of today's Expos to Montreal 67 or Vancouver 86, which took place "before the internet, and during the Cold War, when global cultural exchange was much more limited." Indeed, it seems true that contemporary Expos don't hold as exalted a place in the cultural imagination as past events, which enthralled visitors with visions of technological utopianism. That forefront of innovation has moved elsewhere, and for many that sort of crowded, sweetly naïve enthusiasm is more of a relic of the 20th century.
While the BIA representatives pointed out that Shanghai's 2010 Expo set a record for total visitors (though Montreal continues to hold the record for most international visitors) modern events are clearly no longer the global sensations they once were. As it stands, both Canada and the U.S. have allowed their BIE memberships to lapse, suggesting diminished interest in the event over recent decades.
While it's still early in the process, more details of a potential bid—including the theme, as well as economic projections and detailed infrastructural plans—will more clearly outline an Expo's potential benefits. If the City does follow through with a successful bid, however, the challenge will be to create an event that's a defining cultural legacy for Toronto rather than one that just delivers an afternoon of fun for the family.
What do you think of Toronto's prospective bid? Feel free to join in the conversation by leaving a comment below this page, or by contributing to the discussion on our Forum.An Act of Pure Evil
By
Cognitive Dissonance
When I selected the name of my avatar here on Zero Hedge and began posting comments, then articles when I became a contributing editor, there was deliberate and conscious intent on my part to disturb the cognitive dissonance of the herd. Rarely do we personally grow unless sufficiently prodded with a poker.
My intent with this article is NOT to stick a finger in the wound and cause more pain. Not in the least. But "We the People" have an extremely complex, some might say insane, relationship with murder/death/kill. To put it bluntly, we have been deeply conditioned to believe certain 'types' of killing are just and righteous, therefore 'legal'. More importantly, we believe that just about the only righteous killing can, and must, be conducted by the state and its duly appointed apparatchiks.
To be even more blunt....that's screwed up. This article illuminates both the state's, and our, hypocrisy.
WARNING!! Trigger alert. Do NOT read this if you wish to remain comfortable with your belief systems.
This is being written the day after the mass shooting in Las Vegas and it in no way diminishes the horror and suffering experienced by all involved. I cannot imagine what it was like to be watching an outdoor concert and suddenly find myself under fire with nowhere to run and no place to hide.
It was truly horrific, senseless and so very sad. Or as President Trump declared in his morning after address to the nation, this was “an act of pure evil”.
There is no doubt over the ensuing days, weeks and months millions of words will be spoken and written about this singular act of violence perpetrated upon an unaware and unprepared crowd of dessert revelers. From arm chair psychologists such as this author to so called ‘experts’, we will be bombarded with one part insight to every hundred parts nonsense.
No doubt the nonsense will prevail.
I suspect some readers will not take kindly to me going off script so soon after what is being billed as a national tragedy. In my defense, the difference between me and your average sociopath politician is I am attempting to empower the reader by expanding our minds while they are trying to dis-empower the reader via carefully crafted propaganda and cognitive manipulation.
They want you to refasten your blinders while I wish to tear them off.
I absolutely guarantee you nearly every single political leader and wannabe is thinking only one thought at this precise moment. How can I use this situation to my political advantage? You cannot participate in modern day politics and not think in this manner, regardless of how good and honest you might claim to be.
When you swim in the swamp, you employ the same techniques and thought processes as all the other swamp dwellers. At best it is an occupational hazard, at worst an all consuming disease. Unfortunately very few escape with their morals and dignity intact and none succeed in draining, or even changing the flow of the fetid swamp waters.
But this isn’t the purpose of this screed at all. Either we fully recognize, and are repulsed by, the nature of the swamp and those who dwell within while taking concrete and purposeful steps to distance ourselves as much as possible from all that the swamp encompasses. Or we have learned to mostly ignore it, live with it, benefit from it or directly participate in it.
I tell myself I’m somewhere in-between, but that just might be my ego talking.
There are no innocents, only collaterally damaged individuals. But there are plenty who declare ourselves innocent, claiming the Sergeant Schultz defense of “I see nothing, I know nothing and I wasn’t even (t)here”.
I do not dispute the fact that planning and preparing for, and then carrying out, an act of mass murder and mayhem is indefensible and inexcusable. I assume the reader feels the same way I do, that the person who perpetuated this bloodshed with forethought and malice was mentally deranged and possibly even ‘evil’, regardless of the details of motive and method.
Where we might depart the same path is in how we characterize mentally deranged as defined by a nearly equally mentally deranged society. What, exactly, is the difference between a ‘crazy’ individual shooting from the 32nd floor of a hotel into a large crowd of people with conscious intent to kill and a nation’s military lobbing cruise missiles or dropping bombs onto an opposing nation’s population centers, occupied hospitals or upon other so called ‘innocents’ with the same conscious intent to kill?
Now I am absolutely positive the reader’s mind is racing through the thousand and one excuses, reasons and rationalizations we have been programmed with, and conditioned to believe and repeat, in order to justify homicide, murder really, to ourselves and to our peers in the name of ‘war’.
I get it. I understand. I am the product of the same conditioning and propaganda everyone else has been exposed to. But the question remains entirely reasonable and relevant. How is homicide by the state any different than homicide by an individual, whether on a mass or individual basis?
Once we begin to delve into this thorny issue, the next question is why do “We the People” support one homicidal entity while vigorously condemning the other?
Ever notice how violence conducted in an ‘offensive’ manner is decried as wrong and ‘illegal’, evil even, while violence employed purely in defense of yourself and those around you is accepted as reasonable and justified? After all, civilized people know there are rules to follow when conducting war. You can’t have people just killing and maiming each other willy-nilly with no rules, now can you?
This is precisely why all nations frame war, before, during and after, as unavoidable and defensive in nature. And it’s also the reason why nations routinely engage in false flag operations in order to create plausible deniability and justification for homicide in order to gain, consolidate or hold on to power, wealth and control.
I can drop 1,000 pound bombs on your head or direct a cruise missile through your kitchen window, but I can’t use poison gas, exploding bullets or other such ‘illegal’ methods of particularly gruesome homicide. As if being blown into bits and pieces by a bomb or missile isn’t particularly gruesome or horrifying.
The fact remains we can rationalize away anything we wish to justify, first as individuals and then as a herd, by simply framing the discussion in ways that fit already programmed terms and conditions that justify our actions. Helpfully (thankfully, for we as ‘moral’ individuals might balk at doing so) the programming is already determined, then promoted and placed via state sponsored education and later via the deeply influenced, if not outright controlled, state propaganda arm called mainstream media.
All that remains is for us to not only accept it, but endlessly repeat it back to others, the ultimate positive feedback loop of group-think that reinforces both our conditioning and the continuing acceptance of our conditioning. The base message is usually not that sophisticated, enabling infinite modification by each individual so that state sponsored homicide is not only acceptable, but in many situations desirable and even necessary.
Once we are able to shoehorn distasteful nonconforming tidbits into our internal narrative, we sleep better at night. Never underestimate the lengths to which we will go to believe precisely what we want to believe.
So there you have it. One ‘madman’ with several automatics and lots of ammo randomly, and rapidly, shooting at human fish in a barrel is bad, very bad. Of this there is no argument from me. But college educated chisel jaw all American hero pilots dropping 1,000 pound bombs on hospitals or strafing wedding parties is acceptable as long as he or she is following ‘legal’ orders and plays by the rules of war a la legal murder/homicide.
And if there is some unfortunate targeting snafu or human error that leads to collateral damage |
aining.
A companion bill (S2880) sponsored by state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., (R-Union) sailed through the upper house of the New Jersey Legislature in June.
Because some technical amendments were made to the bill before the Assembly vote, the Senate convened Tuesday to concur with the changes.
In order to take effect, the bill will need to be signed by Christie, who will have until Jan. 19 to approve it.
Lesniak said Monday he hadn't received any commitments from the Republican Presidential candidate, but the Democratic lawmaker from Union viewed Christie's comments from last March as a public show of support for Rutgers' quest to upgrade its athletics facilities.
"I'm optimistic because of the fact that (Rutgers) President (Robert) Barchi, (Board of Governors) Chairman (Greg) Brown and Athletics Director (Pat) Hobbs have made their support known to the Governor and the Governor himself has said he believes Rutgers athletc facilities should be Big Ten quality,'' Lesniak said. "This is a critical element to make that happen. So I'm optimistic that he'll sign it.''
The bill provides up to $25 million in tax credits under Economic Redevelopment and Growth Grant Program for certain infrastructure at Rutgers, which last June announced a plan to upgrade its athletics facilities with a series of projects that would support the 24-team program.
To accommodate the additional tax credits without adversely affecting previously created ERG tax credit program categories, the bill would raise the total ERG tax credit program cap from $600 million to $625 million.
According to the bill description, "ERG tax credit awards are authorized for taxpayer use in up to 10 equal annual installments following project completion, must close a project financing gap that otherwise would be likely to prevent a project's realization, and cannot exceed 30 percent of total project cost in conjunction with any municipal ERG award. The application deadline is July 1, 2016 and projects must obtain temporary certificates of occupancy by July 28, 2018.''
Keith Sargeant may be reached at ksargeant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KSargeantNJ. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.The Iraqi army wrested control of a village held by the Islamic State south of Mosul on Tuesday, nearly three months after launching an offensive to retake it.
The Iraqi military said forces from the 71st Brigade of the army’s 15th Division, which has closely trained with the U.S.-led coalition in the country, led the operation to secure Nasr, 35 miles south of Mosul, after a renewed push. However, the head of the brigade, Brig. Gen. Badr Ahmed al-Luhaibi, was killed.
[After more than $1.6 billion in U.S. aid, Iraq’s army still struggles]
The delay in recapturing the village had proved to be an embarrassment for the Iraqi army and the coalition, with the operation having been touted as the first real test of freshly trained Iraqi units. The United States spent more than $1.6 billion training and equipping the Iraqi army last year, an effort largely centered on troops designated for the operation to recapture Mosul, the largest Iraqi city under the control of the Islamic State.
Iraqi forces are still a long way from being able to begin an offensive targeting the northern city itself, which President Obama had said he envisaged by the end of the year. In addition to military preparation, such an operation requires political coordination between Baghdad and the semiautonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, and those relations are strained.
[The Islamic State has lost this much territory in Iraq and Syria this year]
A drawn-out and bloody battle for Fallujah, the city west of Baghdad that was the first in the country to fall to the Islamic State, also could further delay preparations, with units needed for Mosul tied up in fighting there.
Still, some long-awaited reinforcements finally arrived south of Mosul over the weekend, including tanks.
Maj. Gen. Najim al-Jabouri, commander of the Mosul operation, had complained that the lack of armored support was hampering progress.
[American troops edge closer to the front lines in Iraq]
“In only three hours, we liberated the village and crushed the resistance,” said Lt. Col. Helan Mahmood, the head of an army commando unit that fought in Nasr. He said the recently arrived armored units had played a “major role.” Iraqi army units also retook the nearby village of Hajj Ali on Monday evening, he added.
Iraqi forces briefly entered Nasr in late March, declaring it under their control before withdrawing again. The head of the brigade was dismissed after the failed operation and replaced with Luhaibi.
Read more:
Under strain, Islamic State takes its battle to the streets of Baghdad
Iraq is broke. Add that to its list of worries.
A tale of two cities in Aleppo
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the worldFailed U-turn leaves bendy bus stuck in middle of road at Avalon Beach
Updated
A bendy bus ended up stranded across a road in Sydney's northern beaches after becoming wedged on a median strip.
A witness told the ABC the driver of the State Transit bus tried to do a U-turn near the intersection of Avalon Parade and Barrenjoey Road in Avalon Beach about 8:00am.
A spokeswoman for State Transit said no one was onboard the bus at the time of the incident.
"Due to the turning vehicle's turning ability, the bus was unable to complete the manoeuvre and blocked all south-bound lanes and one north-bound lane of traffic as a result," she said.
"A State Transit mechanic attended the scene quickly and the bus was moved shortly after at around 8:30am.
"The driver involved was counselled and will be given additional training operating a bendy bus."
A sign post on the side of the road was removed temporarily to allow the vehicle to turn around.
No-one was hurt in the incident.
The Transport Management Centre said a mechanic was sent out to help move the bus.
Topics: disasters-and-accidents, accidents, road, avalon-beach-2107, nsw, australia
First postedMETAIRIE, La. -- When the New Orleans Saints visited Fort Collins, Colorado, to hold a private workout with quarterback Garrett Grayson just three days before the draft, they also wanted to do a little film study with him. So they cued up his game at Boston College from last September.
That one game essentially told the entire story of Grayson's turbulent but resilient career at Colorado State.
It began with two interceptions in the first quarter and a big hit that resulted in an injury to his throwing shoulder. It ended with a game-winning, 12-yard touchdown pass on fourth-and-10 with just over a minute remaining -- to Grayson's fifth option in the progression.
"You probably run that play 50 times, there may be once that you're gonna get to that part of it," former Colorado State and current Florida head coach Jim McElwain said. "I mean, it was the 'go to the bathroom' route.
"I think that speaks volumes. For him to keep his poise and to be able to find that was something. That's kind of when it hits you and you say, 'This guy gets it.'"
Grayson rolled to his right on the play to buy time when he saw that Boston College had flooded the left side of the field with coverage. Grayson was surprised to find that receiver Charles Lovett was left uncovered when he looked to the back of the end zone. So he delivered a pass near the sideline that gave Lovett just enough room to tap his toes down.
"Game. Set. Match. I love this play!" ESPN analyst Jon Gruden marveled when he reviewed the play with Grayson during their pre-draft taping of a "QB Camp" special. "You threw the dead route to beat Boston College. That's awesome."
Gruden then added the words, "Changing the culture."
The play was bigger than just one moment or one game. It was, indeed, a culture-changing victory on the road against a top-tier opponent from a major conference.
Colorado State had won a total of seven games in Grayson's first two seasons -- the second of which was derailed by a broken collarbone -- which led to a coaching change and McElwain's arrival. Then the Rams went 8-6 in Grayson's junior year and started 2-1 in his senior year, including a loss at Boise State.
The win at Boston College helped ignite a nine-game win streak and a 10-3 finish.
"That's probably my favorite game through my whole career," Grayson said this past weekend during a break between practices at the Saints' rookie minicamp. "Because I threw two picks in the first quarter, we were down 14-0 and then we came back, battled back.
"We needed a touchdown to win it, fourth-and-(10), a minute left in the game. It doesn't get any better than that."
Coach Sean Payton said the Saints reviewed every game Grayson played in college. But they broke down that particular game with him because it contained the lows before the highs.
"You want to see how they handle some adversity," Payton said.
Clearly, the Saints liked what they saw.
They drafted Grayson in the third round, with the 75th pick -- the first time Payton has selected a quarterback before the seventh round and the earliest the Saints have taken one in the standard draft since Archie Manning in 1971.
Because longtime starter Drew Brees is still just 36 years old, the Saints weren't in desperate need of a quarterback. But they did take a more thorough look than usual at this year's class, holding private workouts for multiple mid-round prospects. Payton said the Saints reached the conclusion that one -- and only one -- was worth selecting that high.
"For us, there wasn't more than one. This was the player if he was available," Payton said after the draft. "If not, we probably would have went without drafting a quarterback."
Garrett Grayson shook off a rocky start to help Colorado State defeat Boston College on Sept. 27, 2014. AP Photo/Stephan Savoia
Handling adversity wasn't always one of Grayson's strengths.
He readily admits that he failed in that area the first time he faced major obstacles as a young college quarterback. Grayson broke the collarbone in his non-throwing shoulder five games into his sophomore year in 2012, then re-injured it later that year when he tried to come back too early. The plate that had been inserted in the collarbone shifted out of place.
Grayson said he became depressed for a long time afterward, that he couldn't handle watching practices and standing on the sideline without being able to play. And he decided to get away from the team for a while -- a decision he later regretted.
"I came back and I apologized to all my teammates because I didn't feel like I handled that whole process the right way," Grayson said. "I just wasn't there as much as I should have been. As a quarterback, you should always be a guy you can count on and be there for your teammates.
"That was something that was kind of like a stab in the heart. It just hurts when you can kind of see it in your teammates' eyes that you're letting them down."
Grayson also got down on himself when he struggled on the field during an 0-2 start to the 2013 season. He blamed himself for the losses as the frustration built. He later credited extra film study with McElwain and offensive coordinator Dave Baldwin for getting him on the right track.
Now, Grayson credits both of those rough patches for helping to shape him.
"It hasn't been all glory," Grayson said. "There's definitely the tough times, and it made me who I am."
Grayson has a tattoo on his chest with one of his father's favorite quotes: "Don't ever leave somewhere saying you could have done more."
"And I think I've done a good job of it," Grayson told Gruden during their "QB Camp" conversation.
Lovett -- the receiver who reeled in that culture-changing touchdown catch -- agrees.
Lovett, who was also in Saints camp for a tryout this past weekend, said Grayson's apology in the spring of 2013 meant a lot to others on the team -- but that they also understood how tough the injuries were on Grayson and "let him know that we were behind him 100 percent."
"He came back with more confidence and more strength in that arm, and it sort of led him to where he was today. It was negative energy that fueled the positive fire," said Lovett, who said Grayson stands out for his "good heart" as much as being a great athlete.
Along with the 18 victories, Grayson posted gaudy numbers over his final two college seasons: 7,702 yards, 55 touchdowns and 18 interceptions.
"You're getting not only a really, really good player, but a guy who just loves the game," McElwain said. "He's competitive, he's tough. I mean, this guy took some beatings now and never flinched. I just can't say enough good things about him."
Grayson has an opportunity in New Orelans to watch and learn as an understudy. Trevor Ruszkowski/USA TODAY Sports
The Saints are also getting a lifelong "underdog," as Grayson described himself.
The 6-foot-2, 220-pound quarterback had a prolific career at Heritage High School in Vancouver, Washington. But he was still lightly recruited. Washington State wanted him to play safety.
Louisville coach Steve Kragthorpe reportedly liked Grayson but didn't have an opening, so he recommended him to former Colorado State coach Steve Fairchild. Even then, Grayson was grayshirted as a freshman, delaying his enrollment until January 2011.
So Grayson went to live with his sister who was teaching at -- of all places -- Brees' alma mater, Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. While Grayson was in Austin, his high school coach arranged for him to spend the fall working with former NFL and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Ty Detmer while volunteering to help coach Detmer's high school team.
"When he came in, I was kind of like: 'Man, this guy's got all the tools. I'd like to see what Colorado State has on their team right now,'" Detmer said. "I was kind of shocked a little bit that he wasn't already playing for somebody."
One thing they worked on was transitioning from the spread offense Grayson ran in high school to taking snaps under center in Colorado State's pro-style offense.
"He did some five- and seven-step drops, things he hadn't done, some different kinds of throws. But, shoot, he made every one of them and made it look pretty easy," Detmer said.
The harder transition in his early years at Colorado State, Grayson and McElwain both said, was learning not to go for the "home run" all the time. Grayson said that was a habit from his old days in the spread, and he learned to realize that sometimes the 2-yard pass was the best play.
"And then the other thing, I think he did a good job of studying what color jersey we were wearing that given week and throwing to that color jersey," McElwain cracked of Grayson's early struggles with turnovers.
Ultimately, Grayson's mastery of the pro-style offense became one of the reasons why he was the third quarterback taken in this year's draft class, behind only the top-two picks, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota. Pro-style quarterbacks have become rare in the spread-heavy college game.
McElwain said Grayson had a great ability to do things like adjust protections, make run-pass play calls at the line of scrimmage and exploit the "hot read" when he saw a blitz coming.
Gruden, who called Grayson the "sleeper" of the draft and the best chance to slip through the cracks like Russell Wilson did three years ago, marveled at Grayson's recall. Gruden said they "covered four hours of film in an hour."
It's not surprising, then, that Payton became so drawn to Grayson. Payton and Gruden are close friends who used to work together and grew up in the same West Coast-style offense.
Payton said Grayson's size, stature and accuracy were all pluses. But along with those position-specific traits, the Saints look at things like: "Is he a guy that competes? Is he tough? How is he when the team's behind? How does he handle [defensive] pressure?"
"Throughout the process," Payton said, "we saw a number of things that we valued."One of the new, more controversial provisions expands depression to include some forms of grief. On its face it makes sense. The grieving often display all the common indicators of depression — loss of interest in life, loss of appetite, irregular sleep patterns, low functionality, etc. But as others have observed, those same symptoms are the very hallmarks of grief itself.
Ours is an age in which the airwaves and media are one large drug emporium that claims to fix everything from sleep to sex. I fear that being human is itself fast becoming a condition. It’s as if we are trying to contain grief, and the absolute pain of a loss like mine. We have become increasingly disassociated and estranged from the patterns of life and death, uncomfortable with the messiness of our own humanity, aging and, ultimately, mortality.
Challenge and hardship have become pathologized and monetized. Instead of enhancing our coping skills, we undermine them and seek shortcuts where there are none, eroding the resilience upon which each of us, at some point in our lives, must rely. Diagnosing grief as a part of depression runs the very real risk of delegitimizing that which is most human — the bonds of our love and attachment to one another. The new entry in the D.S.M. cannot tame grief by giving it a name or a subsection, nor render it less frightening or more manageable.
The D.S.M. would do well to recognize that a broken heart is not a medical condition, and that medication is ill-suited to repair some tears. Time does not heal all wounds, closure is a fiction, and so too is the notion that God never asks of us more than we can bear. Enduring the unbearable is sometimes exactly what life asks of us.
But there is a sweetness even to the intensity of this pain I feel. It is the thing that holds me still to my son. And yes, there is a balm even in the pain. I shall let it go when it is time, without reference to the D.S.M., and without the aid of a pill.Electronic Arts has announced its Q4 and fiscal year 2013 financials with the news Battlefield 3 Premium has over 3.5 million subscribers to-date, and generated over $120 million in revenue through the March quarter.
Full Year & Q4 2013 Battlefield 3 Premium has 3.5 Million subs. It generated $120 million in revenue from launch through March 31. SWTOR – Since going F2P 1.7 million new players have joined; monthly revenue has more than doubled. Paid subs are over 500,000. SimCity has sold 1.6 million units; 50% of sales were digital downloads. Sales for Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3 came in below expectations. FIFA 13 sold through over 14.5 million units in FY13; digital net revenue topped $200 million – up 94% over FIFA 12. Total FIFA digital net revenue was approximately $350 million for FY13. In FY14, 11 titles will be released; mobile titles released will total 15. The Sims Free Play has more than 55 million installs. Origin now boasts 47 million users, including 20 million mobile users. Real Racing 3 for iOS has been downloaded 30 million times and has 2.5 million DAU. The Simpsons: Tapped Out generated almost $10 million in net revenue during Q4; has made almost $50 million since launching in August. It has 13 million installs. NBA Live will be released in FY14 and more information will be announced at a later date. Digital net revenue hit $453 million, up from $419 million year-over-year. Q4 profits hit $323 million, down compared to $400 million year-over-year. Total revenue for FY13 was $3.8 billion, down from $4.14 billion in 2012
EA said that SimCity moved over 1.6 million units since launching in March, and that approximately 50% of sales came from digital downloads.
Labels president Frank Gibeau said SimCity had a “challenging” launch due to the rush of players on its servers. Said the firm ” learned our lesson,” and that such a thing “will not happen again.”
“SimCity [is] a great game that has recovered from a challenging launch,” he said. “The short explanation for the launch is that the initial rush of consumers overwhelmed our gaming service, disrupting the consumer experience. As we stabilized the game and improved service in the first week, fans continued to pour in.
“So far, we are ahead of forecast, with more than 1.6 million units sold through to customers. The digital story is particularly strong, nearly 50% of those sales were high-margin digital downloads. The key takeaway here, SimCity is a highly resilient global franchise with a long service life in front of it, but we learned our lesson and are now building better processes to anticipate that service demand.
“This will not happen again.”
FIFA 13 sold through over 14.5 million units in FY 2013, a 30% increase versus FIFA 12 in the prior year and digital net revenue for the title topped $200 million in FY 2013 – a 94% increase versus FIFA 12 the prior year.
Total digital net revenue for FIFA generated nearly $350 million in FY 2013 through EA Sports, FIFA Online and FIFA World Class Soccer.
The Simpsons: Tapped Out was one of the top-5 grossing iOS game during the March quarter, generating almost $10 million in digital net revenue through the quarter, and sales totaling almost $50 million since launching in August 2012.
Real Racing 3, the number one racing title on iOS, has over 30 million downloads, and has averaged over 2.5 million daily active users since launching in March.
EA’s games and services for mobile and handheld digital revenue generated $104 million in the quarter, a 21% year-over-year increase in digital net revenue. The firm’s Origin platform now boasts 47 million users, including 20 million mobile users.
The firm also reiterated that it will develop and publish new Star Wars titles through a new deal with Disney.
“EA and Disney have signed an agreement to create a number of games on the Star Wars franchise,” said EA labels president Frank Gibeau. “Our agreement unlocks a whole new future of Star Wars games that will span consoles, PCs, tablets, mobile, and more.”
“We are not releasing details about the games today, but some of our most renowned and innovative creative teams are working on ideas,” said Gibeau. “The new games may borrow from films but will be entirely new stories and new gameplay powered by our Frostbite 3 engine.”
DICE and Visceral will produce new games in the franchise, according to Gibeau along with “BioWare which is already developing for the Star Wars franchise.”
Whether this statement referred to SWTOR or a new game from Bioware, we’re unsure.
External and internal candidates for CEO are being still being considered, according to interim CEO and executive chairman Larry Probst.
Gibeau said the firm will reveal next-gen titles in development for FY14 at E3. So expect to hear more information on Battlefield 4, FIFA, Madden, NBA Live and more during the June event.
“We plan to unveil new titles from DICE, EA Sports, Bioware, and other new games,” he said, adding that Frostbite 3 and the firm’s “new sports engine” will be revealed at E3 as well.
“This world class tech is powering all of our development on the new systems,” he said. “It provides an enduring common technology for our developers which saves cost, fosters efficiency, and provides spectacular physics and graphics for our games.”
According to EA, it was the number one publisher in Western retail markets in the March quarter, and the number one global publisher in the iOS game market for FY 2013.
“As we enter a new fiscal year, EA is well-positioned for dynamic growth on next generation consoles, PCs, and mobile platforms,” said executive chairman Larry Probst.
“With world-class games, a rapidly growing digital business, and top-notch creative talent, we are excited about EA’s strategy for FY 2014 and beyond.”
Total profits for Q4 ending March 31 was $323 million, down compared to the $400 million generated during the same period in 2012.
Total revenue for FY13 was $3.8 billion, down from $4.14 billion in 2012, but profits were up to $98 million, compared to $76 million year-over-year.
Digital net revenue hit $453 million, up from $419 million year-over-year.
On the subject of the company’s recent lay-offs and rumored restructuring, CFO Blake Jorgensen confirmed 10% of the publisher’s global staff had been cut, with an expected severance cost total of $16 million. A 10% reduction in staff would put the number of redundancies at approximately 900.American journalist and author
Andrew Ross Sorkin (born February 19, 1977) is an American journalist and author. He is a financial columnist for The New York Times and a co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box. He is also the founder and editor of DealBook, a financial news service published by The New York Times. He wrote the bestselling book Too Big to Fail and co-produced a movie adaptation of the book for HBO Films. He is also the co-creator for the Showtime series Billions.
Early life and education [ edit ]
Sorkin was born in New York, the son of Joan Ross Sorkin, a playwright, and Laurence T. Sorkin, a partner at the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel.[1] His family is Jewish. Sorkin graduated from Scarsdale High School in 1995 and earned a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University in 1999 where he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity.[2] He is not related to Aaron Sorkin or noted defense lawyer Ira Lee Sorkin.[3]
Career [ edit ]
Journalist [ edit ]
Sorkin first joined The New York Times as a student intern during his senior year in high school. He also worked for the paper while he was in college, publishing 71 articles before he graduated. He began by writing media and technology articles while assisting the advertising columnist, Stuart Elliott. Sorkin spent the summer of 1996 working for Businessweek, before returning to The New York Times. He moved to London for part of 1998. While there, he wrote about European business and technology for The New York Times and then returned to Cornell to complete his studies. At Cornell, he was vice president of the Sigma Pi fraternity.
Mergers and acquisitions reporter [ edit ]
Sorkin joined The New York Times full-time in 1999 as the newspaper's European mergers and acquisitions reporter, and was based in London. In 2000, Sorkin became the paper's chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, based in New York, a position he still holds. In 2001, Sorkin founded "DealBook," an online daily financial report published by the Times. As Editor-at-Large of "DealBook," Sorkin writes a weekly column of the same name. Sorkin is also an assistant editor of business and finance news for the paper.[4]
Sorkin has broken news of major mergers and acquisitions, including Chase's acquisition of J.P. Morgan and Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Compaq. He also led The New York Times' coverage of the largest takeover in history, Vodafone's $183 billion hostile bid for Mannesmann. Additionally, he broke the news of IBM's sale of its PC business to Lenovo, Boston Scientific's $25 billion acquisition of Guidant and Symantec's $13 billion deal for Veritas Software, and reported on News Corp.'s acquisition of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal.
Sorkin has reported on the Wall Street financial crisis, including the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the government bailout of other major investment banks and AIG. He has also written about the troubled American auto industry.
In 2007, Sorkin was one of the first journalists to identify and criticize a tax loophole for private equity firms and hedge funds.[5] He first wrote about the topic in a column in March 2007, calling the tax treatment a "charade",[6] and later wrote about it on the front page of The New York Times.[7] He has written at least a half dozen articles critiquing the tax practice by private equity firms and advocated for the government to end the loophole.[8]
In 2014, Sorkin wrote a series of columns criticizing American corporations for trying to lower their US tax bill by merging with smaller foreign companies in a transaction known as an "inversion".[9] He also criticized the Wall Street banks that advised US companies to pursue such deals, describing the banks as "corporate co-conspirators".[10] Sorkin called on the government to end the practice. On September 22, 2014, the Obama Administration changed the tax laws to make it more difficult for US companies to merge to avoid taxes.[11]
On the PRISM surveillance program and Edward Snowden situation, Sorkin said, "I would arrest him and now I'd almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who seems to be out there, he wants to help him get to Ecuador."[12] The next day, Sorkin apologized for the comment; Greenwald accepted, tweeting "Thank you: accepted & appreciated".[13] Reviewing his record after his anti-Greenwald outburst, Matt Taibbi described Sorkin as "a shameless, ball-gargling prostitute for Wall Street".[14]
DealBook [ edit ]
In October 2001, while a journalist at The New York Times, Sorkin started DealBook, a newsletter about deal-making and Wall Street.[15] DealBook was one of the first financial news aggregation services on the Internet.[15] In March 2006, Sorkin introduced a companion website published on The New York Times, with updated news and original analysis throughout the day.[16] In 2007, DealBook won a Webby Award for Best Business Blog[17] and it won a SABEW award for overall excellence.[18] In 2008, the site won an EPpy Award for Best Business Blog.[19]
Television [ edit ]
In July 2011, Sorkin became a co-anchor on CNBC's Squawk Box in addition to his duties at The New York Times. Sorkin has appeared on NBC's Today show, Charlie Rose and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, MSNBC's Hardball and Morning Joe, ABC's Good Morning America, The Chris Matthews Show, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, the BBC World Service, Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and was a frequent guest host of CNBC's Squawk Box before joining the ensemble. Sorkin also hosted a weekly seven-part, half-hour PBS talk-show series called It's the Economy, NY, which focused on how the evolving economic crisis was affecting New Yorkers.[20]
Sorkin is the co-creator for the Showtime series Billions, an American television drama series created with Brian Koppelman and David Levien, starring Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis.[21] The series is loosely based on crusading federal prosecutor of financial crimes Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.[21][22] The show premiered in January 2016.
Too Big to Fail [ edit ]
Sorkin's book on the Wall Street banking crisis, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves, was published by Viking on October 20, 2009.[23] It won the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award for best business book of the year,[24] was on the shortlist for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize, shortlisted for the 2010 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, and was on The New York Times Best Seller list (non-fiction hardcover and paperback) for six months. The book was adapted as a movie by HBO Films and premiered on HBO on May 23, 2011. The film was directed by Curtis Hanson and the screenplay was written by Peter Gould. The cast included William Hurt as Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary; Paul Giamatti as Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve; Billy Crudup as Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank; James Woods as Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers; Edward Asner as Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; Cynthia Nixon as Michele Davis, assistant secretary for public affairs at Treasury; Bill Pullman as Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase; as well as Topher Grace as Jim Wilkinson, Chief of Staff to the Treasury Secretary. Sorkin was a co-producer of the film and had a cameo appearance as a reporter.[25]
Awards [ edit ]
Sorkin shared the Gerald Loeb Award in 2005 for Deadline Writing[26] and earned another for Business Book in 2010 for his book Too Big to Fail.[27] He also won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers Award for breaking news in 2005 and again in 2006. In 2007, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.[28] Also in 2007, SiliconAlleyInsider.com named Sorkin one of New York's "most influential scribes".[29] In 2008, Vanity Fair magazine named Sorkin as one of 40 new members of the "Next Establishment,"[30] and he appeared on the UJA Federation's 2013 list of 40 under 40 top "movers and shakers" in the Jewish community.[31] He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award for Business Book for Too Big to Fail.[24]
In popular culture [ edit ]
In the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad, called Granite State, Sorkin is briefly referenced.[32] He is said to have written an op-ed in The New York Times accusing fictional entrepreneurs Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz of making donations to drug rehabilitation centers in the hopes of cleansing their company's image after the Walter White scandal.[32] Sorkin later wrote the entire fictional article.[32][33]
Personal [ edit ]
Sorkin married Pilar Jenny Queen on June 9, 2007.[34] They have three children, the youngest born on January 4, 2017.[citation needed]Michael Cohen's opening statement to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday was full of eye-popping moments, not the least of which was Cohen's claim that President Trump frequently made racist comments in his presence. "Mr. Trump is a racist," Cohen announced, adding as examples that the president "once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn't a's--thole'... While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. And he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid."
Cohen's confession was particularly shocking because just a few short years ago, Cohen founded and headed the National Diversity Coalition for Trump and passionately argued that the then-candidate was not racist in a nearly 10-minute speech, Mediaite reports.
"I've lost count as to how many times the disgusting, liberal, mainstream media have attempted to label Mr. Donald Trump a racist, a xenophobe, and a bigot," Cohen said at the time, adding: "As the son of a Holocaust survivor, it's hard to sit back — actually, it's morally wrong to sit back and do nothing when someone who you know, someone who you hold in great esteem and truly care about is being so viciously attacked, day in and day out. Not only is Donald Trump not a racist, he believes that all people are part of one race: the human race."
Watch Cohen's 2016 defense of Trump at Mediaite, and watch Cohen call Trump a racist, below. Jeva LangeSpillover Music Festival unveiled more of its lineup today along with the news that it will grow to unfold over three days, proving once and for all that there is no compelling reason to go to Austin the weekend of March 18.
The Parade of Flesh-produced festival — which capitalizes on the flood of bands in our fair state for South by Southwest by bringing those bands to a city that won’t be inundated with digital marketing gurus from Brooklyn and around-the-block lines for rumored “secret performances” — runs from March 18 through the 20th in Deep Ellum. Trees, Club Dada, and Three Links will each host performances. Dada pulled double-duty last year with its indoor and outdoor stage.
More acts will be announced in February, but the lineup is shaping up just fine. Electro goofballs Anamanaguchi, Illinois rockers The Orwells, Mexican garage punks Le Butcherettes, and the shoegazey Nothing get the big print on the bill. We’re especially looking forward to Broncho, Yuck, Ezra Furman, Shannon and the Clams, and Diarrhea Planet, the Nashville six-piece that seems to play in Dallas more than some local bands, but always delivers a stupendously fun show.
Previous installments of the festival have been fantastic, and have occupied just one day of the week. Does expanding to three days mean three times the good times? Maybe?
Even one day of Spillover is, in our experience, better than a full week of SXSW. Our advice: Stay in Dallas and let the music come to you. Save yourself hundreds of dollars and countless headaches. Avoid overwhelming crowds, abbreviated shows, and an avalanche of garbage mixtapes. If you do drive to Austin for SXSW, you’re just emitting that much more CO2 into the atmosphere, ratcheting up the intensity of climate change and essentially contributing to the end of the world.
A three-day pass for Spillover will run you about $45. Tickets and more information can |
as she brushed her thumbs along her belly. When she leaned in for another kiss, Anna happily met her, wrapping her arms around the blonde's shoulders. This time, her wife was more than willing to continue, tongue darting out to beg entry, which she was in no position to deny. Not with the fire steadily building between her thighs, drawing her closer to the blonde's body. With some care, she was walked backwards towards the shore, until the water was shallow enough for her to lay on her back without the threat of drowning. It seemed the fearsome Khaleesi had no qualms about desecrating the sacred lake- or perhaps this was seen in a more positive light. Honestly, Anna hadn't thought to ask what might happen after the trial was complete, but she couldn't find it in herself to object as her wife loomed over her, eyes darkened by desire.
The water lapped at her skin, cooling her even as her heart began thumping in her chest, anticipation of their coming union chasing away her anger, her fear, her doubts. In Elsa's arms, nothing could harm her and nothing would dare. When an insistent hand slid between her legs, she parted her thighs readily, eager to be touched. Her wife didn't disappoint, the water doing very little to dull the sensation as fingers slipped through her folds.
However, the blonde was also full of surprises, and she couldn't hold in the squeak of surprise as a terribly frightening chill worked its way inside her. "Wha-"
"You asked me last night how else you could affect my magic." Excitement and arousal combined as Elsa leaned down to press a chaste kiss to her cheek. "I'll admit, I'm curious myself."
Despite the strange and somewhat unpleasant sensation, Anna moaned and shivered, trusting her wife's judgement. Ever patient and considerate, she had no doubts Elsa had weighed her actions carefully rather than embarked on a whim as she so often did. After acclimating to the strange cold where she burned hottest, she relaxed and let the woman above her work her magic, daring to glance down only when she felt the shaft forming. Like she'd seen dozens of times jutting from between her wife's hips, an ice phallus connected to her own, the tip of the head barely breaking the water's surface. The portion inside of her felt strange but, once she was able to move past the jarring temperature difference, not altogether unpleasant. A shift of her hips moved it inside of her and she couldn't help but gasp, earning a chuckle from her lover.
"It takes some getting used to," she said and the redhead made a mental note to be annoyed by her wife's amusement later. As it was, her attention was snatched away by Elsa taking one of her hands and guiding it to the frigid shaft, curling her fingers around it. "Now focus, my King."
Her brows pinched as she glanced down, spying her hand holding the phallus through the clear water. She wasn't even sure if she could do it willingly; what power she'd displayed the night before was a product of her anger, nothing more than a fluke. When her gaze raised, however, and she caught sight of the anticipation shining in those beautiful blue eyes she'd come to adore, well, she could at least try. Not that she had much of a clue on how to try but she put some solid effort into imagining the hunk of ice in her hand as having the same mix of yellow, orange, and red as her new clothing. Nothing happened and she frowned, looking up in hopes of some manner of guidance.
She wasn't surprised to see Elsa's desire tempered by patience, even if she was still too damn amused for her own good, in the redhead's opinion. "Try this."
Using her grip on Anna's wrist, the blonde began moving her hand to slide up and down the phallus' length, stroking it. It looked a bit goofy, if she was being completely honest, but that was more a product of associating the action with something she did to her wife, not herself. Her attention was pulled away, however, by the Khaleesi's lips seeking out her own, a burning kiss that reminded her rather forcefully that she wanted to physically connect with the woman in any way possible. Just as she'd fallen in love with Elsa's patience and kindness, she'd come to crave the intimacy they shared whenever their bodies met in this sweet dance, regardless if it was a moment of need or of tender care. The very thought she could coax her beloved to the same heights she was often treated to sent a wave of excitement racing down her spine.
And then suddenly- so suddenly, in fact, that she couldn't even pinpoint when or how it happened- a new jolt rocked her body as she felt something for the very first time: the sensation of her own palm against what felt like a thousand nerve endings all at once. She pulled away from her lover, looking down and gaping at the phallus that now sported warmer colors and a heat that chased the chill from before away.
Lips brushed against her forehead. "I knew you could do it."
"That makes one of us." She muttered, blinking rapidly as she tested the limits of her new appendage. Although it was just as unyielding as whenever Elsa took her, Anna could feel even the barest touches against the flame colored ice, her body reacting as if she'd always had it. Whatever misgivings she might've had were quickly swept aside the moment her wife shifted, setting one knee to either side of her hips. She looked up, meeting the woman's gaze and seeing just as much love as always, barely hidden behind desire. "Are you sure?"
Elsa nodded without hesitation. She didn't speak- no words could possibly convey the level of trust this required, how much affection was on display. To any casual observer, it probably wouldn't look like either, but Anna keenly remembered that acknowledging her womanhood was a double-edged sword for her wife. The blonde had first conjured the ice phallus to prevent herself from being given to a Khal, to be taken like a bitch in heat. While this certainly wasn't the same circumstance, there was enough meaning behind the gesture that Anna couldn't help but curl up, taking the blonde's lips in a fierce kiss. Not for the first time, she wondered how- out of all the Dothraki, our of all the warlords, out of all the power hungry fools with an army at their command spread out across the eastern continent her brother could've chosen to sell her to, he'd managed to pick the one woman whom she could give every fiber of her being to without question, without fear of losing herself in the process. Tears stung at her eyes as they parted just enough to set the words on her wife's lips.
"I love you, Elsa."
"And I love you, my glorious dragon." With that, the blonde reached between them, sending a shock through Anna's body as her hand was replaced with a much cooler one, her lover's touch as delicious as if it was truly her flesh as the blonde guided the head of the phallus between her own folds. Idly, the redhead made a mental note to revisit this particular deviation from their usual intimate encounters at a later time, when the water surrounding her wasn't present to muddle the exquisite sensation, but she relished it all the same as Elsa pressed her hips down, taking half the length inside of her with ease. The Khaleesi gasped, obviously surprising herself, and moaned as her inner muscles clenched down on the sudden intrusion. Being on the receiving end for once, Anna couldn't help but groan aloud heself, hands moving to squeeze her wife's hips as she was nearly overcome with sensations.
Was this what the blonde felt whenever their roles were reversed? Thinking back to their wedding night, she couldn't imagine having nearly the same amount of patience, her heels already threatening to dig into the soft soil beneath her for leverage, already desperate to be buried further into the welcoming warmth of her lover. Which, quite frankly, was a bit surprising, if only because she was well aware that Elsa was normally as cool as the magic coursing through her veins.
"Oh, Anna." Her wife moaned, back arching as she closed her eyes, sinking down even further.
There was a moment when progress halted, a brief frown claiming the blonde's lips, but it passed so quickly she might've missed it entirely had she not being so entranced by the expressions playing across her lover's pale features. "Elsa?"
"I'm fine." She quickly assured, so fast the redhead might've doubted her were the words not accompanied by a pleasure filled moan. "Shepard's Ghost. I didn't think it would feel this good."
Somehow, Anna mustered the presence of mind to sound at least a little offended. "Did you think I was exaggerating before?"
"Maybe a little." The blonde admitted before using her thighs to raise herself up until the phallus was almost out of her before dropping back down, taking more of the length inside of her with each descent.
While she was no stranger to the act itself, the redhead had never experienced it like this, finding herself being driven steadily closer to her orgasm as Elsa's walls pressed all around her. Just being able to reach so deep into her lover was thrilling on its own but, as her wife began to lose herself to her pleasure, the gasps and moans that spilled from her lips brought an entirely new level of carnal satisfaction. It didn't matter what position they were in, which roles they assumed, or even their own anatomy- they would find a way forward together, one filled with love and pleasure in equal measure. Unable to stop herself, she gripped the blonde's hips, using what leverage she could manage to thrust up into Elsa while pulling her down harder, reveling in how amazing it felt.
As their passions rose, so did their voices, neither woman particularly concerned about their audience. Anna was dimly aware that their bloodriders were nearby, though seemingly unconcerned with the proceedings down by the water's edge. If any dosh khaleen had taken notice of their actions, they were at least wise enough to be gone by the time both women were spent, lying together in the shallow water to catch their breath. In the relative silence, a question rose to the forefront of her mind and she couldn't help but let it slip from her lips.
"Elsa? Why did you want to try that now?" She hastened to clarify, lest the blonde got the wrong idea. "I'm not objecting! I just... was now really the time?"
Her wife was silent a moment before a soft chuckle rumbled through her chest. "I told you that I don't have a very good history dealing with the dosh khaleen, yes?" She nodded. "I suppose some part of me wanted to wash away all those moments when I feared them with the memory of tonight." Lips brushed against her hair, seeking out her temple for a chaste kiss, while a hand slipped to lightly brush against her belly. "Tonight, they learned to be wary of my beloved Zhavorsa. I'd like to think the next time we come to this place, they will fear the children we bear enough to hold their tongues."
Anna pushed herself up, surprise and excitement building within her. "Wait, what? You think-"
"I think it will take more than once to be sure... but that was what I hoped for," the woman replied as she gently cupped her cheek. "Provided you have no objections."
"Objections?" She pretended to mull it over a moment longer before her smile became uncontrollably wide, too many emotions bursting to the surface for her to truly account for them all. The strongest, though, were the giddiness and joy evident in her voice. "No! Never!" She laughed, rolling on top of her beloved and glancing down, putting a hand on her wife's belly and imagining it swollen with a child born with their blood coursing through its veins, a near perfect twin for the child she was carrying. "Are you sure?"
Elsa easily matched her enthusiasm. "Certain."
There was a niggling doubt in the back of her mind, how both of them being pregnant at the same time could leave them vulnerable. It was quickly banished as she remembered what Kristoff had said earlier. So long as her conviction never faltered, she had nothing to fear; the blood of ancient dragons was now awakened within her. She'd triumphed the dosh khaleen's trial, she'd killed her brother to protect her child and wife, and she was ready for the challenges ahead. No mortal posed a threat to her, her wife, or their children. "We shouldn't waste time, then." The redhead moved, slotting herself between her wife's legs once more. "I'd rather return to the Dothraki Sea sooner than later."
"I'm glad we agree." The Khaleesi's eyes sparkled with mirth, though it was quickly giving way to the darkened shade of her desire, wrapping a hand around the back of her neck to coax her in for a deep kiss.
As they fell back into the familiar- yet, somewhat new- rhythm of their lovemaking, Anna took particularly perverse pleasure in looking forward to what the ridiculous old women would have to say when next they stood in the Mother of Mountains' shadow. She almost couldn't wait.
Author's Note: And so... it continues. Honestly, I haven't read the first book in, like, seven years and I can't find my copy, so this is based more on what I can remember from the books than anything, with some liberties taken because I'm an asshole. With my new work schedule, I can't really promise when the next update will be, but know it's already been started and I have a pretty clear idea on what I want to happen. Again, sorry for the unexpected delays. Also, as shown here, I will likely be scaling back sex scenes going forward. I'm just not very comfortable writing them and it's much easier to allude to their physical relationship. I'm afraid this is one section I prefer to tell, not show. That doesn't mean there won't be any but, if you're here for that, I figured the heads up might be warranted.Fargo is leaving the 20th century behind for season 3.
FX’s acclaimed anthology drama was set in 2006 for its Emmy-winning debut season last year, and then the action shifted to 1979 for its current second season.
Season 3 will take place a couple years after the first season, EW has learned exclusively.
“It’s more contemporary,” showrunner Noah Hawley said when asked about the season 3 time period. “It’s set a couple years after season 1.”
Asked if this means some characters from the first season will return (or maybe even we’ll see older versions of characters from season 2), the writer-producer replied, “Potentially.”
The two seasons of Fargo have had entirely different casts, though one key character, Lou Solverson, was played by different actors in both seasons (Keith Carradine in season 1 and Patrick Wilson in season 2). Solverson’s daughter Molly (Allison Tolman) was a main character the first year, and a young minor character this year. Given that those two characters were in both seasons, one would suppose they’re among the most likely to continue in some capacity in season 3. But Hawley has also previously expressed some reluctance to put Molly Solverson through the dramatic wringer again, given her character’s satisfying season 1 arc.
We also asked Hawley if there were any hints about season 3 planted in the current season of Fargo, which FX recently renewed.
“There are going to be connections, the way the first year was connected to the movie and the second year was connected to the first, but I think part of the fun is figuring that stuff out and I wouldn’t want to take that away from anybody,” he said. “There will be definitely things that connect to something in our story.”
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Hawley noted the show’s setting always has to at least be a few years in the past given the show “based on a true story format.”
“The idea of the ‘true story’ is it always has to be at least a few years ago, because the idea is we finally know what really happened and it took time — because the book doesn’t come out until five or six years after,” he said.
Fargo has been building toward a dramatic confrontation and the fabled “Massacre at Sioux Falls” all season, and there are only two episodes left. Fargo airs Monday nights on FX. Is there any chance Kansas City enforcer Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine) can somehow survive so he can return next season, around 60 years old and more lethal than ever?The word “virus” strikes terror into the hearts of most people. It conjures up images of influenza, HIV, Yellow Fever, or Ebola. Of course we worry about these viruses—they bring us disease and sometimes an excruciatingly painful death.
But the 21 viral types that wreak havoc with the human body represent an insignificant fraction of the 100 million viral types on earth. Most viruses are actually vital to our very existence. No-one seems to stick up for the good guys that keep ecosystems diverse and balanced (although I did recently in a TEDx talk in Noosa).
The sheer number of these good viruses is astonishing. Their concentration in a productive lake or river is often 100 million per millilitre – that’s more than four times the population of Australia squeezed into a ¼ of a teaspoon of water.
Globally the oceans contain 1030 viruses. If you lined them all up they would extend for 10 million light years, or 100 times the distance across our galaxy. Collectively they would weigh as much as 75 million blue whales.
In short, there are a lot.
What are viruses?
Viruses are not living organisms. They are simply bits of genetic material (DNA or RNA) covered in protein, that behave like parasites. They attach to their target cell (the host), inject their genetic material, and replicate themselves using the host cells’ metabolic pathways, as you can see in the figure below. Then the new viruses break out of the cell — the cell explodes (lyses), releasing hundreds of viruses.
Peter Pollard
Viruses are very picky about who they will infect. Each viral type has evolved to infect only one host species. Viruses that infect bacteria dominate our world. A virus that infects one species of bacteria won’t infect another bacterial species, and definitely can’t infect you. We have our own suite of a couple of dozen viral types that cause us disease and death.
A deadly dance
Algae and plants are primary producers, the foundation of the world’s ecosystems. Using sunlight they turn raw elements like carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorus into organic matter. In turn, they are eaten by herbivores, which are in turn eaten by other animals, and so on. Energy and nutrients are passed on up the food chain until animals die. But what ensures that the primary producers get the raw elements they need to get started?
The answer hinges on the viruses’ relationship with bacteria.
A virus doesn’t go hunting for its prey. It relies on randomly encountering a host — it’s a numbers game. When the host, such as a bacterial cell, grows rapidly, that number increases. The more of a bacterial species there is, the more likely it will come into contact with its viral nemesis — “killing the winner”. This means that no single bacterial species dominates an ecosystem for very long.
In freshwater, for example, you see very high rates of bacterial growth. You would think this high bacterial production would become part of the food chain and end up as fish food. But that is rarely the case.
We now realise that the bacteria actually disappear from these ecosystems. So where do the bacteria go?
The answer lies in the interaction of the bacteria and viruses. When a virus bursts open a bacterial cell its “guts” are spewed back into the water along with all the new viruses. The cell contents then become food for the neighbouring bacteria, thereby stimulating their growth. These bacteria increase in numbers and upon coming into contact with their viral nemesis they, too, become infected and lyse.
Viruses make the world go ‘round
This process of viral infection, lysis, and nutrient release occurs over and over again. Bacteria are, in effect, cannibalising each other with the help of their associated viruses. Very quickly, the elements that support the food web are put back into circulation with the help of viruses, as you can see in the graphic below.
Peter Pollard
This interaction ensures inorganic nutrients are readily available to algae and plants on which ecosystems depend. It’s the combination of high bacterial growth and viral infection that keeps ecosystems functioning. This explains why we don’t see bacteria in food webs. Viruses short circuit bacterial production passing higher up the food chain so it doesn’t become fish food in freshwater ecosystems.
Most of the food (dissolved organic carbon) that drives the very high bacterial growth in freshwater comes from the terrestrial environment. Indeed, freshwater viral/bacterial interactions appear to be a critical link in carbon cycle between the land and atmosphere.
Soil viral ecology studies lag way behind water research. Viral dynamics in terrestrial ecosystems are complicated as soils can bind and inactivate viruses to limit their ability to infect other organisms. We may well be relying on freshwater processes to complete the global carbon cycle, as shown in the graphic above.
In freshwater, viruses are enhancing the rate of bacterial decomposition whereby complex organic matter is quickly and efficiently mineralised into their simple inorganic components such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and phosphorus.
Thus viruses are a critical part of inorganic nutrient recycling. So while they are tiny and seem insignificant, viruses actually play an essential global role in the recycling of nutrients through food webs. We are only just now beginning to appreciate the extent of their positive impact on our survival.
One thing is for sure, viruses are our smallest unsung heroes.Image copyright AFP Image caption Ugandan activists held celebrations in August 2015
Ugandan police have blocked gay pride celebrations from happening in two resorts outside the capital, Kampala.
Gay rights activist Frank Mugisha said more than 100 LGBTI people tried to participate in the celebrations in Entebbe near Lake Victoria.
But many were escorted by police back to Kampala in minibuses.
The minister for ethics and integrity had threatened to mobilise mobs to attack participants. Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda.
After being blocked from entering the Entebbe resort, several dozen participants moved on to another resort but were kicked out by officers.
This is the second time the LGBTI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and/or intersex] community has tried to hold gay pride celebrations in Uganda this year. In August, the authorities broke up a beauty pageant and arrested activists.
The BBC's Catherine Byaruhanga reports from Kampala that it is unclear why this event was targeted, as over the past four years celebrations have been held without much notice from the police.
In 2014 a bill to further criminalise homosexuality was overturned in court.This article is by guest author Jack Franklin. SitePoint guest posts aim to bring you engaging content from prominent writers and speakers of the JavaScript community
In this article, we’ll discuss how to use Higher-order Components to keep your React applications tidy, well-structured and easy to maintain. We’ll discuss how pure functions keep code clean and how these same principles can be applied to React components.
Pure Functions
A function is considered pure if it adheres to the following properties:
all the data it deals with are declared as arguments
it doesn’t mutate data it was given or any other data (these are often referred to as side effects)
given the same input, it will always return the same output.
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For example, the add function below is pure:
function add(x, y) { return x + y; }
However, the function badAdd below is impure:
var y = 2; function badAdd(x) { return x + y; }
This function is not pure because it references data that it hasn’t directly been given. As a result, it’s possible to call this function with the same input and get different output:
var y = 2; badAdd(3) // 5 y = 3; badAdd(3) // 6
To read more about pure functions you can read “An introduction to reasonably pure programming” by Mark Brown.
Whilst pure functions are very useful, and make debugging and testing an application much easier, occasionally you’ll need to create impure functions that have side effects, or modify the behavior of an existing function that you’re unable to access directly (a function from a library, for example). To enable this, we need to look at higher-order functions.
Higher-order Functions
A higher-order function is a function that, when called, returns another function. Often they also take a function as an argument, but this isn’t required for a function to be considered higher-order.
Let’s say we have our add function from above, and we want to write some code so that when we call it, we log the result to the console before returning the result. We’re unable to edit the add function, so instead we can create a new function:
function addAndLog(x, y) { var result = add(x, y); console.log('Result', result); return result; }
We decide that logging results of functions is useful, and now we want to do the same with a subtract function. Rather than duplicate the above, we could write a higher-order function that can take a function and return a new function that calls the given function and logs the result before then returning it:
function logAndReturn(func) { return function() { var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments); var result = func.apply(null, args); console.log('Result', result); return result; } }
Now we can take this function and use it to add logging to add and subtract :
var addAndLog = logAndReturn(add); addAndLog(4, 4) // 8 is returned, ‘Result 8’ is logged var subtractAndLog = logAndReturn(subtract); subtractAndLog(4, 3) // 1 is returned, ‘Result 1’ is logged;
logAndReturn is a HOF because it takes a function as its argument and returns a new function that we can call. These are really useful for wrapping existing functions that you can’t change in behavior. For more information on this, check M. David Green’s article “Higher-Order Functions in JavaScript”, which goes into much more detail on the subject.
Additionally, you can check out this CodePen, which shows the above code in action.
Higher-order Components
Moving into React land, we can use the same logic as above to take existing React components and give them some extra behaviours.
In this section, we’re going to use React Router, the de facto routing solution for React. If you’d like to get started with the library, I highly recommend the React Router Tutorial on GitHub.
React Router’s Link component
React Router provides a <Link> component that’s used to link between pages in a React application. One of the properties that this <Link> component takes is activeClassName. When a <Link> has this property and it’s currently active (the user is on a URL that the link points to), the component will be given this class, enabling the developer to style it.
This is a really useful feature, and in our hypothetical application we decide that we always want to use this property. However, after doing so we quickly discover that this is making all our <Link> components very verbose:
<Link to="/" activeClassName="active-link">Home</Link> <Link to="/about" activeClassName="active-link">About</Link> <Link to="/contact" activeClassName="active-link">Contact</Link>
Notice that we’re having to repeat the class name property every time. Not only does this make our components verbose, it also means that if we decide to change the class name we’ve got to do it in a lot of places.
Instead, we can write a component that wraps the <Link> component:
var AppLink = React.createClass({ render: function() { return ( <Link to={this.props.to} activeClassName="active-link"> {this.props.children} </Link>; ); } });
And now we can use this component, which tidies up our links:
<AppLink to="/">Home</AppLink> <AppLink to="/about">About</AppLink> <AppLink to="/contact">Contact</AppLink>
You can see this example working on Plunker.
In the React ecosystem, these components are known as higher-order components, because they take an existing component and manipulate it slightly without changing the existing component. You can also think of these as wrapper components, but you’ll find them commonly referred to as higher-order components in React-based content.
Functional, Stateless Components
React 0.14 introduced support for functional, stateless components. These are components that have the following characteristics:
they don’t have any state
they don’t use any React lifecycle methods (such as componentWillMount() )
) they only define the render method and nothing more.
When a component adheres to the above, we can define it as a function, rather than using React.createClass (or class App extends React.Component if you’re using ES2015 classes). For example, the two expressions below both produce the same component:
var App = React.createClass({ render: function() { return <p>My name is { this.props.name }</p>; } }); var App = function(props) { return <p>My name is { props.name }</p>; }
In the functional, stateless component, instead of referring to this.props we’re instead passed props as an argument. You can read more about this in the React documentation.
Because higher-order components often wrap an existing component, you’ll often find you can define them as a functional component. For the rest of this article, I’ll do that whenever possible.
Better Higher-order Components
The above component works, but we can do much better. The AppLink component that we created isn’t quite fit for purpose.
Accepting multiple properties
The <AppLink> component expects two properties:
this.props.to, which is the URL the link should take the user to
, which is the URL the link should take the user to this.props.children, which is the text shown to the user.
However, the <Link> component accepts many more properties, and there might be a time when you want to pass extra properties along with the two above, which we nearly always want to pass. We haven’t made <AppLink> very extensible by hard coding the exact properties we need.
The JSX spread
JSX, the HTML-like syntax we use to define React elements, supports the spread operator for passing an object to a component as properties. For example, the code samples below achieve the same thing:
var props = { a: 1, b: 2}; <Foo a={props.a} b={props.b} /> <Foo {...props} />
Using {...props} spreads each key in the object and passes it to Foo as an individual property.
We can make use of this trick with <AppLink> so we support any arbitrary property that <Link> supports. By doing this we also future proof ourselves; if <Link> adds any new properties in the future our wrapper component will already support them. While we’re at it, I’m also going to change AppLink to be a functional component.
var AppLink = function(props) { return <Link {...props} activeClassName="active-link" />; }
Now <AppLink> will accept any properties and pass them through. Note that we also can use the self-closing form instead of explicitly referencing {props.children} in between the <Link> tags. React allows children to be passed as a regular prop or as child elements of a component between the opening and closing tag.
You can see this working on Plunker.
Property ordering in React
Imagine that for one specific link on your page, you have to use a different activeClassName. You try passing it into <AppLink>, since we pass all properties through:
<AppLink to=“/special-link” activeClassName=“special-active”>Special Secret Link</AppLink>
However, this doesn’t work. The reason is because of the ordering of properties when we render the <Link> component:
return <Link {...props} activeClassName="active-link" />;
When you have the same property multiple times in a React component, the last declaration wins. This means that our last activeClassName=“active-link” declaration will always win, since it’s placed after {...this.props}. To fix this, we can reorder the properties so we spread this.props last. This means that we set sensible defaults that we’d like to use, but the user can override them if they really need to:
return <Link activeClassName="active-link" {...props} />;
Once again, you can see this change in action on Plunker.
By creating higher-order components that wrap existing ones but with additional behavior, we keep our code base clean and defend against future changes by not repeating properties and keeping their values in just one place.
Higher-order Component Creators
Often you’ll have a number of components that you’ll need to wrap in the same behavior. This is very similar to earlier in this article when we wrapped add and subtract to add logging to them.
Let’s imagine in your application you have an object that contains information on the current user who is authenticated on the system. You need some of your React components to be able to access this information, but rather than blindly making it accessible for every component you want to be more strict about which components receive the information.
The way to solve this is to create a function that we can call with a React component. The function will then return a new React component that will render the given component but with an extra property which will give it access to the user information.
That sounds pretty complicated, but it’s made more straightforward with some code:
function wrapWithUser(Component) { // information that we don’t want everything to access var secretUserInfo = { name: 'Jack Franklin', favouriteColour: 'blue' }; // return a newly generated React component // using a functional, stateless component return function(props) { // pass in the user variable as a property, along with // all the other props that we might be given return <Component user={secretUserInfo} {...props} /> } }
The function takes a React component (which is easy to spot given React components have to have capital letters at the beginning) and returns a new function that will render the component it was given with an extra property of user, which is set to the secretUserInfo.
Now let’s take a component, <AppHeader>, which wants access to this information so it can display the logged in user:
var AppHeader = function(props) { if (props.user) { return <p>Logged in as {props.user.name}</p>; } else { return <p>You need to login</p>; } }
The final step is to connect this component up so it is given this.props.user. We can create a new component by passing this one into our wrapWithUser function.
var ConnectedAppHeader = wrapWithUser(AppHeader);
We now have a <ConnectedAppHeader> component that can be rendered, and will have access to the user object.
View this example on CodePen if you’d like to see it in action.
I chose to call the component ConnectedAppHeader because I think of it as being connected with some extra piece of data that not every component is given access to.
This pattern is very common in React libraries, particularly in Redux, so being aware of how it works and the reasons it’s being used will help you as your application grows and you rely on other third party libraries that use this approach.
Conclusion
This article has shown how, by applying principles of functional programming such as pure functions and higher-order components to React, you can create a codebase that’s easier to maintain and work with on a daily basis.
By creating higher-order components, you’re able to keep data defined in only one place, making refactoring easier. Higher-order function creators enable you to keep most data private and only expose pieces of data to the components that really need it. By doing this you make it obvious which components are using which bits of data, and as your application grows you’ll find this beneficial.
If you have any questions, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to leave a comment or ping me @Jack_Franklin on Twitter.
We’ve teamed up with Open SourceCraft to bring you 6 Pro Tips from React Developers. For more open source content, check out Open SourceCraft.The 18th annual "Blessing of the Bikes" will be held at the cathedral on April 30. View Full Caption Cathedral of St. John the Divine
MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS — While bike lanes and infrastructure continue to increase, riding in New York City still comes with risk — and some cyclists look to the heavens for a little extra protection.
On April 30, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue at West 112th Street will host a "Blessing of the Bicycles" at a 9:30 a.m. service.
Now in its 18th year, the tradition draws hundreds of cyclists to the historic cathedral each year, according to organizers.
During the short, free ceremony, bikes will be sprinkled with holy water and the Rev. Canon Julia E. Whitworth will bless the riders.
A bike will also be brought to the center aisle and a moment of silence observed to mark the deaths of cyclists over the past year,
After that, the spring cycling season is kicked off with each biker ringing his or her bike bell.
Subscribe to DNAinfo's Upper West Side podcast:As the Eastern US braces for what some news outlets are calling “Snowmageddon” and a “Snowpocalypse” people are going to be looking for ways to enjoy their dwellings, while staying warm. We thought what better way to stay cozy during this weekend’s snowstorm than enjoying one of these amazing fireplaces?!?! Click any image to view a larger version.
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The Zeta fireplace by EcoSmart has been one of the hottest designs in the past year or so (no pun intended), winning awards for its design which is crafted from timber, leather, and stainless steel. This design was created by architect John Dimopoulos and was the winner of the 2009 Design Award at the Australian International Design Awards in Sydney, Australia. The fire runs on denatured ethanol, which is an easily renewable energy source. The Zeta is actually larger than the first two images appear as you can see in the third image. It is just over 32 inches tall, about 3 1/2 feet wide and nearly 3 feet deep. The Zeta costs around $9,700:
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Another amazing fireplace design by EcoSmart that we love is called the “Q”. This is another highly acclaimed design and the winner of New York |
be a yet-to-be announced domestic warm-up match, likely to be against Premier League opposition, either home or away.
Conte will have to run a pretty intense schedule to get his Chelsea ready for their first competitive fixture on August 13 – Day 29. And that is when we will start to learn just how much he has done to repair Chelsea's fractured first team set-up.
Come summer bank holiday, on August 29 – Day 45 – things should be finely balanced. Conte will have taken his side through their first three or four Premier League matches, plus the League Cup second-round tie they have to face for the first time in years, by dint of their poor league finish.
New Chelsea head coach Antonio ConteReuters
He will then lose his charges, to the first international break of the season, while having 48 hours to consider what final dealings are needed before the transfer window closes on Day 47. And, from then on, he will be pretty much on his own.
There is another international break the following month, but by the time Day 100 falls, on October 23, Conte will have managed Chelsea through 10 Premier League matches. That is likely to include coming up against at least one or two out of Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and – deep breath – Jose Mourinho.
By this stage, the point at which it was clear the wheels were coming off Mourinho's wagon last season, there will be a well-formed indication of how things are playing out. The target will clearly be to muscle back into the top four, at the very least, and that will mean Chelsea needing around 20 points out of the first 30 available by this point.
Conte not only has the biggest recovery job to implement in Chelsea's recent history this summer: he also has one of the tightest schedules any recent Blues boss has ever had in which to implement it.Don't pretend you can invent a strong enough, memorable password to protect your Bitcoins: crypto-boffins can crack the so-called "brain wallet."
In research published at the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), University College London's Nicolas Courtois and Guangyan Song and White Ops' Ryan Castellucci benchmarked the Bitcoin secp256k1 elliptic curve, with depressing results.
The group managed to retrieve more than 18,000 Bitcoin passwords, they claim, using an Amazon EC2 m4.4xlarge instance. That yielded a rather stunning 17.9 billion passwords tested per US$1 spent, or less than $60 to check a trillion passwords.
As is so often the case, one reason pass-phrases are recoverable is that they're relatively predictable. Examples of recovered pass-phrases include "say hello to my little friend," "to be or not to be," "Walk Into This Room," "party like it's 1999," "yohohoandabottleofrum," and the all-too-obvious "Arnold Schwarzenegger."
The Register presumes that the person or people using "andreas antonopoulos" as a password are merely admirers of the Bitcoin entrepreneur, rather than Antonopoulos himself using his own name as a password.
While not the first study to look into brute-forcing Bitcoin passwords, the researchers reckon their attack more than doubles the speed of password tests against secp256k1 achieved by the attack first disclosed at last August's DEFCON 23.
Their conclusion is simple – you almost certainly can't invent a password too complex to be brute-forced: "Our research demonstrates again that brain wallets are not secure and no one should use them."
In other words, generating a genuinely strong password and keeping it somewhere safe is irritating, but absolutely necessary. ®PORTLAND, Maine — The lobstermen of Owls Head have seen some strangely colored crustaceans in recent years, but one pulled out of the ocean earlier this month was still a first.
“We’ve caught a couple of calico ones, with orange and black spots, and we’ve seen some blue ones,” said Anna Mason of Ship to Shore Lobster Co., “but I’d never seen one that was half-red like that, split right down the middle.”
Mason said the lobsterman who caught the chromatically bisected crustacean about two weeks ago first brought it home to show his family, then agreed to let Ship to Shore donate it to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, where it will live out its days alongside a blue lobster that Mason’s company passed along two years ago.
The institute reported this week when it accepted its new guest that split-colored lobsters are estimated to occur only once out of every 50 million or more. The rarest colored lobsters are believed to be white ones, which reportedly pop up once in every 100 million of the creatures, while blue ones and calico ones are comparatively more frequent — 1-in-2 million and 1-in-30 million, respectively, according to previously published reports.
“It certainly is a rare thing [to find a discolored lobster], and when they catch them on a lobster boat, everybody stops what they’re doing and takes a look,” said Carl Wilson, state lobster biologist with the Department of Marine Resources.
Wilson said he doesn’t know exactly how rare such a lobster is and said oft-referenced rarity figures should be viewed skeptically — “I try not to quote any ‘1-in-however many’ statistics. I don’t know where people get those numbers.”
But, he added that the half-red variety of lobster is rare enough to be a first for him.
“I’m the state’s head lobster researcher, and I have not seen a half-red, half-black lobster,” he said.
Typical lobsters are a dark brownish green in color, and only turn red after being boiled for dinner. Stories of oddly colored lobsters have increased in recent years, but scientists have said they don’t know if that’s a sign the actual frequency of color variants has increased, or if the finds are just better publicized with the explosion of digital camera use and social media.
Another possibility, a New England Aquarium official told the Associated Press last year, is that dramatic increases in the total catch — the statewide Maine haul reached a record 123.3 million pounds in 2012 — are bringing more of the unique lobsters to shore.
In any case, the naturally half-red lobster delivered to Gulf of Maine Research Institute has been welcomed as an attraction and potential study specimen by its new owners.
“GMRI brings students from every corner of Maine — more than 10,000 each year — and engages them in an immersive, hands-on science education experience,” said Alan Lishness, the institute’s chief innovation officer, in a statement Thursday. “One important element of this ‘LabVenture’ program is bringing students face-to-face with the amazing creatures in the Gulf of Maine ecosystem.”Seventeen years after the release of Unbreakable, Samuel L. Jackson is currently back on set as the villainous Mr. Glass in M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass, which will serve as a sequel to both Unbreakable and this year’s Split.
The film began shooting in Philadelphia last month, and our first look at Jackson as his Unbreakable character has just hit the net.
Check it out below!
Samuel L Jackson as Mr. Glass in Glass (2019) (via @reddit) pic.twitter.com/lALO1apwDJ — The Playlist 🎬 (@ThePlaylist) November 8, 2017
In the film…
“Following the conclusion of SPLIT, GLASS finds David Dunn pursuing Kevin Wendell Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Elijah Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.”
Unbreakable‘s antagonist Samuel L. Jackson returns as Elijah Price/Mr. Glass, while Bruce Willis reprises his role as the film’s hero, David Dunn.
Anya Taylor-Joy, who escaped Split, also stars with James McAvoy returning as “The Beast.” Sarah Paulson rounds out the main cast.
Unbreakable star Spencer Treat Clark is back as Joseph Dunn, the son of Bruce Willis’ heroic character, while co-star Charlayne Woodard will again play Elijah Price’s mother.
Jason Blum and Shyamalan produce alongside Ashwin Rajan and Marc Bienstock, and Steven Schneider.
Glass will arrive on January 18, 2019.Posted 10 October 2010 - 12:30
Good morning Pen Fans,
This chart has become a new addiction! Yipee!!! Far less expensive than hunting and buying fountain pens.
Welcome to this forum, soroos. You will encounter friendly people here. The feed on your pen is from ca. 1992-96. It was the first plastic feed on the 149s. It was replaced by the one shown on the far right of the David-Kai chart, the second generation feed which has been in use since 96. For those of you with Writer's Edition pens, you can look at the Hemingway feed for first generation and the Dumas feed for a second generation example. The nib on your pen, three-tone 18C, as noted above, is far older than the other components on your pen. Your pen was made sometime between the early 1980s and yesterday morning. We can narrow the dates later by answering additional questions. At this point, let's just say you have a fairly recent pen with a nib replacement. Your replacement nib, by the way, is one of the very great nibs which was produced for the 149, considered the best or second best by many collectors, especially Europeans who have more experience with 18 carat than do North Americans and Asians. Congratulations on a wonderful new acquisition.Will Oregon follow Washington and California in becoming the next (and last) West Coast state to embrace same-sex marriage?
The state's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates certainly hope so, and have launched an ambitious "Oregon Says I Do" petition campaign to extend marriage equality to Oregon.
According to Petition Director Ryan Brown, the campaign will kick off on Friday, July 26 in cities all across the state. Brown says organizers are hoping to gather 116,284 signatures by July 3, 2014 -- "a signature every 4 and 1/4 minutes."
"Together, we can make it possible for every Oregonian to have the freedom to marry the person they love," he concluded in an email statement. At least 116,000 valid signatures are necessary for the initiative to make the November 2014 ballot.
Find out more information on "Oregon Says I Do" here.Share this article:
Two former Covina-Valley Unified School District teachers who took students on a San Clemente camping trip, supplied them with alcohol and cocaine and had sex with two of them pleaded guilty Friday and were sentenced to probation.
Melody Suzanne Lippert, 38, of Covina, and Michelle Louise Ghirelli, 30, of West Covina, also permanently surrendered their teaching credentials as part of the plea deal with prosecutors, according to Deputy District Attorney Kristin Bracic.
Lippert pleaded guilty to felony statutory rape. Ghirelli pleaded guilty to the same charge as well as a felony count of furnishing a controlled substance.
Although Lippert slept with someone who was 18, she was still charged with statutory rape as an “aider and abettor” of Ghirelli’s underage sex crime, Bracic said.
Lippert was also ordered to do 15 days of work with Caltrans. If she fails to do so, she could face three months in jail, Bracic said. Ghirelli, meanwhile, must serve six months in a live-in, locked-down drug rehabilitation facility, or she could face the same amount of time in jail, the prosecutor said.
Lippert was the “matchmaker” for Ghirelli, who had sex with a 17-year- old boy. Lippert had sex with an 18-year-old former student along for the party at San Clemente State Beach, Bracic said.
“The number one thing here is the victims are 17- and 18-year-old boys who are graduating next week and they just wanted to close this chapter in their lives as quickly as possible,” Bracic said, explaining why the plea deal was struck with the defendants. “They were happy to get it done once and for all.”
The two women were also rewarded for taking responsibility for their crimes relatively early in the legal process, Bracic said. The “major punishment” is the loss of their teaching credentials, she said.
The two will avoid having to register as sex offenders.
“They acted foolish in this isolated incident,” Bracic said, adding that the sex-offender registration requirement should be reserved for “sexual predators.”
A protective order is in place barring the two women from South Hills High School in West Covina, where Lippert’s son is enrolled.
“So she can’t even go to that school and drop her son off in the morning,” Bracic said.
Before she was arrested, Ghirelli had been promoted to an administrative job and was working on her master’s degree, Bracic said.
The two defendants taught English together at the school and the victims were their former students, according to the prosecutor, who said the victims were embarrassed by the affair.
“I know everyone looks at this like they were getting high fives in the hallway, but they were absolutely mortified and embarrassed,” Bracic said.
The 18-year-old victim felt as if he was pushed into having sex with Lippert, Bracic said.
“Nobody came out of this happy,” Bracic said.
Lippert’s attorney, Leonard Levine, said his client is “ashamed and embarrassed by her actions for which she takes full responsibility. It cost her a promising and up to this point successful teaching career, and now she wants to move on to be a loving mother, wife and lead a productive life. And she’s very sorry for what has occurred.”
Lippert organized the unapproved Dec. 27-29 camping trip through a group text message to the co-defendant and five male high school students, according to Bracic.
West Covina police contacted sheriff’s investigators Jan. 16 about the party, leading to the arrests of the defendants the next day.
Ghirelli’s attorney, Stephan DeSales, previously told City News Service that his client is “devastated” and that it was not altogether clear to her that the victim was underage.
“There was a lot of stuff going on and it was not clear what the age of this kid was when whatever happened happened,” DeSales said.
Three of the five teens on the camping trip to San Clemente were 18, DeSales said.
“She’s totally devastated,” DeSales said of his client. “She’s a sweet person, a very nice person who was getting her master’s degree at Cal Poly Pomona and now that’s all gone.”
— City News Service
2 teachers admit campout sex with teens, get probation was last modified: by
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Follow us:Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) talks with reporters. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Pot puns are always a hit (see what we did there?). We just don’t always expect them from an 83-year-old Mormon who happens to be a Republican senator.
But Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) on Wednesday provided the laughs we all needed with a double-entendre laden news release announcing the introduction of a bill that would boost research into medical marijuana. “It’s high time to address research into medical marijuana,” Hatch said in the release. Get it? High?
One wacky-weed joke might seem restrained enough. But the creativity of the news-release author apparently knew no bounds. More Hatch quotes: “To be blunt, we need to remove the administrative barriers preventing legitimate research into medical marijuana, which is why I’ve decided to roll out the MEDS Act.”
Someone is apparently having fun with a standard-issue bill announcement. The concluding quote from Hatch repeats the “high” reference, but no matter. “I have high hopes that this bipartisan initiative can be a kumbaya moment for both parties.”
Spokesman Matt Whitlock credited the laughs to Hatch’s surprisingly impish sense of humor. “While this is a serious bill dealing with serious issues, particularly in Utah, he felt that the best way to ensure it received the attention required for a thorough and robust debate was with a bit of good-natured humor, similar to that of his social media platforms.”
Too bad he didn’t send it out at 4:20.
Read the news release here.An unusual looking bear, the now extinct short faced bear, sits in the deep grass on the rocky shore of a prehistoric North American wetland. He faces to the right of the image, looking towards the rising sun which bathes the seen in golden light. Some puffy white clouds drift lazily in the sky.The short-faced bear, or Arctodus Simus, is an genus of bear that inhabited North America during the last ice age and went extinct about 10,000 years ago. It may have been the largest predatory land mammal of its day. Experts disagree on the exact nature of it's diet, but there is speculation that it would steal other predator's kills by using its intimidating size to run them off.This image is part of my paleoart series. It an an artwork depicing a scene of one of the largest animals of the pleistocene era North America.Note: this scene uses purchased content.Tools used: Poser, Vue, GIMPThanks for looking!DanielP.S.Prints for this are available from my print gallery: [link] Follow me on Facebook: [link] Also, I have a Zazzle store now: [link]If you're a fan of combat sports, Brock Lesnar's performance in UFC 121's main event last Saturday was nothing short of pathetic.
For those of us that watched the big show, we witnessed the man who many, if not most, considered to be the best heavyweight in MMA not only completely gas out two minutes into the first round, but handle taking punches the same way a girl scout would covering up, cowering, and hoping the bad man would just go away. On that same night, we watched Brendan Schaub school another heavyweight elite, Gabriel Gonzaga, with nothing but good ring generalship and a decent jab.
It's becoming increasingly obvious that boxing fundamentals are not just winning high profile fights, but an absolute necessity to compete at the elite level. MMA isn't like it was back when Royce Gracie entered the first UFC and dominated every opponent he came across by immediately taking them to the ground and performing submissions. These days, grappling and submission defense is a standard, and fighters are usually more than equipped on preventing being taken to the ground and on what to do when it happens. So where does that leave them? Standing and striking.
But let's not act like flying knees and kicks are winning fights. Frankie Edgar completely dominated a top three pound-for-pound fighter in BJ Penn, not once, but twice by fighting almost entirely as a pure boxer. By sticking and moving and circling his opponent, Edgar managed to both embarrass and end the reign of the lightweight champion. Not once in either of their fights did the great Penn seem to have any answer.
Dan Hardy - known for being a ferocious striker himself - was just knocked out when he was countered while throwing a looping left hook. It's the same left hook that quite often we'll see MMA guys do mid-fight when they give up on strategy and just look for the quick KO. I call it "The Striker's Folly." It's when two fighters suddenly decide to just start winging left hooks until someone inevitably gets caught. The lethal cocktail of small gloves, an unprotected chin, and not seeing the punch coming leaves somebody out cold and the fight over. Most of Chuck Liddell's career wins were based on this...so were his losses.
It's this kind of poor establishment of boxing fundamentals which makes the still-evolving sport sometimes look cheap and amateurish, even at the highest level, and it's not simply a matter of styles making fights. There is no excuse for a UFC fighter to not know how to properly handle taking a punch, to not be prepared for more than a round of hard fighting, to not know how to approach an opponent who circles you with a flicking jab, to lack the discipline to avoid a fight regressing into a wild slugfest. Yet, still we're seeing it all the time. This isn't just stuff they shouldn't be doing in a championship fight this is stuff that should be out of their system by the time they sign with the UFC.
If this means Shane Carwin needs to start jogging in training, like a professional boxer does, in order to prevent punching himself out after one round, so be it. If BJ Penn needs to learn how to counter and throw back when his opponent just wants to box all night, fine. It's certainly better than him aimlessly waiting all night hoping for his opponent to stand still so he can shoot for the takedown.
There was a time when MMA was young and every fighter needed extensive lessons on how to perform a takedown, how to perform submissions, and how to guard during grappling. Now, it seems they all need a serious clinic with Emanuel Steward before entering the Octagon. You can't take a punch well? Try sparring every day in a boxing ring until you can. Getting caught on the chin too often? Learn to keep your guard up. Can't catch your opponent who's boxing your ears off? Somebody teach you how to apply pressure and cut off their exit. And once that's down, then you can begin to apply it to the rest of your game.
Anderson Silva has long been known for his ability to not just deal punches, but avoid them coming his way, despite being a fantastic BJJ guy. Lyoto Machida seemed invincible in his run to the light heavyweight championship, with his counters and striking combinations, but even that ended when Shogun Rua applied one of Boxing 101's "Styles Make Fights" rules counterpunchers hate pressure.
It really is funny to see how full-circle boxing has become in MMA. Royce Gracie made it seem worthless at one time, but now, it seems more necessary than ever. But let's make sure that we're learning more than just how to throw a punch. Today's MMA elite need the endurance to make it through the long haul, the experience to know how to handle an opponent who decides to fire off on you, and the basic movement and ring generalship to handle a guy who just wants to stick and move on his feet. Until then, don't be surprised to see more dominant champions of MMA fall to boxing's simple one-two.LIBERTY, Weber County — Nearly a week after the Ragnar Relay Wasatch Back race, complaints are coming in that trash from the event is still around.
Signs from the race are still up and pieces of trash have not been picked up. While cleanup efforts do happen after the race, some residents are concerned that it may not be enough
There are no huge piles of garbage, but there’s enough trash that it concerns Eden homeowner Bryan Smith. He found signs, water bottles and some team shirts.
“I also found stuff that was left over from some people’s lunches, yogurt cups, things like that,” Smith said. "This year, I just got a little frustrated with what I was witnessing and decided to document some of it.”
He took a few pictures and cleaned up what he could on his way out of town Wednesday. As owner of Only In Ogden, a shop and local entertainment blog, pictures he posted online drew some attention. Others chimed in with similar complaints.
"I don't think that's how people should respect other people's neighborhoods when they're in them,” Smith said. “I’m not alone in this. I’ve talked to a lot of people in my community that have exactly the same experience.”
While more than 1,000 volunteers helped pick up trash after the event, a small group made another sweep down the route Thursday. Some relay workers picked up what they could along a stretch of road between Liberty and Snowbasin.
"We got out here as quickly as we could to see what was going on,” Ragnar Vice President of marketing Rick Larsen said. He rode along the route Thursday to investigate claims that garbage from Ragnar runners was still there.
"There's so many people out, it was surprising, and it was surprising, too, that we didn't start hearing them until the last 24 hours,” Larsen said.
Organizers scanned the area with trash bags in hand.
"Actually, it looks pretty good,” Larsen said. “Our event covers a lot of ground and a lot of miles to police, and as we've driven the course through Ogden Valley, we found a couple of bottles, but for the most part it looks like the crew did their job."
Still, he said, officials are taking the complaints seriously.
"We stage 22 overnight relays around the country,” Larsen said. “There is always room to improve. We're always in dialog with our communities."
Ragnar organizers plan to meet with Smith to discuss future improvements.
“My biggest hope in this is to see that there’s a strong desire to leave a community in better shape than it was before the event,” Smith said. “We need those events, and I applaud the people that volunteer their time, their passion and energy to make it happen.”
Contributing: Viviane Vo-DucEditor’s note: The wonderful actress and teacher Marian Seldes died this week at age 86. For an intimate look at a legend, Post theater columnist Michael Riedel reached out to someone who knew her well. Here’s what Academy Award winner and “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey recalls of his beloved acting teacher.
There I was in September 1979 at the corner of 55th Street and Seventh Avenue, a few days before my first classes at the Juilliard School of Drama. I’d just left Los Angeles, where I’d tried to start a career in television after high school by auditioning for programs like “The Gong Show.” Thankfully, that career path never took off.
Standing next to me that brisk fall day was my best friend from high school, Val Kilmer. Now in his third year at Juilliard, he’d encouraged me to audition — if I was serious about wanting a career in the theater. I was and I did, and was very fortunate to be chosen as one of 28 students of the new class, Group 12.
As we waited for the Walk/Don’t Walk sign to change, Val suddenly said, “Do you see that woman over there in purple?” Standing directly across the street was a tall, elegant woman, looking around with excitement, as if it were her first day in New York City — not mine — dressed in purple from head to toe.
“That’s Marian Seldes,” Val said. “She’s going to be your first Shakespeare teacher. Wanna meet her?”
So we crossed the street, and there on that corner I was introduced to Marian Seldes.
Upon hearing that I was to be one of her new students, her reaction, as I later learned, was typically theatrical and very memorable: She grabbed my face with both hands, squeezed my cheeks like a peach and, in the most dramatic tone, said, “My little bird.”
She then turned and flitted across the street, without ever looking for oncoming traffic.
Val turned to me and said, “God has his finger on her head and just guides her through life. A cab’ll never hit her. She’s a force of nature.”
What a force, indeed. She believed in her students. She believed in all her students.
She reveled in their challenges, inspirations and aspirations, and her dedication to them was endless — it never stopped, not even after class was over, or if a student graduated or was even kicked out of the “Yard,” as we called it.
Only after I left school did I realize the depth of her commitment and the impact of her dedication.
For quite some time, I didn’t have an agent or money or a job or even prospects. But whenever I did manage to get some awful off-off-off-off-off-Broadway gig, there she was — beaming, in the front row — as I did some monologue in some terrible play, or tackled some obscure piece at a dance space on 13th Street.
I can honestly tell you that for the first four to five years of my career in the theater, Marian would somehow find out what I was doing, and where, and just show up.
She was always there, pushing you on. That infectious smile when she greeted you backstage, as she enveloped you into her arms like some sort of rag doll; her seriousness in talking about your work; the notes she’d give you in a diner later on; the stories she would share about her own theatrical beginnings.
Her very presence gave you hope.
Her dedication breathed life into your efforts; her belief in your talent allowed you to think you might have a future.
She was always there, pushing you on … Her very presence gave you hope.
This is the work of a true teacher, one who knows that a young person needs encouragement when times are tough. Sometimes, an adult you admire (or even secretly worship) can say just the right words, at just the right time — and give you everything you need.
And at that moment, it’s not about a job or money: It’s the feeling that comes when you believe in yourself, because that beautiful mentor was there when you needed her.
And so, as we say goodbye to the Guinness Book of World Records legend that was Marian Seldes, all of us who were her students and who have been lucky enough to build careers thank her for giving us wings and teaching us all how to fly.
Many of us have flown far higher than we ever thought we could, because all of us were her little birds.Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she would have won the presidential election but for nagging problems with her secret emails and those of her campaign chief, and she declared herself part of the “resistance” opposing President Trump.
Shunning the role of gracious loser, Mrs. Clinton said she was on track for victory, having overcome a “barrage” of attacks, but could not surmount the late revelation by FBI Director James B. Comey that he was reopening — then quickly closed again — a criminal probe into her secret use of a private email server.
She also said Russia worked to defeat her by orchestrating the leak of campaign chief John Podesta’s emails, which served as a distraction and an embarrassment in the campaign’s final weeks.
“If the election had been on Oct. 27, I’d be your president,” Mrs. Clinton said in an appearance at the Women for Women International Conference in New York.
Mrs. Clinton said she took the blame for her loss but was “on the way to winning” until Mr. Comey’s late involvement in the form of a letter to Congress alerting the country that emails newly obtained from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s computer were being investigated for possible relevance to the closed case.
She cited data analyst Nate Silver in saying she had the election sewn up in October.
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign; there is no such thing. But I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off. The evidence for that intervening event is, I think is compelling and persuasive.”
Mrs. Clinton also said she felt Russia played a coordinated role in the election. She pointed to Obama administration conclusions that Russian agents orchestrated the hack and leaking of Democratic National Committee emails early in the summer and then of Mr. Podesta’s emails late in the campaign.
The former first lady, senator and secretary of state said the timing of the Podesta leaks appeared to her to be an effort to distract the country from a lewd “Access Hollywood” tape that showed Mr. Trump bragging in vulgar terms about sexual abuse of women.
“Ask yourself this: Within an hour or two of the ‘Hollywood Access’ tape, the Russian theft of John Podesta’s emails hit WikiLeaks. What a coincidence. You just can’t make this stuff up,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton laid blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom she had a rocky relationship during her time at the State Department. She seemed to suggest a meeting of goals between the Trump team and Mr. Putin.
“He certainly interfered in our election, and it was clear he interfered to hurt me and helped my opponent,” Mrs. Clinton said. “If you chart my opponent and his campaign’s statements, they quite coordinated with the goals that leader who shall remain nameless had.”
Republicans said Mrs. Clinton was missing the point of the election.
“The American people did not support her disastrous policies or her candidacy,” said Chase Jennings, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “If Democrats hope to have any chance of rebuilding their decimated party, supposed leaders like Clinton should spend less time deflecting blame and more time accepting it.”
Election analysts say Mrs. Clinton lost because she failed to focus on the industrial states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Each had gone Democratic for a generation in presidential elections but supported Mr. Trump.
Mrs. Clinton is writing a book about the campaign, and she said it was painful to relive her stumbles.
She also said she is part of the “resistance” movement that has emerged to protest Mr. Trump at every turn.
“I’m now back to being an activist citizen and part of the resistance,” Mrs. Clinton said in what appeared to be a hint of future criticism of Mr. Trump.
Mrs. Clinton made her appearance just days after former President Barack Obama broke his postelection seclusion by making several public appearances around the 100-day mark of Mr. Trump’s tenure.
Mr. Obama offered several jabs at his successor, particularly his fondness of Twitter.
Mrs. Clinton offered caution about Mr. Trump’s declaration that he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un if certain preconditions are met.
Mrs. Clinton said that was a break with long-standing U.S. policy that North Korea was a regional responsibility and meeting one-on-one would reward the country’s dangerous behavior.
The former first lady leveled the same criticism during the 2008 presidential campaign when Mr. Obama said he would meet with the leaders of North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba without any preconditions.
Mrs. Clinton mentioned several times Tuesday that she won the popular vote despite her Electoral College loss.
The president has vocally disputed losing the popular vote, attributing it to voter fraud. He said as recently as last week that he “would still beat Hillary in the popular vote.”
“Remember, I did win more than 3 million votes than my opponent,” Mrs. Clinton said.
She said, though, that Mr. Trump should focus on bigger issues.
“If he wants to tweet about me, I’m happy to be the diversion. We’ve got lots of other things to worry about. He should worry less about the election and my winning the popular vote than doing some other things that would be important for the country,” she said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.GENEVA (21 November 2016) – A proposed Israeli law enabling the confiscation of privately owned Palestinian land would deal another severe blow to hopes of a lasting peace, a United Nations human rights expert has warned.
Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk said he was deeply concerned at the proposal to legalize more than 100 illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank, which passed its first reading in the Knesset on 16 November.
“Unauthorized outposts, most of which have been established on private Palestinian land and are located deep within the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under Israeli domestic law. Their retroactive ‘legalization’ will be another nail in the coffin for the two-state solution,” said Mr. Lynk.
“These outposts undermine the Palestinian right to self-determination, violate their rights to property, freedom of movement and development, and continue to confine the Palestinians into smaller and smaller cantons of non-contiguous lands within their own territory.”
The Special Rapporteur noted that the draft legislation, if adopted, allows the Israeli state to appropriate private Palestinian lands on which the outposts have been built, thereby regularising them for use by Israeli settlers. Lynk emphasized that international law prohibits the occupying power from confiscating private property. Even the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled on a number of occasions that the confiscation of private Palestinian lands for settlement purposes was illegal under Israeli law.
“The Knesset should not be giving the green light to theft by changing the law,” he said.
Mr. Lynk also noted that the violation of international law was not lessened or mitigated by the bill’s proposed measures to compensate Palestinians whose land had been unlawfully taken.
The tabling of the draft law follows a recent Israeli Supreme Court ruling that the Amona outpost must be evacuated by 25 December, rejecting a request by the Israeli Government for it to be delayed. “Among the purposes of this legislation is to regularize the legal status of Amona,” said the Special Rapporteur.
Mr. Lynk noted with alarm that some senior Israeli cabinet ministers had not only supported the bill, but were openly calling for the annexation of large parts of the West Bank.
“The international community must be very clear with the Government of Israel,” he said. “The annexation of occupied territory likewise would be a profound breach of international law. If Israel proceeds with either step, the international community must be prepared not only to condemn the action, but also to adopt appropriate measures to reverse these violations.”
Mr. Lynk, whose mandate as a Special Rapporteur covers the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, stressed that all Israeli settlements and outposts in occupied land were illegal under international law.
“An occupying power is expressly prohibited from transferring its civilian population into an occupied territory. This violates the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949, and is contrary to numerous United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, as well as a major advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in 2004,” he said.
ENDS
In 2016, the UN Human Rights Council designated Mr. Michael Lynk (Canada) as the seventh Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the then UN Commission on Human Rights. As a Special Rapporteur, Mr. Lynk is part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity. Learn more, log on to: http://www.ohchr |
't stop others from indulging in corruption. And the third kind are like Arjun-they fight against their own people for what is correct. We have too many Duryodhans and Bhishms, but not enough Arjuns."
A Lucknow boy with a penchant for such lofty prose, Chaturvedi's strength comes as much from his own conviction as it does from his understanding of the service rules that protect the Indian bureaucracy. Despite 12 transfers in five years, one suspension, two chargesheets for removal from service, and false police and vigilance cases, Chaturvedi has not only managed to win all the cases against him in court or at the Central Administrative Tribunal, he has also managed to secure a change of cadre from Haryana to Uttarakhand this August, citing "extreme hardship" in his home state.
SK Lamba: Crusading against corruption in Adarsh Housing Society SK Lamba: Crusading against corruption in Adarsh Housing Society
At AIIMS, he busted an illegal drugs racket by catching a local medical shop selling spurious drugs at inflated prices to poor patients under the aegis of hospital officials and local politicians. As part of his operation, a van laden with drugs worth Rs 6 crore was seized, leading to a larger expose. The Magsaysay Award in Manila on August 31 was the cherry on top.
Death threats and punishment postings are now a matter of course for Chaturvedi, who says the keys to his mental peace are a simple life (he doesn't own a car, his home in AIIMS has sparse furniture) and regular entertainment (he is a "filmy" who can spout dialogues from Hindi blockbusters at the drop of a hat and watches at least one new release every Friday). On September 21, Chaturvedi donated the Rs 20 lakh he got with his Magsaysay Award to an AIIMS fund for the treatment of poor patients. "When you harass someone, he reaches a point when he's not scared anymore."
Amitabh Thakur: Crusading against corruption in government offices and the land mafia in Noida Amitabh Thakur: Crusading against corruption in government offices and the land mafia in Noida
It's a sentiment shared by Amitabh Thakur, a UP-cadre IPS officer who served as just another "accommodating bureaucrat" for over a decade until a fight over his own study leave at IIM, Lucknow engineered a change of heart in 2007. From an officer who did not shake the status quo, Thakur became a serial litigant, and filed a slew of public interest cases against anyone and anything with the help of his wife Nutan Thakur. This year, he made a huge impact-filing a PIL against Yadav Singh, an engineer from Noida who had allegedly amassed property and wealth worth thousands of crores, purportedly through his links with top Samajwadi Party politicians. Such is Yadav Singh's clout that a CBI probe ordered by the Allahabad High Court was challenged directly by the Akhilesh Yadav government at the state's expense. Thakur, 47, alleges he has been victimised relentlessly since then. He and his wife Nutan, 42, were even booked in a rape case this July, which, he says, is fabricated.
Not enough protection
To protect those exposing wrongdoing, the Whistle-Blowers Protection Act, 2011, was passed by the Lok Sabha on December 27, 2011, by the Rajya Sabha on February 21, 2014 and given the President's assent on May 9, 2014. But it came with riders that threaten to reduce it to a "paper tiger".
Bhadresh Vamja: Crusading against corruption in public distribution system Bhadresh Vamja: Crusading against corruption in public distribution system
Principal among them is the provision to ensure punishment for false or frivolous complaints, which, activists say, make it more of a weapon for the government and less of a shield for whistle-blowers. One more rider is that every complaint has to be filed with the identity of the complainant, which the Vigilance Commission must not share, except, if it deems fit, to the head of the department against which the complaint has been filed. Activists allege that since complaints cannot be anonymous, whistle-blowers are open to the potential risk of being discovered by people with influence. Another drawback is that the act only covers employees working with the Government of India, and does not hold jurisdiction over state employees.
Instead of strengthening its powers, an amendment bill, tabled by the NDA government this May, could weaken the act even further. If it is passed, whistle-blowers will no longer be able to provide documents and information protected under the Official Secrets Act, 1923, putting classified documents out of their reach. Further, there will be no time limit to determine whether certain documents fall in the exempted category, making it easy for officials to put complaints in the cold storage.
Attempts to weaken the act and to dilute the efficacy of the RTI, which allegedly began towards the end of the UPA regime and continued under the NDA, are being seen by activists as a bad omen. They say that RTI inquiries are not properly monitored, penalties are not imposed for violations, and several queries are either denied outright or simply not answered. "Over a 10-year perspective, we have gained in terms of transparency. But over three years, this is being scaled back, says Santosh Desai. "It seems the political establishment felt too much freedom had been given away too easily."
It's evident that our 'new freedom fighters' are forced to battle in an arena where the odds are stacked against them. Like gladiators thrown into a pit of lions, their chances of victory are slim. Little incentive to tell the truth, almost no protection, pressure to co-opt, and the innate fear of retribution are all realities they have to constantly live with. Those who choose to step into the cauldron in spite of these hazards are indeed offering a vital public service. It's not always easy to emulate them. The least one can do is stand by their side.
with Uday Mahurkar, Asit Jolly, Piyush Babele, M.G. Arun and Asmita Bakshi
Follow the writer on Twitter@_kunal_pradhanThe SBS weekend fare continues to reside in the ratings crapper, with the currently airing Divorce Lawyers in Love not winning in any love from the audience. The network is bringing in the big guns next with the K-drama remake of TW-drama In Time With You. Starring Ha Ji Won and Lee Jin Wook, the two veterans couple up for the first time onscreen to play best friends through 20 years with him nursing a long standing crush on the other than finally gets reciprocated after she suffers one bad relationship too many and sees him in a new light.
The cast of The Time I Loved You, 7000 Days gathered for a script reading last week and filming already commenced over the weekend. The script reading pictures, aside from a sneak peek at Ha Ji Won with her bitch face ready for the character and Lee Jin Wook all beaming warm smiles just like his character, is a veritable who’s who reunion from the cast of Pinocchio. Yoon Kyun Sang, Lee Joo Seung, Jin Kyung, Shin Jung Geun, the only thing missing is expecting Ha Myung and In Ha to pop out in a cameo. I love this cast, there might actually be a chance I like this version once the original story is given a fresh new set of clothes.The Vikings, for the first time since 2001 with Randy Moss and Cris Carter, will likely feature a pair of receivers with over 800 yards. Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs have currently combined for 1619 receiving yards, and are on pace to finish with 932 yards and 1096 yards, respectively—which would also make Diggs the first 1000-yard receiver Minnesota has had since Sidney Rice, seven years ago.
With all of that receiving success in mind, Stefon Diggs has found ways to keep grounded—devoting time today to Pillsbury United Communities, a non-profit dedicated to reaching out to underserved communities around Minneapolis, providing resources for education, employment and health.
The initiative Diggs is focusing on today, and one he’s donating a significant amount of technology to, will specifically work on creating STEM education opportunities for children in the inner cities. I had the opportunity to talk to Diggs over the phone today about his work with the organization, and he was extremely enthusiastic about what he could do for children in disaffected communities.
“I kind of took it as a father figure role. I handled it the best way I knew how. Just like people who have their first child—you don’t know everything to do but you try do everything you can.” – Stefon Diggs
“I want to impact kids in any way, shape or form that I can,” he said. “They focus on inner city neighborhoods and I’m all about impacting kids.”
Diggs had a rough upbringing in Maryland that saw him taking on quite a bit more responsibility as a young man before heading off to college. At age 14, Stefon Diggs had to deal with the death of his father, and that saw him taking on a parenting role for his younger siblings, a responsibility he didn’t take lightly.
“I had to take on a lot at a young age,” he told me. “Being a man, especially being a man when you’re younger, you have to set an example for some younger siblings of yours and I kind of took it as a father figure role. I handled it the best way I knew how. Just like people who have their first child—you don’t know everything to do but you try do everything you can. Now my little brothers are doing really well. They’re both in school and they’re both playing football and I’m just proud of them.”
One of Diggs’ brothers, Trevon Diggs, is making waves as a true freshman at Alabama, and capped off his season with 90 yards of punt return yardage against Florida in the SEC Championship game.
That football success isn’t as important to the eldest Diggs brother, however. “It’s not only football—how they’re growing as young men is more important to me. Football is always exciting and it will always be my first love as far as sports but as far as them growing up as individuals, that’s more important.”
That brings Diggs back to the Pillsbury United Communities work, where he’ll be donating software, iPad minis, printers and other technologies towards the community center. Along with donations from CenturyLink—including a professional caliber recording studio—the community center will be able to provide children with technologies they’ll use to further their STEM education.
The young Maryland native was attracted to the program’s mission, and believes that STEM-specific education has a tough time otherwise reaching children in the inner city. “The community center focuses on STEM initiatives. Helping them grow in those ways is the main focus—when you give kids a platform to step on,” he said, “it just elevates them and puts them in the right direction. It gives them more access to different things.
Pillsbury United Communities is located at 1701 Oak Park Avenue North in North Minneapolis and has provided services to its community since 1937. Find out more at their website.
As far as his football work is concerned, Diggs is just as enthusiastic about the Vikings’ chances to win out and make the playoffs. He’s aware there’s been more pressure put on the offense as the season goes on, and what role he plays in making sure that the offense executes.
To him, the demands of winning out aren’t a burden. “I don’t take it as a lot of pressure,” he argued. “As far as being a professional, sometimes things don’t go your way, sometimes you have to dig yourself out of a hole, so in order to put us in the best position possible, we’ve got to win out, that’s all.”
He repeated head coach Mike Zimmer’s mantra of taking things one game at a time and focusing on opponents and he knows there are eyes pointed squarely at the offense. “I have 100% faith in my guys,” he said of the offensive unit. “We can do anything we put our mind to when we execute. The games that we lost came down to a couple of plays. It’s not like we were ever getting blown out or things of that nature. We just have to execute at a high level to do things that we need to.”
His role has been critical to that necessary offensive success and attributes it to his coaching. He’s been an advanced technical route runner, earning praise from teammates that worked against him in practice, and credits coaches like his two position coaches at Maryland: Lee Hull, who now works with an extremely talented Indianapolis Colts receiving corps, and Pro Bowl receiver Keenan McCardell.
He also reserves no small amount of praise for the current Vikings receiver coach, George Stewart.
“Those guys got me prepared for where I am now,” he told me. “I continued to sharpen my blade each and every day, each and every week. When I got into the league last year, Coach Stewart, he does a great job on fundamentals and details and that’s where I got to where I am today. Just some great guys and a lot of effort, a lot of practice and a lot of time put in.”
When asked what the best piece of advice he could take away from their coaching was, he struggled to find just one nugget, but settled on precision. “McCardell, he told me a lot. He didn’t say one key thing, but you need to be precise,” he emphasized. “You need to be at your depth when you’re supposed to be there. You’ve got to do it all the time. It’s not about doing it the one time or doing it twice. You’ve got do it every time. …. attention to detail.
“With Coach Stew—you need to have a mindset, you need to play at a high level all the time, you need to do things the right way. You need to be paying attention to the fundamentals and details, and things will happen the way they’re supposed to.”
That precision and focus on route depths has been one reason he and Sam Bradford have hit it off despite having no offseason work together. “[I’m] just trying to do everything I can for the man. He’s a great guy, he prepares the right way; he’s a professional. I’m just trying to do my part and be where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there and catch the ball.”
The drive that Diggs has is one big reason that he was able to surpass his expectations as a fifth-round pick and make a near-immediate impact with the team—it’s also the same drive that raised his brothers and now attempts to secure opportunities for dozens of other children in and around Minneapolis.
It should be no surprise that Stefon Diggs pays more attention to the long-term prospects of his team, his family and the community around him. Diggs has always looked forward, and that’s one reason this project appealed to him.
“I just saw it as an opportunity being presented to me and I tried to jump all over it. Kids are our future.”Robotech Flight Jackets from Toynami and EEPMON! In collaboration with artist EEPMON, Toynami is introducing Robotech Flight Jackets! Limited 300 units worldwide, preorder now at ToynamiShop.com!
Introducing the 1/72 Valkyrie VF-1S Die Cast model! New from Calibre Wings! The VF-1 Valkyrie is an amazing die-cast metal model based off the Macross VF-1 Valkyrie. Set in 1:72 scale this high end non-transformable collectible comes equipped with a standing and sitting pilot. Preorder available now, shipping Q3 2019!
Super Deformed Morphers are back! Super Deformed Morphers are coming back! Available in single blind boxes or packs of 15 units!
Robotech issue #16 now out Robotech #16 is now out at your local comic shop and online!
‘Batgirl’ Writer Brenden Fletcher Joining ‘Robotech’ for Free Comic Book Day! HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: ‘Batgirl’ Writer Brenden Fletcher Joining ‘Robotech’ Comic Franchise! The Robotech Free Comic Book Day issue will be released May 4!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Robotech.com! From all of us at Harmony Gold, we hope you and your loved ones are enjoying the holiday season!
Miriya Sterling 1/100 with Micronian Pilot now shipping! Just in from Toynami! Miriya Sterling’s 1/100 Veritech is back, now with micronian-sized pilot figures! In stock and shipping!
KitzConcept Introduces the 1/12 Scale Minmei Figure! Featuring the new 1/12 scale 6 inch Minmei Collectible Figure from KitzConcept! Comes with multiple faces, hands, microphone and Minmei Doll, in stock and shipping now!
Robotech Archives: Macross Vol 2 Robotech Archives: Macross Saga Vol 2 is here!
Robotech Force of Arms Strategy Guide The Force of Arms card game is out now and Solar Flare has a strategy guide to help you with some gameplay tips!
Icon Heroes Presents Robotech Plush Dolls New from Icon Heroes: 10 inch plush dolls featuring Rick Hunter and Roy Fokker! Preorders available now, shipping Q1 2019!
Coleco Robotech Mini Arcade Game now on preorder to the public! After the initial manufacturing run ships to crowdfunding backers, the Coleco Robotech mini arcade game will be available for the public! Preorder yours now, shipping in December!
Robotech: Attack on the SDF-1 board game now on preorder! Strange Machine Games is bringing Attack On the SDF-1 to your living room this November! This exciting new board game has you defending the SDF-1 with the entire fleet at your disposal against the Zentraedi armada. Transform into firing mode with a cardboard constructable SDF-1 that looms over the playing board! Preorder now at the Robotech Store or Japan Anime Games, also available with a tabletop playing mat!
Robotech Force of Arms Cardgame Playmat from Solar Flare Games Solar Flare Games has a 24x18 playmat designed to go with their upcoming Robotech: Force of Arms card game. Preorder now or as a bundle with the card game, shipping July!
KitzConcept’s Rick Hunter 6 inch Figure now on preorder! KitzConcept is proud to present their new 1/12 scale 6 inch Robotech Figures! Featuring highly detailed sculpting and articulation, these are the perfect desk or shelf decoration. Preorder now, shipping November 2018!
ROBOTECH MUSCLE TRASH CANS! Super 7 has announced their new Trash Can edition of the Robotech MUSCLE figures… get the entire Wave 1 set (12 figures) in new colors and contained in a collector’s trash can! Preorder available now!
KitzConcept 1/72 Super Veritech Skull Leader with FAST PACK Introducing KitzConcept’s FAST PACK Super Veritech Armor for the 1/72 scale Veritech!
ROBOTECH LIVE ACTION FILM UPDATE Robotech live action film director Andy Muschietti (Stephen King’s IT) and screenwriter Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman) stopped by the Harmony Gold offices and picked up some sweet swag! Jason will be working on the script this year while Andy directs the second IT film.
Max and Miriya diecast models on preorder! Brand new Max Sterling and Miriya F-14 Tomcats from Calibre Wings are now on preorder! Shipping June!
The Robotech Store’s 2018 Holiday Sale!... UPDATED DEC 25! Get ready for takeoff, the Robotech Store’s 2018 Holiday sale is now live! Incredible savings up to 40% off! Toys for the kids, gifts for friends and vintage Robotech collector items! Sale ends December 23rd!
Robotech #14 is out in comic stores and online now! Titan Comics’ Robotech #14 is out now in comic stores and online! Dig deeper into the conspiracy within the ranks of the Robotech Defense Force, and the secret history of the SDF-1!
ROBOTECH CONVENTION TOUR TOUCHES DOWN AT MCM LONDON COMIC CON The Robotech Convention Tour is touching down at MCM London Comic Con! Join Harmony Gold’s Tommy Yune, Titan Comics’ Chris Thompson and Robotech Comic Writer Simon Furman as they present the latest developments in the Robotech universe, from the awesome Titan comic series to the live action film in the works at Sony Pictures!
Robotech at Paris Comic Con this Weekend! The Robotech Convention Tour is coming to Paris Comic Con! Join Harmony Gold’s Steve Yun as he presents the latest developments in the Robotech universe, from the awesome Titan comic series to the live action film in the works at Sony Pictures!
ROBOTECH DAY IN SHANGHAI ON OCTOBER 26th! The 2018 Robotech Convention Tour makes a stop at the Shanghai Comic Convention on Friday, Oct. 26th at 4:30 p.m.!
ROBOTECH IN THIS MONTH’S LOOT ANIME! This month’s theme is TRANSFORM, subscribe by Oct 27 to get muerchandise from Dragonball Z, My Hero Academia, Robotech and more!
ROBOTECH DAY AT NEW YORK COMIC CON 2018! Harmony Gold and Reed Exhibitions are proud to announce that the Robotech Convention Tour will make a stop at the New York Comic-Con. Join your fellow fans for the latest developments in the Robotech universe, from awesome new products to the live action film in the works at Sony Pictures with the producers of 300 and the director of Stephen King’s “It”
Robotech at Salt Lake Fan X! Sept 6-8, Harmony Gold will be at FanX 2018 in Salt Lake City, Utah! Come see the latest Robotech stuff, find out about the all-new Robotech comic storyline and see the latest news on the live action film coming from Sony Pictures!
Robotech at Nan Desu Kan 2018! August 31 to September 2, Harmony Gold will be at Nan Desu Kan 2018 in Colorado! Come see the latest Robotech stuff, find out about the all-new Robotech comic storyline and see the latest news on the live action film coming from Sony Pictures!
Robotech: Force of Arms preview at AnimeFest in Dallas this weekend! Solar Flare Games will be at AnimeFest in Dallas this weekend and they’re bringing pre-release retail copies of the Robotech: Force of Arms card game! Come visit them at booth #301, August 17-20 at the Sheraton Dallas and get your hands on it before it’s released to the public!
Robotech #12 is out at comic stores and online! Robotech #12 is out now at your local comic store and digitally online! Rick, Lisa, Max and Kramer attempt a daring escape from Breetai’s flagship, and Max faces off in a rematch against Zentraedi warrior Miriya! #12 also introduces new Robotech artist Hendry Prasetya!
Robotech Space Camp Shirt now from Super7! Macross Island “Space Camp” T-shirt now shipping from Super7!
ROBOTECH GAMES AT GEN CON! Come to GenCon in Indianapolis this August 2nd-5th! Strange Machine Games will be demoing all their upcoming Robotech tabletop games, including early retail copies of Ace Pilot!
UPDATE: 4 INCH ROBOTECH ACTION FIGURES NOW SHIPPING! Weekday afternoon cartoons, action figures and ROBOTECH always equaled a happy childhood! Now that feeling is back with this brand-new assortment of ROBOTECH action figures! All your favorite ROBOTECH characters are here, fully articulated and featuring removable helmets and display stands!
Robotech Trade Paperback #2 NOW SHIPPING! Now collected into one convenient volume! The next four issues of the explosive new Robotech series by Titan Comics is available for preorder! Shipping June 19th!
80’s Tees is giving away hundreds in Robotech prizes! 80’s Tees is giving away hundreds of dollars in Robotech prizes away, and there are 7 ways to enter! No purchase necessary! Hurry, sweepstakes ends Tuesday night!
UPDATED THURSDAY: All The Robotech At San Diego Comic Con! Robotech will be at San Diego Comic Con on July 19th-22nd! Come visit us at our panel on Thursday, and check out exclusives at our licensees Toynami, Titan Comics, Icon Heroes, Super7 and Prime 1 Studios!
Robotech at Anime Expo 2018! Harmony Gold is bringing it to Anime Expo 2018! Come see our panels at the largest anime convention in North America, this coming 4th of July Weekend! Check out our panel times!
Check out Jhae Fanning’s VF-1S car at Anime Expo! Jhae Fanning, Robotech Superfan and car enthusiast, has brought his awesome VF-1S Acura NSX to Anime Expo, go check it out in person at booth #2025
Robotech Lootcrate at Anime Expo 2018! Lootcrate is at Anime Expo 2018 in Los Angeles right now! If you missed out on the Skull Leader beanie from their February Loot Anime, you can secure one for yourself by signing up at their booth this weekend at AX, booth 4907!
Robotech Issue #10 in stores now! Robotech Issue #10 From Titan Comics On Sale Now! The radical reimagining continues! Despite his incarceration, warlord Khyron continues to be a major threat to the SDF-1. Max and Miriya introduce themselves to each other… with their fists!
SUPER 7 FEATURED IN HISTORY OF MACROSS AND JETFIRE You should already be watching The Toys That Made Us on Netflix, but if you aren’t, our friends Brian Flynn and Josh Herbolsheimer from Super 7 are featured in the second episode of the second season. Better yet, it’s the episode that features the history of how Macross’ VF-1 Valkyrie was first brought to the US as Transformers’ Jetfire!
ROBOTECH: FORCE OF ARMS CARD GAME PREORDER ROBOTECH: FORCE OF ARMS is coming mid-July from Solar Flare Games! Get your preorder in now!
80’s Tees Robotech Giveaway! 80’s Tees is giving away a Coleco Evolved Robotech mini-arcade and a Skull Leader hoodie! Enter to win! Winner will be picked in 15 days!
MOMOCON THIS MEMORIAL WEEKEND! Mark your calendars! Robotech is coming to Atlanta, Georgia for Momocon on Memorial Weekend, May 25-27th! Special guests Richard Epcar (Ben Dixon and Lunk), Barbara Goodson (Marie Crystal, Sera) and Kari Wahlgren (Ariel) will be there!
Coleco Robotech mini arcade game Kickstarter Coleco brings back classic gaming and Robotech with their new line of Coleco Evolved mini arcade cabinets! Kickstarter ends June 7th, shipping September!
ROBOTECH NOW AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING IN AUSTRALIA All 85 episodes of Robotech are available for streaming in Australia via Stan! Stan? Stan.
80sTees.com’s Kevin Stecko: How I Got To Be A Featured Extra On Cobra Kai Not strictly Robotech news, but our friend Kevin Stecko at 80’s Tees as you may have guessed is a lover of all things from the 80’s! Recently he got to be in the new Youtube series, Cobra Kai! Check out his story!
NERDIST: COLECO TURNS ROBOTECH AND OTHER CLASSICS INTO MINI ARCADE GAMES “While Robotech and Rainbow Brite were created in the ’80s, neither franchise received its own arcade title during that era. But now, Coleco is turning the clock back thirty years to give Robotech and Rainbow Brite the throwback style video games they deserve as the latest releases in the Coleco Evolved Mini Arcade line. “
1/100 VF1J WITH MICRONIAN PILOT MAX ON PREORDER! Preorder available now! Shipping September!
ROBOTECH #9 IN STORES NOW In stores and available online today! Secrets and lies kick off the third arc of Robotech! Breetai is under pressure and Claudia has to deal with a possible traitor…meanwhile, Rick Hunter gets a massive shock! Plus, meet Dolza and Miriya!
1/100 Veritech Vol.1 w Micronian Pilot Rick NOW SHIPPING! The wait is over! Toynami is now shipping the first volume in the ROBOTECH VF-1 TRANSFORMABLE VERITECH FIGHTER COLLECTION. Rick Hunter Volume 1 comes fully equipped with 2 pilots; one cockpit pilot and one standing pilot. In stock now!
In Memory of Don Yee This past Saturday, Don Yee passed away from cancer. For almost as long as Robotech has existed, Robotech fans have known Don Yee. He was an amazing illustrator whose works were published in Robotech Art 2. He was a familiar fixture at conventions around Southern California, and many voice actors knew him as a personal friend.
Classic Robotech comics are back! Order the Robotech Archives: Macross Volume 1 now! For Robotech fans who missed out on classic Robotech comics from the 80’s and 90’s, Titan Books is here to the rescue! Robotech Archives Vol 1 is now available at comic stores, in your online comic apps, and in the Robotech Store!
SolarFlare Games’ ROBOTECH: FORCE OF ARMS CARD GAME NEARLY COMPLETE SolarFlare Games’ ROBOTECH: FORCE OF ARMS is nearly art-complete and expected to ship this July! Check out this video of artist Andora Cidonia illustrating the “Reflex Weapons” card!
Robotech at C2E2 this weekend! Harmony Gold USA comes to C2E2 in the windy city of Chicago this weekend! Get the latest announcements in the Robotech universe on Sunday morning, 10:45AM in S405A
KIDS LOGIC 1/6 SCALE COCKPITS MANUFACTURING NOW, SHIPPING APRIL After many manufacturing delays, Kids Logic is reporting that the 1/6 scale VF-1J cockpit with Rick Hunter is under full production and is expected to ship at the end of April!
ROBOTECH AT ANIME BOSTON THIS WEEKEND! Harmony Gold USA presents the latest developments in the Robotech universe, from awesome new products to the live action film in the works at Sony Pictures with the producers of 300 and the director of Stephen King’s “It”
Toynami 1/100 Veritechs with Micronian Pilot Rick at Wondercon! Drop by the Toynami #WonderCon Booth #827 to be the first to purchase the Robotech “Rick Hunter” VF-1J this weekend! The #WonderCon Robotech Panel takes place tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. PDT in Room 300B
Robotech At Wondercon 2018, March 23! Harmony Gold will be at Wondercon Anaheim in Southern California, March 23! Come get the latest news on the live action film from Sony, the comic by Titan and awesome new licenses on the way!
New Robotech Jerseys and Hoodies from 80s Tees! New from 80’s Tees! Roy Fokker and Rick Hunter hockey jerseys, Test Pilot hoodies, and more!
Announcing the KitzConcept Store! KitzConcept in Hong Kong has launched their online store with free shipping to the United States and many other countries! Get Super Deformed Veritechs, Minmei Dolls and 1/72 Veritechs direct from their factory in China!
KitzConcept 1/72 Veritech Skull Leader Preorder! New from KitzConcept! 1/72 scale Realistic Veritech Fighter Skull Leader! Shipping in April, preorder available now!
Robotech Comes to Emerald City Comic Con 2018! Coming to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, Washington this weekend! Harmony Gold USA presents the latest developments in the Robotech universe, from awesome new products to the live action film in the works at Sony Pictures with the producers of 300 and the director of Stephen King’s “It”.
ROBOTECH #7 IN STORES NOW! The seventh issue of Titan’s epic Robotech comics is now out at comic stores! Read Comics The Gathering’s review and get your issue at your local comic store or online!
Minmei Pull Back Dolls Minmei Pull-Back Dolls from KitzConcept are now available at the Robotech Store! Each Minmei Doll stands 2.5 inches high and features a pull-back motor that lets Minmei dance, waving her arms and head!
ROBOTECH M.U.S.C.L.E. WAVE 1 NOW SHIPPING! These all new Robotech M.U.S.C.L.E. figures from Super7 are flying into the ring! Now shippin from the Robotech store!
Robotech Trade Paperback #1 shipping now from ROBOTECH.COM Now collected into one convenient volume! The first four issues of the explosive new Robotech series by Titan Comics is available for preorder! Shipping now from Robotech.com!
New footage of Prime 1 Studio’s VF-1J Guardian Statue! New video from Prime 1 studio showcases the incredible VF-1J Super Veritech statue currently in the works!
Robotech in February’s LootAnime! UPDATE: Ends 2/27! This month’s Loot Anime by Loot Crate is all about advanced weapons, powerful androids, giant mechs and more awesome TECH with futuristic anime and manga gear featuring PsychoPass, AstroBoy, Robotech and BattleAngelAlita!
Robotech Watches now available! Introducing the Robotech Watch! Featuring an all-steel body and genuine leather wristband. What time is it? Robotech time!
Robotech #6 in stores now! The sixth issue of Titan’s epic Robotech comics is now out at comic stores! Read Comics The Gathering’s review and get your issue at your local comic store or online!
BOARD GAME GEEK: Robotech Force of Arms nominated for most anticipated games of 2018 BoardGameGeek.com is taking votes for the most anticipated new board games of 2018… and Solar Flare’s Robotech: Force of Arms is nominated for multiple categories! Head on over to Board Game Geek to vote!
UPDATE: ROBOTECH VISUAL ARCHIVE: MACROSS SAGA NOW SHIPPING! The massive new tome of pre-production art and technical information from Robotech: The Macross Saga is now available and shipping out!
ROBOTECH ACE PILOT BOARD GAME ON PREORDER! Robotech: Ace Pilot from Strange Machine Games is now available for preorder in the Robotech Store, at a Holiday preorder discount price of $20! (MSRP $25)
1/100 Veritech Vol.1 w Micronian Pilot Rick PREORDER The wait is over! Toynami is proud to offer the first volume in the ROBOTECH VF-1 TRANSFORMABLE VERITECH FIGHTER COLLECTION. Rick Hunter Volume 1 comes fully equipped with 2 pilots; one cockpit pilot and one standing pilot.
ROBOTECH 2018 CALENDAR PREORDER! The Robotech 2018 Calendar is now available for preorder! Shipping in about a week, the calendar features all new artwork and sculptures from Jay Tablante, Prime 1 Studio, KitzConcept, KidsLogic, Lee Kohse, Alex Ronald, Francisco Etchart, Tommy Yune and more!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT HARMONY GOLD We hope you all have a great Thanksgiving with your family and friends. Enjoy this awesome new artwork from artist Lee Kohse!
Den of Geek: New Details on Classic Robotech Comics We’ve got details (and covers!) of the Robotech comics that will republished by Titan Comics.
SYFYWIRE EXCLUSIVE: SNEAK PEEK AT ROBOTECH ISSUE 5 See the fallout of that major twist in first look at Robotech Issue #5! Visit SyfyWire for an early peek at several new Robotech covers and pages!
Robotech Holiday Sale coming Nov 24! The Robotech Holiday Sale is coming Nov 24th! Enjoy Thanksgiving with your family, then prepare for an all-out assault of savings on Robotech gifts for your friends and family!
Singing Dancing Minmei Doll NOW SHIPPING! NOW IN STOCKL AND SHIPPING! KitzConcept is proud to present the Singing Dancing Minmei Doll! Inspired by the TV show, this Minmei doll can sing and dance to your favorite Robotech tunes through bluetooth Robotechnology!
ROBOTECH #4 IS NOW OUT AT COMIC SHOPS AND ONLINE! Robotech #4 is now out in comic shops and online! Visit Comic Shop Locator to find your local comic store or buy online at Comixology! Watch our comic trailer!
Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween to all our fans from Harmony Gold! Happy and safe hunting tonight!
PRESS RELEASE: ROBOTECH VISUAL ARCHIVE: THE MACROSS SAGA (PREVIEW) ROBOTECH – THE GROUNDBREAKING MECHA ANIME RECEIVES THE ULTIMATE ART BOOK!
New Rick Hunter Skateboards from Nsurgo! SHIPPING AT THE END OF OCTOBER! The first of Nsurgo’s newest line of officially licensed Robotech Skateboards is here! The Rick Hunter skateboard deck was designed by Robotech artist Long Vo. Inspired by the opening scene of the Robotech credits, Long captures the iconic cockpit scene with Rick Hunter. Truly a masterpiece that Robotech fans can not miss!
SKULL LEADER BATTLOID PLUSH NOW SHIPPING! The new Skull Leader Battloid Plush dolls from Puni Puni Factory are now shipping!
ANNOUNCING “ROBOTECH: FORCE OF ARMS” CARD GAME FROM SOLAR FLARE GAMES! Announcing a new Robotech card game by Solar Flare Games! And a message from Dave Killingsworth of Solar Flare Games about his love for Robotech!
Robotech #3 OUT IN STORES AND ONLINE TODAY The third issue of the new Robotech comic series from Titan is out in comic stores and online!
CALIBRE WINGS AT SINGAPORE TOY GAME AND COMIC CONVENTION Aweesome Toys interviews Noel Lee, founder of of Calibre Wings, at the Singapore Toy Game and Comic Convention and gets a tour of the booth and the beautiful new Robotech F-14 models!
PREVIEWS: ROBOTECH #1 WAS THE #1 NON-PREMIER COMIC IN AUGUST Previews World is reporting that the first issue of the Robotech comic was the #1 non-premier (small publisher) comic for the month of August, |
a little" just before visiting the church. He sat with his victims for about 15 minutes before the slaughter. They handed him a sheet with religious verses.
"It was a Bible study," he said.
He brought with him seven magazines, he told investigators. A bag and his weapon.
"I was sitting there thinking if I should do it or not," Roof said, according to the video.
"I could have walked out. I don't want to say it was spur of the moment."
In the video, Roof is seen sitting at a circular table at the Shelby, North Carolina, police department, after his arrest. He occasionally gestures with his hands but his voice -- deep and monotone -- betrays no emotion. The sun hits the camera lens, partly washing out the young man's face.
"Somebody had to do it," Roof said of the slayings. He added that "black people are killing white people everyday... What I did is so minuscule compared to what they do to white people every day."
He researched the city and the church and then acted alone.
'Our people are superior,' Roof told investigators
"I like Charleston," he said in the video, which is more than two hours long.
"It's historic, too, you know. I think at one time it had the highest ratio of blacks to white during slavery, and AME is a historic church. I researched black churches."
The web also influenced his deadly handiwork. "It sounds lame but it was pretty much the Internet," he said.
After sketching out the massacre scene for investigators, Roof said, he emptied seven magazines. His victims cowered under tables, he recalled. No one tried to escape.
"It was pop, pop, pop," he said, adding that he was didn't shoot a woman who was looking at him.
Roof said he was "in absolute awe" that police weren't waiting outside when he left the building. He had been prepared to kill himself in the event of a confrontation with police.
At one point, Roof, 22, described his crime as "political" and said he considered himself "a white supremacist."
"Our people are superior," he said. "That's just the fact."
His views on race were awakened by the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, he said. He also talked about Muslims overrunning parts of Europe. He said he supported Hitler.
His goal was "to agitate race relations," the suspect said.
Asked by an investigator if his crime made him feel "glad," Roof said: "I had to do it. I wouldn't say I was glad."
When told he had killed eight people at the scene and a ninth died at a hospital, Roof said, "Well, it makes me feel bad."
He said he couldn't look at relatives of his victims if they were seated across from him.
Did he have a message for the public?
"Ugh, I don't know."
Before his confession, Roof munched on Burger King hamburger brought to him by police officers.
The showing of the video Friday capped a dramatic and emotional week for the 12 jurors and six alternates, as well as attendees at the trial in federal court.
Roof's mother passed out and collapsed during a lunch recess in the courtroom Wednesday. His attorney said in a court filing that she suffered a heart attack.
Roof was "cold and calculating" in planning an attack, a federal prosecutor said in opening statements.
Roof studied the church's history in the black community, found out what time a Bible study class would be held, loaded his gun the night before, packed extra ammunition and drove more than an hour to the church, Assistant US Attorney Jay Richardson told the jury of nine whites and three African-Americans.
He was welcomed into the Bible study and displayed a "cold and hateful heart" by sitting with the group more than 30 minutes, Richardson said.
Tywanza Sanders, one of those killed, told Roof that he didn't have to shoot them, saying, "We mean you no harm," the prosecutor said, recounting the story of one of the survivors.
Roof, who is white, replied, "Y'all are raping our white women, y'all are taking over the world," Richardson said.
JUST WATCHED Friends of Tywanza Sanders: 'He was always smiling' Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Friends of Tywanza Sanders: 'He was always smiling' 03:10
After he was captured, authorities learned Roof had written a "manifesto" of his racist beliefs and posed for photos with the US flag burning in one hand and the Confederate flag in the other, Richardson said.
Roof also designed his own logo that included his initials, a swastika and the number 88, which for white supremacists stands for "Heil Hitler," the prosecutor said. "He created the symbol to reflect who he was, what he thought and what he had done," Richardson said.
Defense statement
Opening for the defense, attorney David Bruck told the jury, "You're probably wondering why there has to be a trial."
The practical reason for the trial, Bruck said, is that the government has asked for the death penalty.
Bruck said the jury will decide guilt or innocence in the first phase of the trial. In the second phase, the jury will decide on punishment.
Bruck reminded the jury of Roof's youth and urged them to try to understand him. Roof told the FBI he didn't have any friends, Bruck said.
Jurors should ask where Roof's feelings of racial hatred came from, Bruck said.
"How much sense does this crime make, does it make any sense and if any at all, what does that tell you?" he asked.
Bruck said he would not call any witnesses.
Roof sat mostly motionless in his state-issued, gray-and-white striped jumpsuit throughout opening statements, barely looking up from the defense table.
JUST WATCHED Obama sings 'Amazing Grace' during eulogy for pastor Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Obama sings 'Amazing Grace' during eulogy for pastor 01:44
Tywanza Sanders was at Bible study with mom, aunt
Felicia Sanders, who survived the shooting, was one of seven prosecution witnesses on Wednesday. Sanders' 26-year-old son, Tywanza, and 87-year old aunt, Susie Jackson, were victims.
Sanders teared up recalling her close friends and members of the church, including the Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74, a church staff member and former pastor of Friendship AME Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
Simmons, who was killed, "was the backbone of the church," Sanders said.
Richardson showed pictures of all nine victims as Sanders spoke. They smiled and looked happy.
Tywanza Sanders, 26, was killed in the shooting. His mother testified Wednesday.
She screamed, 'He has a gun'
At Bible study, Sanders recalled the church's then-pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed, gave Roof a copy of the page they were studying.
Sanders said Roof hung his head down during their group -- "just as he's doing right now."
Roof also appeared to have his eyes closed throughout Sanders' testimony.
Sanders shut her own eyes as she recalled that night.
Then, "a lot of sound went off," she said.
She screamed, "He has a gun." Roof had already shot Pinckney.
JUST WATCHED New video shows church group moments before shooting Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH New video shows church group moments before shooting 01:15
Sanders was under a table.
"There were so many shots," she said.
Her granddaughter said, "Granny, I'm so scared."
"Play dead, play dead," Sanders recalled telling her.
"I muzzled her face to my body so tight that I thought I suffocated her," Sanders said.
Sanders said Roof asked Polly Sheppard, a retired nurse, if he had shot her yet.
Sheppard replied, "No."
Sanders said Roof wanted her to tell his story.
Roof faces 33 federal charges: nine counts of violating the Hate Crime Act resulting in death; three counts of violating the Hate Crime Act involving an attempt to kill; nine counts of obstruction of exercise of religion resulting in death; three counts of obstruction of exercise of religion involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon; and nine counts of use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence.
If convicted, he could face the death penalty.Former FBI Director James Comey will testify before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Thursday, in what will be his first public appearance since being fired by President Donald Trump on May 9.
The anticipated testimony, and the questions that will follow from the 13 members of the bipartisan committee, is already being played up as political theater—a chance for the agency head supposedly ousted for lack of loyalty to the President to present his side of the story.
Read: What Happened With James Comey? Timeline Of Events That Led To FBI Director’s Firing
While much of the public will tune into the hearing for the drama, security experts will be watching Comey’s appearance with the hope the former FBI director may provide insight into the FBI’s investigations into ties between members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government, as well as reveal details about the alleged Russian hacking and meddling in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.
Robert L. Deitz, who served as senior counselor to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and general counsel at the National Security Agency prior to that, told International Business Times he believes many in the security community would like to gain insights into specifics about the Russian interference on the U.S. election.
“They would probably like to know the techniques the Russians used to hack into U.S. systems.” The information has two values, according to Deitz: “Closing defensive weaknesses and identifying patches.” He said cybersecurity experts would also like to learn about the signatures of the Russian hackers, which may help in the difficult task of attributing attacks to a particular source.
The issue is likely particularly pressing in the wake of the publishing of a leaked NSA document that details cyberattacks carried out by the Russian military against U.S. voting software companies and local government officials.
However, Deitz was not optimistic about the likelihood of any of that information actually being revealed over the course of Comey’s testimony. “I doubt whether Comey’s testimony will get into the weeds," he said. “I expect that stuff will be classified Top Secret, and most senators couldn’t care less about techniques.”
Hank Thomas, the cofounder and chief operating officer of Strategic Cyber Ventures, told IBT he hopes Comey’s appearance will answer questions about the content of conversations between Trump surrogates and Russian officials during and after the campaign.
“We know that Mike Flynn was in communications with the Russians, what was said? Was it appropriate, borderline, or criminal?" Thomas said.
Thomas, a former executive at defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said he hopes Comey will report on the supposed backchannel established between the Trump campaign and Russian diplomats so the public may learn if it was “designed to simply be a backchannel, or a covert communications channel?”
The backchannel, reported last month by the Washington Post, was supposedly sought by Trump’s son-in-law and confidant Jared Kushner. According to the report, he approached Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities for communications in an apparent attempt to shield discussions from monitoring by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Read: What James Comey Will Say At Hearing About Trump, Russia And Mike Flynn
Like Thomas, University of New Haven professor and national security expert Jeff Beatty told IBT the main question he hopes to see answers is “was there any criminal activity?”
Beatty—who has served as in the Delta Force, FBI and CIA—noted that question itself has many component questions within it, but at the heart of it all is the possibility that something criminal took place.
Glenn Carle, a national security expert and Associate Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, told IBT he didn’t expect the topic of Russia to arise much in Comey’s testimony. Instead, he said he expects Comey to focus on his interactions with the President.
“The critical question is the independence of the FBI and the FBI director from the executive branch,” Carle said. “Comey’s description of the nature of the interactions that Trump had with him and to what extent he found them appropriate or inappropriate, that’s the key thing.”
While Carle said he doesn’t expect Comey to explicitly say whether the President attempted to obstruct justice by interfering with FBI investigations—specifically the agency’s probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn—but to provide information that may allow the committee to make such a determination.
Most experts seemed to share in Deitz’s somewhat gloomy outlook for the hearing.
“I think we are likely to hear commentary on policy and politics which may or may not have anything to do with criminal activity,” Beatty said.
Carle said the anticipation for Comey's testimony has been "like the build up to the Super Bowl" because of the broad expectations for what the former FBI director may talk about, but expects the hearing itself will be much more narrowly focused than some seem to expect.
"I can't imagine he'll give details [into investigations]," Carle said, noting that while Comey may comment on how serious the investigation is, he expects he will defer most questions regarding investigations to Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Thomas, on the other hand, said he expects the hearing would produce rather definitive answers by the time it is said and done.
“I suspect the conclusion will be that there is no doubt that the Russian security services are actively trying to divide the west and influence decisions that are beneficial to the growth of Russia’s global standing and power,” he said.
Thomas also said he anticipates the public will learn that members of the of the Trump team participated—willingly or unwillingly—in Russian influence operations including hacking efforts in order to gain an advantage in the 2016 Presidential election.This Nothing This Heaven
Notes on W. S. Merwin’s The Shadow of Sirius
Jonathan Weinert
I
There is nothing more alien in tone to the poems in W. S. Merwin’s 2008 collection The Shadow of Sirius than the prophetic works of William Blake. Where Blake is strident, public, overtly political, epic, symbolic, dense, muscular, and resistant to interpretation, Merwin is subtle, private, intimate, obliquely political, lyric, non-metaphorical, relaxed, airy, and, at least on the surface, remarkably transparent to sense. If Blake is a full-sized orchestra complete with brass and timpani, Merwin is a modest chamber ensemble, or a wind harp. Blake is Rintrah roaring and shaking his fires in the burdened air (Blake 1993, 143). Merwin is “the stillness after the rain ends” where “nothing is to be heard but the drops falling / one at a time from the tips of the leaves / into the night” (“Nocturne II,” 2008: 93).
Despite the obvious differences, I read some essential similarities that link the two poets across the centuries. Like Blake, Merwin considers the imagination to be among the highest of human faculties. Blake saw the imagination as an emanation of the divine, a means by which to transcend “the world of generation” in order to apprehend “the world of eternity”:
The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the eternal realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature. (Blake 1982, 555).
In my reading of Merwin, the imagination in contrast represents the means by which the human individual can arrive at the world of nature or generation, and apprehend an intimate interconnection both with the natural world and with other human beings. “There is an individual relationship between the human imagination and all of life,” Merwin remarked before a reading in May 2011, “and that relationship is the basis of human compassion” (“A Reading…”).
That relationship is enacted, and the imagination is made effective, by language. To know Merwin as the great poet of silence is to attend to exactly one half of his sensibility and to overlook the crucial role that singing and speech play in his work. Indeed, The Shadow of Sirius begins with human song—the ancient Han Dynasty poems of Cai Wenji, whom “The Nomad Flute” apostrophizes—and ends, in “The Laughing Thrush,” with birdsong “tumbling upward note by note out of the night” (“The Laughing Thrush,” 2008: 113). The poems engage with language and speech as much as they engage with its absence; there are at least a dozen poems in which figure books (a dictionary, an old favorite volume from childhood, a codex) or writings (letters, poems, notes).
Three poems in The Shadow of Sirius deal explicitly with words and their derivations. The first of these, “Raiment,” begins as a meditation on clothings and coverings, then opens out, through a consideration of the origins of the words “habit,” “custom,” “costume,” and “decency,” onto surmises about words and what lies beyond them:
apparently we believe
in the words
and through them
but we long beyond them
for what is unseen
what remains out of reach
what is kept covered
with colors and sizes
we hunger
for what is undoubted yet dubious
(“Raiment,” 2008, 26)
This passage echoes persistent concerns about language that have appeared in Merwin’s poems throughout his career. But Merwin’s doubts regarding the efficacy of language to express “what is unseen / what remains out of reach” have never taken the form of fashionable postmodernist hand-wringing about the disconnection of signifier and signified. In fact, rather than criticizing language for failing to satisfy its most fundamental claims, Merwin criticizes the users of language for failing to apprehend its deepest implications. For Merwin, the fault is not in the language, but in ourselves.
Merwin has been pointing to the possibility of a higher order of language, one whose words have the power to enact a deep and resonant sense of interconnectedness, at least as far back as Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment (1983). In that book, the poem “The Unwritten” speculates that ordinary pencils contain an essential text composed of words that would grant its readers the ability to “make out the real names / of everything.” They may be hidden away, but the words that compose that text really are there. What is in doubt, it turns out, is the ability of the human imagination to access and interpret them:
even when the dark has worn away
they’ll still be there
hiding in the air
multitudes in days to come may walk through them
breathe them
be none the wiser
what script can it be
that they won’t unroll
in what language
would I recognize it
would I be able to follow it
to make out the real names
of everything
maybe there aren’t
many
it could be that there’s only one word
and it’s all we need
(“The Unwritten,” 1983, 40–41)
A similarly crucial but inaccessible text appears in the poem “History,” in The Rain in the Trees (1988). In that poem, a note is written on a page of “a book full of words to remember.” The book is then closed, taken into a foreign country where no one can read the language, and lost—that is, it is hidden from its potential readers by at least three removes. But the books and the words it contains really are there. The implication, however unlikely and paradoxical it may seem, is that an extraordinary act of memory or imagination can recover them—or if not recover them, at least invent a way in which it is possible to “manage without them” (“History,” 1988: 37). I cannot think of a better, or more practical, account of where poetry may begin.
Authentic language, and its loss, is one of Merwin’s great themes. In a 2010 interview in The New York Times, Merwin said that he wanted to use his tenure as US Poet Laureate, to which he had just been appointed, “to emphasize his ‘great sympathy with native people and the languages and literature of native peoples’” (Cohen 2010). Unsurprisingly, Merwin often locates authenticity in indigenous languages, fundamentally figurative and metaphorical languages which have not been degraded by the imperatives of commerce and scientific analysis. The type of authentic language in The Rain in the Trees is native Hawaiian, which is in the process of being rendered extinct through the predations of American English and contemporary business culture. In “Losing a Language,” the native language, the language of the elders, is capable of expressing subtle and resonant apprehensions not available in a language that disparages metaphor and figuration. But “the young,” who have been persuaded through a program of total assimilation “that it is better to say everything differently,” have lost not only the words that can describe such experiences, but also the very ability to believe in and therefore have such experiences:
many of the things the words were about
no longer exist
the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree
the verb for I
(“Losing a Language,” 1988: 49).
The diminishment of language is either the cause or the effect of a diminishment of consciousness, which entails the loss of the ability to imaginatively sense one’s connection to “the universe and everything living” (Cohen 2010). As a result, the young confront a dead world from which they are exiled, a world that is owned and used rather than felt and understood: “everywhere instead of a name there is a lie.” Jan Zwicky defines the imagination as the capacity to sense resonant connections in the world, to pay attention to the thisness of the world as an act of love. “Lyric thought is a kind of seismic ontological exploration,” Zwicky writes in Wisdom and Metaphor. “Ontological attention is... the antithesis of the attitude that regards things as ‘resources,’ mere means to human ends” (Zwicky 2008, sections 44, 52).
II
Blake considered oppositions such as “the world of generation” and “the world of eternity” crucial and creative, and called them “Contrarieties.” “Without Contrarieties is no progression,” writes Blake in the opening argument of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell—a book whose very title encodes the fruitful interrelationship of an essential binary (Blake 1993, 143). The world that Merwin’s poems imagine is also composed of oppositions and contraries, although Merwin tends to collapse such oppositions without abolishing them. In The Shadow of Sirius, for instance—a book whose title invokes a binary system like The Marriage of Heaven and Hell—the world of generation is the eternal world. Eternity is not a separate realm; rather, it is this realm apprehended in its totality, as in the poem “Just This,” in which all of time stands together in an endless now which embraces all motion but does not itself move:
When I think of the patience I have had
back in the dark before I remember
or knew it was night until the light came
all at once at the speed it was born to
with all the time in the world to fly through
not concerned about ever arriving
and then the gathering of the first stars
unhurried in their flowering spaces
and far into the story the planets
cooling slowly and the ages of rain
then the seas starting to bear memory
the gaze of the first cell at its waking
how did this haste begin this little time
at any time this reading by lightning
scarcely a word this nothing this heaven
(“Just This,” 2008: 112)
Merwin’s title here typically cuts in several directions at once. There is “just this” one world and no other, the entire history of the world amounts to “just this” little time, all the labor of poetry comes to “just this” little understanding, which is “scarcely a word.”
“Collapsed opposition” is a perfectly good definition of paradox, and paradox is the means by which Merwin often reaches beyond apparent contradictions to describe experiences and apprehensions that cannot be reduced to conventional categories of thought. “Just This” does not attempt to resolve the paradox on which it lands—“this nothing this heaven.” The phrase “this heaven” neither revises nor replaces “this nothing”: both stand together, both are given equal weight, both are simultaneously true. We begin to approach the nature of things, the poem seems to be saying, when we can see the truth of both statements at the same time without losing the sense of their contradiction.
When awareness of paradox gives rise to situational irony, as it often does, Merwin tends to respond with bemusement or an understated (and often overlooked) wry humor. Here, the speaker’s sense of his own patience seems first astonishing in relation to his own long lifetime, then absurd in relation to the vastly incommensurate lifetime of the universe. In a neat reversal, the lifetime of the universe first seems astonishing for its inconceivable length, then astonishing for its inconceivable brevity. The light that emerges from darkness and flies throughout all eternity is, at the same time, a flash of lighting; the lifetime that is nothing more than a flash of lightning extends, through its participation in the lifetime of the universe, to the beginning of time.
III
In a 2009 interview with Terry Gross on the National Public Radio program Fresh Air, Merwin talked about an important legacy left to him by his parents, who died within a few months of each other:
[O]ne of their great gifts to me was that neither of them turned out to be afraid of dying at all. And in quite different ways, they died without any expression of anxiety or of dread or of clutching at anything else. And that’s a great gift to be given, that feeling of no fear, and I think I inherited it from them very early. (Merwin 2009)
Shadow and its analogues absence and silence have figured prominently in Merwin’s poems since The Moving Target (1963) and earlier. Where they were once predatory, encroaching, and annihilating—especially in the insatiable swallowing shadow of “The Last One” (1967: 10–12)—they have become, in the recent work, embracing, refreshing, intimate, and full of potential. In The Shadow of Sirius, Merwin confronts shadow and absence more personally than he ever has before. He addresses his own mortality, his own inevitable absence, and the silence into which his voice must fall, with the absence of anxiety and dread that was his parents’ gift to him.
Rather than seeking for some amelioration or compromise, Merwin refuses to retreat from the full purport of his vision, and he begins to imagine the journey into silence and shadow as a sort of adventure. “When the moon has gone I fly on alone / into this night where I have never been,” he writes in “The Curlew”; and later, in “Nocturne II,” “I lie in the dark / listening to what I remember / while the night flies on with us into itself” (2008: 59, 93). The journey into shadow is also a kind of homecoming:
night is a dream you know
an old love in the dark
around you as you go
without end you know
(“Good Night,” 2008: 46)
These lines, so quiet and so apparently casual, accord with the cosmography that Merwin’s enterprise inscribes. By collapsing the worlds of generation and eternity, by affirming that there is “just this” world, the only direction in which Merwin can go is straight on ahead, into that portion of time in which he no longer appears as a living individual. His beloved chows, elegies for whom comprise the brief second section of The Shadow of Sirius, having gone on before him, show him the way, which is headlong into the darkness: “When it is time I follow the black dog / into the darkness that is the mind of day” (“By Dark,” 2008, 43), and again, “o closest to my breath / if you are able to / please wait a while longer / on that side of the cloud” (“Into the Cloud,” 2008, 48).
As in the Tao, the Kabbalah, and other religious philosophies, Merwin’s vision identifies shadow and silence as both source and destination. “Eye of Shadow” figures shadow as an originary presence, a guardian of the wellsprings of being, a prince in a beggar’s dark rags, a guide and seer and herald:
Sentry of the other side
it may have watched the beginning
without being noticed in all
that blossoming radiance
the beggar in dark rags
down on the threshold
a shadow waiting
in its own fair time
all in its rags it rises
revealing its prime claim
upon the latter day
that fades around it
while the sky is turning
with the whole prophecy
o lengthening dark vision
reaching across the faces
across colors and mountains
and all that is known
or appears to be known
herald without a sound
leave-taking without a word
guide beyond time and knowledge
o patience
beyond patience
I touch the day
I taste the light
I remember
(“Eye of Shadow,” 2008, 66)
The closing declarations of “I”—“I touch the day / I taste the light / I remember”—repeated three times as in a fairy tale, or like the tolling of a bell, assert the persistence of the personal self (both the I and the eye) in the face of the shadow which must swallow it, counter night with day, balance darkness with light, and match obliteration with memory. But this is not Merwin raging against the passing of the light; rather, this is Merwin affirming that the light and the darkness come and go together, that the self and the self’s absence are equally part of what is, like the visible star Sirius A and its unseen companion, Sirius B.
IV
Ever since Walt Whitman opened his most famous poem with the line “I celebrate myself and I sing myself,” American lyric poetry has tended to foreground the personal ego and its desires. Even a poet as apparently self-effacing and opposite in sensibility as Emily Dickinson worries about the subject of selfhood, its ambiguities and uncertainties: “I felt my life with both my hands / To see if it was there—” writes Dickinson in poem 351. In the 1960s and 1970s, Merwin appeared to be the poet par excellence of the terror of personal annihilation, and his poems the site not of the personal ego and its passions, but of disembodied voices who could not satisfy their legitimate desires.
The project of Merwin’s poetry up to The Shadow of Sirius reads like an attempt to establish and inhabit the self in a specifically named and imagined place. Merwin’s discovery of such a place in his poems coincides with his arrival in Hawaii, which has been his primary home since the mid-1970s. By The Rain in the Trees (1988), Merwin had transitioned from a spare and oracular style to a relaxed and colloquial style, and he had started to import his personal history directly into his poems as subject matter. Concurrently, Merwin opened his poems up to larger historical subjects and began experimenting with longer narrative forms not previously attempted in his work.
Across all of these periods, however, Merwin continued to write short lyric poems, sometimes in meter, sometimes in syllabics, sometimes with subtle rhyme schemes or repeating end words or end sounds. Although it has gone through many changes over the years, Merwin’s voice is unmistakable, and the strength of that voice has led many casual readers to imagine that Merwin has been writing the same sort of poem over and over again for decades. The fact is that Merwin has a sort of horror of repeating himself. Despite evident similarities in tone and diction, the poems of, say, The Vixen (1996), with their alternating indented lines, lengthy enjambed sentences, and complexly layered meditations on the passage of time over certain landscapes in the southwest of France, could not be more different from the poems of Present Company (2005), apostrophes to the things and notions and imaginations of ordinary life, mostly in short lines and often in syllabics, with a surprising number of Italian sonnets, each exhibiting a variant rhyme scheme, as if Merwin were trying to exhaust the possibilities of the form.
The short lyrics of The Shadow of Sirius are something new again. These poems are not highly orchestrated nor are they especially dramatic. They are not rigged to detonate, they are not metaphorical except in the most expansive definition of the term, and they do not necessarily leap or turn or try to dazzle. Rather, they are cast in the intimate and unadorned voice of a close companion who speaks softly and urgently, as it were, into one’s very ear. Their directness and simplicity is neither accidental nor easy, but rather results from a vigorous program of distilling and paring back speech.
In The Shadow of Sirius, Merwin does not reverse his project of situating, rooting, and satisfying the desires of the personal self. Instead, he attempts to move beyond it, to contact the place where the self can register and recognize energies and forces that originate outside itself while remaining embodied. Here is the poem “Falling”:
Long before daybreak
none of the birds yet awake
rain comes down with the sound
of a huge wind rushing
through the valley trees
it comes down around us
all at the same time
and beyond it there is nothing
it falls without hearing itself
without knowing
there is anyone here
without seeing where it is
or where it is going
like a moment of great
happiness of our own
that we cannot remember
coasting with the lights off
(“Falling,” 2008, 104)
The situation and disposition of the hearing self is suppressed in favor of what the self hears: the rain falling loudly and blindly through the trees, within an enveloping silence and darkness. By implication, and by the accumulation of similar situations in other poems in the book, the speaker and his companion can be seen in bed in the middle of the night, listening. The simile that begins in the poem’s fourth-to-last line connects the sensual experience of the rainfall, and the more abstract thoughts about its unselfconsciousness, with the personal experience of “a moment of great / happiness of our own.” Even here, the personal ego gives way to an experience that can only exist in an exchange between two people/ Furthermore, that experience persists only in the speaker’s recognition that it must have happened, since it cannot be remembered. The speaker’s consciousness, then, becomes the site of various forms of unconsciousness, and he discovers his connections to the world and to his companion precisely to the degree that his personal ego is emptied out.
Can there be a lyric poetry that enacts the emptying out of the self, the relinquishing of desire? The poems in The Shadow of Sirius pose, and begin to answer, this question.
Jonathan Weinert’s first book of poems, In the Mode of Disappearance, won the 2006 Nightboat Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is co-editor, with Kevin Prufer, of Until Everything Is Continuous Again: American Poets on the Recent Work of W. S. Merwin (Wordfarm, 2012).
Works Cited
Blake, William, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” in The Early Illuminated Books. David Bindman, ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Blake, William. “A Vision of the Last Judgment.” In The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake, David V. Erdman, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Cohen Patricia. “W. S. Merwin to Be Named Poet Laureate,” The New York Times, June 30, 2010.
Merwin, W. S. “A Reading by U. S. Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin.” Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, 6 May 2011.
_____. “The ‘Sirius’ Side Of Poetry.” Interview with Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR (21 April 2009).
_____. The Shadow of Sirius. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 2008.
_____. The Rain in the Trees. New York: Knopf, 1988.
_____. Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment. New York: Atheneum, 1983.
_____. The Vixen. New York: Knopf, 1996.
_____. The Lice. New York: Atheneum, 1967.
Zwicky, Jan. Wisdom and Metaphor. Kentville, Nova Scotia: Gaspereau Press, 2008.Fit to Ride: Just when you thought the planking was over…
This week fitness gurus Biz Stamm and Pi the Bunny show us how to increase upper-body strength with the help of a mounting block.
From Biz:
Just when you thought the planking was over…
As riders, it’s really easy for us to ignore our upper body. We, as a demographic, are notorious for having ultra strong legs. For me, the extra strength has always come with a little extra bulk (an ex-boyfriend once informed me that I had thunder thighs. Note the prefix “ex” before the word “boyfriend.”), but it’s never really bothered me, because while my thighs are a bit on the thicker side, they are fantastically strong, and feeling strong feels good! Why not feel even better by strengthening our upper bodies as well? So here it is HN, I have a challenge for you. It involves planking… sort of.
Despite Pi’s insistence that “breading” is the newest, hippest meme (What can I say? He watches far too much South Park), let’s keep this whole planking thing alive. Plank pushups that is. If you’re like me, just the thought of plank pushups makes your arms quiver with exhaustion, but I’ve devised a way to ease into a pushup routine using your everyday mounting block.
Start off doing pushups off the top of the block. As you progressively get stronger you can move down the steps.
While I don’t have any awesome prizes to give you, I think we all need to show Pi that planking is still cool. Have some things around |
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That has left historic Chinatowns struggling to figure out how to thrive and appeal to new customers, as traditional residents and customers have dispersed, without losing their Chineseness.
That hasn't been an easy path. Chinatowns are renowned for the multiplicity of clan associations, business groups, heritage advocates and others who all weigh in, often with contradictory solutions.
Recently, some young Chinese-Canadians, wanting to connect with the culture that their parents sometimes distanced themselves from in favour of assimilation, have appeared on the scene. That adds more energy but another complication.
"The difficulty is getting that first generation and that third generation to come together," says Terry Wong, a director of the Calgary's Chinatown business association.
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A man rests on a bench in Calgary’s Chinatown. Jeff McIntosh/for the globe and mail
In spite of the differences, communities have mobilized to try many approaches: signs, gates, gardens and public art that visibly signal Chinese culture; walking tours and marketing efforts aimed at tourists, now a key component of their economies; support for traditional businesses; police or security on the streets; and street cleanups.
Along with that, many Chinatown leaders are weighing the benefits of encouraging development to draw in new residents, who they hope will help sustain their once-isolated enclaves.
Calgary's Chinatown benefits from still being the main Chinese shopping area for the city's roughly 75,000 Chinese residents, unlike Chinatowns in Toronto and Vancouver. And it isn't in as close proximity to social problems as in other cities. But Chinatown leaders still fear it could be eradicated by development – not residential, but commercial.
A protest erupted last year against a proposal for a 27-storey building in the area, mainly because it was going to be an office building. The city, at the urging of Chinatown leaders, has stipulated that new development has to be 60-per-cent residential.
Druh Farrell, the city councillor for the ward that includes Chinatown, said that's a message she's heard. "What we need is more people in Chinatown."
Mr. Wong and Ms. Farrell say, as well, that those new people can't all be seniors living on small pensions or low-income families in social housing.
"What we need for the local businesses to thrive is a mix, a diversity of incomes," Ms. Farrell said.
In Edmonton, the chair of the Chinese Benevolent Association, Michael Lee, said people would very much like to see residential development and Chinatown has some empty lots that would be appropriate. But no builders are interested because the area is also the city's epicentre of homelessness and drug use. "The spillover effect is most likely the biggest single factor that hinders any growth," Mr. Lee said.
That's even though Edmonton has a sizable Asian population – close to 100,000 – that is the result of four waves of immigration: railroad workers in the earliest years, Hong Kong immigrants in the 1960s and '70s, Vietnamese refugees after 1979 and now mainland Chinese students flocking to local universities.
In Toronto, which has the country's biggest central-city Chinatowns, one in the west and one in the east, some fears have arisen about condo development nearby.
But Tony Yu, chair of Toronto's Chinatown business-improvement association, says newcomers are welcome because "we would like to see the community is improving."
Toronto's main Chinatown is not cut off from downtown, as it is in Vancouver, by a band of territory dominated by social problems and extreme poverty. So it gets a lot of foot traffic from people coming in from nearby areas, as well as the benefit of having institutions such as OCAD University nearby with its thousands of students looking for inexpensive food.
Rush hour commuters in Toronto’s Chinatown. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
And the area still functions as an early landing pad for new immigrants, although they typically move out within a few years to suburban enclaves. But new ones are always arriving.
As a result, most of Mr. Yu's organization's efforts are focused on making the area more welcoming for visitors. A current project is to create a public square on Huron Street, north of Dundas Street, and decorate it with Chinese-themed furniture and public art to send a visible message about the area's culture. The group also works with local police on safety issues.
In Vancouver, though, the backlash to that potential solution for Chinatown – development to bring in new residents – is at fever pitch after a new policy appears to have opened the floodgates in a city where real estate prices are so high that developers are stampeding into the most unlikely areas.
"We had no idea that Chinatown would be so attractive to them," says Henry Tom, a director of the Chinatown Merchants Association.
Six years ago, after a series of public hearings, Vancouver city council voted for policies that a huge majority of Chinatown groups and supporters had decided, some reluctantly, was the best way to save Chinatown – a rare consensus in a community that is famous for factions that can't agree. The policy protected some sections of Chinatown as heritage areas while opening up others for buildings as high as 120 feet.
Three new condo buildings were built almost immediately under those guidelines. Then the ground shifted.
The Beedie project became the focus of a wave of angst and suspicion.
The Ramen Butcher in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Rafal Gerszak/for the globe and mail
But underneath the debate about development are other, even more difficult questions for those trying to preserve Chinatowns.
Can they still be Chinatowns if non-Chinese people become the majority of the local population? And if most of the businesses aren't Chinese?
A busy block of Vancouver's Georgia Street, for example, still has three Chinese produce stores, a butcher, a fish store, a housewares shop, a tea shop, a herbal-medicine supplier, a doctors' office with advertising in Chinese characters, an appliance dealer and a store selling cheap clothing, some with Chinese motifs.
But it also has a "modern American restaurant … with taxidermy," hip ramen and noodle eateries with contemporary Chinese-fusion menus and an upscale coffee shop. There are also offices for an advertising company and a small art gallery.
That might look like a successful blend of old and new, but to some in the community, it's not a balance. Instead, it's the edge of a wave they fear will eventually drown traditional Chinatown. And they say condo developments – in particular projects such as the Beedie proposal – are the underlying push.
"This will further drive up speculative investment and drive out legacy businesses," said Kevin Ly, one of the young speakers at the City Hall public hearing. "If you want people to come back, market housing isn't the solution."
A worker from Tin Lee Market in Vancouver’s Chinatown takes a break. Rafal Gerszak/for the globe and mail
Victor Toh, who lives in one of the neighbourhood's newer, and larger, condo developments, said he was attracted to the area in part because he saw it as a way of reconnecting to a Chinese culture he hadn't had much exposure to when he was young.
But for Mr. Toh, who is Chinese from Malaysia and then Toronto, the real driver for the move to Chinatown was money and convenience for his family.
His wife, Medde de Vera, works as a cocktail server and relief supervisor at the city's downtown casino. Mr. Toh runs a special program in the Downtown Eastside for preteens with learning problems and special needs. The new condo means both of them can walk to work, rather than commuting from the far east side of Vancouver where they used to live.
And the price was right. The couple paid a mere $275,000 for their ninth-floor, 583-square-foot condo – an amount that now seems like chicken feed in Vancouver's hot real-estate market.
The couple, with their eight-year-old son, try to eat and shop in the area as much as possible, patronizing Kent's Kitchen or the food-court restaurants in Chinatown Plaza several times a month – to "support the little guy," as Mr. Toh puts it.
Still, he says the neighbourhood's transformation is inevitable. "I like the Chinese culture, but I don't think they're going to be able to stop change here."
MORE FROM THE GLOBE AND MAIL:
Dragon in the room: Meet the wealthy immigrants at the centre of Vancouver’s housing debate/a> Hostility toward rich, Chinese newcomers has left many asking the same question: Why is Canada willing to take our money, but then belittle us?
Chop Suey Nation: A road trip uncovers the lives behind small-town Chinese-Canadian food From Victoria to Fogo Island and in every province in between, Ann Hui drives across the country to uncover the immigrant history – and vibrant present – of small-town Chinese-Canadian foodHigh-speed (AVE) rail services in the Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia came to a halt this morning due to a cable fibre theft.
More than 20 trains were stopped, affecting around 9,000 passengers travelling to Madrid and the French border, as well as other locations.
The first service to be halted was between the cities of Barcelona and Girona.
The theft is suspected to have happened last night, between the station of Vilafranca del Penedès (Barcelona) and the French border, local media reported.
Renfe passenger department head in Catalonia Félix Martín was quoted by El Pais as saying: "The entire perimeter of the track is fenced in and will be part of the police investigation to determine the circumstances of the theft."
Passengers are being offered other modes of transport, and an alternative communication route is said to have been activated at 10.15am local time in an attempt to restart the train service.
Renfe said in a statement that the train service between Vilafranca and Figueres Vilafant (Girona) on the Madrid-Barcelona line has been restored and will gradually return to normal.
"Travellers between Figueres, Girona and Barcelona moved into trains on the conventional line, while a bus service was established between Barcelona and Perpignan."
"Travellers between Figueres, Girona and Barcelona moved into trains on the conventional line, while a bus service was established between Barcelona and Perpignan for travellers to international destinations," it added.
The operator has provided an option for the travellers to cancel their journeys and receive a refund within three months.
Theft of cable fibre is a major issue being raised by European rail operators, who are seeking an EU-wide response to tackle the menace. The cables supply electricity to locomotives.
According to the European network of railway police forces, Rail Pol, operators are resorting to helicopter patrols and covering infrastructure with artificial DNA paint to track the offenders.
The UK’s NetworkRail says that metal thefts cost the operator £19m a year. In Greece, cable theft cost amounted to €12m in recent years, while in Germany the cost to the nation’s rail operator grew by 50% from 2010 to 2011.
Image: High-speed train at Camp de Tarragona in Catalonia, Spain. Photo: courtesy of JPVL at Ferropedia.SAN ANTONIO - The plan to relocate the Confederate statue at - The plan to relocate the Confederate statue at Travis Park could move forward.
District 1 Councilman District 1 Councilman Roberto Trevino released a statement saying that he and District 2 Councilman William Cruz Shaw have had positive talks about the initiative with Mayor Ron Nirenberg
Trevino believes there is support to move forward with the City Council consideration request.
"Our public spaces should not be dedicated to symbols of power that honor an ideology which regarded black Americans as property,” Trevino said.
If the relocation is approved, the City Council will work with the Department of Arts and Culture and the Office of Historic Preservation to come up with a plan for the statue.
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Copyright 2017 by KSAT - All rights reserved.Image copyright AFP Image caption The African Union said it made a tactical withdrawal from Merca on Friday
The Somali military, backed by the African Union (AU), has retaken Merca from al-Shabab militants who seized the port city on Friday, residents say.
Civilian casualties were reported after what residents said was light resistance from the militants.
The AU on Friday denied it had lost control of Merca, saying it had made a tactical withdrawal.
Al-Shabab was forced out of the capital Mogadishu in 2011 but still has a presence in large areas of the south.
A Somali military official told AFP news agency: "The Somali forces and Amisom [AU] peacekeepers secured control of Merca again and now the situation has returned to normal.
"There was brief exchange of gunfire, but the militants have fled."
He said "several" al-Shabab fighters and one Somali soldier had been killed in the fighting. A resident told AFP that four civilians had died in his part of the city.
Image copyright Twitter
Residents on Friday said Amisom and government personnel left the city at midday, and soon after heavily-armed al-Shabab militants marched in, raising their flag over the police station and administrative headquarters.
Amisom later tweeted that it was still in control of Merka and suggested its troops were "re-adjusting their positions for tactical reasons".
Some Somalis have taken to social media to demand an explanation as to why Amisom abandoned the city and to ridicule Friday's tweet, using the hashtag #SomeoneTellAmisom.
Merka, also spelt Marka, is located around 100km south-west of Mogadishu and is both the state capital of Lower Shabelle and the third largest port in southern Somalia.
The fighting in Merka comes three weeks after al-Shabab overran an AU military base outside the southern Somali town of el-Ade, saying they had killed about 100 Kenyan soldiers.
Image copyright TwitterThis article is about the Finnish hockey team. For other uses, see Kalpa (disambiguation)
The Kalevan Pallo (KalPa) is a professional ice hockey team which competes in the Finnish Liiga. They play in Kuopio, Finland at the Data Group Areena.
Team history [ edit ]
Established in 1929 as Sortavalan Palloseura in Sortavala, the club relocated to Kuopio in 1945 after its original hometown had been annexed by the Soviet Union. During its Sortavala years, the club was not active in ice hockey, but competed in association football, bandy, and pesäpallo instead. Ice hockey was introduced in 1947, and in 1956 KalPa officially replaced the more traditional Kuopio club KuPS in that sport thus specializing in hockey – minor league football was still continued until 1974 as a farm team of sorts for KuPS.
The full name of the company that runs the representative team today is KalPa Hockey Oy. The majority of the company is owned by former NHL players Sami Kapanen and Kimmo Timonen. Kapanen is the majority owner, controlling 50.5% of the franchise. Timonen owns 8%, while Timonen's former teammate Scott Hartnell owns 5%. Hartnell purchased a minority share of the team after getting financial advice from Kimmo Timonen during a road trip to Boston.
During the 2004–05 NHL lockout, Timonen, Kapanen, and fellow NHL player Adam Hall were playing for KalPa. After winning the Mestis championship, KalPa returned to SM-liiga for the 2005–06 season, after being relegated six years earlier in 1999.
KalPa has won three medals: silvers in the 1990–91 and 2016–17 seasons and a bronze in the 2008–09 season.
Honors [ edit ]
Mestis [ edit ]
Finnish Liiga A-juniors (U20) [ edit ]
Players [ edit ]
Current roster [ edit ]
Updated February 12, 2019.[1][2]
Honored members [ edit ]
NHL alumni [ edit ]
References [ edit ]You know that blue Twitter bird that's always popping up these days? Well, the little guy's got a name. It's Larry. Larry the Bird. As in, Larry Bird, the Hall of Fame basketball player.
This tidbit most recently came to light earlier this week, thanks to a tweet from Ryan Sarver, a platform and API manager at Twitter. He posted a photo of Twitter's creative director, Doug Bowman, explaining how the company's logo has developed over the years. Sarver's tweet mentioned the "evolution of the Larry the Bird logo."
The connection actually makes quite a bit of sense, if you do a little Internet stalking and connect the dots.
Twitter's co-founder is Biz Stone. A 2009 interview from The Boston Globe tells us that Stone graduated from Wellesley High School, just outside Boston. And Wikipedia tells us Stone was born in 1974.
This means Stone likely was a wide-eyed, prepubescent youth at the same time Larry Bird was leading the Boston Celtics to two NBA championships, winning three consecutive league MVP titles from 1984 to 1986.
The Beantown hoops backstory has gained a fair amount of media coverage since Sarver's tweet earlier this week. But Peter Stringer, the Celtics' director of interactive media, was aware of the connection back in August, when he had this Twitter exchange with Stone:Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has resigned from cabinet to prepare for work in the private sector, he announced in a news release Tuesday.
"Yesterday, I informed the prime minister that I am resigning from cabinet. This was a decision I made with my family earlier this year, as I will be returning to the private sector," Flaherty said in a statement.
Conservative sources told CBC News that Flaherty spoke to his family at Christmas and made the decision then. He started calling close friends at 4 p.m. ET Tuesday, after the markets closed, to let them know of his decision.
Flaherty isn't immediately going to a job in the private sector.
"As I reflect on my almost two decades in politics, I am proud of the accomplishments of the governments I was part of, provincial and federal.... Now, I will focus on life beyond politics as I return to the private sector. I believe that I have served my country, province and constituents of Whitby-Oshawa to the best of my abilities and thank them for their continued trust and support for almost two decades," Flaherty said in the statement.
Flaherty is staying on as an MP for the time being, his spokesman told CBC News.
Replacement to be named Wednesday
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement that he accepted Flaherty's resignation reluctantly. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver will be named Flaherty's replacement on Wednesday.
"In a political career of almost 20 years, Minister Flaherty has exemplified the best qualities of those who enter public life: a true commitment to service, and a sincere desire to leave the country in better shape than it was when he entered politics," Harper said.
"Since 2006, he has been a steady hand, ably guiding Canada through the most challenging economic times since the Great Depression and gaining the country a solid global reputation for economic management."
Flaherty was Harper's only finance minister. He was an MP who carried a great deal of influence in the Conservative caucus. He differed from Harper last month over a 2011 campaign promise to offer income splitting to couples with children. Kenney said he wants the party to stick with the promise, despite Flaherty's opposition.
Battled health problem
Flaherty has spent more than a year dealing with health issues and has faced repeated questions about whether he would retire. A year ago, Flaherty disclosed he was being treated for a serious dermatological condition known as bullouspemphigoid. The treatment involved taking a strong steroid called prednisone, which is often accompanied by serious side-effects.
Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty speaks with reporters as he leaves question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on March 6. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press) Flaherty said in his statement that he is "on the road to a full recovery" and that his departure from politics is "not related in any way" to his health.
Last November, Flaherty told reporters he would run in 2015, but last month said in an interview that he wasn't sure.
New Democrat finance critic Peggy Nash said Flaherty had a "tough, tough job" during the recession and that he performed well, but that many people still haven't recovered from the recession.
"There are other decisions that Jim Flaherty and the Conservative government took that certainly our party disagreed with in terms of cutting programs and services, changes to [Employment Insurance], bringing in austerity measures rather than continuing with some modest stimulus to help the economy fully recover," Nash said.
"There are political and economic differences. Having said that, no one would doubt the sincerity and work ethic of Jim Flaherty."
'Hack and slash'
Liberal Deputy Leader Ralph Goodale said it will be tough for the government to fill the hole created by Flaherty's departure from the finance role.
"I think he'll also be criticized for that focus [on cutting spending] because it was to the exclusion of everything else and, quite frankly, you cannot hack and slash your way to prosperity. You also need to invest in the underpinnings of growth, like infrastructure, for example, and post-secondary education," Goodale said.
"We will disagree about his policy accomplishments or failures, that's natural in political life. But on a day like this when he has stepped aside, I certainly want to wish him well."
Former MP Ted Menzies, who was Flaherty's parliamentary secretary for three years, said Flaherty was the longest-serving finance minister in the G7 when the global recession hit.
"He provided leadership and guidance. So not only did he guide us through it, he helped other countries through it as well," said Menzies, who retired last year to become president of CropLife Canada.
Flaherty's focus on slashing from the federal budget to return to balance from deficit, however, drew criticism from the groups whose funding was cut.
Menzies said staying focused on the goal of a balanced budget was important.
"That's why we're in the position that we're in today... it's that kind of dogged determination to see it through," he said.
Mobile users click here to see Twitter reaction to Flaherty quitting cabinet.WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the rich might see a hike in taxes as he pursues a major tax overhaul with outreach to Democrats who oppose cutting rates for the wealthy, while Republicans in Congress set a timetable to unveil their plan.
The White House and the Republican-led Congress have not put forth a detailed tax plan despite months of talks that have excluded Democrats. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said an outline would be unveiled during the work week beginning Sept. 25, with congressional tax-writing committees crafting detailed legislation in the subsequent weeks.
READ MORE: Kaspersky Lab products removed from U.S. government systems due to Russia security concerns
Democrats have criticized the Republican tax overhaul efforts as benefiting mainly the wealthiest Americans. Trump, a real estate mogul, said the rich would not be making gains with the plan, which he said was geared toward providing the largest tax cut ever for the middle class and creating jobs.
“I think the wealthy will be pretty much where they are,” Trump said of taxes on the rich, without specifying the income level. “If they have to go higher, they’ll go higher, frankly.”
Trump will host Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday evening to discuss the legislative agenda with a focus on the tax overhaul after meetings with bipartisan groups of lawmakers on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon.
“We should be able to come together to make government work for the people,” Trump told reporters as he met with eight Democratic and five Republican House members to try to find common ground on taxes as well as immigration and healthcare.
Asked what his message was to skeptical conservatives who worry he is cozying up to Democrats, Trump said: “I’m a conservative, and I will tell you I’m not skeptical. And I think that if we can do things in a bipartisan manner, that’ll be great. Now it might not work out.”
WATCH: Trump continues bipartisan mission by hosting dinner with Dem leaders
Trump blindsided Republican leaders last week by striking a deal with Schumer and Pelosi on the U.S. debt limit and federal spending for three months, and also spoke to them about how to resolve the fate of 800,000 young adults brought into the United States illegally as children, the so-called Dreamers.
‘NO MATTER WHAT’
Ryan said the outline being worked on now would reflect the consensus of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Trump administration.
“I would love to have the Democrats supporting and working with us in a constructive way on tax reform, but we’re going to do it no matter what,” Ryan said.
Asked about Trump’s comment on a possible tax increase for the wealthy, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady said: “My goal is to lower taxes on every American as much as possible and help them keep more of what they earn.”
READ MORE: Steve Bannon: Trump firing James Comey the biggest mistake in ‘modern political history’
Trump reiterated his goal for a 15 percent corporate tax rate, down from the current 35 percent, even as Ryan and the president’s own treasury secretary cast doubt in recent days on the ability to go that low.
WATCH: Donald Trump wants to get ‘best deal’ on tax reform
“It would bring us to the level where China and other countries are. And we will be able to compete with anybody,” Trump said of the 15 percent rate.
There has been no comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. tax code since 1986, and the starkly different visions embraced by the two parties for how to move forward promise to make the task difficult.
Ryan and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed confidence last week that Congress would pass the tax legislation this year.
READ MORE: FBI officials close to James Comey not allowed to appear before senate committee
In his nearly eight months in office, Trump has failed to get his major legislative goals through Congress. A bid to dismantle the Obamacare healthcare law fell apart and he has not unveiled detailed proposals on taxes and infrastructure spending.
Democratic aides said Schumer and Pelosi would press Trump for action to protect the Dreamers after the president rescinded a five-year-old program to spare them from deportation, and to stabilize health insurance markets under Obamacare.
Some Republicans chafed at Trump‘s Democratic outreach.
“The problem here is we don’t have a clue what’s in the tax plan, now Trump is talking about doing bipartisan stuff with Chuck and Nancy on taxes,” said David Brat, a member of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus.
Democrat Joe Manchin, one of the senators who met with Trump on Tuesday, told CBS News that Trump promised the plan would not be “a tax cut for the rich” and was “very aggressive” on the need for a bipartisan deal.
“The perfect piece of legislation can get 30 Democrats and 30 Republicans in the (100-seat) Senate. That’s 60. We’re not going to get the fringes,” Manchin said.Drexel’s new website, designed by Virginia-based firm NavigationArts, recently won a Webby Award for Best Education website at the 17th Annual Webby Awards.
Hailed as the "Internet's highest honor" by The New York Times, The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. The IADAS, which nominates and selects The Webby Award Winners, is comprised of web industry experts, including media mogul Arianna Huffington, Skype CEOTony Bates, Mozilla CEO and Chair Mitchell Baker, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, mobile-phone inventor; Martin Cooper, and StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp.
"Honorees like NavigationArts are setting the standard for innovation and creativity on the Internet," said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. "It is an incredible achievement to be selected among the best from the 11,000 entries we received this year."
In designing Drexel’s website, NavigationArts used “responsive design” to engage students, no matter their location or device.
“The cutting-edge design of Drexel’s new website captures the essence of Drexel’s innovative, fast-paced urban culture and offers virtual visitors the opportunity to get a feel for the Drexel experience,” said Lori Doyle, senior vice president for University Communications. “Our collaboration with NavigationArts was successful in creating a site that reflects our strategic vision.”Tofu, also known as bean curd, is a food prepared by coagulating soy milk and then pressing the resulting curds into solid white blocks of varying softness. It is a traditional component of East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines; it has been consumed in China for over 2,000 years.[2] It can be silken, soft, firm, or extra firm. It has a subtle flavor, so it can be used in savory and sweet dishes. It is often seasoned or marinated to suit the dish and its flavors, and absorbs flavours well.[3]
Nutritionally, tofu is low in calories, while containing a relatively large amount of protein. It is high in iron, and can have a high calcium or magnesium content depending on the coagulants used in manufacturing (e.g. calcium chloride, calcium sulfate, magnesium sulfate).
Etymology [ edit ]
The English term "tofu" comes from Japanese tōfu (豆腐), borrowed from the original Chinese equivalent (豆腐 dòufu (pinyin)), literally "bean" (豆) + "curdled" or "fermented" (腐).[4][5][6]
A reference to the word towfu exists in a letter dated 1770 from the English merchant James Flint to American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin. This is believed to be the first documented use of the word in English.[8]
The term "bean curd(s)" for tofu has been used in the United States since at least 1840. It is rarely used outside of the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.[9]
History [ edit ]
Tofu-making was first recorded during the Chinese Han dynasty some 2,000 years ago.[2] Chinese legend ascribes its invention to Prince Liu An (179–122 BC). Tofu and its production technique were introduced to Japan[10][11][12] during the Nara period (710–794). Some scholars believe tofu arrived in Vietnam during the 10th and 11th centuries.[13] It spread to other parts of Southeast Asia as well.[14] This probably coincided with the spread of Buddhism as it is an important source of protein in the vegetarian diet of East Asian Buddhism.[10] Li Shizhen, during the Ming Dynasty, described a method of making tofu in the Compendium of Materia Medica.[15] Since then, tofu has become a staple in many countries, including Vietnam, Thailand, and Korea, with regional variations in production methods, texture, flavor, and usage.
Theories of origin [ edit ]
The most commonly held of the three theories of tofu's origin maintains that tofu was discovered by Lord Liu An, a Han Dynasty prince. While plausible, the paucity of reliable sources for this period makes this difficult to conclusively determine. In Chinese history, important inventions were frequently attributed to important leaders and figures of the time.[16] In 1960, a stone mural unearthed from an Eastern Han dynasty tomb provided support for the theory of Han origin of tofu; however some scholars maintain that tofu during the Han dynasty was rudimentary and lacked the firmness and taste for it to be considered as tofu.[17]
Another theory suggests that the production method for tofu was discovered accidentally when a slurry of boiled, ground soybeans was mixed with impure sea salt. Such sea salt would probably have contained calcium and magnesium salts, allowing the soy mixture to curdle and produce a tofu-like gel.
The last group of theories maintains that the ancient Chinese learned the method for curdling soy milk by emulating the milk curdling techniques of the Mongolians or East Indians. Despite their advanced culture, no technology or knowledge of culturing and processing milk products existed within ancient Chinese society. (They did not seek such technology, probably because of the Confucian taboo on fermented dairy products and other so-called "barbarian foodstuffs".)[citation needed] The primary evidence for this theory is the etymological similarity between the Chinese term for Mongolian fermented milk (rufu, which literally means "milk curdled") and the term doufu ("beans curdled") or tofu. Although intriguing and possible, there is no evidence to substantiate this theory beyond academic speculation.[16]
China [ edit ]
A form of tofu may have been discovered during the Han dynasty (220 BC – AD 220), but it did not become a popular food in China until the Song dynasty (960–1279).
In China, tofu is traditionally used as a food offering when visiting the graves of deceased relatives. It is claimed that the spirits (or ghosts) have long lost their chins and jaws, so that only tofu is soft enough for them to eat. Before refrigeration was available in China, tofu was often only sold during winter, since tofu did not spoil as easily in cold weather. During the warmer months, tofu, once made, spoiled if stored for more than a day. Chinese war hero Guan Yu used to be a tofu maker before he enlisted in the army. Chinese martial arts expert and hero Yim Wing-chun was a celebrated tofu maker in her village. (Tofu as such plays a part in a 1994 movie about her life, Wing Chun.)
Japan [ edit ]
Tofu was introduced to Japan during the Nara period (late 8th century) by Zen Buddhist monks, who initially called it "Chinese curd" (唐腐, tōfu). Much of tofu's early use in Asia was as a vegetarian substitute for meat and fish by Buddhist monks, especially those following Zen Buddhism.
The earliest Japanese document concerning tofu refers to the dish being served as an offering at the Kasuga Shrine in Nara in 1183.[18] The book Tofu Hyakuchin (豆腐百珍), published in the Edo period, lists 100 recipes for cooking tofu.
Southeast Asia [ edit ]
In Southeast Asia, tofu was introduced to the region by Chinese immigrants from Fujian province, as evidenced by many countries in Southeast Asia referring to tofu using the Min Nan Chinese pronunciations for either soft and firm tofu, or "tāu-hū" and "tāu-goan" respectively. In Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines, tofu is widely available and used in many local dishes.
Tofu is called tahu in Indonesia, and Indonesian dishes such as tahu sumbat, taugeh tahu, asinan, siomay and some curries, often add slices of tofu. Tahu goreng, tahu isi and tahu sumedang are popular fried tofu snacks.
Tofu is called tauhu in Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysian and Singaporean Indians use tofu in their cuisine, such as in Indian mee goreng, and rojak pasembor. Peranakan cuisine often uses tofu, as in Penang curry noodles and laksa. Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines are major producers of tofu and have plants in many municipalities.
Tofu in the Philippines is an essential in the daily diet, as taho. It is widely eaten as breakfast, or tokwa (a dry, fried variation), which is a staple alternative to meat in main meals and in numerous regional dishes. Tofu was introduced to the archipelago in the 10th to 13th centuries by Song dynasty Chinese mariners and merchants, along with many other foods that became staples of the Philippine diet. The use and production of tofu were first limited to urban centres with influential Chinese minorities, such as Cebu or Tondo, but quickly spread to even remote native villages and islands.
Outside Asia [ edit ]
Benjamin Franklin was the first American to mention tofu, in a 1770 letter to John Bartram. Franklin, who encountered it during a trip to London, included a few soybeans and referred to it as "cheese" from China.[19] In 1770 Franklin also corresponded with James Flint on the subject of how the Chinese converted callivances (soybeans) into tofu. This is believed to be the first use of the word "tofu" in the English language.[20] The first tofu company in the United States was established in 1878.[21] In 1908 Li Yuying, a Chinese anarchist and a vegetarian with a French degree in agriculture and biology, opened a soy factory, the Usine de la Caséo-Sojaïne. This was the world's first soy dairy and the first factory in France to manufacture and sell beancurd. However, tofu was not well known to most Westerners before the middle of the 20th century. With increased cultural contact between the West and East Asia and growing interest in vegetarianism, knowledge of tofu has become widespread. Numerous types of pre-flavored tofu can be found in supermarket chains throughout the West. It is also used by many vegans and vegetarians as a source of protein.
Production [ edit ]
Making tofu Coagulated soy curds Curds in a tofu mold
Regardless of the product or scale of the production, the production of tofu essentially consists of
the preparation of soymilk the coagulation of the soymilk to form curds (douhua) the pressing of the soybean curds to form tofu cakes.
It is similar to the production of dairy cheese by coagulating the milk of dairy animals to form curds and pressing and aging the curds to form cheese. Typical tofu making procedures are cleaning, soaking, grinding beans in water, filtering, boiling, coagulation, and pressing.[23][24]
Coagulation of the protein and oil (emulsion) suspended in the boiled soymilk is the most important step in the production of tofu. This process is accomplished with the aid of coagulants. Coagulation of the soymilk is the most important step in tofu making process but is complicated as the process depends on complex interactions. There are many variables including the variety and percentage of protein in the soybeans used, slurry cooking temperature, coagulation temperature, and |
, Paquette’s left leg buckled and turned the wrong way. Paquette did not return to the game.
None of the three centers participated in the Lightning’s practice Friday. The Tampa Bay Times’ Joe Smith reported that all three players were out day-to-day with lower-body injuries.
Day to day is a hard thing to interpret this time of year. Bishop was day day after Game 1 of ECF last spring + didn't return in series. — Joe Smith (@TBTimes_JSmith) March 10, 2017
The Lightning are already without their best player, Steven Stamkos, who has not played a game since November 15th. Stamkos tore the lateral meniscus in his right knee. Doctors said Stamkos would be out four to six months. GM Steve Yzerman was recently quoted saying there is a possibility Stamkos could return this season.
#tblightning Yzerman said there's a chance Steven Stamkos plays this season. "Everything is moving along really well." No date set. — Joe Smith (@TBTimes_JSmith) February 27, 2017
The Capitals’ potential first-round opponent for the playoffs changes almost daily. As of the time of publishing, the Capitals would match up again with the New York Islanders, but they could also match-up with Toronto, Philadelphia, or the aforementioned Lightning.
The Capitals have not won in either of the two playoff series they’ve been matched up with Tampa.
TB 7 points out of playoff spot with 1 game in hand. Can't think of worse 1st-Rd matchup for Caps than surging Lightning with Stamkos back. https://t.co/ZD0qQIR19w — Stephen Whyno (@SWhyno) February 27, 2017
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PinterestBy Beth Ricanati, M.D. for YouBeauty.com
Everyday wellness is about taking care of yourself and feeling good, every day -- and every night. It doesn't just mean eating right and exercising. It also means finding small, simple ways to take care of ourselves and feel good about ourselves. And here's one of the simplest ways out there: Upgrade your pajamas.
Many of us are tired by the end of the day -- way too tired to care what clothes we choose to wear to bed. If we're lucky, we've managed to brush our teeth and wash off our makeup before we pass out on the pillow. But thinking about pajamas? Not so much.
Your bed is simply for sleeping and for sex. It's not a place for eating dinner or sorting the day's mail or catching up on "Game of Thrones". Just because its uses should be limited doesn't mean the bed isn't important. And that's exactly why you might want to think about what you slip on before you slip in.
Feeling good on the inside sometimes comes from looking good on the outside. Wearing your old college sweatshirt to bed, your boyfriend's favorite T-shirt or yesterday's clothes doesn't necessarily do much for your self-esteem. And if you choose to sleep with someone else, getting into bed in these old, often too big and unflattering clothes does not do much to inspire romantic thoughts and behaviors.MANILA -- President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday denied anew that the government is responsible for extrajudicial killings in the country and labeled the crimes as a “dirty job.”
Duterte, who promised to address the problem of extrajudicial killings, also called it a “form of torture.”
“I do not allow extrajudicial [killings]. We do not do that. It’s a dirty job,” he said in a speech during the awarding ceremony of the 9th Belenismo 2016 in Tarlac.
“Para kang di lalaki, talian mo balutan… It’s a form of torture,” he added.
(It's like you are not a man, tying and wrapping.)
However, Duterte also apologized to those who were affected by his bloody war on drugs, saying his campaign is a “matter of survival” for the country. “I’m sorry for those na tinamaan (who were affected),” he said.
Since May 10, a total of 2,593 fatalities related to drugs have been recorded, data from the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research group showed.
Of this number, 945 have been killed by unidentified assailants while 1,463 died in police operations.
Since his assumption into office, Duterte has repeatedly been criticized by human rights groups both here and abroad for his war on drugs but no proof of state-sponsored killings have surfaced.
He said he released P1 billion to the Department of Social Welfare and Development as budget for the rehabilitation of drug surrenderers.
"Basta this Pasko, you can have your medicine, reseta may pirma ng doktor punta ka sa DSWD," he said.
(This Christmas, you can have your medicine. As long as you have a prescription with the doctor's signature you can got to the DSWD.)I've been a developer for the past seven years. Currently I'm in the aerospace industry and work with a variety of programming languages and operating systems.
One of the things a good developer should always strive for is efficiency. Slow code should be improved if possible. Complicated steps should be simplified or removed. Finding a poorly-implemented process which is costing company time and streamlining it is usually a good thing, and means more profits, which means larger paychecks and bonuses, and happy bosses. Right?
Dave had been working in the shipping department for a while when he discovered how the monthly shipping statistics were gathered. His coworker, Clarke, walked him through the process one day when Dave had some downtime.
“Everything comes in as Excel reports from our two software systems,” Clarke began. “Then I have to edit them to get them in the same format, combine them, and muck around with filters and sums to get the numbers the boss likes to see.”
Dave shuddered at the thought of manually hacking reports together. “How long does it take you?”
“It’s not too bad anymore, maybe four or five hours. Sometimetimes longer if I make a mistake.” Clarke shrugged. “It’s not hard, just tedious.”
“And this is each month?”
“Yep. It used to take me a few days until I got used to it.”
Dave thought for a moment. “The data isn’t complicated at all. I bet I could write a script to do most of it for you.”
Clarke’s eyes lit up at the suggestion. “Really?”
Together they went to their supervisor, an older gentleman named Rick who looked like he could retire any minute now. After a brief proposal, Rick didn’t seem impressed. “The current system works fine, I don’t think it needs to be changed.”
“I could have the whole thing written in less time than it takes Clarke to process one monthly report,” said Dave. “After that, all he’d have to do is click a button. We’re talking minutes instead of hours.”
Rick muttered something and dismissed them. Dave and Clarke left, unsure if they had permission to proceed.
Dave wrote the new system anyway. Once he’d received some older reports to understand the formatting, he spent a few hours of spare time to write up a fairly simple C# program to automate all the manual editing that Clarke had to do. With a long history of previous reports and the historical data, Dave proved the program’s accuracy by running it across a year’s worth of data.
It worked flawlessly. Creating the monthly report now only took about ten minutes, most of which was spent waiting on connections to the other software systems. Once it had all the data, it spit out the report in less than a second. When the next report was due, they generated it using Dave’s application and avoided hours and hours of Excel wrangling.
Rick was not impressed when they showed him their work. “How do I know if it’s right?” he asked. “I don’t really trust computers. I’ll have to verify everything myself now!”
And that he did. Rick spent the next two days printing out every daily-activity email for the previous month, calculating all the shipping statistics with a four-function calculator, and compiling results on a sheet of notebook paper. And because the emails were user-generated, not system-generated, they often contained minor errors which required even more time to correct. After several tries, Rick eventually had a report that agreed with Dave’s.
And this continued for a few more months. Dave’s program would generate an accurate report within minutes, then Rick would spend hours, if not days, hidden within a small fort made of printed emails, only to eventually come up with the same numbers.
Word got out on Dave’s accomplishment and he was soon offered a transfer to another department. The supervisor there was not afraid of modern technology and wanted to replace their current paper-based delivery manifest process with a computer-based solution that could save thousands of dollars in printing costs. Dave accepted the transfer and eagerly started on the new project. And last he heard, Rick had thrown away Dave’s little shipping report program and even the old Excel report system, instead dealing with stacks of printed emails and a four-function calculator to generate a handwritten report each month.The federal government's increasingly convoluted marijuana policy is on trial in California, where a U.S. district court is considering a challenge to the 44-year-old law that lists pot alongside heroin and ecstasy as one of the most dangerous and harshly regulated illicit drugs.
Congress and the Nixon administration first slapped marijuana with a Schedule I designation as part of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Placement in this group requires that a drug, chemical or controlled substance "has no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse."
This new challenge, launched by a group of defendants on trial for illegally growing marijuana, argues that pot no longer fits that classification and, in so doing, questions the constitutionality of the decades-old law.
U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller allowed the defendants to make their case in an unusual pretrial hearing, which, according to the Los Angeles Times, included expert testimony and "thousands of pages of briefs, exhibits and declarations." The five-day hearing featured pointed arguments from federal prosecutors, who had to make the case that marijuana still belongs in the Schedule I group despite overwhelming new evidence that the drug has great medicinal value and does not cause serious addiction.
U.S. v. Science: Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Broderick, writing on behalf of the federal government, argued that "most mainstream physicians agree that marijuana is a dangerous drug" and that there remains "some dispute among doctors as to whether marijuana is medicine."
Ironically, Broderick and his colleagues filed their brief just weeks after the Obama administration and the new Republican-controlled House and Senate signed off on a spending bill that explicitly forbids the Department of Justice from using federal funds to interfere with state-approved medicinal marijuana operations.
But more important here is the large and growing stack of research, much of it presented by the defendants in California, that shows marijuana is not just useful in a medical setting, but could provide necessary comfort to patients with chronic ailments ranging from epilepsy and glaucoma to post-traumatic stress disorder.
And lest this become a question of competing studies, there is the fact that no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose. Heroin, also a Schedule I drug, killed 5,925 people in the U.S. in 2012 alone. Cocaine, which is prosecuted as a less dangerous "Schedule II" substance, becomes lethal at 10-12 times its "effective dose." As the Huffington Post reports, scientists believe you'd need to smoke between 20,000 and 40,000 joints in one sitting to kill yourself with marijuana. No one ever has.
Experience in Colorado and Washington state, and any of the 23 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized pot for medicinal use only, proves that the marijuana smoke is no worse for your lungs than cigarettes and no more addictive than a cup of coffee. Neither nicotine or caffeine are controlled substances.
The court's decision: The L.A. Times reports that Judge Mueller isn't expected to make a ruling until "later this year." If she finds in favor of the defendants, prosecutors are expected to appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over nine western states in addition to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
In the unlikely event both courts agree with the defendants (whose case features some pretty complex arguments about constitutionally guaranteed equal protection and states' rights), the next stop would be Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Supreme Court.Gangster State America– Paul Craig Roberts
Gangster State America
Where Is America’s Democracy?
Paul Craig Roberts
Anyone who looks carefully behind the veil of words cannot find democracy in America. For years I have been writing that the US government is no longer accountable to law or to the people (see, for example, my book, How America Was Lost). The Constitution has been set aside, and the executive branch is degenerating into Caesarism.
Government is used to impose agendas that result from the symbiotic relationship between the neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony and the economic interests of powerful private interest groups, such as Wall Street, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and extractive industries (energy, mining, and timber). Dollar imperialism, threats, bribes, and wars are means by which US hegemony is extended. These agendas are pursued without the knowledge or approval of the American people and in spite of their opposition.
Professor Martin Gilens at Princeton University and Professor Benjamin Page of Northwestern University have examined American governance and have concluded that the US is an oligarchy ruled by powerful rich private interest groups and that the US government has only a superficial resemblance to a democracy. Their analysis is forthcoming in publication in the journal, Perspectives on Politics.
Their conclusions are striking:
“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
“When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.”
“In the United States, our findings indicate that the majority does not rule–at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.”
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
A number of factors have contributed to the demise of democracy and accountable government in the US. One factor is the concentration of the US media in a few hands. During the last years of the Clinton regime, a formerly diverse media with significant independence was concentrated in five mega-corporations. The value of these corporations consists largely of their federal broadcast licenses. To insure the renewal of these licenses, the media avoids challenging the government on significant issues.
Another factor is the offshoring of US industrial and manufacturing jobs. This development destroyed the manufacturing and industrial unions, which were the backbone of the Democratic Party’s financial support. Now the Democrats have to appeal to the same interest groups as the Republicans–Wall Street, the military/security complex, and the polluting industries that despoil the environment. As both political parties are now financed by the same private interests, both political parties serve the same masters. There is no longer any countervailing power. The Obama regime is simply a continuation of the George W. Bush regime.
Two recent rulings by the Republican majority on the US Supreme Court are another decisive factor. The court ruled that it is merely an exercise of free speech for oligarchs to purchase the US government (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission). A corrupt Supreme Court has invented a “constitutional right” for corporations and oligarchs to use their vast financial resources to form a government of their choosing.
Private interest groups in the US are so powerful that they can purchase immunity from law. On March 27 a retiring Securities and Exchange Commission prosecutor, James Kidney, said that his prosecutions of financial criminals at Goldman Sachs and other giant US banks were blocked by SEC political appointees who “were focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service.”
In a recent test to ascertain the responsiveness of members of Congress to monied interests in comparison to voters, two letters were sent to congressional offices. One letter asked for the representative to meet with community groups in his district. The other letter asked for the representative to meet with a group of active donors. The latter letter received by far the most responses from members of Congress.
In the US and Europe there is constant propaganda about “gangster state Russia.” According to this propaganda, President Putin is a tool of oligarchs who use Putin to rule Russia and loot the people. In my opinion, this propaganda originates in the Washington-funded NGOs that constitute a US fifth column inside Russia. The purpose of the propaganda is to destroy Putin’s legitimacy and that of his government in hopes of bringing to power a Washington-compliant government in Moscow.
My impression is that the Russian government has curtailed activities of some of the oligarchs who used the privatization era to seize control of resources, but that the government’s actions are consistent with the rule of law. In contrast, in the US oligarchs control the law and use it to acquire immunity from law.
The real gangster state is the US. Every institution is corrupt. Regulators sell protection from law for well-paying jobs in the industries that they are supposed to regulate. The Supreme Court not only permits money to purchase the government but also sells out the Constitution to the police state. The Supreme Court has just refused to hear the case against indefinite detention of US citizens in the absence of due process. This is an unambiguous unconstitutional law, yet the Supreme Court refuses to even hear the case, thus granting unchecked police power to the gangster state. http://rt.com/usa/156172-scotus-ndaa-hedges-obama/
Another defining characteristic of a gangster state is the criminalization of dissent and truth tellers. Washington has done everything in its power to criminalize Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for revealing the US government’s illegal, unconstitutional, and criminal actions. Washington reeks of hypocrisy. On April 26 the State Department announced its third annual Free The Press campaign, a propaganda exercise directed at foreign countries that are not Washington’s puppets. The very same day the Justice Department told the Supreme Court to reject the protection US journalists have under the Constitution against being forced to reveal their confidential sources so that James Risen can be imprisoned for reporting a government misdeed. https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/04/state-dept-launches-free-press-campaign-while-doj-supreme-court-force-reporter
In the 21st century Washington has squandered trillions of dollars on wars that have destroyed countries and killed, maimed, and displaced millions of people in seven or eight countries. Declaring its war crimes to be a “war on terror,” Washington has used the state of war that it created to destroy US civil liberty.
In the 21st century it is difficult to find a significant statement made by Washington that is not a lie. Obamacare is a lie. Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction is a lie. Assad’s use of chemical weapons is a lie. Iranian nukes are a lie. Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea is a lie. No fly zones are a lie. Russian aggression against Georgia is a lie. 9/11, the basis for Washington’s destruction of civil liberty and illegal military attacks, is itself a lie. The fantastic story that a few Saudi Arabians without government or intelligence agency backing outwitted the entire national security apparatus of the Western world is unbelievable. It is simply not credible that every institution of the national security state simultaneously failed. That Washington would tell such a fantastic lie shows that Washington has no respect for the intelligence of the American people and no respect for the integrity of the American media. It shows also that Washington has no respect for the intelligence and integrity of its European and Asian allies.
Washington won’t even tell the truth about little things in comparison–jobs, unemployment, inflation, GDP growth, economic recovery. Washington rigs the markets in order to cover up its sacrifice of the economy for the benefit of a few special interests. In the name of “privatization,” Washington hands over public assets and government responsibilities to rapacious private interests.
The conclusion is inescapable that the US is a gangster state. Indeed, the US is worse than a mere gangster state. The US is a shameless exploitative tyranny.Training camp is over. And the winners are...
MVP -- Malcom Floyd in a runaway. Newcomer and Pro Bowl cornerback Brandon Flowers said Floyd, soon to be 33, moved like he's just three years into the NFL.
There wasn't a cornerback who faced him that Floyd failed to roast once.
Floyd took another step Friday in his comeback from the scary neck injury that ended his 2014 season. Against Seahawks starters and second-stringers, he caught one Philip Rivers pass in traffic and another over the middle.
Floyd said the contest's speed and contact, which included crack blocks against safeties, was vital to scrape barnacles off his game. He pronounced himself "pleased and confident" after facing the Super Bowl champs.
"It just stunk that we lost," he said. "I wanted to go back in the game."
A bonus, both of Floyd's catches came as an inside receiver. Everyone in the NFL knows Floyd is a slick outside receiver. There's more traffic, however, working from the slot. He looked comfortable there. He wasn't spooked by the over-the-middle hit that put him in an ambulance last September.
It's a big feature in Mike McCoy's system that receivers are fluent at all three receiver spots -- split end, flanker, slot. The versatility makes the Chargers harder to defend. Floyd, as well as Keenan Allen and Eddie Royal, looks comfortable in each role.
Best development -- Health. The Chargers were spared the carnage that jolted several other teams (see: Chargers' first opponent).
Best undrafted rookies -- Running back Branden Oliver challenged Marion Grice, a sixth-round pick. Chris Davis mounted a push at cornerback and punt returner, while nose tackle Tenny Paleopoi matched or edged fifth-round draftee Ryan Carrethers.
Top rookie -- Chris Watt. Coming off a strong spring training, he looked comfortable at right guard and backup center despite missing the first preaseason game following an apparent head or neck injury. With Jeromey Clary still not practicing, he's a candidate to start at right guard in the season opener Sept. 8.
Most energetic performer -- Receiver Dontrelle Inman. Even among workaholics, he was frisky. Not satisfied with full-padded team practices on hot days, he worked out at length on the field afterward.Hindsight is 20-20, something Amazon now has about the launch of its first smartphone. Amazon debuted the $199 Fire Phone in June, though trimmed the price of the device to 99 cents (with a two-year contract) just two months after it went on sale, without explanation. Speaking to Fortune, Amazon's senior vice president of devices David Limp now says the company simply whiffed on the pricing. "We didn't get the price right," Limp said. "I think people come to expect a great value, and we sort of mismatched expectations. We thought we had it right. But we're also willing to say, ‘we missed.' And so we corrected."
"We thought we had it right."
That correction — as Amazon calls it — also hit its bottom line, as the company revealed last week. While reporting an operating loss of $544 million for its latest quarter, the company noted that it was taking a charge of $170 million related to the Fire Phone. It also said it was still sitting on $83 million worth of phones going into its fourth quarter.
Much like its Fire tablets, the Fire Phone was designed to help users mainline all of the company's services, from buying things on Amazon.com, to accessing its streaming music and video services, and custom Appstore. It also launched with an exclusive feature called Firefly that would identify objects that could be purchased from Amazon. However, the key feature designed to set it apart from other smartphones was a set of front-facing cameras used to create a sense of faux 3D motion.
Amazon still hasn't released sales numbers on the device, and isn't likely to. The company typically keeps them secret, preferring instead to compare sales to the previous iterations. Customer reviews of the device have been less than kind, averaging less than two and a half stars across 3,399 reviews.AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Dozens of people chanted anti-Semitic slogans during riots that broke out in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood of The Hague after a man being arrested died in police custody.
More than 100 people chanted “Jewish murderers” on Thursday night in the Schilderswijk, where a handful of Jews live in a Jewish-owned enclave surrounded by project apartments populated by low-income families, according to a report on The Post Online.
The riots took place at a theater stormed by protesters approximately a mile away from the enclave, the De Telegraaf daily reported.
More than 200 people have been arrested since protests broke out in the Schilderswijk over the death of Mitch Henriquez, a citizen of the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba. Police officers are accused of suffocating Henriquez during his arrest at a park; preliminary autopsy findings appeared to support the allegation.
The Schilderswijk has one of the highest crime rates in the Netherlands. Last year, the neighborhood saw riots that broke out on the margins of rallies in support of the ISIS terror group and featured its flags. Protesters hurled stones at riot police during an anti-ISIS march last year. During Israel’s war in Gaza, at least two demonstrations in Schilderswijk against Israel featured calls to slaughter the Jews.
The Jewish-owned enclave was purchased in the 19th century by the Jewish community to accommodate impoverished Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe. But the Jewish population of The Hague was almost totally annihilated during the Holocaust. The area around it became populated by families of migrant workers in the 1960s and 1970s. The city is now believed to have a few hundred Jews.
Lody van Der Kamp, a Dutch rabbi who has spoken out on the need to facilitate dialogue between Muslims and Jews, wrote in an Op-Ed for the Joodse Omroep Jewish broadcaster on Thursday that “when the calm returns, it is time to take these young men by the hand and show them their own Schilderswijk’s history.”But if there's one thing I want you to know, it's that I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. If you could give me a script and say, "This is the story of your life," I would do it over and over again, a billion times. Hockey gave me every opportunity I could dream of. I lived the dream every Canadian kid wants to have. I got to play in the greatest league in the world, in the greatest sport in the world.
There are a lot of people I want to thank. And I'm going to get to them.
In Kindersley, Sask., we lived right across the street from Elizabeth School. You could see it from our front window. I remember being really young, probably three or four. My older brothers (Chad and Mike) would go to school, and my dad (Dean) coached the senior hockey team. The rink was right next to the school and my dad had the key. He would put on my skates, toss me on the ice and go get breakfast. That's my earliest memory of hockey.
Both sides of my family were hardworking and entrepreneurial. My parents owned and operated an A&W in the city. That was my lunch spot. My dad coached my brothers and me. He always made it fun, but never showed any favouritism. If anything, he was probably harder on us than our teammates. My mother (Donna) loved us no matter what we did, but she is hard-nosed. She always says I get all my toughness from her.
My parents believed in me, but I was cut from every Midget Triple-A team I tried out for until my last year. I never thought I would make it. I remember training with my friends, many of whom were drafted by Western Hockey League teams. I wasn't. I had a bad reputation on the ice as undisciplined and unpredictable. Always taking a lot of penalties.
I was invited to camp as an 18-year-old by the WHL's Red Deer Rebels, but didn't make it and they dropped me. Then, in the middle of the season, Medicine Hat called, but I wasn't going to go. The previous year the team I played with, the Kindersley Klippers, went all the way to the Royal Bank Cup before losing in the final. The whole team was back. We had a great chance to win this time and that's what I wanted to do.
I was starting to get scholarship offers in the United States, but I was kidding myself. I wasn't the best student and all I cared about was hockey. My dad knew I so badly wanted to play in the WHL, so he sat me down and said this was the best chance I would have to play there or in the NHL. It was the 2004-05 lockout, so I'd play in front of all the scouts. He told me with the style I played at my size, I had to prove I could play a big schedule. I still didn't want to abandon my teammates in November. Medicine Hat had injuries, but once everyone got healthy, would I be sitting in the stands and not playing?
Some of those teammates pulled me aside and said, "You have to go." Until last week, the hardest decision of my life was to leave them.
Going into it, I doubted I was good enough. How were those guys going to treat an 18-year-old rookie? What I learned about myself is that when I play nervous, it helps me. Those guys treated me great. I was on a line with Darren Helm right away and, later, Kevin Undershute. When the playoffs came, I hit my stride.
We played Red Deer in the first round and my job was to get under Dion Phaneuf's skin. Remember, Dion would have been in the NHL that season if it weren't for the lockout. He smoked me a couple of times, but if I got him to take a coincidental penalty, I knew I was doing my job. I definitely irritated him.
He is one of the guys who sent me a text last week. We've battled against each other since those junior days. That he took the time to send that meant a lot - they all meant a lot.
We beat the Rebels in seven games, but lost to Prince Albert in Round 2. I gained a lot of confidence. At the team banquet, assistant coach Shaun Clouston was handing out the awards and announced me as playoff MVP. I looked at my parents, and said, "Really?"
I think they wanted me to take that as a challenge to become a bigger part of the leadership group. I started to think, "Maybe I could play in the AHL or the ECHL."
Not even the NHL.
In Medicine Hat our radio play-by-play guy, Bob Ridley, also drove the team bus. During my second season, we were on that long road trip through Vancouver, Kelowna and Prince George when he asked to tape an interview and told me that I had been ranked by NHL Central Scouting. I had zero idea. I was like a deer in the headlights and so excited. It gave me more confidence.
I was actually glad I wasn't invited to the combine, because I was such a weak little kid. I would have been the guy who does one bench press, or two pull-ups. On the day of the 2006 draft, I was in the basement with my parents, brothers and some friends. We kept hitting refresh on the computer. The fifth round came, then the sixth, the seventh. Kris Russell was in Columbus at the time and his father, Doug, told me they were interested in me.
So, when their seventh-round pick arrived, I was thinking, "This is my only chance."
The phone rang from a number I'd never seen before. One of my buddies was on another computer and cheered because he knew the pick. I was ecstatic. So happy, so relieved. There was a big slo-pitch tournament going on in Kindersley that day. I was legal age and we partied pretty hard.
I remember my first trip to the Traverse City rookie tournament. Columbus had a tough team. Jared Boll, Marc Methot, Tom Sestito, myself. We won it two straight years - and there were a lot of fights.
Then I remember being in awe, star struck around Sergei Fedorov, Anson Carter, Adam Foote and Fredrik Modin. I'd be riding the bike and if there weren't any to use when a veteran walked in, I'd pretend I was finished just to see if they wanted it. What surprised me was how normal those guys were. They were great guys, although I didn't say much my first couple of years at camp. Mike Commodore gave me his number right away and told me if I needed anything to let him know. He would lend me his car and made sure I knew the door was always open at his place. And I couldn't believe how welcoming the owners, the McConnell family, were.
It's funny - my rookie dinner was right here in Vancouver at the Gotham Steakhouse. Luckily, there were about seven of us. I spent $5,000. I haven't spent that much on a dinner since and never will again, but it was the best $5,000 I ever spent. My first goal was against the Canucks, too. Some people said I put it top-shelf, but I know I flubbed it and the puck trickled past Roberto Luongo. Today it's at my mother-in-law's house in Columbus.
One year, on the night before training camp opened, a few of us went out for dinner and stopped for a quick drink. There was a table of attractive women and we started chatting. The next day, I went for lunch after medicals and ran into one of them, Allison. It was a Saturday, a Buckeye football game day.
Allison always jokes that in Columbus, she is more famous than me. She captained the Ohio State cheerleading team for a couple of years. We ran into each other again and I asked her out on a date. The rest is history. We got married 10 days after I played in the 2014 Stanley Cup final with the Rangers.
I had no idea a trade was coming in April of 2013. I'd broken my clavicle and was basically done for the season. I lived right across from the arena - there were six or seven of us who lived in this complex. Derick Brassard texted to say he thought he was being traded to the Rangers, so I walked across the hall to talk to him. I missed a call from the 614 area code, but didn't think much of it.
There was Brass, Steve Mason and John Moore, who thought he was being traded, too. I gave him a hug, said, "Good luck, buddy," and then saw a text from Rick Nash. It said, "If everything goes through, it will be great to be back on your team." I thought he meant it for Brassard and texted the wrong guy. Then I heard on TV that it was Brassard, Dorsett and Moore.
I said, "I guess I'm coming with you."
Five minutes later, Glen Sather called. The call I missed was from Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen. I was on an airplane 50 minutes later.
A funny story I remember from New York: The players asked me what kind of music I liked to get pumped up before a game. I'm not a big music guy. I told them if I go on a four- or five-hour drive, I won't put on the radio because I just like to think. Marc Staal looked at me and said, "That's insane."
The Stanley Cup run with the Rangers was crazy and a great time. The playoffs at Madison Square Garden, and doing it with an Original Six team. The Yankees and Knicks were not that good at the time. You could feel the buzz. I wasn't recognized that often in New York City, but during the playoffs I'd ride the subway to the arena and people would yell, "Let's go, Dorsett!"
I will never forget being down 3-1 to Pittsburgh and Martin St. Louis getting the phone call that his mother had passed away, just as our plane landed. It was such an emotional time for our team. One of our best players and leaders was having a hard time and we knew we had to rally for him. The morning skate the next day when he walked in…. Wow. I can still remember that feeling when we saw him. Not much was said. Not much needed to be said.
The way he played. The funeral. He gave the best speech I've ever heard.
Doing it with the guys I started with, Brassard, Moore and Nash, was special. The billboards that went up in my hometown: "Good luck Derek in the Stanley Cup final." You think of those times when you were a kid "fake lifting" the Stanley Cup on the street.
I didn't see Alec Martinez's Cup-winning goal. Two shifts before, there was a collision and I twisted my ankle. I'd gone down the tunnel to be evaluated. I didn't see the replay for a year, because I wasn't going to search for it. The room afterwards was so quiet. I don't remember what anyone said. We were devastated, but proud of what we accomplished.
I miss New York City and loved playing for the Rangers. The way the fans and team treat you is unbelievable.
I could see I wasn't going to play that much the next season. I think I've got a good grasp of the business sense of the game, so I understood where I fit and where I belong. We were stacked down the right side with Nash, St. Louis, Mats Zuccarello and Jesper Fast. I spoke to Sather and coach Alain Vigneault and told them if there was an option for a better situation, I would like the opportunity to work for another contract to stay in the NHL. I had one year remaining on the current one.
They told me they were not going to trade me just to make a trade, and I respected that. I thought it would be Calgary or Vancouver. I'd heard the Flames wanted me at the deadline, but it didn't go through. Willie Desjardins, my junior coach who would get the Vancouver job, was on our guest list for the wedding.
On the day of my rehearsal dinner, we were cleaning up after spending the day shooting clay pigeons. I got a call from Sather, who said: "We appreciate what you've done for us, and, as an early wedding gift, |
1960s, though, at least one clown brought the political bite of court jesters to America. Because he’d been arrested for demonstrating multiple times, a peace activist by the named of Hugh Nanton Romney started wearing a clown costume to protests and changed his name to “Wavy Gravy.” But he didn’t stop there: The official clown of the band Grateful Dead, Wavy Gravy began entertaining children with comic routines and magic tricks, and even went on to found Camp Winnarainbow in Northern California with his wife, a place kids and adults can study clown philosophy as well as acting, improv, juggling, stilt-walking, magic, unicycle, acrobatics, trapeze, tightrope-walking, and art.
Clowning for adults returned to the mainstream in the 1980s, with the new vaudeville movement. Bill Irwin and Avner Eisenberg, for example, performed tremendously popular solo clown shows on Broadway. Clowns also regained some of their prominence with the re-emergence of one-ring circuses in America, such as the Big Apple Circus based in New York City, which began in 1977; the Altanta-based UniverSoul Circus, which started off as an African American circus in 1994; the Cirque du Soleil shows that started in 1984 in Montreal; and the small-scale Pickle Family Circus, founded in San Francisco in 1974 and is now part of the Circus Center. “When one-ring circuses became popular again, then the role of the clowns became important, and you began seeing entrée clown acts being performed in American circuses again,” Johnson says.
While clowns got a G-rated, happy persona in the 20th century, the mystery of what might be behind the face paint was lurking in the shadows. In the 1920s, silent film star Lon Chaney played a couple of sad clowns who fall tragically in love and die. In 1928’s “Laugh, Clown, Laugh,” his clown falls to his death from a high-wire, and in 1924’s “He Who Gets Slapped,” he unleashes a lion to kill his romantic competition before he dies from a stab wound. The Joker, the famous criminal mastermind in sinister clown makeup, was introduced in the first Batman comic in 1940. In Cecil B. DeMille’s 1952 film, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” James Stewart plays Buttons, a clown who uses his whiteface makeup to hide his identity as a doctor who performed a mercy killing on his wife. “There is some history of clowns as sinister characters,” Johnson says. “It’s the irony or the dichotomy of a character who’s supposed to bring happiness doing the opposite.”
But, by and large, clowns enjoyed most of the 20th century as saccharine symbols of childhood innocence. That is, until December 1978, when John Wayne Gacy, who sometimes performed as Pogo the Clown (despite having a criminal sexual assault record), was arrested and charged in connection to the rape and murder of 33 teenage boys. The man known as “The Killer Clown” was put on death row in 1980 and was executed in 1994.
The concept of “coulrophobia,” or a fear of clowns, didn’t even exist before the 1980s, and it’s not acknowledged in any psychiatric manuals. Johnson says that little children generally like real, professional clowns, but when they get older, they tend to reject clowns as embarrassing and childish. “Preteen boys especially decided that they’re too old for clowns and that a way to prove that their maturity is to be aggressive towards clowns.” To appeal to a teenage-boy sensibility, a target demographic for advertisers, clowns depicted in movies, television, games, comics, and books got edgier—scarier and more loathsome.
“It just became a fad to talk about clowns negatively and say that you hate clowns,” he says. “It doesn’t have anything to do with actual clowns. It was almost a way to show that you were sophisticated.”
In the 1980s, evil, malicious clowns started creeping into movies. In 1982’s horror film “Poltergeist,” a clown doll possessed by a vengeful spirit grabs a child and attempts to choke him. In the 1985 children’s film “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” Pee-Wee dreams his beloved bike is being slaughtered by malevolent clown nurses and doctors. Then in 1986, Stephen King published his horror novel, It, about children who are terrorized by an inter-dimensional being that takes the shape of their biggest phobia: Pennywise the Dancing Clown. (It also manifests as a giant spider to adults.) It was adapted into a television miniseries that aired on ABC in November 1990.
Thanks to It and Pennywise, the image of the evil monster clown was solidified in the public imagination. Movies like 1988’s “Killer Clowns From Outer Space,” 1990’s “Clownhouse,” and 1992’s “Dr. Giggles” hit the screen. In 1992, a Detroit hip-hop group made its debut as the facepaint-wearing Insane Clown Posse, championing a genre known as “horrorcore rap” that uses horror-film tropes as metaphors for the brutal realities of urban street violence. A performance of I.C.P.’s song “The Juggla” in 1994 inspired the group’s fans to wear clown makeup and call themselves “Juggalos” and “Juggalettes.” Horror clowns only got more horrifying with the titular demonic spirit in the “Killjoy” series starting in 2000, the deranged Captain Spaulding in Rob Zombie’s 2003 slasher “The House of 1,000 Corpses,” Billy the Puppet in the gory “Saw” franchise starting in 2004, and Heath Ledger’s nihilistic turn as Batman’s arch-enemy The Joker in 2008’s “The Dark Knight.”
Aside from psychotic serial killers, clowns were portrayed in mainstream entertainment as having dark lives in the real world, consumed by depression, cynicism, addiction, and other vulgar pursuits. Krusty the Clown, who debuted on “The Simpsons” cartoon in 1989, was a beaten-down misanthrope off the set of his TV show. For the sketch comedy TV show “In Living Color,” Damon Wayans created Homey D. Clown, an ex-con doing community service, who first appeared in 1990 and flat-out refused to engage in any foolishness, declaring, “Homey don’t play that!” In 1990’s “Quick Change,” Bill Murray commits a robbery in a clown costume, and in 1992’s “Shakes the Clown,” Bobcat Goldthwait played a clown in the grips of depression and alcoholism who is framed for murder.
In 2007, a researcher from the University of Sheffield named Dr. Penny Curtis surveyed 250 British children, ages 4 to 16, about hospital design and decor. “We found that clowns are universally disliked by children,” Curtis told the journal Nursing Standard in 2008. “Some found them quite frightening and unknowable.” However, most news outlets who published her quote misunderstood the widely reported survey: It was about decoration, not the live “caring clowns” who provide therapeutic care in hospitals, and clown images were only a small part of the study. In the results published online, only five children are quoted saying they dislike clown images, calling them “creepy” or “babyish.” By contrast, two recent Italian studies have shown that professional hospital clowns can help reduce children’s anxiety before surgery and even speed up recovery time for respiratory illnesses.
Hartmier attributes much of clowning’s bad rap to amateurs who lack modern clown training. “People think, ‘I can just put on a costume, and I’m a clown,’ she says. “Those people tend to be the ones that have the scary-looking makeup. They may jump in front of a kid and say, ‘I’m a clown! You’ve got to love me!’ and scare the kid because they don’t know how to properly approach children.”
Little kids are often frigthened when parents shove them in the arms of an odd-looking stranger, whether it’s a man dressed as Santa Claus or a costumed Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, and a good, professional clown knows that.
“When I see parents approaching me with their kids and I see the kid’s eyes being huge, I stop the parents,” Hartmier says. “I say, ‘No, don’t come any closer.’ Parents sometimes reply, ‘But we want to get a picture with you,’ and I say, ‘I don’t want the child coming closer to me until that child asks me to,’ And they look at the kid, like, ‘Well, she’s only this much old. How can she ask?”’ I say, ‘Just wait.’ I just take my time, and next thing you know, the little girl reaches out to me. Now, it’s safe for me to come close.”
Professional clowns trained to work with children have credentials, whether that’s being registered with the Clowns of America International or the Association for Accredited Clowns, attending classes and workshops held by the World Clown Association or the Circus Center’s Clown Conservatory, or partaking in clown camps. Often, those who work parties will have liability insurance and be able to produce a criminal background check. Hartmier even has fire-safety education training and works as a safety clown for Just for LAFS (Life and Fire Safety).
“Clowning is a business,” Hartmier says. “Clowns today have to be politically and ethnically correct. We have to know where our hands are at all times. We have to know the safety rules, like you don’t give balloons to children under the age of 3 because they can put them in their mouth and choke on them. If I do face-painting I can tell you the all ingredients in my paints, in case of allergy. You have to know etiquette. If I were to go and clown in Japan, for example, I would need to know it’s a huge no-no to touch a child on the head.
“If I’m going to a private home to do a birthday party, I also indicate that I’m not a babysitter,” she continues. “I’m here to do my performance. I expect an adult to be in the room the whole time.”
Today, while stage and TV jobs are all but gone, “there are so many different areas where clowns are being utilized,” Hartmier says. “You’ve got hospital clowning, Christian clowning, safety clowning, birthday-party clowning, circus clowning. I even know a gentleman who does history clowning.”
Professional clown makeup tends to be less extreme than the old-fashioned grotesque, comedy whiteface. Many clowns favor the more natural auguste light look. And, as Hartmier points out, clowns don’t have to be funny all the time, particularly, say, when working at a hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. True professional clowns also never play pranks or gags, like squirting flowers, on audience members without explicit permission; they only pull gags on other clowns. As much as kids love their smartphone games and movies, Hartmier says they still are charmed by clowns.
“He’d ask the pig something like, ‘Who’s the biggest scoundrel in town?’ And the pig would walk around and stop in front of the mayor.”
“Most kids now aren’t used to live entertainment, so they don’t know how to respond,” Hartmier says, explaining that she encourages children to clap or cheer. “Then they realize, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I can be noisy here. I don’t have to be just sitting quietly like I’m in a movie theater.’ Clowning comes from the heart, and it really connects with them in a way other forms of entertainment don’t. I get kids coming up to me afterward, giving me hugs because they’ve loved the performance so much. You can’t hug a movie.”
Routines have changed quite a bit, too. One popular old bit had to do with two clowns in a stagecoach being chased by a rider. In the old routine, as the rider gets closer, the clown driving the coach repeatedly asks the clown on lookout how big the rider is. Once the rider gets too close, the driver clown beseeches the other to shoot him, and the punchline, or blow-off, is, “I can’t. I’ve known him since he was this big.” Hartimier says clowns can’t shoot guns anymore, and since Westerns aren’t as popular as they used to be, kids often don’t know what a stagecoach is anyway. But the joke can be parlayed in a routine about a Justin Bieber type getting chased by paparazzi.
“Kids looove slapstick,” Hartmier says. “My partner and I, we do slapstick. We do the pies and the mess. We get covered in slop. One of the things that kid love about the mess is the fact that they kind of live vicariously. Everybody’s always wanted to get a pie thrown in their face. But society says, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ When they see clowns do it, it’s fun. My partner and I, we do a wallpapering routine, and we end up getting covered head to foot.That’s the finale of our show. At the end, when I’m covered, I’ll turn around and go, ‘Free hugs.’ You’d be amazed at how many people want to come up and give me hugs. They want to get in there and play.
“The tramp character is one that in the 20th century people relate to the most as being human and less of an exaggerated cartoon.”
“Again, we have to be ever so careful not to portray that we’re bullying each other because they’re young and impressionable,” she continues. “When we do our slapstick routine, yeah, we’re having a bit of the fight. We’re getting frustrated with each other, but then we’re laughing at each other. We’re not really angry, and we’re still helping each other.”
Hartmier loves clowning so much that she married a fellow clown—in a clown wedding, naturally—and their daughter also clowns. She has a vast collection of clown dolls and figurines, clowning magazines, objects from the Ringling Circus, and even clown Christmas ornaments. Bruce Johnson is an even more serious clown collector, who explains that there are three categories of clown collectibles: fantasy or made-up clowns, those based on real-life clowns like Emmett Kelly or Lou Jacobs; and objects belonging to real-life clowns like noses or props. Johnson also has clown masks and katsina dolls from Native American tribes; children’s books about clowns and circuses; clown photographs; and clown statues.
“I have some clown dolls, but I try to stay away from the fantasy ones,” he says. “There are more dolls of specific characters, like Oleg Popov, who was a star at the Moscow State Circus, and Grandma, which was the character of Barry Lubin, the star of the Big Apple Circus.”
Clown memorabilia isn’t particularly valuable collecting category, Johnson says, so it’s best just to go for what you like. Circus programs, because they were printed in limited numbers and thrown away, are best investments. But be wary of circus posters.
“In the 1970s, the Ringling Bros. Circus reprinted a lot of their classic circus posters and sold them in the souvenir stand,” Johnson says. “And the Circus World Museum reprinted a lot of the classic posters and sold them in the gift shop at the museum. I’ve seen those in antique stores. Even though I can see where it says ‘Circus World Museum’ on it, the owner of the antiques store was saying, ‘Oh, no, no, that’s an original poster. That’s very valuable.’ You have to become educated at to know whether you’re looking at a modern reprint or if it’s actually an antique poster that has value to it.”
No matter how ridiculed clowning becomes in mainstream American society, Hartmier says, clowning will never die, because it connects people.
“Laughter brings closeness,” she says. “When I was in Hong Kong, I was actually asked to speak with the performers at Ocean Park, which is similar to Sea World, and they asked me, ‘What do I see as a clown? What do clowns do?’ And I told them clowning comes from the heart. They were saying, ‘Is it juggling? Is it balloon art?’ I said those are all great skills that clowns utilize, but that doesn’t make a clown. You don’t have to be a clown to do balloons. You don’t have to be a clown to face paint. Those are just skills. ‘But what’s clowning?’ Clowning is a connection with people.
“They were going, ‘Well, I don’t understand,’” she continues. “So I did a funny bit. And at first they wondered what I was doing, and then at the end of it, they were roaring. So they said, ‘Why does that work?’ And I said, ‘This is what I mean by connection: Why is it that people laugh when you see somebody hit their thumb with a hammer? Because somewhere in your past, you’ve done something just as stupid.’”
(Recommended reading: Bruce “Charlie” Johnson’s Clown History; Smithsonian Magazine’s article, “The History and Psychology of Clowns Being Scary”; John Plant’s paper, “The Plains Indians Clowns, Their Contraries, and Related Phenomena”; the Disability Studies Quarterly’s paper “From Marvels of Nature to Inmates of Asylums: Imaginations of Natural Folly”; Andrew McConnell Stott’s book, “The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi”; and Janet M. Davis’ book “The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top.”)Epic Games is proud to announce today that FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE is created with Unreal Engine 4. Square Enix fully unveiled the game onstage during PlayStation Experience 2015 this weekend, giving everyone a first look at one of the most celebrated games ever made, at last redone with high-fidelity graphics to match its lively and emotive story and cast of characters. The highly anticipated remake of the role-playing game was first unveiled earlier this year during E3 2015.
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FINAL FANTASY and SQUARE ENIX are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Square Enix group of companies.It’s normal in the wake of a crushing political defeat for the losing party to rethink things, and The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart’s latest piece is an important entry in Democrats’ attempt to understand what happened in 2016 and try to shape a left-of-center coalition that can win given American political realities.
It’s also a genuinely terrifying vision of what could happen to American liberalism if the Democratic coalition learns the wrong lessons from losing to Donald Trump.
The problem with Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic party in 2016, Beinart argues, is that they were way too pro-immigrant. They celebrated diversity rather than assimilation. They didn’t treat immigration as a threat to working-class prosperity. They didn’t emphasize rigorous enforcement at the border or call for big crackdowns on employers who employ undocumented immigrants. Beinart concludes with the requisite admonishment of silly campus leftists, chiding the University of California system for listing the phrase “melting pot” as a potential microaggression.
If only Hillary Clinton had gone to one of UC’s campuses, Beinart muses, "called that absurd," and "challenged elite universities to celebrate not merely multiculturalism and globalization but Americanness," then "Clinton would be president today."
It’s certainly interesting fan fiction, not least in that it implies that America’s most radical pro-immigration agitator is UC president Janet Napolitano, who dramatically ramped up deportations as Secretary of Homeland Security. The essay as a whole is similarly far-fetched and confused. Beinart appears to want to both make a policy argument that Democrats are mistaken to support mass immigration, and a political argument that they have to turn right on the issue to survive.
The piece conflates the two arguments at points, but they’re very different. One is an argument about the economic and cultural effects of immigration, about which Beinart is wrong. The other is an argument about what policies on immigration Americans are in fact demanding, about which Beinart is also wrong, but in a more interesting way.
There really is an economic consensus that immigration is good
Beinart’s policy argument is that liberals have given short-shrift to the costs of immigration, especially the economic ramifications. He’s mistaken. If anything, Democrats are too hesitant about noting the enormous economic benefits immigration brings to most Americans, and certainly to immigrants themselves.
Beinart gives readers a totally false sense of the state of research on immigration and its benefits. He focuses on a narrow academic debate over whether or not immigration modestly reduces wages for certain native-born high school dropouts — who are less than 8 percent of the total native-born population, and an even smaller portion of the working-age population — and not on the overwhelming academic consensus that the other 92.4 percent are held harmless or benefit from immigration, and that Americans gain overall.
Nor does he note that immigration appears to increase high school graduation rates among natives, further shrinking the number of people who might be negatively affected, or that that the biggest economic costs of immigration are borne by previous migrants — which makes sense, as they’re much more directly in competition with new immigrants than natives are.
Beinart portrays a National Academy of Sciences study on immigration as showing major costs to native workers, when the study actually concluded, “the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers overall is very small”; when the study came out, the New York Times’ Thomas Edsall correctly summarized, “the academy comes down decisively on the pro-immigration side of the debate.”
But Beinart’s political argument is disconnected from this narrative of immigration battering the working classes. He doesn’t argue that Democrats should turn against immigration because doing so helps native workers. He instead claims that they "must take seriously Americans’ yearning for social cohesion" and "dust off a concept many on the left currently hate: assimilation."
The idea that the US has gotten worse at assimilating new immigrants, though, is unfounded. The National Academies of Sciences study Beinart cites found “the rate of relative wage growth and English-language acquisition among the foreign-born is now slightly slower than it was for earlier immigrant waves” but that “the children of immigrants continue to pick up English-language skills very quickly.” “Slightly slower” — truly terrifying stuff!
Meanwhile, the NAS also conducted another review specifically focused on the evidence around immigrant integration, and concluded that there’s little reason to think that immigrants are integrating more poorly than they used to.
"They’re integrating as well as, or even faster, than immigrants who came from Europe in the last century," Harvard sociologist Mary Waters, who led the review, said in an interview with ThinkProgress’s Esther Yu Hsi Lee. "What we find overall — there’s a lot of details and caveats — but overall, the immigrants are rapidly assimilating into American society." Among the primary remaining barriers to integration are a lack of legal status for undocumented immigrants and racial prejudice against non-white immigrants.
Beinrt’s concern about public opinion more generally is also odd, given that Americans have become more pro-immigration, not less, in recent decades:
There’s no humane way to crack down on immigration
Let’s suppose for a second that Beinart is right, and this pro-immigration American public would nonetheless like Democrats to be less pro-immigration. For one thing, maybe this is a sincere desire of white voters without college degrees in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, who Democrats likely need to win over to retake the Senate and who remain important in the electoral college.
What policies should Democrats then champion? Here’s Beinart’s proposed agenda:
A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants
No guest-worker programs
Promoting English learning among immigrants
Tough enforcement of companies that hire undocumented immigrants
The first item is smart, and promoting English is benign enough, I suppose. The Gang of Eight immigration bill embraced by Democrats in 2013 would have made headway on both those goals: it offered undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, and to get permanent residency, they would have to demonstrate they’d learned English.
But the other two provisos are just code words for limiting immigration, period.
Calling for enforcement that punishes companies that hire undocumented immigrants, rather than the immigrants themselves, is a cruel sleight of hand. If you’re an undocumented immigrant working in a good job — maybe as a domestic care worker in a welcoming household, or for a compassionate boss at a restaurant — and your job gets taken away due to the enforcement of this provision, are you really being held harmless? Or is the government denying you your livelihood in service of upholding a manifestly unjust law?
Any realistic comprehensive immigration program gaining buy-in from business leaders is going to include an expansion of worker visas; the Gang of Eight bill included a provision called the “W-visa.” Guest worker plans tied to specific employers encourage abuses by bosses, which is why the W visa is not tethered to single employers. And to make sure these workers have the option to become more permanent members of their community, the W-visa would let them petition for permanent residency, addressing Beinart’s concerns about integration.
It’s a program that, if combined with vigorous enforcement of worker protection laws (as it should be), would enable thousands of foreign workers to earn two, three, four, even more times their earnings at home. It’s a significant blow against poverty for people in developing countries, not just for the workers themselves but also for any family members and others to whom they send remittances as well.
Being for equality means being for immigration
This is the point where you have to ask yourself what Beinart actually thinks the Democratic party is for. Personally, I think any center-left party worth its salt has to be deeply committed to egalitarianism, not just for people born in the US but for everyone.
That means fighting for LGBT rights against bathroom bills, fighting mass incarceration and police violence victimizing black Americans, and working for more domestic redistribution to address poverty and hardship, including through universal health care.
But it also means treating people born outside the US as equals. It means generously funding foreign aid for health programs that have saved hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives. And it means a strong presumption in favor of open immigration. Not only does migration help native workers overall, it enables a massive increase in the welfare of people abroad, typically people much poorer than even poor Americans, who come here. Recent research from economists Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro, and Lant Pritchett estimated that someone from Nigeria who moves to the US will be able to earn $16,611 more every year than they would at home. For Indian workers, the number is $14,317; Mexican workers, $10,523; Cambodian workers, $21,352.
These are massive, massive transfers to people far poorer than the American population. And they do not require new taxes. All they require is lessening the massive barriers to moving and working abroad that currently exist.
What kind of egalitarian would oppose that? And what is the point of a strategy for the center-left to win that means giving up on that goal?
Beinart argues that to continue on their current path, Democrats need to build a viable, durable coalition that supports efforts to “promote both mass immigration and greater economic redistribution.” I really, profoundly agree with that. For rich countries, accepting large numbers of immigrants is a basic obligation of justice, as is helping the poor at home, and left of center people need to be thinking hard about how to build an electoral and interest group coalition that can support both those goals. It’s not impossible but it’s not easy.
But Beinart doesn’t actually seem to care about promoting mass immigration. And that’s the one answer to this dilemma that’s completely unacceptable.When Sven Berger looked around at the other jurors in the deliberation room during a 2008 capital murder trial, he knew that the majority wanted the death penalty. He also knew he didn’t.
But he voted for it anyway. It's a decision he still regrets, and one he says he wouldn't have made if the law had been clearly explained in that Tarrant County courtroom.
He'd sat in the courtroom and listened to how Paul Storey, the 22-year-old defendant in an ill-fitting suit, and another man had robbed a miniature golf park near Fort Worth and fatally shot the assistant manager, 28-year-old Jonas Cherry. Berger knew Storey was guilty, he said in a recent Texas Tribune interview, but in his gut, he didn't believe the man would be a future danger to society, a requirement in issuing the death penalty in Texas.
What Berger didn’t realize — in part because of the language in the jury instructions — was that his vote alone could have blocked the jury from handing down a death sentence and given Storey life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Thinking that he'd have to convince most of his fellow jurors to spare Storey from execution, he didn’t fight as the jury deliberated, Berger said. When the life-or-death questions went around the table, he answered like everyone else.
Now, with Storey’s execution set for April 12, Berger and at least two state lawmakers are hoping to change jury instructions in death penalty cases.
“The judge instructed us that any vote that would impose a life sentence would require a consensus of 10 or more jurors,” Berger wrote in a letter to the Senate Criminal Justice Committee last week. “With the vast majority of the other jurors in the room … voicing their vote for death, I seriously doubted I could persuade one, let alone nine other jurors, to vote to incarcerate Mr. Storey for the remainder of his life, and I switched my vote.”
To hand down a death sentence in Texas, the jury's decision must be unanimous. If even one juror disagrees, the trial automatically results in a sentence of life without parole. But the jury instructions don’t say that, and, under state law, no judge or lawyer can tell jurors that either.
Instead, deliberations in a trial's sentencing phase (after the jury has issued a conviction) focus not on death versus life, but on three specific questions the jury must answer: is the defendant likely to be a future danger to society? If the defendant wasn’t the actual killer, did he or she intend to kill someone or anticipate death? And, if the answer is yes to the previous questions, is there any mitigating evidence — like an intellectual disability — that the jury thinks warrants the lesser sentence of life without parole?
To issue a death sentence, the jury must unanimously answer “yes” to the first two questions and “no” to the last question. But, the instructions state, to answer “no” to the first two questions or “yes” to the last, ten or more jurors must agree.
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What those complicated instructions don't say is that a single juror can deadlock the jury on any of the three questions, eliminating death as an option and triggering an automatic life without parole sentence.
Berger didn’t get the distinction.
“I’m appalled that Texas’ capital jury instructions misled jurors about the implications of their vote, and find it unconscionable that men and women like me, with the power of life and death, are told that they must act only as a single group, and that their individual voice doesn’t matter,” Berger wrote in his letter.
He’s not the only one upset. Democrats Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr., of Brownsville, and Rep. Abel Herrero, of Robstown, filed bills in the Texas Legislature to strike the language that says ten or more jurors must agree to answer against the death penalty, and also remove a sentence that bars judges or lawyers from telling jurors what their votes mean. And Republican Rep. John Smithee, of Amarillo, has since signed on to Herrero's bill as a co-author. Senate Bill 1616 and House Bill 3054 have both been referred to committee.
“I was shocked to learn that the instructions in place actually lie to jurors who are tasked with quite literally making a life or death decision,” Lucio told the Tribune, saying religious advocates first informed him of the current jury instructions.
The bills might not make much headway in a Republican-dominated legislature that tends to avoid anything that could affect the death penalty. Though no opposition has come forward yet (neither bill has even been granted a hearing), prosecutors would likely fight it if it gained traction.
“In a death penalty case, the jury's job in sentencing is to answer the special questions required by the law, not decide the ultimate sentence. This bill informs them of the effect of their vote and basically encourages any hold-out jurors to try to hang the jury on sentencing,” said Shannon Edmonds, Director of Governmental Relations for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
District attorneys from the state's five biggest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis — all either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on the bills.
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The issue has been introduced at the Texas Capitol before. In 2011, state Rep. Armando Walle filed a bill almost identical to the current ones. It never made it out of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee after a lackluster hearing, with only one person testifying for the bill.
Regardless, Herrero said the change is necessary and he is optimistic about the current bills’ chances.
“We’re talking about life and death decisions being made by jurors, and it shouldn’t be determined by a guessing game,” he said.
Advocates hope the increased awareness with cases like Storey’s will give the issue more of a boost this year. Amanda Marzullo, interim executive director for Texas Defender Services, said she hopes to have Berger and another juror who has changed her mind testify if either bill is granted a committee hearing.
“It wasn’t really pushed [in 2011],” Marzullo said. “This is the first time the legislature’s really had a conversation about fairness to jurors in capital sentencing.”
Berger said he has been haunted by the death sentence he helped impose since an appellate attorney came to him months later and showed him evidence of Storey’s mental impairments. According to one psychologist, Storey had an IQ of 81. This cemented what he already thought but was unwilling to fight for at trial — that Storey wasn't likely to be a future danger.
Berger wrote an affidavit in 2010 stating that had he known about Storey's mental status, he would have fought against the death penalty at trial, specifically on the future dangerousness question. Despite his statement, Storey's sentence was upheld by the appeals court.
Berger said the experience has turned him from a supporter of capital punishment to an opponent.
“I’ve certainly been educated about what goes into death penalty cases and the results….it’s just astonishing to me how often trials are wrong. So that by itself would change my mind. I still believe there are bad people in the world, but no, I’m against the death penalty,” Berger said.
Now, Storey’s court appeals have all been exhausted. Last week, the parents of Storey’s victim, Jonas Cherry, wrote a letter asking the state and local authorities to commute his sentence, and his lawyer said he would file a petition to the governor asking for clemency, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, but these are long shots.
More likely, Storey will be led to the execution chamber on April 12 and become the fifth person executed by Texas this year.
“I feel terrible. I think about it a lot, actually … especially with the execution looming,” Berger said. “It’s something that you know is going to happen, but it’s so far away you can kind of push it to the back of your head... And then all of a sudden, there’s this date attached to Paul.”
More on the death penalty in the Texas legislature:
At least two Texas Democrats and one Republican are pushing to reform the death penalty under the law of parties, which holds those involved in a murder equally responsible, even if they weren't directly involved in the actual killing.
State Rep. Toni Rose, D-Dallas, has filed long-shot House Bill 3080, which would prevent offenders proven to have had a severe mental illness at the time of their crime from being sentenced to death in a capital murder case.This 24-foot long diorama created by Brickmania, depicts the WWII Battle of Peleliu, complete with a 10-foot long USS LST-325 ship, tanks, Marines, sailors, bunkers, ambulances and supply trucks. The model is filled with so many amazing details and features, including a shark waiting in the waters for doomed minifig men.
The diorama cost about $33,000 dollars and used over half a million bricks. It originally debuted at Brickworld Indy this past March. If you're near Evansville, Indiana today get your ass down to the Evansville Museum Transportation Center (EMTRAC), because this model is |
ertainty Principle, to be untrue. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, believed to be named after a place or a person, affirms that the exact state of quantum particle cannot be determined with full accuracy, no matter how refined the measurement equipment is. The classical example being the measurement of the velocity and position of a free particle: to be able to measure the position of a particle you must be able to'see' it. This means that you have to illuminate it at least with one photon. But the collision between the photon and the particle changes the velocity of the particle, thus making it impossible to determine what the velocity was before the position was measured.
Li Azbel's conjecture involved some of the most obscure variants of knot theory.
The EPR paradox describes the possibility of creating a pair of particle whose quantum state was entangled in such a way as to be mirror of each other. For example a pair or particle with position and velocity given as (x0,v) and (x0,-v), i.e. a pair of particle that at given time are at the same position, but have exactly opposed velocity vectors. After some time, the two particles would be separated by a large distance, and measurement could be done on each of them independently. Now by measuring, say, the position of particle A and the velocity of particle B, the EPR paradox states that you would thus have determined the exact state of both particles, thus violating the Heisenberg relationship.
But later experiments confirmed the Heisenberg principle, thus making the EPR paradox void, to the surprise of many. Mathematically, this didn't cause any problems as the collapse of the wave function due to measurement was an instantaneous happening. From a physical point of view, this was more difficult to comprehend, as it seemed to imply that the state change propagated instantly between the two particles. This was immediately suggested as a way to create faster-than-light communication: by making a measurement on a particle it would lead to an instantaneous change in the remote particle's state, thus transmitting one bit of information. A detailed mathematical analysis of this scenario though showed that due to the statistical nature of the quantum particle, only noise would be transmitted, thus laying to rest these speculations for millenniums.
This is precisely where Li Azbel took up the problem, with a rare insight leading to a breakthrough. She argued that even though the output of the transmission was pure noise, the structure of the noise could be used to encode the information. Indeed, it was well known that the bifurcation cascade leading to purely chaotic time-series had a universal structure, governed by the Feigenbaum constant. Taking a parametric family of functions called logistic maps, defined in the interval [0,1], there existed a parameter and an initial condition of the map that could generate any arbitrary random sequence of number. Azbel considered the problem from the other side, i.e. given a finite chaotic sequence, how could you trace yourself back to the initial condition? By using a maximum entropy analysis on the Shannon information entropy of the signal she devised a way to solve this inverse problem. Furthermore, she demonstrated that by carefully modulating the measurements of tangled quantum states, basically willfully introducing noise in the measurement process itself, that specific noise structure would be carried across to the measurements of the other particle.
The process was thus the following: A byte of information is mapped on an initial condition of the logistic map leading to a chaotic attractor. This noisy sequence is then used to modulate the measurements done on a sequence of entangled particles. At the same time on the other side, measurements are made on the particles and a noise sequence is extracted. Maximum entropy analysis is then done to determine the initial condition from which this series has been generated and thus map it back to a given byte of information. Note that in this case, the noisy sequence sent is totally uncorrelated to the one measured. What they do have in common is to be from the same chaotic attractor, and that is the information that actually gets transmitted instantly, regardless of distance.
As stated before, this theoretical result was originally considered to be too incredible, to be true. The Azbel-Wuthrich experiment used a very similar setup as the ancient Aspect experiment, and it was a historical moment when the first Smiley :-) was sent over this channel. Following that, a great gold-rush started on who would be the first to industrialize this.
The result of that rush is the familiar Fluid router, which forms the building block of universal communication as we know it today. Ignoring the mathematical intricacies, the architecture of these routers is deceivingly simple. The first step of their manufacturing is the creation of the entangled quantum states. This is done by using superfluid 4-Helium, where essentially all the Helium atoms are entangled in a single quantum state due to Bose condensation. A droplet of such liquid 4-Helium is then carefully separated in two. From this point, the two droplets, and more specifically the Helium atoms in the droplets are intrinsically tangled. Each droplet is then placed in separate router box, that contain necessary mechanism to encode and decode bytestream into quantum state measurements performed on the atoms of the droplet. From that point on, these two routers are linked together, regardless of their separation. Thus a spaceship will usually buy a router pair from a network provider. One box will be placed in the spaceship, while the other one kept in the network provider’s backbone, that will have connections to other routers, thus effectively forming a decentralized network, where messages can be routed across many routers and many providers. This architecture is similarly to the ancient Internet.
The only limitations of this communication system is in the capacity of the channel. Indeed, the manufacturing of the entangled 4-He superfluid is an expensive process. Furthermore, a large number of atoms are used for each byte, as a statistically relevant chaotic sequence needs to be created. The sequencing introduces a limit to the bandwidth, allowing only the transmission of x bytes/second. The amount of data sent then depletes the pool of available entangled atoms, thus limiting the total amount of data that can be sent with a given router pair.
The FTL communication services have spread to every corner of the world of EVE since they first appeared a couple of centuries ago. The services and routers, albeit owned and run by independent companies, are under constant scrutiny and regulations by a CONCORD sub-committee to enforce both security and privacy in the communications channels and to make sure the companies are correctly rendering the services they claim. The fierce competition on the telecommunication market makes it cheap, efficient and reliable to talk, transfer data and even conduct business for people light-years apart.Unknown vandals have painted red graffiti, with anti-religious “Neither God, nor master, nor state” and rebellious “Down with the authorities” slogans on the doors of the 19th-century Sacré-Coeur basilica atop Montmartre in Paris, France.
The marble entrance of the one of the world’s most famous attractions has also been tagged in red and black paint, saying “F*** tourism” and “Set fire to chapels.”
“1871, long live the commune," which referred to a Paris Commune revolt against the government in Paris that began in 1871 on March, 18 and left thousands dead, was also painted on the doors of the church.
According to the local press, the act of vandalism was performed overnight Monday to Tuesday. Clean-up crews have already been deployed to erase the words.
The graffiti, written just a few days ahead of municipal elections scheduled March 23 in Paris, has been strongly denounced by Parisian authorities.
“I strongly condemn the graffiti that was sprayed last night on the entrance of the [Sacré-Coeur]. Such defacing - and it’s not the first - is unacceptable,” said Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë.
Both candidates for municipal elections, Anne Hidalgo, from the Socialist Party and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, from the conservative UMP party, condemned the act and called for a strong response to the incident.
Et le vandalisme ne s'arrête pas là. Les touristes ont pu découvrir un très élégant "FUCK TOURISM". #Classepic.twitter.com/3eqRVilVor — RetN Mademoiselle (@RetNdemoiselle) March 19, 2014
According to France’s Interior Minister Manuel Valls, the act was "an offense to Catholics and a serious attack on a monument that is an icon of Paris's architectural heritage."
Though city authorities have not yet revealed who was behind the act, the finger of blame is being pointed at extreme leftist groups.
According to Delanoë, the basilica has always been a target for anarchists and far-left activists who believed the church was built as a symbolic punishment of supporters of the Paris Commune.
A popular tourist destination, which draws millions of visitors each year, Sacré Coeur is a Roman Catholic Church and minor basilica, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The basilica is considered as a double monument, political and cultural.
The damaging acts of vandalism can be spotted not only in France. On Tuesday a student broke a 19th-century statue of ‘the Drunken Satyr’ in the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan, Italy, while taking picture of himself. The Greco-Roman statue’s leg was torn off and broke into pieces on the floor.Gerry Gaston Barton wants someone to pay for the four decades he's spent wrongly labelled a sex offender.
Barton, a native of Nova Scotia who now lives in Alberta, is suing the Attorney General of Nova Scotia and his federal counterpart for the way his case was handled, CBC News reports.
In 1970 when he was 19, Barton was convicted of statutory rape after a 14-year-old girl in his Digby, N.S., neighbourhood accused him of raping her and fathering her baby.
But the RCMP reopened the case in 2008 when a criminal investigation revealed the teen, who can't be identified, had been sexually assaulted by her brother since the age of nine. The woman now says the brother was her baby's father but she accused Barton because her father refused to believe her brother had molested her.
Barton was arrested and convicted of statutory rape despite no evidence except the teen's claim, CBC News said.
Now 63 and living in Morinville, near Edmonton, told CBC News he protested his innocence at the perfunctory the court proceeding.
"When I went to court, the only one that was there was the prosecutor and the RCMP, the judge and the family that accused me of this, and my mom and dad sitting in the back," he said.
"They gave me a year's probation, they threw me in jail, my mother had to put her house up to get me out of jail and for what? For what? For nothing."
[ Related: Kyle Unger files $14.5-million wrongful-conviction lawsuit ]
Barton carried the sex-offender label throughout his life, making it hard to get and keep jobs, his lawyer said.
"All you need to hear are the words convicted sex offender and I think you can imagine what that would do to a young man's life and all the doors that would close on you," Dale Dunlop told CBC News.
Things changed when the woman came forward in 2008 and admitted the truth.
"The RCMP obtained DNA samples from all involved and testing overwhelmingly eliminated Mr. Barton as the father of the child born to the complainant," reads one court decision reported by CBC News.
"These tests also overwhelmingly indicated that the complainant's brother was the father of the child."
In 2011, Nova Scotia's Court of Appeal officially quashed Barton's conviction, calling it a "miscarriage of justice."
But apparently that's not enough to automatically entitle Barton to compensation as far as the Nova Scotia government is concerned.
"There's a lot more to it than just saying that police did something or someone else didn't do something," Justice Minister Ross Landry said. "It's a matter of getting the full picture and understanding how that occurred."
Both Nova Scotia and the federal government, which has jurisdiction over the RCMP, are fighting Barton's attempt to sue them for malicious prosecution and negligent police investigation.
They lost a round last week when a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge ruled the suit could go ahead, CBC News said.
"I have borne in mind the overall context of this case where there has been a wrongful conviction, now recognized to have been a miscarriage [of] justice, that occurred at the hands of the RCMP and the Crown prosecutor involved in the case some 43 years ago," Justice Robert Wright said in his decision.
Nova Scotia has learned nothing since the Donald Marshall case in 1971, Dunlop suggested.
Marshall, an 17-year-old aboriginal from Sydney, N.S., was convicted of murdering a teenage friend. An appeal overturned the verdict but also absolved the authorities of responsibility for a miscarriage of justice, putting some of the blame on Marshall, who'd had previous run-ins with police. It would take a royal commission to exonerate him in 1990.
“I would hope with Donald Marshall and our history of mistreatment of minorities that things would have changed, but I guess they haven't," Dunlop told CBC News.
[ Related: Wrongfully convicted Romeo Phillion to launch $14-million lawsuit ]
The Marshall case is one of the best known wrongful convictions in a history of Canadian justice is dotted with such miscarriages.
Sixteen-year-old David Milgaard was convicted for the 1969 rape-murder of nursing aide Gail Miller in Saskatoon. His trial featured coerced testimony from his friends and dubious physical evidence from lazy police work.
Milgaard, supported by his mother, fought for for decades to overturn the conviction, which was finally set aside by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992. It would take a DNA test five years later to finally clear him. The Saskatchewan government awarded him $10 million.
Story continuesTRENTON -- Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday said he's owed an apology after multiple officials and news outlets disputed his claim that he saw television footage of "thousands and thousands" of people in Jersey City cheering during the 9/11 attacks.
The billionaire businessman and former Atlantic City casino tycoon tweeted a link to a Washington Post story from Sept. 18, 2001 -- a week after the terrorist attacks -- that said authorities detained and questioned a number of people in Jersey City "who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river."
"I want an apology!" Trump wrote. "Many people have tweeted that I am right!"
Via @washingtonpost 9/18/01. I want an apology! Many people have tweeted that I am right! https://t.co/CpsMxs54qv pic.twitter.com/wrDEhXJlvR -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2015
Still, the Washington Post examined its 14-year-old report in a fact-check of Trump's comments and concluded that "a number of people" does not equate to "thousands" and that "allegedly" indicates "there is no video footage or other proof that celebrations actually took place."
The paper also interviewed Serge Kovaleski, one of the reporters who wrote the story -- who did not recall whether the allegations were confirmed.
"I certainly do not remember anyone saying that thousands or even hundreds of people were celebrating," Kovaleski told the Post. "That was not the case, as best as I can remember."
FACT CHECK: Trump's claims about cheering in Jersey City on 9/11 ring false
The issue started at a rally in Alabama on Saturday night, as Trump called for surveillance of mosques in the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks -- which terrorist group the Islamic State, or ISIS, took credit for carrying out. Then, the real estate mogul began discussing the 9/11 attacks.
"I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down," Trump said. "Thousands of people were cheering. So something's going on. We've got to find out what it is."
In an interview on ABC's "This Week" the following morning, Trump stood by his story, saying he watched the scene unfold on television.
"I know they don't like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time," he said. "There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it -- a heavy Arab population that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good."
MORE: Post-9/11, we found no evidence N.J. Muslims celebrated terror attacks
Images of Muslims celebrating in areas of the Middle East were broadcast on TV at the time. But an examination of news accounts finds no evidence or confirmed reports of mass cheering in Jersey City.
And despite widespread rumors of celebrations by Muslims in Newark and Paterson, The Star-Ledger reported that police and local leaders denied they ever happened.
NJ.com readers have suggested that video was broadcast at the time showing people celebrating in Paterson, the city with the second-largest Muslim population in the U.S. But such a clip has never been authenticated.
Some have also suggested that they saw some people cheering in either Jersey City or Paterson on the day of the attacks. But again, that does not match the "thousands" that Trump said he saw.
MULSHINE: Attacks on Donald Trump over 9/11: There was a video, but not from New Jersey
Shai Goldstein, the former New Jersey regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said it's possible that Trump and others are confusing alleged cheering in New Jersey with celebrations that occurred in the West Bank on 9/11.
"Nothing happened in Jersey City nor Paterson," Goldstein told NJ Advance Media. "No one knew when the Twin Towers fell who was responsible and investigations by the ADL concluded there were no celebrations of any kind -- none -- in Paterson or any where else in New Jersey."
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- a Democratic presidential candidate -- said during an interview Monday on CNN that he is concerned about "the growth of Islamophobia in this country -- the desire to win votes by scapegoating a group of people, which is not what America is supposed to be about."
"So I think once again, Mr. Trump is missing the boat," Sanders added.
New Jersey is home to the second-largest Muslim population in the U.S., after Michigan. About 2 percent of the state's nearly 9 million residents identified as being Muslim in 2010, according to data compiled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. The figures show for every 100,000 people in New Jersey, there are 1,827 Muslims.
Donald Trump's most outrageous quotes 16 Gallery: Donald Trump's most outrageous quotes
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.So, these new features will give you even more options to customize the way you control Samus. Morphing with just a button can give you a lot more versatility, specially when using analog sticks. For those with analog controls, Samus can walk if you push the stick halfway towards a direction.And the coolest, and potentially most useful, Aim Lock. Holding the Aim Lock button will force Samus to aim in a specific direction, and walk instead of run. This makes some of the harder Metroid fights more interesting, since you can now strafe and position your shots better.These features have been in development for quite a while. Now that they're working properly and bug-free, they are officially a part of the engine. You'll be able to try these out on the upcoming demo.And last but not least, Decayed, an awesome AM2R fan, donated a Game Maker Ubuntu Export Module license. This means that, whenever the project is migrated to Studio, a Linux port will be very likely to be developed.My gratitude to this great person, he's starting his own project, so make sure you visit his webpage every once in a while.As always, your thoughts, comments and suggestions are welcome.Clashes have broken out between police and asylum seekers at Idomeni refugee camp in Greece, where over 11,000 people have been stranded since Balkan countries shut down their borders in late February.
Video footage from Ruptly shows police in riot gear lined up at the camp, with one officer pushing a refugee who angrily shouts at the policeman.
Crowds of refugees can also be seen making their way towards a police line, eventually shoving the officers, who push back with their riot shields and batons.
An estimated 11,500 people have been stranded at the camp after Balkan states closed their borders, cutting off the main refugee route to the European Union.
Camp residents are living in squalid conditions as they await their fate. The camp has been described as a “modern Dachau” by Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis.
On Sunday, residents were given false hope that the Greek border with Macedonia would be opened.
The optimism appeared to have been triggered by rumors that journalists and Red Cross officials would help refugees force their way across the fence into Macedonia, a Syrian refugee told Athens News Agency (ANA).
Read more
The news led to around 300 people gathering by the railway tracks and border fence in a largely peaceful demonstration observed by Greek police in riot gear, AFP reported.
However, their hopes of leaving the camp were dashed when Greek officials announced on loudspeakers that the crossing would remain closed.
The Balkan countries' border closures have created a build-up of around 50,000 migrants and refugees in Greece.
The European Union reached a deal with Turkey earlier this month, which will see all illegal migrants reaching Greece from Turkey being sent back. In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey.
It comes as Europe continues to face the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, with over a million migrants arriving on the continent last year. Most refugees come from Syria, where a civil war has killed 250,000 people and displaced more than 12 million since 2011, according to UN figures.— A man with a record of more than two dozen arrests related to the transit system was arrested again Wednesday – this time on allegations that he stole a Greyhound bus.
As CBS2’s Jessica Schneider reported, Darius McCollum, 50, was arrested in Park Slope, Brooklyn Wednesday.
Police sources said McCollum has already planned his next heist when he was arrested Wednesday. McCollum told detectives he planned to steal an airplane next, sources said.
The Greyhound bus McCollum allegedly stole had arrived from Philadelphia at the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 11 a.m. Wednesday, police told CBS2. It was slated to leave the terminal for Richmond, Virginia at 2:15 p.m.
At 1:30 p.m., Greyhound realized the bus was missing, police said. Ten minutes later, they called their transportation command headquarters Texas, which was able to detect the bus through an onboard GPS, police said.
The GPS tracker found that the bus was on the road in Brooklyn, police said. Greyhound called the NYPD Communications section, which issued an alert to the 78th Precinct where the bus was detected, police said.
“Because all of our coaches are equipped with GPS tracking mechanisms, the bus was recovered quickly,” said Greyhound spokeswoman Ashley Sears.
Officers from the 78th Precinct Anti-Crime team found and pulled over the bus at Third Avenue and Union Street around 4 p.m., police said.
McCollum was behind the wheel, and there were no passengers on the bus, police said.
McCollum was charged with grand larceny, possession of a forged instrument, criminal impersonation of a police officer, unauthorized use of a vehicle, and criminal possession of stolen property.
He has 25 prior arrests related to the transit system.
In 2013, McCollum pleaded guilty to stealing a Trailways bus from a depot in Hoboken three years earlier. He had been arrested behind the wheel in 2010 on the highway that leads to John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was sentenced to 2 1/2 to 5 years in prison.
McCollum was ordered as part of his 2013 plea deal to voluntarily enter a program to undergo cognitive behavioral therapy. He was diagnosed with what was until recently called Asperger’s syndrome but is now referred to as an autism spectrum disorder, and officials said his repeated arrests stem in part from it.
McCollum had the subway map memorized by the time he was 8, and tried unsuccessfully to get a job with the transit system. Instead he became a transit impostor and has been arrested 29 times. But he is not a violent criminal – he just drives the routes, fixes tracks and takes tolls without an official job until he’s caught by police.
McCollum has become a celebrity for escapades that began at age 15, when he piloted an E train six stops from 34th Street to the World Trade Center without any passengers noticing. He grew up in Queens near a station serving two Metropolitan Transportation Authority lines, and learned the mechanics of the transit system from workers who took an interest in him.
He was arrested for trespassing into a subway control tower in 2000.
In 2004, he attempted to commandeer a Long Island Rail Road train — leading to a jail sentence two years later.
Part of the problem is McCollum wasn’t diagnosed with the disorder until recently. He was first handed literature on the topic about 12 years ago during a Manhattan case, but the judge at the time refused to order a psychiatric evaluation after she said she looked the disorder up online and decided he didn’t have it.
A treatment program had never previously been proposed as a solution to his crimes.
Following his 2013 plea, prosecutors, the judge and his attorney were all hopeful he would be able to stay out of trouble. McCollum said at the time that he would not let them down. At the time, he was staying with friends in Queens, and working with filmmakers making a documentary about his life.
(TM and © Copyright 2015 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2015 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)Description
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Inyou are dropped into a virtual world with the ability to perform a variety of actions You can socialize, play games, fight, listen to music, shop, or just hang out. You can also create objects and scripts in-game using the built-in script editor, which uses Linden Lab's own Linden Scripting Language (LSL For short) to allow you to essentially let you make whatever you want, provided you remain within the rules given.The game also has a solid avatar system, in which you can attach any object you create (or'rez', which here means to generate, if you already have it in your inventory) to an appendage of your body. This feature can be used in creative ways, producing avatars such as robots, zombies, even furries (anthropomorphic animals).The object building system is very simple, similar to a 3D modeling program, in which the 'player' uses primitive objects, or prims (such as squares, circles, or triangles, for example), to piece together an object. With LSL, this could be anything, from something as simple as a physics-enabled beach ball, to a drivable robot.There is a ratings system enforced at all times, with two ratings: PG and Mature. PG could be anything from G through PG-13 as far as content is concerned, and mature simulators (or sims, the places that the areas of the game are divided into), can have anything R rated and up. The teen version naturally only has PG rated sims so concerned parents need not worry. It is considered an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) and thus is internet-only, although some things such as sound production and creating animations must be made separate from the Second Life application itself.There are various groups in the game. Anyone with 100 Lindens (in-game currency) can start up a group, and anyone can join one. The leader of a group (and the group's council if it has one) can decide to hide it from public view or only allow certain people to join by way of invitation. A group member or council member has a title above their username (for example, in the Junkyard Furrys group, a member has Furry-4-Life above his or her name) that classifies them as such.There is an in-game economy, and real cash can be exchanged for in-world cash, and vice versa. You can buy or rent a piece of land, much like in real life, with increasing prices, relevant to the amount of land you're purchasing or renting.One needs a premium account (starts at $10 per month) to own land, but a premium account comes with a complementary 512 m² of land. Additional land, as well as other account-related options, are changeable on the official website.It is possible to sell items you create in-game in a shop, either rented or purchased, so theoretically, if someone's in-game business was successful enough, he or she could sell all their in-game cash and live off of the resulting cash in real life.Payment is accepted with a credit card, but when selling money you can either have the real life money charged to your PayPal account or have a check sent to you.
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In October 2006, the international press agency Reuters opened an in-game agency in Second Life. The reporter Adam Reuters ( Adam Pasick ) provides press coverage about in-game events, the currency, and other subjects, from inside the game. The website can be found in the related links section.This article is over 3 years old
California accepts historic offer by farmers to cut water usage by 25% Read more
An inflatable dam in drought-stricken California was damaged on Thursday, causing the loss of nearly 50,000,000 gallons (190m litres) of water.
Police said vandals caused “irreversible damage” to the inflatable dam in Fremont, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. The vandalism caused water meant for local residents to instead flow into San Francisco bay.
The Alameda County water district said the lost water could have supplied 500 homes for an entire year.
“This is a very significant loss of water under any circumstances, and more so in the drought conditions we are experiencing,” said ACWD’s general manager, Robert Shaver. “It is an utterly senseless, destructive, and wasteful thing to do.”
Police said that the vandals entered a restricted area on Thursday and intentionally damaged the dam. By Saturday, no one had been arrested in connection with the incident.
The water agency said it would cost $3m to replace the dam, but said it did not expect that the damage would have a long-term impact on the water supply for Fremont, Newark and Union City.
Once officials were alerted to the damage, water workers were able to divert water from other sources to stop any further loss.
California’s state water board announced on Friday that it had accepted a deal from farmers to cut back their water use as the state endures its fourth year of drought. The deal came as the board warned it would employ mandatory cuts if the two parties could not reach an agreement.A quadcopter drone that weighs less than two pounds and can travel nearly 180 miles an hour has just broken a world record.
The new DRL RacerX from the Drone Racing League set the Guinness World Record for the fastest ground speed by a battery-powered remote-controlled quadcopter, the league said Friday. The official record-breaking speed was recorded as 163.5 miles per hour.
Guinness World Records measures drone speeds by having the aircraft fly back and forth along a 100 meter course. The average top speed achieved is used for the record measurement.
The Drone Racing League says earlier prototypes actually “burst into flames when hitting its highest point of acceleration” due to the amount of power used.
“We’re thrilled to put our proprietary technology to the test, as we’re all about speed and pushing the limits of drone design here at DRL,” Drone Racing League CEO and founder Nicholas Horbaczewski said in a release. “The record-setting Racer X represents the culmination of years of technological innovation by our team of world class engineers, and we’re very excited to unveil the fastest racing drone on earth.”
People will be able to see more high-speed drones in action during the 2017 DRL Allianz World Championship finale on ESPN on July 28 at 9 p.m.Goldilocks diplomacy.
Pence likewise grappled with Trump’s mass deportation plan, his proposed Muslim ban, and his nuclear proliferation advocacy by simply denying they exist. His lying was likely an act of self-preservation, but in an axiomatic sense it was also disrespectful. Trump tops the ticket, he sets the agenda, and Pence isn’t supposed to have unilateral authority to rewrite the playbook or speak before Trump has spoken. Even if Pence was simply trying to make it through the debate without self-destructing, he still took liberties Trump can’t be seen to tolerate.
We can be sure that Clinton won’t be generous in her interpretation of Pence’s performance, too. She will emphasize the extent to which Pence overrode Trump, or at least the extent to which Pence’s performance is evidence of complete dysfunction within Trump’s campaign. At some point, whether on the debate stage or in a future rally, Trump will respond by reaffirming his positions, and by implication his dominance.
And this is what Republicans who think they can quietly turn the page on Trump after the fall campaign are missing.
Trump’s narcissism stands in the way of everything Republicans stake their hopes on. He can’t soften or polish his performance because to study and stick to script is to implicitly acknowledge imperfection. Trump claims credit for Pence’s debate performance because to commend and imitate him would be to admit inferiority. He certainly can’t let Pence outmode him on the ticket, and for the same reason he won’t allow other Republicans to imitate Pence—to unctuously fall back on tired right-wing shibboleths as if Trump’s candidacy had just been a bad dream—when their time comes.
Not only did Trump leave an indelible mark on their party, he co-opted its base, which is now primarily loyal to him, not to the GOP as an institution. He also has an immense social media following and writes his own ticket on cable and broadcast news. That’s why Republicans have had to treat him gingerly through all his ugliness, and why they will have to continue to do so after the election. Even if Trump ultimately decides not to launch his own media empire in 2017, he will be able to reach his supporters and, at his discretion, turn them against the GOP. He will punish Republicans if they abandon his anti-immigrant, anti-trade agenda, and there will be hell to pay if they humiliate him personally in the public square or try to write him out of existence.
Republicans are thinking wishfully if they believe this campaign is coming to a merciful end. It will shock them how much Trump happened.It has been revealed that due to overwhelming customer demand by collectors, Funko will debut a new collectible series consisting of POP boxes and exclusive stickers sheets. While the line will still be called “Pop!” the vinyl figures that once brought the line to prominence will no longer be produced. Full story below.
“We’ll begin to start phasing out the vinyl figures that came with the boxes,” said no one at Funko. “Collectors’ tastes have changed in the last couple of years and they are not as interested in the figures as much as they are the pristine condition of the boxes and the stickers on them.”The boxes will be shipped in a plastic protector inside their own protective box to preserve the resaleability, an important factor for most new POP collectors. Funko will also guarantee that no human hands will come in contact with the thin cardboard boxes. “I deal only in current high-end Hot Topic exclusives,” said a Facebook group seller. “I’m glad this is happening. My business is selling these exclusives for 3 or 4 times what anyone can buy them for in the store, so the demand is there for anything with a sticker on it. I’ll be putting these out for sale just as soon as Hot Topic gets them on the store floor. Hell, I might try posting while I’m still there!”
"Nothing makes me happier than the stickers! I plan to put stickers on all of my Funkos, exclusive or not." said one fan. "It's about time Funko listened to collectors. I have spent $2000 on Funkos in the last six months, I think I have a right to say in how the company is run."
Boxes will have a retail price of $19.99 each while exclusive stickers sheets are guessed to be retailing at $9.99 each.
--April Fo-Ol'sdayIf you’ve been following along with DockerCon2016, you probably heard the huge announcement regarding Docker security: they have integrated automated setup and management of Swarm nodes configured with TLS. In summary, they are giving each node a cryptographic identity and protecting communication channels with certificate based authentication and transport encryption. Well guess what? We have some exciting news as well!
A couple of months ago, we disclosed an industry first: support for iSCSI over TLS. In a previous post, we demonstrated that iSCSI/TLS has superior performance when compared to IPsec using functionally equivalent ciphers (3.8x bandwidth!!!). Today, we’re announcing one of the missing pieces to the Docker security puzzle: end-to-end encryption for storage.
In our latest release, you get fully automated end-to-end encryption with perfect forward secrecy (PFS) for persistent volumes. iSCSI/TLS is firewall friendly, blazingly fast and no fuss. Even better, it’s just a single command line option with Docker. Check out the video for a demo and stayed tuned for more exciting security related news to come!121
My family really liked these cookies. They are delicious and unique. They remind me a little of butter toffee. Real butter makes all the difference! To give the flavor even more depth, I sligh...
Didn't love em, didn't hate |
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Luckily, Scott Gimple came on board as the new showrunner and turned Carol from a meek Midwestern mom to the shockingly remorseless killing machine we know and love today.
RIP, T-Dog. Your sacrifice was not in vain!
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[Games Radar]
Contact the author at rob@io9.com.As an indie that hopefully will be making games/tools for years to come, I certainly want to spread realistic information about the revenue that can be generated as an independent developer. There is a decent amount of information that can be found on the web for being featured in the daily sales on the Unity Asset Store, but I couldn’t find any on what being featured in the monthly Level 11 program can do.
This past month (October 2015), one of my assets Easy Wifi Controller got to be a part of that program so I figured I’d share my experience with being involved in it. You’re all here for the data so I’ll get right into the first piece of information below which is the sessions for a 2 month period, September (normal month) and October (month being featured).
Sessions:Image copyright AFP/Reuters Image caption Estimates suggest the vote could be extremely close
Brazil's lower house of Congress is voting on whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff over charges of manipulating government accounts for political gains - a claim she denies.
The "yes" camp is leading by a wide margin, as the vote reaches its final stage. To succeed, the motion needs a two-thirds majority - or 342 votes.
Ms Rousseff accuses her opponents of mounting a "coup".
Some 25,000 rival protesters are rallying outside Congress.
The lengthy session in the capital Brasilia has heard speeches from both sides.
With 400 of the 513 votes cast, 297 voted to impeach Ms Rousseff, 97 were against, four abstained and two were absent.
If the motion is approved by two-thirds it will be sent to the upper house, the Senate, which will consider the allegations of unlawful activity against her.
If the Senate finds Ms Rousseff guilty, she can be removed from office permanently. She has two opportunities to appeal during the whole process.
Impeachment vote: Live updates
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ms Rousseff accuses her opponents of mounting a "coup"
The result of the lower house vote may not be known for a while, as each member of the lower house is being given the opportunity to explain the decision they have made - as their vote is flashed up on screen.
Voting began after passionate statements from lawmakers and party leaders in a session that was disrupted as it got under way, and is being broadcast live on television as well as on large screens in city centres.
Defending Ms Rousseff, Afonso Florence, of her governing Workers' Party, urged lawmakers to have a "democratic conscience", and attacked her opponents who are facing their own charges of corruption.
Pro-impeachment lawmaker, Antonio Imbassahy of the PSDB party, told his colleagues to "choose the country that we want from now on", and said Brazil needed "moral reconstruction."
Read more on Brazil's political crisis:
Hundreds of thousands of protesters have gathered in cities across the country - Ms Rousseff's supporters wearing red and her opponents wearing the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag.
Some 25,000 protesters from both sides have gathered outside the Congress building in Brasilia - separated by a 2m (6.5ft) high wall, that stretches for 1km (0.6 miles).
Reports say the atmosphere has so far been peaceful; almost festive with music, fancy dress and people blowing trumpets and vuvuzuelas.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Protesters for and against the motion have gathered in Brasilia: This man's sign reads "Bye darling"
Image copyright AP Image caption Her supporters see the impeachment bid as an attack on democracy
Brazil's three main newspapers predict a narrow vote in favour of impeaching Ms Rousseff.
The 68-year-old president has vigorously denied any wrongdoing, and on Saturday wrote in one newspaper her opponents "want to convict an innocent woman and save the corrupt".
The BBC's Wyre Davis in Brazil says Ms Rousseff is an unpopular leader in a country facing a severe economic crisis.
She is accused of juggling the accounts to make her government's economic performance appear better than it was, ahead of her election campaign two years ago - charges she vigorously denies.
Image copyright EPA Image caption A metal barrier has been erected to prevent clashes between Rousseff supporters and opponents
But her supporters say many of the lawmakers who are sitting in judgement have been accused of far more serious crimes.
If she is impeached, Vice-President Michel Temer would take over as interim president, but he is also facing impeachment proceedings over the same allegations as Ms Rousseff.
Ms Rousseff accused him this week of being one of the ringleaders of the "coup" attempt against her.
She has also indicated lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha - who would be second in line to replace her - is among those trying to oust her. He is being investigated over allegations of taking multi-million-dollar bribes.
Next in line to replace her is Renan Calheiros, head of the Senate. But he, too, is under investigation in connection with a massive corruption scandal at state-oil company Petrobras.
All three are from the PMDB - the largest party in the coalition, which abandoned Ms Rousseff in recent weeks to support the impeachment. They deny the allegations against them.
Rousseff under pressure The Brazilian president faces a battle to stay in power 513 members of the lower house of Congress
342 votes needed to move process to the Senate
41 senators out of 81 must vote in favour to begin impeachment trial
180 days she could be suspended for during the hearings Reuters
What happens next?
Lower house vote: An impeachment vote is due in the lower house on Sunday. A two-thirds majority is required for it to go forward to the Senate.
Senate vote on trial: If Ms Rousseff case is sent to the Senate, a simple majority is enough to suspend her for up to 180 days while she is put on trial. Vice-President Michel Temer would step in during this period.
Impeachment vote: For Ms Rousseff to be removed from office permanently, two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote in favour. Mr Temer would remain president for an interim period should this happen.Gore-Tex is a waterproof, breathable fabric membrane and registered trademark of W. L. Gore and Associates. Invented in 1969, Gore-Tex can repel liquid water while allowing water vapor to pass through and is designed to be a lightweight, waterproof fabric for all-weather use. It is composed of stretched polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is more commonly known by the generic trademark Teflon.
History [ edit ]
Gore-Tex was co-invented by Wilbert L. Gore and Gore's son, Robert W. Gore.[1] In 1969, Bob Gore stretched heated rods of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and created expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE). His discovery of the right conditions for stretching PTFE was a happy accident, born partly of frustration. Instead of slowly stretching the heated material, he applied a sudden, accelerating yank. The solid PTFE unexpectedly stretched about 800%, forming a microporous structure that was about 70% air.[1] It was introduced to the public under the trademark Gore-Tex.[2]
Gore promptly applied for and obtained the following patents:
Another form of stretched PTFE tape was produced prior to Gore-Tex in 1966, by John W. Cropper of New Zealand. Cropper had developed and constructed a machine for this use. However, Cropper chose to keep the process of creating expanded PTFE as a closely held trade secret and as such, it had remained unpublished.[3][4]
In the 1970s Garlock, Inc. allegedly infringed Gore's patents by using Cropper's machine and was sued by Gore in the Federal District Court of Ohio. The District Court held Gore's product and process patents to be invalid after a "bitterly contested case" that "involved over two years of discovery, five weeks of trial, the testimony of 35 witnesses (19 live, 16 by deposition), and over 300 exhibits" (quoting the Federal Circuit). On appeal, however, the Federal Circuit disagreed in the famous case of Gore v. Garlock, reversing the lower court's decision on the ground, as well as others, that Cropper forfeited any superior claim to the invention by virtue of having concealed the process for making ePTFE from the public. As a public patent had not been filed, the new form of the material could not be legally recognised. Gore was thereby established as the legal inventor of ePTFE.[3][5]
Following the Gore v. Garlock decision, Gore sued Bard, Inc. for allegedly infringing its patent by making ePTFE vascular grafts. Bard promptly settled and agreed to exit the market. Gore next sued IMPRA, Inc., a smaller maker of ePTFE vascular grafts, in the federal district court in Arizona. IMPRA had a competing patent application for the ePTFE vascular graft. In a nearly decade-long patent/antitrust battle (1984-1993), IMPRA proved that Gore-Tex was identical to prior art disclosed in a Japanese process patent by duplicating the prior art process and through statistical analysis, and also proved that Gore had withheld the best mode for using its patent, and the main claim of Gore's product patent was declared invalid in 1990. (See W.L. Gore & Assoc., Inc. v. IMPRA, Inc., 975 F.2d 858 (Fed Cir 1992))[citation needed]. In 1996, IMPRA was purchased by Bard and Bard was thereby able to reenter the market. After IMPRA's vascular graft patent issued, Bard sued Gore for infringing it. Gore-Tex is used in products manufactured by Patagonia, L.L. Bean, Oakley, Inc., Galvin Green, Marmot, Vasque, Outdoor Research, Arc'teryx, Haglöfs and The North Face among others.
Other products have come to market exploiting similar technologies following the expiry of the main Gore-Tex patent.[6]
For his invention, Robert W. Gore was inducted into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.[7]
In 2015, Gore was ordered by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to pay Bard $1 billion in damages.[8] The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the Federal Circuit's decision.[9][10]
Manufacture [ edit ]
PTFE is made using an emulsion polymerization process that utilizes the fluorosurfactant PFOA,[11][12] a persistent environmental contaminant. In 2013, Gore eliminated the use of PFOAs in the manufacture of its weatherproof functional fabrics.[13]
Gore-Tex fabric for outdoor clothing Schematic of a compositefabric for outdoor clothing
Design [ edit ]
Gore-Tex materials are typically based on thermo-mechanically expanded PTFE and other fluoropolymer products. They are used in a wide variety of applications such as high-performance fabrics, medical implants, filter media, insulation for wires and cables, gaskets, and sealants. However, Gore-Tex fabric is best known for its use in protective, yet breathable, rainwear.
Waterproof running shoes made with Gore-Tex, offered by different manufacturers, exhibited to running club meeting at local shoe store
The simplest sort of rain wear is a two layer sandwich. The outer layer is typically nylon or polyester and provides strength. The inner one is polyurethane (abbreviated: PU), and provides water resistance, at the cost of breathability.
Early Gore-Tex fabric replaced the inner layer of PU with a thin, porous fluoropolymer membrane (Teflon) coating that is bonded to a fabric. This membrane had about 9 billion pores per square inch (around 1.4 billion pores per square centimeter). Each pore is approximately 1/20,000 the size of a water droplet, making it impenetrable to liquid water while still allowing the more volatile water vapour molecules to pass through.
Gore-Tex jacket ( Effect of water repellent on a shell layerjacket ( Haglöfs Heli II)
The outer layer of Gore-Tex fabric is coated on the outside with a Durable Water Repellent (DWR) treatment. The DWR prevents the main outer layer from becoming wet, which would reduce the breathability of the whole fabric. However, the DWR is not responsible for the jacket being waterproof - this is a common misconception. Without the DWR, the outer layer would become soaked, there would be no breathability, and the wearer's sweat being produced on the inside would fail to evaporate, leading to dampness there. This might give the appearance that the fabric is leaking when in fact it is not. Wear and cleaning will reduce the performance of Gore-Tex fabric by wearing away this Durable Water Repellent (DWR) treatment. The DWR can be reinvigorated by tumble drying the garment or ironing on a low setting.[14]
Gore requires that all garments made from their material have taping over the seams, to eliminate leaks. Gore's sister product, Windstopper, is similar to Gore-Tex in being windproof and breathable and it can stretch but it is not waterproof. The Gore naming system does not imply specific technology or material but instead specific set of performance characteristics.[15]
Other uses [ edit ]
Gore-Tex membrane under an electron microscope
Gore-Tex is also used internally in medical applications, because it is nearly inert inside the body. In addition, the porosity of Gore-Tex permits the body's own tissue to grow through the material, integrating grafted material into the circulation system.[16] Gore-Tex is used in a wide variety of medical applications, including sutures, vascular grafts, heart patches, and synthetic knee ligaments, which have saved thousands of lives.[17] In the form of expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (E-PTFE), Gore-Tex has recently been used as membrane implants for glaucoma surgery.[18]
Gore-Tex has been used for many years in the conservation of illuminated manuscripts.[19]
Explosive sensors have been printed on Gore-Tex clothing leading to the sensitive voltametric detection of nitroaromatic compounds.[20]
Gore-Tex is also used as a membrane in sealed battery products, to allow pressure relief from outgassing, but preventing ingress of moisture.
The "Gore-Tex" brand name was formerly used for industrial and medical products.[21][22]
See also [ edit ]Share. The actor-director duo’s third film in the franchise will supplant the previously planned Jeremy Renner sequel. The actor-director duo’s third film in the franchise will supplant the previously planned Jeremy Renner sequel.
Jason Bourne is back! Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass, who teamed for the second and third Bourne films (The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum), are in the process of cutting deals with Universal Pictures to return for a third film together in the series.
Deadline has the report, which confirms Latino Review’s scoop from months ago that Damon would return to the titular character. Damon had always said he would not return without Greengrass, while the director had made it clear that he felt he had nowhere else to go with the character. Now, apparently, he feels differently.
Exit Theatre Mode
Interestingly, Universal already had a Bourne film planned for a July 16, 2016, release, though that was to have been the Jeremy Renner-starring sequel to the spin-off picture The Bourne Legacy. But now the plan reportedly is to go into production first on the Damon/Greengrass film for the 2016 date and then follow up with the Renner sequel, which is to be directed by Fast & Furious franchise stalwart Justin Lin. This will enable Lin to focus on Season 2 of HBO’s True Detective, which he is in talks for.
It also gives Universal that most coveted of movie prizes these days: a shared universe of interconnected yet separate franchises -- the Damon Bourne and the Renner Bourne. How long until we get The Bourne Avengers?
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottIGN, on IGN at scottcollura and on Facebook.In an amazing untold story reflecting President Obama's doubletalk on immigration, during Tuesday's town hall-style debate with Mitt Romney he claimed responsibility for putting more Border Patrol agents on our border than ever before. What he did not say is that come January 2, 2013, the president's failure of leadership could result in 3,400 Border Patrol agents losing their jobs. Also on the chopping block are 3,400 Customs and Border Protection inspectors, 932 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents, and 802 ICE deportation and removal officers.
We now learn that budget sequestration — which will slash the federal budget by 9.4 percent in 2013 for discretionary defense appropriations and by 8.2 percent in 2013 for discretionary nondefense appropriations — is actually worse than thought. A law passed 14 months ago required another 1.9 percent reduction in 2013 if the Congressional Super Committee failed to come to agreement on a budget, which is exactly what happened.
Why didn't we know just how bad the cuts would be? Apparently when the Obama administration submitted its report to Congress, it was not required by the Sequestration Transparency Act to add in the extra 1.9 percent. Who knows why. And Congress did not bother to figure out either, until it became clear that Congress and the President had failed to come to any agreement.
So what does the 1.9 percent mean? The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently told Congress the amount now will be $60.6 billion rather than the already debilitating $50 billion cuts previously expected. OMB reported exactly where the cuts would be and Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, quickly made its key aspects public in a pleading "dear colleague" letter to fellow members of Congress, asking for cooperation to solve the pending budget disaster.
While the White House is reported to be asking other Democrats and those affected in the defense sector to stay "mum" regarding the cuts until after the election, the fact is that keeping quiet likely will not induce the president to divert from campaigning to force a budget compromise on Congress and further economic collapse on Americans.
To make an obvious point even more obvious, sequestration will enhance and underscore Obama's open border policies. Border agents are already operating in the wake of failed southwest border security policies that have left both civilians and U.S. immigration agents dead on both sides of the border and placed hundreds of guns in drug lords' hands in and out of the United States. President Obama failed to acknowledge either issue in Tuesday's debate with Mitt Romney.
Rep. Dicks' letter presents alarming concerns. Below are the key excerpts from the 15-page letter explaining current sequestration requirements and what they mean for immigration and border security. Note that only border agents dealing with enforcement are cut; no U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) personnel are included because the agency is almost entirely funded by fees paid by immigrants, businesses, etc. USCIS is responsible for implementing President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) administrative amnesty and is necessary to process applications from those illegal aliens seeking to take advantage of the program.
October 9, 2012
Dear Colleague:
My purpose here is to illustrate the consequences of an automatic, across-the-board, uniform percentage reduction prescribed by the Budget Control Act (BCA). This letter will examine the impact of sequestration on the whole range of Federal responsibilities and, I hope, help make the case for Congress to act responsibly by agreeing to a more sensible approach to deficit reduction.
First, let us remember the purpose of sequestration. In an effort to reduce the deficit by $2.4 trillion, the BCA captured the initial $1.2 trillion in cuts almost entirely by capping discretionary appropriations over the ten years from FY 2012 to FY 2021. To get the second installment of $1.2 trillion, Congress established the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. Concerned, however, that the Congressional Super Committee might require additional motivation to agree on a balanced deficit reduction plan, Republicans and Democrats agreed to sequestration. Sequestration is not so much a back-up plan as an inducement for all sides to reach a compromise. Clearly, any thoughtful, deliberate agreement will be an improvement over the mechanical and indiscriminate nature of sequestration cuts. So the BCA provided plenty of time, more than one full year between the due date for the Joint Committee to propose its recommendations and the imposition of sequestration, to enable Congress and the President to try again.
To be clear: If sequestration takes effect, it is only because it failed to motivate Congressional action as intended. The across-the-board cuts take effect only because the Joint Select Committee failed, and only if, in the ensuing year, Congress and the President fail to reach agreement on a more sensible deficit reduction plan. [emphasis added]
The Sequestration Transparency Act (STA) directed OMB to report on how the Administration interprets the law related to implementing sequestration. On September 14, OMB submitted its report estimating percentage cuts for defense and nondefense appropriations based on assumptions set in the STA:
A reduction of 9.4 percent in 2013 for discretionary defense (function 050) appropriations for each non-exempt item
A reduction of 8.2 percent in 2013 on discretionary nondefense appropriations
OMB, in accordance with the STA, looked at only one aspect of sequestration. As another motivation to act, the BCA also set up a second, separate sequestration to enforce the firewall between security and non-security appropriations. Because the Joint Committee failed, a new and lower defense firewall goes into effect, requiring an additional cut in defense spending. Based on levels in the agreed upon continuing resolution for FY 2013, we estimate:
An additional reduction of 1.9 percent in 2013 only for discretionary defense (function 050) accounts
...
If Congress fails to replace sequestration with a responsible, long-term deficit reduction plan, Moody's has warned they will downgrade America's credit rating and the Congressional Budget Office notes they will overturn their forecast of steady growth for 2013, predicting another recession with a 9.1 percent unemployment rate. CRS estimates that sequestration alone would result in 1.4 million jobs lost in the same year.
...
Homeland Security
Required reductions of budgetary resources for the Department of Homeland Security will roll back significant progress in securing our Nation's borders, increase wait times at our Nation's land ports of entry and airports, impact aviation and maritime safety and security, leave critical infrastructure vulnerable to attacks, hamper disaster response time, and eliminate cyber security infrastructure that has been developed in recent years.
Since the sequester would not be ordered under the BCA until January, federal agencies including the Department of Homeland Security would be forced to compensate for the first quarter of spending with even greater budget cuts through the rest of the year.
Over 24,500 jobs could be lost to achieve reduced funding levels including:
3,400 Border Patrol agents — a reduction in Border Patrol agents to below FY 2009 levels, from an anticipated 21,370 agents to 17,970; a cut of this magnitude would significantly impact progress along the Southwest Border. DHS would not be able to maintain the minimum number of 21,370 agents set by P.L. 112-74.
3,400 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers — a reduction in CBP Officers to below FY 2007 on-board levels, from an anticipated 21,775 Officers to 18,375; this reduction will significantly increase wait times at our Nation's land ports of entry.
...
932 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agents – a decrease of this magnitude would significantly impact efforts to investigate crimes involving counter-proliferation, terrorism, and transnational threats.
802 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operation positions – These cuts to on-board levels will significantly roll back progress that has resulted in record-high removals of illegal criminal aliens this past year.
...
In order to sustain frontline operations in recent years while facing declining budgets, DHS has already taken significant reductions to administrative and mission support functions over the past several years. Over $3 billion in cost avoidances and savings have been achieved to date, which leaves little else to cut without directly impacting frontline operations.
Where possible, DHS and its Components would attempt to avoid cutting frontline positions. However, as stated by OMB in its report to Congress, "No amount of planning can mitigate the effect of these cuts."Walmart is rolling out a new technology in its stores that enables shoppers to scan and pay for their items without checkout lanes, registers, or cashiers.
Here's how it works: shoppers download Walmart's "Scan & Go" app, then scan the barcodes of the items they wish to purchase.
STOCK PRICE FOR WMT Full price information
Once they are finished shopping, they click a button to pay for their goods and show their digital receipt to a store greeter on their way out the door.
Amazon revealed plans in December to introduce a similar technology to its own brick-and-mortar grocery concept, called Amazon Go, which is still in the planning phases.
But Walmart is leaping ahead of Amazon and already rolling it out to more than a dozen stores in Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky.
For shoppers without smartphones, the retailer provides hand-held scanners. The stores also have options for customers who don't want to link up a credit card to their Scan & Go accounts.
Those customers can simply click "finish" on the app, then report to a self-checkout register where they will scan a barcode for their total purchase and pay for their goods.
Shoppers in Waxahachie, Texas are among the first to use the new technology.
"It makes shopping easier because you can actually see what your total is before getting up to the register," Mattie Shepherd told The Waxahachie Daily Light. "You can scan, and it'll show your purchases of everything and then what your total is, so you can keep track of what you're spending and I think that's cool."
"It's kind of like 'The Jetsons," another patron told the Daily Light.
This is Walmart's second attempt at Scan & Go technology.
Walmart first launched the technology in stores three years ago, but it never caught on.
RELATED: 14 items people keep coming back to Walmart to buy
14 PHOTOS 14 items people keep coming back to Walmart to buy See Gallery 14 items people keep coming back to Walmart to buy MOST REORDERED BABY WIPES: PARENT'S CHOICE FRAGRANCE FREE BABY WIPES MOST REORDERED COOKIE: OREO CHOCOLATE SANDWICH COOKIE (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) MOST REORDERED CEREAL: HONEY NUT CHEERIOS (Photo by Richard Levine/Corbis via Getty Images) MOST REORDERED CANDY: HERSHEY'S MILK CHOCOLATE BAR REUTERS/Mike Blake MOST REORDERED BEVERAGE: WATER MOST REORDERED CRACKER: NABISCO RITZ CRACKERS (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) MOST REORDERED CHIP: TOSTITOS CORN CHIP SCOOPS (Photo by James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images) MOST REORDERED CONDIMENT: FRENCH'S CLASSIC YELLOW MUSTARD (Photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images) MOST REORDERED CANNED SOUP: CAMPBELL'S CREAM OF MUSHROOM REUTERS/Brendan McDermid MOST REORDERED SPREAD: JIF CREAMY PEANUT BUTTER (Bill Hogan/Chicago Tribune/MCT via Getty Images) MOST REORDERED DIAPERS: PAMPERS REUTERS/Rick Wilking MOST REORDERED HAIRCARE: TRESEMME MOISTURE RICH SHAMPOO AND CONDITIONER Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images MOST REORDERED SKINCARE: JERGENS ULTRA HEALING EXTRA DRY SKIN MOISTURIZER Facebook/Jergens MOST REORDERED CLEANING PRODUCT: DAWN ULTRA DISHWASHING LIQUID ORIGINAL SCENT (Photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
NOW WATCH: Walmart built a giant vending machine for groceries
See Also:
SEE ALSO: Walmart is building giant towers to solve the most annoying thing about online orderingWith the help of a US federal judge, Microsoft has struck a blow against one of the Internet's worst sources of spam: the notorious Waledac botnet.
Microsoft said that it had been granted a court order that will cut off 277.com domains associated with the botnet. This will effectively knock the brains of Waledac off the Internet, by removing the command-and-control servers that criminals use to send commands to hundreds of thousands of infected machines.
Thought to be used by Eastern European spammers, Waledac has been a major source of computer infections and spam over the past year. Microsoft believes the botnet can send over 1.5 billion spam messages daily.
In a lawsuit against the unknown spammers behind Waledac, filed Monday with the US District Court of Eastern Virginia, Microsoft argues that Verisign, which manages the.com domain, is a choke-point for the botnet. The court has apparently ordered Verisign to remove the botnet's command-and-control domains from the Internet.
"This action has quickly and effectively cut off traffic to Waledac at the '.com' or domain registry level, severing the connection between the command and control centers of the botnet and most of its thousands of zombie computers around the world," Microsoft said in its blog post announcing the effort.
Verisign could not immediately be reached for comment.
Because Waledac uses peer-to-peer techniques to control hacked boxes as well, Microsoft has more work to do, however.
"It's a busy night tonight and tomorrow is probably going to be a busy day as well," said Jeff Williams, director of Microsoft's Malware Protection Center in an email interview.
Williams didn't provide details on what Microsoft was doing to further attack Waledac, but in its blog posting the company said it is "taking additional technical countermeasures to downgrade much of the remaining peer-to-peer command and control communication within the botnet." Microsoft expects to "continue to work with the security community to mitigate and respond to this botnet," the post states.
Known internally as Operation b49, Microsoft's takedown operation "was the result of months of investigation and the innovative application of a tried and true legal strategy," Microsoft said.
Microsoft tried to strike a blow against Waledac last April, by adding detection for the infection to its Malicious Software Removal tool. But that didn't stop the botnet, and spam levels have remained high.
"They didn't kill it," said Paul Ferguson, a researcher with Trend Micro, via instant message. "I've been getting a boat-load of Waledac spam lately."Welcome What is a Browncoat What is Firefly
Universe & Language � Language � Chinese Chinese Chinese :: :::: Firefly-isms :: Firefly and Serenity Chinese [ Bartender knocks Jayne's drink from his hand]
JAYNE: What th--
BARTENDER: The hero of Canton won't be drinking that shiong mao niao [panda urine].
- " Jaynestown " I spent four crazy days writing constantly, cursing in Chinese, sleeping very little and having dreams about playing bocci ball with Adam Baldwin. - Jose Molina, on writing the Firefly episode "Ariel," "On 'Ariel,'" Firefly official site, 2002 WARNING! Some translations are R-rated. Mandarin Chinese pronunciations and English in "quotation marks" come from the shooting scripts, as posted online or published. Those not in the scripts, especially those in {curly brackets/braces}, are less certain. Some series/movie translations into Chinese were very loose. Numerals for Mandarin Chinese Tones:
1 high, flat; 2 high, rising; 3 low, dipping [shifts to 2nd tone before another 3rd-tone syllable]; 4 high, falling; 5 neutral [used with many grammatical words and ends of compound words]
Bu4 (no/not/un-) becomes bu2 before another 4th-tone syllable. Yi1 (one, a) becomes yi4 before a 1st-, 2nd-, or 3rd-tone syllable and yi2 before a 4th-tone syllable. There are exceptions. "Serenity, Part 1"
MAL: "Ta ma de." [Ta1ma1 de5.] ~ "Dammit."
MAL: "Bizui." [Bi4zui3.] ~ "Shut up."
KAYLEE: "Shi" [Shi4.] ~ "Affirmative"
WASH: "Aiya! Huaile." [Ai1ya1! Huai4le5.] ~ "Something's wrong." [exclamations for bad news]
MAL, again: "Bizui." [Bi4zui3.] ~ "Shut up."
WASH: "Zhu yi." [sic] [Zhen1 ta1ma1 yao4ming4. Zhu4yi4.] ~ "Watch your back." [This is pretty damned dangerous. Pay attention.]
INARA: "Qing jin." [Qing3jin4.] ~ "Come in."
MAL: "Ni ta ma de. Tianxia suoyoude ren. Dou gaisi." [Ni3 ta1ma1 de5. Tian1xia4 suo3you3 de5 ren2. Dou1 gai1si3.] ~ "Everyone under the heavens ought to die."
INARA: "xiao meimei" [sic] [mei4mei5; subtitles: "Mei-mei"] ~ "little sister" WASH, cut line: "Shi." [Shi4.] ~ "Affirmative."
"Serenity, Part 2" MAL: "Ta ma de! Nimen de bizui!" [sic] [Ni3men5 dou1 bi4zui3!] ~ "Everybody shut the hell up!"
WASH: "kwong-juh duh" [kuang2zhe3 de5] ~ "nuts" [crazy]
MAL: "xiao meimei" [xiao3mei4mei4; subtitles: wrongly just "mei-mei"] ~ "little sister" [second mei4 retains 4th tone here]
JAYNE: "Hun dan!" [Hun2dan4!] ~ "Damn!"
ZOE: "Ai ya. Women wanle." [Ai1ya1. Wo3men5 wan2le5.] ~ "We're in big trouble." SIMON, deleted scene on DVD: "Duibuqi?" [sic] [Shen2me5] ~ "I'm sorry?"
This shen2 is she2 in Taiwan.
"The Train Job" MAL: "Ching zie lie ee bay Ng-Ka-Pei?" [Qing3 zai4lai2 yi1 bei1 ng5gaa1pei4?] ~ "Can I have one more glass of Ng-Ka-Pei [a medicinal-herb wine], please?"
Mandarin pronunciation of drink: wu3jia1pi2; Cantonese Chinese Tones: 1 high, flat (or falling); 2 high, rising; 3 mid, flat; 4 low, falling; 5 low, rising; 6 low, flat
MAL: "Oh, juh jen sh guh kwai luh duh jean jan..." [O1, zhe4 zhen1 shi4 ge5 kuai4le4 de5 jin4zhan3...] ~ "Oh, this is a happy development..."
KAYLEE: "Kuh-ooh duh lao bao jurn..." [Ke3wu4 de5 lao3 bao4jun1...] ~ "Horrible old tyrant..."
KAYLEE: "jen duh sh tyen tsai" [zhen1 de5 shi4 tian1cai2] ~ "an absolute genius"
JAYNE: "dong ma" [dong3 ma5; subtitles: "Dong ma?"] ~ "understand"
JAYNE: "go tsao de" [gou3 cao4 de5; subtitles: completely omitted] ~ "dog humping" [dog-humped]
"Bushwhacked" JAYNE: "Wuh de ma." [Wo3 de5 ma1.] ~ "Mother of god." [Literally: My ma!]
MAL: "Jen dao mei!" [Zhen1 dao3mei2!] ~ "Just our luck!"
WASH: "tyen shiao duh" [tian1 xiao3de2] ~ "name of all that's sacred" [heaven knows what]
WASH: "Tzao gao." [Zao1gao1.] ~ "Crap." [Damn!]
MAL: "Wuh de tyen, ah." [Wo3 de5 tian1, a5.] ~ "Dear god in heaven."
JAYNE: "Hwoon dahn." [Hun2dan4.] ~ "Jerk." JAYNE, cut line: "Fong luh." [Feng1le5.] ~ "Loopy in the head." KAYLEE, cut line: tyen tsai [tian1cai2] ~ "genius"
"Shindig" WRIGHT THE SLAVER, x2: "Way!" [Wei4!; subtitles: A: wrongly "Wait!"; B: "Wei."] ~ "Hey!"
ATHERTON: "bao bay" [bao3bei4; subtitles: "baobei"] ~ "sweetheart"
BADGER: "wun gwo pee" [wen2guo5 pi4] ~ "smelled a fart"
BADGER: "pee-goo" [pi4gu5; subtitles: "pigu"] ~ "bottom" [butt]
INARA: "Lao pung yo, nee can chi lai hun yo jing shen." [Lao3peng2you5, ni3 kan4 qi5lai5 hen3 you3 jing1shen5.] ~ "You're looking wonderful, old friend |
songs by sound. It is only 500K in size and only take up 440KB of your computer space.
To get Tunatic to work, you have to feed it with song input. The most common (and easiest) way is to use connect your computer to an external microphone and point it to the music source. It may seem dumb and stupid, but it works.
In the event that you do not have an external microphone, some of the ways that you can do include:
plug your sound source directly to your computer, using the line-in method. This is actually the best way as there won’t be any loss in sound quality. If you are using Mac, many of the later models come with a built in microphone, which means you can use Tunatic instantly. If you are playing music directly from your computer, you can select “What you hear” (also named “Stereo Mix” or “Mixed Output”) as input.
When you first open Tunatic, you will find that it occupies only a small fraction of your desktop and little configuration option. In fact, the only option you can configure is to choose the sound input source.
When you are ready, simply play the sound and feed it in to Tunatic. Click the search button on Tunatic to get it to retrieve the song information from its database.
According to its website, Tunatic supports any genre of music (except classical). Being someone adventurous, I decided to try out different type of music and see if it can detect them correctly.
First I try out the oldies English pop song. No problem for Tunatic.
Next, I try out Jazz music. Once again, it detects the songs fairly quickly.
The next attempt is a Latin salsa song. No sweat.
The last attempt is a popular Chinese song, and it detect the song again. However, due to the language setting in my Windows computer, it is not able to display the Chinese character properly.
For all the songs that I have tried, it brings me satisfactory results. If you happen to find out which genre/language of songs that it can’t support, do let me know.
Once it have successfully detected the song, a small arrow will appear beside the name of the song. Click on this arrow and it will bring you to its website where it will show you the link to buy the song from iTunes, download the song as a ringtone, or to search for its lyrics. Not too bad for a simple software like this.
What it does not do
While Tunatic works great at detecting music, it does not contain any data about the track info and album arts, nor update the meta-tag automatically. If you are searching for meta-tag auto updater software, MakeUseOf does have a great article about this- 4 Easy ways to Fix music tags and organize library 4 Easy Ways Fix Music Tags & Organize Music Library 4 Easy Ways Fix Music Tags & Organize Music Library Read More.
Also, Tunatic does not response well to voice. If you sing or hum into the microphone and wish for Tunatic to find that song for you, you will be disappointed.
Conclusion
This is definitely not a great software that will save thousands of life, but if you are like me, who does not have the habit of managing your songs and have the sudden urge to find out the title of that song, then this will just be the right software for you.
Tunatic is currently available for Windows 2000 or higher and Mac.
If you are aware of any free program tool that can identify songs by sound please share them with everyone in comments.Overview
The Seattle City Council unanimously voted to establish the Seattle Renters’ Commission in March 2017. The purpose of the Seattle Renters’ Commission is to advise the Mayor and City Council on issues and policies of importance to renters citywide.
Role of the Seattle Renters’ Commission
Provide information, advice, and counsel to the Mayor, City Council, Department of Neighborhoods, Office of Civil Rights, and other City departments concerning issues and policies affecting renters, including, but not limited to: housing affordability, transportation access, land use, public health and safety, and economic development.
Monitor the enforcement and effectiveness of legislation related to renters and renter protections, and provide periodic advice on priorities and strategies for strengthening enforcement and effectiveness of renter protections.
Develop and periodically amend bylaws and an annual work plan that enable the Commission to organize itself, perform its work, and advance program and policy proposals consistent with its mission.
Membership
The Seattle Renters’ Commission consists of 15 members appointed to serve in an advisory capacity to the Mayor and City Council. Six are appointed by the City Council and six are appointed by the Mayor. The Commission appoints two members, and the 15th member joins the Commission each year through Get Engaged, a leadership development program for young adults age 18-29 in partnership with the YMCA.
Appointments are made to ensure that varied renter perspectives are represented, including renters from historically underrepresented groups, such as low income renters, LGBTQ renters, immigrant renters, renters with felony records, those paying rent with assistance, and renters who have experienced homelessness.
The City Council's Affordable Housing, Neighborhoods, and Finance Committee discussed and voted on the following Seattle Renters' Commission appointments at its August 2 and August 16, 2017 meetings.
City Council Appointees:
L. Curtis Blankinship
Clifford C. Cawthon
Jessie Jacobs
Michael Padilla Ocampo
Laurie Rocello Torres
Jessica Westgren
Mayor Appointees:
Beverly Aarons
Jack Barker
Sherry Collier
Daniela Lopez
David Mooney
ChrisTiana ObeySumner
Get Engaged Appointee:
Calvin Jones
Media
Contact
For further information about the Seattle Renters’ Commission, view the Department of Neighborhood's site on the Renters' Commission.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
DAVIS--
Fired up and frustrated.
Hundreds of UC Davis students walked out of class Friday as part of an ongoing fight to oust Linda Katehi from her job as Chancellor. The students are outraged that, on top of her university salary, Katehi accepted high paying board seats at DeVry Education Group and John Wiley and Sons.
Critics call that a conflict of interest which came at the expense of students. Katehi has since stepped down from Devry and apologized. That wasn't enough to stop this movement.
"We want chancellor Katehi gone," Kyla Burke, one of the protest organizers, told FOX40. "But not just because of her problems, but because what she represents the corporatization and privatization of our university, and we want to change that."
Protesters also say Katehi has failed to properly address racial and religious tensions on campus.
While some students stand in solidarity with the movement, others question if fiery chanting is the best method to affect change.
"I feel as though this movement isn't being productive, because there's no dialogue between the chancellor and the students," UC Davis junior Bennett Reeber said.
The University told FOX40, the Chancellor agreed to a discussion this week with two protesters, however that meeting was interrupted by chanting and banging on doors.
"The Chancellor remains very interested in having a meaningful and respectful conversation with the protesters, as she does with all students. She repeatedly has made offers to meet with the protesters," a UC Davis Spokesperson said in a written statement.
Burke isn't satisfied with that, and wants to have a meeting on the protesters' terms, instead.
"They keep trying to set up meetings on their terms where they can isolate certain students and keep us separate," Burke said.
The University says Katehi does not plan to resign.Turkey could walk away from a promise to stem the flow of refugees to Europe if the European Union (EU) fails to grant Turks visa-free travel to the bloc in October, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a German newspaper.
His comments in Bild's Monday edition coincided with rising tensions between Ankara and the West that have been exacerbated by a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15.
Turkey is incensed by what it sees as an insensitive response from Western allies to the attempted putsch, in which 240 people were killed.
Long wary of Turkey's ambitions to join the EU, some European countries have expressed concern over a huge number of arrests since the coup, implying President Tayyip Erdogan is using it to quash dissent.
The unease has also hurt relations between Turkey and Austria and Sweden, with Ankara summoning diplomats from both countries to protest against what it says are false reports about changes to its child abuse laws.
READ MORE: Opinion - The dark side of the EU-Turkey refugee deal
Asked whether hundreds of thousands of refugees in Turkey would head to Europe if the EU did not grant Turks visa freedom from October, Cavusoglu told Bild: "I don't want to talk about the worst-case scenario - talks with the EU are continuing but it's clear that we either apply all treaties at the same time or we put them all aside."
Visa-free access to the EU - the main reward for Ankara's cooperation with choking of a flow of people to Europe - has been delayed because of a dispute over Turkish anti-terrorism legislation, as well as the post-coup arrests.
Brussels wants Turkey to soften the anti-terrorism law. Ankara, though, says it cannot do so, given multiple security threats which include the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant presence in neighbouring Syria and Kurdish fighters in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.
European Commissioner Guenther Oettinger has said he does not see the EU granting Turks visa-free travel this year because of Ankara's sweeping arrests, which have seen more than 35,000 people held over alleged involvement in the coup.
Cavusoglu said the deal with the EU stipulated that all Turks would get visa freedom in October, adding: "It can't be that we implement everything that is good for the EU but that Turkey gets nothing in return."
A spokesman for the European Commission declined to comment on the interview directly but said the EU continued to work together with Turkey in all areas of cooperation.Evonik Industries AG is an industrial corporation headquartered in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, the largest specialty chemicals company in the world,[2] owned by RAG Foundation. It was created on 12 September 2007 as a result of restructuring of the mining and technology group RAG. Evonik Industries united the business areas of chemicals, energy and real estate of RAG, while mining operations continue to be carried out by RAG. Since then, the energy and real estate business areas have been divested, with no share being held in the former and a minority share still being held in the latter. Its specialty chemicals business generates around 80% of sales in areas in which it holds leading market positions. Evonik Industries employs about 33,000 people and carries out activities in more than 100 countries. The operating activities are organized into six business units which are a part of the chemicals business area. Evonik is the main sponsor of German football club Borussia Dortmund.[3]
History [ edit ]
Founding of the company [ edit ]
Evonik headquarters in Essen, Germany
Historically, Evonik Industries' businesses were part of RAG activities. The idea of splitting the company was put forward in 2005. The background of this idea was that RAG's core business of coal mining is carried out under government contract in Germany, while businesses transferred to Evonik compete in international markets. This structure did not permit the payment of dividends to the shareholders, which limited shareholders' readiness to inject equity into the RAG, which thereby restricted the company's ability to access fresh capital. As the first step, RAG’s shareholders sold their shares to RAG foundation (RAG-Stiftung) to split RAG. The Foundation was established on 10 July 2007, and Evonik Industries was created on 12 September 2007.
The original plan foresaw the IPO of Evonik Industries in the first half of 2008. However, this plan was postponed until mid-2010 at the earliest, and the RAG Foundation started to look for strategic investors, while still holding on to the plans for a midterm IPO.[4][5] In June 2008, the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners bought a stake of 25.01% in the company.[6] Among many other private equity investors who bid for the stake (amongst them Blackstone Group and 3i), Russian Gazprom was reported to have considered buying a stake in Evonik Industries.[7] The IPO, by now planned for fall of 2011, was once again postponed in September 2011, this time citing the "current state of financial and capital markets and their prospects." [8] RAG Foundation had planned for Evonik’s IPO to take place in 2012, but this was postponed as a result of poor market conditions. Evonik shares have been traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 25 April 2013. Prior to the IPO the company had given institutional investors the opportunity to acquire around 14% of the shares for €2 billion.[9]
Shareholding structure [ edit ]
Since 5 March 2015, the shareholding structure of the Evonik Industries AG is composed as follows:[10]
67,9%: RAG Foundation
14,0%: Gabriel Acquisitions GmbH (a company owned by funds advised by CVC Capital Partners)
18,1%: Free float
Historical significance [ edit ]
In 2006, RAG acquired Degussa AG,[11] which was later renamed Evonik-Degussa GmbH. In 1998, Degussa instructed the American historian Peter Hayes to clarify the company history during the Third Reich.[12] One of the former subsidiaries of Degussa, the Degesch (translation: German Corporation for Pest control), was the main manufacturer and distributor of the chemical Zyklon B, which was used to execute people in gas chambers of German concentration camps during the Holocaust.[13] Furthermore, gold dental fillings, which had been forcefully removed from the mouths of concentration-camp inmates, had been processed by Degussa.[13] The historical significance of Degussa appeared again in the publicity surrounding their involvement in the construction of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, because the plasticizer and the anti-graffiti coating were produced by Degussa. Therefore, the work on the memorial was interrupted to clarify the situation. In November 2003, the trustees decided to finish the building with the involvement of Degussa.[14]
Operations [ edit ]
Evonik divested its former holdings in the areas of energy and real estate and now focuses on the core business of specialty chemicals.[15]
Chemicals Business Area [ edit ]
Share of the Deutsche Gold- und Silber-Scheideanstalt, issued 5. November 1928
Degussa gold, 5 g
The Chemicals Business Area of Evonik emerged from Evonik Degussa GmbH (formerly Degussa GmbH — an acronym of Deutsche Gold- und Silber-Scheide-Anstalt (German Gold and Silver Separating Works)) based in Essen, Germany. It employs about 34,000[16] people and is one of the world's largest producers of specialty chemicals. It includes six business units: Advanced Intermediates, Consumer Specialties, Coatings & Additives, Inorganic Materials, Health & Nutrition and Performance Polymers.[17] Degussa was acquired by RAG in 2006. Its latest acquisition is the Tippecanoe Labs plant site at Lafayette, Indiana from Eli Lilly on 1 January 2010.[18] In November, a plant for the production of DL-methionine was opened in Singapore. At a cost of €500 million, it is the largest investment to date in the chemical sector in the company’s history.[19] In June 2014, the Supervisory Board resolved to restructure the Group, with plans for the six chemical segments to be bundled into three GmbH (limited liability) companies from 2015.[20]
Energy Business Area [ edit ]
The former energy business portion of Evonik was operated through Evonik Steag GmbH (formerly STEAG), which is the fifth largest power company in Germany, based in Essen. The company operates fourteen hard coal-fired power plants, of which eleven are located in Germany, and one in Turkey, one in Colombia and one in the Philippines, and two industrial power plants. It also operates in the field of transport, processing and distribution of hard coal, coke and byproducts from coal processing, as well as in the field of gas supply, transport and trading.[21] In December 2010 Evonik Industries signed an agreement to sell 51% of shares in its energy business to a consortium of municipal utilities in Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr region. The agreement was finalized on 2 March 2011. The remaining 49% were acquired by the consortium for €570 million in August 2014.[22]
Real Estate Business Area [ edit ]
Evonik Immobilien GmbH used to manage around 60,000 company-owned residential units in Germany. In addition, it had a 50% stake in TreuHandStelle GmbH, which manages more than 70,000 residential units. Evonik Immobilien GmbH was amalgamated with TreuHandStelle GmbH and placed on a more independent basis in the medium term.[23] As per the resolution of the general meeting held on 25 November 2011, the name of the subsidiary Evonik Immobilien GmbH was changed to Vivawest GmbH. On 1 January 2012 Vivawest merged with residential management company THS under the name Vivawest. In 2013, Evonik sold the majority of its shares in Vivawest to the RAG Foundation, the Evonik pension fund, and the coal mining corporation RAG AG. Evonik now holds only 10.9%, and there are plans to sell this stake too.[24]
Corporate responsibility [ edit ]
Evonik Industries is a member of the United Nations Global Compact. The annual CR report of Evonik Industries is based on the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative. Evonik is also a founder member of the Together for Sustainability initiative, focused in promoting sustainability practices across the chemical industry's supply chains, and whose president is the current CPO of the company, Rüdiger Eberhard.
Evonik has been the main sponsor of Borussia Dortmund (BVB) since the 2006/2007 season [25]
Evonik was one of the sponsors of the World Chess Championship 2008 [ citation needed ]
Evonik supports the work of the episcopal agency "Adveniat" for the improvement of the environment in Latin America [ citation needed ]
On 17 May 2011, as part of a charity football match between Borussia Dortmund and an all-star team from Japan, Evonik donated €1 million to a children’s home situated in the Tohoku/Ichinoseki-shi earthquake zone which was destroyed by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. [ citation needed ]
Evonik is the main sponsor of the Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation, a non-profit organization which conducts deep-sea research in the Azores using a submersible.[ citation needed ]
2012 cyclododecatriene plant fire [ edit ]
In March 2012, a fire at the Degussa plant[26] in Marl,[27] stopped production of cyclododecatriene (CDT) for a duration of several months. The plant produced a substantial proportion of the world's production of CDT, particularly that needed to produce laurolactam, a precursor to the polyamide PA12. This shortage in turn led to concerns for global production of finished goods, particularly in the automotive industry.[28] Other biobased polyamides, not dependent on laurolactam or CDT, have been put forward as alternative materials.[27]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Iraqi soldiers show a flag that they seized from the Islamic State, near the front line, in the town of Kharbardan. (Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images)
The base salary offered to the worker named al-Jiburi was a pittance, just $50 a month. But even the cash-challenged Islamic State knew it had to do more to sustain the loyalty of a man with nine mouths to feed.
A crinkled wage voucher breaks it down by family member: For each of his two wives, al-Jiburi would receive an extra $50. For each of his six children under age 15, he would get another $35. Any “female captive”— sex slave — would entitle him to an additional $50. For al-Jiburi, described in the document as a service worker for the terrorist group, the monthly total came to $360, payable in U.S. greenbacks.
Salary details and other minutiae of life in the Islamic State are contained in a series of unusual documents released Friday by a scholarly journal. The records, all official documents from inside the group’s self-declared caliphate, collectively reinforce the prevailing impression of an organization under strain, struggling to compensate its fighters and workers, and forced to ration electricity, fuel and other resources.
A document shows a salary scheme of $360 per month for an Islamic State worker. (CTC Sentinel)
While defectors and refugees also have described deteriorating conditions in the Islamic State’s territory, the official documents offer a more authoritative account of how the terrorist group is coping after months of aerial bombings and a string of military defeats on the ground, said Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a British scholar who obtained the papers.
“The documentary evidence confirms the current coalition approach has brought about significant losses for the Islamic State and put it under pressure on multiple fronts,” al-Tamimi wrote in an essay in the CTC Sentinel, published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, N.Y.
[How air strikes are putting a strain on the Islamic State.]
But he also cautioned that “any predictions of the Islamic State’s collapse are premature.”
The salary voucher and most of the other documents in al-Tamimi’s collection are dated within the last six months, and most were obtained in Syrian and Iraqi towns that were recently liberated from the Islamic State’s forces. Several appear to be attempts to address acute shortages of resources, ranging from fuel and food to electric power.
One document, written in October and carrying the insignia of the Islamic State’s regional government in Aleppo, Syria, forbids fighters from using the group’s vehicles except for approved military operations. Some militants were using vehicles for personal reasons, and the unauthorized driving was “causing an unjustified waste” of the governorate’s resources, “reaching the point of forbidden excess,” the document asserts.
“It has therefore been decided to direct all brothers not to use vehicles … except by permission,” it says.
A similar proclamation by the same governorate announces a cutback in electricity, announcing that fighters’ homes would no longer receive around-the-clock power, in order to assure a plentiful supply for military bases.
[Is ISIS losing the propaganda war? Poll of young Arabs offers hope.]
Still another, posted in January in Mosul, the caliphate’s Iraqi capital, hints at shortages of drugs and medical supplies, caused in part by medical professionals selling their stocks to help finance their flight from the Islamic State. The document forbids all subjects from removing or selling pharmaceuticals or medical equipment without permission.
A document about preventing unnecessary use of Islamic State vehicles outside of operation hours. (CTC Sentinel)
The salary record obtained by al-Tamimi counters earlier reports about relatively lavish salaries paid by the Islamic State to attract fighters. The document, with a date stamp between January and February of this year, includes a printed matrix used to calculate current pay rates for fighters as well as government employees. It suggests a low base pay for ordinary workers and militia members, with higher wages possible for those with wives and families, or with sex slaves.
The publication of the document comes five months after Islamic State leaders announced a 50-percent pay cut for fighters, citing the group’s financial difficulties.
Al-Tamimi, a research fellow with the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, said the document does not reflect bonuses that might be paid to some of the group’s members for service on the front lines. But he said the low wages proffered are another reflection of the challenges faced by a terrorist group that has seen steep drops in revenue from oil sales as well as the physical destruction of some of its cash holdings.
Yet the signs of financial strain do not necessarily mean that the Islamic State is faltering, he said.
“You have to be careful,” he said in an interview. “Some defectors are claiming that the Islamic State’s end is imminent, but I don’t see that. It’s just not the case.”
Read more:
The twisted path that brought four ISIS recruits to the heart of Europe
One woman helped the Paris attacks mastermind. Another turned him in.
Crackdown may have spurred Brussels terrorist attack, officials sayNew NJ.com logo
Introducing our new logo
We are excited today to unveil a new NJ.com logo and tagline showcasing our focus on meeting readers' and advertisers' needs in the digital age. In conjunction with the new logo, we're also launching our most significant marketing campaign in nearly a decade. Celebrating our new motto, the campaign will begin appearing on billboards, NJ Transit buses and trains, PATH trains and various websites this month.
NJ.com unveils new logo 5 Gallery: NJ.com unveils new logo
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NJ.com has experienced tremendous growth in recent years and currently reaches nearly 10.5 million monthly visitors who generate more than 87 million monthly page views [Source: Adobe Site Catalyst, August 2013]. We see how our audience is engaging with our content on a daily basis and we work relentlessly to keep the people of the Garden State connected to what is important to them, whenever and wherever they need it. As the #1 news and information site in New Jersey [Source:
The Media Audit, May-July 2012, Base: New Jersey Twenty-one County Area, Adults 18+, 30-day cume
], we are also in a unique position to connect businesses and New Jerseyans. NJ.com's popularity among a wide range of audiences, particularly among the highly coveted 25-49-year-old demographic, has translated into significant advertising growth. Far more than a website, we are at the leading edge of online marketing solutions. With a portfolio of clients ranging from local and national retailers, to entertainment, real estate, employment and automotive, we offer innovative digital solutions to help businesses grow, including sophisticated geographic and behavioral targeting using first-party data, search-engine marketing strategies, online display advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing and video.
Expanding to serve consumer and advertiser demand
As part of the evolution of NJ.com, we are investing and expanding to meet high consumer and advertising demand. On the editorial side, we are expanding our digital-first coverage of major New Jersey pro and college sports teams — particularly the Giants, Jets, Yankees, Devils and Rutgers football — while also enhancing our local, public-interest and political reporting.
On the business side, we've greatly expanded our advertising sales and client service team to provide some of the New Jersey's leading advertising consultants, specializing in online marketing solutions that help local businesses succeed. We hope you like our new look and direction, and above all else continue to enjoy coverage that is "True Jersey."This, as I probably don’t need to tell you, is a banknote.
To be specific, it’s a 10-afghani banknote printed in 2004 (my thanks to Dr Amelia Dowler of the BM for that astonishingly precise piece of identification), and it’s been hanging about in my wallet since my last trip to Afghanistan in 2011.
What I hadn’t noticed in all that time, and only did notice when Roh Yakobi drew my attention to it last week, was the emblem in the top right corner, above the picture of the building (the mausoleum of Ahmad Shah Durrani, considered the founder of Afghanistan, in Kandahar). Here’s a close-up:
This is the seal of Da Afghanistan Bank, the central bank of Afghanistan established in 1939 (1318 in the Iranian/Afghan solar calendar). But alongside the name of the bank in Pashto, in Arabic script at the top and Latin script at the bottom, there’s a text in Ancient Greek, ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ ΕΥΚΡΑΤΙΔΟΥ, “Of the great king Eucratides.”
Eucratides was a Greek king of Bactria (roughly northern Afghanistan) in the second century BC (rough dates 170-145BC). What’s represented in the centre of the seal is in fact one of his coins. Here’s a silver tetradrachm of Eucratides with the same design:
This blog is essentially my best attempt to answer a question that Roh Yakobi put to me, a very good question: what on earth is a two-millennia-old coin image of a Greek king doing on a modern Afghan banknote?
To start with the coin design, and Eucratides. The image on the bank note is the “reverse” of the coin. On the “obverse” is an image of the king himself, in a cavalry helmet and cloak, but on this side, surrounded by Eucratides’ name and titles, we see two galloping horsemen in conical hats, holding palms and long stabbing spears. Their equipment associates them with Macedonian military tactics (the Greek kings of Bactria were all inheritors directly or indirectly of Alexander conquests in the region) and the cavalry for which Bactria was famous. But the star over each of their heads identifies them as Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri or divine sons of Zeus by Leda. The pair are saviour gods, helpers of humanity in crisis.
Eucratides, like all the Greek rulers in the borderlands of India, is a shadowy figure. He may have seized power in Bactria; certainly his reign seems to have been a very violent one, his campaigns potentially extending as far as N.-W. India, and his death may have come at the hands of his own son. Apollodorus of Artemita (at Strabo 15.1.3) calls him “ruler of a thousand cities”; one in particular we know was called Eucratidia, and it may be the same as the remarkable archaeological site of Ai Khanum in N.-E. Afghanistan. Then again, and this is the story with almost all the information we have about Eucratides, it may not.
In between fighting and founding/retitling cities, Eucratides minted some very innovative coins (which are the most tangible evidence we have about him): the description of himself as “Great” on this one is one such innovation, and almost certainly indicates that his grip on power was in reality highly vulnerable. “The coins of Eucratides I or Great, are very numerous, and of very spirited execution,” wrote Charles Masson, the nineteenth-century deserter-cum-antiquarian, as he fossicked around Begram, north of Kabul, the site of the great city of Kapisa/Alexandria ad Caucasum before it hosted an airbase. But the most famous example of Eucratides’ coinage is the so-called Eucratidion, at 169.2g. the largest gold coin surviving from Antiquity. This was bought in London by a French dealer in 1867 from a man who had carried it from Bukhara in a pouch secreted in his armpit. It is now housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
A celebrated design, then, and quite a common archaeological find in Afghanistan. We still need to explain its presence on the note, but the first step is to establish why Da Afghanistan Bank, when it was founded in 1939, adopted this design. The answer offers a fascinating insight into Afghanistan’s perception of itself at that moment.
The establishment of an Afghan central bank was part of a bigger project to modernize Afghanistan under the Musahibun regime of Zahir Shah (king of Afghanistan from 1933 to 1973). Taking as its models European nations and “advanced” Islamic countries like Iran and Turkey, Afghanistan was giving itself the institutions of a developed state. Responding to the wave of nationalism in the world of the 1930s, in the words of Robert D. Crews in his excellent book Afghan Modern, “Afghans faced the test of demonstrating their right to belong in this world of nation states by articulating a national language, culture and past” (p.156). This could take the form of national financial institutions, and also of discriminatory policies against non-Muslims, especially Jews (dangerous notions of Aryan ancestry were also in the air). But a 2,000-year-old coin image, too, contradictory as it may seem, could symbolize progress in thirties Afghanistan.
The explanation of this lies in the archaeological work undertaken in Afghanistan in the previous two decades. Archaeology had properly begun in Afghanistan with the agreement between King Amanullah (another modernizer) and the French government in 1922 to establish the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan (DAFA). By the late thirties, as Nile Green explains (“The Afghan discovery of Buddha: civilizational history and the nationalizing of Afghan antiquity,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 49 (2017), 47-70), the discoveries of French archaeologists at such sites as Begram and Hadda (of which the publications began to appear in numbers in the mid-thirties) were starting to secure the interest of the Afghan leadership. The National Museum of Afghanistan, which moved into its new premises in the administrative district of Darulaman in Kabul in 1931, was being turned, mainly by these French discoveries, into one of the richest collections in the world. In 1937, according to the French chargé d’affaires, “The excavations at Begram have been visited by several ministers … the king himself visited the exhibition mounted at the Kabul museum.”
We need to appreciate what a dramatic change this represented in Afghan attitudes to their past, an emphasis on pre-Islamic cultures, Buddhist as well as Greek, which superseded and sidelined Afghanistan’s Islamic heritage, hitherto the focus of Afghan historiography and national identity. This new emphasis was facilitated by the activities of DAFA, but it also represented Afghanistan’s attempt to align its own historical identity with what Green calls the “civilizational norms” of the developed world that it aspired to join. By highlighting its Greek heritage, Afghanistan could claim a share of the classical origins of Europe and the West. A state-owned bank represented civilization and modernity in the 1930s, but so did a coin with Greek writing on it.
Green’s article focuses on a key personality in these cultural developments, Ahmad Ali Kuhzad, an Afghan archaeologist who had worked with DAFA and subsequently in a series of Persian publications communicated the insights gained by the French into ancient Afghan history to the Afghan elite and beyond. I suspect Kuhzad was more directly involved in this design than I can now establish. There’s a Kuhzad publication from 1938/1317, Maskukat-i Qadim-i Afghanistan, Ancient Coins of Afghanistan, which I’m trying to get my hands on, but which I’m fairly confident will contain lots of images of Eucratides coins when I do.
So that’s how Eucratides made it onto the seal of the State Bank, and it tells us a lot about Afghan aspirations in the 1930s. But we still have to explain how he made it onto the notes.
That happened in 1979, but in this instance I suspect the Bactrian Greeks had a less to do with the development. Take a look at these four Afghan bank notes (images all from Banknote World), the first of Zahir Shah in 1967:
The second is of Daoud Khan (1977), Zahir Shah’s cousin, who deposed him in 1973 and established a republic:
The third is from 1978, and was printed by the communist government of Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, which had overthrown and killed Daoud:
Finally from 1979/80, and this is the first note to have Eucratides on it (although he has stayed there ever since), a note issued by the communist government of Babrak Karmal, installed by the Soviets after they had intervened and overthrown Amin:
Each of these notes has a “national” emblem on it. On Zahir Shah’s it’s a long-established symbol of Afghanistan, a mosque containing minbar (pulpit) and mihrab (the niche indicating the direction of Mecca). Daoud replaces that with an symbol for the Republic of Afghanistan, an eagle. But the image of Taraki’s regime is a big departure, retaining the corn sheaves that surround Zahir Shah’s and Daoud’s emblem, but containing within just the name of their faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, خلق (Khalq), meaning “People”. It is this image that is superseded by the seal of Da Afghanistan Bank when Karmal’s alternative faction of the Communist Party, پرچم(Parcham, “Banner”), is installed by the Soviets.
The Taraki/Amin regime was exceptionally brutal (there is a moving article about its crimes by Nushin Arbabzadah here), and the radical and precipitate reforms it attempted to impose on Afghanistan provoked the uprising that turned into the ten-year resistance to the Soviet occupation. It was with the immediate aim of deposing Amin (who had in the meantime got rid of Taraki) that the Soviets stepped in at the end of 1979. All this meant that Karmal’s regime had every reason to distance itself from its fellow communists and from their uncompromisingly partisan approach, and I think this best explains their adoption of the seal of the Afghan central bank in place of the Khalq emblem, a gesture implying at the same time economic prudence (though all of these notes have the name of the bank prominently somewhere) and a national project more broadly-based than narrow factional interests.
But Eucratides also offered Parcham a non-Islamic motif. Zahir Shah’s mosque was of course overtly Islamic; Daoud’s republican eagle still had a minbar and mihrab represented on its chest. In the 1930s an Ancient Greek king had represented civilization and development. Here he represents secularism, I suspect, as well as the Afghan nation. It’s odd that a king’s name and a pair of saviour gods could do any such thing, of course, but what the Greco-Roman world can be used to endorse is endlessly surprising.
Very useful to me when writing this was a deleted BBC Persian |
campaigning for "open government data" initiatives – demanding the publication of public datasets in machine-readable, freely reusable formats. The argument for this is impeccable: the data is collected by public bodies; it should therefore be available to the public that paid for it. The motivations behind the campaigns are likewise admirable: if the data is available, then civic-minded geeks can do useful things with it.
The open government data campaigns have been surprisingly successful in both the US and the UK. Huge swaths of public data are now available. I can download a vast spreadsheet containing details of every contract worth more than £500 entered into by my local authority, for example. And in many cases, people have already developed useful services on top of public data. For example, busitlondon.co.uk provides a helpful online tool for planning a journey by bus in London.
There's lots more in that vein, and it's all good stuff. At first sight, therefore, open government data looks encouraging. But there are a couple of flies in the ointment. The first is that there is a difference between open data and open government. The current Hungarian administration, for example, has been quite good at publishing public data, but is morphing into one of the most secretive and authoritarian regimes in Europe.
And then there's that awkward question again: who benefits? Certainly the public, to some extent. But there are signs that open government data favours private companies bidding for local authority contracts. The companies know what it costs the authority to collect the refuse, for instance; but their own finances are opaque, so it's impossible to judge whether they would really be more efficient than a public body.
And the moral? Be careful what you wish for.Before I came to UChicago, I didn’t believe in magic. But now, after five weeks and one Halloween in our enchanted ivory tower and Hogwartsian halls, Wingardium Leviosa seems just as useful as cogito ergo sum.
It all started when I recognized that something magical transpired each time I had a man in my room. With the click of the closing door, bippity boppity boo, he would try to kiss me, whether evening, afternoon, or morning too! I was astounded by the persistence of this seemingly supernatural phenomenon. Take me and a college boy and mix us into the dormitorial cauldron and you’ve got a bundle of awkward turtles. It didn’t matter who the boy was, or what we were doing (studying, schmoozing, fixing my window, or “chilling”), eventually his eyes would slip into an ogling trance, and his lips would head toward mine only to be met by a heavy torrent of unease from my ensuing snub.
The fact that being in my room equated to “let’s hook up” didn’t make much sense—I assumed some magical force must be at hand.
I then explained a few things to these men. First, that I’m haunted by my biggest fear which is neither spiders, heights, darkness, nor econ midterms, but rather something far more menacing: the hump and dump. After reading that New York Times article on heartless overachievers at UPenn with boy toys and plenty of other features on hookup culture—while also witnessing H&Ds first hand—sensual touching sans a long-term emotional tie, sans an appreciation of more than your partner’s body, sans sobriety, became the bête noire of my college career.
One victim quipped, “Hump and dump is a bit superfluous; hookup says it all for you.” I could feel my Kuko omelet making its way up my digestive system. He made me realize that the phrase “hookup,” which once meant “kissing and stuff,” now encompasses the “dump,” embracing the definition of a one night stand–like encounter.
Sometimes I would even expound that as a modern Orthodox Jew, I identify with a community in which touching the opposite gender is forbidden in many circles, where modesty reigns supreme, where women are supposed to cover their knees, elbows, and collar bones, where sensual contact is something holy between you, your spouse, and God. On top of that, I had spent the previous year in an Orthodox West Bank seminary, trying to find my place in the religious labyrinth nestled between tradition and modernity, through studying the texts constituting the fabric of Jewish life.
Among my peers in Israel, I was seen as the most licentious for talking to boys and about them, for going into Jerusalem on Thursday nights, and for wearing pants. Here, I feel like a nun. I wasn’t modest enough for my ex who wanted to be a rabbi, but here, I offend by commenting on the revealing reality of a crop top.
Judaism is a system meant to structure one’s every waking (and even sleeping) moment: a faith based in myriad precepts. There are commandments prescribing how to tie shoes, how to speak, how to drink, how to have intercourse, how to make a business transaction, and even how to gain salvation by waving a chicken around your head. Yet of all precepts, one always left me somewhere between flummoxed and vexed: yichud, the biblical prohibition of seclusion with the opposite sex in a private area.
Even if one’s sure of her restraint, the prohibition remains on the Talmudic principle: “There’s no guarantee when it comes to arayos (forbidden sexual relations).” The rabbis reasoned that in yichud, a person’s “evil inclination” (or what Socrates would call the “appetitive” part of the soul) swells, and under these circumstances, no one can guarantee reason’s triumph.
Only after my first month of college did I understand the commandment I had flouted my entire life. The rabbis must have been onto the boy-girl dorm spell, and enacted yichud to prevent it.
O-Week: Bodies layered on bodies, on booze, on weed, on juice, on sweat, on “Wrecking Ball” swarm around me in a sardine-packed frat. Hills of flesh covered by revealing spandex beg me to notice them. I came here with my house, figuring this was an important bonding activity and that frat parties are an important part of the American college experience. In this makeshift sauna, where the air is both visible and palpable, I feel my soul raped while my body remains untouched.
“I’m leaving. If I meet a guy here, he’s probably not going to be a quality one,” I say to my housemate.
“What if he just likes to have fun?” she responds.
“Well, this is not my type of fun,” I say, grabbing my sweater and heading toward the door.
On my way out, I notice a girl packed into her tight trousers like two generous scoops of ice cream. All dressed in black, she stands before me with dark skin, leggings, and an even darker accessory—a hijab. There she is in her religious head garb, and there I am in my knee-length skirt and long sleeves. I can easily visualize her praying silently before she eats, like me, hardly moving her lips in order to remain unnoticed. I ponder whether she also claims to be professionally driven and yet sometimes wishes to be at home, singing tenderly to a child. If at times she also feels like her body is no longer hers, but a political arena, and yet, at other moments, loves the flow of fabric, the swinging long skirts, the enigma of stealthy skin.
Did she not feel as out of place as I do, or even more so? To an untrained eye I’m not wearing a visible symbol shouting, “Shalom! I’m an Orthodox Jew!”, but she is wearing one proclaiming her religious affiliation and the rules of modesty which ordinarily follow. Would that man in the corner approach her from behind like he just did to two other girls? The scene before me was harder to grasp then any problem set here thus far.
I glance at my watch and remember it’s Friday and I have yet to read this week’s Torah portion. A little part of me wishes to invite the darkly clad stranger to join me in reading Genesis, back in my room.
Eliora Katz is a first-year in the College.Share
The post-game chatter about Meryl Streep’s intro for Emma Thompson at the National Board of Review completely missed the point of what Streep was saying. Moreover, the beauty in Streep’s speech was shunted to the side as the churning and hysteria found its way from comments section to blog to comments section. “Streep has insulted Walt Disney! Streep has hurt Emma Thompson’s Oscar chances! Streep has insulted everybody! Streep just blew it for her own Oscar nomination.” And so yeah, that happened.
The funny part of it is Streep did exactly the opposite. She didn’t “insult” Walt Disney. She did two things with her speech. The first, she spoke THE TRUTH. OH MY GOD, not the TRUTH! The second, she tried to spin the filthy way Emma Thompson has been treated by the press in light of the so-called Saving Mr. Banks scandal, that is, the insinuation that Thompson had something to do with the slick makeover of P.L. Travers.
What Streep did — now listen closely, Oscarwatchers because it looks to me like y’all missed the point — was take some of that heat off of Thompson and put it on Disney, where it belonged. Do I think Saving Mr. Banks is a good film? Yes. Do I think it deserves to be ripped apart by people who don’t have a presidential election to tweet about? Nope. Should any of that “controversy” have impacted, in any way whatsoever, Emma Thompson’s chances at winning an Oscar? Do I even have to answer that question?
Here is Streep’s speech in its entirety. I really hope that those making the story about how Streep acted out and hurt Thompson’s or her own Oscar chances will read this. (Courtesy of Vulture):
[Streep walks on stage wearing one of the “Prize Winner” hats from Nebraska, which had been scattered on the tables as promo items] What? Oh? Oh. Okay. [Takes off hat] I’m not the prize winner. It’s so weird! This is a very late night, and we have Spike Jonze — twice — coming up, so I want to say to you, I have a short, sweet, kind of funny version of this tribute to Emma Thompson, and I have the long, bitter, more truthful version, so I would like a vote — and I’m serious! I’m happy to do just the short one. I’d love to do the long one. [Lots of applause, one audience member hollers, “Go for it!”] Anybody want to leave? Go now. I guess that’s the long one.
Some of [Walt Disney’s] associates reported that Walt Disney didn’t really like women. Ward Kimball — who was one of his chief animators, one of the original “Nine Old Men,” creator of the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, Jiminy Cricket — said of Disney, “He didn’t trust women, or cats.” And there is a piece of received wisdom that says that the most creative people are often odd, or irritating, eccentric, damaged, difficult. That along with enormous creativity comes certain deficits in humanity, or decency. We are familiar with this trope in our business. Mozart, Van Gogh, Tarantino, Eminem … Ezra Pound said, “I have not met anyone worth a damn who was not irascible.” Well, I have — Emma Thompson. Not only is she not irascible, she’s practically a saint. There’s something so consoling about that old trope, but Emma makes you want to kill yourself because she’s a beautiful artist, she’s a writer, she’s a thinker, she’s a living, acting conscience. Emma considers carefully what the fuck she is putting out into the culture! Emma thinks, “Is this helpful?” Not, “Will it build my brand?” Not, “Will it give me billions?” Not, “Does this express me? Me! Me! My unique and fabulous self, into all eternity, in every universe, for all time!” That’s a phrase from my Disney contract. I’m serious! “Will I get a sequel out of it, or a boat? Or a perfume contract?” Ezra Pound said, “I have not met anyone worth a damn who was not irascible.” Though he would say that because he was supposedly a hideous anti-Semite. But his poetry redeems his soul. Disney, who brought joy, arguably, to billions of people, was perhaps … or had some racist proclivities. He formed and supported an anti-Semitic industry lobbying group. And he was certainly, on the evidence of his company’s policies, a gender bigot. Here’s a letter from 1938, stating his company’s policy to a young woman named Mary Ford of Arkansas, who had made application to Disney for the training program in cartooning. And I’m going to read it here in Emma’s tribute, because I know it will tickle our honoree, as she’s also a rabid man-eating feminist like me! “Dear Miss Ford, your letter of recent date has been received in the inking and painting department for reply. Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that task is performed entirely by young men. For this reason, girls are not considered for the training school. The only work open to women consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink, and then, filling in the tracing on the reverse side with paint according to directions.” When I saw the film, I could just imagine Walt Disney’s chagrin at having to cultivate P.L. Travers’ favor for the 20 years that it took to secure the rights to her work. It must have killed him to encounter a woman, an equally disdainful and superior creature, a person dismissive of his own considerable gifts and prodigious output and imagination. But when we sit in our relative positions of importance and mutual suspicion, and we cast judgment on each other’s work, we’re bound to make small mistakes and misconstrue each other’s motives. Which brings me to awards season. Which is really ridiculous. We have made so many beautiful movies this year, and to single out one seems unfair. And yet, it’s a great celebration, and I’m so proud to be here, in this group of artists. Nobody can swashbuckle the quick-witted riposte like Emma Thompson. She’s a writer. A real writer. And she has a writer’s relish for the well-chosen word. But some of the most sublime moments in Saving Mr. Banks are completely wordless. They live in the transitions, where P.L. traverses from her public face to her private space. I’m talking about her relentlessness when she has her verbal dim sum, and then it moves to the relaxation of her brow, when she retreats into the past. It’s her stillness. Her attentiveness to her younger self. Her perfect alive-ness. Her girlish alertness. These are qualities that Emma has, as a person. She has real access to her own tenderness, and it’s one of the most disarming things about her. She works like a stevedore, she drinks like a bloke, and she’s smart and crack and she can be withering in a smack-down of wits, but she leads with her heart. And she knows nothing is more funny than earnestness. So now, “An Ode to Emma, Or What Emma is Owed”: We think the Brits are brittle, they think that we are mush
They are more sentimental, though we do tend to gush
Volcanoes of emotion concealed beneath that lip
Where we are prone to guzzle, they tip the cup and sip
But when eruption bubbles from nowhere near the brain
It’s seismic, granite crumbles, the heart overflows like rain
Like lava, all that feeling melts down like Oscar gold
And Emma leaves us reeling, a knockout, truth be told Ladies and gentlemen, the entirely splendid Emma Thompson.
A brilliant speech by a brilliant woman to another brilliant woman. Thompson, a creative force in Hollywood, gives, without question, one of the best performances of the year, second only to Blanchett perhaps, deserves better than to be the center of a fake controversy that entirely misses the point of what Saving Mr. Banks is supposed to be about. Is it supposed to be an expose of the real life of PL Travers or Walt Disney? No. It is a Disney movie about a Disney movie that is designed to do what most Disney movies do: make you feel better for a few hours.
Streep is saying she is a “man-eating feminist” and so is Thompson and so was Travers. These truths do not have to exist in contradiction with the pretty lies of Saving Mr. Banks. They can all exist in unison. Movies are not our history classes. They are not supposed to take the place of our own education or our own morality or our own ability to think for ourselves. The ideas presented in the film, and the truth, can co-exist. If we continue down this road, this silly Crucible-like hysteria that erupts during Oscar season where each film is taken apart — we will have nothing left but the most bland films that star people who are mostly beyond reproach: white men. Is that what you all want?
The bigger truth about awards season, that if there is a film about women it is either dismissed (mostly) by critics unless those women are either naked or half-naked, with their legs sprung up in the air (bonus points if they aren’t wearing underwear). The more strong of female characters the film is the less chance it has in the Oscar race as its dictated today. When you think of a so-called “strong female character” first think whether her own inner trajectory plays out on screen or whether her only purpose for being on screen is as just one of the many factors that enable the male character’s trajectory to play out.
The headline for Vulture’s article where Streep’s speech can be found said ”
Read Meryl Streep’s Walt Disney–Dissing NBR Speech in Its Entirety
This is how societies break down brick by brick and how women stay exiled on the island of gossip and clucking hens. The lede here should not be that Streep dissed Disney but that she celebrated Thompson. She took a brave stand when everyone else was backing away from the debate about Saving Mr. Banks. That is the story. Walt himself is long dead. The truth about him and Travers is there in the archives for anyone to discover should they go looking.
Read what Streep said very closely and then try to get the bigger picture of what she was saying. If you come out of that speech worried that Streep might have said something that cost Thompson the Oscar you have completely missed the point. What matters here is so far beyond that. Character assassination is what really is at play this year with regards to Thompson and Saving Mr. Banks. Streep gets that. This was her chance to stand UP for Thompson. And that is exactly what she did, elegantly, fiercely and with poetry.
Finally, if you want reality don’t go to the movies.Saskatchewan RCMP have charged a 41-year-old man, saying he made threats against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over Facebook.
Christopher Hayes was arrested Tuesday in the village of Grayson, Sask., located approximately 170 kilometres east of Regina.
He was charged with one count of uttering threats. Police seized several electronic items from the man's house. He was arrested without incident.
The incident was investigated by the RCMP's National Security Enforcement Section.
"We take all complaints of this nature (threats) very seriously," Supt. Rob Cameron said in a release. "No matter who the victim is or by what means the threat is conveyed, and investigate them to their fullest potential."
Police received a complaint against the posting on March 30, and received a second complaint on July 13.
RCMP arrested and charged a man in Grayson, Sask., with uttering threats against the prime minister. (CBC) RCMP said there was no direct contact between the accused and the prime minister.
The prime minister's press secretary said the Prime Minister's Office does not comment on Trudeau's security.
The accused made his first court appearance this morning in Yorkton provincial court and was released with an undertaking and on conditions that he not use Facebook to contact the prime minister.
Crown prosecutor Fred Fisher told CBC News the substance and seriousness of the threat was enough to call for a charge.
"I can tell you the police came to us, we discussed and thought it merited a charge based on the circumstances," Fisher said, adding specific details of the threat will come out in court.
Hayes is expected to make his next court appearance on Aug. 8 in Melville provincial court.This article is over 3 years old
Government regulations to raise cost of divorce applications more than from $845 to $1,200 are ruled out by the Senate amid legal challenge by Labor
Senate strikes down Coalition's 'divorce tax' for second time in two months
The Senate has shot down regulation intended to drive up the cost of court services like divorce applications for a second time in two months after the government brought in regulations during parliament’s winter recess.
On 13 July the attorney general, George Brandis, introduced an increase to court fees, effective the next day.
The cost of divorce applications rose by more than 40%, from $845 to $1,200, leading opponents to brand it the “divorce tax”. The cost of issuing a subpoena more than doubled, from $55 to $125, and amending an application, which was previously free, now costs $125.
Similar regulation to change the fee structure of the family and federal courts had been disallowed by the Senate less than a month earlier.
Labor takes fight against 'divorce tax' to the federal court Read more
On Tuesday, Labor, the Greens and independent senator Glenn Lazarus joined forces to pass a disallowance motion in the Senate that would reverse the fee hike by 39-29 votes.
Labor’s family law spokesman, Graham Perrett, said he was “glad that the Senate banded together” to overturn attorney general George Brandis’ divorce tax.
“Only an idiot would attempt to thumb their nose at the Senate,” Perrett told Guardian Australia, adding that he was “very concerned” that Brandis had “ignored the will of the Parliament” by trying to reintroduce the price rise.
“The government must now respect the Senate’s decision and drop this unjustified and unfair tax on court users,” Greens senator Penny Wright said. “It is completely inappropriate for the government to target family breakdown as a cash cow for their flawed revenue measures. Especially when only a minor proportion of the money raised will go back to the court systems.”
“These family court fee hikes have made it harder for victims of domestic violence to seek a divorce, so I am exceptionally pleased to have been able to secure this victory for them and others who have struggled to find the extra fees,” Wright said.
“Cost is already the most common barrier to people seeking legal help, so it is appropriate that the Senate has again rejected the government’s cruel attack on the most vulnerable.”
Senate shoots down divorce fee hikes over concerns about domestic violence Read more
Labor has taken the government to federal court over the fee hike, which is expected to add more than $87m more to the budget bottom line over four years.
Legislation states that once regulation is disallowed by the Senate, similar regulation cannot lawfully be made again within six months.
The government says the new price hike – which adds $5 to the first iteration of the fee increase – is substantially different to its first legislation.
The disallowance motion will not affect a legal case brought by Labor, which aims in part to refund applicants who paid more for their court services over the last four weeks.
The federal court is expected to hand down its decision on the legality of the regulation on Thursday morning.Just as people started to think that things were getting calmer – if not exactly brighter – in the rich countries, things have become decidedly slower and more volatile in the so-called "emerging market" economies. At the centre of the (unwanted) attention at the moment is India, which is seeing a rapid outflow of capital and thus a rapid fall in the value of its currency, the rupee. But many other emerging market economies, other than China, have also seen similar outflows and weakening of currencies recently.
This is not necessarily a bad development. The currencies of many emerging market economies, especially those of Brazil's real and South Africa's rand, had been significantly over-valued, damaging their export competitiveness. Devaluation could actually help these economies put their growth on a more sustainable path.
However, people are rightly worried that too rapid flows of capital out of these countries may cause excessively fast devaluations, resulting in currency crises and thus financial crises, as happened in eastern Asia back in 1997. Situations like this can arise because the currencies of the emerging countries have been propped up by something that can quickly disappear – that is, the large inflows of speculative capital from the rich countries. Given its nature, such capital is ready to pull out at any moment, as an increasing portion of it has been doing for several months.
This is a stark reminder that things are still not well with the world economy, five years on from the outbreak of the biggest financial crisis in three generations in September 2008.
We have had such huge capital inflows into the emerging economies mainly because of quantitative easing (QE) by the central banks of the US, Britain, and other rich countries, which injected trillions of dollars into the world economy, in a desperate attempt to revive their moribund economies.
In its initial phase, QE may have had acted like an electric shot to someone who just had a cardiac arrest. But subsequently its boosting effects have been largely through the creation of unsustainable asset bubbles – in the stock market, in property markets and in commodity markets – that may burst and generate another round of financial crises. On top of that, it has caused much collateral damage to developing countries, by overvaluing their currencies, helping them generate unsustainable credit booms, and now threatening them with the prospect of currency crises.
If its effects are at best debatable and at worst laying the ground for the next round of financial crises, why has there been so much QE? It is because it has been the only weapon that the rich country governments have been willing to deploy in order to generate an economic recovery.
QE has become the weapon of choice by these governments because it is the only way in which recovery – however slow and anaemic – could be generated without changing the economic model that has served the rich and powerful so well in the past three decades.
This model is propelled by a continuous generation of asset bubbles, fuelled by complex and opaque financial instruments created by highly leveraged banks and other financial institutions. It is a system in which short-term financial profits take precedence over long-term investments in productive capabilities, and over the quality of life of employees. If the rich countries had tried to generate recovery through any other means than QE, they would have to seriously challenge this model.
Recovery driven by fiscal policy would have involved an increase in the shares of public investment and social welfare spending in national income, reducing the share going to the rich. It would have generated new public sector jobs, which would have weakened the bargaining power of capitalists by reducing unemployment.
Recovery based on a "rebalancing" of the economy would have required policies that hurt the financial sector. The financial system would have to be re-engineered to channel more money into long-term investments that raise productivity. Exchange rates would have to be maintained at a competitive level on a permanent basis, rather than at an over-valued level that the financial sector favours. There would have to be greater public investment in the training of scientists and engineers, and greater incentives for them to work in and with the industrial sector, thus shrinking the recruitment pool for the financial industry.
Given all this, it is not a big surprise that those who benefit from the status quo have persisted with QE. What is surprising is that they have actually strengthened the status quo, despite the mess they have caused. They have successfully pushed for cuts in government spending, shrinking the welfare state to the extent that even Margaret Thatcher could not manage. They have used the fear of unemployment in an environment of shrinking social safety nets to force workers to accept more unstable part-time jobs, less-secure contracts (zero-hour contracts being the most extreme example), and poorer working conditions.
But is this maintenance, or even fortification, of the ancient regime likely to continue? It may, but it may not. Greece, Spain, and other eurozone periphery countries could explode any day, given their high unemployment and deepening strains of austerity. In the US, which is considered the home of quiescent workers, the call for living wages is becoming louder, as seen in the current strikes by fast-food restaurant workers. The British are (overly) patient people, but they may change their mind when the full extent of budget cuts unfolds in the coming months.
All of these stirrings may amount to little, especially given the weakened state of trade unions, except in a few countries, and the failure of the parties on the left of centre to come up with a coherent alternative vision. But politics is unpredictable. Five years after the crisis, the real battle for the future of capitalism may be only just beginning.A man believed to be a Briton who arrived in Phuket on October 7 from Nigeria via Dubai was found dead from an unknown causes at his luxurious condominium room on Patong beach in Phuket on Thursday.
Patong hospital director Dr Sirichai Silpa-archa and Krathu district police said they were yet to confirm whether the dead man was Mr Clark Martin John Roberts, a Briton, or not although the room where the body was found three days after his death belong to Mr Roberts.
But the fact that the dead man came from Nigeria where an outbreak of Ebola has been taking place has health officials from the communicable diseases control office in Phuket to be on the alert and taken precautions.
Reporters, rescue workers and people at the condominium who were in close contact with the man and who were close to his body have been told to observe themselves if they develop fever within 21 days and to try to avoid contact with the other people.
Police said that Mr Roberts fainted on Patong beach on October 15 and was rushed to Patong hospital where he was diagnosed of having heart problem.
The body found in Mr Roberts’ room was badly decomposed as he was thought to have died three days ago.While I’m between projects, it’s interesting to see what starts to bubble up in my creative mind. Sometimes it’s plot, sometimes it’s setting. Right now it happens to be character. For some reason, I’m getting wicked insults popping into my head in a new character voice.
Wicked dialogue does not a character make. I must craft one, and hopefully I will create one to suit these lines that my hindbrain is feeding me.
So, here are some notes on character creation.
When writing, you have to know your character pretty well before you start off. A lot of the discovery of who they are happens while you’re writing them, yes, but you need to have some idea of who they are at their core before you begin.
The trimmings can evolve as you go, and it’s quite thrilling when you discover parts of a character on the fly.
But who they are deep inside is yours to lay out and set in stone before the first time they grace your page.
It is a writer’s basic duty to lay out coherent characters. If the players in your story are unbelievable, that is to say, they are untrue and your audience picks up on it, you lose all credibility as a writer.
Your plot can be genius, your settings magnificent, and your prose delightful, but if your characters give your reader pause, you’ve failed.
This is a rare case when the converse of the rule is just as true: your plot can have some holes, your setting could be a little bland, and your prose might be a bit generic, but if your characters grab your audience, buddy you’re in the door.
My first draft of this post included some examples of this, but I thought it would be better for you to discover your own. Ask yourself, are there any stories that come to mind, films, TV shows, books, anything at all, where you forgave them a few mistakes because of their characters? When you excused a lame plot hole or some flat exposition, because you were being drawn onwards by the strength of the character?
We forgive a lot if the characters ring true.
So how do we go about making believable characters?
First let’s look at where we get aspects of the character from.
From life. “People watching” is a great way to spot things to stow away in your bag o’ writerly goodness. From the smallest gesture to the way someone stands, from their accent to their dress, you can take that and run with it. You can expand this into people you know, but there is a danger there. Tuckerizing someone as an injoke is one thing, basing whole characters off of people you know is entirely another. And I think very few writers would recommend it. Let’s keep the friends we have, eh? There are plenty of people yet to be invented that we can abuse.
A common mistake for new writers is to get hung up on names.
The name of your character is mostly unimportant.
Let me say that again.
You don’t need the name before you write the character.
Use a place holder name, and for godsakes, don’t wait until you have their perfect name before writing the story. That’s an excuse and you’re fooling yourself.
I’ve heard some people advocate changing character names every ten thousand words, or every few dozen pages, or every other chapter or whatever. The idea behind this is that we don’t want to get too attached to our characters- we need to be able to hurt them in brutal ways, and if you’re all precious about them, you’re going to have a hard time doing things that will make your work better.
So rename them. Figure it out later or as you go along.
I like to pick a name and generally stick with it, but I’ve often found myself at a loss for a name at the start of something, so I use placeholder names. Ctrl+F and replace is your friend. Don’t get precious. Names are unimportant.
But don’t be clever- stupid names that draw attention to you as the writer instead of keeping your audience in the work where they should be is something to avoid. If it doesn’t make sense in the context of the story, find something ‘less cool’.
I’ll do another post about how writers intrude on the story, but for the purpose of character creation, one of the big ones is naming them.
With that out of the way, onwards.
So where do characters come from? Life, yes, but also fiction.
Writers cannot ignore the thousands of years of story telling from cultures around the world, and all the myriad of characters that have already been created. There is nothing new under the sun, but we’re all beautiful unique snowflakes, right? So there should be characters left. There will always be characters left.
The archetypes are there and you have to be aware of them. Good writers get pretty familiar with maybe half a dozen archetypes, great writers have more. These skeletons can be helpful forming a basis for your characters. The specifics of their motivations, backgrounds, and surface details change, but these archetypes exist for a reason. Use them.
As you get more and more specific with a character, the closer you come to creating a character that already exists. It’s impossible to know every single story and every single character that’s ever been created, but this is where a sometimes overlooked aspect of creating comes into play: consuming.
You have to know what’s out there. What characters are in the popular culture right now? Are you inadvertently recreating them because they got under your skin without you realizing it?
One morning, I independently invented Dexter. Good thing I already knew about Dexter, or that could have gone on longer than it did. It was one of those “smack your forehead and laugh” moments. You can search the internet, ask friends, and check out TV Tropes.
Consuming media, literature, movies, TV shows, opera, whatever, is a vital part of the creation process. You cannot write in a vacuum.
Where else do characters come from?
From yourself.
DANGER DANGER
HIGH VOLTAGE
This is very risky business. A lot of first-time writers write themselves as the main character. It’ll save you some time if you just listen when I say to NOT do that. (Other characters that are wasting your time: a writer, a writer struggling to ‘make it’, someone writing anything, especially in a coffee shop). I mean, I can’t tell you what to do… but know that agents and editors delete those stories without a second look as soon as they see those characters.
Of course, how do you write a character without putting yourself into them. I don’t know that it’s possible. Even the vilest of characters, those who I would be loathe to think I had even the slightest bit in common with, come from within me. And because I’m not just creating flat evil, as in, a bad guy who has no past and is evil personified for no reason, I know that they have motives, desires, and feelings.
Empathy is the strongest source of character creation.
Understanding why characters do what they do leads to crafting complexity into them, and this is the breath of life.
I’ll say it again. Empathy.
The best characters come from understanding. You craft their stories, and in doing so, delve into their pasts, their motivations, their thoughts and feelings.
Truly understanding a character will allow you to bring richness to their portrayal that will draw your audience in.
This seems like a good place to leave off, as this topic is rather dense. To recap:
Realistic characters are needed to tell your story. These characters come from many places: real life, people you know, characters that already exist, and yourself. Understanding your characters enables you to write them more convincingly. Understanding what characters already exist enables you to create new characters.
Well I hope this has been helpful. I do enjoy sharing my notes.
Happy writing!
Until next time dear readers, thanks for stopping by.
Heidi out.
49.261226 -123.113927
AdvertisementsPhoto: Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
Healthy coral, something that is becoming harder to find. Photo: Wikipedia, CC
A new study published in the October issue of the journal Ecology sheds a bit more light on a phenomenon that is becoming more and more common for corals around the world: Bleaching ( described as "the whitening of corals, due to stress-induced expulsion or death of symbiotic unicellular algae or due to the loss |
in Cranford, and seen without a smile."
After a while she let the book drop. It had grown dark outside, and she got up and tottered over to draw the curtains. She made her way carefully, hanging onto the bed and then the wall. They didn't like her to do it without the quad cane but she was safe enough, there wasn't room to fall. Though she had fallen once on her way to the toilet and forgotten that she had a button to call for help. The curtains were navy blue, although she was quite sure there had been a pale green blind the last time. She leaned on the window sill, looking out at the bare branches of a sycamore moving in the breeze. The moon was half-obscured by a thin veil of cloud. Where was this place? Up on the moor? Or was it somewhere along the canal? There might be birds in the branches in the morning. She must remember to come and look. She had her binoculars somewhere. She remembered insisting on holding on to them and Philip saying gently that she wouldn't have any use for them in the nursing home and Jinny saying in her gruff way that she might as well bring them if she wanted them. They must be here somewhere, unless that was in the other world. It would be very unfair if the binoculars were in one world and the tree were in the other.
If there were two worlds.
If there were two worlds, then what caused her to slide between them? They weren't two times as they were for Charlotte. It was the same year, whichever year it was. It was just that things were different, things that shouldn't have been different. She had four children, or three. There was a lift in the nursing home, or there was only a stairlift. She could remember things that couldn't simultaneously be true. She remembered Kennedy being assassinated and she remembered him declining to run again after the Cuban missile exchange. They couldn't both have happened, yet she remembered them both happening. Had she made a choice that could have gone two ways and thereafter had two lives? Two lives that both began in Twickenham in 1926 and both ended here in this nursing home in 2014 or 2015, whichever it was?
She shuffled back and looked at her notes, clipped to the end of the bed. It was February 5th 2015, and she was VC. That was definite, and good to know. She sat down but did not take up the book. It would be suppertime soon, she could hear the trolley moving down the corridor. They'd feed her and then it would be time for bed. This was the same whatever world she was in.
If she had made a choice -- well, she knew she had. She could remember as clearly as she could remember anything. She had been in that little phone box in the corridor in The Pines and Mark had said that if she was going to marry him it would have to be now or never. And she had been startled and confused and had stood there in the smell of chalk and disinfectant and girls, and hesitated, and made the decision that changed everything in her life.
2
Adam: 1933
It was July 1933 and Patsy Cowan was seven years old and they were in Weymouth for two glorious weeks. There was a band in the bandstand, and sculptures of animals made of sand, and donkeys to ride and the sea to swim in, and they were building a sand pulpit for Mr. Price to preach from in the evening. She was wearing a brown cotton bathing suit, though most of the younger children and some of the other seven-year-olds still went bare. She could remember running bare when she had been a mere child, but she liked the bathing suit. Her fine brown hair was tied into bunches on both sides of her head, and when she shook her head hard she could make them slap her cheeks. She didn't do it though, because Oswald said it made her look stupid, shaking her head for nothing. Oswald was just ten, she envied his summer birthdays. He wore long striped swimming shorts, down to his knees, and he was beginning to tan already.
They had come down by the late train on Friday night and today was Sunday, only the second whole day of the holiday, with twelve more whole days to go. They wouldn't all twelve be this glorious, Patsy knew that. The sun couldn't shine all day every day even on holiday, there was bound to be at least one rainy day. But on a rainy day Dad would take them to the museum or to an interesting old church or castle, which might not be as wonderful as a day on the beach but it was still fun. There would also be one afternoon when Dad would take Oswald to see football -- "Sorry old girl, this is a boys' afternoon out, just us men!" Dad would say, as he said every year. It did no good to argue that she loved football, or that if Oswald was going to have Dad to himself for an afternoon she should have the same. Dad had pointed out last year that she was having an afternoon with just Mum, and of course even then when she'd been only six she had known better than to complain.
They dug the pulpit with spades and with their hands. The spades had wooden handles and metal blades, and they were just like real spades except for the size. Hers was red and Oswald's was blue, and Mum said that if they lost them they needn't think they were getting any more. Mum was sitting reading on a deck chair she had paid for at the top of the beach, but Dad was right there with them, organizing all the church children building the pulpit. Patsy loved the feeling of sand between her toes and the way sand was so easily shaped and manipulated. She loved making a mark and rubbing it out. Sand was hot on top and cool underneath when you dug, and it was clean, it brushed off, or if it didn't you could easily wash it off if you went down to bathe. Sand wasn't like dirt at home. You could get as sandy as you liked and just run into the water and be all clean again.
Best of all was coming down to the beach early in the morning when the tide had washed away all the marks of the day before, and running on the hard-packed sand making footprints. The first morning Dad had brought them down, they had followed the tracks of a man and a dog, the little paw prints running in and out of the edge of the sea, until at last they caught up with them and saw that the dog was a white and black terrier and the man was just a man who said "Good morning" politely to Dad. But this morning coming down before church they had been the very first, and they had run across the great flat sand in the early morning light, "the lone and level sands stretch far away" as it said in the poem, with the waves lapping with little white edges and beyond them the sea stretching out even further away, stretching all the way to America. Dad walked along the edge of the sea looking for shells and seaweed, but the children ran barefoot and free. Patsy could run as fast as Oswald, even though he was two and a half years older. She could run faster than any of the other seven-year-olds. One day later in the week Dad would organize athletics on the beach, he had promised, and she would win, she knew she would. She could do a handstand every time and a cartwheel twice out of three times.
"This is going to be the best pulpit ever!" she said, digging enthusiastically. "Better than last year. And Mr. Price will give the best sermon ever and convert all the heathens!"
"That's right, old girl," Dad said. "But don't throw your sand out behind you without looking, you're getting it on people."
She looked around guiltily, but he was laughing, not angry, although her sand had spattered his legs. It was so nice to spend whole days with Dad like this. It only ever happened in the summer and perhaps for a day or two at Christmas. He worked so hard selling wirelesses and mending them for people. He went off on his bike before she was up in the morning and sometimes didn't come back until after she was in bed. On Sundays he didn't work, but he was usually so tired that Mum made her and Oswald tiptoe around after they came back from church. Sometimes he would rouse himself in the afternoon and take them out for a walk, or organize a ball game in the park. Then she would catch a glimpse of her summer father, the man who loved to play. He had the older children running down to the sea now with buckets, to bring water to wet the sand to shape it. Patsy dug more carefully.
"Why aren't you a minister, Dad, like Mr. Price?" she asked.
"God didn't call me that way," he replied, talking to her the way she liked, as if she were an equal.
"And He did call you to be a wireless installer?"
"Well, I learned about radio in the war, and so when I was demobbed it seemed like a good choice," he said.
That didn't seem as grand as God calling him. "Didn't God -- " she began.
"Why do you want me to be a minister anyway, Miss Patsy?" Dad interrupted.
"Ministers only work on Sundays," she said. "You'd be home with us the rest of the time."
For a moment she was afraid from the look on Dad's face that she'd said something naughty, or worse, blasphemous. Her mother shut her in the cupboard when she said anything blasphemous, though she never meant to. She knew thoughts about God and ministers had the potential to get to dangerous places. Then he threw back his head and laughed so much that all the other children laughed too, even though they hadn't been listening and didn't know what he was laughing about, and other groups on the beach, people they didn't know at all, turned their heads and looked at them. Patsy hadn't meant to be funny, but she was so relieved she had been funny by mistake and not blasphemous by mistake that she laughed too, but hers wasn't a real laugh or the infectious hilarity of the other children.
"I must tell Mum that," Dad said. "How she'll laugh! I dare say she'd not like it if I was under her feet six days a week instead of only one!"
Oswald was back with a bucket almost full of sea water. He must have been carrying it very carefully so as to avoid spilling. "Tell Mum what?" he asked.
"Patsy wants me to be a minister so I'll only have to work on Sundays!"
Oswald didn't laugh. "I'm not sure Mum would find that funny," he said.
"No, maybe you're right," Dad agreed.
"Patsy's not a baby any more. She should know that ministers work hard visiting the sick and... writing their sermons and..." it was clear that Oswald's imagination was at an end.
Dad laughed again. "It's all right old boy. I won't say anything to Mum. You're probably right that she wouldn't see the funny side."
"It's just that she wants us to be like Lady Leverside's children," Oswald said.
Dad pulled Patsy onto his lap and patted the sand for Oswald to sit next to him, which he did, setting down the heavy bucket. "She wants the best for you," he said. "For both of you. That's why she wants you to dress nicely and speak properly and all of that. Your Mum worked for Lady Leverside before we were married, and that's where she learned to take care of children. So that's how she knows how to make bathing costumes and recite poetry and all that. I didn't have the advantages you're getting. Your Gran didn't know any of the things you're having the chance to learn from your Mum."
Patsy smiled at the thought of comfortable old Gran reciting poetry. Gran cooked on the fire and made the best toffee in the world, but she wasn't a poetry sort of person somehow.
"But, while it's good that you have those advantages, this is very important, I want you to know that you're just as good as Lord Leverside's children, as good as any children in the world. You can do as much as they can, more. You can do better than them. You can go far and achieve great things."
"But they're honourable children," Patsy said. "The Honourable Letitia and the Honourable Ralph. We're not like them. Mum says we're not."
"She says she doesn't want us to be common," Oswald said.
"Like when you were playing football with the boys and you came home and said -- " Patsy started eagerly, but Oswald punched her arm.
"It's not fair repeating tales," he said.
Dad looked at him reproachfully. "It's better than hitting a girl, and one three years younger than you. That's just the kind of thing I'm talking about, where you have the chance to learn better and you should take it."
"Sorry," Oswald said. "But honestly, Dad, she shouldn't repeat things like that."
"No, Patsy, your brother is right. If he said something he shouldn't and Mum punished him, then that should be the end of it."
"Sorry," Patsy said. "I didn't mean to sneak." She put out her hand to Oswald to shake, which he did.
"But coming back to the other thing," Dad said, "The fact that they're The Honourable and you're just Master and Miss means nothing. You're every bit as good as they are, and you can go as far as they can. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"
"Adam!" Patsy said, quickly before Oswald could answer such an easy riddle. "And Eve was the lady!"
Oswald laughed. "She doesn't understand, Dad."
"But you do, don't you? You know what I'm saying. Look at it this way, did Lady Leverside bring up her children herself? No, she chose your mother to do it. You're having the same upbringing they had."
One of the other children came to ask Dad a question about the pulpit and he got up to help. Patsy sat still, crinkling her toes and feeling the sand scrunch up under them. Lady Leverside's children had seemed as far above her as the sun and the moon. Mum never said Patsy was better than they were at anything, never even as good. It was always "The Honourable Letitia would never have spoken with her mouth open..." or "forgotten her cushion..." or "come downstairs with her hair unbrushed." Patsy was used to thinking of them as paragons. She considered Dad's view that she was as good as they were, and potentially even better. Yet she knew they had six of everything, all of the best, and if they grew out of any of their clothes they had more right away, ordered from John Lewis's. She and Oswald only had one set of best clothes at a time, and only two other sets of clothes, and they were forever outgrowing them or tearing them. She tore hers climbing trees and Oswald tore his playing football or fighting with boys.
"When I'm thirteen they're going to send me away to school," Oswald said, plopping down on the sand beside her.
"Will they me?" Patsy was alarmed, even though thirteen seemed impossibly far away, almost the whole length of her lifetime.
"I don't think so, because it's really expensive and you're a girl," Oswald said. He wasn't looking at her, he was tracing a complicated design in the sand with his finger. "I think they'll send you to a day school."
"Why will they send you then?"
"Because of what Dad just said about getting on. Dad left school when he was fourteen and he's been sorry ever since. He wants me to be a gentleman, just the same as Mum does." He didn't look up, but he piled up the sand wildly over the pattern he had made.
"Like Adam," Patsy said, and for the second time didn't understand why she had made somebody laugh.
"But it's all such tosh," Oswald said. "I'd a hundred times rather be brought up by Gran and get a job at fourteen than spend my life trying to ape something I'm not."
"Why don't you tell them so, then?"
"Oh come on Pats, you know there are things you can say and things you can't."
She did know. It seemed she had always known. She wanted to do something to comfort her brother, but there wasn't anything. Gran would have hugged him, but in their house hugging was discouraged. She put her hand out again for him to shake, and he shook it solemnly.
"Come on," he said.
"Where?" she asked, getting up at once expectantly.
"You'd come anywhere with me, wouldn't you, Pats?" Oswald smiled down at her. "I must go down to the sea again!"
"The lonely sea and the sky!" she shouted.
"Anything less lonely than the sea in Weymouth on a hot Sunday morning in July is difficult to imagine," Dad said.
Later, after a bathe where she had swum ten strokes without Dad holding on, she ran on rubbery legs up to Mum's deckchair. Mum was reading the paper and looking very serious, but she put it down when she saw them and got out the towels and their clothes so they could dress nicely for lunch. Mum had sewn brightly striped beach towels into little tents with elastic around their necks so that they could take their wet things off underneath and didn't have to go into the changing huts, which were smelly and besides cost money.
Dad dried his back with a big flat towel. "Patsy's really learning to swim," he said. "You should enroll her for lessons at the baths when we get back to Twickenham. It's easier to swim in the baths," he said over his shoulder to her. "There aren't any waves to smack you in the face."
"All right," Mum said. "If she'd like it. Oswald started going when he was about this age."
"Have you had a nice peaceful morning?"
"Lovely," Mum said, though how it could be lovely sitting still in a deckchair reading Patsy couldn't imagine.
"Is there any news in the paper?" Dad asked.
Mum tutted, which she did when she was going to report on something of which she disapproved. "It seems as if the Nazis in Germany have banned all the other political parties -- made them illegal just like that. Theirs is the only party. Goodness knows how they think that's going to work when they have elections."
"I don't suppose they're planning to have elections," Dad said. "It looks to me as if that Herr Hitler intends to be Führer for life."
"And such horrible things," Mum said. Then she changed her tone completely and turned to Patsy. "Aren't you dry yet? They'll be laying out our lunch before we get back if you don't hurry. We don't want to make extra work for Mrs. Bonestell."
Oswald pulled off his towel, revealing his neat shirt and shorts underneath. "I wish we could have a picnic on the beach."
"Not on a Sunday," Mum said, reprovingly.
"We got the pulpit built," Dad said quickly. "Mr. Price will be able to get right up there and preach, and we can all sing hymns as loudly as we can. Patsy was saying he'd convert any heathen on the beach."
"I hope you built it in the right place this time," Mum said.
"We took proper notice of the tide," Dad said. "Don't worry, there won't be any of that King Canute preaching this year. Are you dressed under there yet, Patsy?"
Patsy had got her dress twisted up somehow so she couldn't find the hole for her right arm. Dad held the big towel up and Mum rapidly sorted her out. "Now let's go up and get some Sunday dinner," Dad said. "Lunch, I mean. Come on!"
Twelve and a half more days of holiday, Patsy thought, and swimming lessons when she got home. Even if Oswald did have to go away to school it wasn't for three years, and even if the Germans were acting peculiar they were a long way away. Mum and Dad were smiling at each other and Oswald was carrying the bucket and both spades, and if they were lucky there might be tinned salmon and tomatoes for lunch.
3
Oystercatchers: 1939-1944
In the end it was the same as if she had been sent away to school, because she was thirteen in 1939 and her day school was evacuated. Patty spent the war years in safe but miserable deprivation in Carlisle. There was never enough of anything, until they grew used to it and did not expect there to be. The days before the war began to seem like a utopian dream. She learned Latin and French and how to do sums in pounds, shillings and pence, she learned long division and A. E. Housman. She did well academically. She made friends but no close friends. The comparative wartime poverty of them all highlighted rather than erased the class differences. She remained athletic but not good at team sports. She excelled in tennis and rowing and swimming, which gained her some popularity as she moved up the school.
In due course Oswald left his minor public school at seventeen, and went straight into the RAF, where he ended up in Bomber Command. He was killed in the autumn of 1943 flying a raid over Germany. Patty went home to Twickenham that Christmas, all heartiness and perpetual appetite, in the middle of a late growth spurt. She found her mother trying to be proud of her heroic son but succeeding only in being desolate. Her father looked ten years older. She knew she was no compensation to them for Oswald's loss, and did not try. Her own loss was constantly with her.
On Boxing Day she dragged her father out for a walk. "Come on, Dad, got to blow off the cobwebs!"
He was almost silent as they walked their familiar circuit, up through the park, where they had collected conkers every year, around the church and back down the hill, past the bushes where they always picked blackberries. The absence of Oswald was almost deafening. "How are you doing, old girl?" her father asked at last.
"Oh, you know," she said. "How about you, Dad?"
"I do miss that boy," he said, and his face crumpled up.
"And how's work?" she asked, embarrassed, desperate to change the subject.
"You know I can't talk about my war work!" he said.
It was the last time she saw him alive. He was killed a few months later by a direct hit from a V-1, on the day she took the Oxford entrance exams. She went up to Oxford for a visit and was awarded an Exhibition to St. Hilda's College, which would provide her with enough money to live on while she studied, without need for parental support. She called to see her mother on her way back to school, spending an uncomfortable night in her old room. There was very little for her to eat, and she had a long complicated train ride ahead of her. Her mother took the triumph of having been accepted and awarded the Exhibition entirely for granted. "They'll be taking more women because so many men are out because of the war," was all she said. After Patty's obligatory words on meeting, her father was not mentioned.
Going upstairs early to bed, clutching a hot water bottle for warmth in the cold spring, she quietly opened the door to Oswald's old room and found it stripped bare even of the furniture and carpets. Only the paler patches on the wallpaper where his photographs had hung showed that he had ever been there at all. In her own cold bed, where there was not enough light to read, she wondered how much of a mark Oswald had left on life. He had broken their parents' hearts, and helped her grow up. (Almost eighteen and newly accepted at St. Hilda's, she felt thoroughly grown up.) He had probably cheered his comrades in the RAF. She wondered if he had had a girlfriend. She had seen so little of him in the last few years, both of them away from home, and the war. And of course, though she didn't like to think of it, he had thoroughly changed the lives of the people whom he had bombed. She thought of factories destroyed that would not make bombs that would not kill people the way her father had been killed. She thought of planes damaged by Oswald's attacks so that raids took place later and killed different people, or didn't take place at all. She tried not to think of houses in Germany falling and crushing their inhabitants like the bombed-out houses she had seen in Twickenham and Oxford. Oswald had done his best, as her father had in two wars now, while she had done nothing. She had been a child, but the war was still on and she was proposing more study, not war work.
The train journey the next day was even more gruelling than she had expected. The main line north had been bombed and not yet mended, so the train crept around by branch lines, last in priority after troop trains and even goods trains. At Rugby an American soldier got on and tried to flirt with Patty, who had no idea how to respond and stood frozen until he apologized and said he had thought she was older than she was. She was about to have her eighteenth birthday. She knew other girls her age flirted and joked and were at ease with men.
At Lancaster, which should have been five hours from London but which had been eleven, the train came to a permanent halt. She stood on the platform of the Victorian station, part of a group of stranded travellers. "There's nothing going north tonight," the guard said. "Not unless you want to go around by the Cumbrian Coast line. There's a train just starting for Barrow, and it'll go on up that way. But you'd do better stopping the night here."
"Does it go to Carlisle?" somebody asked.
"Yes, all the way round the coast to Carlisle. It's slow like, but it gets there in the end."
Patty climbed into the little train which rattled along the rails. It was full of workers in overalls making for the Vickers yards at Barrow-in-Furness. One of them, a gray-haired man with a lined face, prodded his younger companion into giving Patty his seat. "Can't you see the young lady's tuckered out?"
Patty sat gratefully. "I am. I've been travelling all day."
"Where have you come from then?" the man asked.
"London."
"That's a step! What took you there?"
"I had an interview yesterday at an Oxford college, and I spent the night with my mother just outside London."
"Oxford!" The man was gratifyingly impressed. "An Oxford scholar! You must be a brainy one then."
Patty smiled. "They're taking more women because the men are off at the war. I've been wondering whether I should go even so, or whether I should be doing war work."
"If you have the chance to better yourself you should take it," he said, and though his manner was completely different he reminded her of her father. "I'm a fitter, and I've done as well for myself as I can. Now our Col who gave you his seat, he's a fitter too, but he's taking night classes and after the war he means to get on."
"Your son?" she asked.
"My nephew," he replied, and was silent a moment, then changed the subject. "Now, where are you going tonight? Are you going to school?"
"Yes, back to my school. It's been evacuated to Carlisle."
"Carlisle! You won't get there tonight!" As if to emphasize his words the train slowed to a stop.
"The guard on the platform in Lancaster said this train went around the coast to Carlisle," Patty said.
"Well, so it does, but not until tomorrow. I don't know if we'll be in Barrow before midnight, but whenever we get there the train will stop there until the morning and go on to Carlisle then. Tom, what time does the train go out to Carlisle in the morning?"
The man addressed had a little rabbitty moustache. He pulled a booklet out of his pocket. "Ten oh eight," he said after a moment's perusal. "Why's that, Stan, what do you want with going to Carlisle?"
"It's not me, it's the young lady here. They told her in Lancaster she could get to Carlisle by this train, but it's not so is it?"
All the men looked at Patty, who blushed under their attention.
"Well, whatever they told her she won't get further than Barrow until ten oh eight tomorrow morning. You'd have done better to have stopped in Lancaster, lass," Tom said.
"Don't worry, you can stay with my Flo and me," Stan said reassuringly. "Flo will make you up a bed in no time and find something for your supper too, as I expect you're hungry."
"I'm always hungry," Patty said, sincerely, but all the men laughed.
She slept that night in a worker's cottage in Barrow-in-Furness. She woke early to the sound of seagulls calling. She had not known Barrow was by the sea. She opened the blackout cautiously and saw gray waves by the gray daylight. It was just before seven in the morning. She dressed quickly. The room was a boy's room with a carefully made hanging model of a Spitfire and framed amateur perspective drawings of birds. She wondered where that boy was, dead or away at the war? She remembered Stan's face when he had said that Col was his nephew. She went downstairs. Flo was in the kitchen already, making up the fire. "You're an early bird, Patty," she said. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
"You've been so kind, and I would like a cup of tea, but I just saw from my window that we're by the sea. I haven't seen the sea properly since before the war, and I thought I might just slip out quickly for a walk now, first, before I do anything." As she said it Patty thought she was being silly, but she remembered the clean-swept sand and the sound of the sea.
Flo looked skeptical. "It isn't the proper sea, just the bay, like. You need to go around to Morecambe for the proper sea with a bit of a beach and things to do."
"There wouldn't be anything to do at this time of the morning anyway. I just want to run down and see it."
"Well it's right there at the bottom of the street, for what it's worth," Flo said.
Patty pulled on her coat and went out. The wind was gusting and the sky was brightening a little. The cords of an empty flagpole were clapping repetitively, a solitary empty sound.
As Flo had said, there was no proper beach. The waterfront was just a narrow shelf of stones and broken shells where the waves were breaking. Out across the bay she could see the shadow of the other shore. It couldn't be more different from the blue sky and limitless horizon of Weymouth before the war. Yet still the waves ran in endlessly and comfortingly on the strand. In and back, each a little closer, breaking in a rush of spray, and then the sound of the shingle being sucked back, drowned as the next wave came forward, each wave different and each the same. The sea was as new as the morning, and yet the same sea as when she had been a child and Oswald and her father still alive, and the waves ran in and back as they had been doing all the time since she had last seen them.
Above the seagulls circled and called. Nobody else was down by the water. Patty felt herself taking deeper breaths. There were other birds at the edge of the waves, not seagulls, black and white birds with sharp beaks.
She crouched down. It was too cold to consider sitting on the pebbles. She did not throw a stone because she didn't want to hurt or frighten the birds. She watched them wading in the shallow water at the edge of the sea. It felt like a blessing being there and watching them. She remembered Mr. Price preaching from the pulpit they had built for him one of those summer Sundays, not the King Canute Sunday, and not the day her father had quoted "When Adam delved," some other ordinary holiday Sunday. "You can always bring your troubles to Jesus, and you can bring him your happiness too. Jesus is always there for you. Jesus loves you, loves you, in your griefs and your joys. God is your father, everybody's father. He loves you like a father. If you turn to him in your troubles, God can help."
In recent years she had grown away from the simple piety of her childhood. In school many of the girls mocked at the way the teachers hypocritically mouthed religious sentiments, and some of that slopped over into mocking Christianity itself. And the war had lasted such a long time, and taken so much from her. But the sea was still here, and just like it God was still here, waiting patiently, although she hadn't been paying attention. Jesus was there, and loved her, and the sea was there, endlessly going in and out. She had lost her earthly father and brother, but she still had her heavenly father. And of course they were not just gone, they were with God. In a sense she still had Dad and Oswald. She had the hope of seeing them again. Tears came to her eyes and she let them spill down her cheeks. There was nobody there but the sea and the seabirds. She felt as if she had been given a great gift.
Back in Stan and Flo's kitchen they had breakfast just ready: Cumberland sausage and fried bread and strong tea with milk and sugar. "We'd give you an egg if we could," Flo said.
"Sausage is more than enough. I know that's from your ration," Patty said.
"Sausage makes the meat go further," Flo said.
Stan said grace unselfconsciously, as he had the night before. Patty's "Amen" was less automatic and more heartfelt than it had been then, but nobody remarked on it.
"Did you find what you were looking for down by the sea, then?" Flo asked as she started to cut her sausage.
"More than I was looking for," Patty replied as soon as her mouth was empty.
"More?" Stan asked.
Patty couldn't speak.
"She said she hadn't seen the sea since before the war," Flo said.
"Reckon it might be a thing you could miss at that," Stan said.
"What are those black and white birds with pointed beaks that run along the edge of the water?" Patty asked.
"Why, those would be oystercatchers," Stan said after a moment's pause. "Do you like birds then?"
"I don't know much about them."
Stan got up and went to the bookshelves above the big wireless in the corner of the kitchen. He pulled down a big green book and flicked through it to a sketch of the bird she had seen. "One of those, like?"
"Yes, that's it!" she was delighted.
"Our Martin was very fond of birdwatching. It's a nice hobby for a boy. Doesn't cost much."
"I can see this would be a good place for it," she said. "And I'm sure my brother would have loved it, though Twickenham wouldn't be so good."
"You'd be surprised how many birds you can see in a suburb," Stan said.
"That's Martin's room you were sleeping in," Flo said. "He's in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. We don't hear from him half as often as we'd like."
"At least he's still alive," Patty said. "My brother -- "
"There's no call to upset yourself," Flo said, and put a hand on her shoulder.
"No reason birdwatching wouldn't be a nice hobby for a girl too," Stan said. "I think we have a beginner book here that our Martin grew out of long ago." He pulled out another much slimmer book. "You take this, and that'll be a start."
"You've already been so kind," Patty said.
"Now I have to get off to work, but you'll find your way back to the station all right, won't you?" Stan said, finishing up his breakfast.
"I will. And I can never thank you enough for taking me in, and the book, and... and restoring my faith in human nature," Patty said.
"You think of us when you're an Oxford scholar," Stan said. "And we'll think of you. And when Martin comes home we'll tell him he had a girl in his bed when he was far away!"
4
Sculling: 1944-1946
When first Patty went up to Oxford she threw herself into the Christian Union and her newly rediscovered love of God. All her friends were drawn from Christian Union circles, which were happy to include her. Although she remained shy and awkward, for the first time in her life she felt she belonged. It was the autumn of 1944, the Education Act had been passed, and free and equal access to education for everybody was for the first time a reality. The invasion of Europe had begun in June with the Normandy landings, and although she was no longer so entirely riveted to the radio for news updates as things dragged out, it seemed finally possible to imagine that the war might one day be over. There was a spirit of optimism and the sense that a better world was coming. Meanwhile the petty daily inconveniences of the war ground on, with everything in short supply. Oxford was full of women and cripples -- men injured in the war. Patty rowed both in the women's eights and alone. She went on outings organized by the Christian Union. She read Milton and struggled with Old English. She worked hard. Her essays got unspectacular but good marks.
VE Day came and Hitler died in his bunker, and although the war with Japan ground on, there was a sense that everyone was more than ready to be done with the whole thing and move on. Then in the summer the Americans dropped |
— Donuts Yes Yes.jobs Employment For websites with job opportunities and job listings.[77] Employ Media No Yes.joy Amazon Registry Services, Inc.[47].kim Kim (Korean surname) — Afilias Unknown Yes.kitchen food industry and remodeling — Donuts[donuts 87] Yes Yes
L [ edit ]
M [ edit ]
N, O [ edit ]
P, Q [ edit ]
R [ edit ]
S [ edit ]
T, U, V [ edit ]
W, X, Y, Z [ edit ]
Chinese [ edit ]
Name Chinese term Translation Restrictions Operator IDN DNSSEC.shouji 手机 shŏujī mobile phone QIHOO 360 TECHNOLOGY CO. LTD..tushu 图书 túshū books Amazon Registry Services, Inc..wanggou 网购 wǎnggòu online shopping Amazon Registry Services, Inc..weibo 微博 wēibó microblogging Sina Corporation.xihuan 喜欢 xǐhuān like QIHOO 360 TECHNOLOGY CO. LTD.
French [ edit ]
German [ edit ]
Hindi [ edit ]
Name Translation Restrictions Operator IDN DNSSEC.desi Hindi for the peoples and cultures of South Asia
See also Desi — Desi Networks Unknown Yes.shiksha Hindi for "education". — Afilias Unknown Yes
Italian [ edit ]
Portuguese [ edit ]
Name Translation Restrictions Operator IDN DNSSEC.bom good Núcleo de Informação e Coordenação do Ponto BR - NIC.br.passagens ticket Travel Reservations SRL
Spanish [ edit ]
Internationalized generic top-level domains [ edit ]
All of these TLDs are internationalized domain names (IDN) and support second-level IDNs.
Notes: general remarks and intended use
DNSSEC: presence of DS records for Domain Name System Security Extensions
DNS Name IDN Language Script Transliteration English Translation Notes DNSSEC xn--4gbrim[112] موقع. Arabic Arabic mawqiʿ "site" or "location" Open TLD Yes xn--fhbei[112].كوم Arabic kūm com Owned by: VeriSign Sarl [47] xn--mgbb9fbpob[112].موبايلي Arabic mūbāylī My mobile (phone) Owned by: GreenTech Consultancy Company W.L.L.[47] xn--mgbi4ecexp[112].كاثوليك Arabic kāthūlīk Catholic Owned by: Pontificium Consilium de Comunicationibus Socialibus (PCCS) (Pontifical Council for Social Communication) [47] xn--ngbc5azd[112] شبكة. Arabic Arabic shabaka "network" Open TLD Yes xn--ngbe9e0a[112].بيتك Arabic baytak your home Owned by: Kuwait Finance House [47] xn--mgbab2bd[112] بازار. Persian Arabic bâzâr "market", "bazaar" Open TLD Yes
DNS Name IDN Language Script Transliteration English Translation Notes DNSSEC xn--3ds443g[112].在线 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) zàixiàn "online" Open TLD.
The Chinese Government quickly bought 20,000 internationalized subdomains for localities.[113] Yes xn--fiq228c5hs[112].中文网 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) Zhōngwén wǎng "(written) Chinese (language) network" Open TLD.
The Chinese Government quickly bought 20,000 IDN for localities.[113] Yes xn--ses554g[112].网址 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) wǎngzhǐ "network address" or "website" Open TLD Yes xn--5tzm5g[112].网站 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) wǎngzhàn "website" Open TLD Yes xn--io0a7i[112].网络 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) wǎngluò "network" Open TLD Yes xn--55qx5d[112].公司 Chinese Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) gōngsī "business organization" or "company" Open TLD Yes xn--czru2d[112].商城 Chinese Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) shāngchéng "mall" Open TLD Yes xn--nqv7f[112].机构 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) jīgòu "agency" Open TLD Yes xn--6qq986b3xl[112].我爱你 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) wǒ ài nǐ "I love you" Open TLD Yes xn--czr694b[112].商标 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) shāngbiāo "trademark" Open TLD Yes xn--rhqv96g[112].世界 Chinese Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) shìjiè "world" Open TLD Yes xn--3bst00m[112].集团 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) jítuán "conglomerate" Open TLD Yes xn--30rr7y[112].慈善 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) Císhàn "philanthropy" Open TLD Yes xn--45q11c[112].八卦 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) Bāguà "gossip" Open TLD Yes xn--55qw42g[112].公益 Chinese Chinese (Simplified) Gōngyì "philanthropy" Open TLD Yes
Other script [ edit ]
DNS Name IDN Language Script Transliteration English Translation Notes DNSSEC xn--i1b6b1a6a2e[112].संगठन Hindi Devanagari saṅgaṭhana "organization" Open TLD Yes xn--11b4c3d[112].कॉम Hindi Devanagari kom com xn--c2br7g[112].नेट Hindi Devanagari net net xn--mk1bu44c[112].닷컴 Korean Hangul datkeom / tatk'ŏm dotcom xn--t60b56a[112].닷넷 Korean Hangul datnet / tatnet dotnet xn--9dbq2a[112].קום Hebrew Hebrew qwm "com" Open TLD Yes xn--q9jyb4c[112].みんな Japanese Hiragana minna everyone Open TLD [114] Yes xn--1ck2e1b[112].セール Japanese Katakana sēru sale Owned by: Amazon Registry Services, Inc.[47] xn--bck1b9a5dre4c[112].ファッション Japanese Katakana fasshon fashion xn--cck2b3b[112].ストア Japanese Katakana sutoa store xn--eckvdtc9d[112].ポイント Japanese Katakana pointo point xn--gckr3f0f[112].クラウド Japanese Katakana kuraudo cloud xn--tckwe[112].コム Japanese Katakana komu com Owned by: VeriSign Sarl [47] xn--42c2d9a[112].คอม Thai Thai khom com
Geographic top-level domains [ edit ]
Name: DNS name
Entity: Target geographic area
Notes: general remarks
IDN: support for internationalized domain names (IDN)
DNSSEC: presence of DS records for Domain Name System Security Extensions
Africa [ edit ]
Asia [ edit ]
Europe [ edit ]
North America [ edit ]
Oceania [ edit ]
South America [ edit ]
Internationalized geographic top-level domains [ edit ]
Brand top-level domains [ edit ]
Name: DNS name
Entity: company and/or brand
Notes: general remarks
IDN: support for internationalized domain names (IDN)
DNSSEC: presence of DS records for Domain Name System Security Extensions
Internationalized brand top-level domains [ edit ]
Special-Use Domains [ edit ]
ICANN/IANA has created some Special-Use domain names which are meant for special technical purposes. ICANN/IANA owns all of the Special-Use domain names.[246]
Name Entity Notes IDN DNSSEC.example Not installed as a domain name, but usable in text as an example.
example.com, example.net and example.org are also reserved for this purpose but are active sites. Unknown.invalid Not installed as a domain name, but usable in testing as a domain which wouldn't work. Unknown.local Local network Unknown.localhost Points back to own computer Unknown.onion Connection to the Tor network Unknown.test Meant for testing DNS software Unknown
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag Domain registry is operated by United TLD Holdco Ltd. t/a Rightside Registry, a subsidiary of the Rightside Group. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Operated by Charleston Road Registry, Inc., a subsidiary of Google. See [2] a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p A subsidiary of Minds + Machines Group (formerly Top Level Domain Holdings.) ^ Operating as Afilias Domains No. 5 Limited.
^ Operating as dotCricket ^ Operating as Blue Sky Registry
^ Operating as Half Oaks, LLC ^ Operating as Knob Town, LLC ^ Operating as Steel Falls, LLC ^ Operating as Baxter Hill, LLC ^ Operating as Half Hallow, LLC ^ Operating as Grand Hollow, LLC ^ Operating as Over Galley, LLC ^ Operating as Atomic Madison, LLC ^ Operating as Spring Cross, LLC ^ Operating as Half Sunset, LLC ^ Operating as Atomic Maple, LLC ^ Operating as Delta Dynamite, LLC ^ Operating as Delta Mill, LLC ^ Operating as Foggy Hollow, LLC ^ Operating as Goose Cross, LLC ^ Operating as Wild Corner, LLC ^ Operating as Delta Lake, LLC ^ Operating as New Falls, LLC ^ Operating as Tin Mill, LLC ^ Operating as Sand Cover, LLC ^ Operating as Holly Fields, LLC ^ Operating as Snow Sky, LLC ^ Operating as Black Corner, LLC ^ Operating as Fox Shadow, LLC ^ Operating as Goose Park, LLC ^ Operating as Steel Lake, LLC ^ Operating as Puff Willow, LLC ^ Operating as Trixy Cover, LLC ^ Operating as Fox Orchard, LLC ^ Operating as Silver Avenue, LLC ^ Operating as Pine Mill, LLC ^ Operating as Pine House, LLC ^ Operating as Fox Dynamite, LLC ^ Operating as Magic Woods, LLC ^ Operating as Koko Lake, LLC ^ Operating as Snow Shadow, LLC ^ Operating as Binky Frostbite, LLC ^ Operating as Spring Way, LLC ^ Operating as Pine Fest, LLC ^ Operating as Sand Sunset, LLC ^ Operating as Steel Station, LLC ^ Operating as Tin Birch, LLC ^ Operating as John Edge, LLC ^ Operating as Dash Park, LLC ^ Operating as Half Trail, LLC ^ Operating as Extra Madison, LLC ^ Operating as Holly Hill, LLC ^ Operating as Sugar Cross, LLC ^ Operating as Brice Way, LLC ^ Operating as Spring Madison, LLC ^ Operating as Binky Birch, LLC ^ Operating as Romeo Canyon. ^ Operating as Snow Oaks, LLC ^ Operating as Corn Station, LLC ^ Operating as Trixy Park, LLC ^ Operating as Pioneer Maple, LLC ^ Operating as Spring Falls, LLC ^ Operating as Magic Pass, LLC ^ Operating as Victor Beach, LLC ^ Operating as Atomic Pipe, LLC ^ Operating as Just Maple, LLC ^ Operating as Cotton Cypress, LLC ^ Operating as Just Cover, LLC ^ Operating as Fox Woods, LLC ^ Operating as Brice Orchard, LLC ^ Operating as Fox Station, LLC ^ Operating as Half Cypress, LLC ^ Operating as John Dale, LLC ^ Operating as John Castle, LLC ^ Operating as Lone Fields, LLC ^ Operating as Sugar House, LLC ^ Operating as Goose Sky, LLC ^ Operating as Black Cover, LLC ^ Operating as Over Madison, LLC ^ Operating as Corn Sunset, LLC ^ Operating as Snow Moon, LLC ^ Operating as Pioneer Cypress, LLC ^ Operating as Silver Glen, LLC ^ Operating as John Madison, LLC ^ Operating as Goose Woods, LLC ^ Operating as Sugar Park, LLC ^ Operating as Outer House, LLC ^ Operating as Outer Maple, LLC ^ Operating as Pioneer Willow, LLC ^ Operating as Wild Way, LLC ^ Operating as Holly Glen, LLC ^ Operating as Just Goodbye, LLC ^ Operating as Pine Moon, LLC ^ Operating as Victor Trail, LLC ^ Operating as Trixy Oaks, LLC ^ Operating as John McCook, LLC ^ Operating as Big Fest, LLC ^ Operating as Hidden Frostbite, LLC ^ Operating as June Woods, LLC ^ Operating as John Goodbye, LLC ^ Operating as Fern Pass, LLC ^ Operating as Grand Glen, LLC ^ Operating as Trixy Manor, LLC ^ Operating as Magic Glen, LLC ^ Operating as Sea Goodbye, LLC ^ Operating as Sugar Glen, LLC ^ Operating as Sea Corner, LLC ^ Operating as Foggy Sky, LLC ^ Operating as Foggy Moon, LLC ^ Operating as Snow Galley, LLC ^ Operating as Spring Tigers, LLC ^ Operating as Magic Birch, LLC ^ Operating as Big Pass, LLC ^ Operating as Grand Island, LLC ^ Operating as Big Hollow, LLC ^ Operating as Lone Sunset, LLC ^ Operating as Binky Glen, LLC ^ Operating as Snow Avenue, LLC ^ Operating as Little Galley, LLC ^ Operating as Fox Castle, LLC ^ Operating as Binky Galley, LLC ^ Operating as Fern Madison, LLC ^ Operating as Ruby Town, LLC ^ Operating as Silver Cover, LLC ^ Operating as Atomic Fields, LLC ^ Operating as Half Falls, LLC ^ Operating as Grand Orchard, LLC ^ Operating as Tin Avenue, LLC ^ Operating as Dash Cypress, LLC ^ Operating as Victor Frostbite, LLC ^ Operating as Delta Orchard, LLC ^ Operating as New Cypress, LLC ^ Operating as Outer Moon, LLC ^ Operating as Auburn Bloom, LLC ^ Operating as Pioneer Tigers, LLCScience Shorts 510.486.4014 •
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Previous studies have shown that breast cancer survivors who meet the current exercise recommendations (2.5 hours of moderate intensity physical activity per week) are at 25% lower risk for dying from breast cancer. New research from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and reported in the International Journal of Cancer suggests that exceeding the recommendations may provide greater protection, and that running may be better than walking.
The study, by Berkeley Lab’s Paul Williams of the lab’s Life Sciences Division, followed 986 breast cancer survivors as part of the National Runners’ and Walkers’ Health Study. Thirty-three of the 714 walkers and 13 of the 272 runners died from breast cancer over 9 years. When analyzed together, their risk for breast cancer mortality decreased an average of 24% per metabolic equivalent (MET) hours per day of exercise, where one MET hour equals a little less than a mile of brisk walking or about two-thirds of a mile of running.
However, when the runners and walkers were looked at separately, there was significantly less mortality in those who ran than walked. The runners’ risk for breast cancer mortality decreased over 40% per MET hour per day. Runners that averaged over 2 and a quarter miles per day were at 95% lower risk for breast cancer mortality than those that did not meet the current exercise recommendations. In contrast, the walkers’ risk for breast cancer mortality decreased a non-significant 5% per MET hour per day.
Williams cautions, however, that this study doesn’t disprove the benefits of walking because the number of subjects was small compared to previous research showing a benefit. However, he does believe that the research shows that exceeding the current exercise recommendations is probably better than simply meeting them, and that running may be better than walking.
“If I were a breast cancer survivor, I would certainly consider running or some other vigorous exercise over walking, and I wouldn’t just be doing the minimum, with the consequences and potential benefit being so great,” he adds
Previous research from the national study showed that running was more effective than walking for weight loss. For many health benefits, however, running and walking appear to give the same benefits for the same amount of energy expenditure. These include lower risk for coronary heart disease, diabetes, hip replacements, as well as brain cancer. Running and walking also seem to be equally beneficial in the primary prevention of breast cancer.
The National Runners’ and Walkers’ Health Studies were supported by a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
The IJC study is available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.28740/abstract
# # #
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.Commandline mode
When you press : or / in Vim, you go into commandline mode. This opens up a prompt at the bottom of the screen, where you can enter a command or a search pattern.
In commandline mode, you can press ctrl-p to go backwards and ctrl-n to go forwards through your command history. The up and down arrow cursor keys also work.
command action ctrl-p Show previous historical command/search ctrl-n Show next historical command/search ctrl-f Switch from commandline mode to the commandline window
If you need to make extensive edits to a command, change to the commandline window by pressing ctrl-f.
Note that ctrl-f is the default, but it can be customized using the cedit option. Read :help cedit for more information.
The commandline window
The commandline window shows your last 20 search patterns or commands. You can move up and down through them with the k and j keys, and when you press <enter> it executes the command underneath the cursor.
The cool thing about the command-line window is that it’s a regular Vim buffer, so all of the editing commands that you are used to are available to you. This makes it extremely useful if you need to iterate on a search pattern.
command action q/ Open the commandline window with history of searches q: Open the commandline window with history of commands ctrl-f Switch from commandline mode to the commandline window
Note that you can customize the number of commands that Vim remembers with the history setting.
Replacing prime marks with curly quotes
In the video, I use the following example as a demonstration:
This string contains a 'quoted' word. This string contains 'two' quoted 'words'. This'string doesn't make things easy'.
My intention is to replace the prime marks with curly double quotes, so that it looks like this:
This string contains a “quoted” word. This string contains “two” quoted “words”. This “string doesn't make things easy”.
To create a suitable search pattern, I went through the following iterations:
\v'.+' \v'[^']+' \v'('\w|[^'])+' \v'(('\w|[^'])+)'
The final pattern works for each of my test cases, so I can use it for a substitution command as follows:
/\v'(('\w|[^'])+)' :%s//“\1”/gc
Here, I’ve left the search field blank in the substitution command, which tells Vim to use the most recent search. Alternatively, I could hard code the search pattern into the substitution command:
:%s/\v'(('\w|[^'])+)'/“\1”/gc
When making this substitution on an entire document, I use the c flag so that I can inspect each substitution before either doing it or skipping it.
Homework
Note that this substitution command is not a complete solution for replacing prime marks with curly double quotes. It works for my 3 test cases, but there are other situations where it will fail. Here is one:
This string doesn't contain any quotes, isn't it.
Your homework, should you choose to accept it, is to refine the search pattern so that it handles this case appropriately. See if you can think up other failing test cases, and hone the substitution command to work for those as well.
Further readingMaking healthy choices while eating on the go can be tough. Sometimes potato chips just sound so good. But despite their convenience, pre-packaged goodies (and even homemade snacks) are often packed with sugar, sodium, and other ingredients to be wary of. The good news is that with a little preparation and the right ingredients, snack time can be healthy, tasty, and hassle-free.
1. Caramelized Pumpkin Seeds
Autumn means pumpkin-flavored everything, but why stop when the trees are finally bare? Instead of grabbing another Pumpkin Spice Latte, bake a batch of pumpkin seeds. They can be made sweet or savory, and are packed with vitamins either way, making them ideal to grab as a quick, crunchy snack.
2. Dark Chocolate Coconut Protein Balls
Protein powder is easy to pack in your bag, but mixing it solely with water isn't always as satisfying as making a blended protein shake. To get a protein fix and some flavor without the need for a blender, try protein balls instead. Full of healthy fats and chocolate (yum), this gluten-free and paleo snack will provide a boost of energy to last all day (and they'll last all day in your bag, too).
3. Homemade Turkey Jerky
There's a reason campers carry this protein-filled snack: Jerky is great fuel for a long, active day, and it can withstand long treks in any temperature (talk about sturdy.) To keep the chewy snack healthy, opt for turkey instead of beef—it'll keep fat and sodium to a minimum.
4. ips Egg White Chips
Those in pursuit of a protein power snack should look no further. These egg white chips have seven grams of protein per serving and come in awesome flavors like white cheddar and barbeque. Snacking on crispy egg whites may not sound as appealing as chowing down on a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, but they happen to taste pretty darn good.
5. Annie Chun's Seaweed Snacks
Seaweed is quite the superfood: It's full of antioxidants, calcium, and tons of vitamins and minerals. But while the health benefits are many, its slimy texture doesn't appeal to everyone. Annie Chun's Seaweed Snacks, however, are crunchy and come in multiple flavors (brown sugar, anyone?), so the snack tastes less like algae, and more like a small slice heaven.
6. Triple Layered Apple Sandwich
Apples are great alone, but they're even better when layered with dried fruit, almond butter, and nutritious seeds like chia and sesame. Not to mention the fiber and protein in this mini meal will keep even the hungriest of appetites satisfied for hours.
7. Trail Mix
We love trail mix at Greatist—in fact, we eat it daily. But the tasty mix of nuts, fruit, and other goodies can be a dangerfood (not to mention easy to overeat). Luckily, there are several tricks for keeping it healthy, like buying pre-portioned bags, storing it in single-serve bags, or whipping up one of these 21 healthier trail mix recipes at home.
8. Fruit and Dip
Many fruits don't require a refrigerator and taste great with a dip like nut butter. Simply pick a dipper of choice (apples and bananas are always winners), put a few scoops of nut butter in a small Tupperware, and hit the road. Worried about the ripeness of your banana? Speed things up by packing it in a paper bag.
9. Mango Popcorn Balls
Often thought of as a buttery movie staple to stay away from, popcorn is actually a great snack to have on hand—and even better when in ball form. (It's a whole grain, after all.) But like many items on this list, preparation is key. We suggest skipping the butter and adding nuts and fruits instead. Not a mango fan? Try swapping in dried cranberries, cherries, or anything seasonal.
10. Dark Chocolate
It's true: chocolate can be a healthy snack. The key is sticking to dark varieties and pairing it with a healthy sidekick, like clementines or pomegranate seeds. Just try not to eat the entire bar. It's all about moderation, after all.
11. Energy Bites
We made these energy-packed delights and can say firsthand that they are awesome. Filled with sunflower seed butter, blueberries, oats, agave, and more, they're the perfect healthy treat (or pre-workout bite if heavy cardio is the goal). The only downside? They're almost too good.
12. Spicy Roasted Chickpeas
Chips are an easy go-to snack, but few have substantial nutritional value. (Sigh, we'll miss you, Cheetos.) Instead, satisfy crunch cravings by noshing on a protein-filled bowl of roasted chickpeas, which can be seasoned to suit all taste buds. Love spice? Layer it on. Prefer sweet? That works, too.
13. Open-Faced Rice Cake Sandwich
PB&J is a lunchtime staple, but sometimes we like to change things up. To lighten the classic and add some crunch, sub rice cakes for bread. We also like topping them with banana slices and cinnamon or honey instead of jam.
14. Trader Joes Green Bean Chips
Baking veggie chips can be fun, but there are times when buying them is simply easier. Our store-bought favorite? Lightly Salted Crunchy Green Beans from Trader Joes. Filling up on greens has never tasted so good. Just beware of eating the entire bag in one sitting.
15. Dried Fruit
Fresh fruit is awesome, but it'd be pretty darn difficult to cut and eat a mango while commuting. Avoid the mess and reap the nutritional benefits by packing dried fruit instead. Just make sure to buy unsweetened, as some store-bought varieties can have up to 25 grams of sugar per serving. Excess sugar consumption can have some not-so-sweet consequences like type 2 diabetes and heart disease Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among adults with type 2 diabetes. Bleich, SN, Wang, YC. Department of Health Policy and Management. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD. Diabetes Care. 2011 Mar; 34(3): 551-5. Dietary sugars intake and cardiovascular health: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Johnson, RK, Appel, LJ, Brands, M, et al. Circulation. 2009 Sep; 120 (11): 1011-20..
16. Mary's Gone Crackers
Thanks to the rise in popularity of gluten-free diets, finding wheat-free products is no longer so difficult. What is difficult is finding ones that are both healthy and tasty. Mary's Gone Crackers, however, are both. Made with brown rice, flax, and other gluten-free grains, the crackers are both tasty and sturdy—perfect for a topping like Justin's nut butter squeeze packs.
17. Curried Carrot Chips
Plain raw carrots aren't the most exciting or satisfying snack on the planet. To keep your taste buds enthused, get crafty with a peeler and make curried carrot chips. They take under 30 minutes to prepare and taste great with a variety of spices (or just salt and pepper).
18. DIY Protein Bars
Packaged protein bars can be delicious (and they certainly market themselves as nutritious), but heed caution: they're a dangerfood. Avoid the sugar trap of store bought kinds by experimenting with flavors and making them in your own kitchen instead. Some of our favorites: No-Bake Almond Fudge Protein Bars and Cinnamon Raisin Peanut Butter Fudge Bars. (Don't let their sweet names fool you—they're actually healthy!)
19. Dressed Up Suzie's Puffed Rice Thin Cakes
Looking for a lighter, more compact version of rice cakes? Try Suzie's Puffed Rice Thin Cakes. They may be thin, but they're sturdy enough to stand up to the likes of avocado, a great topper made even better with a dash of Sriracha.
20. Granola Bars
Granola bars are a great go-to snack, but many store-bought versions aren't as healthy as their labels may indicate. While packaging looks healthy, they're often packed with high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils, which can lead to weight gain and high cholesterol Trans-fatty acids--effects on coronary heart disease. Karbowska, J., Kochan, Z. Gdański Uniwersytet Medyczny, Katedra i Zakład Biochemii. Polish Merkur Lekarski. 2011 Jul;31(181):56-9. Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome. Elliott, S.S., Keim, N.L., Stern, J.S., et al. Department of Nutrition, University of California. Davis, California. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2002 Nov;76(5):911-22.. Try these homemade, nut-free granola bars as an alternative.
21. Dry Cereal
Cereal is a popular breakfast food for a reason: it's full of healthy carbs, fiber, and protein. It's also easy to throw it in a container, toss in your bag, and eat on the go. Just be careful when it comes to serving sizes, since some breakfast cereals can be high in calories and sugar.
22. Canned Fish
Fish may be a pungent snack, but the protein and omega-3s it packs make it worth the extra stink. Not to mention, eating omega-3s can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. (Just don't whip it out in a small room or on public transportation, please.) To keep preparation to a minimum, grab a snack pack like Bumble Bee Sensations Seasoned Tuna with Crackers.
23. No-Bake Zucchini Bread Granola Bites
Gluten-free and vegan, these bites are the perfect snack for someone with stomach sensitivities. Simply mix the ingredients, pop them in the fridge, and grab a few before heading out the door.
24. DIY Fruit Leather
Remember the days of fruit rollups and lunch boxes? Those were the best. And there's no reason not to incorporate them into adult life. Simply pick your favorite fruit and let your taste buds relive childhood, without the sugar crash. We're big fans of this Sneaky Green Apple Fruit Leather recipe, which has an extra nutritional boost from one of our favorite superfoods.
25. Pita Pocket with Hummus
Pita pockets taste great with almost any filling. We like to pack them to the brim with hummus, cucumber, and other veggies for a delicious vegetarian snack. For those looking for some protein, throw in deli turkey slices or pre-cooked chicken.
26. Turbana Plantain Chips
Plantain chips may not be as tasty as the fried, potato-based variety, but they're a much healthier option—and still quite good! Turbana keeps it simple by using all-natural ingredients in their six varieties. We love pairing the chili-flavored version with hummus.
27. Protein Wrap
While regular ol' bread may become squishy after sitting in a bag all day, wraps are much sturdier. Plus, they come in a variety of flavors (and can fit just as many dietary needs). Fill them with nut butter, honey, jam, turkey, cheese, pesto, or any other nutritious stuffer you like.
28. Fresh Veggies
Carrots, bell pepper, and sugar snap peas are just a few veggies that can be packed as a snack and enjoyed throughout the day. Pro tip: To keep them fresher, longer, store vegetables in a Tupperware instead of a plastic bag.
29. Homemade Baked Chips
Chips are delicious — there's no doubt about it. But the packaged kinds aren't exactly healthy. Making them from scratch, on the other hand, is nutritious and easy. Plus, you can experiment with ingredients (green beans, sweet potato, apple…oh my!) and have control over the amount of sodium and fat in each batch.
30. Healthy No-Bake Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Bites
Quick, easy, delicious… it's hard to go wrong with a snack like this. Not to mention these hearty bites are full of two Greatist favorites: chocolate and peanut butter. (And they taste like cookie dough.)
31. Cranberry-Orange Chex Mix
There's no need to banish cranberries from the kitchen after Thanksgiving. Enjoy the sweet-tart berries all year long by noshing on cranberry Chex mix. To make it a tad healthier, use fresh orange juice, low-sugar cereal, and cut back on the sugar.
32. Veggie Pirate's Booty
Spinach, parsley, and kale have never tasted so good—at least not in snack form. These airy delights are packed with veggies, but taste like a splurge. The one drawback? It's hard to put them down after opening. We suggest pouring a serving into a bowl and setting the rest aside to avoid overconsumption.
33. Whole-Wheat Zucchini Muffins
Whoever started the trend of putting veggies into baked goods is a genius. It can be tough to get the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables in a day, so adding them to snacks certainly makes it easier. These zucchini muffins are full of fiber and vitamins, plus they're suitable for those who prefer the dairy-free or vegan lifestyle.
34. Whole-Wheat Pita Chips
Before grabbing a bag of sodium-laden potato chips, consider deconstructing a whole-wheat pita and turning it into a handful of bite-sized snacks that satisfy when it comes to crunch, but are better for your body. We love the Old Bay seasoning in this recipe, but you can also go sweet by adding cinnamon and a dash of sugar.
35. Buddy Fruits
Gummy snacks may seem like a splurge, but they can actually be a great way to fuel up on fruit. Our favorite are Buddy Fruits Pure Fruit Bites, which—true to their name—are made with 100 percent fruit.
36.Matcha Green Tea Pound Cake
We love anything that tastes like dessert but can pass as a healthy snack. Take this matcha bread, which has the flavor of pound cake but is made of green tea powder. For a full snack, pair it with berries or top with a light spread of nut butter.
37. Ants on a Log
There's no reason this snack should be left in the days of playgrounds and after school snacks—it's delicious and good for you at any age! The classic combination of celery, peanut butter, and raisins is good as-is, but don't be afraid to experiment: almost every kind of nut butter will work with this recipe, as will dried fruit or nuts.
38. Vegetable Salads Rolls
Salad is difficult to eat while on the run, but salad wrapped in rice papers is another story. Simply slice your favorite veggies, add a little sauce, wrap them up, and they're good to go. Not sure where to start? We love this recipe for Vegetable Salad Rolls with Almond-Lime Sauce.
39. Pretzels and Cheese
It's true: Cheese does require refrigeration. But if you're planning to snack midday, it'll hold up just fine. We recommend pairing a string cheese with a small bag of pretzels (regular or gluten-free).
40. KIND Healthy Grains Bar
KIND is well-known for their tasty trail mix bars, but they recently released a granola bar that's just as good—if not better. We tried the peanut butter dark chocolate and dark chocolate chunk variety, and loved them both. But be warned: they tend to crumble, so bring a napkin.
41. Carrot Cake Granola
Recipes with "cake" in the title tend to be winners, and this Carrot Cake Granola recipe is no exception. Made with coconut oil and natural sweeteners like maple syrup, a handful of this cereal is the perfect pre-gym snack or treat to keep you full in between meals. Did we mention it tastes like cake?
42. Lemon-Blueberry Paleo Muffins
Who doesn't love muffins? Not to mention healthy ones (like in this recipe) that are full of berries and topped with lemon sugar sprinkles. Whether the caveman diet appeals to you or not, this paleo snack is sure to please.We gravitate to superhero stories in times of stress. After all, it’s reassuring to think that, somewhere, there might be somebody with powers who can save us from the world we’re in. Here are eleven superhero YA books to encourage you to embrace your inner superhero as the year rolls on.
I Am Princess X by Cherie Priest
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Release date: May 26 2015
Best friends Libby and May created a princess together, but when Libby died Princess X died with her. Years later, May starts to see the Princess everywhere. There are disturbing similarities between Libby’s story and Princess X online. Only one person could have started this phenomenon – her best friend, Libby, who lives.
The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M. Campbell
Publisher: Egmont USA
Release date: May 11 2010
Damien Locke has a plan: major in messing with people at the local supervillain university and become a professional evil genius, just like his supervillain mom. But when he discovers the shameful secret she’s been hiding all these years, that the one-night stand that spawned him was actually with a superhero, everything gets messed up.
These Vicious Masks (These Vicious Masks #1) by Tarun Shanker & Kelly Zekas
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Release date: February 9th
England, 1882. Evelyn is bored with society and its expectations. So when her beloved sister, Rose, mysteriously vanishes, she ignores her parents and travels to London to find her.
Hero by Perry Moore
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Release date: September 1 2007
The last thing in the world Thom Creed wants is to add to his father’s pain, so he keeps secrets. Like that he has special powers. And that he’s been asked to join the League. And the one Thom can barely face himself: he’s gay.
Being Jamie Baker (Jamie Baker #1) by Kelly Oram
Publisher: Bluefields
Release date: June 14 2010
An accident that should end in tragedy gives Jamie Baker a slew of uncontrollable superhuman abilities. To keep her secret safe, Jamie socially exiles herself as Rocklin High’s resident ice queen. But during a supercharged encounter with star quarterback Ryan Miller she literally kisses anonymity goodbye.
Dread |
Platform and crawler transporter. The future Space Launch System (SLS) will also be assembled there.
At 3,664,883 cubic meters (129,428,000 cubic feet) it is one of the largest buildings in the world by volume.[2] The building is at Launch Complex 39 at KSC, halfway between Jacksonville and Miami, and due east of Orlando on Merritt Island on the Atlantic coast of Florida.[2]
The VAB is the largest single-story building in the world,[3] was the tallest building (160.3 meters, 526 ft) in Florida until 1974,[4] and is still the tallest building in the United States outside an urban area.[4]
History [ edit ]
The VAB, which was completed in 1966, was originally built to allow for the vertical assembly of the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo program and referred to as the Vertical Assembly Building. In anticipation of post-Saturn projects such as the Space Shuttle program, it was renamed the Vehicle Assembly Building in 1965,[5][6] and was used for the shuttle's external fuel tanks and flight hardware, and to mate the Space Shuttle orbiters to their solid rocket boosters and external fuel tanks. Once assembled, the complete Space Shuttle was moved on the Mobile Launcher Platform and Crawler-Transporter to LC-39 Pad A or B.
Construction [ edit ]
In 1963, NASA contracted the Morrison-Knudsen company to design and build the VAB. Construction began with driving the first steel foundation piles on Aug. 2, 1963. It was part of NASA's massive effort to send astronauts to the Moon for the Apollo Program. Altogether, 4,225 pilings were driven down 164 feet to bedrock with a foundation consisting of 30,000 cubic yards of concrete. Construction of the VAB required 98,590 tons of steel.[7] The building was completed in 1966.[8] The VAB is 526 feet (160.3 m) tall, 716 feet (218.2 m) long and 518 feet (157.9 m) wide. It covers 8 acres (3 ha), and encloses 129,428,000 cubic feet (3,665,000 m3) of space.[9]
Located on Florida's Atlantic coast, the building was constructed to withstand hurricanes and tropical storms with a foundation consisting of 30,000 cubic yards of concrete and 4,225 steel rods driven 160 feet into limestone bedrock. Despite this, it has received damage from several hurricanes (see below).
Capabilities [ edit ]
Discovery toward the A crane lowerstoward the SSET and SSSRBs in high bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building for STS-124
There are four entries to the bays located inside the building, which are the four largest doors in the world.[10] Each door is 456 feet (139.0 m) high, has 7 vertical panels and 4 horizontal panels, and takes 45 minutes to completely open or close. The north entry that leads to the transfer aisle was widened by 40 feet (12.2 m) to allow entry of the shuttle orbiter. A central slot at the north entry allowed for passage of the orbiter's vertical stabilizer.
To lift the components of the Space Transportation System, the VAB housed five overhead bridge cranes, including two capable of lifting 325 tons, and 136 other lifting devices.
The building has at least 10,000 tons (40 MW) of air conditioning equipment, including 125 ventilators[2] on the roof supported by four large air handlers (four cylindrical structures west of the building) to keep moisture under control. Air in the building can be completely replaced every hour. The interior volume of the building is so vast that it has its own weather, including "rain clouds form[ing] below the ceiling on very humid days",[11] which the moisture reduction systems are designed to minimize.
Exterior [ edit ]
The American flag painted on the building was the largest in the world when added in 1976 as part of United States Bicentennial celebrations, along with the star logo of the anniversary, later replaced by the NASA insignia in 1998. It is 209 feet (63.7 m) high, and 110 feet (33.5 m) wide. Each of the stars on the flag is 6 feet (1.83 m) across, the blue field is the size of a regulation basketball court, and each of the stripes is 9 feet (2.74 m) wide.[12] Work began in early 2007 to restore the exterior paint on the immense facility. Special attention was paid to the enormous American flag and NASA "meatball" insignia. The work repaired visible damage from years of storms and weathering. The flag and logo had been previously repainted in 1998 for NASA's 40th anniversary.[13]
Repair work after Hurricane Frances
The most extensive exterior damage occurred during the storm season of 2004, when Hurricane Frances blew off 850 14 × 6 foot aluminum panels from the building, resulting in about 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2) of new openings in the sides.[13][14] Twenty five additional panels were blown off the east side by the winds from Hurricane Jeanne just three weeks later. Earlier in the season, Hurricane Charley caused significant but less serious damage, estimated to cost $700,000. Damage caused by these hurricanes was still visible in 2007. Some of these panels are "punch-outs", designed to detach from the VAB when a large pressure differential is created on the outside vs. the inside. This allows for equalization, and helps protect the structural integrity of the building during rapid changes in pressure such as in tropical cyclones.
The building has been used as a backdrop in several Hollywood movies including Marooned, SpaceCamp, Apollo 13, Contact, and others.
Future [ edit ]
Discovery in the Vehicle Assembly Building waiting for a ferry flight to Dulles, Virginia for permanent display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. in the Vehicle Assembly Building waiting for a ferry flight to Dulles, Virginia for permanent display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
The Space Shuttle was retired in 2011 after which NASA temporarily (as early as 2012) offered public tours of the VAB. These tours were temporarily discontinued in February 2014 to allow for renovations to take place.[15]
The NASA FY2013 budget included US$143.7 million for Construction of Facilities (CoF) requirements in support of Exploration programs including Space Launch System (SLS) and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV). NASA began modifying Launch Complex 39 at KSC to support the new SLS in 2014, beginning with major repairs, code upgrades and safety improvements to the Launch Control Center, Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and the VAB Utility Annex. This initial work will be required to support any launch vehicle operated from Launch Complex 39 and will allow NASA to begin modernizing the facilities, while vehicle-specific requirements are being developed.[16]
The VAB could be used to some extent for assembly and processing of any future vehicles utilizing Launch Complex 39, in addition to renovations for SLS capabilities. On June 16, 2015, NASA released an announcement for proposals (AFP) seeking interest in using the VAB High Bay 2 and other complex facilities for commercial use in "assembling, integration, and testing of launch vehicles." This move is in line with the intent to migrate KSC towards acting as a spaceport accessible to both government and commercial ventures.[17] On April 21, 2016, NASA announced the selection of Orbital ATK to begin negotiations for High Bay 2. The "potential agreement" includes an existing mobile launcher platform.[18]
Gallery [ edit ]
Overview of the VAB and LCC industrial area
Close-up photo of the VAB.
Endeavour on its way into the VAB. At the top of the doorway is the slot for the vertical stabilizer
The Space Launch System mobile launch platform and tower being moved by the crawler transporter to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center
The Vehicle Assembly Building consists of nearly 100,000 tons of steel. Seen here is a platform being hoisted by the overhead cranes during its renovation
SLS mobile launcher at the high bay of the VAB
A sunrise view with the VAB in the background
The Vehicle Assembly Building during astronomical twilight
Long exposure of the exterior at night
View from the rear at 2 miles distance, during early evening. The SLS launch tower and orbiter processing facilities are visible.
Illuminated night view during rainfall
Upward interior view of the high bay during SLS renovations
Crawler-way and closeup of the building. The Launch Control Center is visible adjacent to the VAB on the left.
Panorama of the reservoir and river where barges carrying rocket components are docked, with the VAB in the background.
References [ edit ]Get 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
Manchester United will wear their blue away kit in the Europa League final.
The Red Devils take on Ajax in Stockholm next week and will be classed as the away side.
United wore blue shirts, shorts and socks for their first European final when they overcame Benfica at Wembley in 1968, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Bobby Charlton struck twice in the final 10 years after the Munich air disaster decimated Matt Busby's Babes.
In 1991, United were clad in Adidas white as they beat Barcelona in the European Cup Winners' Cup final in Rotterdam. United wore their special Umbro Champions League kit to beat Bayern Munich in 1999 and wore their Nike home strip to beat Chelsea nine years later.
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(Image: REUTERS)
(Image: Getty Images)
Both of United's Champions League final defeats to Pep Guardiola's Barcelona came with them wearing their white away garb.
United wore Admiral blue for their first ever competitive match against Ajax in the 1976-77 Uefa Cup and were dressed in the same colour when they beat Ajax at the Amsterdam Tournament in 2006.
Ferguson's side wore a blue and black changed kit for their Europa League round-of-32 triumph in the Dutch capital in 2012.
(Image: Getty)
(Image: Getty)
Adidas has already released United's away strip for next season. The strip is 'inspired by 92' - using the same fleck design United sported for two years in the early 90s and which they wore in the 1992 League Cup final.
Adidas said in a press release statement: "Manchester United fans of all ages will recognise the bold graphic pattern from the 1990-92 away jersey that defined football shirt design for an era. Connecting the past to the future, the new kit pays homage to the historic design, celebrating the rich history of the club.
"The graphic design of the original kit has been reimagined on a black backdrop with white hues, with the classic adidas three stripes, club badge and adidas logo all in white. A crew-neck collar gives the kit a modern makeover, making it a jersey that’s as much at home on the streets as it is on the pitch.MEXICO CITY — Municipal police officers encircled the bus, detonated tear gas, punctured the tires and forced the college students who were onboard to get off.
“We’re going to kill all of you,” the officers warned, according to the bus driver. A policeman approached the driver and pointed a pistol at his chest. “You, too,” the officer said.
With a military intelligence official looking on and state and federal police officers in the immediate vicinity, witnesses said, the students were put into police vehicles and taken away. They have not been seen since.
They were among the 43 students who vanished in the city of Iguala one night in September 2014 amid violent, chaotic circumstances laid bare by an international panel of investigators who have been examining the matter for more than a year. The reason for the students’ abduction remains a mystery.The following Major League Baseball records are generally considered unlikely to ever be broken. The information is compiled from various sources including sportswriters, players, and fans. Many of these were initially set by either freak occurrences of greatness or during the early decades of baseball when certain rules, techniques, and fundamentals were in place that have since drastically evolved, making it almost impossible to replicate such feats in today's game.
Pitching records [ edit ]
Most career wins – 511 [ edit ]
Set by Cy Young, 1890–1911.[2][3][4] Highlights include five 30-win seasons and fifteen 20-win seasons.[5] The next closest player is Walter Johnson, with 94 fewer wins at 417; he was the only other player to have reached 400.[6] The most wins by a pitcher who played his entire career in the post-1920 live-ball era is Warren Spahn's 363.
For a player to accomplish this, he would have to average 25 wins in 20 seasons just to get to 500. In the past 38 years, only 3 pitchers (Ron Guidry in 1978, Bob Welch in 1990, and Steve Stone in 1980[7]) have had one season with 25 wins.[8] Between 2000 and 2009, the Major League leader finished each year with an average of 21. Only three active players have even 200 wins—the 45-year-old Bartolo Colón leads with 247 wins, with the 38-year-old CC Sabathia (who has announced that he will retire at the end of the 2019 season[9]) just behind at 246 and the 36-year-old Justin Verlander trailing with 204.[10]
Most wins in a season – 59 [ edit ]
Set by Old Hoss Radbourn, in 1884.[11] Most pitchers in today's game start 30–35 games per season, and thus do not start enough games to break the record. The most games started by a pitcher in the 2018 season was 35, accomplished by Jhoulys Chacín, and only three pitchers in the 21st century have started more than 35 games in a season (Tom Glavine in 2002 and Roy Halladay and Greg Maddux in 2003, each with 36 starts).[12] Although relief pitchers often appear in more than the requisite number of games, they rarely record ten wins in a season. To put this record in further perspective, the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season was Denny McLain in 1968 and the last pitcher to win 25 games in a season was Bob Welch in 1990. Also, the most wins in a season by any pitcher in the 21st century is 24, by Randy Johnson in 2002 and Justin Verlander in 2011.[13]
Most career complete games – 749 [ edit ]
Set by Cy Young, 1890–1911.[3] Highlights of this record include: nine 40-complete-game seasons, eighteen 30-complete-game seasons[5] and completing 92 percent of his total career starts (an all-time record of 815).[3] The next closest player is Pud Galvin, who has 103 fewer complete games at 646. Among pitchers whose entire careers were in the live-ball era, the most is 382 by Warren Spahn.
For a player to accomplish this, he would have to average 30 complete games over 25 seasons to get to 750. Between 2000 and 2009, the Major League leaders in complete games averaged 8 per season, and only two pitchers in the 21st century have had 10 complete games in any season (CC Sabathia with 10 in 2008 and James Shields with 11 in 2011).[14] In addition, only two pitchers other than Young have even started as many as 749 games—Nolan Ryan (773) and Don Sutton (756).[15] The closest active players are Colón and Sabathia, each with 38 complete games.[16]
The quest for any complete-game records, either over a career or over a single season, is further complicated by the drastic change in philosophy embraced by virtually all modern managers and pitching coaches, motivated in roughly equal parts by more advanced modern-day medical knowledge of the cumulative damage that pitching does to a hurler's arm, combined with a team front office's reluctance to see a pitcher in whom they have invested considerable financial capital in the form of a big contract getting hurt. Another factor, arguably, is the greater reliance of managers and pitching coaches on sabermetrics—in this case, statistical data and analysis that generally show leaving a starter in longer leads to diminishing returns in terms of opposing batters allowed to reach base safely and score runs.[17] While even a few decades ago, a starting pitcher was expected to go out and attempt to pitch a complete game, with the manager going to his bullpen only if the starter ran into trouble or was injured or visibly tiring, the present-day norm is the starter is expected to give his manager six, or perhaps seven "quality innings," at which point the manager—who, along with the pitching coach, has been tracking the starter's pitch count—will normally lift him and bring in one or more middle-relief specialists to pitch the next several innings and form a bridge to the team's closer.[18] There are exceptions—a manager will leave a starter in who is working on a no-hitter or, sometimes, a shutout, or will let a starter continue if he is pitching particularly strongly and has not run up a high pitch count. But managerial caution is now a more dominant mode, particularly if a pitcher is coming off a recent injury or has had Tommy John surgery or any other major procedure done on his pitching arm.
These changes in philosophy have reduced the number of complete games in today's game to an even greater extent than in the first decade of the 21st century. Since Shields amassed 11 complete games in 2011, no pitcher has had more than 6 complete games in a season. In 2018, all of Major League Baseball combined for 42 complete games, with no pitcher having more than 2.[19]
Most complete games in a season – 75 [ edit ]
All-time record of 75 set by Will White in 1879; modern-era record of 48 set by Jack Chesbro in 1904. Sports Illustrated has said about this record, "Even if the bar is lowered to begin with the live-ball era (which began in 1920), the mark would still be untouchable." The most complete games recorded in a live-ball season is 33, achieved three times in all—twice at the dawn of that era by Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1920 and Burleigh Grimes in 1923, and also by Dizzy Trout in 1944, a season in which the player pool was severely depleted by World War II call-ups. According to SI, modern starters can expect to start about 34 games in a season.[14]
Most consecutive complete games (since 1900) – 39; Most consecutive games without being relieved – 202 [ edit ]
Both records were set by Jack Taylor, who pitched 202 consecutive games without being relieved from June 20, 1901 through August 13, 1906. The streak includes a total of 187 career starts (all complete games) and 15 relief appearances. The streak of 39 consecutive complete games (uninterrupted by a relief appearance) is a subset of the longer streak, lasting from April 15 through October 6, 1904.
Most career shutouts – 110 [ edit ]
Set by Walter Johnson, 1907–27.[20] Highlights include: eleven 6-shutout seasons and leading the league in shutouts 7 times.[21] The next closest player is Grover Cleveland Alexander, who has 20 fewer shutouts at 90. As is the case for career wins and complete games, Warren Spahn holds the record among pitchers whose entire careers were in the live-ball era, with 63.
For a player to tie Johnson's record, he would have to pitch 5 shutouts every season for 22 years.[20] Between 2000 and 2009 the Major League leader in shutouts finished each year with an average of 4, and no pitcher in the 2018 season recorded more than 1 shutout. Also, adding the MLB-leading shutout totals for each season from 1991 through 2018 results in a total of 109, still short of Johnson's record.[22] The closest active player is Clayton Kershaw with 15.[23]
Most consecutive no-hitters – 2 [ edit ]
Set by Johnny Vander Meer on June 11 and 15, 1938.[1] Despite holding this record, he finished his career with a 119–121 win–loss record.[1] The prospect of a pitcher breaking this record by hurling three consecutive no-hitters is so unimaginable that LIFE described this as "the most unbreakable of all baseball records."[1] Ewell Blackwell came the closest to matching Vander Meer after following up a no-hitter with eight no-hit innings in 1947.[24] In 1988, Dave Stieb of the Toronto Blue Jays had consecutive no-hitters going with two outs in the ninth; both were broken up by singles.[25] Between 2000 and 2009, 20 no-hitters were pitched, and the closest anyone came in the 21st century is Max Scherzer, who in 2015 threw a one-hitter and no-hitter in consecutive starts, respectively losing out on perfect games in the seventh inning and on the 27th batter.[26][27][28]
[3][29][30] Nolan Ryan holds records in career no-hitters, strikeouts and bases on balls. Given the fact that he pitched a record 27 years in MLB, all three records are regarded by many sportswriters as unlikely to ever be surpassed.
Most career no-hitters – 7 [ edit ]
Set by Nolan Ryan, 1966–93. Sandy Koufax is second with 4 no-hitters.[3] No other pitcher has tossed more than three no hitters.[3] Between 2000 and 2009 there were 20 no-hitters.[27] Only 32 pitchers have thrown 2 or more no-hitters, and of the 18 active pitchers that have thrown a no-hitter, only six have pitched more than one (Homer Bailey, Mark Buehrle, Tim Lincecum, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Jake Arrieta have each pitched two no-hitters).[27] After Ryan and Koufax, just Larry Corcoran, Cy Young, and Bob Feller have thrown 3 no hitters.
Most career strikeouts – 5,714 [ edit ]
Set by Nolan Ryan, 1966–93.[30] Highlights include: six 300-strikeout seasons, fifteen 200-strikeout seasons, and leading the league in strikeouts 11 times.[31] To accomplish this record, Ryan played the most seasons (27) in MLB history.[6][29]
The next closest player is Randy Johnson, who has 839 fewer strikeouts at 4,875.[6] Johnson also had four consecutive 300-strikeout seasons at the turn of the 21st century (1999–2002);[3] the only pitchers with a 300-strikeout season after 2002 are Clayton Kershaw, who had 301 in 2015, Chris Sale, with 308 in 2017, and Max Scherzer, with 300 in 2018.[32] For a player to approach this record, he would have to average 225 strikeouts over 25 seasons just to get to 5,625. Averaging 250 strikeouts over 23 seasons would enable him to surpass the record with 5,750. Between 2000 and 2009 the Major League leader in strikeouts finished each year with an average of 287, and even that average is skewed with large strikeout seasons by Randy Johnson and Pedro Martínez early in the decade. No pitcher exceeded 280 strikeouts between 2005 and 2014, and the only pitchers to have done so since are Kershaw and Sale in their respective 300-strikeout seasons, Scherzer in both 2016 and 2018 (with 284 in 2016), and Justin Verlander in 2018 (with 290).[32] The closest active player is CC Sabathia, with 2,986 strikeouts.[33]
Most career bases on balls – 2,795 [ edit ]
Set by Nolan Ryan, 1966–93. Ryan ended up with 50 percent more bases on balls than any other pitcher in history.[30] The next closest is Steve Carlton with 1,833. The only active player to have issued even 1,000 career walks is Sabathia, who ended the 2018 season with 1,060.[34]
Most career saves – 652 [ edit ]
Set by Mariano Rivera, 1995–2013.[35] Highlights include 15 consecutive seasons with 25 or more saves,[36] 9 consecutive seasons with 30 or more saves and 15 seasons with 30 or more saves (all three are records). After Trevor Hoffman, who retired with 601 career saves, the next-closest pitcher in saves is Lee Smith, with 478.[37][38]
For a player to reach Rivera's record, he would have to earn an average of 35 saves for 17 consecutive seasons just to get to 595 saves[39] or 40 saves for 16 consecutive years to reach 640.[40] As of the end of the 2018 season, the closest active player is 30-year-old Craig Kimbrel with 333 saves, slightly more than half of Rivera's total.[41][42]
Most innings pitched in a season – 680 [ edit ]
Set by Will White in the same 1879 season in which he set the record of 75 complete games noted above (at this time the distance from mound to plate was 45 feet). The record pitching from the distance used since 1893 (60 feet 6 inches) is 482 innings that first year by Amos Rusie, which had been exceeded 85 times by pitchers working from 45 or (starting in 1881) 50 feet, including by Rusie himself the three previous consecutive seasons, but has never been approached since (Ed Walsh in 1908 was the last to pitch 400 innings in a season). The most innings pitched in a live-ball season (since 1920) was Wilbur Wood's 3762⁄ 3 innings in 1972.[43]
No pitcher has even thrown half of White's record total for innings in a season since Phil Niekro in 1979, with 342. The last 300-inning season to date was by Steve Carlton the following year, with 304. The highest single-season innings count in the 21st century was Roy Halladay's 266 in 2003, and the two most recent seasons of 2017 and 2018 saw the two lowest innings totals for an MLB leader in the sport's history (apart from the strike-shortened 1981 and 1994 seasons)—Chris Sale with 2141⁄ 3 in 2017 and Max Scherzer with 2202⁄ 3 in 2018.[43]
Most career wild pitches thrown – 343 [ edit ]
Set by Tony Mullane whose career spanned from 1881 to 1894. Mullane pitched through a staggering 4531.1 innings (24 all-time) throwing a total of 343 wild pitches and averaged an errant pitch in 7.56% of those innings. Nolan Ryan is second on the list of most wild pitches with 277. The active leader in wild pitches is Félix Hernández with 151, less than half of Mullane's total.[44] With modern pitchers throwing fewer innings as well as wild pitches, this record is safely unbreakable.
Hitting records [ edit ]
Most career hits – 4,256 [ edit ]
Set by Pete Rose, 1963–86.[45] No active major league player is at this time considered to be close to breaking Rose's mark. The only two players with 3,000 hits who were listed as active going into the 2019 season were the 45-year-old Ichiro Suzuki (3,089 hits) and 39-year-old Albert Pujols (3,082),[46] and only Pujols is expected to be active beyond the first week of the 2019 season.[47] To get within 6 hits of tying Rose, a player would have to collect 250 hits over 17 consecutive seasons,[48] or more than 200 hits over the course of 21 seasons. In the past 81 years, only Ichiro has topped 250 hits in a season (with 262 hits in 2004).[48] As of the end of the 2018 season, Ichiro has 3,089 MLB hits[46] and 1,278 hits in the Japanese major leagues[49] for a combined, unofficial total of 4,367, 111 more than Rose's record; however, Ichiro's hits from Japan's major leagues are not counted toward his MLB total. At the same time, Miguel Cabrera (35 years old) has 2,676 hits after 16 seasons; he would have to average 176 hits over 9 additional seasons (or 198 over 8 seasons) to break the record. No player younger than Cabrera was within 200 hits of his career total at the end of the 2018 season, and no player younger than 30 at that time had even 1,600 career hits.[46]
Most consecutive seasons with 200 hits – 10 [ edit ]
Set by Ichiro Suzuki, who attained this from 2001–10.[50][51][52] Ichiro's honors since joining the Seattle Mariners from Nippon Professional Baseball at age 27 include winning the 2001 AL Rookie of the Year and MVP awards, claiming the AL batting title in 2001 and 2004, leading the AL in hits in seven seasons (2001, 2004, 2006–10)[51] and breaking George Sisler's 84-year-old single-season hits record in 2004 with 262 hits.[53] The closest player is Willie Keeler who had 8 consecutive seasons with 200 hits that occurred almost a century prior in the dead-ball era.[54] The 2018 season was the first since 2013 in which no player reached the 200-hit mark.[55]
Most career triples – 309 [ edit ]
Set by Sam Crawford, 1899–1916. Highlights include: five 20-triple seasons and sixteen 10-triple seasons.[56] The next closest player is Ty Cobb, who has 14 fewer triples at 295. Because of changes in playing styles and conditions that began around 1920 and have continued into the present from the dead-ball era to the live-ball era, the number of triples hit has declined noticeably since then. Among hitters whose entire careers were in the live-ball era, the leader in career triples is Stan Musial, with 177.
For a player to threaten Crawford's record, he would have to average 15 triples over 20 seasons just to get to 300. Between 2000 and 2009 the Major League leader in triples finished each year with an average of 17, and no player in the 2010s has had more than 16 triples in a season.[57] The closest active player is José Reyes, with 131.[58]
Most triples in a season – 36 [ edit ]
Set by Chief Wilson in 1912.[59][60] Only two other players have ever had 30 triples in a season (Dave Orr with 31 in 1886 and Heinie Reitz with 31 in 1894),[60] while the closest anyone has come in the century since Wilson set the record is 26, shared by Sam Crawford (1914) and Kiki Cuyler (1925).[60] Only six hitters have had 20 triples in the last 50 years: George Brett (20 in 1979), Willie Wilson (21 in 1985), Lance Johnson (21 in 1996), Cristian Guzmán (20 in 2000), Curtis Granderson (23 in 2007) and Jimmy Rollins (20 in 2007).
Most home runs in a game – 4 [ edit ]
In all, 18 players have hit four home runs in a game. On first glance, the record might appear possible, though unlikely, to break. However, in a 2018 story, Sam Miller of ESPN argued that hitting five homers in a game "is outlandishly unlikely." First, according to Miller, a five-homer game would require not only that a player get five plate appearances in a game, but that he receive hittable pitches in each appearance. Only two players have ever made a plate appearance that could have resulted in his fifth homer of a game—Lou Gehrig in 1932 and Mike Cameron in 2002, each making two plate appearances in a game after having hit four homers. Additionally, no player has ever homered in five consecutive at-bats, even in multiple games. Miller summed up what he viewed as the impossibility of a five-homer game with the following:[61]
That means a five-homer game would likely have to involve somebody doing something totally unprecedented, and fitting it within the narrow confines of a single game, with no margin for error or an intentional walk.
Lou Gehrig came close to doing so in 1932, when after hitting four homers he hit a deep fly to center, but center fielder Al Simmons made a diving catch.[62]
Most grand slams in a single inning – 2 [ edit ]
Set by Fernando Tatís in 1999.[63] Only twelve other players have ever hit two grand slams in a single game.[64] However, breaking the record would require a player to hit three grand slams in a single inning. Breaking this record would also tie the major league record for RBI in a single game (12). Over 50 players have hit two home runs in a single inning,[65] but no MLB player has so much as hit three home runs in one inning. However, one minor league player, Gene Rye, has achieved the feat of hitting three home runs in a single inning.[66]
Highest career batting average –.367 [ edit ]
Ty Cobb's career batting average of.367 is viewed as unbreakable.
Set by Ty Cobb in 1928 after beginning his career in 1905.[67] Highlights of this record include; three.400 seasons, nine.380 seasons, and leading the league 11 times in batting average.[68] Cobb managed to hit.323 in his final season at age 41.[6] The next closest player is Rogers Hornsby who had a batting average of.358; Hornsby's career straddled the dead-ball and live-ball eras, with most of it being in the live-ball era. There are only 3 players with a career average over.350, and the highest batting average among those who played their entire careers in the live-ball era is Ted Williams'.344. Since 1928, there have been only 46 seasons in which a hitter reached.366 and only Tony Gwynn attained that mark at least four times, finishing with a career.338 batting average.[69] The active player with the highest batting average is Miguel Cabrera at.317, fractionally above José Altuve.[70]
Highest single-season batting average –.440 [ edit ]
Set by Hugh Duffy in 1894, the highest single-season average in National League, and MLB history. Nap Lajoie's.426 in 1901 is the highest in American League history. In the modern (post-"dead-ball") era, Rogers Hornsby hit.424 in 1924, a feat unmatched since then. George Sisler's.420 average in 1922 still stands as the highest American League average of the modern era. Ted Williams hit.406 in 1941, the last player in either league to top.400 for a season. Since then, only George Brett, who hit.390 in 1980, and Tony Gwynn, who hit.394 in a strike-shortened season in 1994, have even come close to breaking.400, and they were nowhere near any of the historical league or MLB highs.
In another 2018 ESPN story, the aforementioned Sam Miller argued that it was impossible to hit.400, or even seriously challenge the mark, in the modern game, noting that no hitter in the 21st century entered the second half of the season with an average above.380, and no batter since 2009 who qualified for his league's batting title had a.400 average at any point after May 25. Additionally, Miller argued that a player who might conceivably challenge.400 would have to combine a low strikeout rate, high home run rate, and high batting average on balls in play—a group of skills which largely do not complement one another.[71]
Most RBIs in a single season – 191 [ edit ]
Set by Hack Wilson, who batted in 191 runs in 1930. Only Hank Greenberg and Lou Gehrig, at 183 and 184 RBIs respectively ever came close, and there have been no real challenges to the record for over 75 years.
Highest career on-base percentage –.482 [ edit ]
Set by Ted Williams from 1939 to 1960.[72] Williams, the last man to hit.400 in a MLB season (.406 in 1941), won six American League batting titles, two Triple Crowns, and two MVP awards. He ended his career with 521 home runs and a.344 career batting average. Williams achieved these numbers and honors despite missing nearly five full seasons to military service and injuries.[73] The next-closest player in career OBP is Babe Ruth at.474.[74]
Since Williams' retirement, only four players have posted an OBP above.482 in a season, with Barry Bonds the only one to do so more than once.[72][75] Bonds ended his career with an OBP of.444; the leader among active players is Joey Votto, at.427 after the 2018 season.[74]
Longest hitting streak – 56 games [ edit ]
With pitching the way it is—specialty guys, closer and setup guys—you're not going to have a chance |
City On the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria, a one-kilometer-long aircraft hangar houses Redemption Camp, the flagship of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a global Pentecostal ministry that started in Nigeria and now has branches across the world. Some call it Redemption City; pilgrims flock here in droves. Adedamola Osinulu, a professor at New York University and an expert on global Pentecostalism, explains the significance of Redemption Camp: it offers, he says, a spiritual alternative — a place where the politically disenfranchised can make their voices heard. Pentecostalism in Nigeria took off in the mid-nineties, when the brutal dictatorship of Sani Abacha meant “there was no political space in which to be active.” In that repressive environment, followers embraced religious ritual to express opposition without risking suppression or death. In many other developing countries, Pentecostalism revived in the 1980s against the backdrop of structural adjustment policies and deepening privatization. Scholars affixed the prefix “neo” to it, creating an apt connection between the religious movement and neoliberal economics. Of course, the depoliticization that marks Pentecostalism is just one religious response to political dispossession and economic marginalization. At its height in the 1960s and ’70s, followers of liberation theology insisted that the Catholic Church had to do more than just welcome the poor or offer faith as a personal balm. Describing the world in terms of “structural sin,” they saw religion as an instrument for tackling inequality and other social injustices. In countries across Latin America, liberation theology turned churches into a vital bulwark against dictatorship and oppression. In contrast, in the few instances where contemporary Pentecostalism has ventured into the political arena, it’s done so for conservative purposes. In the 1990s, the UCKG denounced Workers Party leader (and eventual president) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, calling him a “demon” and encouraging congregants to vote for his rival. (The church later softened its approach to Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, who publicly worshipped alongside UCKG founder Edir Macedo in 2014.) The sermons highlighted the institutional power that Pentecostal churches can wield. But Brazil is the outlier, and the UCKG’s forays into electoral politics are more a reflection of the ambitions of its leadership than anything else. The vast majority of the time, there’s politics, and there’s Pentecostalism — and never the twain shall meet. As the scholar Martin Lindhardt notes, the theological separation between “this” world and the Pentecostal world of religious ritual means political events are seen as irrelevant to what really matters: spiritual action. Worshipers at Redemption Camp, Osinulu says, are “not trying to change society or create an alternative.” Likewise for the clergy at UCKG in London. Pastor Fernando, one of the younger pastors, tells congregants that “justice” is not “out there,” where people are striking or “holding up signs,” but in their hearts, where they solidify their relationship with God. In places where rudimentary political action can carry enormous risk and economic forces batter workers and the poor, changing the world by changing yourself can be a compelling alternative. After all, why would you waste your time fighting hostile structures of power when you can attain the rewards of the spirit in the here and now?
Big Society Pentecostalism grows in the fault lines of late capitalism, where structural injustices are psychologized and individualized. To hear Daniela tell it, people are poor because they’re “letting in the devil.” The path to prosperity is through enlisting in God’s army of spiritual warriors, who are faithful enough to resist these demonic forces. Like similar apologias — the myth of meritocracy comes to mind — spiritual warfare obscures the root of the problem: people are poor in the advanced capitalist world because money has been redistributed upward. Concentrated wealth, not insufficient faith, explains the dire economic straits in which many Pentecostal congregants find themselves. As anthropologist Kevin O’Neill puts it, spiritual warfare allows “complex problems with deep historical roots to be moralized — to be defined as matters of character, individual failing, or sin.” In doing so, it misdirects congregants, channeling their energy toward individual struggles for recognition and redemption and away from collective struggles for redistribution and emancipation. This isn’t to say Pentecostalism doesn’t benefit some of its congregants. People at the UCKG eagerly insist on their faith’s transformative power, and many maintain that it’s allowed them to climb from the lowest rungs of the social ladder to wealth and civic engagement. They tell stories of tackling drugs, truancy, and poverty. For women dealing with domestic violence and machismo culture, the churches can cultivate important leadership and social skills. At the very least, Pentecostalism can make crushing problems — poverty, political marginalization — seem more manageable. Yet the belief that individual empowerment can remedy structural issues inevitably redounds to the benefit of capital — the very force responsible for their marginalization. Scholars have long pointed out that the neoliberal state pathologizes the most marginalized — castigating them as “welfare queens” (in the US) or benefit scroungers (in the UK) — and cuts state services while speaking the language of empowerment. David Cameron’s Big Society exemplified this combination: he argued that if society could take charge of its own issues, the state would become less cumbersome, no longer weighed down by unnecessary interventions. In reality, the “Big Society” was Thatcherism by a different name: austerity and privatization policies simply shifted responsibility for providing vital benefits from the state to the individual and civil society. Christian organizations once had soup kitchens; in Britain they now ran food banks. Pentecostal churches were among those that stepped in as the state pulled back. At the UCKG, congregants jostle to have their CVs blessed by pastors and get help navigating the bureaucratic frustrations of Home Office paperwork. Cameron himself seemed to see the connection: on the campaign trail in 2015, he visited the Redeemed Christian Church of God, where he evangelized visions of his Big Society and preached the importance of aspiration. In countries such as Nigeria, where governments implemented neoliberal policies under pressure from international institutions, Pentecostal churches played a similar role. Citizens had to cope with a state that couldn’t be relied upon provide basic goods. Pentecostalism swooped in, with its seductive roadmap for social and spiritual mobility. At best, it offered a way for followers to side-step the state’s inadequacies, enabling them to “do more with less.” But whether in Nigeria or Britain, genuine empowerment was nowhere to be found. This was nothing more than a faith-inflected shell game.The cardinal celebrates the opening Mass on World Youth Day 2016 on July 26. (twitter.com/wyd_en)
John Paul II's World Youth Day Legacy Shines Through Krakow's Cardinal Dziwisz
COMMENTARY: The devoted secretary to the saint celebrated the opening Mass for World Youth Day in Krakow.
FATHER RAYMOND J. DE SOUZA
KRAKOW, Poland — The opening Mass of World Youth is always celebrated by the local archbishop. For the most part, the pilgrims are indifferent about whom that might be, if they notice at all. Yet, in Kraków, there is unusual interest in the local archbishop — or, precisely, who the local archbishop used to be and what he used to do.
Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, archbishop of Kraków since 2006, is the only elector in the College of Cardinals who is now occupied with the second-most-important job of his life. For the 39 years before he was archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Dziwisz served as the personal secretary of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, from 1966 to 1978 as archbishop of Kraków, and then, from 1978 to 2005, at his side as pope. Stripped of all family before he was ordained a priest, John Paul had no one in his life closer, and for longer, than the young man he himself had ordained a priest. In many profiles of the cardinal, he is described as more of a son than a secretary.
Just three years after his ordination, Father Stanisław received a call from the young Archbishop Karol Wojtyła of Kraków, suggesting that the priest might be able to help in the archbishop’s office. Within a few days, he reported for duty, not knowing how long the assignment would last. It lasted four decades — and even beyond John Paul’s death.
As archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Dziwisz — aside from governing one of the most historic dioceses in the world — has dedicated himself to two principal tasks — last acts of service to the man he served. The first was shepherding, if from a distance, the sainthood cause, which was accomplished in record time, nine years after John Paul died. As a celestial gift to Cardinal Dziwisz, as if to recognize his lifetime of service, John Paul’s canonization date was set for Divine Mercy Sunday 2014 — which was also the cardinal’s 75th birthday. As required, he had to submit his letter of resignation that day, though it has yet to be accepted. He could have signed it Nunc Dimittis, the nighttime prayer of the Church — “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace.”
The other great project has been the shrine of St. John Paul just beside the sanctuary of Divine Mercy. The shrine tells the story of John Paul’s life in a series of chapels, as well as mosaics and bronzes, and serves as a center of memory and devotion. There is also intended to be a research center for the study of John Paul’s works, as well as a retreat center for pilgrims. Cardinal Dziwisz celebrated the first Mass in the principal upper church on his own 50th anniversary of priestly ordination in 2013. Pope Francis will celebrate the first papal Mass in that shrine on Saturday.
At the opening Mass on Tuesday evening — held in the same Błonie Park where John Paul celebrated his papal Masses on his visits to Kraków — Cardinal Dziwisz exercised his longtime discretion, not reveling in stories about his life with John Paul, but focusing on the World Youth Day theme of mercy.
“Kraków is alive with the mystery of Divine Mercy, owing to humble Sister Faustina and John Paul II, who made the Church and the world sensitive to this specific trait of God,” Cardinal Dziwisz said in his homily, which did not emphasize Pope John Paul. “Returning to your countries, homes and communities, carry the spark of mercy … so that human hearts will beat to the rhythm of the Heart of Christ, which is ‘a flaming fire of love.’ May the flame of love engulf our world and rid it of egoism, violence and injustice, so that a civilization of good, reconciliation, love and peace will be strengthened on our earth.”
It is widely expected that Cardinal Dziwisz, 77, will retire this fall, and he faces two remaining projects, having completed what might be called a valedictory World Youth Day.
The first task is to encourage a shift from valedictory mode in the next generation of Church leaders in Poland, both clerical and lay. The canonization and the shrine were worthy but backward-looking projects, looking to celebrate what Pope John Paul had done.
The need in Poland today is not so much to look back, but to apply John Paul’s vision to the future.
“Polish young people know that John Paul is a great hero of the nation,” said Michał Łuczewski, director of the Center for the Study of John Paul II in Warsaw, a think tank devoted to applying the teaching of John Paul to contemporary Polish issues. “They need to discover in him not just a hero from the past, but a pattern for life and thinking in the future.”
The second task left to Cardinal Dziwisz is to organize for posterity his private papers. Knowing that Soviet spies had thoroughly penetrated the Vatican in the 1970s and 1980s, Pope John Paul did not keep written records of his meeting and conversations for the official files. Rather, he would have a daily conversation with his secretary, leading to a daily diary that recorded the Holy Father’s day and what he wanted recorded from it. It’s a day-by-day, hour-by-hour record of a pontificate that fills more than 27 volumes. What Cardinal Dziwisz will do with the papers to regulate their publication and/or access to scholars remains his last great act of service to John Paul, after a lifetime of doing just that in exemplary fashion.
Father Raymond J. De Souza
is editor in chief of
Convivium magazine.
He is in Kraków to cover
World Youth Day for
the Register and EWTN.I’m so excited for the season finale tomorrow. I feel like I’m late with this but seeing as how the ship feud is still going strong I guess I have time to blab. So Jarco has to be the weirdest pairing I’ve seen in a long time. Not weird cause of fans and their ramblings but how the show just threw it in with little to no build up or fleshing out. I can’t think of any other show that’s done this.
Ok, so “build up” may not have been a good choice there. They have been working up towards it since season 1; Marco’s constant ravings of affection had to have paid off eventually but I was just hoping it would be more. Can anyone tell me who Jackie is? I know she loves skating, she’s nice, pretty laid back….and that’s it. She may or may not have lived in a ravine but aside from that she’s just been a plot device this entire time. That makes it really hard for me to take in the intimate scenes her and Marco share cause the only thing I can see is a guy who’s living a fantasy and a girl who’s probably rolling with it cause why not.
I was hoping after Bon Bon that Jackie would show up more. Maybe have an episode or two where Marco learns more about her and he either falls more in love or is slowly being turned off while she begins to fall for him.. But no, just a small phone call in one episode then jumps back for another kiss after having a plethora of Starco bait and foreshadowing of things to come; only came to remind us that Marco is seeing someone. It’s all she’s good for.
I really do want to like this ship. If it’s going to stick around the better half of the show, you bet I want to enjoy it rather than sitting around waiting for the scenes to pass. Suppose it doesn’t help that Marco and Jackie’s personalities don’t even gel well. Maybe it’s Marco’s insecurity but I’m not sure. Obviously he and Star have pretty good chemistry but I’d argue that he has more chemistry with Tom than Jackie. The way I see it now, there are 2 possibilities:Marco breaks up with Jackie for Star or he breaks up with Jackie but also rejects Star cause he feels he’s not ready for relationships.
Welp, finale is nearly here. I doubt we’ll learn anything more about Jackie there but maybe next season :PWith our time on Earth coming to an end, a team of explorers undertakes the most important mission in human history: traveling beyond this galaxy to discover whether mankind has a future among the stars.
That’s the theme of the upcoming film Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway and opening Nov. 7.
A black hole also plays a key role in the film (to explain how the characters could experience time at different rates), with a design based on new mathematical models created by astrophysicist Kip Thorne. As noted in WIRED, Thorne expects at least two technical papers would come out of his research that went into creating the movie’s black hole, one for the astrophysicists and another for computer graphics specialists on the team’s discoveries about gravitational lensing.
Warner Bros. Pictures International | INTERSTELLAR – Official International Trailer 4
WIRED | Christopher Nolan and Kip Thorne give WIRED an exclusive look at the creation of
Interstellar‘s black hole.On September 1 of every year in J. K. Rowling’s beloved Harry Potter novels, several hundred British teenagers board the Hogwarts Express to travel to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Once they arrive, those entering the school for their first year undergo the venerable ritual of being sorted into one of the school’s four Houses: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Slytherin.
Last June, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the first Harry Potter book, we invited readers to take a scientific-based quiz on which of the four Houses they would have been assigned had they received an owl-borne acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Over 1 million people accepted the challenge, and more than 600,000 opted to anonymously contribute their responses and a small amount of demographic information to future research of the geographic distribution of personality. (The respondents do not represent a statistical sample of people, but this research is not a poll.)
That gives us a treasure trove of data on how different types of people are drawn to the different Houses in Rowling’s universe. Based on the nearly 500,000 U.S.-based responses to our quiz, here are five things we learned:
America is a nation of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs
While plenty of respondents were sorted into Gryffindor (Harry Potter’s House) or Slytherin (home to many of the books’ budding villains), a majority were in either Ravenclaw (home to the studious and industrious) or Hufflepuff (the House of humility and diversity). This is not surprising. Gryffindor and Slytherin generally play host to the books’ most extreme fictional characters, while we found that Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were closer to the average, non-magically-embroidered personality.
Men gravitate to Slytherin and Gryffindor
While Gryffindor and Slytherin were generally less common than Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, they attracted significantly more men than women, once the data is adjusted for the fact that more women than men took the survey as a whole. For Gryffindor, this is generally because men were more likely to profess a willingness to court danger, which correlates with that House.
Slytherin is for the young
We found that the only House where personality fit varied based on age was Slytherin — and as you can see, it varied a lot. This could be a function of maturity. While Hufflepuffs tended to reject the notion that some people are more entitled to respect than others, Slytherins were the opposite.
Midwesterners are just as humble as we thought…
A state-by-state map shows that Hufflepuff is prevalent in the middle of America, while Slytherin gravitates to the South, Gryffindor to the Southwest, and Ravenclaw to upper New England.
..while there are pockets of Houses across the country
Slytherin may be most prevalent in the South on a state level, but there are also enclaves around the Boston region, as well as clusters of Gryffindors in Colorado. The size of the dots in this chart is proportional to the degree of affinity for the House, not the population.
Design by Robin Muccari
Contact us at editors@time.com....
#AlternativeFacts #BeBoldForChange #Ghosts #Science #RationalPoliticsProject
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/06/women-strike-trump-resistance-power
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https://www.internationalwomensday.com/BeBold
http://www.spreaker.com/user/cellardoorskeptics/privilege
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http://promotingsecularfeminism.com/
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http://effective-altruism.com/ea/163/rational_politics_project/
https://history.osu.edu/people/tsipursky.1
http://glebtsipursky.com/
http://intentionalinsights.org/
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-fake-news-solution-2017-3
https://thehumanist.com/magazine/march-april-2017/features/towards-post-lies-future
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http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-lhc-proves-ghosts-do-not-exist
http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2017/02/16/has_the_large_hadron_collider_disproved_the_existence_of_ghosts.html
http://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-neuron-has-been-found-wrapped-around-the-entire-circumference-of-the-brain Intentional Insight including the Rational Politics Project. They talk about his project to help correct and educate people who believe alternative facts. The show will end with Chris and Christopher talking about if ghosts have been proven real and a quick look at an article about a Giant Neuron.#AlternativeFacts #BeBoldForChange #Ghosts #Science #RationalPoliticsProjectSubscribe: http://www.spreaker.com/user/cellardoorskeptics Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CellarDoorSkeptics RSS Feed: https://www.spreaker.com/user/8326690/episodes/feed iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cellar-door-skeptics/id1044088575?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 Website: http://cellardoorskeptics.com Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/cellar-door-skeptics Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cellardoorskeptics Intro Music: http://aloststateofmind.com/ Links------------------
#71: International Womens Day / Rational Politics ProjectThis week Cellar Door Skeptics dives into the celebration of women and activism with International Women’s Day. The theme for this year was “Be Bold for Change” and Christopher interview Jennifer Beehan Director of CFI Michigan and Xandi Andersen board member of the Alabama ACLU, Clinic Defender, and new co-host on Promoting Secular Feminism. After that Christopher will interview Gleb Tsipursky PhD Assistant Professor and founder ofMuhammad Ali, who died at the age of 74 on Friday night, was an Olympic athlete, legendary boxer and a proud black Muslim
Twitter grew furious as news coverage and commemorative tweets used language that indicated that Muhammad Ali transcended his race and religion as he became a symbol for greatness not only among boxers, but a symbol of athletic prowess for all athletes and for American victory at the 1960 Summer Olympics.
However, Ali's race and religion held no relevance for sportscaster Chris Myers, who tweeted early Saturday morning that when you looked at Ali, "you didn't see color you didn't see religion."
When you saw #Ali you didn't see color you didn't see religion you saw a gentle man who was a strong fighter,a Champion you could believe in
Twitter promptly corrected him.
How can you ignore this when Muhammad Ali CHANGED HIS NAME bc of his blackness and religion @The_ChrisMyerspic.twitter.com/b5km8LYI7i
@The_ChrisMyers you willfully turn a blind eye to the aspects of his life you hate
@The_ChrisMyers like, Muhammad literally fought against people like YOU! You didn't see his pain, his cultural upbringing, his way of life.
@The_ChrisMyers this extra ass tweet. A simple "RIP" would have been nice
@The_ChrisMyers Ali was constantly reminding all you would hear about the injustice faced by ppl of color. Don't twist his legacy, man.
Users also took umbrage with news reports that included rhetoric about Ali "transcending race," including NBC News
Twitter user Broderick Greer called out NBC News for their report, which he said used the phrase as a "subtle way of erasing his blackness."
Saying Ali "transcended...race" is a subtle way of erasing his blackness. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/muhammad-ali-greatest-all-time-dead-74-n584776...pic.twitter.com/ujBokP73oi
Other users jumped to rebuke the phrase, which many said contributed to erasure of Ali's race and religion, two issues he spoke about often.
"He transcended race"https://twitter.com/no_cut_card/status/739106203528204289...
Muhammad Ali, who gave up his title protesting against mistreatment of blk ppl, would be absolutely SHOCKED to learn he "transcended" race.
Y'all want all the late Black legends to have "transcended race". Nah, they Black af y'all just love it
Dear mainstream media, STOP saying #MuhammadAli transcended race. That term is NEVER applied to someone white, so stop it with Blacks!
Why can this one black person "transcend race" when they possess brilliance + talent you want to exploit but other black ppl??
My blackness is not a burden to me. It's a burden to you. I ain't transcending nothin.
"Ali transcended race." Translation: Will Smith played him in a movie + I loved Hitch so I'd really just like to make him palatable to me
"Ali transcended race." Translation: my white dominant culture was not properly centered in Ali's life so I'll do it in his death.
"Ali transcended race." Translation: eek-I don't like to talk about race and I liked Ali so he must not have been *that* Black, right?
Hopefully the pushback against the coverage of and response to Ali's death will inform news outlets and Twitter users alike to rethink what they mean when they say someone "transcends race," especially when it's someone who fought hard to remind people that black lives matter.We're a week and a half out from Halloween so now seems as good a time as ever for me to tell you the story of the cream that was recently made with my blood. It's the only story I've been able to tell anyone, if they're in the beauty industry or not, for weeks. It's the only story Brennan's been able to tell anyone for weeks too and it wasn't even his blood! So gather 'round friends, let's talk about Dr. Barbara Sturm's fabled MC1 cream and why it's the best thing I've ever put on my face.
So who is this Dr. Sturm? She is a former orthopedic doctor turned skincare messiah and real life best friend of Cher. She launched her line at Net-a-Porter in 2014, and has since started selling through Violet Grey, SpaceNK, and Shen in Brooklyn—so to celebrate, she threw a little brunch for New York's beauty editor contingent at Cafe Clover. If you go, try the quinoa pancakes.
Now, a little inside baseball: The beauty industry loves to have celebratory breakfasts. Because A) avocado toast. And B) it's a good way for everyone to meet a likely very busy brand founder all at once. Also there's usually goody bags with products. On the whole, I'm not complaining.
When I arrived, I saw friend and ITG writer Alyssa Reeder. She whispered to me, "Have you heard of the blood cream?" No I had not. I had heard of Dr. Sturm and that was pretty much the extent of it. Turns out blood cream—or MC1 officially—is simultaneously as easy and as difficult to explain as it sounds. You see, Dr. Sturm pioneered the vampire facials you heard about when Kim Kardashian started getting them. She's known for her ability to harness your own blood's ability to heal your body—first in surgery, then in facials, and now in skincare. For the bespoke cream, she funnels a client's blood through a special vial that stimulates the blood to react like you've been injured. It's those resulting, healing proteins that fuel the cream. "It's like super-charged Neosporin for your face," Alyssa told me. "It's all I've been using... She'll do it for you if you want."
What I did not realize was that Dr. Sturm would be taking our blood right after the wait staff took our coffee orders. She set up shop at the bar and started taking blood from a line of increasingly anxious editors. Now, one does not simply say no to an experience like this. Fear of needles aside, it's work! I do this for you, dear readers. So I chugged a juice to get my blood sugar up a little and did it. Dr. Sturm is a whiz with a needle—felt like a mosquito bite. Then Jessica Richards, founder of Shen, gave me one of these cute bandaids, and I went back to the office.
A week later, I received what looked like a lab sample: plastic white jar, handwriting on the label, nothing special. The cream is white, odorless, and has a fine texture... If you told me it was drugstore, I would believe you. I didn't actually test it out until last weekend though—a fellow beauty editor suspected it may have broken her out so I was hesitant. But last Saturday I got fed up enough with my forehead of healing zits that I caved. Super-charged, powered-by-blood Neosporin sounded perfect. And people don't pay more than $1000 for a cream that breaks them out, right?
No they don't, because this shit is gold. Sorry if that's not a very nuanced review. But it's magic. Healing scabs looked 50% better the next morning. After four days of applying morning (it's good under makeup) and night (it's not heavy, but when I wake up I still feel moisturized) my skintone is even again, and a bunch of bumpy, clogged pores at my temples have dissolved. It's a powerful anti-ager, too. Any lines I may have had on my forehead are nowhere to be found. Instead, my skin looks taut as hell. I'm probably going to start using it on my neck, too. Partially because I'm searching for the secret for getting rid of tech neck; but mainly because the jar apparently expires in December and I don't know how else I'm going to make the most of it.
As for the $1400 question: Will I be purchasing once my freebie runs out? Well, that all depends on if I feel like paying my rent come January. So, I'll let you know!
—Emily Ferber
Photos via ITG.
Now, about your neck. Product recs for that are over here.New research from Mind shows that men are twice as likely to have mental health problems due to their job, compared to problems outside of work.
One in three men (32 per cent) attribute poor mental health to their job, compared to one in seven men (14 per cent) who say it’s problems outside of work. Women, on the other hand, say that their job and problems outside of work are equal contributing factors; one in five women say that their job is the reason for their poor mental health, the same as those who say problems outside of work is to blame (19 per cent).*
The research, which comes from a survey of 15,000 employees across 30 organisations, is released as Mind urges employers to sign up to the Workplace Wellbeing Index 2017/18. The Index is a benchmark of best policy and practice when it comes to staff mental health, designed to celebrate the good work employers are doing to promote and support positive mental health, and to provide key recommendations on the specific areas where there is room to improve.
The data also shows that men are less prepared to seek help and take time off than women. While two in five women (38 per cent) feel the culture in their organisation makes it possible to speak openly about their mental health problems, only one in three men (31 per cent) say the same. Two in five women (43 per cent) have taken time off for poor mental health at some point in their career, but this is true for just one in three men (29 per cent).
This suggests that although men are more likely to have mental health problems because of their job, women are more likely to open up and seek support from their line manager or employer. Previous Mind research suggests that men often try to find ways of dealing with their problems independently rather than reaching out and sharing their problems. Instead of talking about their problems, men prefer to watch TV, exercise or self-medicate, such as drink alcohol. Mind urges men to open up and ask for help earlier on, so they can receive the support they need, before they reach crisis point.**
The findings show a difference in how men and women feel they’re being supported in the workplace. While three in five women (58 per cent) feel their manager regularly checks in on how they are feeling, only half of men (49 per cent) feel the same.
However, the results show that line managers feel confident in supporting employees with mental health problems. Three in four line managers (74 per cent) feel confident in supporting a team member with mental health problems. Although the results show a discrepancy between how male and female line managers feel they promote workplace wellbeing. Only three in five male line managers (60 per cent) feel they have a good understanding of how to promote the mental wellbeing of staff, compared to three in four female line managers (74 per cent).***
Emma Mamo, Head of Workplace Wellbeing at Mind, said:
“Our research shows that work is the main factor causing men poor mental health, above problems outside work. Many men work in industries where a macho culture prevails or where a competitive environment may exist which prevents them from feeling able to be open. It is concerning that so many men find themselves unable to speak to their bosses about the impact that work is having on their wellbeing and even more worrying that they are then not asking to take time off when they need it. Our research shows that the majority of managers feel confident in supporting employees with mental health problems, but they can only offer extra support if they’re aware there is a problem.
“In the last few years, we’ve seen employers come on leaps and bounds when it comes to tackling stress and supporting the mental wellbeing of their staff, including those with a diagnosed mental health problem. However, there is more to do and employers do need to recognise the different approaches they may need to adopt in how they address mental health in the workplace.
“Mind’s Workplace Wellbeing Index is a great opportunity for companies to examine their management practices, policies and assess how effective their mental health support and initiatives are. It also gives us an insight into key trends happening within the workplace and address these on a larger scale. We’re delighted to have worked with many forward-thinking employers in our first year who are doing ground-breaking work to make mental health a priority. We hope that many other organisations will follow in their footsteps by taking part in our Workplace Wellbeing Index in 2017/18.”
Thirty organisations took part in the first ever Index earlier this year including Lendlease, Dr Challoner’s Grammar School, the Environment Agency, Jaguar Land Rover, PepsiCo, Deloitte and Barnardo’s. Mind is now calling on forward thinking employers from across all industries to sign up to the Index in 2017/18.
The findings show that employers are prioritising mental health and taking proactive steps to support their staff, including:
Almost two in three employees (63 per cent) feel that their workload is manageable
Half of employees (50 per cent) feel their organisation supports their mental health compared to one in three (33 per cent) who don’t
Over half of respondents (55 per cent) feel their line manager supports their mental health, compared to under one in three (30 per cent) who don’t
Employers can sign up to the Workplace Wellbeing Index 2017/18 by 18 September 2017.
* Mind surveyed 15,000 employees, of which 1,763 are currently experiencing poor mental health
** Data taken from Mind’s It’s OK To Cry research, September 2015
*** Mind surveyed 15,000 employees, of which 3,003 were male line managers and 2,204 were female line managersSmart ships are likely to be carrying cargoes within ten years but all in the logistics chain need to adapt in order to make good use of the new technology and the huge amount of data that will be available as a result, according to WISTA.
According to Sue Terpilowski, President of WISTA UK – the Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association UK – shipping will go from a “poor beginning” in terms of generating and using data to be at the forefront of new technology. All thanks to customer demand.
Ms Terpilowski said the change would see “talking” ships within 10 years; “Even the paint will be able to tell you about the waves hitting the ship. These ships are going to be telling you about the weight and the stresses on deck when slow steaming would be appropriate and many more operational elements. There are many opportunities for the industry, but is it ready to take advantage?
“Ship intelligence will be the driving force that will determine the future of the industry, the type of ships at sea and the competencies requires of tomorrow’s seafarers.”
Legislators, ship finance and service sectors will all need to make changes to cope with the advent of the smart ship and new skills will be required from operating companies. Technology is being developed that can be adapted to shipping operations and over the next five years Ms Terpilowski predicts that there will be machine to machine (M2M) and the internet of things (IoT) connectivity in logistics.
“The logistics sector wants transparency. As a smart ship to smart logistics means reduced inventory and production lines running at optimum levels. This allows two way planning – intelligent buying and customer services that combine articles from different sources.”
She sees the major benefits as:
Safety, security and quality of cargo
Cost effective utilisation of containers and equipment
More efficient logistics networks and infrastructure
Real time tracking, monitoring and control of intermodal shipments
Special benefits for reefer |
said.
"You don't want to see that, right?" Jets captain Andrew Ladd said. "I understand [Little] is probably in a vulnerable spot and I think he's stumbled for 3-4 steps. As a [defenseman], you know he's in a vulnerable spot; do you need to try to take his head off? I don't think so."
Stralman was not penalized for the hit but received two minutes for roughing Blake Wheeler after Wheeler responded.
"I don't play the game to try to hurt anybody," Stralman said. "I tried to make a hit and he lost his edge, lost his balance, and I was in his way. There is really not much I can do to pull out of that one."
Little has 42 points (17 goals, 25 assists) in 57 games.ASHBURN, Virginia -- With the Washington Redskins' offseason practices over, here are some offensive observations:
Receiver Jamison Crowder: A lot of attention at receiver focused on rookie Josh Doctson and veteran DeSean Jackson. But Crowder is the target who left folks at Redskins Park excited. Late last year, the Redskins felt Crowder wore down (he admitted as much) and it impacted his ability to get free. Crowder has looked decisive and explosive in his routes this offseason. And don’t think that just because Doctson is here that Crowder will somehow get bumped in some three-receiver sets. The Redskins will be reluctant to sit Crowder based on how they felt he looked this spring, building on his 59-catch rookie season. He still must show he can shake defensive backs when they play press coverage.
Jamison Crowder has flashed his potential this spring, but still must show he can shake defensive backs when they play press coverage. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Lineman Arie Kouandjio: His strength always has been a big part of his game, but he had to work on blocking on the move. He rotated with the starting offensive group throughout the spring practice sessions with Spencer Long. The projected starter (if healthy) is Shawn Lauvao, but if he’s not ready then Kouandjio could get the nod. The key will be if the Redskins tweak their blocking scheme, which they could do, so that they have a greater ability to block in a more confined area. That would play to Kouandjio’s strength.
Quarterback Kirk Cousins: Cousins had some strong days, but also was picked off a couple of times. However, Cousins at times threw more decisively. It also was clear that he’s taking charge of the offense more. He was not perfect and missed on some throws. In some cases, it was good defense; in others, it was about the throw.
Running back Matt Jones: I hesitate to say a whole lot about running backs in the spring because so much changes when the pads come on. But I will say the Redskins saw what they wanted from Jones -- taking better paths off handoffs, for instance. The sense is that they’re in a better spot than they were a year ago if he performs this season the way he has practiced this spring. However, the question for Jones remains consistency considering he has never been the main back for a 16-game season.
Tight end Jordan Reed: Yes, he missed the past three days of practice, including one last week and two this week. But Reed looked very good when he was in camp and the coaches’ confidence in him has only increased. Reed worked out in Houston and Miami before heading to Ashburn and will do so again before training camp. Reed’s work ethic is an understated part of his game -- he excelled at getting free on certain routes, but vowed to improve on them this offseason. The coaches say that mission was accomplished.
Offensive lineman Spencer Long: Kory Lichtensteiger remains the starter and even coach Jay Gruden said he wanted to use Long there in order to have another option during games. In other words, Long likely will stick at guard and be an emergency backup center. But with Lauvao still ailing, Long will get a chance to win the starting job in camp. Austin Reiter still appears to need more work and to play with more strength.September 2016 was a milestone for the earth’s climate. It was the hottest September on record, nearly a degree Celsius warmer than the average from 1951 to 1980. It also was the first September where the Mauna Loa Observatory — “the gold standard for carbon dioxide monitoring” — measured the monthly average of carbon dioxide at more than 400 parts per million (ppm). Because September is almost always the annual low point for CO2 readings, that means the world has permanently crossed the 400 ppm threshold.
That also means what today we call the hottest September ever will soon be a normal, or even cool, September. Scientists have long forecast that if we could cut emissions enough to limit warming to two degrees Celsius, we could avoid the effects of climate change — including sea rise, crop failure, increased extreme weather — spinning out of control. We’ve already crossed the one-degree threshold and are projected to reach around four degrees. That’s about seven degrees Fahrenheit — imagine how different your state’s weather would be if temperatures averaged seven degrees warmer every day.
Is there any hope for the future? President Obama has made progress in cutting emissions and moving the country to cleaner energy. Facing a fanatically anti-environment GOP Congress, however, he has had to depend largely on executive branch powers. The next president will need to not only preserve those policies — among them limits on power-plant emissions, raised fuel standards and measures to reduce methane emissions — but also expand them.
Only one of the two presidential candidates has a climate policy; luckily, it’s the one holding a commanding lead. Hillary Clinton’s plan isn’t perfect: Her softness on the dangers of fracking and her embrace of the ethanol-boosting Renewable Fuel Standard program — which has done more to help the corn industry than the environment — are troubling. But she would also build on the president’s strengthening of fuel-economy and efficiency standards, include green energy projects in her national infrastructure plan, implement the landmark Paris climate deal and Obama’s Clean Power Plan and spend $60 billion to fund states and cities that want to go beyond White House goals for lower emissions.
If climate change is, in Clinton’s words, “a defining challenge of our time,” it’s disappointing to offer a strategy that can be summed up as “the status quo, but a little more so.” But as long as the Republican Party controls even half of Congress, executive actions will be the only weapons in the armory to fight climate change. More expansive ideas such as a carbon tax will never make it to the president’s desk. Progressively stronger executive actions may be enough, but nobody’s sure — and when the alternative is catastrophe, you’d like to be sure.
During the first Clinton-Trump presidential debate on Sept. 26, Hillary Clinton accused Trump of believing that "climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese," and Trump interrupted to object. (The Washington Post)
Democrats face steep odds in retaking both houses of Congress; under a Clinton presidency then, environmentalists likely would get more results if they focused on changing the climate debate rather than retaking Capitol Hill. Poll numbers offer some reason for optimism. Gallup reported in March that 64 percent of Americans worry about global warming, the highest percentage in eight years, and a record 65 percent now believe global warming is caused by “human activities.” The public is as receptive as it has been in nearly a decade. But work remains: Only 41 percent believe climate change is a serious threat, and another recent Gallup poll found that independents are split over whether 2015’s record temperatures were the result of “human-caused climate change” or “natural changes.”
Shifting the discussion is one area where, surprisingly, the 2016 campaign could change the climate debate for the better, even though climate change has been absent from the discussion. The contest has altered political journalism in a important way: As CNN’s Dylan Byers writes, “The traditional model of ‘he said, she said’ journalism... was thrown out the window in favor of a more aggressive journalism that sought to prioritize accuracy over balance.” More journalists have seen that the sky won’t fall if they treat falsehoods as falsehoods, and climate change is an obvious area to apply this new model. Senators should not be able to bring snowballs onto the Senate floor to “disprove” climate change without every headline fact-checking them. The realities of climate change are as much objective truth as the murder or unemployment rates. Regarding them as such will be an early test of whether political journalism has rededicated itself to the facts.
The debate over climate change is changing, but not as rapidly as it can or should. We have largely squandered decades that could have been spent heading off the danger, and now the consequences are no longer abstract. Climate change is a perilous threat to the country and the world; we must finally treat it that way.The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals said no this week to tracking your movements using data from your cell phone without a warrant when it declared that this information is constitutionally protected.
The case, United States v. Davis, is important not only because it provides substantive and procedural protections against abuse of an increasingly common and highly invasive surveillance method. It also provides support for something Christopher Sprigman andIhave said before – that the government's other “metadata” collection programs are unconstitutional.
The Davis decision, in effect, suggests that the U.S. government's collection of all kinds of business records and transactional data – commonly called "metadata" – for law enforcement and national security purposes may also be unconstitutional.
#### Jennifer Granick ##### About Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Jennifer returns to Stanford after working with the internet boutique firm of Zwillgen PLLC. Before that, she was the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Your phone sends signals to the nearest cell towers so that the communications network system knows where to route a call should one come in. Many providers collect and store the location of towers a customer connects to at the beginning and end of the call for billing purposes. FBI agents in *Davis *obtained these records without a search warrant and used them to place the defendant, Quartavious Davis, near the scene of a number of robberies.
The Davis decision, in effect, suggests that the U.S. government's collection of other kinds of business records and transactional data, commonly called "metadata", for law enforcement and national security collection may also be unconstitutional.The prosecution had argued that cell tracking without a warrant is constitutional per the 1979 case Smith v. Maryland. In that case, the Supreme Court said that phone users have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the phone numbers they dial, and therefore they aren't protected under the Fourth Amendment. Key to the Smith case was the Court’s view that the suspect had knowingly disclosed the phone numbers to the phone company and therefore had no protection with regard to them. Additionally, Smith built on the 1976 case of United States v. Miller, which held that a person does not have Fourth Amendment rights in their bank records because they are the bank’s business records and not the customer’s private data. Together the cases are known as the “third-party doctrine,” which says that you have no Fourth Amendment interest in a third party’s business records because you have voluntarily disclosed information to the business and assumed the risk of that information being further disclosed to the government.
This third-party doctrine is what the NSA has used to justify its current warrantless bulk collection of phone call records – revealed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden – as well as its past collection of internet transactional information, and its suspected acquisition of financial information.
Challenges to the phone records bulk-collection program are currently wending their way through the federal courts. Last December, a District of Columbia judge held that the bulk collection of phone records violates the Fourth Amendment – regardless of Smith – and called the program “almost Orwellian.” Yet shortly thereafter a different district court judge relied on Smith to give the program his stamp of approval. This month, a third federal judge opined that the Supreme Court should overturn Smith v. Maryland – but until it does so, he was obligated to allow the calling records collection program to continue.
Great Privacy News for Everyone
The Eleventh Circuit federal appellate court has rejected the idea, however, that Smith and Miller allow warrantless acquisition of business records that reveal intimate matters. Instead, the court looked to a more recent Supreme Court case – United States v. Jones (2012) – which held that attaching a GPS-tracking device to a vehicle and using the device to monitor the car’s movements was a trespass that violated the Fourth Amendment because it interfered with the defendant’s property interest in the car. In concurring opinions, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and four other justices added that the GPS surveillance “impinge[d] on expectations of privacy” because it allowed authorities to monitor every place a suspect traveled and infer many things about a suspect's private life based on that information.
>The Eleventh Circuit concluded that under the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, location information is Fourth Amendment protected.
Relying on the Jones concurrences, the Eleventh Circuit concluded that under the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, cell phone location data is also protected under the Fourth Amendment, since this data can reveal private matters such as “being near the home of a lover, or a dispensary of medication, or a place of worship, or a house of ill repute”. The appellate judges also dismissed the argument used in Smith that people lose their right to data submitted to businesses, rejecting the idea that people know in any meaningful way that in using their cell phone they are sending their location information to a provider.
Davis, by refusing to apply Smith and Miller in a stored records case, has taken a giant step away from the legal justification propping up many of the government’s targeted and bulk metadata collection practices.The appellate judges in Davis, by refusing to apply Smith and Miller to a case involving stored records, have taken a giant step toward undermining the legal justification propping up many of the government’s targeted and bulk metadata collection practices. The call detail records that the NSA gets under its Section 215 collection program – which provide information about phone numbers called and received and the duration of calls – include far more detailed data than the simple information at issue in Smith and are far more revealing of private conduct, social networks, and thought processes. This is especially true because the records are collected in bulk.
In Jones, Justice Sotomayor opined that it may be time to rethink the third-party doctrine. The Eleventh Circuit has taken a step in that direction, writing an appellate-level opinion that rejects the extension of those 1970s-era cases to modern communication networks and data. This is great privacy news for anyone who uses a cell phone. But it’s also a tremblor suggesting that when appellate courts finally get hold of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection programs, these programs may very well be knocked down.Massachusetts has a problem with cigarette smuggling—a problem, that is, from the point of view of tax collectors and government regulators. State officials have hiked tobacco taxes so high in pursuit of the twin not-so-compatible goals of enhancing revenue while also discouraging smoking that people are buying their smokes on the black market, smuggled in from low-tax jurisdictions or overseas.
In response, the state established the Illegal Tobacco Task Force, to crack down on those subjects who refuse to be passively milked or else give up on their vice. That unholy committee of cops and revenooers has come up with a plan for victory in pursuit of its "mission to confront and combat the illegal tobacco trade in Massachusetts": import personnel and tactics from the war on drugs.
Because we all definitely look to drug prohibition as a model for success, right? Well, not all of us—a lot of police, health professionals, and prosecutors are having doubts. More on that later.
In its initial report, released two weeks ago, the task force complains: "Several recent studies have indicated that approximately 11.9%-12.7% of all cigarette packs sold in the metro Boston area failed to bear a valid Massachusetts tax stamp. Another study using different methodologies and testing techniques estimates the size of the illegal cigarette market in Massachusetts at 15.53%."
Just as concerning for officials, smuggling has bled over into the growing market for "other tobacco products" including cigars and chewing tobacco, though the scope of the illegal trade is harder to measure.
This is a serious problem, we're told, because "cigarette smuggling costs the Commonwealth millions of dollars in lost revenue year over year."
Unsurprisingly, black market goods are brought in from states where tobacco is taxed at a lower rate—which is to say, almost anyplace else.
Actually, the Task Force—a collaboration between the Department of Revenue and the State Police—may be underestimating the amount of cash slipping through its fingers. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the go-to authority on American cigarette smuggling, tracks this sort of trade across the entire country. Its latest estimates, released in 2014, did indeed put smuggled cigarettes at 12.71 percent of the market. But that was before Massachusetts hiked the tax by $1.00 per pack to $3.51. A 2013 study also produced before the tax hike found that nearly 40 percent of discarded cigarette packages in Boston bore out-of-state tax stamps.
And why not bring them in from elsewhere when cigarettes are taxed at $1.78 per pack in New Hampshire, $1.60 per pack in Pennsylvania, and $0.30 per pack in Virginia? That's quite a savings.
As for those other tobacco products, smokeless tobacco is taxed at a rate of 210 percent of wholesale cost, while cigars and smoking tobacco are taxed at 40 percent of wholesale cost. Pennsylvania doesn't tax such products at all.
Smuggling may be a problem for tax-hungry state officials, but it's just good sense for Massachusetts residents trying to enjoy the pleasures of life. Understandably, that high tax differential creates a lot of space for underground entrepreneurs to profit by keeping those pleasures affordable.
"[O]nce taxes get far enough out of whack among states, basic economic incentives almost guarantee a thriving black market—and, eventually, an arms race between enforcement and motivated cigarette traffickers," the Boston Globe noted in a 2014 article on the illicit trade.
In the seemingly inevitable way of governments everywhere, Massachusetts officials appear to have embraced that arms race rather than consider de-escalation of any sort. In particular, they point with envy to enhanced penalties and enforcement powers in Rhode Island that, among other things, "expanded investigators' authority to search the premises of tobacco dealers and suppliers at all levels of the supply chain."
Hmmm… Draconian punishment and weakened search and seizure protections. What could the Task Force be getting at here?
Oh wait, here it is: representatives of Connecticut and New York law enforcement invited to advise their Bay State neighbors "noted the close similarities between narcotics investigations and illegal tobacco investigations. As a result, they suggested trying to find experienced narcotics investigators (often former police officers) to be part of any tobacco investigations team."
It's not only personnel. Smoke-tax enforcers advising the task force also recommended increased surveillance, use of paid informants, and undercover operations in order to target the black market created by high state tobacco taxes.
In other words, enforcement of taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products should look increasingly like decades-old efforts behind laws against marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and the like—prohibition efforts that have brought ever-growing demands for more law enforcement power and resources because, like efforts to stamp out cigarette smuggling, they haven't worked.
"The war on drugs has been a tremendous failure," Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland admitted in October of last year at the launch of Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, an effort in which he's joined by New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton, Los Angeles Police Chief Charles Beck, and Washington, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, among other criminal justice system veterans. They want to dial back harsh criminalization and lengthy sentences that have filled prisons with nonviolent offenders. They echo the call of the former cops and prosecutors of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition who have made similar—and stronger—arguments for years.
Likewise, the World Health Organization considers prohibitionist policies counterproductive and now urges that "Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize injection and other use of drugs and, thereby, reduce incarceration" and ease access to health care. WHO also favors decriminalizing sex work and homosexuality for the same reasons.
Health professionals, police chiefs, and prosecuting attorneys now say that the surveillance tools, intrusive investigations, criminalization, and brutal penalties accumulated over decades of drug prohibition have been terrible and damaging mistakes.
But tobacco regulators in Massachusetts and elsewhere seem to think that they'll be brilliant additions to efforts to squeeze people for taxes on their smokes.“Bernie Sanders for President?
You Frickin’ Kidding Me?
He’s a Commie.
Is That Even Legal, a Communist President?” —A man named Tom in Manchester, New Hampshire
Photographs by Nigel Parry
There were a few changes in that same speech Bernie Sanders freely admits he’s been giving for the past four decades, give or take a j’accuse or two.
Beginning in 1981, when he was first elected as the democratic-socialist mayor of Burlington, a.k.a. “the People’s Republic of Burlington,” the only U.S. city then maintaining a pro–Nicaragua-Sandinista foreign policy, Bernie, as he is universally known there, often railed against “the ruling class.” These days, with the condition-red Republican hegemony hard upon the land, the 73-year-old U.S. senator has upped the ante, going with “the billionaire class.” Likewise, well-worn jeremiads against the Rockefellers, big oil, and the Bush neocon cabal have been replaced by broadsides decrying corporate media and the moneybag Koch brothers, Chuck and Dave, wielders of the Citizens United truncheon.
“The Koch brothers say, ‘Oh, you want to run for the Senate?’ ” Sanders thundered during a recent speech in New Hampshire, the early presidential-primary state where prospective candidate Sanders has been spending a good deal of time of late. “ ‘Okay,’ ” Sanders continued. “ ‘Here’s your hundred million dollars. Here’s your speech. … You’re not an elected official, you’re an employee.’ …Does their greed know any bounds?”
The question is rhetorical. Almost everything Bernie Sanders says, in his incongruous Brooklyn-deli-man accent that dates to his 1940s Flatbush upbringing, is rhetorical. Small talk and false ingratiations are not his thing.
Related Stories The Complete Guide to 2016 Presidential Candidates [Updated]
Like a rabbinical Man in Black, a lone truth teller, Bernie fired the rat-a-tat of bone-chilling bullet points: how nearly 46 million Americans are now in poverty, “more than at any time in the history of our country”; how, “despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act,” some 40 million citizens still will likely have no health insurance. Did you know that the top 25 hedge-fund managers in the country make enough to pay the salaries of more than 425,000 public-school teachers? No? Well, it’s true, Sanders said. Is anything likely to change? Not really. As Bernie explained, “60 percent of the people don’t vote; 75 percent of low-income people don’t vote; 80 percent of people between 18 and 21 don’t vote.”
Like his fellow senator on the left, Elizabeth Warren, the white-haired Sanders is a reigning campus hero, but his testament brings only gloom to his audience at the University of New Hampshire auditorium. Could things really be that bad? Could the American experiment, the New Jerusalem of Thoreau and Emerson, have been reduced to this snarling, cobalt-hearted thing? What kind of country have we bequeathed to our children, the poor debt-ridden college students/suckers who filled much of the hall?
As for the upcoming 2016 election, what could a matchup of Hillary and Jeb Bush decide except who sat at the temporary head of the Illuminati table? Sanders is on record as saying he respects Hillary, that they became “friends” when she was First Lady and then a senator. But what difference could someone as connected to power as Hillary make in the present dire situation? “If you talk about the need for a political revolution in America, it’s fair to say that Secretary Clinton probably will not be one of the more active people,” Sanders has said.
It is at about this point in the Bernie Sanders speech that someone asks the Question. The query might come from a man with a graying ponytail, or a lady in a hand-knit sweater, the sort of people who regularly contribute $25 to $50 to Sanders, who won’t take money from major corporations. (He still has about $4.5 million left over from the $8 million he raised during the 2012 election cycle.) Or it could be asked by a student, an earnest, fresh-faced scholar looking into the abyss of an uncertain future. The fact is the Question is not quite a question at all. It is more of an entreaty, a plea.
Are you going to run for president? That’s what everyone wants to know.
At the UNH speech, the supplicant was a middle-aged registered nurse. “Will you do this for us?” she beseeches. “We’re begging you, Bernie. Save us. Please.”
Photo: Nigel Perry/New York Magazine
At any given time there are but 100 individuals who can call themselves U.S. senators, and only one of them decorates his office with a large portrait of Eugene V. Debs, the five-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America. Then again, there aren’t many states in the Union that would elect someone like Bernie Sanders to the Senate.
To know why we may soon be living in a however unlikely Bernie Sanders moment, it is useful to know Vermont, the state Sanders has represented in Congress for 24 years, the last eight as a senator. It is helpful to understand that long before Sam Houston and the loutish Lone Star State, before the “patriot” secessionists of Arizona, there was the Republic of Vermont, a sovereign nation with its own constitution. Signed in a tavern during a raging thunderstorm in 1777, the Vermont constitution forbade slavery and guaranteed suffrage to male non-landowners. In other words, it offered more freedom than the famous document promulgated by the vaunted U.S. Founding Fathers and ratified in 1789.
By the 20th century, Vermont had settled into a pious, flinty New Englander sort of pre-Goldwater Republicanism (tough on money, liberal on social issues). But these stately agronomic rhythms were well in flux by the time Bernie Sanders arrived for good during the tumultuous year of 1968.
“My hair was long, but not long for the times. I smoked marijuana, but was never part of the drug culture. That wasn’t me,” says Sanders as we sit together in his office on Church Street in Burlington, a pleasant burg of more than 40,000 and the largest settlement in the state.
Good luck prying anything personal beyond the basic bio from Sanders. He does, however, allow that his early life in Flatbush, where he grew up in a three-and-a-half-room apartment on East 26th Street and went to James Madison High School (Chuck Schumer also went there), bore little resemblance to the left-leaning intellectualism often associated with the New York Jew.
“My father was a worker,” Sanders says dispassionately. “He came here in 1917 without a penny, didn’t speak English, yet managed to send me and my brother to college. My mother wanted a house of our own, but he couldn’t provide that. I suspect they voted Democratic, but it wasn’t anything that was ever discussed.”
Sanders says it was only after leaving Brooklyn to attend the University of Chicago—and when the civil-rights movement hit—that he became politically aware. He began marching and protesting. In the mid-’60s, he lived on an Israeli kibbutz for six months.
Sanders after his first win as Burlington mayor in 1981. Photo: Rob Swanson
When Sanders arrived in Vermont at age 27, it was among the whitest and most rural states in the country, as it still is today. He was one of thousands of “flatlanders” (what the “woodchuck” locals call out-of-staters) fleeing the “hassle” of New York and Boston. Sanders fell in love. This wasn’t Brooklyn. “In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never once heard anyone loudly cursing in the grocery store.”
He did odd jobs and began to raise a family. In 1971, a friend invited him to a meeting of the then-fledgling leftist Liberty Union Party. Sanders remembers: “I stood up, said a few words. I can’t remember what. Two hours later, I was a candidate for the United States Senate.” He got in his $200 car and went out to campaign. “Here I was, running on this tiny party, with no money, but I was allowed to participate in the debates, I was on the radio, interviewed in the newspapers, actually taken seriously. Could you imagine that happening today?”
Sanders ran as an “unabashed socialist,” got 2 percent, kept at it, got 4. He did considerably better in the blue-collar areas of Burlington. Switching from the socialist Liberty Union Party to become an Independent, he ran for mayor and, in what became a nasty standoff between liberal flatlanders and old-line woodchucks, managed to beat the five-term incumbent Gordon Paquette by a count of 4,030 to 4,020.
Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, another Brooklyn-born flatlander and Vermont icon, recalled the scene. “Our first store was in an old gas station. We wanted to show movies, but the city said no. We’d be competing with the theater. It was that old-boy cronyism, like playing a Betty Boop cartoon on a wall was going to wreck anyone’s business. When Bernie came in—his followers were called Sanderistas—things loosened up quite a bit.”
As the flatlanders kept coming, making Vermont into perhaps the bluest of blue states, Sanders became the beneficiary of a rare political calculus. Unlike almost every other modern pol, he hasn’t had to change with the times. The times came to him. After four terms as Burlington mayor, 16 years in the House, and eight years in the Senate (he was reelected in 2012 with a steamrolling 71 percent of the vote), Sanders says his views are “basically the same” as during his Liberty Union days.
In a way, he is the living embodiment of the ’60s credo “What goes around comes around,” because it is Sanders’s unchangingness that has landed him a bumper crop of press and appearances on national media like The Colbert Report. His message of equality in the face of massive inequality strikes many as an echo of a nearly forgotten yet more hopeful time. As another hippie phrase goes, “It’s so old it’s new.”
“You could say moving to Vermont was the best decision I ever made,” Sanders says. “What would have happened if I’d stayed in Brooklyn? How far could I have gotten? The State Assembly?”
Although he was admittedly no more than “a foot soldier” in the great movement battles of the ’60s, Sanders is the last pure man standing of his most political generation. The highly compromised examples of Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Jerry Brown, and even Jesse Jackson notwithstanding, he alone has been able to keep the outsider faith. Even though he votes with the Democratic Party more often than many actual Democrats, he is the longest-serving Independent member of Congress in the history of the country.
Sanders estimates he’s personally conversed with “a very high percentage” of the state’s 620,000-plus inhabitants. Everyone you meet can tell you of the time Sanders came into their store, addressed their town-hall meeting, or stepped out of character to play a garbageman in a Bread and Puppet Theater extravaganza up in Glover.
This doesn’t mean he is universally beloved. Stories abound about Sanders’s highhandedness, his sheer I-am-right-and-everyone-else-is-wrongness. You look for the Brooklyn in the man, a hint of the haimish, a few laughs to make the medicine go down, but find little. Even though many younger progressive pols in the state have worked for him, they approach him with wariness. “He’s the king, they owe him, they don’t want to cross him,” says one close observer. A commonly heard phrase is “Bernie Sanders is a man of the people who doesn’t particularly like people.”
Bernie might be a grump, but, as they say in the northern kingdom, “he’s our grump,” a durable brand. No one can say he’s not his own man. That’s what he’s got going for him as he trundles around the country with his decades-old speech, testing the waters for a long-shot presidential run. It could be that Warren is a better sell to those who feel disenfranchised by the soul-crush of money politics, but as of now she isn’t making the rounds for herself in Iowa and New Hampshire. So until someone else comes along, if you’re not crazy about the way things are going in this benighted land of ours, Bernie Sanders, grumpy grandpa, is your guy.
You know you’re in Vermont when you get off the plane and the first thing you see is a sign offering college students a chance to spend a semester abroad in Cuba. You know you’re in New Hampshire when your rental car bottoms out in a pothole 400 yards past the state line. Compared with the designer Eden west of the Connecticut River, things are a little scrabbly here in the “Live Free or Die” state. Maybe it’s that no-state-income-tax that keeps the roads so crappy, but everywhere was the hand of man: stilled factories, giant malls, and all.
Much of the anti-Sanders rhetoric in Vermont comes from the left, often from old comrades dating to the pre-mayoral days who consider “Bernardo” a sellout. He’s been lambasted over his rapprochement with upstate gun owners and his relatively moderate commentary on Israeli-Palestinian relations (he’s for a two-state solution, but the topic only makes him groan). There was widespread criticism, even from people like Ben Cohen, over Sanders’s support for basing Lockheed’s F-35 jets at the Burlington airport. But that’s Vermont. New Hampshire is a place more in tune with the prevailing American norm.
“Bernie Sanders for president? You frickin’ kidding me? He’s a commie. Is that even legal, a communist president?” says a man named Tom, sloshing back a margarita, watching Thursday-night football at Cactus Jack’s in Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city and the home of the Union-Leader, the right-leaning newspaper (Hunter S. Thompson called it “America’s worst newspaper”) that plays a large role in the New Hampshire primary process.
“The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, everyone else gets fucked,” says one of Tom’s buddies who identified himself as “a dues-paying member” of the pipe-fitters union. “Things suck, I get it. I just don’t want to be yelled at by some socialist.”
I bring this up with Sanders. Is there something in the national DNA that words like socialism cause such seemingly instinctive abhorrence?
It has nothing to do with socialism, Sanders counters. It is all the fault of the Koch brothers and the media. The entire popular culture is a vast mind-control program.
“People care more about Tom Brady’s arm than they do about our disastrous trade policy, NAFTA, CAFTA, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. ISIS and Ebola are serious issues, but what they really don’t want you to think about is what’s happened to the American middle class.”
The excessive cost of higher education and the burden of “Mafialike,” shortsighted student loans are other staples of Bernie’s never-ending speech. He never fails to hit the note in his voluminous web presence, which is the pride and joy of his bare-bones staff, making sure that prospective younger voters know that, even if Sanders reminds them of their lovable-curmudgeon grandpa, he’s got a big and beefy Twitter feed. “Once America ranked No. 1 in turning out college graduates. Now we are 12th,” Sanders regularly tells his overflowing campus crowds.
When speaking to students, Bernie often stops mid-speech to ask “How much does it cost a year to go here?” At Plymouth State, a properly disgruntled computer major derisively shouted out, “$22,000.”
“Twenty-two thousand!” Sanders replied. “That’s a lot of money. A working family can have a hard time coming up with that.”
It’s at that point that Bernie, who paid nothing like that for his one year at Brooklyn College, unveils his belief that all colleges should be free. Predictably, the proposal gets a big cheer.
Another college appearance, this one within the Ivy League halls of Dartmouth, offered an opportunity for some old-time class analysis. With the room awash with fist-bumping Bernie energy, Sanders asked his “how much” question. Someone answered, almost apologetically, “$65,000, maybe 70.”
The number—it’s actually $62,000—seemed to stop even Bernie in his tracks. That was really a lot of money.
Then again, this is the alma mater of Nelson Rockefeller. Over in the stately Baker-Berry Library, with its 200-foot bell tower, was the renowned “Black Dan” portrait of the young Dartmouth man Daniel Webster, Sanders’s fellow senator and leading Federalist enemy of the American populism that would come to be known as “Jacksonian democracy.” Dartmouth’s endowment currently stood at $4.5 billion, returning 19.2 percent in the fiscal year that ended on June 30. Even at $248,000 for a four-year degree, it is unlikely that many of the students here will leave school in the condition Sanders sometimes calls “indentured servitude.” Here was the Establishment Sanders rails against.
But what could you do? There’s only so much power anyone, Bernie Sanders very much included, could challenge in America. Besides, the speech is the speech. Sanders pronounced himself happy with the turnout and the enthusiasm of the students’ response.
In 1987, while still mayor of Burlington, Sanders made a record of ’60s folk anthems, his booming Flatbush-ese plowing through such movement favorites as “We Shall Over |
concerns and any thoughts or recommendations you may (have) for the city going forward," Reeve wrote.
Gonzalez declined to meet with city attorneys, asserting that by not further investigating the city chose to "reaffirm a response that victims of abuse are all too often provided: there is nothing more to be done."
"While I appreciate your offer to meet to discuss my concerns in greater detail, I have little confidence that any substantive, meaningful or necessary conversations will occur unless an outside party investigates this matter further," Gonzalez wrote to the city attorney.
Reeve told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email Thursday that the conduct Gonzalez alleged would have violated city rules in place at the time and the accusations would have been investigated had they "been reported." Reeve noted that Gonzalez received training on the city's anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, "including his ability to make reports outside his own office if he didn't feel comfortable reporting to his supervisor."
Gonzalez told the city attorney in an email that he did report the behavior to his supervisors, Tom Miller and Jennifer Yocom, but they dismissed his concerns. Miller said in November that Gonzalez never told him about inappropriate behavior. Yocom could not be reached for comment Thursday evening.
Gonzales told the city attorney that he was "shocked and saddened" that his statement had gotten out to the public.
He said the email that he wrote to eight top city officials' public email addresses was "intended solely for review by city of Portland staff." Public employees' emails are public records unless there is a specific provision in the law, such as for records containing private medical information, that allows them to be kept confidential.
--Jessica Floum
503-221-8306It’s difficult to predict how an appeals court will rule after it hears arguments Monday in Verizon Communication’s challenge of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality rules.
Groups on both sides of the debate over the FCC’s rules prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing traffic say they believe they have a good case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Reading the court’s tea leaves has become as much of a case of wishful thinking as a predictive science.
On one hand, the same appeals court ruled against the FCC in April 2010, when the agency tried to force Comcast to comply with an Internet policy statement after the cable broadband provider was caught slowing BitTorrent and other bandwidth-hogging applications. The court said then that the FCC lacked “any statutorily mandated responsibility” to enforce network neutrality rules.
The legal situation has changed since then, however. Last December, the same appeals court ruled in favor of the FCC after Verizon Wireless had challenged the agency’s authority to impose data roaming rate rules on mobile carriers. The question over the FCC’s authority to impose data roaming rules is similar to the one raised by Verizon in the net neutrality case, some telecom experts said.
Then, in May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a case called City of Arlington v. FCC, that a regulatory agency generally be given broad deference when interpreting its own authority when statutory ambiguity exits. That decision could influence the upcoming appeals court decision, some experts said, although others cautioned that the cases have significant differences.
Adding to the difficulty in predicting an outcome: The court has a number of options it could take. It could strike down the FCC’s net neutrality order, it could uphold it, or it could take some type of middle ground. For example, the court could kick back the rules to the FCC by saying the agency may have the authority but hasn’t made its case.
[Related: A brief history of net neutrality at the FCC]
Verizon’s position
Verizon argues that the FCC doesn’t have authority to regulate an information service, a class of communications that the agency has previously exempted from most regulation. The net neutrality rules are a violation of Verizon’s First Amendment free speech rights and its Fifth Amendment property rights, the company has argued.
The agency has claimed broad authority over broadband using twisted regulatory logic, Verizon’s lawyers wrote in their brief to the appeals court. As with the earlier Comcast case, “the FCC has acted without statutory authority to insert itself into this crucial segment of the American economy, while failing to show any factual need to do so,” Verizon said in the court brief.
That earlier Comcast decision from the same court presents a major “hurdle” for the FCC, said Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation, a free market think tank that has joined a brief calling for the court to overturn the rules. Although the FCC, in its 2011 net neutrality order, “made an effort to beef up its argument that it possesses authority under the Communications Act to regulate Internet access service, I think the overall impression is that the agency is reaching too far,” May said by email.
May would lean toward the FCC losing the case, he said. The court will look at whether the FCC’s net neutrality rules were reasonable, May said, and many critics have argued the regulations were unnecessary because there have been few examples of violations.
“Even if the court finds that the FCC possesses authority under the statute, there is a pretty good chance the court will find, in light of the lack of persuasive findings concerning market failure, consumer harm, or impact on investment and innovation, that the agency’s decision is arbitrary and capricious,” May said.
The Free State Foundation, free market think tank TechFreedom and other critics of the net neutrality rules argue in their brief that the U.S. government could police major violations of net neutrality principles under existing antitrust law.
If the appeals court strikes down the rules, “net neutrality will be dealt with the same way concerns about competition are dealt with throughout the rest of the economy,” Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, said by email.
The TechFreedom/Free State Foundation brief also repeats concerns that the rules violate broadband providers’ free speech rights. “By denying Internet service providers their editorial discretion and by compelling them to convey content providers’ messages with which they may disagree, the Order violates broadband providers’ First Amendment rights,” the brief says.
The First Amendment and Fifth Amendment concerns are “silly,” countered Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, a digital rights group that has pushed for strong net neutrality rules. The FCC hasn’t taken away Verizon’s ability to communicate on its website or its blogs, and the agency hasn’t taken away the carrier’s network, he said.
Verizon’s argument that its free speech is impacted when it provides the pipes for other people’s messages is “contrary to the notion to what a carrier does and how the Internet works,” he said.
Verizon, during other debates, has argued it should not be held responsible for the communications of its broadband customers, says the Center for Democracy and Technology and a group of legal scholars in their brief to the appeals court.
The FCC’s order does not violate Verizon’s free speech rights, but “instead protects the First Amendment interests of Internet users,” CDT says in the brief. “Certainly, Verizon often does speak via the Internet, using websites, blogs, email, social media, and the like. But its separate conduct in transmitting the speech of others should not be confused with Verizon’s own speech.”
Still, the FCC’s argument that it has so-called ancillary authority to regulate broadband because it has authority over other communications services may be a tough sell, Wood said. The appeals court rejected the ancillary authority in the 2010 Comcast case, he noted.
The Supreme Court’s City of Arlington case and the data roaming case give the FCC a “mini-winning streak,” however, Wood said. He gives the FCC a “close to 50 percent chance” of winning the Verizon case.
The FCC has a good chance of winning, countered Michael Weinberg, a vice president at digital rights group Public Knowledge. The agency is “basically right” in arguing it has the authority to regulate broadband under the Communications Act, he said.
The agency had potential court challenges in mind when it drafted the net neutrality order, Weinberg said. “The FCC was thoughtful about this,” he said.It is a known fact that Google is the No.1 search engine and almost all online businesses either have advertised or know about ads on Google. But there is another big website which people often forget about. YouTube. YouTube is not just the world’s No.1 video hosting platform but also the world’s No.2 search engine. A lot of people go to YouTube directly and search for video content instead of going to Google.
So I guess it is time to start exploring video marketing on YouTube and YouTube ads. There are different types of ads on YouTube and it may be a little confusing at first, but the very purpose of this article is to bring clarity about the whole YouTube advertising process and possibilities. Mostly the focus of this post is on one type of ad called the TrueView ads.
YouTube advertising can be ineffective and one can get into the trap of treating it as just another website where you put up the ads and bring traffic to your website. But the best use of ad dollars spent in YouTube advertising would be to push video content that is already hosted on YouTube so that it creates a snowball effect. Hence the first step would be:
Step 1: Start with Video Content Marketing on YouTube
Before you start exploring how to setup YouTube ads, my recommendation would be start using YouTube as a video content distribution channel first. Setup a YouTube channel, publish some quality videos on the channel, spread the links through social media and your own website. The types of videos may be customer testimonials of your product or service or a how-to video demonstrating your product in action.
Gather some views, comments and followers. This exercise would give you a lot of insights on what your average audience expects. This information will help you in fine tuning and optimizing your future video ad campaign.
Step 2: Understand YouTube Ad Types and Setup Video Ads
YouTube’s TrueView video ad campaigns are targeted towards increasing views/plays for a YouTube video and is also the most effective way to do it. To get started, login into adwords and click on New Campaign. Under New Campaign, select ‘Online Video’.
In the next page, give the campaign name, budget, select location and select the language. You can observe that the Ad section is optional but go ahead and select a video from YouTube. Once selected, you will have the following three options for TrueView ad formats:
In-stream In-display In-search
1. In-Stream Ads
These In-Stream ads are like pre-roll ads but they appear before, in the middle or in the end of other YouTube videos. After 5 seconds, the viewer has the option to skip the ad and you will not be charged for it. For videos which are 30 seconds or longer (Your video which you are promoting as an ad), you will be charged only when the user views the videos at least for 30 seconds. If your video is less than 30 seconds, you will be charged only when the user completes watching the video.
The following image shows how a TrueView In-stream ad looks like.
Just like the advantage of Google PPC ads where you are charged only for clicks and not for views, here you will be charged only for people who have taken interest in the video and watched it. Remember that there is no separate option to upload your video creative here. The video ad creative itself should have been uploaded to YouTube before you are setting up the ad campaign.
2. In-display Ads
In-display means that your YouTube video will be promoted via display ads within YouTube as well through other websites who have chosen to display ads from Google. This can appear as an ad on the right side of a video that is being already watched on YouTube or any other web property on the internet where Google Display Network reaches.
Within YouTube, these ads are usually highlighted in yellow. You may have seen such ads already while using YouTube.
These videos may appear on websites where the website owner has chosen to display video ads. These videos can also play right in the ad banner within a website and the user can complete watching the video within the website itself.
Unlike In-stream ads, you will be charged when the user chooses to watch the video. You will be charged even if the user doesn’t view it for 30 seconds. The reason for this is because the users choose to watch your video and they are not interrupted during other videos like In-stream video ads. If your video is engaging, the user will watch the entire video.
3. In-search Ads
These ads are similar to the In-display ads but instead of the ad appearing next to a YouTube video, the ads will appear when people search inside YouTube for specific keywords. The ad will be displayed either as a 640×90 Rectangle on the left half of the page or a 300×70 Small Rectangle on the right half of the page. In the image below, the ad that is highlighted in red is a 640×90 Rectangle
These ads are much similar to the regular PPC ads on Google and in my opinion, this is the best type of TrueView ad because you are targeting people who are looking for you. When people are looking for information in YouTube instead of Google, this is the best way to capture their attention and then convert that prospect into a customer.
Other Types of YouTube Ads
There are some other types of YouTube ads which are less frequently used and only by marketers with high budgets. The conversions may be low with such ads, but it is a huge branding channel and can help in getting the message across, spreading the buzz and creating an impact in the market.
First Watch Ads
As the name suggests, first watch ads are the first ad that YouTube viewers engage in. Right now, YouTube claims that approximately 75 million daily global impressions can be delivered with First Watch ads.
Google :30s
Google :30s are 30 second video ads which will be played in YouTube or in the Google Display Network. With this type of ad, you can access the entire Google video inventory.
YouTube Home Page Ads
The are the big (sometimes really big) banner ads you see on the home page of YouTube. According to YouTube: “Each format is a huge canvas for your brand message. Interactive rich media and social media links give you tremendous user engagement.” This ad format comes with standard and expandable options.
According to YouTube the home page ads get high click-through rates, high interaction rates, increased video views, more searches for your brand on YouTube and Google, and more customer visits to your website. These ads cannot be run through adwords. You need to contact a Google sales representative to get this going.
YouTube Mobile Ads
YouTube Mobile ads are the ads that will be displayed in the mobile version of YouTube (m.youtube.com). Google claims that more than 400 million videos are watched on mobile devices every day. If you are looking for maximum brand exposure, this is not something you can afford to miss. YouTube Mobile Ads offers three types of ads as follows:
Road Blocks
Mobile Channel Ads
In-stream ads
This type of ads also cannot be run using adwords. You need to contact a Google sales representative.
Conclusion
I hope you have got a clear idea about YouTube video ads in this article. The success of the video campaign rests on the effectiveness of the video being promoted and it goes back to proven advertising and copy-writing principles. Web videos have made it much easier to communicate complex information to a lot of people in an easy to understand manner… and YouTube is leading the web video revolution. Many digital marketers are missing out on the power of video and it is a great time to make hay while the web video sun is shining.Belarusian and Russian opposition leaders are to launch a Russian-language television channel based in Estonia to combat Kremlin propaganda throughout Eastern Europe, according to The Guardian.
At present, aru.tv broadcasts online three days a week, but it plans to expand its coverage from April, according to its founder, Belarusian activist Pavel Morozov.
It receives support from MyMedia, an initiative funded by the Danish government to promote independent journalism in Turkey and several former Soviet countries.
“Aru.tv targets people in Russia and the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, the Baltic states and Belarus,” Morozov told Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita. “The people behind this project consider its main mission to be providing information free of propaganda elements.”
A previous attempt by Morozov to launch aru.tv in 2009 was short-lived. Now the format has changed and will have a more “satirical direction”, he told the Estonian site Rus.err.ee.
Aru.tv is run mostly by political émigrés. Morozov received political asylum in Estonia after he faced legal trouble in his homeland in 2005 for creating satirical cartoons of strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko, and one of the main hosts is Artemy Troitsky, an acclaimed Russian music critic and outspoken opponent of Putin's government, who also relocated to Tallinn recently.The Czar walked into the second floor men’s room at the Castle this morning and found ‘Puter sitting on the cold tile floor, in his underwear, staring at the floor drain while clutching a roll of Brawny paper towels in one hand, and a mostly empty brown jug of spiced rum and home-made Dr. Pepper in the other. For those of you who know ‘Puter, this is known as “Waiting for the big one.” Anyhow, the Czar asked “What vexes thee?”
“Did you see the price of gas in California, which you will no doubt write about complete with a photograph conveniently in the right corner? ‘Puter is forced to conclude you were right about quantitative easing.”
Yep. Which you can read about here, as well as here, over here, and even over here.
Gas prices are shooting up. And you were warned about this, too: back in late 2010, before any of the explosive, violent protests in the Mideast occured.
How on earth did the industry know that riots in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya would drive prices up? Well, they didn’t know anything of the sort. What they knew, and what was largely denied by our government, was that quantitative easing would kick in sometime in 2011, and last until at least 2012. Anyone with any sense about money should have known this would occur, on schedule, to the amount it has.
All the turmoil in Northern Africa does not really affect our gas prices, because the United States buys no oil from Tunisia or Egypt or Libya. The price of gas has been going up because the boneheads in our government decided to print up billions of dollars in extra currency and dump it into circulation. The theory sounds like something from an Our Gang save-Mickey’s-farm plot: if we print up a ton of money and throw it…somewhere…Americans will suddenly have a lot more money, which they will start spending on things like vacations and dining in restaurants, and this will kick the economy in high gear and companies will start hiring again, and then we will never worry about that money ever again.
Of course, in real life, this is like trying to fix a leak in a boat by drilling a bigger hole in the hull to drain the water.
Indeed the execution was classic Obama: they put the money into the federal bond market, which encouraged bond holders to cash in and convert money to stocks. This flared up the Dow Jones Industrial Average (which is an inexperienced way to measure the real economy) in late 2010 and everyone in the White House declared the recession was over. Then, unemployment remained high because the spike in stock prices was caused only by an influx of cash, not real capital. No one started hiring. So things stayed a little bleak.
Our president, predictably, undid his own strategy by telling Americans to skip vacations and going out for dinner. The increase in spending failed to occur, meaning that the value of the dollar dropped. See, the President’s economics eggheads skipped the class day to attend a pro-union folk song rally, missing the part where the professor explained how inflation weakens the dollar. If you increase the amount of dollars without increasing the value of products and services, prices go up to compensate.
This is easy to understand if, unlike them, you have a clue how investing works. If the value of a company is worth $45 million, and they have a million shares of stock for sale, the share price is $45 a share. Simple, right? If the price of the share goes up to meet demand, the value of the company goes up; if people start selling shares, the price goes down—the value of the company starts going down.
Likewise, if the price of the stock is $45 a share, and the company suddenly announces they are selling an additional 100,000 shares of stock, what happens? The value of the stock drops, because $45,000,000 divided by 1,100,000 shares of stock equals $40.91. You just lost almost four bucks per share. This is what inflation does to the dollar.
By flooding the bond market with billions of extra dollars, the value of the dollar drops. This is inflation, even if you call it “quantitative easing.”
It takes a few months for the ripple effect to occur. And since this started a few months ago, economists who did their homework began warning that we would see an increase in prices right…about…now. And because the stock market got the extra cash first, the first things that start getting hit with inflation will be your futures markets: oil and food, most notably.
Why your gasoline prices are going up.You can guess where you are seeing the prices surge fastest.
Here is why this drags the entire economy, and why whatever little bit of good the Obama administration sought to claim out of quantitative easing will now go up in smoke: as the price of gas increases, the cost to ship products has just gone up. Why?
Whether you ship good by plane, rail, ship, or truck, these guys need fuel—not green jobs—to power the equipment. Oil prices go up, so fuel prices go up. Fuel prices go up, and the cost to ship this stuff goes up. As a result, those costs are not magically absorbed by rich, corporate fatcat bankers: they are passed right onto you in the form of higher prices.
Some products can withstand this better: we can delay some shipments or reroute stock supplies accordingly for a while. But not with perishable food items: this drives up food prices even higher, faster.
And when companies cannot afford to ship products, they ramp down production. This means people get laid off. Unemployment increases. Some folks simply quit: many truck drivers are independent contractors, and are responsible to buy their own gasoline. This cost is factored into their contract costs: if they have to pay for higher gas prices, they encounter one of two situations: they have a fixed price, and so have to eat the cost out of their profit, or else they have to raise their price per mile, which makes them less competitive against shipping companies. As a result, many drivers simply quit the job and look for work elsewhere. Because they quit, this usually fails to show up on employment statistics.
Let us review: the Fed elects to go for quantitative easing. This increases inflation, prices, and unemployment. Done.
The President, of course, is focusing like a laser on the economy. So that should fix everything.The Jumo engine, made by the German aircraft company Junkers in the 1930s, was an oil-burning, smoke-spewing machine. But it was the most efficient engine of its day. Achates Power, based in San Diego, California, is modifying the design to make it meet modern emissions standards, while improving its efficiency. Data from Achates’s small, single-cylinder test engine convinced the U.S. Army to give Achates, and partner AVL Powertrain Engineering, $4.9 million to build a complete multi-cylinder prototype engine that the Army hopes can be the basis for a range of applications, including powering tanks.
Little engine: Achates has demonstrated the core parts of its technology in this single-cylinder, two-piston engine.
The Army picked Achates because of the potential of its engine to be smaller and more fuel efficient than its conventional engines, while being able to burn a range of different fuels, including jet fuel and diesel. Achates says that its engine, which could also be used in passenger vehicles, could improve the fuel efficiency of a diesel engine by 20 percent.
Since diesel engines are already very efficient, this improvement would result in an engine that’s 50 percent more efficient than gasoline-powered ones, says CEO David Johnson (see “Engine Could Boost Fuel Economy by Half,” “Exploding Engine Could Reduce Fuel Consumption,” and “Engine Reinvention”). And he says the engine could cost 10 percent less than a diesel engine, narrowing the gap between diesel and gasoline engines (diesel engines can increase the price of a car by $1,000 or more).
The basic Junkers design has an unusual arrangement of pistons. In a conventional engine, a piston moves inside a cylinder, compressing fuel and air against a cylinder head. A significant amount of energy in fuel ends up heating the cylinder head rather than driving a piston. The Junkers design puts two pistons in the same cylinder and eliminates the cylinder head. Instead, the two pistons compress fuel and air between them and then fly in opposite directions when the fuel is combusted.
To improve emissions and reduce fuel consumption, Achates has made dozens of changes to the original design, including altering the shape of the combustion chamber and improving fuel injection. But so far, its fuel-efficiency claims are based on data from a single-cylinder engine, extrapolated using computer simulations to estimate the performance of a multi-cylinder engine. (Multiple cylinders would be needed for most applications.) The design also hasn’t been tested under all the conditions the engine would see in ordinary driving, such as transitioning from acceleration to cruising or decelerating.
Johnson contends the differences between single-cylinder and multi-cylinder engines are well known and can be accurately modeled.
The original version of the article was called “An Engine that Uses Half the Fuel.” That was inaccurate.Even if massive multiplayer online role-playing games aren't your thing, there's no denying the breadth of World of Warcraft. It's been a monolithic force in gaming for years now, and it's been played by over a hundred million people. The MMORPG is so powerful, in fact, that as it stands now, its in-game currency is worth more than Venezuela's real-life money, the bolivar.
Though we heard about it via The Blaze, Venezuelan Twitter user @KalebPrime tweeted his discovery on July 14, saying that on Venezuela's black market, which NPR says is the most-used method of currency exchange in the country, you can exchange 8,493.97 bolivars for one U.S. dollar. At the same time, WoW tokens, which can be bought in-game for $20, are worth about 8385 gold per dollar.Norwich City have completed the signing of 25-year-old defender Grant Hanley from Newcastle United on a four-year deal for an undisclosed fee.
The Scotland international broke through at Blackburn Rovers in 2010 after previously being part of the Rangers youth setup, going on to make exactly 200 appearances for the Ewood Park outfit.
Named as Rovers’ captain in January 2014 while aged 22, he moved to Tyneside last summer and made 16 appearances in domestic competitions across the course of the campaign.
Speaking to Norwich City TV after completing his switch to Carrow Road, Hanley said: "Being able to come to a massive club and get games is a big motivation for me.
"It’s a club with high aspirations and a fresh start for me. As a defender, I’m a bit of an old-fashioned no-nonsense centre-half and you pride yourself on clean sheets.
"We’ve got work to do on the training ground to improve that so I’m looking to hit the ground running. I can’t wait to get started."
On what Hanley will add to his squad, Head Coach Daniel Farke added: "We’re really pleased to sign Grant because it is clear our defensive line needs strengthening.
"He is a quality defender with very solid experience and is a leader too. I really like his attitude and his desire to come and play for us as well as the attributes he will add on the pitch."Two passengers were killed and more than 182 were injured on Saturday when an Asiana Airlines flight originating in Seoul crashed while landing at San Francisco's airport.
The cause of Saturday's crash has not been determined. On Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Deborah Hersman said a preliminary review of airplane surveillance "wasn't conclusive."
Here's what we do know: On Saturday morning, the 777 Boeing aircraft originating from Seoul crashed into the runway at San Francisco's airport, breaking off its tail and catching fire. As passengers fled down emergency slides, firefighters doused the burning fuselage with foam and water. (Read: "Can an Airplane Door Open in Midflight?")
On Monday, a spokesperson for Asiana Airlines told the Associated Press that the pilot of the plane, Lee Gang-guk, had only 43 hours at the helm of a Boeing 777 and was making his first landing at the San Francisco airport.
The NTSB has said that the aircraft approached San Francisco "significantly" slower than its target airspeed, but has ruled out engine trouble as a cause. The investigators are currently looking at the aircraft and at the crew, to determine whether they were flying manually or using autopilot during the botched landing.
But the question of whether the pilot was using autopilot may be a red herring, says Patrick Smith, a veteran airline pilot and author of the book Cockpit Confidential.
"As in all lines of work, some aviation tasks are more difficult and work-intensive than others," he wrote in a column analyzing Saturday's crash. "All pilots are trained to handle the sorts of challenges SFO presents, and visual approaches, which do not rely on instrument guidance to the extent of the more common instrument landing system approach, are common at large and busy airports."
We asked Smith to explain this further; specifically, to tell us when and how pilots use autopilot to control a plane and why a pilot might want to use manual controls.
What is "autopilot" on airplanes?
I prefer the term "auto flight system" instead of "autopilot" because we're actually talking about a collection of subsystems that help control various aspects of a flight: heading, altitude, course, speed, engine power, etc. Different components are used at different times, and can be used together or separately, depending.
There is a thing called the autopilot, which frees you from having your hands physically on the controls. There's also something called the autothrottle, which controls engine thrust. I say "controls," but it's doing so in response to what's needed and input by the crew.
What's the biggest misconception about autopilot?
One of the most stubborn myths in all of aviation is this notion that pilots just sit there while the plane flies itself from City A to City B. It's infuriating to know that people believe this, because it's utterly false. Airplanes do not fly themselves. The crew flies the airplane through the automation. A plane cannot fly itself any more than an operating room, with all of its advanced technical equipment, is able to perform an organ transplant by itself. The equipment makes things easier, but the operation itself is controlled by humans.
But what about drones? They clearly fly without a pilot on board.
With the proliferation of drones, there's a tendency to extrapolate and say: Why can't we scale up a drone and stick 300 people in it and off you go? It's so far off from reality that it's hard for me to explain. A drone and a commercial jetliner are the ultimate apples and oranges.
I'm curious about when pilots use the automated systems versus controlling the plane "hands on." Are there times when one is preferable?
More than 99 percent of landings are performed manually. There is such a thing as an autoland where you set up an auto approach and, to put it coarsely, the airplane will land "hands off." But I see only a few of those a year—they're only performed in extreme low-visibility conditions, and the airplane, pilot, and airport all have to be certified.
Were the pilots in the 777 crash in San Francisco flying hands on?
They would have been flying hands on. For reasons not understood, they seem to have found themselves in the throes of an unstable approach. They were either too low or too slow, and when they attempted to break off the landing and go around, it was too late and the plane crash-landed. But how they got themselves in that situation I don't know, and we won't know until we get the full NTSB report.
What does it mean to fly using a "visual approach"?
This can mean somewhat different things, but in the context of the SFO accident it refers to an approach made without the aid of something called an instrument landing system (ILS), where crews follow a pair of horizontal and vertical beams to the runway.
Why wouldn't the pilots in the 777 crash have been using those two beams? It sounds like it would be a lot easier.
That system was not being used for that runway. But a visual approach without ILS is relatively common and something that every pilot knows how to do. Without this guidance, an approach is somewhat more challenging, but it does not explain or excuse landing short of a runway.
I've heard a lot of people say in recent days that they've spent more time flying in airplane simulators than the pilot in the 777 crash had spent flying this particular plane.
Everybody is an airline pilot when they're sitting at their desktop airplane simulator. As for the experience of the Asiana crew, I wrote about this earlier today.
On a lighter note, have you seen the movie Airplane!? What do you think of the autopilot in that movie?
The ones we have are a little more sophisticated than that, and usually don't inflate.
A funny story: In Airplane! there's that well-known scene where Leslie Nielsen's character walks into the cockpit and says to the pilots, "I just want to tell you both good luck; we're all counting on you."acceL. Profile Joined April 2010 United States 109 Posts #1 I'm not sure where to post this.
Anyways, I got into an emo-fit because this noob Hocari cheeses every game and I lose because I'm bad, etc....
I am challenging him to a 200$ grudge match. I am a poker player so these things are typical of me. Most people know poker player words = bond (unless they are degen losers obv). As for him I doubt he will stick to the deal, which has already accepted in game.
acceL vs Hocari
Bo5 -> Metalopolis -> Loser Pick etc...
Now let's see if he comes and confirms said match.
^_^
exile Profile Joined April 2010 Canada 64 Posts #2 Blogs ^^
Zhek Profile Blog Joined January 2010 Canada 337 Posts #3 Get some casting going. We all love drama. If what I say offends you, don't worry, I mean every word.
Technique Profile Joined March 2010 Netherlands 1542 Posts #4 On August 24 2010 00:47 acceL.sik wrote:
I am challenging him to a 200$ grudge match. I am a poker player so these things are typical of me. Most people know poker player words = bond (unless they are degen losers obv).
Lmao. Lmao. If you think you're good, you suck. If you think you suck, you're getting better.
Karliath Profile Blog Joined April 2010 United States 2214 Posts #5 can I obs ^_^
Maaku Profile Joined May 2010 United Kingdom 142 Posts #6 I think we need chill casting this time though!
Snowfield Profile Blog Joined April 2010 1285 Posts #7 Sounds fun, also, blogs
imweakless Profile Blog Joined September 2009 680 Posts #8 livestreaming this games would be sick KMK,Qri,GsD#1, UEE,stork jangbi for life!
acceL. Profile Joined April 2010 United States 109 Posts #9 He told me to post, now he's suddenly afk.
DwD Profile Joined January 2010 Sweden 6690 Posts #10 Get a stream going son! ~ T-ARA SoYeon ~ 9MUSES Hyemi ~ OH MY GIRL YooA ~ DIA Yebin ~ DREAMCATCHER SuA ~ I.O.I ~ ChungHa
Mykill Profile Blog Joined February 2009 Canada 3251 Posts #11
great get this casted drama llamaaaaaagreat get this casted [~~The Impossible Leads To Invention~~] CJ Entusman #52 The problem with internet quotations is that they are hard to verify -Abraham Lincoln c.1863
vyyye Profile Joined July 2010 Sweden 3915 Posts #12 I'd watch it.
Chairman Ray Profile Blog Joined December 2009 United States 11440 Posts #13 PM Chill and get him to cast it, this is gonna be awesome!
mute20 Profile Joined April 2010 Canada 153 Posts #14 Even if you do win I doubt he will pay up
Apocalyptic Profile Joined July 2010 United States 131 Posts #15 HaHa I'd watch this. What races are you guys? "Some people are like a slinky, not really good for anything but they still manage to bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs"
acceL. Profile Joined April 2010 United States 109 Posts #16 I actually plan on him not paying. I don't care about the money, I just want him to look like the tool he really is.
Pandain Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 10313 Posts #17 On August 24 2010 00:54 acceL.sik wrote:
I actually plan on him not paying. I don't care about the money, I just want him to look like the tool he really is.
Man you really got to stream it. I know I would definitely watch it.l Man you really got to stream it. I know I would definitely watch it.l
acceL. Profile Joined April 2010 United States 109 Posts Last Edited: 2010-08-23 15:56:04 #18 You: u got paypal?
Hocari: youre fucking garbage
yes i do
You: k
200$ bo5
Hocari: ok
how do i know
ur going to pay when u lose
You: k
tl.net
im going to post a thread
i puased a game
if you don't pay
Hocari: make a thread
You: you'll look bad
etc...
200$ bo5.
Hocari: ok
make a thread
You: k ill make it after this game
You: kk making now : u got paypal?: youre fucking garbageyes i do: k200$ bo5: okhow do i knowur going to pay when u lose: ktl |
of airstrikes.
"I have seen everything in Mosul, it’s OK,” he said, just an hour after returning from the city. “But the future we don't know what will happen…. If the Iraqi army is going to do air strikes that will be very difficult."
At the monastery, Nadia, along with other women from Mosul, helps in the kitchen, and waits. Some here say it’s like waiting for the war to start in 2003, only worse. Then, there was the possibility that life would get better; this time, many Iraqis are just thinking of all the things they’ve lost.A recent review of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is has found that in the 10 years since its original release, the infection rate of HPV has been lowered by up to 90 percent in countries with high levels of immunisation.
The review found that with more than 187 million doses of the vaccine administered in 130 countries around the world, the number of HPV infections fell by up to 90 percent in some areas, with similar decreases in genital warts and cervical abnormalities also being reported.
"Reductions in HPV infections as well as reductions in the prevalence of HPV 6/11/16/18-related diseases, as noted by decreases in Pap abnormalities, cervical pre-cancers, and genital warts, were detected within four years after vaccine introduction," said lead researcher Suzanne Garland, from the Royal Woman’s Hospital in Australia.
HPV is a DNA virus that spreads through sexual contact. Before this vaccine, having one of more of these viruses were very common, with the CDC concluding that nearly all sexually active men and woman have had it.
"One in two of us will get it in our lifetime, so it is extremely common infection," said HPV vaccine co-creator Ian Frazer, from the University of Queensland told the Brisbane Times. "The chances of you getting a cancer if you have the virus is about one in 100."
What’s worse is that HPV causes more than 70 percent of all cervical cancer cases, and also increases the risk of vulva, penile, anal, and throat cancers.
"Five percent of all cancers worldwide are caused by papillomavirus infection, cervical cancer is the big one," said Frazer, "but there are also some cancers in the throat and mouth we recognise are being increasingly caused by these viruses and then on top of that are a number of rarer cancers caused by these viruses."
"About 20 percent of all cancers are caused by a virus infection, and about a quarter of those are caused by papillomavirus," he adds.
Analysing the findings of 58 studies from nine different countries on the effects of the HPV vaccine, the researchers found that in high immunisation areas such as Australia, where the vaccine is provided in specialised school vaccination programs for free to all 12-year-old school children, the rates of HPV and HPV-caused diseases plummeted.
"Maximal reductions of approximately 90 percent for HPV 6/11/16/18 infection, approximately 90 percent for genital warts, approximately 45 percent for low-grade cytological cervical abnormalities, and approximately 85 percent for high-grade histologically proven cervical abnormalities have been reported," the researchers report.
Another study from February this year showed in the US, the rates of HPV infection declined from 11.5 to 4.3 percent. That’s a 64 percent reduction, which is pretty incredible when you realise that only 37 percent of girls and 13 percent of boys between 13 and 17-years-old have received all their shots.
The US reportedly has such low levels of HPV vaccination due to controversy over the sexually transmitted nature of HPV, and the age at which kids are recommended to receive the shot. But research has shown that the vaccine is most effective when the patients have had no sexual contact to be able to spread the virus.
The research is a pretty good indication that we’re on the right track in dealing with HPV, and with proper implementation, we might some day be able to eradicate HPV-related diseases altogether.
"Observations from over the past 10 years are that the HPV vaccines, if delivered effectively to the majority of 10 to 12 year-old-girls in the developing world from today forward, should lead to the global elimination of new cervical and other HPV associated cancers by 2050," said Frazer.
The meta-analysis has been published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, and the American study has been published in Pediatrics.One image you probably didn’t think you’d see in the aftermath of the Houston storm: a grandma on a Jet Ski.
But that’s exactly what happened to Karen and J.C. Spencer.
The elderly Texas couple found themselves trapped inside their home after Hurricane Harvey barreled through the state, leaving thousands of people stranded. Cleanup efforts just getting underway.
So the Spencers reached out to a place they frequented for help — the local Chick-fil-A, according to ABC News.
The manager sent them a Jet Ski, along with two heroes, Keith Christensen and Winston Savice Jr.
"Thank you," J.C. Spencer told the two saviors. "You're a hero."
J.C. Spencer said the moment calling Chick-fil-A was hilarious to him.
"We had to get out of there so I called Chick-fil-A, now that sounds kind of funny," J.C. Spencer said in an interview on "Good Morning America" Wednesday. "I ordered two grilled chicken burritos with extra egg and a boat. And can you believe that one of the managers of Chick-fil-A, she sent her husband to pick us up and we are so grateful."
Spencer said the two Jet Ski riders arrived shortly after, bringing the couple to higher ground.
Karen Spencer can’t believe it happened.
"I can't believe I'm leaving my flooded house in a Jet Ski," she told ABC News.
This Houston grandmother called @ChickfilA to help her evacuate her house, the manager sent a boat & these jet ski riders saved her instead. pic.twitter.com/vXELBRKlgJ — Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) August 30, 2017
Humans helping humans has been one of the emerging stories from the storm that’s ravaged through Houston.
As the BuzzFeed reported, Texas residents have had to rely on the help of their neighbors, as law enforcement and search and rescue teams deal with an abundance of calls.
Locals have used their own boats to head out and save lives, according to the Deseret News.
Similarly, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have banded together to help rescue Texas residents from flood waters, according to the Deseret News.
"It's all our friends, friends and neighbors. We were lucky. We were in the right spot so it didn't get to us but it got to them," said Mark Myers, a member of Windrose Ward of the Klein Stake of the LDS Church in Klein, Texas.The City Council on Monday unanimously approved a bill allowing vacant corner stores in Remington to reopen — a move cheered by many in the North Baltimore neighborhood.
"The passing of the bill is great for the many residents of Remington who want the convenience of being able to buy essentials, such as milk and eggs or hammer and nails or have a pleasant eatery in their community without the need of transportation," said City Councilman Carl Stokes, lead sponsor of the legislation.
Hundreds of corner stores throughout Baltimore that have become vacant cannot reopen as businesses under current zoning law, according to the city's planning department. Stokes' bill allows 12 corner stores in Remington that are now zoned for use only as residential properties to reopen as their historical use.
Ryan Flanigan, the president of the Greater Remington Improvement Association, said the bill grew out of conversations neighbors have been having for years. As much of the neighborhood has improved, many former corner stores remained vacant because they were too awkward to remake into residential housing, he said.
"People often throw up their hands in frustration and say 'There's nothing we can do about it,'" he said. "We found out there is something we can do about it."
The zoning change — which is backed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake — will allow small businesses at the sites, but will not permit "liquor stores or taverns," according to the city's planning department. The department supported the legislation, concluding that if the vacant stores continue to sit unused, they "could become a blighting influence on the neighborhood."
The bill was not without critics.
Joan Floyd, president of the Remington Neighborhood Association, a rival community group, has opposed the zoning change. She questioned why the council is pushing through a rezoning bill for Remington while the city's comprehensive rezoning plan is being worked on in committee.
Since 2012, the council has been working on the first citywide rewrite of zoning laws since the 1970s. Stokes says his bill is needed because the rewrite is taking too long.
Mike Colligan, who owns one of the vacant stores, said he hopes to attract a tenant soon.
"I'm hoping to put some sort of corner store there," he said. "Maybe a yoga studio or barber shop or grocery store. There's some cool stuff that people are looking into. There's been a ton of interest."
Flanigan said he believes Remington's actions could encourage other neighborhood associations to press for similar action on vacant stores in their areas.
"I hope other communities investigate these changes," he said.
lbroadwater@baltsun.com
twitter.com/lukebroadwaterThis article is over 6 years old
IEA report says Iraq could soon be responsible for nearly half of all anticipated growth in global oil output
Iraq could become the world's second-largest oil exporter within two decades and double its output by 2020, a major study has found.
The International Energy Agency said Iraq can overtake Russia for exports and be responsible for nearly half of all anticipated growth in global output.
But the country's government must overcome internal disputes over oil rights with the autonomous Kurdish region in the north and increase current investment from $9bn (£5.6bn) in 2011 to $25bn a year on average for the rest of the decade, the authors warned.
The IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, explained: "Developments in Iraq's energy sector are critical for the country's prospects and also for the health of the global economy.
"But success is not assured, and failure to achieve the anticipated increase in Iraq's oil supply would put global oil markets on course for troubled waters."
Executive director, Maria van der Hoeven, added: "We all have an interest in Iraq realising its potential and revitalising its economy."
Decades of conflict have left Iraq's oil and energy sector in disarray, but Baghdad has recently signed a series of contracts with BP and Royal Dutch Shell, among others, to raise production levels.
This year output passed 3m barrels per day (bpd) for the first time in 30 years and the country, which has the world's fourth-largest oil reserves, overtook Iran to become the second biggest producer in the Opec cartel.
The report said Iraq can hit 6.1m bpd by 2020 and 8.3m bpd in 2035 mainly in and around Basra in the south.
However, an ongoing dispute with the Kurdistan regional government could slow progress. The federal government says deals which the Kurds have signed with ExxonMobil and Chevron are illegal.
A new law on hydrocarbons and revenue sharing is currently being debated but failure would cause delays.
The report said: "Iraq stands to gain almost $5tn (£3tn) in revenues from oil export over the period to 2035, an annual average of $200bn and an opportunity to transform the country's future prospects. Achieving the required level of oil production and export will require rapid, co-ordinated progress all along the energy supply chain."
One beneficiary of the surge in oil flows from Iraq, the IEA said, will be China. The agency forecast that by 2020, 80% of Iraq's oil will go to Asia.
The report also focused on Iraq's internal energy needs and revealed that it needs 70% more power generation capacity to meet current demands and avoid rolling blackouts which continue to affect the country.
If planned new capacity is delivered on time, however, the electricity grid will meet supply demands by 2015.
The report added: "Iraq needs to install around 70 gigawatts of generation capacity and move away from a predominantly oil-fired power mix to more reliance on efficient gas fired generation: without this transition Iraq would forego around $520bn in oil export revenues."All four episodes of Hard Boiled in the Big Easy are now available on YouTube! Please share them with your friends!
Check out Updates 13 and 14 for some big last-minute news and a summary of just what this Deadlands thing is all about! And please tell your friends! There's less than 48 hours left, and we want to celebrate our success by giving YOU more stuff!
And remember that Deadlands uses the Savage Worlds core rules. If these are new to you, try out our FREE Test Drive Rules at our website!
Savage Worlds Deluxe Explorer's Edition. Hardback available now, softback available August 2012!
Reward Summaries!
Here's a quick list of the extra rewards and add-ons added since the Kickstarter began. Thanks SO much for making this such a wild success! And don't forget the special contest to see if you can catch Shane in the Big Easy on Sunday, June 10th! (See Update #12!)
Unlocked Rewards for Dime Novelists and Up
Hard Boiled in the Big Easy Audio Drama
Deadlands Noir Digital Soundtrack
Figure Flats PDF
4 x Map Flats PDF (Printable, figure-scale maps focusing on Metaire Cemetery, Old Absinthe House, Streets of the Big Easy, and the Bayou locations)
Detective's Notebook Deluxe Character Sheet PDF
Old Absinthe Blues" adventure PDF
Custom Dice (Gumshoes and up)
Game Master's Screen (Capos and up)
5 Deadlands Noir Figures (Private Dicks and up)
Here's a quick summary of what we're adding in addition to the reward levels you see on the right:
Add Ons
Here are the additional items you can add to your order if they're not already included in your reward level. We'll send out a survey when the Kickstarter is over to make sure we're adding the right thing--or you can message us via Kickstarter and we'll let you know we got it.
$20 International shipping
$15 PDF of the Deadlands Noir Companion (included with Palooka and Shamus and up)
$20 Print version AND PDF of the Deadlands Noir Companion
$10 Print copy of the Deadlands Noir Figure Flats (at least four sheets of high-quality color cardstock)
$10 Print copy of Metaire Cemetery Map Flat (full-color dry erase, double sided)
$10 Print copy of Old Absinthe House Map Flat (full-color dry erase, double sided)
$10 Print copy of Streets of the Big Easy Map Flat (full-color dry erase, double sided)
$10 Print copy of the Bayou Map Flat (full-color dry erase, double sided
If you're more inclined to see all this in table format, backer Marc Keil came up with this handy chart. Thanks, Marc!
Deadlands Noir Reward Summary (Courtesy of Marc Keil)
What's Deadlands Noir?
New Orleans, 1935. Whoever called this the Big Easy sure got that one wrong. Things are tough all over. Honest work is hard to find, and even dishonest jobs are getting scarce. The one thing that’s not in short supply is trouble. From shady thugs to crooked cops to Mafia soldiers, there’s plenty of characters out there looking to give an honest Joe a hard time.
And that’s not the worst of it.
There are stories going round about things that go bump in the night. Things you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley on a darker night. And those stories aren’t just coming from rummies or saps who read that Epitaph rag.
Still, there are a few heroes left in the concrete jungle. Steely-eyed private dicks, fast-talking grifters, wild-eyed inventors, and shadowy houngans still struggle against the encroaching darkness. With enough moxie—and more than a little luck—they might just be enough to turn the tide.
Deadlands Noir is a pen-and-paper roleplaying game set in the world of Pinnacle Entertainment’s award-winning Deadlands universe. It includes new Edges, Hindrances, and powers, as well as new rules for handling detective work, the state of the Union and the CSA in the Depression-era, a complete Plot Point campaign, and of course, more monsters and ghouls than you can shake a smoking.45 automatic at.
Update! Since we started, we've added a number of additional products and rewards, including the Deadlands Noir Companion that adds four new cities with their own dark secrets: Chicago, Lost Angels. Shan Fan, and the City of Gloom!
Deadlands Noir uses the best-selling Savage Worlds rules, and you will need a copy of those to play. Check out the Test Drive version of the rules for free at www.peginc.com! Our Explorer's Edition of the rules is only $9.99, print OR PDF!
*** Note: We expect the PDF to be available November 2012, not November 2013 as listed under the Mook Reward. Sorry for the mistake! We can't fix it once it's live. ***
*** Perks! ***
Here's a sneak peak at the work in progress of the special bennies, map, dice, cards, and badge! We'll show you more as progress continues! This is not final art (or a picture of the metal badge, of course). They're concept sketches we'll use to make the final products.
A section from one of our figure-scale maps by Aaron Acevedo!
Check out Updates as we go to see more!Washington Post readers are some of the most critical. Watch deputy editorial page editor and columnist Ruth Marcus respond to reader comments. (Kate Woodsome,Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
“The president weighed in just as any father would, based on the limited information that he had,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, effectively confirming The Post’s report that President Trump personally drafted Donald Trump Jr.’s misleading statement about his meeting with a Russian lawyer proffering dirt on Hillary Clinton.
“As any father would.” That phrase contains so much — so much, indeed, that Sanders invoked it twice. The president, she continued, “offered suggestions like any father would do.” The paternal invocation seeks to harness — it hijacks — the primal ferocity of parental love in the service of political self-preservation. Your kid’s in a bit of trouble — no matter that he’s a 39-year-old man, he is still your child — so he turns to you for help: “Hey, pop, what should I say?”
He needs advice, not really any different from deciding how much life insurance to buy, or whether this stock looks like a good investment. In well-functioning families, sons turn to their fathers for guidance; fathers are the fount of wisdom and judgment. Who can fault a parent for rising to a child’s defense?
But of course for all of Sanders’s treacly effort to Hallmarkize this touching family moment, it was anything but. This was less “Father Knows Best” than “Father Stonewalls Best.” Parents everywhere, fathers and mothers alike, should be repulsed by this playing of the parent card.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Aug. 1 said President Trump was involved in the drafting of a statement released by his son Donald Trump Jr. "like any father would do." (Reuters)
“As any father would.” Fathers are supposed to teach their children the difference between right and wrong. My father taught me not to lie. Donald Trump Jr.’s father taught him to shade the truth — in this case, so much that it was in total eclipse. “The statement that Don Jr. issued is true. There’s no inaccuracy in the statement,” Sanders said. No technical inaccuracy, perhaps, but little actual truth.
“We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up,” Trump Jr.’s statement read. In fact, and it took multiple iterations for the full facts to emerge, Trump Jr. eagerly accepted the meeting, and invited top campaign officials, in hopes of getting the goods on Clinton. “Primarily’’ was the tell, the classic Trumpian hedge behind which Sanders so unconvincingly hid.
“As any father would.” Fathers are supposed to put their children’s well-being above their own; that selflessness is the essence of being a parent. Trump Jr.’s attorney, Alan Futerfas, told The Post that he and his client had been “fully prepared and absolutely prepared to make a fulsome statement” about the meeting. Then the president intervened, dictating edits in the statement to his aide Hope Hicks, and gambling foolishly that the real facts wouldn’t emerge.
When, inevitably, they did, it made Trump Jr. look bad — “If it’s what you say, I love it,” he told the Russian attorney of her Clinton offer — but also provided evidence of some willingness on the part of the Trump campaign to collude with the Russians. Whose interest was the president so frantically scrambling to protecting here, his son’s or his own?Hitler and Eva Braun ‘had sex without touching each other or taking their clothes off’ because he was so fanatical about hygiene, says author Martin Amis.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, the novelist claimed he believes the German dictator kept Eva at arm’s length and would achieve orgasm just by watching her lift her skirt.
He also claimed that Hitler was an asexual and may have had a similar kind of sexual relationship with his half niece, Angela ‘Geli’ Raubal.
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Adolf Hitler pictured with long-term lover and wife Eva Braun who 'had sex without taking their clothes off'
Amis told visitors he imagined the leader of the Nazi Party ‘would fortify his underpants with clean serviettes and then would go into some form of excitation with Eva Braun at a safe distance’.
He said: ‘I imagine Eva would stand a good distance away and lift her skirt and then there would be some sort of soggy climax on Hitler’s part and that would be that.’
The award-winning writer was speaking about his second Nazi-era novel, ‘Zone of Interest’ which is being released 23 years after his first, ‘Time’s Arrow’, was published.
And although he feels he has come to know Hitler well, he maintains the truth about his sexuality remains a ‘black hole’.
Author Martin Amis made the claims while speaking at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature yesterday
‘Sexuality is one of the ways we recognise each other,’ he said
‘Knowing whether someone is married or gay or whatever it might be, you recognise that.
‘I don’t want to be reductive, simplistic or frivolous but I am convinced one of the reasons why Hitler is an unrecognisable figure is that sexually he is a void.
‘With Stalin or Mao there is clear pattern seigniorial behaviour - of having a big appetite – but with Hitler there is absolutely nothing.’
His explanation is that Hitler was ‘not quite the full quid’ and may simply have been insane.
‘In Hitler studies there are three schools of thought about Hitler’s sexuality.
‘One is normality but I think you can boot out that consideration immediately. Can you see Eva Braun relishing a post coital cigarette? Can you consider Hitler’s tender foreplay, a considerate and energetic lover? No you can’t begin to imagine that.
‘So I’d say normality is out. Asexuality is the other one - and the third one is perversion.
‘Historians and psycho-historians who adduce perversion all come up with the filthiest stuff you could possible imagine - coprophilia, coprophagia, all things to do with excretion.”
‘But there are no real clues about his sexuality - except that he wouldn’t take his clothes off, even for his physician and he was almost fanatical about cleanliness, which suggests to me asexuality plus.’
In his latest book he explores the horrors faced by thousands of Jews when they were sent to concentration camp Auschwitz.
The author said one thing which had shocked him during research for the book is that the Nazis had their wives and children living with them in the death camps.
Amis claims that Hitler kept Eva at arm’s length and would achieve orgasm just by watching her lift her skirt
Hitler asleep in an armchair next to Eva Braun in the teahouse on the Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden
Hitler kisses the hand of Eva Braun, in 1941. Author Martin Amis claims Hitler was an 'asexual' and insane
He also discovered how Jews had to pay for their own train fares to the camps - one-way tickets and with children under-12 going free.
Martin Amis was speaking about his second Nazi-era book 'The Zone of Interest' at festival yesterday
But even though he was gaining in knowledge, Amis said he had still not discovered the reason for Hitler’s policies, particularly the hatred of the Jews.
‘One can’t understand the Nazi hatred because it’s anti-human, it’s counter-human.
‘It is a hatred that is not in us, it is outside man.’
Amis dubbed Hitler ‘a bourgeois anti-Christ’ and also spoke of his concern for the high percentages of people in many countries who remain anti-Semitic to this day.
A survey of Greeks showed 69 per cent were anti-Jew, possibly proving that a country in economic crisis was more likely to feel hostility towards Jews, who are seen to be clever, successful and better off.
He also said 93 per cent of Iraqi and Saudi Arabian people are anti-Semitic while Iran is the most benevolent country in the Middle East with ‘only’ 56 percent disliking Jews.
In England the figure is eight percent and in Sweden just four percent, he added.
Amis believes that for some reason Jews inspire either love or hatred in people - his own first love was a Jewish girl - and that few remain neutral on the issue.
He is planning on writing a third novel set against the same grim backdrop.Oootopia: An Artgebraic Tribute to Adventure Time
Oootopia: An Artgebraic Tribute to Adventure Time
Hey Finn
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Marcegum
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Charging up
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Marceline, Vampire Queen
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Tree Trunks
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Eyes Filled With Diamonds
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Sneaky Snack
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Duel with King Worm!
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Lost in the Gardens of Greeples
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Party Animals
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LSP and Melissa
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Hambo...my only friend.
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Hey Girl!
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Mean Marceline
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Happy Bday Hotdog Princess pg1
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Happy Bday Hotdog Princess pg2
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Happy Bday Hotdog Princess pg3
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Happy Bday Hotdog Princess pg4
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Happy Bday Hotdog Princess pg5
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Happy Bday Hotdog Princess pg6
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Happy Bday Hotdog Princess pg7
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Strength, Courage, and Everlasting Friendship
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Our House in the Middle of the Street
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BMO Noire
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Go With Me
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In Your Footsteps
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Adventure 'till You Drop
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Choose Your Own Adventure Time
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C'mon Grab Your Friends,
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Gross Face Sky Base
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Finn and Jake Prepare to Face the Great Ghost Wizard
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Finn by Classic Cartoonists: Al Hirschfeld
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Finn by Classic Cartoonists: Don Martin
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Finn by Classic Cartoonists: Dr. Seuss
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Finn by Classic Cartoonists: R. Crumb
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Finn by Classic Cartoonists: Richard Scarry
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Strawberry bite
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CATTACK!
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Drain the Red
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Sovereign and the Saccharine
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Sons of Mars Promo Art
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Wizard Club
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The Crew
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can you name them all?
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sandwich time
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Go With Me
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Fwends Forever
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Baby Blue
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Pretty Pink
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Bath Time
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Piles
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Lady and Peebles
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Nightosphere Marceline
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Remember You Marceline
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In Pen We Trust
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Adventure Time Piggle 1 by TADO
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Adventure Time Piggle 2 by TADO
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BMO by TADO 1
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BMO by TADO 2
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Finn Panda by TADO
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Finn by TADO (sat)
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Finn by TADO (tall)
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Ice King by TADO
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Jake by TADO (small)
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Jake by TADO (tall)
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Mr Cupcake by TADO
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Princess Bubblegum by TADO
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Rainicorn by TADO
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Daddy Why Did You Eat My Fries
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Stylized art
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Princess Bubblegum
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Forest Archery
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Marceline Rogue
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SoldWhat do you guys think? Besides being a full blown nail polish addict, I think I have now become a hardcore decal addict.
To be perfectly honest, at first I did try to freehand some stashes. It was a nightmare to say the very least. This is another one of those cases wear something simple turns to impossible for me. Then I remembered that last year I went through the same thing and ended up purchasing some decals afterwards.
Polishes used Zoya Spencer and Emilia. I used a holographic topcoat over Emilia to give it a really unique looking effect. The decals are more like stickers rather than water decals, which makes it a little neater to apply.
I really hope you guys like my simple No Shave November mani. Let me know down in the comments what you've done for the month to raise awareness.
Hiya guys. Somewhere between my post at noon and now I feel like I've caught something. Sneezing and full blown body aches. I'm hoping it's anything but the flu. Cross your fingers for me that this doesn't stick around. So how many of you have heard of No Shave November? A lot may have heard of it or the concept, but may not know it's actually a form of cancer awareness. You can find more information and ways to donate at no-shave.org. Even though the month is almost over, I really wanted to participate in raising awareness. So here's my simple mani:You can see above these are the decals I purchased last year. If I'm not mistaken, I believe I got these from eBay. Unfortunately I don't remember the merchant, but it was like two dollars or something like that. Very inexpensive and they end up looking pretty cute.SINGAPORE: When Singaporean Shereen Williams moved to the United Kingdom back in 2005, all she was looking for was a job in accounting.
Fast forward more than a decade, the regional community cohesion coordinator now tackles hate crime, violent extremism and inequality in Wales.
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In her free time, the 34-year-old also supports victims of forced marriages in Muslim families across the country by providing care and helping them through the legal process of annulling their matrimonies.
Ms Shereen now has something to show for her efforts: Being made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her community service in Wales.
The Singapore High Commission in London announced this in a Facebook post last Sunday, congratulating her for contributing to her local community and bringing pride to Singapore.
The MBE recognises an outstanding achievement or service to the community that, according to the official website of the British government, has a “long-term and significant impact”.
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Famous names to have been granted the MBE include singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and Star Wars actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
“For me, it’s not something common that everyone here gets,” Ms Shereen told Channel NewsAsia on Thursday (Jul 6) over a choppy WhatsApp call after taking her seven-year-old son to school. “To get it as a foreigner says a lot for me.”
As Ms Shereen is not a British citizen, she can only be granted an honorary award and will not get to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Her award ceremony will instead be held at a historical government building in the Welsh city of Newport. Not that she minds.
“If you go to the palace, you can only bring three people with you,” she said. “Whereas for something like this, it could actually be a really nice celebration not just for me, but also for the people I work with.”
Ms Shereen added that her community work - which kicked off after her husband offered her name for a job as a treasurer at a youth charity - is far from done.
“You do this work because you want to help people, not because you want to get some extra alphabets after your name,” she said, referring to the official title granted to MBE recipients.
Ms Shereen recounted her joy in helping a young girl escape a forced marriage three years ago and seeing her fall in love and have children. “My favourite part was receiving her picture on her wedding day looking really happy,” she said.
These moments, together with the support from her family back home, drive Ms Shereen on in her quest to serve her community.
“When the honours were finally announced, my mother was extremely happy. She’s always had me in her prayers, so this is a reflection of my parents, really,” she said.
“They’re always sort of reinforcing in me to keep doing the good work.”Just in time for binge-watching TV shows over the long Thanksgiving weekend, NVIDIA is rolling out a new update for its Android TV-based Shield TV set-top devices. The 6.2 Experience Update includes new Google Assistant support for several of Shield TV’s services.
Editor's Pick Deal: grab the NVIDIA Shield TV for only $170 at Amazon and Best Buy If you're looking to upgrade your living room entertainment experience, there are few ways cheaper than picking up an NVIDIA Shield TV. Not only is it a gaming system backed up by the hundreds of …
Specifically, you can now use voice commands to launch videos on VUDU and Plex, along with controlling Ecobee thermostats, Logitech Circle cameras, and LG’s SmartThinQ appliance. The update also adds HDR video support for VUDU TV shows and movies, and adds two new apps, Disney’s Movies Anywhere and the Hotstar app for watching popular movies and shows from India. You can cast music from Amazon Music from your Android phone to the Shield TV with this update. As we previously reported, you can now also download and play the Shield TV exclusive Android port of the classic third-person action game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Also, you can stream and play the PC versions of Bungie’s sci-fi shooter Destiny 2 via the NVIDIA GameStream service, along with FIFA 18 and Star Wars Battlefront II.
Finally, the 2.6 software download includes the latest Android security patches, along with a SHIELD TV 2017 firmware update for its remote, which offers improved responsiveness. Keep in mind that NVIDIA is currently running a Shield TV Black Friday game sale, with prices as low as 75 percent on some titles, from now until Nov. 27. You can also get the set top box itself for the reduced price of $169.99 at Amazon and Best Buy.Tennessee running back Jalen Hurd has told the school he plans to transfer, Volunteers coach Butch Jones said Monday.
"Jalen has informed me that he intends to transfer, and I support him on that," Jones said. "I'm very, very thankful for everything that he's done for our football program, but it's all about our football program and our football team and moving forward from this point forward."
Hurd's plans to transfer were first reported by radio station WNML in Knoxville, Tennessee. The radio station also reported that Hurd, who is 6-foot-4, wants to switch positions and will attempt to play wide receiver or tight end at a new school.
Jalen Hurd intends to transfer from Tennessee. Jim Brown/USA TODAY Sports
Jones said he met with Hurd on Monday morning and discussed the situation.
Hurd, a junior, has had an injury-plagued season and didn't play in the second half of Saturday's 24-21 loss to South Carolina.
In 2015 he rushed for 1,288 yards and 12 touchdowns. He also had two receiving touchdowns.
Editor's Picks Jalen Hurd's departure latest blow for fading Vols Jalen Hurd's decision to transfer is another hit for a Tennessee team that has fallen short of expectations at nearly every turn.
Sources close to Hurd have been saying for a year or more that he |
NEGA POP’s title track enters the fray the moment you press play with an infectious mix of bitpop and trance music that serves as the EP’s anthem. We’re treated with TORIENA’s beautiful vocals in this one, whose sweet but also commanding tone grabs your attention while being complimented by bright staccato melodies. This catchy bitpop tune sinks its hooks into you quickly and exhibits TORIENA’s signature blend of bubblegum pop with a blisteringly intense and hard-hitting electronic edge. Its repeating refrain of “Sweet, ACUTE, POP NEGA POP” is tailor-made for her legendary live performances. Seriously, I would have loved to have been a member of the crowd at TORIENA’s recent performance at Square Sounds Tokyo Festival, and hope to one day experience such excellence for myself!
POP NEGA POP EP by TORIENA
‘4D RAVE ON’ starts with a stripped-down LSDJ melody at a slightly slowed tempo. This lasts for about 15 seconds, at which point TORIENA unleashes layer upon layer of banging dance beats, gutteral groovy bass, and frenetic pulse waves that are given free reign to rise to enthusiastic heights in a quick, searing solo. The initial stripped-down melody returns but quickly becomes dissonant, steadily rising in speed as multiple samples are injected into the mix. The pace quickens faster and faster, until the entire track explodes into a frenzy of BRK!s, rapid kick beats, and sweat. It’s at this point that ‘4D RAVE ON’ reaches its titular fourth dimension and kicks the lively party atmosphere into overdrive and does not let go until its final moment.
POP NEGA POP EP by TORIENA
‘NEGA POP NEGA’ keeps the rave alive with a driving dance beat that propels the track forward and gets the crowd jumping immediately. What I really love about this track is the way in which the ascending bassline that scoops the low end is mirrored by the descending melody on the high end. The effect of this juxtaposition is a clamping effect that hits your ears squarely in the center in a way that’s extremely satisfying. Midway through as the beat continues, we’re showered with an array of quick blips that feel like little sonic raindrops, doing their best to keep the listener cool in the midst of this white-hot banger of a track. There’s an incredible mastery of the noise channel on display in this track as well; its seething hiss sounds and feels like the resulting steam from ‘NEGA POP NEGA’s hot and cold elements.
‘POP NEGA POP EP’ reminds us all, in case there was ever any doubt, that TORIENA is at the top of her game and represents the absolute cream of the crop of chiptune artists out there. Her mesmerizing and intricate music brings chiptunes to the dancefloor with ease, and one can’t help but fall for her incredibly fun sound and charismatic stage presence. Sure, it’s only a 3 track EP, but not one second is wasted here in melting your face and showing you just what chipmusic is capable of. ‘POP NEGA POP’ is an experience that you’ll want to put on repeat for multiple spins and is the perfect appetizer for her full-length albums. It’s absolutely worth the 5 dollar asking price on bandcamp, as it has the transformative power to turn any social gathering into a full-on rave! New music from TORIENA is out now, and all is well in the chiprealm. Grab ‘POP NEGA POP’ for yourself ASAP, you’ll love every second.
Keep your hands and heart held high!
\m|♥|m/
TORIENA:
Bandcamp | Soundcloud | Website | Twitter | Tumblr | Facebook
POP NEGA POP EP by TORIENA
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You’ll need:
2 pieces of wool felt
2 pin backs
a few buttons
a few pins
a hot glue gun
a sewing machine
a pair of fabric shears
an iron
our frill pattern
For a fuller and longer frill, print the pattern as it is on 11″ x 17″ paper at 100%. For a smaller frill, reduce the size of the pattern and print on normal 8.5″ x 11″ paper. Carefully cut out the volute-shaped pattern, stack, and pin onto the two pieces of stacked felt. Using the pattern as a guide, cut out the felt. While keeping the two pieces of felt stacked, pull the two pointed ends taut. A ruffle will be created on one side and a straight line on the other. (Click images to enlarge)
Sew the felt together along the straight side, with a 1/4″ inseam, down to the end. Trim any extra threads. Open the frill. Spread the seam apart on the backside and press it open using the tip of a hot iron.
Run a zig zag stitch down the center of the front side of the frill. This will keep the back seam open and flat, giving the frill structure and shape. Glue or sew buttons along the front stitch. Flip the frill over and glue or sew a pin back at the top and another at the bottom.
Your Fendi-inspired frill is finito!
Pin the frill to any blouse, shirt or dress. Make it smaller, make it larger, add less buttons, add more buttons... make it to your liking and have fun!
(all images by Honestly…WTF)Long-Term Effects of School Desegregation and School Quality Each additional year of exposure to desegregated schools increased black mens annual earnings by roughly 5 percent. Court-ordered desegregation of U.S. schools began in the 1960s and continued through the 1980s. As a result, school segregation decreased dramatically from 1968 to 1972, particularly in the Southeastern states. In Long-run Impacts of School Desegregation and School Quality on Adult Attainments (NBER Working Paper No. 16664), author Rucker Johnson concludes that earlier studies substantially underestimated both the returns to education and the benefits of school desegregation. He finds that although court-ordered school desegregation did not affect outcomes for whites, it significantly improved the adult attainment of blacks born between 1950 and 1975. Rucker analyzes data on over 4000 children born between 1950 and 1975. They were assigned to schools based on 1970 school district lines and on the census block in which they reportedly grew up. He also has data on the average per-pupil spending for school districts as a whole, as well as the dates of court rulings, school data, segregation indices, and measures of county characteristics that were provided to him by the Office of Civil Rights, the 1962-82 Census of Governments, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the American Communities Project at Brown University. The average high school graduation rates for blacks and whites in Rucker's sample were 0.73 and 0.88, respectively. On average, children were in desegregated schools for five years, and each additional year that a black child was exposed to education in a desegregated school increased the probability of graduating by between 1.3 and 2.9 percent. For black men, spending time in desegregated schools as a child also reduced by 14.7 percent the probability of spending time in jail by age thirty. Rucker estimates that each additional year of exposure to desegregated schools increased black mens annual earnings by roughly 5 percent, increased their wages by 2.9 percent, and led to an annual work effort that was 39 hours higher. At the same time, for these black male adults the probability of poverty decreased by between 1.6 and 1.9 percentage points. Overall, five years spent in desegregated schools yielded an estimated 25 percent increase in annual earnings and increased annual work effort of 195 hours. Desegregation also resulted in significant long-run improvements in blacks' adult health, as measured by self-assessed general health status; the effect of a five-year exposure to school desegregation is equivalent to being seven years younger. By the fourth year after a desegregation order, average annual per-pupil spending in the affected districts had increased by an average of $1,000 from a 1967 baseline of $2,738. Rucker notes that "there was suggestive evidence that reductions in school segregation levels that were not accompanied by significant changes in school resources did not have appreciable long-run impacts on blacks' adult attainments." --Linda Gorman The Digest is not copyrighted and may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution of source.Image copyright Moray Council
A new councillor has resigned only days after being elected in Moray.
Sandy Cooper was one of three people chosen to represent the Elgin City North ward in last week's election.
He tendered his resignation in a letter to the council's chief executive.
The letter said he had taken the decision after "careful consideration" and apologised for the inconvenience and cost implications. A by-election will take place at a date yet to be decided.
'Not for me'
Mr Cooper had earlier promised £1,000 of his annual authority salary to each of five schools in his ward if elected.
When contacted by BBC Scotland and asked about his decision, Mr Cooper said: "It's just not for me."
It is understood the cost of the by-election could be about £25,000.
Moray Council said Mr Cooper's nomination papers contained no party or political affiliation.That Hillary Clinton's White House hopes were stunted at least in part by an unfair news media is a conviction that continues to burn strong with her hardcore believers, even as the rest of us know that, like Santa, the Easter Bunny, and Chris Cillizza's political insight, it isn't real.
Complaints about the media as it relates to Clinton resurfaced this week after a New York Times reporter defended his paper's coverage in 2016.
Critics bombarded New York Times White House Correspondent Glenn Thrush on Monday after he shared a news article on Twitter about the Secret Service running out of money to pay its staff due to President Trump and his immediate family's frequent traveling.
"Trump's gilded lifestyle is bankrupting the Secret Service," Thrush tweeted.
Trump's gilded lifestyle is bankrupting the Secret Service -- @bykevinj https://t.co/lOCfKaJdYm — Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) August 21, 2017
One person sarcastically replied to Thrush, "But the emails," a reference to news coverage of Clinton's private email server throughout the election.
Thrush responded by publishing a series of tweets mocking the critique and pointed out other elements of Clinton's campaign that cost her votes, including her uninspiring speeches, her lack of trying in swing-state Wisconsin, and the server itself.
It's not persuasive to Clinton fanatics to argue that she ran a lazy campaign against an inexperienced celebrity businessman who everyone expected to lose. Her supporters instead cling to the absurd notion that the national media was mean to her.
"Seriously, the Times needs to hire an outside investigator to look at the 2016 election the way it did the run-up to Iraq War," liberal writer Joan Walsh wrote in response to Thrush. "Or else its best reporters will lose credibility in Twitter beefs trying to 'balance' Times bad email coverage with Clinton flaws."
Democratic activist Peter Daou accused Thrush of rehashing "every stale mainstream narrative about 2016."
It's not as though harping about the media's Clinton coverage is some new and unexplored idea.
New York Times columnist David Leonhardt said in May that the media "failed to distinguish a subject that sounded important — secret emails! — from subjects that were in reality more important." He called his own paper's coverage "the media's worst mistake in 2016."
The liberal Mother Jones publication accused the New York Times of an "epic Hillary Clinton screw-up."
Clinton herself has been complaining about the media for years. Three months ago, she said the New York Times covered her email server controversy "like it was Pearl Harbor."
But the actual reporting was fairly unremarkable.
"Hillary Clinton used personal email account at State Dept., possibly breaking rules," said the headline on the New York Times article that broke the story in 2015.
From there on, news trickled out about her team having deleted 33,000 emails from the server, that a small private company managed the server, and that it was kept in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home basement.
Federal investigators got involved. Then-FBI Director James Comey held a press conference to call Clinton's communications practice "extremely careless." Anthony Weiner was implicated.
Precisely none of these things were done to Clinton by the media. But Joan Walsh thinks the Times should appoint a Sept. 11-style commission to investigate its coverage.
While the nation's former top diplomat was under federal investigation for her "extremely careless" communications practices (that spinning sound is Walsh rolling her eyes), Trump was skating by a distracted media all the way to the finish line.
Wait, that's not right.
CNN was actually playing the infamous "pussy" tape on an endless loop, reporters were feverishly looking for his tax returns, and every news article called Trump a bigot.
Other headlines Trump saw throughout the campaign: "Donald Trump mocks reporter's disability," CBS News ( a lie); "In 1927, Donald Trump's father was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens," Washington Post ( deceitful); "Donald Trump: Ban all Muslim travel to U.S.," CNN (okay, that one was true and his proposal was popular).
Ask anyone if they'd rather run a campaign dogged by coverage over an email server or a campaign against any of the scrutiny Trump faced, and the answer is obvious.
The media's 2016 coverage was slanted — in Clinton's favor. And she still lost.
Eddie Scarry is a media reporter for the Washington Examiner.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Spacey plays the US president for much of the series
Production of the sixth season of Netflix series House of Cards has been suspended following sexual assault allegations against actor Kevin Spacey.
Spacey, who stars in the political drama, has been accused of making sexual advances to a 14-year-old boy.
The show was already due to end after this season, but production is now suspended "until further notice".
The Old Vic theatre in London, where Spacey worked for 11 years, said it was "deeply dismayed" by the allegations.
The 200-year-old theatre has set up a confidential complaints process for anyone connected to the Old Vic to come forward.
The Old Vic said in a statement: "We aim to foster a safe and supportive environment without prejudice, harassment or bullying of any sort, at any level."
Special Emmy award for Spacey withdrawn
The decision to end House of Cards was announced in a joint statement by Netflix and Media Rights Capital (MRC), a production company that makes the series.
"MRC and Netflix have decided to suspend production on House of Cards season six, until further notice, to give us time to review the current situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew."
The announcement comes after Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp on Sunday accused Spacey of inappropriately touching him when he was 14 years old.
Spacey, who is also executive director of House of Cards, said he owed Rapp, now 46, a "sincere apology" for what he said would have been "deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour".
Spacey also announced that he was now living "as a gay man", but the Oscar-winning actor has been widely criticised for choosing this moment to come out.
Why are people angry about Kevin Spacey coming out?
On Monday, producers said the show would end after its sixth season, which they recently began filming at a studio near Baltimore.
A Netflix representative said the decision to end the series in 2018 had been made months ago.
According to Variety magazine, producers are considering a spin-off series.
House of Cards, which is based on a BBC programme, was first broadcast in 2013.
The first season garnered nine Emmy nominations, becoming the first online streaming series to win such mainstream accolades.What would Wyatt Earp think about this?
The police force in Albany, Georgia has some vacancies after seven officers quit following a shooting attempt on one of their colleagues.
WBAL-TV reports that last week gang members opened fire on an officer. Fortunately he was not hurt. However the shooting hit home with members of the force, leading to the seven resignations.
City Manager James Taylor said this type of mass resignation is common after such an incident because officers realize just how dangerous their job is.
"We have to find a way to help them handle this. We have to help them understand that we're on their side and we will support them and that all they got to do is the best they can do and that we'll give them all the tools to protect them and keep them as safe as we can and hopefully they'll stay," Taylor said.
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The department said it is having a hard time filling shifts since the resignations. Albany has about 200 police officers.
Is this mass resignation an indicator that police pay is too low, considering the dangers the police face each day? Or are these individuals running from the bad guys?
undefinedAn international team of researchers led by the University of Oklahoma has discovered a strong association between the lifestyles of indigenous communities and their gut microbial ecologies (gut microbiome), a study that may have implications for the health of all people.
Under the direction of Cecil Lewis, co-director of the Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research in the OU College of Arts and Sciences, the team presents an in-depth analysis of the gut microbiome of the Matses, an Amazonian hunter-gatherer community, which is compared with that of the village of Tunapunco, who are highland small-scale farmers, as well as with urban city-dwellers in Norman, Okla.
In comparing the three groups to previously published studies in Africa and South America, the team observed a striking trend. Human gut microbiota cluster together based on subsistence strategy more than geographic proximity. Thus, hunter-gatherers in South America and Africa are more similar to each other than either are to rural agriculturalists or to urban-industrialists, even from neighboring populations.
It is now well accepted that human gut microbiomes are actively involved in health and that changes in our gut microbes from living more sanitized, industrialized lifestyles, has led to susceptibility to certain autoimmune disorders like asthma and allergies.
Also, it has become clear that industrialization has led to a decrease in gut microbiome diversity. Moreover, in the gut of industrialized peoples, one particular bacteria genus is conspicuously absent, Treponema. These bacteria have co-existed with humans and other primates for millions of years, so their absence in industrialized people is disconcerting.
"In our study, we show that these lost bacteria are in fact multiple species that are likely capable of fermenting fiber and generating short chain fatty acids in the gut. Short chain fatty acids have anti-inflammatory properties. This raises an important question, could these lost Treponema be keystone species that explain the increased risk for autoimmunce disorders in industrialized people? This is what we hope to explore next," says Lewis.
R. Tito notes that, after the team's visit, the Matses community's hunter-gather lifestyle had begun to change to one that includes industrial food. "It is possible that their current profile is changing, and we have a unique opportunity to appreciate the biological impact of urban transition in the gut microbiome," states Tito.
"Studying native human communities provides an opportunity to explore human biological phenomena that might have disappeared in western societies; however, we need to be conscious of the challenges of working with vulnerable human populations," says Obregon-Tito.The White House announced today that President Obama will award the Medal of Freedom to former Tennessee women's basketball coach and Alzheimer's cure advocate Pat Summitt.
Summitt, whose 1,098 wins is tops in college basketball history, retired this week after 38 seasons in part because she has early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
"Coach Summitt is an inspiration, both as the all-time winningest NCAA coach, and as someone who is willing to speak so openly and courageously about her battle with Alzheimer's," Obama said in a statement.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honor, "presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors," said the White House.
The White House will announce other Medal of Freedom honorees later this year.
Obama also said in his statement:
"Pat's gift has always been her ability to push those around her to new heights, and over the last 38 years, her unique approach has resulted in both unparalleled success on the court and unrivaled loyalty from those who know her and those whose lives she has touched. Pat's coaching career may be over, but I'm confident that her work is far from finished. I look forward to awarding her this honor."
The White House said in a statement:TORONTO – In a heartwarming story that has touched Canadians coast to coast, TV personality Rick Mercer announced that he has finally moved out of the iconic alley he once called home.
“It just goes to show,” said Mercer, “If you work hard and save your pennies, even a comedy show host can make it in this country.”
The announcement marks a turning point for the CBC host. He has long been known to viewers as a genuine man of the people, who would invite them into his alley home, weekly, and give his take on the events of the day. His take-no-prisoners rant style and outdoor residence earned him the title of Canada’s answer to Oscar the Grouch. This Monday, however, Rick will be putting that all behind him as he enters the next chapter in his life: that of a homed man.
“I’ve had a lot of good times in this alley,” said Mercer, picking up a box labeled ‘DVDs’ from behind a dumpster and loading it into a UHaul. “It was great working from home all these years. But I’m getting older now, and these weary bones long for a roof and a toilet to call my own. Frankly, I should’ve done this years ago.”
Fan reaction has been mixed. RMR viewer Dave Mackie, sees the move as a betrayal. ”I’ve been a Rickhead since the 22 Minutes days,” he said. “The whole reason people watch is because they know he lives in an alley. It’s authentic. If he doesn’t live there anymore, what’s the point?”
Those in the industry, however, have had universally positive reactions. “Huh, looks like Rick really got his ducks in a row this time,” said fellow CBC host Ron MacLean, while taking a long drink of water from a hose. “If he can do it… maybe one day I’ll move out of [Don] Cherry’s tool shed.”
After packing his UHaul and bidding farewell to Rex Murphy, Mercer grew visibly emotional as a raccoon approached him. “Aw, Bandit, I told you. You can’t follow me this time.” said Mercer, choking back tears. “Now go on, get! Get outta here!”
Mercer was stoically silent for the rest of the move.
Upon entering his apartment for the first time, Mercer put down his bag and took a deep breath. He then paced around his living room for eight minutes, making acerbic points about Prime Minister Trudeau’s failure to enact electoral reform. “Yeah.” he said afterward. “I think I’m gonna like it here.”Introduced Version
SENATE BILL No. 347
_____
DIGEST OF INTRODUCED BILL
Citations Affected: IC 6-7-3; IC 9-24-6-8; IC 9-30-5; IC 11-12-3.7-3; IC 16-31-3; IC 20-28-5-8; IC 22-15-5-16; IC 25-1-1.1; IC 34-24-1-1; IC 35-45-6-1; IC 35-48-4; IC 35-50-2-10.
Synopsis: Marijuana offenses. Provides that operating a vehicle with an inactive metabolite of marijuana, hashish, or hash oil in one's body does not violate the impaired driving laws. Makes possession of less than three ounces of marijuana a Class C infraction. Makes possession of more than three ounces of marijuana a Class B misdemeanor, and makes the offense a Class A misdemeanor if the person has two or more prior convictions involving marijuana in the past five years. Requires a court to suspend a sentence imposed for possession of marijuana if the person does not have a previous conviction involving marijuana in the past five years, and requires a court to defer a sentence if the person pleads guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Makes the sale or delivery of more than three ounces of marijuana a Class A misdemeanor, and makes the offense a Class D or Class C felony under certain circumstances. Provides a defense if a person who delivers under ten pounds of marijuana does so for no consideration. Makes the public use or display of marijuana a Class B misdemeanor, and makes the offense a Class A misdemeanor if the person has two or more prior convictions for an offense involving marijuana in the past five years. Reduces the penalty for maintaining a common nuisance to a Class A misdemeanor if the only unlawful controlled substances involved were marijuana, hashish, or hash oil. Repeals the controlled substance excise tax. Makes conforming amendments.
Effective: July 1, 2012.
Tallian
January 9, 2012, read first time and referred to Committee on Corrections, Criminal, and Civil Matters.
Introduced
Second Regular Session 117th General Assembly (2012)
PRINTING CODE. Amendments: Whenever an existing statute (or a section of the Indiana Constitution) is being amended, the text of the existing provision will appear in this style type, additions will appear in this style type, and deletions will appear in this style type.
Additions: Whenever a new statutory provision is being enacted (or a new constitutional provision adopted), the text of the new provision will appear in this style type. Also, the word NEW will appear in that style type in the introductory clause of each SECTION that adds a new provision to the Indiana Code or the Indiana Constitution.
Conflict reconciliation: Text in a statute in this style type or this style type reconciles conflicts between statutes enacted by the 2011 Regular Session of the General Assembly.
PRINTING CODE. Amendments: Whenever an existing statute (or a section of the Indiana Constitution) is being amended, the text of the existing provision will appear in this style type, additions will appear in, and deletions will appear inAdditions: Whenever a new statutory provision is being enacted (or a new constitutional provision adopted), the text of the new provision will appear in. Also, the wordwill appear in that style type in the introductory clause of each SECTION that adds a new provision to the Indiana Code or the Indiana Constitution.Conflict reconciliation: Text in a statute inorreconciles conflicts between statutes enacted by the 2011 Regular Session of the General Assembly. SENATE BILL No. 347
A BILL FOR AN ACT to amend the Indiana Code concerning criminal law and procedure.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana:
SOURCE: IC 6-7-3; (12)IN0347.1.1. --> SECTION 1. IC 6-7-3 IS REPEALED [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2012]. (Controlled Substance Excise Tax).
SOURCE: IC 9-24-6-8; (12)IN0347.1.2. --> SECTION 2. IC 9-24-6-8, AS AMENDED BY P.L.9-2010, SECTION 13, IS AMENDED TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2012]: Sec. 8. The following, if committed while driving a commercial motor vehicle or while holding any class of commercial driver's license, are disqualifying offenses:
(1) Operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol in violation of IC 9-30-5-1(a), IC 9-30-5-1(b), or section 15 of this chapter.
(2) Operating a vehicle while under the influence of a controlled substance or marijuana in violation of IC 9-30-5-1(c) or IC 9-30-5-1(d).
(3) Leaving the scene of an accident involving the driver's commercial motor vehicle in violation of IC 9-26-1.
(4) Conviction of a felony involving the use of a commercial motor vehicle other than a felony described in subdivision (5). (5) Use of a commercial motor vehicle in the commission of a felony under IC 35-48 involving manufacturing, distributing, or dispensing of a controlled substance.
(6) Violation of IC 9-30-5-2 through IC 9-30-5-8 involving operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
(7) Refusing to undergo testing for the enforcement of IC 9-30-5-1 or section 15 of this chapter.
SOURCE: IC 9-30-5-1; (12)IN0347.1.3. --> SECTION 3. IC 9-30-5-1 IS AMENDED TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2012]: Sec. 1. (a) A person who operates a vehicle with an alcohol concentration equivalent to at least eight-hundredths (0.08) gram of alcohol but less than fifteen-hundredths (0.15) gram of alcohol per:
(1) one hundred (100) milliliters of the person's blood; or
(2) two hundred ten (210) liters of the person's breath;
commits a Class C misdemeanor.
(b) A person who operates a vehicle with an alcohol concentration equivalent to at least fifteen-hundredths (0.15) gram of alcohol per:
(1) one hundred (100) milliliters of the person's blood; or
(2) two hundred ten (210) liters of the person's breath;
commits a Class A misdemeanor.
(c) This subsection does not apply to marijuana, hashish, or hash oil. A person who operates a vehicle with a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II of IC 35-48-2 or its metabolite in the person's body commits a Class C misdemeanor.
(d) A person who operates a vehicle with marijuana, hashish, hash oil, or an active metabolite of marijuana, hashish, or hash oil in the person's body commits a Class C misdemeanor.
(d) (e) It is a defense to subsection (c) or (d) that the accused person consumed the controlled substance under a valid prescription or order of a practitioner (as defined in IC 35-48-1) who acted in the course of the practitioner's professional practice.
causes serious bodily injury to another person when operating a motor vehicle: does any of the following commits a Class D felony:
(1) Causes serious bodily injury to another person when operating a motor vehicle with an alcohol concentration equivalent to at least eight-hundredths (0.08) gram of alcohol per:
(A) one hundred (100) milliliters of the person's blood; or
(B) two hundred ten (210) liters of the person's breath.
(2) Causes serious bodily injury to another person when operating a motor vehicle with a controlled substance listed in SOURCE: IC 9-30-5-4; (12)IN0347.1.4. --> SECTION 4. IC 9-30-5-4 IS AMENDED TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2012]: Sec. 4. (a) A person who(1)with an alcohol concentration equivalent to at least eight-hundredths (0.08) gram of alcohol per:(A) one hundred (100) milliliters of the person's blood; or(B) two hundred ten (210) liters of the person's breath.(2)with a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II of IC 35-48-2 or its metabolite in the person's body. This subdivision does not apply if the controlled substance is marijuana, hashish, or hash oil. or
(3) Causes serious bodily injury to another person when operating a motor vehicle with marijuana, hashish, hash oil, or an active metabolite of marijuana, hashish, or hash oil in the person's body.
(3) (4) Causes serious bodily injury to another person when operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated.
commits a Class D felony. However, the offense is a Class C felony if the person has a previous conviction of operating while intoxicated within the five (5) years preceding the commission of the offense.
(b) A person who violates subsection (a) commits a separate offense for each person whose serious bodily injury is caused by the violation of subsection (a).
(c) It is a defense under subsection (a)(2) that the accused person consumed the controlled substance under a valid prescription or order of a practitioner (as defined in IC 35-48-1) who acted in the course of the practitioner's professional practice.
causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle: does any of the following commits a Class C felony:
(1) Causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle with an alcohol concentration equivalent to at least eight-hundredths (0.08) gram of alcohol per:
(A) one hundred (100) milliliters of the person's blood; or
(B) two hundred ten (210) liters of the person's breath.
(2) Causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle with a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II of IC 35-48-2 or its metabolite in the person's blood. This subdivision does not apply if the controlled substance is marijuana, hashish, or hash oil. or
(3) Causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle with marijuana, hashish, hash oil, or an active metabolite of marijuana, hashish, or hash oil in the person's body.
(3) (4) Causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated.
commits a Class C felony. However, the offense is a Class B felony if the person has a previous conviction of operating while intoxicated SOURCE: IC 9-30-5-5; (12)IN0347.1.5. --> SECTION 5. IC 9-30-5-5, AS AMENDED BY P.L.102-2010, SECTION 1, IS AMENDED TO READ AS FOLLOWS [EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2012]: Sec. 5. (a) A person who(1)with an alcohol concentration equivalent to at least eight-hundredths (0.08) gram of alcohol per:(A) one hundred (100) milliliters of the person's blood; or(B) two hundred ten (210) liters of the person's breath.(2)with a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II of IC 35-48-2 or its metabolite in the person's blood.while intoxicated.However, the offense is a Class B felony if the person has a previous conviction of operating while intoxicated within the five (5) years preceding the commission of the offense, or if the person operated the motor vehicle when the person knew that the person's driver's license, driving privilege, or permit is suspended or revoked for a previous conviction for operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
(b) A person at least twenty-one (21) years of age who causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle: does any of the following commits a Class B felony:
(1) Causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle with an alcohol concentration equivalent to at least fifteen-hundredths (0.15) gram of alcohol per:
(A) one hundred (100) milliliters of the person's blood; or
(B) two hundred ten (210) liters of the person's breath. or
(2) Causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle with a controlled substance listed in schedule I or II of IC 35-48-2 or its metabolite in the person's blood. This subdivision does not apply if the controlled substance is marijuana, hashish, or hash oil.
(3) Causes the death of another person when operating a motor vehicle with marijuana, hashish, hash oil, or an active metabolite of marijuana, hashish, or hash oil in the person's body.
commits a Class B felony.
(c) A person who causes the death of a law enforcement animal (as defined in IC 35-46-3-4.5) when operating a motor vehicle: does any of the following commits a Class D felony:
(1) Causes the death of a law enforcement animal (as defined in IC 35-46-3-4.5) when operating a motor vehicle with an alcohol concentration equivalent to at least eight-hundredths (0.08) gram of alcohol per:
(A) one hundred (100) milliliters of the person's blood; or
(B) two hundred ten (210) liters of the person's breath. |
&WR)
Approximately 100 conservative activists gathered in front of the White House on Tuesday for a kickoff of what organizers call "the second American revolution."
The event could easily have been mistaken for a tea party rally, with American and Gadsden flags, a smattering of biker jackets and a few lawn chairs.
Freedom Watch founder Larry Klayman, who emceed the event, told attendees if President Barack Obama does not resign by Nov. 29, conservative activists will meet in Philadelphia to elect a shadow government.
"We've got God on our side," Klayman said. "He's going to make sure we win this revolution."
The so-called revolution will be nonviolent, he said.
Klayman is suing the Obama administration in a bid to end the National Security Agency's phone and Internet surveillance programs. He said at the rally that Obama "has broken into 300 million homes" with the programs.
"In the end [Obama] will feel the force of the American people, just like King George did," he said to applause.
The forthcoming convention in Philadelphia, Klayman said, will be organized within the next several weeks. A so-called "government in waiting" will be elected there, including a president, representatives and a cabinet, he said.
Nearly all speakers invoked their Christian faith to condemn Obama.
Bishop Dan Johnson of the Heart of Fire Church in Louisville, Ky., prayed with ralliers, asking God to "cause [elected officials] to get on their knees, not to Allah, but to God almighty." In his prayer, Johnson denounced homosexuality, permissive parenting, pornography and welfare.
Former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., told the crowd Obama should be impeached. Barr spearheaded the successful impeachment campaign against President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
"We have a scoundrel living in that building," Barr said, pointing at the White House, "and need to do something about it."
Barr was the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential candidate and is currently running for a U.S. House seat.
Other speakers included WND editor Joseph Farah, 2004 Constitution Party presidential candidate Michael Peroutka and retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Lyons. Belinda Bee, a principal organizer of the Sept. 11, 2013, motorcycle convoy into Washington, D.C., also attended.
A George Washington impersonator read from the stage a revised Declaration of Independence composed by organizers. "Mister Obama and his collaborators," the man declared, should be personally responsible for the national debt.
The new declaration says Obama must "immediately step down from his usurped office and seek refuge in a nation more of his liking." Grievances against Obama include gun-control proposals, immigration reform agitation, a departure from "Biblical morality," alleged help for al-Qaida associates in the Middle East, an allegedly fabricated birth certificate and executive actions that loop around Congress.
Activists seek to dissolve the United States until Obama is forced from office.
"He's kind of like a skunk," one attendee joked. "He's half white, half black, and everything he does stinks."
More News:BEGINNER TO EXPERT IN 29 WEEKS
It can be overwhelming when jumping into game development for the first time, with so many articles, tutorials, books, resources and opinions circulating around the web. This article is going to simplify the process and give you a road map to becoming an expert with Unity 3d Game Development. We will focus on two separate sections, one to the complete beginner with no programming experience and one for the people who already have programming experience and just want to add unity development to their knowledge base. Choose the one that fits your situation. And if you really just want a visual roadmap, go see the bottom where we have a timeline overview with all the resources.
Weeks 1-4
The Complete Beginner
Before jumping into Unity, it will be extremely important to get a good foundation in a programming language. Unity gives the option to choose from two separate languages, C# (pronounced c-sharp) and Java. We will outline a path to learn each one. All of our tutorials are in C# but honestly they are very similar so either one you choose will differ slightly in syntax. The easiest way we can recommend (and the way I first began learning programming) would be to start with a Learn C#/Java in 21 Days book. These are fantastic resources and break it up into manageable daily learning sessions, which also helps retain the information as well, because they have you do simple tasks to cement the concepts at the end of each daily lesson. At the end of 30 days you will have a very good understanding of the inner workings of that language and programming in general, because a lot of languages still follow the same structure, just using different syntax. Yes, it is completely possible to learn programming, or anything for that matter, online with free resources. Personally I recommend books because it saves time in searching for things and they are getting paid to put out good quality material all in one place, and are easy to reference later on when you need to remember what you did in specific situations. Plus you can’t go wrong investing in knowledge.
Here are the “Learn in 21 Days” books, if you are new to programming, get one of these! You won’t regret it.Katedra (Cathedral in English) is a Lithuanian Heavy Metal band, founded in 1986. From the outset, it was significantly influenced by the style of Iron Maiden.[1]
Members [ edit ]
Current members [ edit ]
Former members [ edit ]
Povilas Meškėla – vocals (episodically also trombone),
Romas Rainys – guitar,
Marius Giedrys – drums,
Naglis Patamsis – keyboard,
Algimantas Radavičius – bass guitar,
Domas Dėdinas - drums,
Gediminas Jurgaitis - bass guitar.
History [ edit ]
Beginning [ edit ]
In its first incarnation, Katedra was composed of the three musicians: Ričardas Laginauskas on guitar, Algimantas Radavičius on bass, and Marius Giedrys on drums. Later, former Foje guitarist Romas Rainys and even then-unknown vocalist Povilas Meškėla joined the band. December 1986 was the official start of Katedra.
Mors Ultima Ratio and break up [ edit ]
In 1989 band finished recording their first LP called "Mors Ultima Ratio" (Latin: "Death is the final accounting"). Although, it was released a year after recording, Katedra's first vinyl album gained extreme popularity in Lithuania. "Mors Ultima Ratio" was also noticed by Edgar Klusener from "Metal Hammer" magazine. He described Katedra as: "that is pure thrash metal act, strong both musically and technically. In fact the formation is superior in comparison with 90 percent of similar Western acts. So it is evident how far the music in Lithuania made headway. Katedra are the only matadors in Lithuania and maybe stand among the hottest European thrash metal bands".[2] Gained popularity, opened doors to concerts abroad. In 1991 Katedra played at "Baltic Sea Music Festival" in Sweden. Unfortunately, it was the last gig for Povilas Meškėla and Romas Rainys with the band. Soon after the festival they left Katedra.
Downturn [ edit ]
The band was now seeking another shift: Ričardas took over the vocalist position. The band's output at this time included the album "Natus in articulo mortis"; their music became more severe; and Ričardas's vocal entry of the Katedra sounds from the standard clichés.[citation needed] The trio played many concerts and their albums were played on Lithuanian radio stations.
Later, and for some time, concert activity was stopped. Although the trio continued to build and perform together, the group's name was almost forgotten. It was a new generation, and new names appeared on the Metal stage. In February 2001, the band was invited to play an acoustic concert on Lithuanian national television. The group relied on its own feet—and played live.
Revival [ edit ]
From 2003 the band helped keyboardist Naglis Patamsis.[clarification needed] The musicians tried to experiment more. In the autumn of 2003, longtime band member Marius Giedrys left Katedra. He was replaced by a new drummer, Domas Dėdinas (who has played in bands such as Inquest, Undertaker, Dahmer, Mezopsychya and Herosgamos).
After a successful appearance at Lithuania's largest rock festival "The nights of rock 2004" in Plateliai, managers found Katedra and booked the band for a few concert programs, which have been shown with success in Lithuanian club music scenes, and also in several foreign festivals.
In the 2005 summer festival "The nights of rock 2005", Katedra presented a retrospective of its old and new songs with the string duo Gleb Pyšniak (cello) and Kristina Baltrušaitytė (viola).
In August 2004, the band announced its third album (and first album on CD format) "III". It was presented in 2006 "The nights of rock".
2006 Band bassist Algis Radavičius was replaced by Gediminas Jurgaitis (previously, he had played in the band "Hersh tu"?
At the end of 2007, Domas Dėdinas was replaced by Salvijus Žeimys (ex "Ossuary", "Spellbound", "Green Bridge Band" and others), who also performs with bands "Skylė", "Atalyja" and "ExLibris".
In September 2008, the group signed a contract with Atra Musica for a fourth album, "Ugnikalnis" (Lithuanian: Volcano)
On November 1, 2008, the band's fourth album, "Ugnikalnis", saw the light of day.
In the end of 2010 Gediminas Jurgaitis left the band. Bass players place was taken by Rimantas Budriūnas.
Significant events [ edit ]
Lituanica ’88 ir ‘89“ (Vilnius)
„Rock Panorama“ (Moskow)
„Rock Summer“ ir „Rock Winter“ (Estonia)
„Liepajas Dzintars ’88 ir ‘89“ (Latvia)
„Sopot“ (Poland)
„Ilosaari Pop“ (Finland)
„Baltic Sea Music Fest '91“ (Sweden)
Lietuvos kultūros dienos Leipcige '94 (Germany) (Lithuanian cultural days in Leipzig)
„Death Comes...2000 ir 2001“ (Vilnius)
„Ferrum Frost“ 2003 ir 2004 (Vilnius)
„Roko naktys 2003,'04, '05, '06, '07, '08“ (Lithuania)
„Riga Bike Show 2005“ (Latvia)
Russia biker show „Baltijskij Šturm 2005“ (Kaliningrad).
Discography [ edit ]
Mors Ultima Ratio (1989) Natus In Articulo Mortis (1992) III (2006) Ugnikalnis (Volcano) (2008)Borrowers buying homes with bigger and bigger mortgages. Specialist lenders taking business from banks by offering more aggressive loan terms. Analysts claiming there is nothing to worry about.
Sound familiar?
The real estate market in Canada is starting to share some similarities with the US before its subprime-fueled housing bubble burst. For one thing, mortgage debt in Canada is close to 70% of GDP, not far from the peak in the US before it all went wrong:
Canada’s central bank recently warned that increasing household indebtedness is the country’s major financial vulnerability. Thanks to easy credit and foreign demand, property prices in Canada have been skyrocketing—the average home price is now rising at a 13% annual pace, not far off the highest rate recorded before the global financial crisis. As a result, the ranks of Canadian mortgage borrowers with high loan-to-income ratios has jumped in recent years:
So, is Canada headed for a crash?
Banking regulation in Canada has traditionally been stricter than in the US, and recent changes to mortgage rules have put even tougher limits on down payments, loan-to-value ratios, and the like. Still, the central bank is worried—but not too worried (pdf)—about lightly regulated mortgage finance specialists taking market share from banks.
Benjamin Tal, an economist at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, doesn’t think so (pdf). He claims that the US housing market cratered not because debt levels were high, but because the US built up ”lousy” debt, whereas the composition of Canadian debt is sound. Indeed, less than 1% of mortgages are three months or more overdue (pdf). “There’s no real estate bubble, except perhaps in Vancouver,” notes Marc Pinsonneault of the National Bank of Canada.
Canadian homeowners will hope these assessments prove more accurate than the ones on the other side of the border.Robotic submersible probes depths of up to 4,000m near Antarctic Peninsula to obtain unprecedented data on how mixing ocean waters affect climate change
A yellow submarine dubbed Boaty McBoatface has obtained “unprecedented data” from its first voyage exploring one of the deepest and coldest ocean regions on Earth, scientists have said.
The robotic submersible was given the name originally chosen for a new polar research ship by irreverent contestants in a public competition. Embarrassed officials decided to ignore the popular vote and instead named the vessel the RRS Sir David Attenborough in honour of the veteran broadcaster. A storm of protest led to a compromise that allowed the name to live on.
The submarine plunged to depths as far as 4,000 metres to obtain information about temperature, water flow speed and turbulence from Orkney Passage, a region of the Southern Ocean about 500 miles from the Antarctic Peninsula.
The data will help scientists to understand the complex ways that mixing ocean waters affect climate change.
Boaty McBoatface: tyrants have crushed the people’s will | Stuart Heritage Read more
Prof Alberto Naveira Garabato from the University of Southampton said: “The Orkney Passage is a key chokepoint to the flow of abyssal waters in which we expect the mechanism linking changing winds to abyssal water warming to operate.
“Our goal is to learn enough about these convoluted processes to represent them in the models that scientists use to predict how our climate will evolve over the 21st century and beyond.
“We have been able to collect massive amounts of data that we have never been able to capture before due to the way Boaty is able to move underwater. Up until now we have only been able to take measurements from a fixed point, but now we are able to obtain a much more detailed picture of what is happening in this very important underwater landscape.”
The submersible was launched from the RRS James Clark Ross as part of the seven-week expedition. It is a new type of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and can travel under ice and reach depths of 6,000 metres, transmitting the data it collects to researchers via a radio link.
The universities and science minister, Jo Johnson, said: “Fresh from its maiden voyage, Boaty is already delivering new insight into some of the coldest ocean waters on Earth, giving scientists a greater understanding of changes in the Antarctic region and shaping a global effort to tackle climate change.”
The name Boaty McBoatface was first put forward by the former BBC radio presenter James Hand in response to a public poll organised by the National Environment Research Council to name their new £200m Arctic research vessel.
The research council was mobbed with more than 7,000 ideas for names in the month-long competition period, among them RRS Onion Knight, RRS I Like Big Boats and I Cannot Lie, and RRS Capt’n Birdseye Get Off My Cod.× 1 dead, 1 injured after shooting outside concert
SALT LAKE CITY – Police responded to a shooting that left one person dead and another person injured Saturday night.
Det. Richard Chipping of the Salt Lake City Police Department said the shooting occurred in the area of 700 West and 1400 South where a concert was taking place, and FOX 13 News first heard reports of the shooting around 9:30 p.m.
Police said shots were fired as the victims were leaving the concert. One man was killed in the shooting and another male was injured.
The man who was killed was later identified as 24-year-old Bradley Hancock.
Chipping said they were searching for a black Jeep Cherokee in connection with the shooting, and a press release issued Sunday stated that a suspect believed to be responsible for the shooting had been arrested.
Chipping said the concert was for a band called Soul Search. The group posted on their Facebook page they were playing Saturday night at The Core, located at 700 West 1444 South.
FOX 13 News will have more information as it becomes available.Media playback is not supported on this device Usain Bolt wins in one of his final 100m races in Czech Republic
Usain Bolt failed to run a sub-10 second time for the second 100m race in succession as he edged to victory at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava.
The three-time Olympic 100m champion won in 10.06 seconds, 0.03secs ahead of Cuba's Yunier Perez.
Britain's Mo Farah won the 10,000m in 27 minutes and 12 seconds, 2mins 34secs clear of Kenya's Mathew Kimeli.
South Africa's Wayde van Niekerk set a 300m world record of 30.81, beating Michael Johnson's 30.85 set in 2000.
Van Niekerk is the first man in history to run sub-10 seconds for 100m, sub-20 seconds for 200m, sub-31 seconds for 300m and sub-44 seconds for 400m.
'I'll be fine' - Bolt
Bolt was expected to retire at the World Championships in London in August but before this race he said that, while this will be his final season, he may race beyond the event.
He is the most successful man in the history of the championships with 13 world medals, including 11 gold.
Fellow Jamaican Merlene Ottey, with 14, is the most decorated female at the event.
It is the first time in his career that Bolt, 30, has run two successive 100m races of more than 10 seconds.
"I'm not happy but I'm just getting into my running and have some training to do," he said.
"I'll be fine. I need to get checked over by my doctor and the coach will give me some training, so no worries."
Bolt started slowly but hit the front with about 40m to go
Farah's London marker
Farah's time was only four seconds off the world-leading time over 10,000m this year, held by Abadi Hadis of Ethiopia.
The four-time Olympic champion will not compete over the distance again until he bids to defend his title at the World Championships.
The 34-year-old's time in Ostrava was well down on the 27:01 he managed to win the world title with in Beijing in 2015, but Kimeli was his only challenger with 10 laps remaining before Farah broke clear for a comfortable victory.
Elsewhere at the event, Olympic champion Christian Taylor set a meeting record of 17.57m to win the triple jump.Monopoly, foreclosure-style
By Tom Toles
***
Do Tell
The gay rights movement is anomalous. I guess everything is anomalous to some degree, but gay people were like this giant INVISIBLE group that was right there amongst us all along, but everybody was pretending they weren't. This worked out nicely for straight people who didn't want to have to think about what they didn't want to have to think about. Well, what do you know, gay people got tired of pretending, because a) nobody likes pretending and b) it occurred to them that they might like the same legal and social rights as heterosexuals. Conservatives promptly labeled equal rights for gay people "special rights", meaning rights for somebody who wasn't them.
The good news is that progress has been, by historic standards, fairly swift. What may be the strangest residue of that progress is Don't Ask, Don't Tell. While you can argue that it served a bridging function while a tradition-oriented establishment came to terms with a new reality, history will look back with blinking incomprehension at a policy that will seem to have been thought up by a preschooler, along the lines of "If I cover my eyes, can you see me?"
So straight people have had to think a few thoughts that make them squeamish in coming to terms with all this. Sorry about that. But now that you've had those thoughts, you can stop thinking about it now! If you KEEP thinking about it, maybe you have other issues. -- Tom Toles
***MY JOURNEY, FROM MIKE POWER TO JOHN BUCKLEY, from investigative journalist to drug designer, started six weeks earlier. To understand exactly how access to designer drugs has changed—to see exactly how easy it is to commission, purchase and import powerful new compounds that are beyond the reach of the law—I decided to get one made myself.
I chose to focus on the Beatles’ drug, phenmetrazine: a nod to the cultural significance of Prellies and their illustrious user base. How easy would it be to get a legal version made? What procedures would it take, what roadblocks would be put in the way?
I phoned a contact with expertise in chemistry and asked if he could think of a simple molecular tweak that would produce a new version of phenmetrazine that would be totally legal. Yes, he said. The change would be trivial. What might its effects be? “A fantastic anorectic if you want to lose weight, and an effective stimulant.”
The search began for a laboratory that would make a one-off sample. I decided that I would present myself as a legitimate broker for a UK-based pharmaceutical firm. Taking on my new identity, I posted a buying request for the drug on various public websites that broker deals between individuals and small pharmaceutical manufacturers. Dozens of emails came back. Not all of them were genuine.
Some of these early responders were blatant scammers: Cameroon and Ukraine do have chemical industries, but those who work in them tend not to be able to offer large amounts of totally new, extremely rare drugs the very next day. My search headed to India, where three firms offered to synthesize the drug for me. On closer examination, though, none of them seemed up to the task—and they were all asking for very large sums of money, well beyond the actual value and difficulty of the compounds we were requesting. One priced the job as high as $10,000.
After weeks of constant searching for a decent lab, one of my contacts sent me the URL of a site in Shanghai that, on the surface of things, has nothing to do with legal highs, analog drugs, or any gray-market activity. They sell organic chemicals on international markets to people in many industries, and offer pharmaceutical drugs to legitimate importers.
But insiders in China who prefer to remain anonymous say there is little accountability or oversight of the chemical industry there. Once they are licensed, operators are seldom monitored, a scenario that has led to dozens of high-profile public health scares, including 300,000 children falling sick as a result of melamine being added to milk, and so-called “date rape” drugs appearing in Australian children’s toys.
I made an approach to the lab during Chinese business hours, and I heard back within an hour. “First, can I know the application of this compound your client use?” asked the person on the other end. “I just want to make sure it is legal application. We can do custom synthesis of this simple chemical surely. But if you can give synthesis route, it will be very good for us and we can save some time for this project.”
I replied, “We are doing basic animal research into the compound’s putative analgesic properties. Based upon its expected effect on monoamines, we believe it will have fairly potent analgesic effects, whilst causing minimal cardiovascular strain. Our intention is to use it as a proof of concept for a new type of analgesic for dogs.”
My online identity for this character and for his company are bare bones: nothing but a webmail address. My cover explanation is that I am designing a painkiller—yet phenmetrazine, the clear progenitor of this recipe, is not known to have any analgesic qualities. To anyone who cares to look, my story is blatantly false. But the lab does not seem to care.
We agree on a price and discuss quality control standards. The lab eventually agrees to send over data that will, they say, confirm they have created a drug with the makeup I require. The report will be based on high-pressure liquid chromatography, which chemists use to match a sample to library of known compounds, and nuclear magnetic resonance, which can reveal the structure of a molecule, regardless of whether it has been studied previously.
Next we agree payment—a few hundred dollars. Rather than an untraceable cash transfer such as Western Union, or an anonymous crypto currency such as Bitcoin, we opt for a simple bank transfer. Delivery is agreed by a well-known courier firm.
Two weeks later I receive another email. The compound is ready, though it is currently a liquid. Purity stands at around 93.7 percent; to purify it to 98 percent will reduce yield. I’m happy to accept that loss, as it will never be consumed. I request that it be salted into a solid, powder form using hydrochloric acid. I receive the qualitative data from the firm by email. The NMR readings feature the long, jagged peaks that suggest the existence of the drug. Now that it meets the stringent purity demands of “my client,” I agree: it’s time to ship it.
But how? Technically, we are doing nothing illegal, so we needn’t smuggle it, or even disguise it. At this stage, though, I have no guarantee beyond the lab’s word that they have carried out the work as instructed; they could easily send me an illegal drug instead of the one I have asked for. And while the point of this substance is that it is legal to bring it into the UK, this is not a mainstream importing job. I cannot help feeling the paranoia of a novice: what screening do customs officers and law enforcement do to track unidentified substances that are being sent across their borders?
I ask for an Material Safety Data sheet, standard paperwork that should accompany any chemical sample in the post. They do not have one—unsurprising, since the chemical is so rare. The unspoken truth hangs in the complicit silence between us: we both know this a modification of an illegal drug, and that it is designed for recreational, not medical purposes.
To get around this, the lab offers to send it hidden in a book: an unusual offer from a company claiming to make and distribute entirely legal substances. But I know that one of the most common ways that small-scale smugglers are detected is when a drug is packed inside an object too cheap or trivial to be posted internationally. Who aside from a rare books dealer would spend $100 sending a book from China to London? Instead, I tell the chemist to simply mark it as documents, to be delivered to a London postal dropbox that I have set up in the fictitious company’s name.
The package of drugs the author designed
Over the next few days I scan the courier’s site nervously watching the package’s progress from Shanghai and out of the country. Paranoia affects would-be drug designers and importers as much as users: after all, while they usually operate legally, their cat-and-mouse game happens at the fringes of the law, not the center—labeling them as not for human consumption—for example. But a few days later my package arrives in the UK, ready for collection.
A legal highs vendor would now offer the drug privately to a select number of influential bulletin-board posters, and ask them to review the drug online. Building hype, creating a market, they would then start selling the compound, but the process of testing and legislating means the British government would be powerless to intervene for at least a few months—perhaps even up to a year. They could sell this drug for $130 a gram, or, to make more money, press it into tablets.
Instead, I send it by registered mail to Andrew Westwell, a medicinal chemist at Cardiff University, who will analyze its contents.Costa Rica has again topped the Happy Planet Index rankings with a substantial lead - having previously come top in our 2009 and 2012 editions. This tropical Central-American country is home to the greatest density of species in the world. Costa Rica’s GDP per capita is less than a quarter of the size of many Western European and North American countries, and is primarily based on tourism, agriculture and exports.
People living in Costa Rica have higher wellbeing than the residents of many rich nations, including the USA and the UK, and live longer than people in the USA. And all of this is achieved with a per capita Ecological Footprint that’s just one third of the size of the USA’s.
What’s working well in Costa Rica?
Costa Rica abolished its army in 1949, and has since reallocated army funds to be spent on education, health and pensions. In 2012, Costa Rica invested more in education and health as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product than the UK. Professor Mariano Rojas, a Costa Rican economist at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, attributes Costa Ricans’ high wellbeing to a culture of forming solid social networks of friends, families and neighbourhoods.
Costa Rica is also a world leader when it comes to environmental protection. The Costa Rican government uses taxes collected on the sale of fossil fuels to pay for the protection of forests.
In 2015, the country was able to produce 99% of its electricity from renewable sources, and the government continues to invest in renewable energy generation in an effort to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2021.
What could be improved?
Income inequality in Costa Rica is particularly high - in part because Costa Rica’s tax system does not effectively redistribute wealth across the population. And while Costa Rica’s commitment to environmental sustainability is impressive, its Ecological Footprint isn’t yet small enough to be completely sustainable.
Photo credit: CC Pasha KirillovYour Bitcoin transactions The Ultimate Bitcoin mixer made truly anonymous. with an advanced technology. Mix coins
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nearmiss
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Merit: 250
Sr. MemberActivity: 448Merit: 250 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 06:54:27 PM #1802 There's been a breach this afternoon with a number of users reporting payout addresses being changed and manual payouts being triggered to the new address. All payouts have been disabled and we are working on determining the scope of the issue. While its unlikely passwords have been compromised (and nothing is stored plain text in the db anyways), its not a bad practice to assume the worst and change passwords anyways.
40.8 total BTC has been lost. We can't really comment much further on account statuses until we gather data on the full picture. Obviously with the time of year, we all have commitments outside, but we are working every spare moment we've got.
I advise people to stop by the irc channel if possible, where live discussions can happen and up to date news provided.
The cows apologize to everyone involved, its a terrible time of year to wake up to such things. There will be 0% fees on anything earned as of now and today's btc earned (keeping in mind payout is disabled for the time being).
nearmiss Profit-Switching Pool w/ Vardiff -> http://hashco.ws Optionally keep the alts we mine or auto-trade for BTC. In addition can be paid out in any of: 365, AC, BC, BTC, C2, CINNI, COMM, FAC, HBN, MINT, PMC, QRK, RDD, WC, XBC
gsrcrxsi
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Sr. MemberActivity: 294Merit: 250 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:00:10 PM #1803 What the mother fuck?!
0.045+ BTC gone.
I assume that HC won't do anything about refunding people??
Such a sad state. First the horrible payouts and connection issues, and now they allow everyone to be compromised and have their shit stolen. A lot of good that 4 digit pin for payouts did huh?
I was already moved off of HC due to the other issues and now this? Yeah. Safe to say i can never trust this pool again...
bronxbob
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NewbieActivity: 9Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:04:24 PM #1805 Quote from: gsrcrxsi on December 24, 2013, 07:00:10 PM What the mother fuck?!
0.045+ BTC gone.
I assume that HC won't do anything about refunding people??
Such a sad state. First the horrible payouts and connection issues, and now they allow everyone to be compromised and have their shit stolen. A lot of good that 4 digit pin for payouts did huh?
I was already moved off of HC due to the other issues and now this? Yeah. Safe to say i can never trust this pool again...
Well to be honest you really can't trust the majority of pools. Its not like we know the backgrounds of the people running this.
I assume that a lot of sites are rife with security issues. Doesn't stop me from mining of course, but I am wary of it all.
Well to be honest you really can't trust the majority of pools. Its not like we know the backgrounds of the people running this.I assume that a lot of sites are rife with security issues. Doesn't stop me from mining of course, but I am wary of it all.
billionaire
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Full MemberActivity: 154Merit: 100 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:06:57 PM #1806 Woke up to find 0.106427 BTC stolen from my Hashcows account. It went to the same address that stole everyone else's. I even had my withdraw limit set to 0.5 BTC, but it was changed to auto at the same time the person changed the address.
I have never had any of the pools or exchanges I frequent ever have my account hacked. Even the lowly two-bit operations. I use a different password and PIN at each site too.
40 BTC seems like a lot for this site to be able to cover in reimbursements due to its own security flaws (which it clearly was since so many were affected). I certainly hope I get paid back, but not holding my breath either. It must be very tempting to simply close down the site and not pay $25,000+ dollars worth of coin to users because of the site's security problems. That's if Hashcows even has enough funds to pay people to begin with.
Needless to say, I will not mine on the site or any other future pools that might be created by Hashcows team until I am fully reimbursed. If I am, I will gladly come back.
gsrcrxsi
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Sr. MemberActivity: 294Merit: 250 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:08:33 PM #1807 I'm sure the amount that HC has been taking in from fees and their own mining is plenty to cover this 40BTC loss. The RIGHT thing for them to do would be to own up to it and just refund what was taken from each person. As well as fix the security.
That's pretty much the only thing they can do to earn the trust of their miners again.
Spiffy_1
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Full MemberActivity: 234Merit: 100 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:12:04 PM #1809 Yeah, not impressed... Log on to see a manual BTC payout with no fee to the address of 13R87ropkDKzDEuVeQoX64kkcLvPWVdTKH. This pool had better do something to fix this issue.. I had a 16 digit random password generated for this site before it was hacked.. I have regenerated another now and my antivirus and spyware detector come up negative on my side. This was a hole in hashco.ws and I expect to be reinbursed. If you like what I've posted, mine for me on whatever algo you like on www.zpool.ca for a minute using my bitcoin address: 1BJJYPRcRPzTEfByCwkeJ8SCBcrnGD1nhL
eaglejam
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NewbieActivity: 7Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:38:46 PM #1812
What is even more scary is they got by the 4-digit PIN that is MANDATORY to set.
Clearly there is a big security issue here, Most likely several of the Boxes running Hashcows have been r00ted. Clean back-ups should be restored and the servers wiped and rebuilt.
It would be nice to have |
/or unaware of past racial/political tensions.The melding of cultures we’re seeing now may have Generation-X and Generation-Y shaking in their boots with claims of racial ‘appropriation’— and, at times, things can get awkward with poor execution and mere thoughtlessness—but to Generation-Z, I would clearly think it all seems ‘normal.’
People need to be creative and play with their bodies. When something awkward or inappropriate happens, that’s GOOD, because it calls into question something dormant in our society that may need to be addressed. Fashion can be very powerful politically. It can bring into question or ignite a very radical idea or thought process through the power of a single image and that image can spread and spark new ways of thinking on its own. I think we need to just watch culture play out, say something when we feel something needs to be said, and call into question what we feel needs to be questioned. Self-righteousness is the cancer to creativity. Nobody likes a watchdog, watchdog’s aren’t lovers, creators, dreamers—watchdogs are political bloodhounds and what everyone needs, in my opinion, is more freedom.” –Mykki Blanco, New York-based musician and artist
“‘Blackness’ (as long as that concept has existed) has always been in fashion. The ways in which blackness is addressed and used as the basis for creative visions of the word mutates over time. For a long time, white men were allowed to take on black masculinity, which is where the concept of a ‘wigger’ comes from. Although there were moments of white women incorporating elements of black style into their looks, it wasn’t in the same way. There was no appropriation of larger ideas of dress, attitude, speech, etc. As we enter the second and third(plus) generations of white kids globally who have ideas of what it means to be white and align oneself with black culture, we’ve gotten to a unique moment where white women, white gay men, and other races are playing with blackness; its notions of coolness, hardness, urban-ness and specific forms of hyper-sexuality. Racism doesn’t exist less, but the merger of black cultural expression with any idea of authenticity or entitlement-to has faded as the internet archives and makes accessible any and every fetish desire, including the desire for or admiration of another culture.
I think everyone should be educated and maybe if that was emphasized more, we wouldn’t find ourselves trapped in cyclical conversations that ricochet between angry accusation and dismissive arrogance. READ. If you like black culture so much, try to understand it—it will make everything you do cooler and smarter. Otherwise… I guess you’re just a wigger.” –Juliana Huxtable, New York-based writer, critic, and nightlife princess
“I read an interview with Miley Cyrus where she said she can put on a white crop top, white leggings, and white Nikes, and nobody is on her level. I’m like, girl, you know that’s what girls wear every day because they can’t afford anything else? Why do rich people want to feel poor? Classism is the new racism. Class affects us more than anything, and within America’s class structure there lies racism. I grew up in America’s largest public housing projects. I know what it feels like to walk into a high-end store and be treated like a minority. I work in an industry that secretly judges me because the slang I use and friends I chose. I don’t want to call where I come from the hood, but it is an environment where 70 percent of the members of my community will eventually be behind bars. I used to use the word ‘ratchet’ back in high school; it was slang for a gun. Seeing how loose this word has become and what it defines as ‘ghetto’ makes me sad. Ratchet is now a trend: everybody wants to wear cornrows and athletic-inspired fashion, everybody’s putting numbers on the back of their t-shirts.” –Prince Franco, Fashion Editor at Studio Formichetti
“I believe people should be able to wear whatever they want wherever. I think it’s nice to be educated in what you’re wearing, but for example, really how many people wearing those “Comme des Fuck Down” hats know who Rei Kawakubo is? But who cares, whatever makes them happy. I think it’s important to be sensitive to others when appropriating something taken from another culture into something to wear for fashion, but it’s so tricky. Whatever you do someone somewhere will find it offensive even if you’re celebrating that culture.” –Matthew Josephs, London-based streetwear stylist
“Designers should take inspiration from anything. You shouldn’t have to live something to be inspired by it or make work around it. Wear whatever you want. You have Kanye West saying that hip-hop is the new rock-and-roll; we’re the new rockstars. He’s completely right. You don’t have to be from the ghetto to listen to hip-hop. It’s the biggest music in the world. Everybody listens to it.” –Dean Kissick, Senior Digital Editor at i-D magazine
“The link between pop culture and mass appeal is not new, and black culture has a long history of being appropriated by and having a major influence on pop culture. But what does seem new is that the stigma attached to rappers and their sometimes unwanted endorsements has faded. I wonder if this has more to do with with the marketing power of these musicians, now that fashion has become such a big business, than a genuine appreciation of their taste. One needs only to be reminded of those recent incidents of racial profiling—for instance, when two black youths were accosted by the police for legally and soundly buying fashion goods at a prestigious department store—to realize that any claim of ‘blackness’ being in fashion is based more on gimmicks and fads than any true solidarity or understanding of the black experience.
Personally, I feel uncomfortable with what it is that is considered ‘blackness’ in America. When Miley Cyrus acts sloppy, vulgar, and idiotic on national television and is then accused of copying ‘black culture’ by the media, I realize there is a much bigger problem at hand: it would seem that being black is synonymous with a kind of overconfidence that is empowered by its defiance of a lack of education and sophistication; it’s synonymous with anti-intellectualism and a lack of self-respect. If you look at the history of black people in the United States, at all their struggles and achievements, it is extremely sad to think what’s now defined as ‘blackness’—it’s amply sugarcoated with post-modern irony and easily swallowed despite being no less bitter than the minstrels and blackface from the days of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow.” -Jeremy Lewis, founder/editor of Garmento Magazine
“The most diverse fashion week continues to be New York’s but still more than four out of five models on the runway are white, and that’s the best fashion week from the point of racial diversity. Milan and Paris are much less diverse. You’ll hear major casting directors making totally preposterous excuses about, for instance, why they, “just can’t possibly hire a black girl for the Gucci show because black girls have a certain kind of body.” The fact that such stereotypes are still so prevalent in the highest part of the industry is really distressing. I do believe that change can come from within. I don’t believe the fashion system has an intractable or unsolvable problem with race. I think that it has a problem and that too often goes unacknowledged but that change can come by defining and quantifying the problems. I reject the notion that race is something that fashion can “play with,” that it’s something that can be “in style.” Race is not a fashion statement. Race is something that fashion needs to confront and admit some responsibility in its construction of and that includes hiring a lot more models of color and a lot more people of color throughout the industry.” –Jenna Sauers, writer and former Fashion Editor at Jezebel
“Fashion industry racism isn’t really different from ‘regular’ racism. There are some people from another race who might say something to a black person and not think it’s racist or offensive because it’s so deep and aligned that they aren’t even aware of it. Appropriating usually comes when people aren’t used to the environment and aren’t familiar with what they’re appropriating; that is when it becomes an issue for some.” –Akeem Smith, New York-based stylist
“Rarely do the original communities benefit from an acceptance of ‘ethnic’ styles in the mainstream. White America has always wanted our look, not us. When South Asian bangles, embroidered flats, and paisley print became accepted in the mainstream, it wasn’t South Asians who suddenly became cool. When a Pakistani woman wears a headscarf or an Indian woman wears a bindi, she is subject to everything from scorn to violence; they risk being seen as ‘unassimilated.’ Since the launch of the ‘war on terror,’ Muslim women wearing the hijab have been subject to public beatings, harassment, and workplace discrimination. Our cultural artifacts become identity markers and those markers become targets. I love the hijab, but the last time I wore it a man in a pickup truck followed me screaming slurs. Meanwhile Rihanna poses in one, Madonna models under a niqab, Lady Gaga sings about burqas.
Appropriation occurs when bodies, typically white, popularize styles that didn’t originate with them, across a matrix of power: the power of visibility, the power to define what is ‘ethnic’ in the market. The gains that follow are reserved for the appropriator, not the appropriated. When the participation of poc in mainstream culture is relegated to trinkets Urban Outfitters can sell, what are we supposed to do, be grateful? While our communities are mined for the latest hip accessories that are lauded on white bodies while suspect on ours, it’s a valuation of whiteness above us. Above our history, dignity, and humanity. I want to see dreadlocks be appreciated because of the black people wearing them, not the corny white dude who doesn’t have to worry about looking ‘too ethnic’ at a job interview. I want to see Bollywood dances appreciated from our current Indian American Miss America, not Selena Gomez’s mangled approximation in her VMA performance of “Come and Get It.” Guess which one of them was subsequently called a terrorist.” –Ayesha Siddiqi, writer, Ideas Editor at BuzzFeed, Contributing Editor at The New Inquiry
“Fashion is such a sprawling umbrella term for that mass of subcultures, individuals, age brackets, and social situations that constitutes consumer groups. I grew up in London, which is very multicultural. The UK’s colonial past shaped the capital’s demographics to quite an extent and the British African-Caribbean population is scattered, large, and well-integrated. The fetishization of urban style is more of a class issue in England. There are plenty of editorial shoots that exploit working class urban lifestyle aesthetics, like so-called “Chav” style, which is a derogatory slang term, meaning ‘Council-housed and violent’ that’s used condescendingly by a largely middle-class media. I’m sure the stylists and photographers working on shoots that use working class aesthetics would prefer I use ‘celebrate’ or even ‘glamorize’ rather than ‘exploit’ to describe their project, but who benefits from a shoot like that? Is it really that cool to appropriate the lifestyle of people who can’t afford to reciprocate” –Ella Plevin, London/Berlin-based freelance stylist and writer
“To see cornrows be depicted on white girls, I don’t know whether to feel happy or sad about it. On the one hand, I feel good that my culture is being appreciated, but I don’t know if it’s being appreciated in the right way. When I see something ghetto in a V Magazine editorial, I’m trying to learn to accept it. The only way our culture is going to move forward is acceptance. Fashion should be able to connect everybody. Not push away people.” –Andreas Aresti, Gypsy Sport designer
“White celebrities can and have been cherry picking Black cultural practices from hairstyles to dance moves to speech acts for centuries—there’s nothing new or cutting edge about this. I do think there’s been an intensification of these acts of cultural appropriation in recent years that have a lot to do with claims that we live in a post-racial or post-gender society. But we only need to look at current events to see that post-racialism is a myth. In the past few months, Renisha McBride (a teenager) and Jonathan Ferrell (a college graduate) were shot dead when they were seeking out help after car accidents. Vanessa Van Dyke, a 12 year old from Florida, was threatened with expulsion from her school unless she cut her natural black hair which the school and some of her classmates found “distracting.” These are current events. If we were to take a longer view of what it is to be Black in the US, in the UK, in Sweden, in the Dominican Republic—wherever—we’d be confronted with a painful and heartbreaking truth that Blackness is not fashion but is a lived experience that requires bearing the brunt of not only racial assumptions but also racist actions that can lead to death. Blackness isn’t fashion, isn’t a trend, and isn’t something to be worn and taken off when the occasion suits. Blackness names a complex set of historical social, political, and cultural, and economic experiences that are lived and that are shaped by very real, very material relations of power. White celebrities who appropriate Black cultural practices benefit from an ahistorical experience of racial difference without bearing the costs of racial difference.” –Minh-Ha Pham, fashion scholar and critic, teaches at Cornell University
***
“We people of color have all the flavor—always have. I watch as you water us down unbeknownst to our growth. Your stimulation was never necessary. A line between cultures once thick, now blurred, distorted, but never damaged. Black don’t crack, we got whipped enough to know that. Look at us, we are who the world wants to be.” –Junglepussy, EmpowererWhen I first heard Singlebarrel was changing their concept, I was very concerned. Immediately I thought that the best bar in Silicon Valley (and perhaps the Bay Area) was in jeopardy. Seriously, what are the chances that they could actually improve on such an outstanding product?I'm happy to say that my worries were not warranted one bit. I finally checked out Haberdasher last week and was completely blown away!Haberdasher means to make or manufacture with skill and careful attention to detail, and is most commonly used in reference to tailoring--explaining the theme. Walking in, the ambiance was already a big improvement. You'll find classy dimmed Edison lights hanging from the ceiling and hidden inside bollard hats. There is more bar space, most casual seating, and comfortable seating for reservations (more on that in a moment). The soundproofing is also amazing. People can talk at a normal volume now and the hushing has been replaced with some nice music.One of my favorite upgrades is that the huge line outside and the 6-person party limit are completely gone! Haberdasher is designed to provide quality craft cocktails more efficiently than before while maintaining the same quality and level of service as Singlebarrel, if not exceeding it.You have two options when drinking at Haberdasher: 1.) Make a reservation. You'll get the best seats and the bartender will come to your table for fully custom-tailored craft cocktail experience, usually with multiple "courses." 2.) Casually walk down to the bar area and order off of a menu of the best craft cocktails Singlebarrel had.How is #2 even possible without a huge line you may ask? Their most popular craft cocktails are on draft. They make them from scratch in large volumes before opening the bar each day. You can still order a customized cocktails at the bar, but their "craft on draft" handles a large number of the orders. I can vouch that the Old Fashioned on draft is just as good if not better than Singlebarrel's. There is also a Moscow Mule where you get to keep the copper mug, Gin & Herb Tonic, Whiskey Ginger, and Montenegro Amaro on tap. There are 8 "house fittings" drinks that are more complex and are made to order from scratch. My wife opted to get a Singlebarrel classic that was not on the menu... the Rum Flip. Not only was it as good as it has always been, but they brought it out in an old-fashion mini milk jug. Nice touch!Other additions to the menu include outstanding non-alcoholic craft sodas, low alcohol drinks, craft beers, and snacks (brisket jerky, chicharrones, garlic almonds, etc.).So in summary, go check out Haberdasher! The best bar in Silicon Valley is now even better. They managed to further innovate the local craft-cocktail scene!Haberdasher is located at 42 W. San Salvador St. For more info and for reservations, head here.In Brutal Takedown, Paper Explains How Nancy Pelosi Has ‘Enabled Sexual Predators For Decades’
The political world is in shock over Nancy Pelosi’s reprehensible defense of alleged sexual harasser and fellow Democrat, Rep. John Conyers on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sunday morning.
Townhall’s Katie Pavlich writes Pelosi’s defense of Conyers is part of her long history of enabling sexual predators.
But first, a recap.
Pelosi called the embattled Congressman an “icon.”
When “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd asked Pelosi if she believed the allegations against Conyers, she had this to say, “I don’t know who they are. Do you? They have not really come forward. And that gets to…Well, that’s for the Ethics Committee to review. But I believe he understands what is at stake here and he will do the right thing. But all of these non-disclosure agreements have to go. By the way, some of them are there to protect the victim because they didn’t want some of it to be public. But that’s over. In other words, if the victim wants to be private, she can be…he or she can be.”
In the same segment, Todd played Pelosi a flashback clip of her defending former President Bill Clinton against the impeachment process stemming from a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Arkansas state employee Paula Jones.
Below is a transcript of the exchange between host Tim Russert and Pelosi in 1998.
RUSSERT: “Why the silence when there have been these allegations, serious ones about President Clinton? PELOSI: “Well, I’d like to say that I think that the women of America are speaking out about, uh, what they think about this whole situation. The women of America are just like other Americans, in that, they value fairness, the value privacy, and do not want to see a person with uncontrolled power, uncontrolled time, uncontrolled, uh, unlimited money, uh, investigation the President of the United States.
“..[T]hat’s exactly what Pelosi is: That woman, a faux feminist who has been enabling sexual predators for decades,” says Pavlich.
The op-ed notes two examples of how Pelosi has enabled sexual predators previously covered by The Gateway Pundit, while highlighting disgraced ex- San Diego Mayor Bob Filner.
Per Townhall:
During her time as Speaker of the House, Pelosi ignored disgraceful sexual harassment by former Congressman and San Diego Mayor Bob Filner. During his time as Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Filner sexually harassed female veterans who were victims of rape during their time in the military. He knew about their vulnerable positions and took advantage of them. He offered them “help” in return for dinner dates. A total disgrace and gross abuse of power. Filner’s record as an advocate for veterans, and female veterans in particular, make the latest developments in the charges of sexual harassment against him that much more deplorable. Three more women this week — two survivors of military sexual assault and a nurse who cared for a female veteran — came forward with allegations that they were sexually harassed by the San Diego mayor and former 10-term congressman.
“I’ll leave you with irony,” the op-ed concludes:
#YesAllWomen deserve to live free from threats of domestic violence & sexual assault. We must shine a bright light on such despicable crimes — Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) May 27, 2014
Click here to read the complete op-ed at Townhall.Chances are pretty good that NHL teams will tell us that every draft selection they make is well thought out. The player they choose is the player they had hoped to secure. And after all, it would be unfair to the athlete to suggest a late round pick was simply a formality.
But one has to wonder what goes on in the minds of the players, those taken very late in the proceedings. The NHL Draft stretches out over two days, producing a lengthy wait for almost all but the first rounders.
One such player is Tate Olson of the Prince George Cougars. The 6’3”, 175-pound defenseman was selected in the seventh round, 210th overall, by the Vancouver Canucks at the festivities in Sunrise, Florida. For the record, he was the second-last player selected. Olson, of course, did not make the trip to be there in person, but he certainly had his mind on the 2015 NHL Draft last June.
“I think Vancouver got a real steal with where they drafted him,” said Cougars head coach Mark Holick in an interview with Hockey’s Future. “And certainly he’s made some noise and been noticed. He went to Vancouver’s camp in Prince George and I thought he looked great. He did a lot of good things.”
Holick is perhaps an old school hockey type, a hard player back in the day and a demanding bench boss today. He is self-deprecating and willingly admits to occasionally lacking a “filter”. In many ways, it is actually refreshing. Holick speaks his mind. That being said, he likes what Olson has contributed to the Cougars this season.
“For Tate, it’s vision, skating, making the right play and getting the puck to the forwards at the time it should be given,” Holick said. “Young kids, when they get in trouble, they tend to hang onto the puck too much.
“With Tate, we’ve been trying to say when you get it, move it, then get up ice and support the rush. Be part of the offensive attack all the time. When you defend, defend hard. He’s not a killer by any means, but he’s got good size and he’s strong. He can defend hard and he’s got a good stick. I think he’s only scratching the surface in terms of how good he can be.”
Olson, from Saskatoon, is part of a core group of five players in Prince George that arrived in BC’s northern capital via the 2012 WHL Bantam Draft. The third pick among those five – he was chosen in the second round, 24th overall – Olson is joined on the current roster by forwards Jansen Harkins (2nd), Brad Morrison (7th), Aaron Boyd (43rd) and Shane Collins (62nd). If the Cougars make some noise during the postseason, it might just be the beginning of some big things for an organization that has struggled for much of the past decade.
An indication that things are improving in Prince George, the Cougars saw four players, including Olson, chosen at the 2015 NHL Draft. Harkins (WPG) was selected in the second round, 47th overall. Forward Brad Morrison (NYR, 4 – 113) and defenseman Sam Ruopp (CBJ, 5 – 129) also heard their names called. Jesse Gabrielle (BOS, 5 – 105), who was acquired by the Cougars last August from the Regina Pats, was also drafted in June.
According to Holick, Olson will be a big part of any future success. The coaching staff will also play an important role, doing their best to manage the minutes that a potentially dominant rearguard plays from game to game.
“He’s having a good year statistically,” Holick said. “He’s our quarterback on the power play from the back end and he’s a guy who plays on our penalty kill. He plays 5-on-5, a lot of key minutes for us.
“For us, it’s being able to manage those minutes. When Tate gets close to 30 minutes, then things maybe start to wander a bit. If we can keep him in the 23 to 26 minutes range if we can, anything over that, he maybe gets a little tired and then the mistakes come.
“We have six veteran defensemen and Tate can play his minutes and be a very effective player for us,” Holick continued. “He plays in every situation. I have no reservations about putting him out at any time. He’s a guy we depend on and a guy I trust in key situations.”
It’s safe to say that Olson, who will celebrate his 19th birthday on March 21st, comes from good stock. His father Arley was well-known across Saskatchewan as a young player and parlayed his minor hockey success into a hockey journey through the NCAA (North Dakota) and the CIS (Saskatchewan).
Olson played in the 2013 Telus Cup at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario with the Saskatoon Contacts, who dropped the bronze medal game by a 3-2 count to Laval. No less than 10 players from that Saskatchewan AAA Midget Hockey League team’s roster went on to play in the WHL.
Olson, who is often paired with Shane Collins, is a big, rangy defenseman with good offensive instincts. He has become an integral contributor in both the defensive and attacking zones. Now in his third full season in Prince George, he has scored nine times and added 38 assists in 67 games, doubling his output from last year. A deep playoff run in the WHL this season will see Olson inch closer and closer to the 200-game plateau.
Below is this writer’s chat with the Cougars’ Tate Olson.
Follow Glen Erickson on Twitter via @glenerickson51J.J. Redick played a pivotal role in the Los Angeles Clippers' 105-103 overtime win over the Detroit Pistons on Monday. He scored 24 points on 10-for-17 shooting, including the 3-pointer that knotted the game at 94 with 19 seconds left to send it to overtime; perhaps more importantly, he committed the ludicrous get-on-my-back-for-a-piggyback-ride loose-ball foul on Pistons center Andre Drummond that kept L.A. within one possession and got the ball back, affording the Clips the chance to tie and eventually go on to win in OT.
A performance like that makes you a person of interest for postgame interviews. A performance like this during said interview makes you a person of interest in a much broader context:
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That might be the fastest we've ever seen J.J. Redick move on the basketball court.
So, what gives? Why'd J.J. — by all accounts one of the game's better, more gracious and more expansive quotes — decide to turn his walkoff chat into a runaway bride-type of situation? The answer comes, as many great things do, from NBA TV's Matt Winer.
According to @Matt_Winer, JJ was in a hurry because the last Clipper player into the locker room has to dance. JJ wasn't having any of that. — NBA TV (@NBATV) December 15, 2015
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Suddenly, all those furtive glances and all that weird looking around snaps into focus — Redick was trying to see if any of his teammates were still on the court, and when he didn't see a whole lot of Clippers black around, he realized it was high time to hightail it out of there and make a break for the visiting locker room. Evidently, though, Redick doesn't have anything to worry about when it's his turn to two-step:
The reason those moves are flawless, of course, is that they're cribbed entirely from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer.
Then again, maybe Redick was just holding out hope that he could somehow slip into the locker room before Lance Stephenson. Granted, it's unlikely — Lance caught his second DNP-CD of the season on Monday, and probably had a decent head start — but come on, who wouldn't want to see more of this sort of physical artistry?
Oh, well. Maybe next time, J.J. If nothing else, though, we appreciate the hustle.
More NBA coverage:
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
Stay connected with Ball Don't Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, "Like" BDL on Facebook and follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.It appears LeBron James will test free agency in 2018, and Russell Westbrook could join him on the open market. (Getty)
The first week of NBA free agency in 2017 was insane. Mad. Dizzying. Crazy. Right?
It’s been OK. But it’s nothing compared to what we could have on our hands in 2018.
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With the majority of notable 2017 free agents off the board, it’s time to peek ahead to the NBA free agent class of 2018, which could be full of stars and superstars alike. Some will be expected to return to their incumbent teams, or opt into the final years of their contracts. Some are restricted free agents. But many will hit the open market, which could make for the wildest summer of player movement in some time.
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This week, we took a look at the prospective 2018 class. Monday was for the point guards; Tuesday was for the wings; Wednesday was for the bigs; and Thursday is for the top 50 overall. Without further ado, here are those top 50 …
TOP 50 FREE AGENTS IN 2018
Key: ^ = player option * = restricted free agent ** = team option
1. LeBron James^, SF
Current team: Cleveland Cavaliers | Age on July 1, 2018: 33 | 2017-18 salary: $33.3 million
Eric Freeman: “It’s unclear how many teams will have the cap room to add James on what could be a record contract. The Los Angeles Lakers appear ready to swing for the fences, but rumors and reports do not add up to a legendary talent moving to a team without a star currently on the roster. However, a lot can happen between now and next July. The mere possibility of a potential G.O.A.T. changing teams could cause many executives to move heaven and earth to open up the necessary cap room. A player of this magnitude only becomes available so often.”
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2. Kevin Durant^, SF
Current team: Golden State Warriors | Age on July 1, 2018: 29 | 2017-18 salary: $25 million
Freeman: “Durant’s 2018 offseason will be important to both him and the Warriors. He could decide to take less than his maximum salary again. Or he could opt for a new five-year mega-deal that would push the Warriors well past the luxury tax threshold right when they face the league’s punitive repeater tax. Owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber will pay whatever it takes to keep one of the best players of this generation, but even a team that prints money has limits. The latter option could force the league’s top team into difficult choices in the future.”
3. Russell Westbrook^, PG
Current team: Oklahoma City Thunder | Age on July 1, 2018: 29 | 2017-18 salary: $28.5 million
Henry Bushnell: “The NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player could re-up with OKC anytime between now and next summer. But if he and newly acquired running buddy Paul George don’t gel, or if he simply decides to explore other opportunities, Westbrook could opt out of his contract and become next summer’s top free agent point guard.”
4. Chris Paul, PG
Current team: Houston Rockets | Age on July 1, 2018: 33 | 2017-18 salary: $24.6 million
Bushnell: “Regardless of how [Paul and new teammate James Harden] amplify or mute each other’s strengths, though, Paul, even at 32 going on 33, should command the max when he becomes an unrestricted free agent next summer. Paul could also sign an extension in Houston, but he’d be eligible for a bigger contract if he waits until next July.”
Paul George and Russell Westbrook should be a potent duo next season. (AP)
5. Paul George^, SF
Current team: Oklahoma City Thunder | Age on July 1, 2018: 28 | 2017-18 salary: $19.5 million
Freeman: “Maybe Westbrook will convince George that Oklahoma living has plenty of positives to offer. Maybe the Lakers will experience another dysfunctional season that turns off top-level talent. Maybe the Thunder will exceed expectations and emerge as the most likely challenger to the Warriors. None of these seems out of the realm of possibility.”
6. DeMarcus Cousins, C
Current team: New Orleans Pelicans | Age on July 1, 2018: 27 | 2017-18 salary: $18.1 million
Ben Rohrbach: “Once believed destined to waste away on a super-max contract in Sacramento until at least 2024, Cousins lost at least $30 million in future earning potential when the Kings dealt him to the Pelicans immediately after the All-Star Game. In some regard, though, he earned his freedom. As mercurial as he may be, Cousins is still a sublime talent who will turn 27 in August, and he will get a max contract offer next summer — whether it’s five years from New Orleans or four years elsewhere.”
7. Isaiah Thomas, PG
Current team: Boston Celtics | Age on July 1, 2018: 29 | 2017-18 salary: $6.3 million
Dan Devine: “There’s no denying that the 5-foot-9 game-breaker and fourth-quarter killer has earned a mammoth raise over the four-year, $27 million deal he inked with the Phoenix Suns three years ago. But in a league landscape in which the salary cap has flattened out after last summer’s sticker-shock-inducing spike, and in which few teams figure to have massive amounts of money to spend, will Thomas find multiple suitors willing to offer a max deal starting at about $30.6 million for the 2018-19 season?”
8. DeAndre Jordan^, C
Current team: Los Angeles Clippers | Age on July 1, 2018: 29 | 2017-18 salary: $22.6 million
Bushnell: “Jordan is one of the best true centers in the NBA, and one of the best players, period, within a five-foot radius of the rim. He finished the 2016-17 season in the league’s top five in field goal percentage and rebounding percentage, and although he had his least impactful year as a shot blocker since 2009-10, he’s been a regular on blocks leaderboards for years. He was viewed as a top-25 player heading into this past season, and with good reason. But does that mean he’ll be paid like a top-25 player next summer?”
9. Carmelo Anthony^, SF
Current team: New York Knicks | Age on July 1, 2018: 34 | 2017-18 salary: $26.2 million
Freeman: “… the Melo situation could get much more complicated next summer. Anthony can opt in for a 2018-19 salary in excess of $29 million, and it’s possible that he’ll consider that more worthwhile than taking significantly less money to join up with a friend on a contender that looks unlikely to beat the Warriors in a seven-game series.”
Despite another big injury, Joel Embiid appears to be a franchise player. (AP)
10. Joel Embiid*, C
Current team: Philadelphia 76ers | Age on July 1, 2018: 24 | 2017-18 salary: $6.1 million
Rohrbach: “There’s a very real possibility Embiid could be No. 1 on this list by season’s end, if he puts up anything close to a full season of his per-36-minute production from 2016-17 (28.7 points, 11.1 rebounds, three assists and 4.7 combined blocks and steals), and it will take another serious injury to prevent teams from throwing max offers at the Cameroonian. And even then, Philly would probably still match.”
11. Andrew Wiggins*, SF
Current team: Minnesota Timberwolves | Age on July 1, 2018: 23 | 2017-18 salary: $7.5 million
Freeman: “Wiggins has arguably not fulfilled the potential that made him the No. 1 overall pick in 2014, but he could be in for a big season with Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns set to take the bulk of the Wolves’ shots. Less will be asked of Wiggins, and he could thrive because of it. If that scenario comes to pass, then the Wolves could be set to enter a precarious cap situation over the next few years.”
12. Avery Bradley, SG
Current team: Detroit Pistons | Age on July 1, 2018: 27 | 2017-18 salary: $8.8 million
Freeman: “It’s possible Bradley could end up a bargain, as well. There’s no guarantee that a market for a non-star, even one entering his prime, will materialize, and Bradley could find a paucity of teams willing to pay him if he wants upward of $20 million per season. This free agent period has served as a cautionary tale for many players of Bradley’s ilk.”
13. Jabari Parker*, SF
Current team: Milwaukee Bucks | Age on July 1, 2018: 23 | 2017-18 salary: $6.7 million
Freeman: “He could be a candidate for a relatively cheap extension before the start of the season, but if he stays unsigned, Parker’s deal figures to be determined heavily by what he shows in his return from the most recent season-ending injury.”
14. Gary Harris*, SG
Current team: Denver Nuggets | Age on July 1, 2018: 23 | 201 |
get more mileage out of what you do. And it is not about efficiency, productivity, paleo-diets or fitbit apps. Instead change a few simple things in your daily routine.
1. First of all, get smart about learning.
Before anything meaningful can improve you need to improve your ability to learn – and retain information. And since our information comes primarily from written and spoken sources, reading speeds and listening are essential.
Learning hack # 1: Do this simple 10 minute exercise 3 or 4 times over the same number of weeks and you will see your reading speed increase from 250 words per minute to 600 and higher (we know that comprehension begins to fall apart at about 900 words). If you double or triple your reading speed – will that have an impact on your life? I am assuming that you are not just reading pulp fiction but meaningful stuff that will refine and develop you.
Learning Hack # 2: Listen to podcasts at 1.5 speed. Again this does not affect comprehension – although it may take a little getting used to listening to what sounds like over-caffeinated speakers on helium, you will be able to either listen to a podcast repeatedly (and increase retention) or simply be able to listen to more of them. 1.5 times is.5 more than what other listeners are getting through.
Learning Hack #3: Do all your learning activities within 2 hours of going to sleep. In 2009 a study at Berkley University conclusively established the relationship between learning and sleep. Motor skills and cognitive skills are processed separately in different stages of sleep, but in any case, having a decent sleep after studying or practicing a physical skill will help you get better at it faster. If you want the condensed version watch this interview with author Josh Kaufman.
The reading exercise alone will be enough to get you fired up about consuming books, so start with stuff you always wanted to read but never have time for, or finish that book that has been collecting dust for the last six months on your bedside table. If you are studying this will change your life, and your results.
Before we move onto items 2 and beyond, the first question will possibly be “What should I learn/read/practice?”
I suggest keep it simple. Don’t try to over-reach, pick one thing that you always wanted to learn or get better at, and commit to that one thing for a couple of months, longer if necessary. Why? Because the most difficult thing will not be the learning part, but developing enough discipline to do it regularly. Your practice needs to become habitual. If you don’t get to that then most things will not get past the attempt.
Besides learning to learn, here are a few more proven brain-enhancing hacks.
2. Add a musical instrument to your learning palette. Music is by far the greatest brain-enhancing activity. It improves all sorts of things from spatial awareness to self-awareness, from the the ability to stay calm to becoming better at maths, puzzles and geometry. Above all, you will suddenly comprehend jokes and the universe in a way that can only understood by other musicians.
3. Reduce your screen time to the absolute minimum necessary, and have one, two or even 3 screen free days every week. Seriously, I dare you. If the world ends on day 3 we’ll all know, otherwise let us all know how you did via the comments below. Screens are the antithesis to a brain-hack (with the exception of your kindle and reading important posts like this one)
4. Meditate daily. Start with 10 minute breathing exercises, and if you really want to alter your brain physically (all good ones) then work towards 20 minutes or longer in a single session every day. There is that famous Zen poverb: “You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day — unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.”
5. Put your to-do list in your diary. To-do’s take time, so if you are not scheduling some time for it, it is unlikely to ever happen! Besides you will learn really quickly to prioritise when you begin to run out of time-slots in your agenda. I could go on here about the power of saying no, but that’s best left for another post.
6. Write important stuff by hand. It has been verified over and over again that writing stuff by hand goes into your brain and stays there, in other words handwriting has a much higher rate of retention than typing. It is probably no big deal that the appointment you typed into Sunrise Calendar on your iPhone is forgotten until the reminder pops up, but it matters when you are taking notes at a meeting. Having important information stored in your brain will ensure that you solve complex problems more effectively. And don’t worry – it is extremely unlikely that you will ever get a notification from your brain saying “Brain full. Would you like to archive old files now?”
7. Dictate to your devices instead of typing. Not really a brain hack, but yeah, why not use technology to your advantage. Typing is slow, speaking and listening back will actually help with retention when your favourite notebook and pencil are not at hand. Besides, its the way of the future (for now). Most devices now do a pretty good job at this, and many of them learn to recognise your way of speaking. Spooky, but very very cool.
8. Get/keep fit with a 10 or 15-minute daily regime. No excuses here, there is a plethora of decent programs out there, find one and refine it as you get a routine going. The simple fact is that your brain works way better if it is carried around by a fit and healthy body. Slouching in a chair, mouse in hand for 8 -15 hours a day staring at a screen is not just destroying your body, it is also destroying your mind, which brings me to the next point.
9. Take breaks. Your thinking ability begins to decline rapidly after 45 minutes at the same task, and is totally zapped, zero, nil, at around 90 minutes. My personal favourite is the Pomodoro Method, where you work for 25 and take a 5 minute break, meaning 5 minutes of doing something away from the desk that has absolutely nothing to do with what you were doing before. If you can go outside, breathe some fresh green air, stare at the clouds and hear cows and birds in some kind of vegetated space even better. But beware – use a timer for this. Time flies when you are getting stuff done!.
10. Eat and drink well and regularly. Up the leafy greens and veg big time, more whole foods and less processed, ditch the sugars where you can, and don’t be afraid of oils and fats. your brain needs them! And of course keep up the water (or green tea).
That book you always wanted to write? A language you wanted to learn? Whatever it is that you have parked because it is to difficult to learn, you now have no reason not to start. It may not make you rich overnight, but I am certain that it will make you happier.
In closing, if you are a parent teach this stuff to your kids. I hope this helps look at your life and theirs in a different way.
You don’t need to be Lucy on performance enhancing drugs to overclock your brain, most of it is simple science, a little discipline and a lot of fun.
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Like this: Like Loading...A judge sentenced Eduardo Reyna to 10 years in prison, but after one year behind bars, he escaped.
Where he is and who helped him remains a mystery.
In 2008, Reyna escaped from a federal prison in Bastrop.
"We don't know at this time who would have aided his escape, such as picking him up on the roadway and getting him transportation elsewhere out of that focal point," says Deputy U.S. Marshal Brandon Filla.
What we do know is a judge sentenced Reyna to prison for dealing cocaine.
His criminal history started in 1976 and includes indecent exposure and drug dealing.
Reyna is now 56 years old. He also goes by the nickname Chacho and he has dual citizenship in the United States and Mexico.
"He may have gone to Mexico for a short time frame but over 8 -years he may have gotten comfortable, may have changed his looks a little bit," Filla says, "and may have had a way to facilitate his way back into the United States if he did go to Mexico."
Reyna has several tattoos, with the virgin of Guadalupe on his chest and Jesus on his arm.
On his right arm he has praying hands and a rose. He has also has small cross tattoos on his hand and arm.
"The pictures that we have are from 2007. He's had eight more years to fade those tattoos out, but they're still going to be somewhat visible," says Filla.
If you have any information on Reyna's whereabouts, call the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force tip line at 512-800-4213.Image caption Julia Lovemore was detained under the Mental Health Act
A mentally ill woman who killed her six-week-old daughter by sitting on her has been detained indefinitely.
Julia Lovemore, of The Rowans, Milton, near Cambridge, earlier admitted the manslaughter of baby Faith on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Her daughter was declared dead on arrival at hospital on 17 June 2009.
The judge at Cambridge Crown Court said the 41-year-old was "profoundly mentally disordered and suffering from religious delusions at the time".
She was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act.
The court heard the mother-of-two had suffered mental health problems since the age of 26 and had recovered, but had a relapse after the birth of her first child in July 2006.
She and her husband were described a "religious fanatics" in court.
Julia Lovemore was visited by a community psychiatric nurse and a health visitor on the day of the killing.
When they arrived, they found her husband David Lovemore, 39, downstairs praying for his wife, and their older child was sitting on the stairs.
The 41-year-old and Faith were not seen by the visitors, who left to call for more help because they were disturbed by Mr Lovemore's behaviour, the court heard.
Prosecutor John Farmer said: "Unfortunately, neither of them sought to see the defendant and the best interpretation of events is that by then Faith was dead or dying because there would be no other reason why the husband of the defendant was so intensely engaged in prayer."
I felt very unsettled, I would almost go as far as to say I was scared Rebecca Hughes, Community psychiatric nurse
Rebecca Hughes, the community psychiatric nurse, told police Mr Lovemore was stamping his feet and saying: "Take the devil out of Julia."
She said: "I have never ever seen him like that before. It was as if he was in a trance.
"I felt the situation was unstable. I was very worried about David, I feared he may be becoming psychotic.
"I felt very unsettled, I would almost go as far as to say I was scared."
Mr Farmer told the court Mr Lovemore walked into a doctor's surgery shortly afterwards with his elder child who had been doused in white spirit, and Faith who was dead.
Authorities were called after Lovemore hit the child over the head with a hairbrush in November that year, the court heard.
She was reported to police by her husband who himself suffered from "profound mental health problems", Mr Farmer said.
He said the child was put on the "at risk" register and in February 2009, when Lovemore was found to be pregnant with Faith, she was seen by a consultant psychiatrist who said she was at high risk of relapse.
The court heard the couple, both "religious fanatics", insisted on having the birth at home without any medical attention at all.
Several meetings were held after Faith was born on 3 May last year, and Mr Farmer said there were no concerns "apart from the administration of extreme religious views".
A meeting was held early in June 2009 which determined both children should remain on the "at risk" register, the court heard.
Lovemore's husband was originally charged with allowing Faith's death, but the prosecution was abandoned in April.
'Parent's responsibility'
A serious case review into Faith's death was carried out by the Local Safeguarding Children's Board.
It said lessons learned included a need to improve the understanding of the nature of psychotic episodes and make sure it was shared and used in child protection processes.
The report added that maintaining key information about family history was essential in assessment of risk.
The link between the parents' religious beliefs and their mental health was only partially understood, and that monitoring plans between agencies must be clear about expectations on practitioners and followed, it added.
After sentencing, Det Supt Dan Vajzovic said: "This was a tragic case which saw a young life ended deliberately.
"Every child has the right to be protected and feel safe in their own home and it is a parent's responsibility to ensure this is the case."Your QA team has their hands full of work to catch up with everything they get from PMs, developers and you - the client. If you are curious on the best way to make a QA’s life easier, have a read below.
Let’s start at the beginning and assume a new project has just begun. The project team consists of a Project Manager, Developer(s), a Quality Assurance Specialist, and of course our dear Client. Everyone is doing their best to plan and organize an MVP version.
The PM carefully prepares user stories with the client — no easy feat! Everything should go according to plan, but suddenly complications appear somewhere along the road.
Then, during application development, the original assumptions change a bit. The Client has just decided that several additional features need to be implemented and in the meantime… the bugs start to appear!
Your QA team now has their hands full of work to catch up with everything. If you are curious on the best way to make QA’s life easier, have a read below.
1. At the beginning there was… a Decent Ticket
Tickets in Pivotal Tracker are fundamental to QA at netguru — they use them all day, every day. No matter if it’s a bug or feature, the ticket should be described very carefully, with love and detail. It’s the ticket creators’ job to give the perfect details which are necessary to address the ticket - the title, the body, the labels if required. It should be clear what the problem is, and/or what the expected outcome ought to be.
When creating a ticket, you can use subtasks if you feel that it'll be helpful to break the main task apart. But never leave a ticket uncompleted. Sometimes tickets are prepared really fast during a meeting and require adding more description later on. That’s OK. But it’s very common that a description is simply skipped over because the title might infer the outcome.
Before completing your ticket, ask yourself the following question: Will somebody else understand the ticket? Did I provide detailed information and my own insight? Could I easily give this ticket to QA from another project and would he or she be able to check it without extra explanation? If you can answer these questions with a yes, especially, the last one, it’s a good sign that the ticket is ready for the world!
Here is an example what a decent ticket should look like:
Decent tickets don't make themselves.
2. Share and attach what you have
When you refer to the front-end work (e.g. graphics, flow, etc.) you can't expect that your QA is a seer. We really don’t know which colour the button should be, what the homepage should look like, or where anything is located. Always remember to attach your mockup (file), screenshots, or links where the required sources are located. What’s really important — make your resources accessible! I have come across several situations when a link from Google Docs wasn't shared properly, or the file was moved to another folder or there was a password I didn’t know. If the author of the ticket is offline and there's no way to get further explanations - your QA is in trouble!
Take a look at this beauty:
Is there anybody out there?
3. Always keep tickets up to date
Sometimes original mockups include really sophisticated functionalities, but we are doing an mvp version, right? Sometimes we need to cut down on some options and restrain from implementing everything at once, or change something in the mockup because it turned out the item is not practical. Always add info about any changes, even if they are small ones. For example, if you decided to change the names of the buttons, mention it. Remember that your QA pays attention to detail and after noticing this difference, he or she will wonder if the change was intended or not. If a new mockup is ready, always remember to replace the outdated file with the latest version.
4. Found an exciting bug? Do it like QA
Bugs found and added by QA are typically described very well, at least, we like to think so :D.
Good QA pays attention to include all the information necessary to reproduce the error and fix it. If you find a new bug and want to add it to PT by yourself, try to copy your QA’s way of reporting bugs. First of all, check if your brand new exciting bug hasn’t been already spotted and added by QA! You can use the search option in Pivotal Tracker and type keywords.
If you didn’t find your bug, create a ticket and remember to attach an accurate pic or video if it’s necessary to explain the bug (Jing might be useful). Always attach a pic and/or video with its URL address. Give full details about the unwanted behaviour of the application.
Stick with the simple form:
"as is": the unwanted action
"to be": how the function should work
Here you can find more useful advice on describing bugs.
Reporting bugs well makes your QA's life so much easier.
5. Commits and specs are welcome
First of all, never ever fix a bug/implement a feature without a proper ticket - if you can't find an appropriate source, ask your QA for help, but when you start fixing things without tickets, the QA will feel out of control.
If you work on a particular ticket, always remember to attach your commits. It’s a piece of cake because Pivotal Tracker is integrated with Github, so the only thing that needs to be remembered is adding a proper ticket ID when you are committing commit.
In other cases when commits are not added, your QA could think that the ticket is not ready and you have delivered it by mistake. What’s more, a ticket without attached commits looks sad and poor. Always remember to attach tests to the bug! If you can't do it for some reason, for example, if there’s no way to test— inform your QA about it in a comment, including an explanation for the lack of tests.
Never leave a ticket alone - it loves commits' company.
6. Labels are important not only in fashion :)
Very short information can be condensed into labels, and they are often essential to check the ticket. Always remember to add a ticket (for example no_qa) to the ones which are not for your qa. For example, if you do code refactoring: Ask another developer from your project to check the ticket tagged “no_qa”.
Another kind of a useful label tool is epic. Epic denotes a more complex functionality consisting of many user stories. You can easily filter by epic and see whole lists of tickets referring to the a bigger function or the a part of an application. Add the epic label if there is an accurate one in PT. Labels could also be useful to inform where QA can test a new feature or where the bug occurs, for example, on staging or production.
7. Ready, steady, go
To put this rule simply: Don’t deliver a ticket if it is not ready to be checked.
Netguru takes care of code quality, so the code from every finished ticket should be checked by other Devs in the company. We call this process a code review. A ticket can't be delivered if it’s not immediately ready to be checked and approved under code review.
Despite the example above, sometimes QA has checked a ticket still not ready to be checked. Why? For example: somebody clicks "Deliver" on the ticket whose commits were rejected by CircleCi and the changes aren't visible or the environment (production/staging) hasn’t been built yet. It’s a waste of time for QA when the task isn’t ready to be handled.
8. Never add a ticket you cannot explain or don’t understand
It seems to be an obvious rule, but sometimes it happens.
If you aren't perfectly sure about how the functionality should work, pass the ticket to someone who does. Ask other team members/clients, for example using a project channel on slack. Don’t forget to add clarification to the proper ticket so your QA wouldn’t have to ask for explanation.
9. Stay tuned with your QA
If you feel like you need to leave some notes for your QA, don’t be shy! For example, if you want to leave hints on how to test something or share some doubts, do it without hesitation. Also, if you want to leave credentials because a bug/feature is implemented on a dedicated user’s account only, or there are additional settings to be changed, comments are a good place to do that - you can leave one for QA in Pivotal.
These practical examples might improve not only QA’s work, but also overall communication between all project members.
At first glance, it can look like a big effort to acclimate to all of those rules. But believe me—it will pay you back. Across the board we have observed changes in:
smoother communication - QA doesn’t need inquiries or further explanations, so there will be no questions which can disturb work on any side of the project.
work speed - the process of checking tickets is faster, even if it takes a little more effort to create the tickets well.
a solid source of knowledge - a comprehensively described ticket is not just for QA, it’s a gain for whole team. Pivotal is viewed by everyone, so it keeps all the members together and updated.
Do all of the above, and you’ll have a highly efficient, perfectly happy QA team.
Greetings from our awesome QA TEAM!
Photo by Anksfoto.
If you want to know more secrets from your Quality Assurance specialists, check out this post about different types of software tests. Enjoy!Officials in the Department of Health and Human Services are looking to reduce the number of temporary and permanent shelters for illegal immigrant children, in the wake of a dramatic drop in illegal immigration at the southwestern U.S. border in the last few months.
An HHS official testified Wednesday at the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Department of Homeland Security refers thousands of children to HHS each year after they are apprehended at the border. In fiscal year 2016, for example, 59,170 kids were referred to HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The high numbers in recent years have necessitated the building of temporary shelters for these children. However, Scott Lloyd, the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, said the numbers are falling since Trump took office.
"In fact, while referrals during the first quarter of FY 2017 were the highest first quarter referrals in the history of the program, referrals since January have dropped to a five-year low," Lloyd said in his prepared testimony.
"In response to the decreased number of referrals, ORR has been working to reduce shelter capacity by closing the temporary shelters that operated earlier in FY 2017, and we are currently implementing further reductions in permanent shelter capacity," he added. "At this time, we have no temporary facilities open at Department of Defense locations, as the last one closed in February 2017."
That's a dramatic turnaround from the Obama years, when illegal immigration soared and in 2014 became a humanitarian crisis. The numbers fell in 2015, but rose again in 2016, in part because illegal immigrants were hoping to get to the U.S. in time for some kind of perceived improved treatment under President Hillary Clinton, or before President Trump took steps to shut the border.
Total apprehensions of illegal immigrants quickly fell under Trump, which DHS has said is a sign of a drop in attempted illegal border crossings.
By February, Trump's first full month in office, total apprehensions fell to their lowest levels for that month in six years.The Nebraska Humane Society is proud to be a member of the Nestle Purina Shelter Champions Program. Nestle Purina brings together the brightest minds in pet science and culture to continually work toward improving pet diets, care and emotional wellness. They also support their shelter partners by donating some 6 million pounds of pet food, treats and litter to more than 940 animal welfare organizations across the country. That means the Nebraska Humane Society can feed quality, consistent diets to the the animals we shelter at no cost. That frees up more funding for medical treatments, behavioral help and other crucial supplies and programs. NHS is proud to feed Purina products and grateful for Nestle Purina's continued support of homeless animals in our community and across the U.S! Find out more
11,093 ANIMALS FOUND PERMANENT HOMES LAST YEAR. Adopt Who We Are The Nebraska Humane Society is a private non-profit organization that rescues, rehabilitates and rehomes thousands of animals each year. We also provide animal control services to Omaha and Sarpy County. As an open entry shelter we take in all lost, abandoned, unwanted and mistreated pets who have nowhere else to go. We work to return the lost, heal the sick and whenever possible, adopt the homeless. Toward that end we treat diseases, set broken bones, stitch up wounds, spay or neuter, microchip, and offer behavior help for scared and unruly dogs. We also work to keep pets in homes by educating pet owners, providing training and free behavior help, and promoting responsible pet ownership. Read More »The past president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ed Young and current pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston recently joined Pastor Kendall Baker and David Welch in denouncing Houston’s recent Equal Rights Ordinance. Young claimed equality in Houston was a “staggering moral issue” because equality, according to Young, Baker and Welch, discriminates against cisgender heterosexual Southern Baptists like himself. At a rally for ending equality, Young proclaimed, “The verbiage of the proposed ordinance is couched in non-discrimination language but, without question, discriminates against people, like you and me, who want to live by our own personal convictions… [LGBT] rights should end where our morality and rights begin.”
Young, Baker, Welch and the Southern Baptist Convention are no strangers to hypocrisy. Young, a pious cheerleader for the Texas religiopolitical machine, even took the stand to testify that Enron’s CEO – proven huckster Ken Lay – was trustworthy, saying under oath that Lay was “a man who keeps his word.” Young’s son was the subject of national scandal for apparently duping followers of his father’s multi-site megachurch into supporting his excessively luxurious lifestyle. After promoting fears of being inundated by transgender sexual predators should Houston’s equality ordinance pass, Baker, and Welch are currently mired in a sexual assault scandal wherein Baker sexually assaulted and harassed women and Welch attempted to get Baker off the hook. After supporting slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, the effort to crush the Equal Rights Act, marriage equality for gay and interracial couples, the “submission” of women to men, efforts to end science-based education, the Southern Baptist Convention has come out as being opposed to the existence of transgender people.
While the Convention’s move to oppose the existence of trans people has drawn criticism, the Convention is no stranger to having its actions criticized. The Convention faced past criticism over the way it handled its child rape problem and more specifically, that they refuse to track their own pedophiles. The Convention’s Florida arm was held liable for in effect, facilitating the rape of children, and recently vowed to fight to pay damages to the rape victim. Some rape survivors have taken it upon themselves to track the child rape issues that plagues Convention members since the Convention itself won’t.
A separate Florida case highlights the child rape issue facing Convention members:
After being convicted of assaulting two young girls, Southern Baptist Convention star Darrell Gilyard began preaching at a new church. In a move that brought international attention, the Baptist church banned children so that the pedophile could continue to preach since Gilyard’s probation forbade him from coming in contact with children. Recently, a judge lifted the ban to allow the convicted child molester access to children.
The Religious Harold reported:
A native of Palatka, Fla., Gilyard rose to fame in the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1980s under the mentorship of former SBC presidents Jerry Vines and Paige Patterson. Jerry Falwell’s pulpit gave Gilyard a platform to share on national television his dramatic testimony of growing up a homeless orphan who lived under a bridge, a story that was later discredited.
The attention helped Gilyard attain several pastorates, until confidence in him eroded after a series of sex scandals in the early 1990s. The Dallas Morning News published stories in 1991 saying dozens of women had accused Gilyard of sexual misconduct, with some alleging rape.
Gilyard began as pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Community Church in April 1993. He resigned Jan. 4, 2008, after a member of the congregation filed a police report claiming Gilyard sent sexually explicit text messages to her daughter.
Gilyard was arrested Jan. 14, 2008, and charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct. He pleaded guilty May 21, 2009, to molesting one girl and sending lewd text messages to another.
While no resolution was made to track the problem of child rapists among its own Convention membership, the Convention did make it clear that they are opposed to the reality of transgender people:
We affirm distinctions in masculine and feminine roles as ordained by God as part of the created order, and that those distinctions should find an echo in every human heart. We condemn efforts to alter one’s bodily identity to bring it into line with one’s perceived gender identity…[and] we continue to oppose steadfastly all efforts by any court or state legislature to validate transgender identity as morally praiseworthy.
After years of membership decline, the Convention leadership is again scratching its head over yet another year of declining membership. Commenting on new findings showing that Convention membership is still in decline, Frank Page, president and CEO of the Convention Executive Committee, said, “The numbers of people in our continent are increasing dramatically while our evangelistic efforts are failing in many places and in many ways.”
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Writers for the TransAdvocate work hard to bring you news and commentary. If you found this article meaningful, let the author know that you appreciate the work they do with a tip!No matter how you slice it, there's only a finite number of people and companies that will put their data in the public cloud, but that hasn't stopped the competition -- for a free service, no less! -- from turning cutthroat. But the market could be in trouble if the same standards that brought down Megaupload are applied, or if providers continue to abuse users' trust.
Over the past few days, two industry heavyweights have tossed their hats in the online storage ring. Microsoft's SkyDrive came first, with 7GB of free storage, tight integration with Office Web Apps, and promised (but not yet delivered) Windows 8 Metro support. The next day, Google announced its long-anticipated Google Drive, improving upon Google Docs with 5GB of free storage and tight integration with Google Apps.
Microsoft and Google, by blessing and massively publicizing the concept, will certainly convert some hesitant users and businesses to the public cloud storage faith, but they'll hardly have the field to themselves. Pick your favorite online storage approach -- iCloud, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Cloud Drive (from Amazon), Dropbox, Box, SugarSync, SpiderOak -- and you can find at least three online reviews right now that will agree with your choice. I guess that's what makes a horse race.
The cloud storage concept isn't new: Google's had online "drive" storage with G-drive since 2004. Dropbox and an early incarnation of SkyDrive (then known as Windows Live Folders) started in 2007. Google Docs has been viable since 2010. But we've never seen a marketing push like the one that's just hit.
I don't think Box (formerly Box.net), SugarSync, or SpiderOak are going to collapse any time soon. Each has a unique niche. SpiderOak encrypts data and doesn't keep the key. Box wants to take on SharePoint in the enterprise, with online workspaces and content management. SugarSync works on all things mobile -- even Symbian, for heaven's sake -- and sports a large number of features none of the others can touch. That said, it's hard for me to envision big growth spurts for any of those three, and some consolidation seems likely.
Dropbox has a lot of useful third party apps, but its advantage isn't going to hold water for too long since all those third parties are working non-stop to tie into Google Drive and SkyDrive.
Cloud Drive needs a massive facelift -- and a good ad campaign -- if it wants to compete as a standalone cloud storage repository. Right now its only real claim to fame is the integration with Amazon's books and music storage, and the Kindle connection. But then again, Amazon may just want to sit this one out, content with servicing Kindle customers.
That leaves iCloud, and I don't see anything but positive fallout for Apple. iCloud has set itself above the fray, with a clearly superior service in many ways. If you don't want to think of it as superior, you can think of it as better integrated with all of Apple's products. And since demand for The Apple Way has never been stronger, iCloud can pretty much ride it all out, looking down at the hoi polloi from afar.
But trouble could be brewing for many cloud storage providers.
The file upload/hosting business was dealt a crushing blow when the U.S. Justice Department shut Megaupload's servers in Hong Kong in January, and had founder Kim Dotcom arrested in New Zealand. The Megaupload team had created an entire ecosystem facilitating the violation of U.S. copyright laws, but the technological heart of the operation hinged around a user's ability to upload copyrighted material, retrieve an URL that pointed directly to that material, and then distribute (or sell) that URL to anyone.
As of today, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and SugarSync have the same feature: They make it very easy to upload a file and generate an URL that points to that file alone. Uploader can then send the URL to anyone they wish, in some cases with an optional password, and the recipients can download the file without signing up for an account, without logging in. SpiderOak has a similar capability, called ShareRooms, that works with folders.
If Megaupload's transgressions were so egregious they warranted international police action, what standards apply to these other cloud storage companies? There's hardly a hair's-breadth of distance between cloud storage and file sharing. Will Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, Box, SugarSync, and SpiderOak be required to scan incoming files for copyright violations? Will they have to implement a Content ID system, similar to YouTube's? If so, Google -- which invented Content ID -- has a big leg up on its competitors.
In the end, it seems to me that the battle for online storage will be less about features and more about trust. Google's raised a hornet's nest of privacy conerns this week over its ridiculous Google Drive terms of service, then compounded the damage by not immediately responding, "We screwed up, we'll change it." Dropbox blew it last year with privacy concerns that haven't been solved -- at least, not in a technical way.
Of all the data storage companies I've mentioned here, only SpiderOak says that it can't look at your stored data. They don't keep the keys. All of the others have ways -- carefully controlled, logged, audited ways -- of looking at your data.
So... whom do you trust? Or do you encrypt your data before sending it to the cloud?
The primary collateral damage in this latest onslaught? Trust.
I see lots of articles online debating picayune features in the data storage apps. Fair enough. None of them seem to state clearly that when you put your data in the cloud, employees of the company trusted with your data can look at it. Specific employees, yes, and there are systems to prevent abuses, yes. But it can still be done.
People who instinctively distrust online storage have good reasons for doing so. People who don't understand how their cloud data can be compromised may be in for a rude awakening.
This story, "Cloud storage booming, but trouble brewing" was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.
This story, "Cloud Storage Booming, But Trouble is on the Horizon" was originally published by InfoWorld.Today, I saw another reference to Hitler's "dark hair" on what is supposed to be a pro-Hitler website by a pro-Hitler commenter.
"It makes me wonder why Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Hess, Speer etc all had dark hair." -HdP
Neither Hitler nor Himmler had dark hair, the other three did. Too many people accept whatever they see in a photograph -- any individual photograph -- without taking into consideration that hair invariably looks darker in photos that are not taken in direct sunlight. The resolution/quality of the photo also makes a big difference.
Hitler's hair was medium brown; Himmler's hair was a light shade of brown [or "dirty" blonde?]. Light to medium brown is probably the most common hair color among ethnic German people (this includes Austrians). From there it goes to lighter and to darker in probably equal numbers.
In addition, Hitler, Himmler and Hess had blue eyes. I can't discover the color of Speer's eyes, but his son has blue eyes [2-13-17: A commenter just presented proof Speer's eyes were brown - see comments]. Brown-eyed Germans, like Goebbels, were just as German as blue-eyed Germans. Besides, Goebbels was the father of several light-haired, blue-eyed children. The blue-eyed Magda Goebbels' hair looks dark in most pictures but she was actually a blonde.
Here are some pictures of Hitler and Himmler revealing their true hair color.
Hitler as a schoolboy. Low resolution of the photo makes for more contrast between dark and light, so the darks become black without any grad |
ever is not born [again],” which is the same as saying, “All that after the coming of Christ the Saviour would enter into the Kingdom of the Heavens must be <140> regenerated.” And forasmuch as infants are men, and as such need salvation; needing salvation, they need also Baptism. And those that are not regenerated, since they have not received the remission of hereditary sin, are, of necessity, subject to eternal punishment, and consequently cannot without Baptism be saved; so that even infants ought, of necessity, to be baptised. Moreover, infants are saved, as is said in Matthew; {Matthew 19:12} but he that is not baptised is not saved. And consequently even infants must of necessity be baptised. And in the Acts {Acts 8:12; 16:33} it is said that the whole houses were baptised, and consequently the infants. To this the ancient Fathers also witness explicitly, and among them Dionysius in his Treatise concerning the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; and Justin in his fifty-sixth Question, who saith expressly, “And they are vouchsafed the benefits of Baptism by the faith of those that bring them to Baptism.” And Augustine saith that it is an Apostolical tradition, that children are saved through Baptism; and in another place, “The Church giveth to babes <141> the feet of others, that they may come; and the hearts of others, that they may believe; and the tongues of others, that they may promise;” and in another place, “Our mother, the Church, furnisheth them with a particular heart.”
Now the matter of Baptism is pure water, and no other liquid. And it is performed by the Priest only, or in a case of unavoidable necessity, by another man, provided he be Orthodox, and have the intention proper to Divine Baptism. And the effects of Baptism are, to speak concisely, firstly, the remission of the hereditary transgression, and of any sins whatsoever which the baptised may have committed. Secondly, it delivereth him from the eternal punishment, to which he was liable, as well for original sin, as for mortal sins he may have individually committed. Thirdly, it giveth to such immortality; for in justifying them from past sins, it maketh them temples of God. And it may not be said, that any sin is not washed away through Baptism, which may have been previously committed; but to remain, though not imputed. For <142> that were indeed the height of impiety, and a denial, rather than a confession of piety. Yea, forsooth, all sin existing, or committed before Baptism, is blotted out, and is to be regarded as never existing or committed. For the forms of Baptism, and on either hand all the words that precede and that perfect Baptism, do indicate a perfect cleansing. And the same thing even the very names of Baptism do signify. For if Baptism be by the Spirit and by fire, {Matthew 3:11} it is manifest that it is in all a perfect cleansing; for the Spirit cleanseth perfectly. If it be light, {Hebrews 6:4} it dispelleth the darkness. If it be regeneration, {Titus 3:5} old things are passed away. And what are these except sins? If the baptised putteth off the old man, {Colossians 3:9} then sin also. If he putteth on Christ, {Galatians 3:27} then in effect he becometh free from sin through Baptism. For God is far from sinners. This Paul also teacheth more plainly, saying: “As through one [man] we, being many, were made sinners, so through one [are we made] righteous.” {Romans 5:19} And if righteous, then free from sin. For it is not <143> possible for life and death to be in the same [person]. If Christ truly died, then remission of sin through the Spirit is true also. Hence it is evident that all who are baptised and fall asleep while babes are undoubtedly saved, being predestinated through the death of Christ. Forasmuch as they are without any sin; — without that common [to all], because delivered therefrom by the Divine laver, and without any of their own, because as babes they are incapable of committing sin; — and consequently are saved. Moreover, Baptism imparteth an indelible character, as doth also the Priesthood. For as it is impossible for any one to receive twice the same order of the Priesthood, so it is impossible for any once rightly baptised, to be again baptised, although he should fall even into myriads of sins, or even into actual apostacy from the Faith. For when he is willing to return unto the Lord, he receiveth again through the Mystery of Penance the adoption of a son, which he had lost.
DECREE XVII.
We believe the All-holy Mystery of the Sacred Eucharist, which we have enumerated <144> above, fourth in order, to be that which our Lord delivered in the night wherein He gave Himself up for the life of the world. For taking bread, and blessing, He gave to His Holy Disciples and Apostles, saying: “Take, eat ye; This is My Body.” {Matthew 26:26} And taking the chalice, and giving thanks, He said: “Drink ye all of It; This is My Blood, which for you is being poured out, for the remission of sins.” {Matthew 26:28} In the celebration whereof we believe the Lord Jesus Christ to be present, not typically, nor figuratively, nor by superabundant grace, as in the other Mysteries, nor by a bare presence, as some of the Fathers have said concerning Baptism, or by impanation, so that the Divinity of the Word is united to the set forth bread of the Eucharist hypostatically, as the followers of Luther most ignorantly and wretchedly suppose, but truly and really, so that after the consecration of the bread and of the wine, the bread is transmuted, <145> transubstantiated, converted and transformed into the true Body Itself of the Lord, Which was born in Bethlehem of the ever-Virgin {Mary ELC}, was baptised in the Jordan, suffered, was buried, rose again, was received up, sitteth at the right hand of the God and Father, and is to come again in the clouds of Heaven; and the wine is converted and transubstantiated into the true Blood Itself of the Lord, Which as He hung upon the Cross, was poured out for the life of the world. {John 6:51}
Further [we believe] that after the consecration of the bread and of the wine, there no longer remaineth the substance of the bread and of the wine, but the Body Itself and the Blood of the Lord, under the species and form of bread and wine; that is to say, under the accidents of the bread.
Further, that the all-pure Body Itself, and Blood of the Lord is imparted, and entereth into the mouths and stomachs of the communicants, <146> whether pious or impious. Nevertheless, they convey to the pious and worthy remission of sins and life eternal; but to the impious and unworthy involve condemnation and eternal punishment.
Further, that the Body and Blood of the Lord are severed and divided by the hands and teeth, though in accident only, that is, in the accidents of the bread and of the wine, under which they are visible and tangible, we do acknowledge; but in themselves to remain entirely unsevered and undivided. Wherefore the Catholic Church also saith: “Broken and distributed is He That is broken, yet not severed; Which is ever eaten, yet never consumed, but sanctifying those that partake,” that is worthily.
<147> Further, that in every part, or the smallest division of the transmuted bread and wine there is not a part of the Body and Blood of the Lord — for to say so were blasphemous and wicked — but the entire whole Lord Christ substantially, that is, with His Soul and Divinity, or perfect God and perfect man. So that though there may be many celebrations in the world at one and the same hour, there are not many Christs, or Bodies of Christ, but it is one and the same Christ that is truly and really present; and His one Body and His Blood is in all the several Churches of the Faithful; and this not because the Body of the Lord that is in the Heavens descendeth upon the Altars; but because the bread of the Prothesis set forth in all the several Churches, being changed and transubstantiated, becometh, and is, after consecration, one and the same with That in the Heavens. For it is one Body of the Lord in many places, and not many; and therefore this Mystery is the greatest, and is spoken of as wonderful, and comprehensible by faith only, and not by the sophistries of man’s wisdom; whose vain and foolish curiosity <148> in divine things our pious and God-delivered religion rejecteth.
Further, that the Body Itself of the Lord and the Blood That are in the Mystery of the Eucharist ought to be honoured in the highest manner, and adored with latria. For one is the adoration of the Holy Trinity, and of the Body and Blood of the Lord. Further, that it is a true and propitiatory Sacrifice offered for all Orthodox, living and dead; and for the benefit of all, as is set forth expressly in the prayers of the Mystery delivered to the Church by the Apostles, in accordance with the command they received of the Lord.
Further, that before Its use, immediately after the consecration, and after Its use, What is reserved in the Sacred Pixes for the communion of those that are about to depart [i.e. the dying] is the true Body of the Lord, and not in the least different therefrom; so <149> that before Its use after the consecration, in Its use, and after Its use, It is in all respects the true Body of the Lord.
Further, we believe that by the word “transubstantiation” the manner is not explained, by which the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord, — for that is altogether incomprehensible and impossible, except by God Himself, and those who imagine to do so are involved in ignorance and impiety, — but that the bread and the wine are after the consecration, not typically, nor figuratively, nor by superabundant grace, nor by the communication or the presence of the Divinity alone of the Only-begotten, transmuted into the Body and Blood of the Lord; neither is any accident of the bread, or of the wine, by any conversion or alteration, changed into any accident of the Body and Blood of Christ, but truly, and really, and substantially, doth the bread become the true Body Itself of the Lord, and the wine the Blood Itself of the Lord, as is said above. Further, that this Mystery of the Sacred Eucharist can be performed by none other, <150> except only by an Orthodox Priest, who hath received his priesthood from an Orthodox and Canonical Bishop, in accordance with the teaching of the Eastern Church. This is compendiously the doctrine, and true confession, and most ancient tradition of the Catholic Church concerning this Mystery; which must not be departed from in any way by such as would be Orthodox, and who reject the novelties and profane vanities of heretics; but necessarily the tradition of the institution must be kept whole and unimpaired. For those that transgress the Catholic Church of Christ rejecteth and anathematiseth.
DECREE XVIII.
We believe that the souls of those that have fallen asleep are either at rest or in torment, according to what each hath wrought; — for when they are separated from their bodies, they depart immediately either to joy, or to sorrow and lamentation; though confessedly neither their enjoyment, nor condemnation are complete. For after the common resurrection, when the soul shall be united with the body, with which it had behaved <151> itself well or ill, each shall receive the completion of either enjoyment or of condemnation forsooth.
And such as though envolved in mortal sins have not departed in despair, but have, while still living in the body, repented, though without bringing forth any fruits of repentance — by pouring forth tears, forsooth, by kneeling while watching in prayers, by afflicting themselves, by relieving the poor, and in fine {in summation ELC} by shewing forth by their works their love towards God and their neighbour, and which the Catholic Church hath from the beginning rightly called satisfaction — of these and such like the souls depart into Hades, and there endure the punishment due to the sins they have committed. But they are aware of their future release from thence, and are delivered by the Supreme Goodness, through the prayers <152> of the Priests, and the good works which the relatives of each do for their Departed; especially the unbloody Sacrifice availing in the highest degree; which each offereth particularly for his relatives that have fallen asleep, and which the Catholic and Apostolic Church offereth daily for all alike; it being, of course, understood that we know not the time of their release. For that there is deliverance for such from their direful condition, and that before the common resurrection and judgment we know and believe; but when we know not.
QUESTION I.
Ought the Divine Scriptures to be read in the vulgar tongue by all Christians?
No. For that all Scripture is divinely-inspired and profitable {cf. 2 Timothy 3:16} we know, and is of such necessity, that without the same it is impossible to be Orthodox at all. Nevertheless they should not be read by all, but only by those who with fitting research have inquired <153> into the deep things of the Spirit, and who know in what manner the Divine Scriptures ought to be searched, and taught, and in fine read. But to such as are not so exercised, or who cannot distinguish, or who understand only literally, or in any other way contrary to Orthodoxy what is contained in the Scriptures, the Catholic Church, as knowing by experience the mischief arising therefrom, forbiddeth the reading of the same. So that it is permitted to every Orthodox to hear indeed the Scriptures, that he may believe with the heart unto righteousness, and confess with the mouth unto salvation; {Romans 10:10} but to read some parts of the Scriptures, and especially of the Old [Testament], is forbidden for the aforesaid reasons and others of the like sort. For it is the same thing thus to prohibit persons not exercised thereto reading all the Sacred Scriptures, as to require infants to abstain from strong meats.
QUESTION II.
Are the Scriptures plain to all Christians that read them?
If the Divine Scriptures were plain to all <154> Christians that read them, the Lord would not have commanded such as desired to obtain salvation to search the same; {John 5:39} and Paul would have said without reason that God had placed the gift of teaching in the Church; {1 Corinthians 13:28} and Peter would not have said of the Epistles of Paul that they contained some things hard to be understood. {2 Peter 3:16} It is evident, therefore, that the Scriptures are very profound, and their sense lofty; and that they need learned and divine men to search out their true meaning, and a sense that is right, and agreeable to all Scripture, and to its author the Holy Spirit.
So that as to those that are regenerated [in Baptism], although they must know the faith concerning the Trinity, the incarnation of the Son of God, His passion, resurrection, and ascension into the heavens, what concerneth regeneration and judgment — for which many have not hesitated to die — it is not necessary, but rather impossible, that all should know what the Holy Spirit manifesteth to those alone who are exercised in wisdom and holiness. <155>
QUESTION III.
What Books do you call Sacred Scripture?
Following the rule of the Catholic Church, we call Sacred Scripture all those which Cyril {Lucar ELC} collected from the Synod of Laodicea, and enumerated, adding thereto those which he foolishly, and ignorantly, or rather maliciously called Apocrypha; to wit, “The Wisdom of Solomon,” “Judith,” “Tobit,” “The History of the Dragon,” “The History of Susanna,” “The Maccabees,” and “The Wisdom of Sirach.” For we judge these also to be with the other genuine Books of Divine Scripture genuine parts of Scripture. For ancient custom, or rather the Catholic Church, which hath delivered to us as genuine the Sacred Gospels and the other Books of Scripture, hath undoubtedly delivered these also as parts of Scripture, and the denial of these is the rejection of those. And if, perhaps, it seemeth that not always have all been by all reckoned with the others, yet nevertheless these also have been counted and reckoned with the rest of Scripture, as well by Synods, as by how many of the most <156> ancient and eminent Theologians of the Catholic Church; all of which we also judge to be Canonical Books, and confess them to be Sacred Scripture.
QUESTION IV.
How ought we to think of the Holy Eikons, and of the adoration of the Saints?
The Saints being, and acknowledged by the Catholic Church to be, intercessors, as hath been said in Eighth Chapter {sic; Decree VIII above ELC}, it is time to say that we honour them as friends of God, and as praying for us to the God of all. And the honour we pay them is twofold; — according to one manner which we call hyperdulia, we honour the Mother of God the Word. For though indeed the Theotokos {Mary ELC} be servant of the only God, yet is she also His Mother, as having borne in the flesh one of the Trinity; wherefore also is she hymned, as being beyond compare, above as well all Angels as Saints; wherefore, also, we pay her the adoration of hyperdulia. But according to the other <157>manner, which we call dulia, we adore, or rather honour, the holy Angels, Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, and, in fine, all the Saints. Moreover, we adore and honour the wood of the precious and life-giving Cross, whereon our Saviour underwent this world-saving passion, and the sign of the life-giving Cross, the Manger at Bethlehem, through which we have been delivered from irrationality, {In allusion to the manger out of which the irrational animals eat their food. JNWBR} the place of the Skull [Calvary], the life-giving Sepulchre, and the other holy objects of adoration; as well the holy Gospels, as the sacred vessels, wherewith the unbloody Sacrifice is performed. And by annual commemorations, and popular festivals, and sacred edifices and offerings; we do respect and honour the Saints. And then we adore, and honour, and kiss the Eikons of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the most holy Theotokos, and of all the Saints, also of the holy Angels, as they appeared to some of the Forefathers and Prophets. We also represent the All-holy Spirit, as He appeared, in the form of a dove.
<158> And if some say we commit idolatry in adoring the Saints, and the Eikons of the Saints, and the other things, we regard it as foolish and frivolous. For we worship with latria the only God in Trinity, and none other; but the Saints we honour upon two accounts: firstly, for their relation to God, since we honour them for His sake; and for themselves, because they are living images of God. But that which is for themselves hath been defined as of dulia. But the holy Eikons [we adore] relatively since the honour paid to them is referred to their prototypes. For he that adoreth the Eikon doth, through the Eikon, adore the prototype; and the honour paid to the Eikon is not at all divided, or at all separated from that of him that is pourtrayed, and is done unto the same, like that done unto a royal embassy.
And what they adduce from Scripture in support of their novelties, doth not help them as they would, but rather appeareth agreeable to us. For we, when reading the Divine Scriptures, examine the occasion and person, <159> the example and cause. Wherefore, when we contemplate God Himself saying at one time, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any idol, or likeness; neither shalt thou adore them, nor serve them;” {Exodus 20:4,5; Deuteronomy 5:8,9} and at another, commanding that Cherubim should be made; {Exodus 25:18} and further, that oxen and lions {1 Kings 7:29} were placed in the Temple, we do not rashly consider the import of these things. For faith is not in assurance; but, as hath been said, considering the occasion and other circumstances, we arrive at the right interpretation of the same; and we conclude that, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any idol, or likeness,” is the same as saying, “Thou shalt not adore strange Gods,” {Exodus 20:4} or rather, “Thou shalt not commit idolatry.” For so both the custom obtaining in the Church from Apostolic times of adoring the holy Eikons relatively is maintained, and the worship of latria reserved for God alone; and God doth not appear to speak contrarily to Himself. For if the Scripture <160> saith [absolutely], “Thou shalt not make,” “Thou shalt not adore,” we fail to see how God afterwards permitted likenesses to be made, even though not for adoration. Wherefore, since the commandment concerneth idolatry only, we find serpents, and lions, and oxen, and Cherubim made, and figures and likenesses; among which Angels appear, as having been adored.
And as to the Saints whom they bring forward as saying, that it is not lawful to adore Eikons; we conclude that they rather help us; since they in their sharp disputations inveighed, as well against those that adore the holy Eikons with latria, as against those that bring the eikons of their deceased relatives into the Church, and subjected to anathema those that so do; but not against the right adoration, either of the Saints, or of the holy Eikons, or of the precious Cross, or of the other things of which mention hath been made; especially since the holy Eikons have been in the Church, and have been adored by the Faithful, even from the times of the Apostles, as is recorded and proclaimed by very many; with whom and after whom the Seventh Holy <161> Œcumenical Synod putteth to shame all heretical impudence.
Since it giveth us most plainly to understand that it behoveth to adore the Holy Eikons, and what have been mentioned above. And it anathematiseth, and subjecteth to excommunication, as well those that adore the Eikons with latria as those that say that the Orthodox commit idolatry in adoring the Eikons. We also, therefore, do anathematise with them such as adore either Saint, or Angel, or Eikon, or Cross, or Relic of Saints, or sacred Vessel, or Gospel, or aught else that is in heaven above, or aught on the earth, or in the sea, with latria; and we ascribe adoration with latria to the only God in Trinity. And we anathematise those that say that the adoration of Eikons is the latria of Eikons, and who adore them not, and honour not the Cross, and the Saints, as the Church hath delivered.
Now we adore the Saints and the Holy Eikons, in the manner declared; and pourtray them in adornment of our temples, and that they may be the books of the unlearned, and for them to imitate the virtues of the Saints; <162> and for them to remember, and have an increase of love, and be vigilant in ever calling upon the Lord, as Sovereign and Father, but upon the Saints, as his servants, and our helpers and mediators.
And so much as to the Chapters and Questions of Cyril. But the heretics do find fault with even the prayers of the pious unto God, for we know not why they should calumniate those of the Monks only. Moreover, that prayer is a conversation with God, and a petitioning for such good things as be meet for us, from Him of whom we hope to receive, an ascent too of the mind unto God, and a pious expression of our purpose towards God, a seeking what is above, the support of a holy soul, a worship most acceptable to God, a token of repentance, and of steadfast hope, we do know; and prayer is made either with the mind alone, or with the mind and voice; thereby engaging in the contemplation of the goodness and mercy of God, of the unworthiness of the petitioner, and in thanksgiving, and in realising the promises attached to obedience to God. And it is accompanied by faith, and hope, <163> and perseverance, and observance of the commandments; and, as already said, is a petitioning for heavenly things; and it hath many fruits, which it is needless to enumerate; and it is made continually, and is accomplished either in an upright posture, or by kneeling. And so great is its efficacy, that it is acknowledged to be both the nourishment and the life of the soul. And all this is gathered from Divine Scripture; so that if any ask for demonstration thereof, he is like a fool, or a blind man, who disputeth about the sun’s light at the hour of noon, and when the sky is clear. But the heretics, wishing to leave nothing unassailed that Christ hath enjoined, carp at this also. But being ashamed thus openly to impiously maintain as much concerning prayer, they do not forbid it to be made at all, but are distributed at the prayers of the Monks; and they act thus, that they may raise in the simple-minded a hatred towards the Monks; so that they may not endure even the sight of them, as though they were profane and innovators, much less allow the dogmas of the pious and Orthodox faith to be taught by them. For the adversary is <164> wise as to evil, and ingenious in inventing calumnies. Wherefore his followers also — such as these heretics especially — are not so much anxious about piety, as desirous of ever involving men in an abyss of evils, and of estranging them into places, which the Lord taketh not under his care. {cf. Deuteronomy 11:12}
They should be asked therefore, what are the prayers of the Monks; and if they can shew that the Monks do anything entirely different from themselves, and not in accordance with the Orthodox worship of Christians, we also will join with them, and say, not only that the Monks are no Monks, but also no Christians. But if the Monks set forth particularly the glory and wonders of God, and continually, and unremittingly, and at all times, as far as is possible for man, proclaim the Diety, with hymns and doxologies; now singing, forsooth, parts of Scripture, and now gathering hymns out of Scripture, or at least giving utterance to what is agreeable to the same; we must acknowledge that they perform a work apostolical and prophetical, or rather that of the Lord.
<165> Wherefore, we also, in singing the Paracletikê, the Triodion, and the Menæon, perform a work in no wise unbecoming Christians. For all such Books discourse of the Diety as one, and yet of more than one personality, and that even in the Hymns; now gathered out of the Divine Scriptures, and now according to the direction of the Spirit; and in order that in the melodies, the words may be paralleled by other words, we sing parts of Scripture; moreover, that it may be quite plain that we always sing parts of Scripture, to every one of our Hymns, called a Troparion, we add a verse of Scripture. And <166> if we sing, or read the Thecara [Threasury], or other prayers composed by the Fathers of old; let them say what there is in these which is blasphemous, or not pious, and we with them will prosecute these [Monks].
But if they say this only, that to pray continually and unremittingly is wrong, what have they to do with us? Let them contend with Christ — as indeed they do contend — who spake the parable of the unjust judge, {Luke 28:2} how that prayer should be made continually; and taught us to watch and pray, {Mark 13:33} in order to escape trials, and to stand before the Son of man. {Luke 21:36} Let them contend with Paul, [who] in the [5th] Chapter {verse 17 JNWBR} of the First [Epistle] <167> to the Thessalonians, and elsewhere in many places [exhorteth to pray unremittingly]. I forbear to mention the divine leaders of the Catholic Church, from Christ until us; for to put these [heretics] to shame sufficeth the accord of the Forefathers, Apostles, and Prophets concerning prayer.
If, therefore, what the Monks do is what the Apostles and Prophets did; and, we may say, what the holy Fathers and Forefathers of Christ Himself did; it is manifest that the prayers of the Monks are fruits of the Holy Spirit, the giver of graces. But the novelties which the Calvinists have blasphemously introduced concerning God and divine things, perverting, mutilating, and abusing the Divine Scriptures, are sophistries and inventions of the devil.
Unavailing too is the assertion, that the Church cannot, without violence and tyranny, appoint fasts and abstinence from certain meats. For the Church for the mortification of the flesh and all the passions, and acting most rightly, carefully appointeth prayer and fasting, of which all the Saints have been <168> lovers and examples; through which our adversary the devil {cf. 1 Peter 5:8} being overthrown by the grace from on high, together with his armies and his hosts — the race {cf. 2 Timothy 4:7} that is set before the pious is the more easily accomplished. In making these provisions the undefiled {cf. Ephesians 5:27} Church everywhere useth neither violence nor tyranny; but exhorteth, admonisheth, and teacheth, in accordance with Scripture, and persuadeth by the power of the Spirit.
And to what hath been mentioned a certain fellow at Charenton — we mean the beforementioned {page 6 ELC} Claud — addeth certain other ridiculous objections against us, and unworthy of any consideration; but what hath been said by him we regard as idle tales; and the man himself we consider as a trifler and altogether illiterate. For from [the time of] Photius what vast numbers have there been, and there are now, in the Eastern Church, eminent for wisdom, and theology, and holiness, by the power of the Spirit. And it is most absurd [to argue] that <169> because certain of the Eastern Priests keep the Holy Bread in wooden vessels, within the Church, but without {outside ELC} the Bema, {sanctuary JNWBR} hung on one of the columns; that, therefore, they do not acknowledge the real and true transmutation of the bread into the Body of the Lord. For that certain of the poor Priests do keep the Lord’s Body in wooden vessels, we do not deny; for truly Christ is not honoured by stones and marbles; but asketh for a sound purpose and a clean heart.
And this is what happened to Paul. “For we have,” {2 Corinthians 4:7} saith he, “the treasure in earthern {sic ELC} vessels.” But where particular Churches able, as with us here in Jerusalem, the Lord’s Body is honourably kept within the Holy Bema of such Churches, and a seven-light lamp always kept burning before it.
And I am tempted to wonder, if it may be that the heretics have seen the Lord’s Body hanging in some Churches without the Bema, because perhaps the walls of the Bema were unsafe on account of age, and so have arrived at these absurd conclusions; but they did not notice Christ pourtrayed on the <170> apse of the Holy Bema as a babe [lying] in the Paten; so that they might have known, how that the Easterns do not represent that there is in the Paten a type, or grace, or aught else, but the Christ Himself; and so believe that the Bread of the Eucharist is naught else, but becometh substantially the Body Itself of the Lord, and so maintain the truth.
But concerning all these things it hath been treated at large and most lucidly in what is called The Confession of the Eastern Church, by George, of Chios, from Coresius in his [Treatises] concerning the Mysteries, and of predestination, and of grace, and of free-will, and of the intercession and adoration of Saints, and of the adoration of Eikons, and in the Refutation composed by him of the illicit Synod of the heretics holden on a certain occasion in Flanders, and in many other [Treatises]; by Gabriel, of Peloponnesus, Metropolitan of Philadelphia; and by Gregory Protosyncellus of Chios in his [Treatises] concerning the Mysteries; by Jeremias, the Most Holy Patriarch <171> of Constantinople, in three dogmatic and Synodical Letters to the Lutherans of Tubingen in Germany; by John, Priest, and Economus of Constantinople, surnamed Nathaniel; by Meletius Syrigus, of Crete, in the Orthodox Refutation composed by him of the Chapters and Questions of the said Cyril {Lucar ELC}; by Theophanes, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in his dogmatic Epistle to the Lithuanians, and in innumerable other [Epistles]. And before these hath it been spoken most excellently of these matters by Symeon, of Thessalonica, and before him by all the Fathers, and by the Œcumenical Synods, by ecclesiastical historians too; and even by writers of secular history under the Christian Autocrats of Rome, have these matters been mentioned incidently {sic ELC}; by all of whom, without any controversy, the aforesaid were received from the Apostles; whose traditions, whether by writing, or by word, have through the Fathers descended until us. Further, the argument derived from the heretics also confirmeth the aforesaid. For the Nestorians after the year of Salvation, 428, the Armenians too, and the Copts, and the <172> Syrians, and further even the Ethiopians, who dwell at the Equator, and beyond this towards the tropics of Capricorn, whom those that are there commonly call Campesii, after the year … {The date is wanting in the text. JNWBR} of the Incarnation broke away from the Catholic Church; and each of these hath as peculiar only its heresy, as all know from the Acts of the Œcumenical Synods. Albeit, as concerning the purpose and number of the Sacred Mysteries, and all what hath been said above — except their own particular heresy, as hath been said — they entirely believe with the Catholic Church; as we see with our own eyes every hour, and learn by experience and conversation, here in the Holy City of Jerusalem, in which there either dwell, or are continually sojourning, vast numbers of them all, as well learned, such as they have, as illiterate.
Let, therefore, prating and innovating heretics keep silence, and not endeavour by stealing some sentences, [as] against us, from the Scriptures and the Fathers, to cunningly bolster up falsehood, as all apostates and heretics have ever done; and let them say <173> this one thing only, that in contriving excuses {cf. Psalm 140:4} for sins they have chosen to speak wickedness against God, {cf. Psalm 74:6} and blasphemies against the Saints.
EPILOGUE.
Let us briefly suffice for the reputation of the falsehoods of the adversaries, which they have devised against the Eastern Church, alleging in support of their falsehoods the incoherent and impious Chapters of the said Cyril {Lucar ELC}. And let it not be for a sign to be contradicted {cf. Luke 2:34} of those heretics that unjustly calumniate us, as though they spake truly; but for a sign to be believed, that is for reformation of their innovations, and for their return to the Catholic and Apostolic Church; in which their forefathers also were of old, and assisted at those Synods and contests against heretics, which these now reject and revile. For it was unreasonable on their part, especially as they considered themselves to be wise, to have listened to men that were lovers of self; and profane, and that spake not from the Holy Spirit, but from the prince of lies, <174> and to have forsaken the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, which God hath purchased with the Blood of His |
carrying out this program proved difficult, given Haiti's political, economic, and foreign policy situations.
The main mission of Haiti's armed forces in the late 1980s continued to be internal security. After 1986, however, this mission regularly conflicted with the national leadership role of the FAd'H. Generational and political differences among officers and a scarcity of resources for the military led to chronic instability that culminated in military coups. These coups caused the government to change hands four times in 1988. A fifth coup in early 1989, however, failed to topple the government. The two most important problems that the FAd'H had to face were, first, a divided senior military command and, second, suspicious junior officers and NCO personnel. These problems became apparent in 1988 when Avril ousted Namphy and subsequently dismissed a number of senior officers. The degree to which NCOs may have been manipulated in this process and the extent to which lower army echelons had begun to shape their own political attitudes caused some observers to doubt the military's future as an institution.
The challenges facing the FAd'H in the late 1980s were more political than military. The largest and most immediate questions revolved around the institution's ability to govern Haiti during a period of political transition and modernization. It remained unclear, in mid-1989, how and when the military planned to transfer power to a legitimate civilian government. Another important problem concerned the personal political ambitions of some army commanders. It was also unclear how the FAd'H would respond to these challenges because the institution had not demonstrated viable national political capabilities. The FAd'H was ill-prepared for this broad new role in national life because François Duvalier had severely limited its role in government affairs.
Other security-related problems included narcotics trafficking. United States officials have expressed concern over Haiti's role as a major transshipment area for narcotics, mainly Colombian cocaine bound for the United States. This role apparently expanded after Jean-Claude's fall. The United States Drug Enforcement Administration opened an office in Port-au- Prince in October 1987 to help Haitian authorities control drug trafficking; however, the lack of a professional police force in Haiti hindered these efforts. The FAd'H appeared ambivalent toward the narcotics issue because drug-related corruption reportedly involved hundreds of members of the officer corps and because some officers resented pressure from Washington. Avril, however, attempted to placate United States concerns by dismissing some officers linked to drug trafficking. The most prominent among the dismissed officers was Paul, a former commander of the Dessalines Battalion, who was indicted in March 1988 by a Florida grand jury on charges of cocaine distribution. Haiti had signed an extradition treaty with the United States, but the agreement did not cover narcotics-related offenses, so Paul never faced trial on the charges.
Paul's continued service in the army posed a political problem, and Avril asked him to retire. In November 1988, however, Paul died mysteriously, possibly a victim of poisoning. Paul's death removed a major narcotics figure and a potential threat to Avril's political power.
Unstable and unstructured civilian politics and institutions also undermined Haiti's stability. Some Duvalierists sought to use the armed forces completely or partially to restore the ancien régime. At the same time, more democracy-oriented civilian groups, all of which lacked strong institutional bases, continued to be suspicious of the army's political leadership. The weak economy and the international media's criticism of Haitian affairs resulted in financial and public-relations problems for the army; and, because Haiti's political environment remained volatile and because the army did not always appear to be in control of the country, Haiti faced more unrest and the possible development of insurgency movements. On the one hand, Haiti's armed forces was still one of the few institutions of national magnitude, but, on the other hand, the armed forces suffered from serious institutional deterioration and diminished cohesion. In 1989 the military was struggling to provide political leadership at a time when it faced its own disintegration.
Disbandment [ edit ]
After years of military interference in politics, including dozens of military coups (from two Duvalier-period attempts in 1958 and 1963 to the last one staged in 1991), Haiti disbanded its military in 1995. Haiti's National Assembly created new civilian law enforcement, with the heavily armed Haitian National Police, and the Haitian Coast Guard, with the help of the United States and the United Nations. Yet, to date there has been no official constitutional amendment to abolish the military. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been authorized to complete the disarmament and demobilization of any remaining militias.[4]
Without its own military, Haiti relies heavily on United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces. The multinational force has been responsible for quelling riots and preparing for democratic elections. Before UN forces arrived, a multilateral force made up of troops from Canada, Chile, France, and the United States helped stabilize the country under the interim leadership of President Boniface Alexandre.[4]
Haiti has no obvious external threats. Tensions have long existed between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but the current border has been fixed since 1936.[4]
21st century [ edit ]
Reformation [ edit ]
In 2017, it was announced that Haiti's government had launched a campaign to re-establish the army. According to the announcement, the government wanted to recruit about 500 men and women, between the ages of 18 and 25, who have passed their secondary education exams. The role of the army would be to help deal in times of natural disaster and to patrol Haitian borders.[5]
Equipment [ edit ]
The army and air force were the better equipped branches of the armed forces, with the navy the least equipped over the years and up to 1994.
Aircraft
Many of Haiti's air force aircraft were donated second hand from the United States and France:
Arms/Artillery/Armored Vehicles
The equipment of the last standing army, many from the United States, were taken by the US Army in the 1990s during Operation Uphold Democracy:
After remobilization of Haitian Armed Forces by President Jovenel Moïse, Armed Forces of Haiti will purchase armored vehicles from Russia in 2019.[citation needed]
Naval Fleet
The Haitian navy fleet existed in the early 20th Century and later 20th Century. Mostly a riverine navy, the naval power was overpowered by the United States Navy in the early 20th Century.
frigate Améthyste (1809–?)
gunboat Crête-à-Pierrot (1896–1902)
gunboat Croyant (1903–1908)
gunboat Centenaire (1904–1911?)
gunboat Vertières (1908–1915)
gunboat Pacifique
gunboat Liberté
260 ton steel gunboat
iron corvette
2 armed sloops
The ships (mainly cruisers) from the fleet that existed in the 1980s was handed over to the Haitian Coast Guard following the disbandment of the military.
Current forces [ edit ]
Haitian National Police [ edit ]
A Haitian SWAT officer with a U.S. Marine
The Haitian National Police is tasked with providing law enforcement and security for Haiti.[6] The force currently numbers more than 8,500 police officers, and is expected to reach 14,000. The force consists of the General and Administrative Services, the Administrative Police, the Judicial Police, the SWAT team, and the Presidential Protection Unit. The Police also has several paramilitary units for defense.
The Haitian police uses the following weapons:
Haitian Coast Guard [ edit ]
The Haitian Coast Guard is charged with law enforcement, security, and search and rescue operations. It maintains bases in Port-au-Prince, Cap-Haïtien, and Jacmel. It is led by the Commandant of the Coast Guard, an Assistant Commandant, an Operations Manager, and a Head of Administration. The force currently has 19 vessels. Officially, it is a part of the Haitian National police.
Military related statistics [ edit ]
Manpower available for military service: 2,047,083 males age 16–49, 2,047,953 females age 16–49 (2008 estimate)
Manpower fit for military service: 1,303,743 males age 16–49, 1,332,316 females age 16–49 (2008 estimate)
Manpower reaching militarily significant age annually: 105,655 males, 104,376 females (2008 estimate)
Military expenditures: 0.4% of GDP in 2006
Foreign military forces [ edit ]
In June 2005, the United Nations Security Council authorized a reinforcement of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)—from 6,700 troops and 1,600 civilian police to 7,500 troops and 1,900 civilian police—to provide security during the run-up to national elections in February 2006. On June 6, 2005, the UN military force launched a coordinated series of operations against armed gangs in Port-au-Prince. By February 2006, 21 nations had contributed military personnel, and 31 nations had contributed police personnel to MINUSTAH. Brazil was the largest single contributor of military personnel with 1,200 troops. From February to May 2005, the U.S. Southern Command carried out a humanitarian mission in Haiti entitled "New Horizons 2005." The task force built schools, drilled wells, provided preventative health services, and set up temporary housing for orphaned children. Troops from all branches of the U.S. armed forces participated.[4]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
The US Navy in the Caribbean 1903–1920, Presence, prevention and persuasion – A Historical Analysis of Military Force Edward Rhodes, 2004 p 160–161
, Edward Rhodes, 2004 p 160–161 Haitian Air Force
"Haiti". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. 20 November 2008.
This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/. Christopher Langton, Military Balance 2007, RoutledgeIn this podcast, Jeremy Harding reads extracts from his essay about migration. The full article is below.
A young, personable man who speaks fair English, Hamraz had been in Dunkirk for about a month when we met. He was a member of the Afghan National Army, from the district of Azra, south-east of Kabul. Early in 2011, going home on leave, he was called to account by local Taliban as a collaborator and told he would have to take part in a car-bomb attack on a nearby hospital if he wanted to redeem himself. He couldn’t return to his regiment without putting his family at risk and he couldn’t stay in Azra, so he left the country. The bomb attack on the hospital went ahead, reducing it to rubble. More than thirty people were killed. He had been on the road for quite a while; his heart was set on the UK, where his cousin had already arrived. The cousin, he explained, had been one of Vice-President Haji Abdul Qadr’s bodyguards at the time of his assassination in 2002, and had gone into exile in Pakistan, but started to receive death threats on his mobile phone eight years later. So now he was in Birmingham, and it made sense for Hamraz to join him if he could steal a ride in a lorry and hop the Channel. The West’s exertions on far-off battlefields, shaping a world in its likeness, are among the reasons Europe is the place of choice for thousands of people like Hamraz. In ways we fail to acknowledge, we issue the invitation and map their journeys towards us.
In Calais, a group of Eritrean asylum seekers talks about the war for independence from Ethiopia. They have a good sense of the history though the oldest would have been ten when the war ended in 1991. Their destination is the UK, but nobody seems to be making a connection for the Channel crossing. They’ve got this far by dodging the Eurodac identification system, which means that they avoided fingerprinting in the first EU country they entered (probably Greece or Italy). The Cool Britannia eat-by date is long expired, and they know it, but they cling to the lingering hope of a deregulated country where they can link up with other Eritreans – there are 40,000 in Britain – and find a way of life.
A thin Ethiopian, spooning up a charity risotto, admits very cautiously to a ‘political problem’ in Addis Ababa, and goes on to explain that his passion is long-distance running. He competed in Serbia, then went on to run in Greece, where he spent several months and won seven races – ‘Google me in Greek alphabet if you know it’ – but for reasons he won’t explain he’s burned his bridges at home. His distance is 10k. ‘Running,’ he says, ‘is all about this.’ He taps his forehead with his finger. England will do more for his mental attitude than Serbia or Greece, and 2012 is Britain’s Olympic year: sports psychologists will be queuing to receive him. All that remains is to slip across the Channel.
Hundreds of thousands attempt to enter Europe without permission every year, or stay on when their visas have expired. Calls to tighten European immigration policy go hand in hand with the project of strengthening its borders, yet it is still a desirable place to be, despite the fact that a majority of Europeans would prefer a deserter from Afghanistan or an athlete from Ethiopia to go away. There are also some who worry about the migrants who are already here: in the vast majority, their papers are in order, they pay taxes and draw benefits, but there’s a nagging suspicion that they are a net drain on European exchequers. In recession country, that makes it easy to cast them as the enemy within.
European attitudes to immigration have hardened. An early warning sign was the growing impatience, in the 1990s, with the notion of multiculturalism. It was a puzzling argument to follow, because the offending element seemed to take many forms. On the face of it, multiculturalism celebrated the ethnic diversity of a changing world: people had different values and cultural markers, even though they lived together in the same societies. Whether or not these differences were welcome was a test of liberal tolerance and the answer, it turned out, was a qualified yes. Europeans took part in the experiment with enthusiasm, even if minorities were alert to any whiff of condescension and said as much. You had to commit to the new environment and learn to inhabit it. Swaying like a blanched orchid at a Peter Tosh concert was not good enough. Painful reprimands from minorities, in the workplace, the faculty, the televised debate were the stuff of our re-education as Europeans. By the 1980s, in theory at least, minorities and majorities were on an equal footing. It was the new conversation. It opened a pathway to equal opportunities in the job market and local government. And it felt right, for blacks, Asians, women, gays and any number of straight white men.
But not for everybody. There were those who saw the point of diversity, and even equal rights, but who objected to equality-in-diversity, a fatal combination in their view, with its suggestion that the case for homegrown, European values must now be heard on its relative merits, as one idiom among others. This in turn cast doubt on the long story that held us together, with its passage through the Enlightenment to liberal democracy, Europe’s unique discovery, which it meant to hand down across the generations. Identity too was an issue, if people could move fluently between one and another – ‘British’ and ‘Asian’, say – or simply hyphenate: it called belonging into question. Who were you really? Along with these misgivings came a feeling that minorities could customise the social contract, opting in and out according to which bits made sense in their microcultures and which bits didn’t. Ethnicity and religion, opponents of multiculturalism began to argue, were blurring an older, consensual version of citizenship, based on rights and duties.
But there was never a debate about multiculturalism without a looming argument about immigration. It’s possible to have reservations about multiculturalism while favouring immigration (or the other way about), but on the whole objections to the first turn out to be objections to the second. And the objection to immigration, as globalisation moves ahead, requires even more strenuous entry restrictions than Europe has in place already. So the question is whether pressure from migrants who overstay their visas or come in undetected will lead to the kind of policies – on border control, detention and deportation – that will turn Europe into a federation of police states. The analogy would be a low-level military conflict going on at a remove from most people’s lives, at Europe’s frontiers, with captives piling up in holding centres, round-the-clock ‘removals’ and raids on workplaces. Will Europe after multiculturalism look like Europe at bay? Perhaps it looks that way in any case.
In the 1990s, the quarrel about immigration was focused on asylum seekers, as Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and France were locked in a battle of conscience over their duties as signatory states to the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. There were ‘floods’ of asylum seekers; they would require housing, healthcare, education and more. Most countries fell back on the notion of ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. Governments felt they could spot economic migrants, pure and simple, among the high number of uninvited people clambering onto beaches or piling into refrigerated trailers, but it was a delicate issue. In the years of optimism and deregulation that followed the Cold War, a gale of prosperity was meant to sweep through the world’s economies. Yet if anything globalisation showed how great the disparities were between wealthy democracies and the rest: developing countries to the south, the debris of the Soviet bloc, large parts of the Middle East, where poverty and joblessness were indeed forms of persecution, or tyrannical mismanagement.
Despite a recent upward trend, the 21st century has seen a decline in the number of asylum seekers in Europe: around 260,000 applications in the 27 member states in 2009 compared with 400,000 among the 15 members in 2001. But the number of migrants in the EU is now greater. Before 2004, roughly 4 per cent of the population of the 15 member states came from outside the Union. Regularisation programmes in Spain and Italy made 2004 the peak year. Today in the enlarged union the proportion of foreign residents is closer to 7 per cent, an increase of about 18 million people in six or seven years. But many of these are non-EU citizens living in new EU states: Russians in Baltic countries, for example. Net inward migration was about 1.7 million a year from 2004 to 2008 and is now falling. Misgivings about asylum seekers have abated, partly because the Balkan wars have come to an end, but partly too as a result of invidious strategies by individual governments, aimed precisely at reducing the numbers. At the same time, the debate on immigration has become sharper and its terms more insular: an energetic, can-do discourse assures us, in spite of growing evidence to the contrary, that states really are in a position to modulate the flow of human beings across their borders, to the nearest ten thousand, in line with their own priorities.
In France in 2011, 180,000 new migrants were allowed in and, as the minister of immigration boasted last month, nearly 33,000 irregular migrants were expelled. For some, the first figure is an outrage, for others the second; both are minor details in a far bigger story. While more and more people are crossing national borders, figures for those who migrate within their own countries – large countries such as China, Mexico, Brazil, Congo DRC – are anywhere between four and seven times higher. In scale alone, they earn their status as canonical migrations. Arrivals in Western Europe since the 1950s are a minor appendix to the canon, but stir up strong feelings among voters opposed to the steady influx of outsiders, especially when a government promises and then fails to hold down numbers, or vaunts expulsion targets (the French target announced for 2012 is 35,000).
September 11 dealt a blow to freedom of movement. Like a front-end collision in a car, it triggered a dramatic security response. Immigration policy was still on the road, but the airbags had been released and remained inflated, making it hard to manoeuvre in traffic or glance at the map. The answer was to apply the brakes, even at the risk of veering away from managed immigration to anti-immigration. Hard on the heels of the attacks – and an announcement by the leader of the Danish People’s Party that there could be no clash of civilisations because Muslims didn’t have one – Denmark brought in a round of laws making it difficult for citizens to marry partners from outside the EU and impossible if they were under 24. In 2004, a bold proposal in Germany to widen the selective recruitment of migrants was struck down and the 1973 ban on foreign labour was left intact. In France in 2006, new laws on family reunification prolonged the waiting time for a spouse’s residency permit from two years to three and required incomers to endorse ‘French’ values. The following year the minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, began hounding down schoolchildren whose papers were not in order.
Unease was not just to do with fresh migrant intakes: politicians and the popular press were deeply concerned about the people already inside their countries, and host cultures now felt freer to speak critically about their minorities. That’s what Frits Bolkestein, then the leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy in the Netherlands, had in mind when he called for more frankness and ‘guts’ on the subject of immigrants. His position was a direct challenge to the etiquette of multiculturalism. Once 9/11 seemed to confirm that the moment for discretion had passed, it was taken up with gusto by Geert Wilders, Pym Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh and others. The Dutch philosopher Baukje Prins (‘The Nerve to Break Taboos’) called this turn in the conversation the ‘new realism’, even if she questioned its basis in reality: its force, she suspected, lay in its appeal to an ‘ordinary’ Dutch person, steeped in native common sense, whose worries had been ignored for years by left-liberal elites. In the UK too, there were ‘new realist’ voices, led by Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who feared that the British would look back on half a century of multiculturalism as a slippery road to segregation. France, always averse to identity politics, tended to agree.
Caribbean, Asian, Turkish or North African were no longer the descriptions that mattered. The defining term was ‘Muslim’: what Muslims did and thought was suddenly central to the immigration debate. Increasingly, the debate was about protecting European values by trying to bring existing minorities into line. In 2004 France banned the hijab in schools and hospitals (and last year the burqa in public, anywhere). In 2005, in a moment of national delirium, riots in the banlieues were blamed on the mosque. When the country returned to its senses, joblessness and segregation in the country’s larger cities came starkly into view. But a series of Islamist atrocities – in Madrid in 2004, the Netherlands (the murder of Theo van Gogh) in the same year, and London in 2005 – kept Muslims under deep suspicion.
In 2006 a controversy erupted in Spain when Muslims asked for the right to pray in the Mezquita at Córdoba, which had been reconsecrated in the 13th century and become a site of Christian worship: the idea was not well received and in 2010 the Bishop of Córdoba launched a plea for the site to be rebranded as a cathedral. In 2007 a tussle began in Cologne over the building of a new mosque in the district of Ehrenfeld. One of the protests against the mosque was attended by delegates from Belgium’s right-wing Vlaams Belang and the Austrian Freedom Party. In 2009 the Swiss voted in a referendum to ban the construction of minarets and the following year it was Angela Merkel’s turn to announce that multiculturalism in Germany had ‘utterly failed’. She was thinking about Germany’s Muslim communities. ‘Muslim identity,’ the social scientist Tariq Modood has remarked, ‘is the illegitimate child of … multiculturalism,’ largely because of its stress on religion, which is difficult for nativists and secular multiculturalists alike. At least with the parent in the grave, it would be easier to tackle the offspring.
But as Europe tumbled into recession and insolvency, its concerns about Islam were subsumed within a general anxiety about all new arrivals, whatever their origins or faith. In 2008 the Federation of Poles in Great Britain registered a 20 per cent increase in hate crimes over the previous year, mostly in the English provinces: they attributed the rise to the economic crisis. The same year Italy declared a state of emergency after a round of confrontations between Roma and mobs of Italians; the army was deployed to keep order and filter out Roma (and Romanians) at the borders. After a decade of openness, Spain was involved in a crackdown on irregular migrants while offering a lump sum to legal migrants, mostly Latin American, to go away if they weren’t in jobs. In 2010 France embarked on a spectacular eviction programme – Roma again – and David Cameron pledged to bring down annual net migration to the UK from hundreds to ‘tens of thousands’, a fantastic notion unless Britain left the European Union and refused entry to ever growing numbers of British returnees – 80,000 plus in 2008 – rethinking their options in Dubai or on the Costa Brava. In 2011 the Dutch labour minister, Henk Kamp, announced that unemployed Eastern Europeans should be sent home – he meant unemployed Poles – but was forced to back down.
Islam remained a worry. In Germany the maverick polemicist and banker Thilo Sarrazin set out a long list of accusations against his country’s Muslim communities. His book Deutschland schafft sich ab was published just ahead of Merkel’s funeral speech for multikulti. But Sarrazin was also alarmed about welfare dependency and idle intruders, wherever they came from, whatever their human rights, and anxious that the suppressed emotions of long-suffering Germans might boil over in the face of these obtuse visitors. The book sold more than a million copies. It seemed that even the Germans, who had received so many asylum seekers in the 1990s, relished the new Alpine chill in the discussion. In 2011, the principle of free movement between Schengen states came under frantic review after pressure from the Elysée. Too many exiles from Tunisia wished to go north to France via Italy, where they’d scrambled ashore in the first place. Last year, the Danish People’s Party forced the country’s government to reinforce the frontiers with Sweden and Germany that no longer existed under the terms of the Schengen agreement.
Perhaps none of this is surprising. It even seems to make sense that the threat of terrorism followed by the reality of a banking meltdown and a recession should have forced Europe to rethink immigration – and welfare budgets – in a landscape of joblessness and debt. But Europe has been wrestling with its doubts about immigration since the 1970s, and the vision of an open, flourishing continent – welcoming refugees, proposing freedom of movement as a momentous objective, even for people beyond its common borders – was already clouding over before the millennium, as wealthier nations drew a line under right of asylum and began to fret about identity politics. Now the hopes of continental prosperity have been dampened. Offshore Britain is no longer confident it can become an Atlantic Hong Kong, leveraged on property values and a powerful financial service sector. Across the ocean, the US wishes to play host to itself and nobody else for the first time in more than half a century. Immigrants in these places are desperately needed, but they are not welcome.
Its aversion to migrants casts Europe’s project in a cold light. In what way do EU member-states differ from nations on other continents which they once regarded with a condescending eye? For example South Africa, plagued by xenophobia in the long aftermath of apartheid, as it struggles to put its house in order. At first, minority rights advocates suspected that ‘aggressive nation-building’ was the reason citizens of the new South Africa favoured heavy restrictions on foreign nationals, or no foreign nationals at all. In 2008 anti-immigrant riots left dozens dead and hundreds injured – and led to voluntary repatriation for many terrified Malawians, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans. Poverty and rabble-rousing in the townships were blamed. Even so, there was still a nagging feeling that citizenship, denied to millions for so long, had been grasped with a fervour that could quickly run to violence against foreigners. Mandela was a stickler for the indivisible nature of citizenship, something he shared with the founders of the republic in France. And with their successors. Apartheid, after all, was the ugly sister of multiculturalism. The rioters in France in 2005 were outsiders, corralled in the banlieues, hungry for inclusion. In South Africa three years later, they were insiders calling for the exclusion of the other.
Electorates in the older EU member-states know they’re stuck with the immigrants they’ve got – the legal ones in any case – and governments have turned with a vengeance to the issues of post-immigration. Here, the key word is ‘integration’, a rearguard policy to ensure that migrants aren’t left to sink their roots in the exotic turf of multiculturalism. Fifteen years ago at the Commission for Racial Equality offices in Bradford, I was told that ‘integration’ was a bad word, like ‘assimilation’. But things have moved on and Europeans are becoming bossy about this. Not only are we sure that fewer migrants should cross our borders – an ideal we shall never achieve without becoming poorer, more decadent and highly militarised – but we’re certain that the ones who are already here should be thoroughly patrolled, to make sure they speak our languages and grasp the way we like to do things.
The new arrangements have a few ragged edges. In Britain, for example, we don’t believe we can invigilate or educate our most troubling minority, flourishing in the upper echelons of the financial sector, or even drop them a hint that, like multiculturalism, the supra-culturalism of the money markets, and the extraterrestrial salaries of managers and traders, can be very divisive. More modest migrants cotton on to this exemption fast, as they toil away at their integration studies. And there’s another curiosity. The path to citizenship, or indefinite leave to remain, is littered with tricky questions. Applicants for settlement in Britain who sit the ‘Life in the UK’ test – compulsory for most – will have to know how many people in Britain are 19 or under, whether a quango is ‘an arm of the judiciary’, or a Methodist a member of the Church of England. But if they pass, they will be well informed about duties, rights and the benefits system. And they will have a reasonable level of English. (Acquiring the language of a host country in Europe carries less of a political charge than the issue of Spanish in US schools.) Learning the ropes is empowering. Language, above all, is the sign and the means of belonging.
It’s not as though migrants dig in, rank and file, against integration. Paul Scheffer, professor of European studies at Tilburg, makes this point in Immigrant Nations, a judicious account of what migrants and European hosts still have to sort out about their long and ambivalent encounter. He cites the case of Fouad Laroui, a Moroccan economist and writer, with a good grasp of the Dutch language, who worked hard to pass his Dutch nationality test after several years as a migrant intellectual. Laroui mugged up the ‘genealogy of the House of Orange’; he spent hours in the public library and the corridors of the Amsterdam Historical Museum. He cast a cursory eye over the postwar Dutch novelists. When the day came, he explains, ‘the procedure took less than five minutes and there were no questions.’ Laroui was unimpressed: this was not a real encounter, merely a formality. Not every immigrant is an assiduous swot with a PhD in economics. Nonetheless Scheffer believes that host countries must be more robust – and ceremonious – as they welcome newcomers into societies that are now ‘so diverse that they are left wondering what holds them together’. The ceremony, in other words, is crucial not only for the migrant acceding to a new identity but for the host trying to recover a sense of coherence. Scheffer would like to see more ritual, and more frankness.
Two other terms in the post-immigration lexicon: ‘detention’ and ‘removal’. The figures for detention in the EU as a whole are hard to establish, but at least 100,000 people are being detained at any given moment in the 27 member-states in connection with unauthorised immigration. As for deportations, the annual figure is closer to 140,000. As Europe thins the numbers down, deportation and incarceration come into play as policy instruments. There cannot be rules without sanctions: even Amnesty International and the British Refugee Council agree that an applicant who fails to win the right to remain should leave. But this principle is weakened in reality by the fact that hunting people down and sticking them on charter flights, as states drum their fingers in the last stages of the appeal process, is prohibitively expensive: recent calculations by the National Audit Office suggested that removing a family of failed asylum seekers costs at least £28,000 and so the bill for deporting all unauthorised migrants and their children could be as high as £8 billion. Time is another factor: to remove every unauthorised migrant in Britain would probably take between fifteen and thirty years at current deportation rates. But parliamentary politics, too, erodes the principle, forever invoked on the hustings and then abandoned, as parties of government that promised to move against unauthorised migrants, or immigration in general, fail to achieve their targets. At the end of their term, they return to opposition without having to explain that they made an impossible commitment in the first place.
Migrants have always been vulnerable to political careers in the making, but they are also becoming the objects of a new, obsessive field of inquiry, like bird watching, based on research and mapping, by an array of interested parties: interstate bodies, interior ministries, lobby groups, border control authorities, private security companies, think tanks, NGOs and contract demographers. The vigilance to which indigenous citizens are subjected by homeland security, corporate marketing and ISPs may be equally intense, but it is surely less insidious. Europeans now take an invasive interest in newcomers: their itinerary, their abilities and disabilities, their faith, their criminal tendencies, their likely mendacity and, of course, their loose-footed relatives (partners, spouses, cousins, offspring) waiting patiently beyond the border.
In the UK the key point to establish is whether a migrant will turn out to be a net asset or a net drain. The British pursue this inquiry with an actuarial passion. Start with irregular migration: in Britain there are maybe 600,000 to 700,000 visa over-stayers, refused asylum seekers and smuggled individuals from outside the country. Reframe this as a healthcare cost, as the IPPR has done, and you emerge with a figure of £123 million per annum spent on tending people who are off the books and unable to contribute, even if they wanted to. Next, imagine the cost of education for children who belong to ‘irregular parents’, somewhere in ‘the tens of thousands’. Assume it takes £4000 per annum to have a pupil in the UK state system and posit a low figure of 60,000 irregular children, to produce £240 million.
Nonetheless, there is a demand in the UK for irregular migrant labour which, if it weren’t met, would result in social costs – absence of care for the elderly for example – and real falls in turnover for businesses that need low-wage, exploitable labour. Typically, jobs (and sectors) that don’t appeal to the British bulldog spirit include care work (23,000 vacancies in 2008), sales and retail assistance, customer service, cleaning and warehouse work, agriculture, construction and food processing. We know that legal migrants are strongly represented in these sectors and can take a safe guess – even without reliable figures – that irregular migrants are plentiful. On the economic benefits of irregular migrant labour minus the unrequited costs in health and education, there is not much convincing arithmetic. But in 2009, in a report commissioned by the Mayor of London, researchers at the LSE suggested that an amnesty programme for irregular immigrants would produce £846 million a year in tax and insurance revenues. Britain could think of its illegal, foreign underclass as a support operation fulfilling real needs, as the country struggles with turbulence in its cloud economy. In sectors where labour shortages are long-term and acute, irregular migrants don’t seem to be taking jobs from British or authorised migrant workers, but there’s a price to pay: visa overstays, which account for most irregular migration, are an abuse of trust; unauthorised entry is a systems breach; migrants may have overwhelming reasons in either case, but both subvert our belief in transparency.
The balance sheet on authorised immigration is also filling up with figures. So what is it we want to know? Well, for instance: surely inward migration puts pressure on the housing sector? Migration Watch UK, which advocates deep reductions in immigration, finds that it does and projects that ‘we will need to build over two hundred houses every day over the next 25 years to house the extra population arising from immigration.’ The Migration Observatory in Oxford cites research from Miami after the Mariel boatlift from Cuba in 1980, when a sudden rise in the population drove up rents by 8-10 per cent. In Spain, as the foreign-born population increased tenfold to nearly five million between 1998 and 2008, housing prices rose by more than 50 per cent. In Britain over the next twenty years, net migration could produce about 40 per cent of the 250,000 new households that will form each year. But the UK is not dealing with a sudden rise, and the Spanish statistic shows a correlation, not a cause and effect. And we cannot predict migration figures in a time of economic uncertainty. The key indicator in the UK – the ratio of house prices to income |
'Unidentified', most police reports in Karnataka use this name. Ex. Aparichita Vyakti. (ಅಪರಿಚಿತ ವ್ಯಕ್ತಿ). Vyakti is a gender neutral way of addressing someone similar to english word 'person'. Most of the articles / reports uses gender as they describe the state of location and conditions of the persons found, followed by skin-tone, height, age, birthmarks and gender. When addressing a possible living but unknown person, "Anamika or Anamadheya" (ಅನಾಮಿಕ ಅಥವಾ ಅನಾಮಧೇಯ) meaning "nameless" are used. Shree Samanya (ಶ್ರೀ ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯ) is another famous term used to refer living person in general, which translates to "respectable commoner".
Korean [ edit ]
In Korean, mwomwomwo (뭐뭐뭐, a tripled form of 뭐, which is a short form of 무엇, the word for what) is used in casual speech. Nugunugu (누구누구, reduplication of who) and eodieodi (어디어디, reduplication of where) can be heard as well.
Hong Gildong (홍길동), a male name, is commonly used as a placeholder name in instructions for filling out forms.
Kurdish [ edit ]
In Kurdish the placeholder name for people is Yaro, derived from the word Yar meaning companion, friend, lover or person.
Latin [ edit ]
In Latin the word res (thing) is used. Some Latin legal writers used the name Numerius Negidius as a John Doe placeholder name; this name was chosen in part because it shares its initials with the Latin phrases (often abbreviated in manuscripts to NN) nomen nescio, "I don't know the name"; nomen nominandum, "name to be named" (used when the name of an appointee was as yet unknown); and non nominatus/nominata, "not named".
Formal writing in (especially older) Dutch uses almost as much Latin as the lawyer's English, and, for instance, "N.N." was and is commonly used as a "John Doe" placeholder in class schedules, grant proposals, etc.
Emperor Justinian's codification of Roman law follows the custom of using "Titius" and "Seius" as names for Roman citizens, and "Stichus" and "Pamphilus" as names for slaves.[6]
Latvian [ edit ]
Names [ edit ]
In Latvian there is no universal placeholder name. Most entities tend to simply use popular real names - as for male first name 'Jānis' (John), for surname 'Bērziņš' (Birch). As second-rate "generalised" names 'Pēteris'(Peter) and surname 'Kalniņš' (Hill) may be used. These are quite popular latvian names and surnames, so - there are quite a number of real people bearing these names and surnames, (just check out https://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%81nis_B%C4%93rzi%C5%86%C5%A1). For female first names 'Grieta' and 'Līga' may be used slightly more often than others.
Places [ edit ]
'Mazpisāni' is a universal placeholder for small town/village located God knows where (or at least away from civilisation). As a contrast location - somewhat larger, still quite remote - 'Lielpisāni' may be used. Literally these two are translated as 'Smallfuck' and 'Bigfuck'. Also 'Viķenpicka' may be used as a placeholder name for remote town.
Lojban [ edit ]
The constructed language Lojban uses the series brodV (namely broda, brode, brodi, brodo, brodu), ko'V (namely ko'a, ko'e, ko'i, ko'o, ko'u) and fo'V (namely fo'a, fo'e, fo'i, fo'o, fo'u) as assignable variables.[7] However, lojban speakers had begin to use as placeholder word, especially in technical discussions on the language. To distinguish both uses, some special markers were created to unambiguously differentiate them.[8][9]
Lithuanian [ edit ]
A universal placeholder for a person in Lithuanian are the variations of names Jonas (John), Petras (Peter) and more rarely Antanas (Anthony), like Jonas Petraitis for a full male name and Janina Jonienė for a full female name. The names are often used in the examples of form filling. Also, name "Vardenis Pavardenis" ("Name Lastname") is a common placeholder.
Probably the best known derogatory placeholder name for a village or a rural town is Bezdonys (an actually existing village). The name literally means "Farting village" in Lithuanian, although the actual origin of the name is Slavonic name of the nearby lake Бездонный (Bezdonniy), meaning "Bottomless". Another also well known derogatory placeholder name for a village or city is Kalabybiškis ("Chiseled Penis[dubious – discuss] village").
Macedonian [ edit ]
In Macedonian џиџе džidže means one (usually small) object, and џиџи-миџи džidži-midži more than one.
Other words used are: ваквото vakvoto, таквото takvoto, онаквото onakvoto ("the like this", "the like that"), речи-го reči-go ("say-it"), ова-она ova-ona ("this and that"), and ваму-таму vamu-tamu ("here and there"). All above mentioned placeholders are used unofficially.
Malay [ edit ]
In Malay the word anu which may be prefixed with si can be used to refer to a person whose name has eluded the speaker. It can also be used for a generic person as in Mr/Ms So-and-so. Another not so commonly used term is polan, also coupled with si in front. The term is generally regarded as old use, and originated from the Arabic word fulan.
"Mat" or "Mamat" are also used frequently in daily slang but not in the official used.
Malayalam [ edit ]
In Malayalam language andanum adakodanum (അണ്ടനും അടകോടനും) is a popular phrase which refers to two generic but not so common names in Malayalam, andan and adakodan. It is usually used in a slightly condescending tone and not in a positive note. It is the literal equivalent of Tom, Dick and Harry in English.
Maori [ edit ]
In the Māori language, the word taru, literally meaning "long grass" or "weeds" is used.
Marathi [ edit ]
Generic men collectively are सोम्या-गोम्या Somya-Gomya (compare English Tom, Dick and Harry).
Aatpat Nagar is 'Anytown'.
Moore (Burkina Faso) [ edit ]
Raogo (male) and Poko (female) are common place holder names used in proverbs as well as stories.
Norwegian [ edit ]
In Norwegian the placeholder names for people are Ola and Kari Nordmann (male and female, respectively). A placeholder name for the ordinary Norwegian is also Hvermannsen ("Everymanson").
In formal legal contexts, Peder Ås (occasionally spelled Aas) and Kari Holm are the generic male and female examples. These are often joined by their adversaries Hans Tastad (male) and Marte Kirkerud (female), together with various members of the extended Ås and Holm families. The first names Marte, Lars, and Kari seem to be very common in both of these families. Most of these people reside and work in the Lillevik ("Small Bay") area and most have accounts in Lillevik Sparebank ("Small Bay Savings Bank"). Some also live in the larger Storby ("Big City").
A placeholder name for a far away country is Langtvekkistan ("Far away-stan"). A placeholder name for a far away place is Huttaheiti, which originally refers to Tahiti. Gokk refers to a cold and unpleasant place and is often used by people from Southern Norway about remote locations in Northern Norway. Der pepperen gror is a notion similar to Gokk, and translates as "where the pepper grows".
Common words for unspecified objects include dings, dingseboms and greie (thingy, gadget). A duppeditt is a small and sometimes useless object. Snurrepipperi (almost always plural) are similar to duppeditt, usually something slight weird and fancy. Krimskrams (almost always plural), borrowed from German, is a random heap of small items.
Persian [ edit ]
In Persian, for general purposes the word Folan or felan فلان (borrowed from the Arabic "Fulan") and Bisar بیسار or Bahman بهمان is used. It is possible to combine the word folan with the word ja جا for the places, kas کس for humans and chiz چیز for things. For people also the word folani فلانی or taraf طرف (both from Arabic) and in slang yarooيارو are used. A generic word that's used for calling anything, regardless of which type, is چيز "thing" (from the old Persian language).
Polish [ edit ]
The abundance of placeholder names appears generally in the spoken variety of the language.
Common nouns [ edit ]
In Polish, the most popular placeholders are to coś (literally meaning this something, a widget), cudo (miracle), dynks (from the German Ding – regional, specific for the region of Wielkopolska, also used in Silesia where it is spelled "dinks"), wihajster (from the German wie heißt er? – what's its name?) and a general placeholder ten teges or, even more often ten tego (lit. "this" in nominative and genitive), which can also be used as a filled pause. There are also other terms, such as elemelek, pipsztok or psztymulec, but they are much less common. Also used are dzyndzel (equivalent to dynks) and knefel (similar to frob, unknown object that can be adjusted or manipulated). For a semi-jocular term contraption the Russian loan word ustrojstwo is often employed.
Places [ edit ]
In press, to avoid details, journalists use the initial letter of a given name of a town, not especially the right one, with N. as predominant. The generic name for a village or a remote small town is Pipidówka, or its more derogatory version Pipidówa. A vulgar, but frequently used term to describe a small and dull place is Zadupie (lit. somewhere behind the arse) or Zacipie (lit. somewhere behind the cunt) which is an equivalent of English shithole. Sometimes, although rarely, Pacanów can also be used (almost always in a jocular sense) which has the same meaning that US Dullsville but is actually a little town in central Poland. More picturesque description contains the common phrase gdzie psy ogonami (dupami) szczekają, literally meaning "Where dogs bark with their tails (arses)". The unspecified place situated far from the speaker's place is called Za górami, za lasami (over the hills and over the forests). Other terms include Pcim Dolny ("Lower Pcim", nonexistent quarter of a real town in Małopolska), Kozia Wólka (lit. "Goat's Will", Wola and Wólka being frequent names of Polish villages). The standard place of a Polish joke is Wąchock – a small town in Eastern Poland (voivodship of Kielce). The road leading to any place is sometimes called Droga na Ostrołękę – after the popular Polish film Rejs. Another, vulgar term is w pizdu (actually a Russian loan word) meaning "somewhere far away" (lit. "into the cunt"). To say that something takes place in the whole country or is simply widespread, Polish native speakers employ phrases like Od Helu do Tatr, Od Bałtyku do Tatr (from Baltic Sea to Tatra Mountains), British equivalents being "Land's End to John o'Groats" or "from Orkney to Penzance", American – coast to coast.
People's names [ edit ]
A universal placeholder name for a man is Jan Kowalski (kowal meaning smith, blacksmith); for a woman, Janina Kowalska is used less often, sometimes with a different first name. A second unspecified person would be called Nowak ("Newman"), choice of first name being left to the author’s imagination, often also Jan for a man; this surname is unisex. Jan is the most popular male first name in Polish, and Kowalski and Nowak are the most popular Polish surnames.
Like in mathematics, the letter x ("iks") is used – an imaginary person can be called Iksiński. Mostly in the spoken language, one can meet also a fictional name Pipsztycki (fem. Pipsztycka). In logical puzzles fictitious surnames frequently follow a uniform pattern: they start with consecutive letters of Latin alphabet and are followed by identical root: Abacki, Babacki, Cabacki etc. for men, Abacka, Babacka, Cabacka etc. for women.
In official documents however, an unidentified person’s name is entered as NN (abbreviation of Nazwisko Nieznane – name unknown, or Nomen Nescio). Informally, to describe any unknown person, the phrase taki jeden (lit. "such a one") is in common use.
The military slang term for an unknown person is the acronym HGW, standing for Chuj go wie (lit. A dick knows him). Other slang terms include koleś (lit. a mate, a pal), facet or demunitive facio (a guy, a bloke) with feminine forms facetka, facia and typ, typek (a type) with its feminine form typiara recently gaining wider usage. Widespread are also gostek, gość, gościu (lit. a guest) and a new fashionable word ziomal or ziom (which roughly equates to the American "homie").
A rare placeholder name for a time and date (jutro) w grudniu po południu ((tomorrow), in December, in the afternoon) is also used. To avoid giving specific time details of a past event, the phrase pewnego razu (once upon a time) is quite often employed. When discussing an event which is not actually expected to occur, the phrase na świętego Nigdy (a play on the Polish for never, nigdy, in essence St. Never's day) is sometimes uttered. An event that may (or may not) occur in a very distant unspecified future is described as za ruski miesiąc (in a Russian month); also, irregularly (or rarely) recurring events can be said to happen raz na ruski rok (once a Russian year). Za króla Ćwieczka (under king Nail) refers to a very long, indefinite time ago.
Numbers [ edit ]
Any number can be replaced with X. A rough number between 11 and 20 can be naście ("teen"); similarly dziesiąt ("-ty" as in "fifty") is popular for numbers between 20 and 100.
The general name for a big amount is masa. The popular and slang expressions od cholery i ciut ciut ("hell of a lot") or od groma (lit. "from a thunder") are used, let alone some vulgar terms like w kurwę (lit. "into the whore") or od chuja (lit. "from the cock"). For very big numbers one can meet the term pierdylion (lit. "fartillion"/"fucktillion") or pierdyliard.
For the approximate ending of an especially large number or an undefined decimal fraction of any number bigger than one, the expression z hakiem (lit. "with a hook" meaning "and something") is widespread; sometimes, not only in expressions related to money, one can say z groszami ("with small coins"; compare English and change).
Portuguese [ edit ]
Things [ edit ]
Common placeholders for objects in Brazilian Portuguese are treco, troço, bagulho, parada, coisa, trem and negócio, among others. In European Portuguese coiso (masculine of coisa, thing, and not a real word) or cena are often used. In the 2000s, coiso ("thingy") has also been borrowed as slang into Brazilian Portuguese, mainly among the young.
Bicho, is used when the specific animal species is unknown, but also is a reference to any living thing whose name does not come to mind or is not of interest.
Persons [ edit ]
Placeholder names for people are usually Fulano (optionally surnamed de Tal), Sicrano and Beltrano, and the corresponding feminines (Fulana, Sicrana, Beltrana). Não-sei-quê/quem/onde/quando/das quantas are quite used as well. In both countries (but quite outmoded in Brazil), João das Couves, Zé das Couves, José dos Anzóis or Zé da Silva are also used, the feminine being Maria (instead of José, which is also often abbreviated to Zé). João Ninguém or Zé Ninguém are used for someone who is unimportant.
Tio and Tia (uncle and aunt respectively) can be used to refer to any unspecified male or female. It is also used between friends to call each other (equivalent to "Hey, you!").
Places [ edit ]
In European Portuguese, one can use the terms "Cu de Judas" (Judas' Ass) and "Cascos de Rolha" (Cork Hull) for remote, isolated and/or rural areas, as in "Lá para Cascos de Rolha" ("somewhere along Cork Hull") or "Ela vive no Cu de Judas" ("She lives in Judas' Ass"). For faraway places, the term Cochinchina is employed, which, despite being an actual place, is used in a generic way as a placeholder for somewhere far away. In Brazilian Portuguese two similar terms for distant places are used, "Onde Judas bateu as botas" ("Where Judas died") and "Onde Judas perdeu as botas" ("Where Judas lost his boots").
Time [ edit ]
Informal placeholder names for dates in Brazil are guaraná com rolha, meaning "guaraná soft drink bottle with a cork stopper" e.g. "Em mil novecentos e guaraná com rolha" is an indicative of something which took place many times ago, or also simply nos tempos do onça, "in the times of the pound-mass" (generally used to mean something even older than the usual for guaraná com rolha, which is usually placed in the 20th century). One can also use "Em mil novecentos e bolinha", roughly translating as "In nineteen-pellets". In Portugal, the expression troca o passo, meaning "exchange step" e.g. "Em mil novecentos e troca o passo" is used in a same way.
No dia de São Nunca, à tarde (in the day of Saint Never, in the afternoon) or simply no dia de São Nunca (in the day of Saint Never) is referring to indefinite date of the year or time in future, or most often to something that will never happen. Quando porcos voarem ("when pigs fly"), quando galinha criar dentes (when chicken will start teething) or quando galinha criar dentes e pintinho falar mamãe (when chicken will start teething and little chicks will say "mommy") or nem que a vaca tussa três vezes e diga amém (not even if a cow coughs three times and say amen) is referring to something that definitely will never take place.
Numbers [ edit ]
Tal and poucos when used with another word means "something". For example, "trinta e tal euros" means "thirty-something euros", while "trinta e poucos reais" means "thirty-something reais". It can also be used for years: "Em mil novecentos e oitenta e tal" means "In nineteen-eighty-something". Another form is "tantos", such as "trinta e tantos anos" meaning "thirty-something" referring to years of age or an uncertain period of years.
Another informal Brazilian placeholder name for numbers, particularly those considered big, either as superlative or in quantities really grueling to count manually, is trocentos e.g. "Aquela patricinha, ela tem não imagino quantos trocentos sapatos e vestidos", which roughly translates as "That clueless wealthy girl, I can not imagine how many trocentos of shoes and dresses she owns". Trocentos is a jocular way of saying trezentos (three hundred).
Actions [ edit ]
The verb coisar (formed by a derivation of coisa, "thing", is often used to replace any verb that expresses actions.
Quechua [ edit ]
In Quechua, there is a noun radical na (whatever) to which verbal (nay = to do whatever), agentive (naq = the doer of whatever), or affective (nacha = cute little thing) suffixes may be added.
Romanian [ edit ]
In Romanian,
chestie is used for objects and concepts,
is used for objects and concepts, cutare for both persons and things.
for both persons and things. Cutărică, tip (masculine) or tipă (feminine) are sometimes used for persons. Popescu, Ionescu, Georgescu, the most common Romanian surnames, are commonly used to signify everybody, or most people. Ion Popescu, the most common Romanian name is used as an equivalent of John Doe or as a sample name for common paperwork. In a more jocular manner, but still part of colloquially understood Romanian, is combining the word Cutare with the ending of Romania's most common names, creating the word Cutarescu
, (masculine) or (feminine) are sometimes used for persons., the most common Romanian surnames, are commonly used to signify everybody, or most people., the most common Romanian name is used as an equivalent of or as a sample name for common paperwork. In a more jocular manner, but still part of colloquially understood Romanian, is combining the word Cutare with the ending of Romania's most common names, creating the word Drăcie ("devilish thing") is a derogative placeholder name for objects (but the derogative nuance is not diabolical, it may simply suggest unfamiliarity or surprise, rather like the adjective "newfangled" in English). A more emphatic form posed as a question is "ce drăcia dracului?" (lit. "what the devil's devilish [thing]?", similar to "what the hell").
("devilish thing") is a derogative placeholder name for objects (but the derogative nuance is not diabolical, it may simply suggest unfamiliarity or surprise, rather like the adjective "newfangled" in English). A more emphatic form posed as a question is "ce drăcia dracului?" (lit. "what the devil's devilish [thing]?", similar to "what the hell"). maglavais is used to designate any kind of (thick) paste or mix. It can indicate construction materials, creams, foods, ointments etc.
Other expressions used include
cum-îi-zice / cum-se-cheamă ("what's-it-called"),
/ ("what's-it-called"), nu-știu-cum/ce/care/cine/când ("I-don't-know-how/what/which/who/when"),
("I-don't-know-how/what/which/who/when"), cine știe ce/cum/care/cine/când" ("who-knows-what/how/which/who/when"), and
un din-ăla (masculine) or o-din-aia (feminine) ("one of those things").
Placeholders for numbers include zeci de mii ("tens of thousands"), often contracted to j'de mii (or even țâșpe mii; from -șpe, an informal numeral suffix equivalent to "-teen" in "sixteen", attached to ț, a Romanian letter sometimes seen as "extra", analogue to the English "a zillion") and also mii şi mii ("thousands and thousands"). Diverse colloquial formulas for "a lot" exist, including o căruță (lit. "a cart-full"), o grămadă (lit. "a pile"), "căcălău" (vulgar; it doesn't mean anything other than "(really) lots of (smth.)"; it sounds both scatological and augumentative in Romanian; comparable with "shit-load") or the poetic "câtă frunză, câtă iarbă" (lit. "as many leaves and blades of grass", referring to a large number of people).
Cucuieţii-din-Deal is a name for obscure and remote places. La mama dracului or la mama naibii ("where the devil's mother dwells", lit. "at the devil's mother"), Unde şi-a-nțărcat dracu' copiii (where the devil weaned his children) also mean a very remote place. For the same purpose, Romanians use also La Cuca Măcăii (an actual remote village in central Romania) and La dracu' in praznic (at the devil's celebration). Other place names may be used as generic placeholders, depending on the speaker's origins.
La paștele cailor (when horses will celebrate Easter—specifically when Orthodox Easter, Catholic Easter and Jewish Passover take place on the same day), Când o face plopu' pere (when pears will grow in a poplar), Când o zbura porcu' (when pigs will fly) and La Sfântul Așteaptă (on Saint Wait's day) both mean "some day in the indefinite future, or quite likely never".
Russian [ edit ]
Things [ edit ]
In Russian, among the common placeholder names are это самое (this particular [object]), штука (thing; diminutive forms also exist), ботва (leafy tops of root vegetables), фигня (crud), хреновина (same meaning as the previous one, but slightly less offensive, related to horseradish sauce), and бред (nonsense, lies). A term for something awkward, bulky and useless is бандура (bandura, an old Ukrainian musical instrument, big and inconvenient to carry). A placeholder for a monetary unit is тугрик (Tögrög, the monetary unit of Mongolia).
Persons [ edit ]
In Russian, there's a special placeholder personal name имярек (from Church Slavonic expression Imya Rek meaning having said a name) which is used (sometimes ironically) to a person whose real name is unknown.
Placeholders for personal names include variations on names Иван (Ivan), Пётр (Pyotr/Peter), and Сидор (Sidor), such as Иван Петрович Сидоров (Ivan Petrovich Sidorov) for a full name, or Иванов (Ivanov) for a last name; deliberately fake name-patronymic-surname combinations use one of them for all three, with the most widely used being Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov. Василий Пупкин (Vasiliy Pupkin) is also (jokingly, because the family name resembles the Russian word for navel, пупок (pupok)) used as a generic name.
Words like парень (guy), товарищ (comrade), бродяга (wanderer or rather bum), трудяга (working man), чувак (dude), друг/подруга (friend masc./fem.), молодой человек (young man), девушка (young woman), гражданин (citizen), уважаемый (respected one), дорогой (dear) all have their own meaning but may be and are used as second-person placeholders as well. Уважаемый is most commonly used by migrant workers from southern FSU countries addressing to Russians.
Sed'maya voda na kisele (seventh water on kissel) denotes very far relatives.
Dzhamshut is a derogative placeholder for a gastarbeiter from southern FSU countries.
Places [ edit ]
One of the most commonly used phrases is у чёрта на куличках (lit. "at the devil's allotment"), which is roughly equal to English "at the world's end" and "in the back of beyond".
(lit. "at the devil's allotment"), which is roughly equal to English "at the world's end" and "in the back of beyond". Various city names are often employed as placeholders. For instance, to denote a remote, obscure place, Тьмутаракань (Tmutarakan, an ancient Crimean city which sounds in modern Russian something like "Dark Cockroach City") is used. Also, Zazhopinsk (City Beyond the Ass) or Mukhosransk (Flyshit city).
(Tmutarakan, an ancient Crimean city which sounds in modern Russian something like "Dark Cockroach City") is used. Also, (City Beyond the Ass) or (Flyshit city). The capital of the Russian backwoods is Урюпинск (Uryupinsk, a town in central Russia), although recently Бобруйск (Babruysk, a Belarusian city) has gained its popularity in the Russian Internet community.
(Uryupinsk, a town in central Russia), although recently (Babruysk, a Belarusian city) has gained its popularity in the Russian Internet community. Куда Макар телят не гонял ("Where Makar didn't drive the calves"), meaning "far-far away" or "somewhere, you won't like".
("Where Makar didn't drive the calves"), meaning "far-far away" or "somewhere, you won't like". In some occasions in literature (a novel by famous Russian and Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol) unknown places are referred to as...ское место (featuring a widespread adjective ending ской ).
(featuring a widespread adjective ending ). Latin N is sometimes used as a placeholder for the actual name of the site, e.g. город N ("city N").
Time [ edit ]
После дождичка в четверг ("right after light rain on Thursday"), referring to indefinite time in future, or to something that will never happen.
("right after light rain on Thursday"), referring to indefinite time in future, or to something that will never happen. Когда рак на горе свистнет ("as soon as a crayfish on the next hill whistles" — equivalent of "when pigs fly"), meaning the same as после дождичка в четверг, and being sometimes combined with it.
("as soon as a crayfish on the next hill whistles" — equivalent of "when pigs fly"), meaning the same as, and being sometimes combined with it. Ни свет ни заря ("neither light, nor dawn"), засветло, спозаранку and so on, speaking of the very early time in the morning.
("neither light, nor dawn"),, and so on, speaking of the very early time in the morning. Во времена царя Гороха ("during the era of the tsar Pea") — a very long, indefinite time ago; prehistorically.
("during the era of the tsar Pea") — a very long, indefinite time ago; prehistorically. До второго пришествия (do vtorovo prishestviya) — "till the Second Advent".
Serbian [ edit ]
Things [ edit ]
sokoćalo used for mechanical devices of unknown purpose.
used for mechanical devices of unknown purpose. džidžabidže (pl.), used for small objects.
Persons [ edit ]
Petar Petrović is used as a John Doe placeholder name
is used as a John Doe placeholder name Jugovići (pl.), addressing to Serbs or other "Yugoslav" (members of ex-Yugoslavian ethnic groups)
(pl.), addressing to Serbs or other "Yugoslav" (members of ex-Yugoslavian ethnic groups) askurđel used colloquially for an unknown very distant and obscure relative, i.e. a progenitor of a large family.
Places [ edit ]
Tungusia is used to represent far and unknown country.
Time [ edit ]
onomad used for an unspecified moment in time in the past.
used for an unspecified moment in time in the past. njeknja used in local dialect of Pirot, unspecified time in the past.
used in local dialect of Pirot, unspecified time in the past. tijadni used in local dialect of Pirot, unspecified time in the past.
Slovak [ edit ]
In Slovak, the most common placeholders are oné (originally an indefinite pronoun) with its variations like oný and onô or tento (originally a definite pronoun, lit. "this one") with variations like hento and tamto which can be used for both things and people.
Things [ edit ]
There are numerous expressions meaning "bullshit", that can be interchangeably used as placeholder names for things – these can be either colloquial, derived from names of farm animals (konina, kravina, volovina, somarina - derived from horse, cow, ox, donkey respectively), or obscene, derived from obscene names for genitalia (kokotina, chujovina, pičovina - derived from cock, cock, cunt respectively). Dzindzík and čudlík are used as a placeholder for (control) elements of various devices. It is often used interchangeably with bazmek (derived from Hungarian "baszd meg" meaning 'fuck it') which can also be used to refer to entire devices or machines.
Persons [ edit ]
The most common placeholder for a full personal name is Jožko Mrkvička (lit. "Joe Little Carrot"). The most common placeholder name for an unknown man is týpek (borrowed from Czech), meaning "dude". This term is used mostly by young people. Ujo (uncle) and teta (aunt) are also commonly used to address unknown adults, mainly by children.
Places [ edit ]
The standard placeholder for a place name is Horná Dolná (lit. "Upper Lower", a reference to a common type of village name which takes the form of a feminine adjective ending in -á, e.g. Terchová, Horná Lehota). It is often used in derogatory fashion to indicate a tiny and remote village (compare US English Hicksville). Remote places can be denoted as Tramtária, or v riti (in an asshole). For remote and rural places there are also the terms kde líšky dávajú dobrú noc ("where foxes say good night"), na konci sveta ("at the end of the world") or zapadákov. In fairy tales, za siedmimi horami ("over the seven mountains") is commonly used.
Time [ edit ]
When referring to times long gone, keď sa voda sypala a piesok lial ("when water crumbled and sand flowed") is sometimes used, generally in fairy tales. Predpotopný ("from before the Flood") is used as an adjective for ancient or obsolete things or concepts. Time that is never to come is expressed as na svätého Dindy ("on St. Dindy's day"), because there is no such saint as Dindy (in fact, Dindy isn't a name at all, it just rhymes with nikdy, "never"). The expression keď naprší a uschne ("after it rains and dries out") is used for the same purpose.
When talking about amounts, X is often used (e.g. žijem tu už X rokov - "I've been living here for X years").
Food [ edit ]
Hovno s makom ("shit with poppy seeds") and obzerance s makom ("gape-food with poppy seeds") is a placeholder name for food, generally used after someone asks what food is going to be eaten. By extension, the term can also mean "nothing".
Slovene [ edit ]
In Slovenia the name Janez Novak is used in place of John Doe, for legal matters. Janez Kranjski is also commonly used. American express advertisements use the name Rok Bergant.
For any remoted place, Spodnji Duplek is often used.
To say something will never happen, Ob svetem Nikoli ("on St Never's Day") is used.
Spanish (Europe) [ edit ]
Things [ edit ]
Cacharro is generally used for objects and/or devices around the kitchen. Chisme can be used for any object whose name is unknown or doesn't come to mind, much like English thingy.
Bicho (from Latin bestius ~ bestia), a pejorative term, is used for an animal of unknown species; in Puerto Rico it also means 'penis'.
Persons [ edit ]
Placeholder names in the Spanish language might have a pejorative or derogatory feeling to them, depending on the context.
Perico de los palotes.
. Fulano/a (from Arabic fulán ) |
I couldn’t yet see. As they disappeared a solitary elderly Filipino man, elegant in his spotless Egyptian-blue Pacquiao tracksuit, stood proudly following the progress of the white dot of Manny’s cap against the dusty hills and leopard print shrubbery. I gave up hiking and stopped to talk with him. “That man is fucking fast,” I lamented, spitting to avoid vomiting off the trail and over into the gorge. He nodded but didn’t bother to tear his eyes off Manny’s cap floating above the dust kicked up behind him. “You with the team?” I asked. He shook his head. “Just going for a hike?” He shook his head again, still meditating with his eyes open. I looked away from his face and in the direction of his gaze and saw Pacquiao’s cap was now hovering beneath the electronic tower poking above the horizon that obscured the HOLLYWOOD sign. When I looked back at the old man he was smiling, almost a kind of beautiful karaoke of the understated, apologetically coy way Pacquiao often does when he surpasses inhumanly high expectations in the ring. “He’s going further than before,” he shook his head again, this time at Pacquiao’s audacity and not at my stupidity. Still his eyes were magnetized to Pacquiao, dry sniping him far off on the distant trail across a precipitous gorge. “I can’t believe he’s actually going further this time.” The tone suggested if Jesus Christ came down from the sky this old man would have shrugged and not bothered to look until he was done with Manny. “How far is Pacquiao going?” He put his hand to his mouth to feel the contours of the smile Pacquiao had carved on his face. Finally he took the hand away from his mouth and scratched his head before answering. “He didn’t go this far for De La Hoya.” “You saw him training here for Oscar?” He nodded. “Jesus.” “No, no,” he smiled again. “Not quite Jesus. But how many wars and how much time have gone by and look at this. Look at him. He’s going further. Look,” he whispered under his breath. I’d been staring at Pacquiao all that cloudy morning but, only right then, after catching my breath, I saw what this stranger was trying to show me. By this time, Manny Pacquiao and his dog had shattered the will of any pursuit toward his destination. Now I understood it had little to do with reaching the HOLLYWOOD sign, or even victory in Las Vegas against Floyd Mayweather, or even becoming president. No, it had everything to do with the dreamscape of 100 million people back where he’d started, this kid who used to sleep in a cardboard box and sold donuts on the street to survive, the journey of a man toward God, the champion as martyr and saint to his people. On the way back down, as he ran, very fast, both toward something and away, his feet seemed barely to touch the ground.
Now sweat soaks Pacquiao’s hair, grease mopped over his brow. Mayweather’s skull glistens under the lights. Floyd Sr. has told his son in the corner he’s fighting scared. Junior heeds his father’s words and drives Pacquiao back against the ropes. Mayweather, ever careful of keeping his distance, wheeling free from any sign of danger, receives the first boos from the audience for his unwillingness to engage. Yet Pacquiao refuses to make any adjustments to his attack. It’s the first glimpse that age may have vandalized his foot speed and his quick spring toward insidious angles of attack. He does not pursue as much as plods. “How mortals take the gods to task!
All their afflictions come from us, we hear.
And what of their own failings? Greed and folly
double the suffering in the lot of man.” — Homer he HOLLYWOOD sign peeks out from the early morning smog and far below sits the Wild Card boxing gym, just off the corner of Santa Monica and Vine, the centerpiece of a decaying strip mall, wedged in an intersection of crushing poverty- a barbershop, Alcoholics Anonymous office, a former “happy ending” Thai massage parlor, a deli, a nail salon. Glittering fortune is activated with Freddie Roach’s arrival in a slick black Mercedes. Pacquiao’s trainer, Roach keeps his blue-collar roots hours, arriving every day at this time, 7 a.m., and usually holding court for the next 12 hours behind his desk before a rapt audience when he isn’t working with fighters in the ring. When the action is good, he signs hundreds of autographs and poses for even more photos with visitors to the gym. He’s as moody a guy as you’ll ever meet—but in five years I’ve never once seen him say no. Nearly all of Freddie’s fighters who went on to become world champions—from Pacquiao to Amir Khan and Guillermo Rigondeaux on down—first stayed next door to the gym, at the fleabag Vagabond Inn, but that’s been torn down. Business is better now—over 20 world champions, HBO reality series, clothing lines, sponsorship from Nike—and he’s expanded his gym into the old Chinese laundromat downstairs. Now, for fighters he likes who’ve traveled a long way, a small apartment next door to the upstairs gym is available. It’s where Freddie himself once stayed when he didn’t have enough money to stay anywhere as he pushed his chips in with the last $10,000 he had to build Wild Card. When I walked into his new gym downstairs from his old one, he was more interested in showing me his antique test-your-strength Coney Island punching bag than May 2. “It’s nice, right?” he laughs. “I mean, I just had it in storage for fuckin’ ever. Shit, Manny’s got a swearing jar for me and I’ve already had to pay him almost $200 bucks. But I haven’t swore in three days. Aren’t you proud of me?” Freddie stands to make almost $12 million off this fight, not bad for a rugged contender who never made six-figures for a fight and barely that in a 53-fight career. After eight years and 406 rounds in the ring, Freddie retired from the sport as a fighter at the age of 27. Four years later he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which he’s suffered from for the last 25 years of his life. “You talk to your guy Tyson lately?” he asks. “He came to New York in November.” Freddie gave me Tyson’s number five years ago, almost like a dare, to see if it could go anywhere. He has a dirty little habit of throwing lifelines out to help people find the life they want to live. When I got back to LA after interviewing Tyson and visited Freddie, I was certain he wouldn’t remember me. He did, with the gym as busy ever, he pushed aside two people he was speaking with, eager as a maniac to holler, “DIDJA GET HIM?” I nodded. “FUCKIN’ GUY!” he slapped his counter. We’ve been friends ever since. “How much fun is actually getting this fight for you?” “Kid,” Freddie smiles, “everywhere, in the restaurant, on the street, wherever we go, black people, white people, Latinos—they all say the same thing. ‘Kick his ass. We hate that motherfucker.’ Not one person has said, ‘I hope you get your ass kicked,’.” “What happens to Floyd if you beat him?” I ask. “He might never fight again. He might never win again. He might be ordinary. If he loses he can’t say he’s better than Sugar Ray Robinson or Muhammad Ali because he’s never lost. He can’t say he’s better than those guys anyway. He’s not even top 50.” “C’mon, Freddie. Top 50?” “Give me one great fighter he’s looked great against. C’mon. Oscar [de la Hoya] had a good chance to beat him. It was close.” “Some writers have suggested maybe you and Pacquiao are trying to cash out.” “If anyone’s cashing out it’s Mayweather. Any fighter who owns 100 cars has always gone broke. Throwing money around embarrassing people. Embarrassing poor people. All his attacks on women that we know of. I mean, talk to the metro police in Vegas. Lotta people like to hit girls. He’s not the only one I ever heard of that likes to do that. I don’t know why they get off doing that. Who can’t beat up a girl?” “Sugar Ray Leonard used to beat the shit out of his wife. Sugar Ray Robinson’s wife said she left him after so many miscarriages she attributed to him beating her up.” “I guess Floyd has more in common with those greats than I thought.” “Have you ever dreamed about this fight?” “You don’t dream so much as you get older. As a younger fighter you dream about all kinds of things.” Freddie’s mother, whom he bought a house next door to where he lives in West Hollywood walked into the gym to say hello. Freddie’s never married. “She just beat cancer again,” he says after she leaves to head upstairs to look after the front desk. “Something taken out last week. Doing good though.” “How’s Manny looked?” “He hasn’t slowed down. No signs of deterioration. But I mean, sometimes I think, who you gonna fight after Mayweather? I mean, he can quit and become president or something if he wants to. Not sure how the other politicians over there might feel about that. They might kill him. Politics is a crazy fucking business over there.” “You ever worry about him staying at the fair too long?” “I don’t want anybody to end up like me with Parkinson’s. Ali walked into the gym 10 years ago. It was the best day we ever had.” He goes on. “He walked in here and asked if he could work out. I was gonna call some people and let them know he was here. Decided not to. Whoever was here was here and they had a day to last their whole life. He hit the bag and the tremors went away. When he stopped, they came back. We watched him shadowbox with his daughter. You know, I don’t shake anymore. I don’t have tremors anymore. I can’t tell you why. New doctor and some new medication maybe. Not sure. I haven’t shaked in six months.” “You were diagnosed with Parkinson’s only a few years after you left the sport. You ever worry about that with Manny?” “I was worried about him after the Marquez fight when he was laying down. The doctor was worried too. But after when he knew where he was and I told him to get in the ambulance to go to the hospital to get checked out he said he had to go to the bathroom to wash off the blood from his face. That’s when I knew he was OK.” “I remember you told me after that fight you were scared Pacquiao might have died when you saw him on the ground.” “He lay there too long for me.” “Five years ago you, when Manny was riding high, you told me Manny was broke. You said he’d never be able to stop fighting. I know he’s making nine-figures against Floyd. But do you ever worry with so many people squeezing Manny financially he might end up like all those other sad stories in boxing?” “He’s gotta be careful. He’s a very generous guy.” “It just seems like with Ali, he left the sport broke and damaged and it turned him into this secular saint. He got lucky with selling his likeness for $50 million unlike Frazier sleeping in his gym after he was done.” “I hope Manny has a happy ending. They’re rare in our sport.” Freddie’s publicist walked in and shook hands with everyone in the room. I looked around the gym at the photos of Freddie and Pacquiao hanging on the walls. Like Ali before him, Pacquiao’s charisma and ability to make you smile, conceals a lot of the darker, tragic angles of his life. From a distance, both Ali and Pacquiao are a boy’s dream of a fighter, but up close a lot of foul dust is suspended in that dream, craving not so much victory as transcendence. It’s a miracle Ali wasn’t assassinated for the risks he took after becoming champion of the world. During his rubber match against Frazier in Manila, Ali claimed to have been on the brink of death. Then he left boxing with barely a dime to show from his purses, wrung out like a wet towel, nothing more to give. Only a minute earlier Roach had suggested Pacquiao risked assassination if he pursued higher office back in his home country. When he was fastened to the canvass against Marquez, many dreaded having witnessed a public execution. He fights now because, somehow, issues are still raised that he needs the money. So does his entourage, and his legacy. Yet for both men, their symbolic value outweighs their actual worth. In many respects, their lives are almost in the way. Martyrdom remains the only deliverance and defense against fading into obscurity, long after all of life’s chips have been pushed in for the last time, immortality hanging in the balance, a final crusade. “How much pressure is there on you with this fight?” “Must win situation. We’ve talked enough. If we don’t win we’re gonna embarrass ourselves. We’ve made a lot of comments about their team. Roger’s health is bad [Mayweather’s brother]. But between Roger or the dad, I don’t give a fuck about either one dying. I hate both of them and they hate me.” “Was having a chance at a fight like this why you opened Wild Card in the first place?” “My trainer Eddie Futch told me ‘Don’t ever build a gym. Don’t ever do it.’ I did it anyway. You don’t know when the next Ali is going to walk through your front doors. Less than a year later my Ali walked through the door. I had ten grand to build a gym. I had 50 bucks left after it was built and bought 25 fliers and I handed them out there on Vine. Six months later a guy I’d never heard of named Manny Pacquiao walked through my door and that changed my life. Pacquiao was my Muhammad Ali. We’ve been together 15 years now. That’s longer than most marriages.” “Longer than mine.” “See? I had him for his first fight in America. We got along all the way till now.” “When the bell sounds and this fight starts, are Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather staring across the ring at the greatest opponent they’ve ever faced?” Freddie paused and chewed on the side of his hand. “Yep. Yeah, I think so. We gotta turn this into a fight. If he moves like he used to and just runs, runs, runs, it could be boring. I’ve fallen asleep at more than one of his fights in the past.” “You dreamed of fighting for a championship yourself as a fighter, is this better now that you’re a trainer working a corner of the biggest fight in history?” “I’m better at what I do now in the corner than being in there for a fight like this as a fighter. What this fight boils down, we’re doing the whole world a service knocking this motherfucker out. Not just boxing. The whole fuckin’ world.” “What’s your swear jar up to at this point?” “Manny’s not here. Fuck you.”
As Pacquiao sinks further on the judge’s scorecards, Mayweather seems disinterested in encountering even the turbulence felt by many in the audience, who flew into Vegas on private planes. The top fighters of their generation engage in a game of tag that only accidentally elevates into the realm of a glorified sparring session. Pacquiao gets lucky landing a punch and tries unsuccessfully to impose his will as Mayweather contemptuously shakes his head. Many fans and the press alike shake their heads at where Mayweather is steering this contest. Fans rise once again to their feet as Pacquiao resumes a largely impotent assault, only to pause in mid-cheer. Mayweather keeps observing, recalibrating his position, adjusting the distance. The crowd sits, and many do not rise again until they leave. “Las Vegas is the savage heart of the American Dream.” —Hunter S. Thompson as Vegas, the most expensive toilet in the world that still can’t flush. Dawn bruises over the Mojave Desert sky. The strip sneers neon fangs outside our window, less to hide America’s lost ability to dream, more to offer a glimpse into the hideous circuits of the dream dreaming you. The losers have already been chewed up and spit out onto the street. Everyone else is still inside where they belong. Before rolling over to Mayweather’s gym, we conducted an informal poll of the indigenous population out front of the Statue of Liberty on the strip. A toothless drunk wore a shirt that read, “Mean people suck, nice people swallow.” Two Mexican men slapped cards off their palms advertising strip clubs. At the end of the block a girl handed out fliers for Bullets and Burgers. The lunch special included shooting rounds from the same weapons Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history, used to rack up 160 kills. If fantasizing about shooting terrorists wasn’t your thing, they had another special: unloading a grenade launcher in the desert. “You’ll speak a new language after shooting that muthafucker,” she assured us. “Or we have some great platinum helicopter packages for seeing the Grand Canyon if that’s more your thing.” Total coverage. A wobbly, broken-down sportscaster with a stained four-leaf clover visor shading his eyes was just cracking open a tall can of beer inside a brown paper bag. Why he felt the need to conceal his alcoholic beverage in this town remained a mystery. “So who’s your pick for the fight?” Mickey asked. “I’ll tell you what I been tellin’ everybody. Keep tell’em the same thing. That Packion ain’t got a chance in hell. Mayweather’s gonna kick his ass back to Tokyo.” “He’s got it coming to him,” I agreed. “Fuckin’ A,” he smiled, taking a long sip from the can and wiping his chin. “I don’t even care who wins. The fights I wanna see are the riots after. I wanna be front row for that shit.” “You going to bother going to the fight?” Mickey asked. Ringside tickets are selling in the neighborhood of $350 grand. “They tried to give me tickets.” “Well, we figured,” I said. “I’m not wasting my time. I’m Forrest Gump boys. That’s me. I’ve backed into everything my whole life.” He illustrated his point by nearly backing into and knocking over a pair of tourists. “I’ve won a million dollars, I’ve lost a million. I played with the Vols with Peyton Manning. In 1991 I was up in the broadcast booth with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. I’ve seen it all. Been there. And you know with this fight? They’d never let Mayweather lose. Odds for a safety at the Super Bowl were 200-1. You think that was an accident? That snap over Manning’s head? There are people in this town with billions riding on that shit. Inside track. “You guys,” he pointed up at some vapor trails in the sky, “you and all the tourists that drop in sooner or later, gotta leave. Me? I’m home right here living the dream, day after fuckin’ day…” Mayweather’s supposed to be training at his gym in Chinatown at 2:30 p.m., likely his last sparring before the fight. No press permitted. We go anyway. Total coverage. A hazy soul-food catering truck is visible through the China Town Arch in the strip-mall parking lot opposite Mayweather’s gym. Maybe a hundred people—media, fans, and parents spending quality time with their kids—roast in the scalding 95-degree heat, clamoring for a glimpse of the self-proclaimed TBE, the best ever. The catering truck, we soon discover, has long since sold out of beverages. Media crews melt in their suits. Sweat and tears mingle on the cheeks of kids. Suddenly about half of Mayweather’s nine-man, man-mountain personal security detail removes the last of the disposable from the gym and onto the street. The others block off the best five parking spaces with orange cones. The security guards elevate their chins and glare at anyone looking for nearby sanctuary under the awning in the shade. “Stay across the street! Floyd doesn’t want anyone in front of the gym.” A little girl clutching a hand-made portrait of Mayweather and Pacquiao squeals. One of the bodyguards notices a homeless man selling knock-off TBE shirts and scares him off with threats and epithets. As a few kids cower and look up at their parents, he walks back into position smirking with satisfaction. An hour goes by. A luxury Rolls parks in one of the five designated spots. Once everyone figured out it wasn’t Mayweather, nobody gave a fuck. After the driver goes in one of Mayweather’s minions buffs the hood. Pamela Anderson shows up in an Escalade—she gets less attention than the driver, clicking by in stilettos, 47 years old and a long way from Baywatch and Ladysmith, B.C. Unlike when she showed up at Tyson-McNeeley 20 fucking years ago, she is turned down at the door of the gym. She goes back to her car and waits for nearly an hour before her cleavage abandons the endeavor. Another hour goes by. A Bentley shows up and two passengers nobody seems to know exit and enter the gym while the buffer attends to their hood. Floyd Mayweather Sr. follows a few minutes later, pulling in and exiting his car while immediately casing the crowd with zombie-like glare. Tight dresses and cameras hold his attention before he shoulder hugs the security team on the way to entering the gym. Whispers trickle through the crowd Floyd Jr. has already arrived at the gym through the backdoor. Over the next two hours a gleaming Fisker Karma and a Mercedes show up and park alongside the other spots taken, Mayweather’s girlfriend and her friend, and an elderly couple enter the gym, leaving one last space. A massive bus, decked out in panoramic display of Mayweather disfiguring opponents’ faces, pulls up and forces everyone gathered to move further back or be backed over. When you’re the champ, even a bus driver can do your bullying. “All they had to do was tell us he wasn’t coming out,” Mickey says. “But to sneak in the back door and then leave all these kids hanging? C’mon.” It’s now 6 p.m., three and a half-hours from when Mayweather was due to arrive and train. Mayweather’s girlfriend and her friend leave the gym and exit the parking lot. The bus driver gets out, ambles over to the gym, and high-fives the security detail. The Ali-injected-to-Zaire, prefight Rumble-In-the-Jungle-scene this is not. There’s some anticipation Mayweather is readying to leave on the bus. The kids’ heat-stroke epidemic temporarily wanes. “He left from the same back door he arrived in,” a reporter from the UK laments. “The nerve of this fucking wanker.” There’s a temporary hush when a man leaves the gym entrance with security, but he isn’t anybody. Someone back inside hollers out, “Y’all want some TMT T-shirts? Gets some genuine Money Team merchandise outside now.” I’m nudged by another journalist from The Guardian. “He’s already long gone.” “Why the fuck is everybody still here then?” I ask. He throws his hand in the air. “He’s the man.” Finally, after nearly four hours, with the sun coming down, a handful of members from the entourage get on the bus and it pulls away, leaving behind noxious fumes and no sign of Mayweather. The crowd disperses, all sad moths and no flame. A couple days later I run into what at first seems a groggy, heavily medicated Mike Tyson at the MGM Grand for the final Mayweather-Pacquiao press conference before the fight. A minor media circus followed him, but when he was encouraged to sit up front, he refused. “I try to stay as far away from dirt as possible.” He quietly sat near the back. Tyson wrote in the epilogue to his memoir about finally striving for goodness instead of greatness. When I interviewed him at the Ritz for Amazon last November, he elaborated, “Sometimes we’re so desperate for greatness and what we believe greatness can give us in return that we bypass people’s generosity. We’re not generous to people. We’re not caring to people. Instead, we’re so selfish to grasp success because we believe our lives will be better once we succeed. But once you do become successful, that rarely happens. Once I became successful and famous, all the problems I was dealing with were magnified.” Shortly after Tyson shook my hand to say hello, a reporter from TMZ asked him about Mayweather’s claim to be better than Ali, and suddenly Iron Mike snapped into focus. “He’s very delusional.” Tyson glared. “If he was anywhere near that realm of ‘greater than Ali’ he’d be able to take his children to school by himself. He can’t take his kids school by himself. And he’s talking about he’s great? Greatness is not guarding yourself from the people, greatness is being accepted by the people. “He can’t take his kids alone to school by himself. He’s a little scared man, he’s a very small, scared man.”
Floyd Sr. tells his son in the corner, “You gotta put it on him, because I’m telling you, man, believe me, I’m gonna tell you right now, they gonna take this fight from you.” The fight’s a dog. He not only knows it, he’s the only person in the ring who seems to think it matters beyond the calculus of dollars vs punch stats. In the audience Mike Tyson stares off blankly, as if confronting the fact that fighting Peter McNeely for 89 seconds in this same arena 20 years ago provided more drama and action than the two greatest pound-for-pound fighters of their generation have provided in – yawn – what round is it now? Seven? Even the card girls are old and tired. In that fight, McNeeley fell to a hook in the first ten seconds. At least he got up. “Muhammad Ali decided one day a long time ago, not long after his twenty-first birthday, that he was not only going to be King of the World on his own turf, but Crown Prince on everybody elses… That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer––he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.” —Hunter S. Thompson, Last Tango In Vegas ullfighting was never intended as a sport. It was conceived as a preordained tragedy, a ballet of life and death blurring into one, the only props a scarlet cape and sharp horns attached to 1600 pounds of bull, sunlight and dark shadows, blood and sand. There is no sensible defense of bullfighting. There are no arguments. All the same, I can’t apologize for falling in love either. It only took witnessing the savage beauty of one fight to spoil every major American sport for me. It didn’t quite rob me of boxing, but it forever changed how I experienced it. I was a teenager the first time I approached the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas bullring in Madrid to buy a ticket during San Isidro, the most distinguished bullfighting festival in the world. I had no clue who any of the matadors were or what made one superior to another. For guidance, I consulted a group of well-dressed, cigar-smoking bullfighting aficionados huddled in the shade outside the arena in my broken Spanish. On Sundays, as Spaniards sometimes joke, all men can wear the same suit for all three of the day’s traditional destinations: the Church, the whorehouse, and the bullfight. I was handed a brochure listing each headlining matador’s performances. As I clumsily pronounced the names, the old men spread their arms out for each, and, name after name, their hands closed in to within a foot or so with each name. I had no idea what this was meant to illuminate and found someone to translate the gesture. “This is the clearance the matadors allow between the bull’s horns and the matador’s heart,” I was informed. “The more superior the matador, the more danger he must accept.” “The better the matador, the more people expect him to risk death?” I asked, confused. “He’s less safe the better he is?” The answer was unanimous: “Claro.” It was less claro to me. I was an amateur boxer and learned boxing required mitigating risk and danger, hitting and avoiding getting hit. Any asshole could turn a boxing match into a drunken barroom brawl, but masters of the trade who laid waste to bloodthirsty tomato cans were celebrated more for doing so with aplomb and surgical precision. About the time I started fighting, Floyd Mayweather Jr., only 21, had already won a world championship and looked to be one of the rare geniuses to grace the sport. Everyone at my gym admired him, but he always scorned risk and danger. When I was in Madrid, I remember wondering that if greatness was dependent on the exposure to danger, what kind of bullfighter Mayweather would make. Then I thought of Ali and the enormous costs that come from blood feuds that transcend sport. It was no accident Ali’s face became the most recognized on earth. There was still one name left in the brochure, attached to the most expensive price tag to watch. “José Tomás?” I asked. The group of old men puffed on their cigars and shook their heads. They all knew. José Tomás allowed the bull’s horn so nightmarishly close to his heart that nobody in Spain could bear to peek through their hands and witness what lived there, poetry in the flash of a cape. But this wasn’t all. One of these old men then explained why Tomás was not yet “The Greatest” in Spain: he hadn’t been gored to the brink of death and returned to be even greater. No matador could be a legend or even be taken seriously unless his legacy included this last essential act, the courting of death and the grace with which he defied it. “No one,” said Mayweather, “can ever brainwash me to make me believe that Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali were better than me.” Forget the headlines, forget the hotel prices, live gate, pay-per-view, and all the records. Forget the money. Maybe the real stakes in this fight were always in the fine print. Perhaps this fight was only about which fighter might assume the fatalistic mantle of Ali. Mayweather believes he is better than Ali, yet even to have a chance at that, he needed the fight that for so long he declined to take, or make. Even this, he refused to admit. Like Ali early on, Floyd didn’t have a popular style. Like Ali, Floyd was too gifted to take punches. Like Ali, when Floyd opened his mouth he offended most people. Like Ali, Floyd paid a high price avoiding conflict, except when he stepped into the ring. There the similarities end, because Ali’s career was never defined by victory, but by the audacity of his struggle. Floyd defined his legacy by the receipts. Just because Avatar had the biggest box office doesn’t make it the greatest film ever made. That is where Mayweather and Ali depart. Pacquiao is the closest echo we have of Ali today, but there has been a heavy cost to earning his place as the world’s most beloved fighter. Like Ali, Pacquiao’s toll is something he will likely pay with before our eyes for the rest of his life. They say a hero is fortunate because, unlike a coward, he only has the one death. But Ali’s valor in the ring cruelly silenced his beautiful voice and installed him in the prison of his body. Mayweather has taken less damage than any great champion in history. No winning fighter in history has been more content to have crowds jeer a performance. Whose legacy will we remember longer or with deeper feeling? We owe the Louisville thief who stole a 12-year-old’s bike a great debt for delivering Ali to our consciousness. Pacquiao’s father ate the family dog to offer the world his son. Mayweather Sr. robbed his only son of innocence and unleashed him, seething and bitter, on a blind crusade of revenge to assert his worth via boxing. Few fighters have been more secure in the ring than Mayweather Jr., but the essence of all security is an obsession with the intruder. You see this in his haunted eyes. “The literature of the sports page is devoted to sizing up a man’s capacity to endure pain and humiliation,” Jimmy Cannon once wrote. “We are cruel in our appraisals and we do it with the belligerence of people who are protected from physical danger by the nature of our jobs. There are few among us who have compassion for the quitter. We make fear in a man playing a game a crime against his sport.” For many contemporary American sports fans, boxing ended the day Tyson retired. The torch Tyson inherited, going all the way back to Jack Johnson at the turn of the 20th century, nearly went out. In the ring, Mayweather has gone to great lengths try to revive that flame. In 2007, he beat Oscar De La Hoya, Tyson’s successor in marketability, in the most lucrative fight in history up to that time, then shrewdly and with greater success, he rebranded himself to fit the winner-take-all era as Money Mayweather, the only measure that seems to matter. Of boxing’s legendary champions, only Rocky Marciano, at 49-0, left the ring with an unblemished record. Mayweather is just shy of equaling that career total. Perhaps Mayweather thought that if he rolled over or embarrassed Pacquiao, he could turn May 2 into the most rewarding speed bump in history, two gift fights away from coasting into being, by the numbers, the greatest fighter in the history of his sport. Still, if they were both matadors, aficionados would scoff at Mayweather’s career next to Ali’s, and be right to do so. Unlike Ali, Mayweather has never tasted defeat. He’s never been knocked down. Ali lost five fights and was knocked down four times. So what? He always got back up. When the bell sounded, both Pacquiao and Mayweather, their generation’s defining talents, stared across the ring at the greatest opponent either had faced in their lives. Not each other, but history, and the hard lessons it teaches. The existential clues all suggest boxing is always a dance with demons more than virtues. The questions with all three fighters—Pacquiao, Mayweather, and the deep shadow of Ali, even as he fades—are, in the end, those they ignored as children, but must confront now. Only a child, naïve to the cost, would ever dream of boxing, of becoming world champion, of entering the ring naked. No sensible adult should ever attempt these things. The gamble is too great. Still, we celebrate and even forgive those who do. All because of one thing: what lives between the horn and the heart, and nowhere else.
Up to this point, Pacquiao is missing four out of every five punches he’s throwing. Mayweather is dialed in to this performance and he lowers the landing gear to touch down and win the fight. Despite his dad’s pleadings to make a fight of this anemic boxing match, Mayweather seems almost gratified to not just take a nine-figure payday for a victory against Pacquiao, but to offer a stale domination over the era’s most exciting offensive fighter. Defense wins championships. Don’t we ever learn? “In the ring, Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali were the equal of each other. Yet, today, Ali has sold an 80% interest in the use of his name and likeness for commercial purposes for $50 million and Joe is living in a room above his gym in Philadelphia. That’s an interesting look at how America treats its sporting icons. Some are accorded special status and others are largely forgotten.” —Muhammad Ali biographer Thomas Hauser “Ali can no longer stand,” Leon Gast, the Academy Award-winning director of When We Were Kings told me over breakfast at his house in Woodstock, New York. “He can’t speak. I saw him and his wife last November and I whispered into his ear, ‘Muhammad, do you remember the guys in Zaire hanging onto the walls screaming ALI BOMAYE! when our plane landed?’ He reacted. His expression changed. It’s all still there with him. He’s still just as beautiful a man as he ever was.” Now four decades, 9000 miles, and a world away from Ali and Foreman in Zaire, a deafening air horn blasts across the arena here in Las Vegas at 3 p.m. signaling two men to strip and wait their turn before a scale for the latest installment of the “Fight of the Century.” “MAKE SOME NOISE!” the MC demands and most of those in the stadium obediently lose their mind. It’s during moments like this that all the unrelenting magic and orgiastic wonder of this town remind you that while you’re certainly on one of the seven layers of hell, it’s unlikely you’ll ever be clear exactly which one. The town’s charm can be found in the ways it always keeps you guessing. Watching Mayweather and Pacquiao take the stage on the dais at the MGM Grand before 16,000 fans who paid $10 to attend, most of whom, presumably, had no hope of affording ticket prices for the actual, almost pre-sold out fight, a handful of things snapped into focus for the first time. The reaction from the audience confirmed that, despite the billing, Pacquiao was the true A-side of this fight. Secondly, a $300 million guaranteed purse did little to remove the stench of boxing’s origins, right alongside the slave auction, half-naked men weighed as specimens before inflicting harm on one another to entertain a blood-thirsty mob. Lastly, and most eerily, when the resident MC, Doug E Fresh, hollered out, “C’mon y’all, let’s bring the street to the MGM!” a reporter I didn’t know turned to me and scoffed, “If Mayweather shits the bed tomorrow night, a lot of black people are going to be pissed off.” Fortunately |
transfer using the ubiquitous T-Money travel card, finding their next bus or subway train on up-to-the minute electronic schedules.
"Our transportation life in Korea has much improved -- and our quality of life as well," Kee Yeon Hwang, the director of the Korea Transport Institute (KOTI), the South Korean government's official research arm for transportation, told CNN.
By many measures, it has also saved time and money. Average speeds on the roads of Seoul has increased from around 20 to 24 kilometers per hour in the past five years. South Korea estimates the total savings of its ITS systems, including automatic toll collection, fewer accidents and less pollution, to be around $1.5 billion a year.
South Korea's ITS has always been government-led and heavily centralized, quickly pushing the country from research to national implementation. The funding continues unabated, to the tune of $230 million dollars annually until 2020.
"The government knew exactly what it had to do. It invested the money and led this as a government project," Young-jun Moon, a research fellow at KOTI's Department of Green Growth Policy and Implementation, told CNN.
"Installing fiber-optic lines along the expressways is very expensive, for just one kilometer you had to invest $100,000. We now have 3,500 kilometers of expressways, all with fiber-optic lines that are the backbone of our communications."
The construction industry helped turn South Korea from a post-civil-war wasteland into a thriving modern economy -- and since the early 1990s, has been in partnership with information technology.
"ITS costs less than one percent of the investment necessary to build a four-lane road," Moon said.
Most roads still get grid-locked and Japan knows the cost of its problem. Drivers there lose 3.5 billion potential working hours to traffic jams, at an equivalent of $109 billion a year, according to the country's Highway Industry Development Organization.
Meanwhile, commuters and transported goods in the U.S. are stuck for 4.2 billion hours a year -- a full work week per person at a total cost of $87.2 billion, according to the Department of Transport's Research and Innovative Technology Administration.
That missed productivity could be particularly costly, as economic rival China ramps up its own investment in ITS, warns a new report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITFT), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The U.S. is still stalled in the research phase and the ITIF report calls for a federal approach comparable in scale to the Interstate Highway System launched in the 1950s, with national real-time traffic information in the 100 largest cities by 2014 and a mileage-based user fee system by 2020.
It is ironic, then, that South Korea's traffic setup was adopted from the Intelligent Vehicle Highway System, an ITS forefather pushed by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration in the early 1990s.
"The majority of experts in Korea were educated in the United States," says Hwang. "We learned from the United States but we didn't see many things practiced there."
A patchwork of state and local responsibility for U.S. roads is a hurdle, something the European Union is also facing as it seeks to introduce ITS standards.
Politicians tend to favor old school road works, fixing potholes and building new roads instead of investing in unseen technology.
The U.S. is expected to spend more than $500 billion dollars on surface transport infrastructure until 2015, while the Department of Transportation's ITS strategy for 2010-2014 keeps intelligent transport funding at about $100 million per year.
Even in South Korea, some jurisdiction tussles remain. The National Police Agency controls the country's traffic lights and adapts them according to drivers' complaints rather than extensive data offered by traffic planners, Moon explained.
The government is also facing bandwidth gridlock as it attempts to switch wireless traffic communications to the world standard 5.9 GHz. In an odd coincidence, that frequency in South Korea is heavily dominated by broadcasting companies beaming mobile TV to commuters.
There's another, decidedly more low-tech issue.
"Driving behavior is very important. Our car culture has not had a long history," Hwang said, citing people running red lights.
"People often violate traffic rules but unless you keep the rules, the system cannot be workable."
South Korean planners are looking to link the upgraded transport to the country's next economic driver, green technology. Still in embryo, the ideas include data systems that allow drivers to map the fastest and most eco-friendly routes.Researchers at Oregon State University have identified for the first time another bacterium that can cause symptoms similar to "salmon poisoning" in dogs -- and may complicate the efforts of Pacific Northwest pet owners to keep their dogs protected and healthy.
The Pacific Northwest, from northern California to central Washington, is the only region of the world in which dogs face this potentially deadly health threat. It's caused by a complicated life cycle that includes a common freshwater snail that harbors a fluke worm, and the fluke, in turn, carries the bacterium Neorickettsia helminthoeca. The bacterium is the actual cause of salmon poisoning.
The underlying problem is not new. Dogs that died after eating uncooked, infected salmon were first noted in the Astoria Journal in 1814, not long after Lewis and Clark visited the region.
The conventional wisdom, however, has been that dogs are usually immune to salmon poisoning after they have once been infected, treated with antibiotics and recovered -- giving pet owners at least some assurance that it's a problem they no longer need be concerned about.
The new discovery makes it clear the issue is not that simple.
In the infectious process that leads to salmon poisoning, the fluke is released from snails, which then infect salmon and other freshwater fishes. The life cycle is completed when a mammal eats an infected fish -- in this case, dogs get sick from eating raw or undercooked salmon. The possible occurrence of "salmon poisoning" is actually dictated by the geographic distribution of the snail.
Another bacterium called "SF agent," however, has been found for the first time in a salmonid fish anywhere in the world, researchers report in a recent study in Veterinary Parasitology. The fluke host for this bacterium is Stellanchasmus falcatus.
"SF agent can infect dogs that eat salmon or trout, and it can cause a mild fever in dogs and other symptoms that can resemble salmon poisoning," said Michael Kent, a professor of microbiology in the OSU College of Science and College of Veterinary Medicine, and co-author of the study. "It can also be treated with antibiotics, but may not offer immunity to dogs that could be later exposed to the actual salmon poisoning bacterium. A pet owner might believe their dog is protected, when it isn't."
The larval stages of the worm that carries Neorickettsia helminthoeca were first associated with the disease in 1911, and in 1950 the actual bacterium was confirmed as the cause of salmon poisoning. It's in the same bacterial family as SF agent -- meaning pet owners must now understand their dogs may face two related Neorickettsia pathogens -- but one causes only a mild illness, while the other can be deadly.
Veterinary doctors, Kent said, routinely have treated animals based on their clinical signs, because the eggs of the fluke may be hard to find in dog feces, and the bacterium is difficult to culture from dog blood. Left untreated, dogs with salmon poisoning can die in a week to 10 days, often from severe hemorrhaging and internal ruptures. The ultimate fatality rate can approach 90 percent of untreated cases.
The bottom line, he said, is that pet owners should not make any assumptions about whether or not their dogs may have immunity to salmon poisoning. Kent said he has received several reports from local veterinarians documenting dogs contracting salmon poisoning more than once.
With the new awareness that different bacteria can cause similar initial symptoms, pet owners should know that dogs displaying such symptoms may or may not have a serious health problem.
The fluke worm, but not the bacterium, can also infect humans. Humans do not contract salmon poisoning, but may develop a relatively mild gastrointestinal illness. Either freezing or cooking infected fish will kill the worms.Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE on Thursday reposted a tweet from a follower blaming his fall in a new Iowa poll on genetically modified corn that “creates issues in the brain.”
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A poll released by Quinnipiac University early Thursday shows Trump trailing retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson Benjamin (Ben) Solomon CarsonPuerto Rico governor, White House clash over meeting Puerto Rico governor says Trump won't meet to discuss hurricane relief The Hill's Morning Report - Can Bernie recapture 2016 magic? MORE by 8 points among likely caucus-goers.
The tweet references Monsanto, a company that pioneered the use of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in farming. GMO farming produces larger crops and saves resources, but critics say food that has been genetically engineered is not safe for consumption.
The St. Louis-based company has become the poster child for opponents of GMOs, spurring a “March Against Monsanto” movement.
Concerned groups have launched unsuccessful state ballot initiatives that would require foods that contain GMOs to be labeled.
The Food and Drug Administration, however, has said food made with GMOs is safe.Kasthuri Munirathinam, a 55-year-old mother of four from southern India, was plunged into debt after borrowing money to marry off her daughters. Like millions before her, she was recruited through an agency and promised an opportunity to earn 1,000 Saudi riyals ($267) a month by working as a live-in maid in Saudi Arabia, the Arab region’s largest economy where domestic help is in high demand.
On Sept. 29, just a few weeks after arriving in the kingdom, she tried to escape from her employer’s house, using two of her saris to fashion a rope and climb from a third-floor window.
What happened next is unclear and disputed. What is clear, however, is the price Munirathinam is paying for trying to leave. She lost her most of her right arm and is now lying in a hospital bed in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
The incident highlights the precarious situation migrant workers across the Gulf face under a sponsorship system that ties their livelihood and residency visas to their employer. Rights researchers say domestic workers, who number at least 2.4 million across the Gulf, are among the most vulnerable because the majority are women and live with their sponsor. Labor laws in Gulf Arab nations often exclude domestic workers from their protections.
Munirathinam’s sisters, speaking by telephone to The Associated Press in India, say her employer was overworking her and not feeding her enough. In calls to her family, Munirathinam told relatives that when she complained to Saudi authorities about her treatment, her employer punished her by locking her in a room.
Mohan Munirathinam, son of Kasthuri Munirathinam, displays his mother’s photograph and a copy her employment documents in Chennai. (AP)
According to her relatives, Munirathinam alleges that she lost her arm as a result of her employer’s actions. But a Saudi police spokesman said their investigation showed she fell from her makeshift rope and that the amputation of her arm resulted from injuries from her fall.
“She feared that they might try to harm her or kill her, so she tried escaping through the window,” her sister Vijayakumari Shankar said. “The recruitment agency told her that she would be able to make a lot of money and help her family out of poverty.”
Munirathinam’s older sister Mallika Jayavel says the sponsor is alleging she jumped from the window because she is mentally ill.
“This is completely untrue,” she said. “They are trying to put the blame on her instead of admitting their guilt.”
Relatives of Kasthuri Munirathinam display a photo of her and copies of her employment documents, in Chennai. (AP)
India’s Foreign Ministry has pressed for an independent inquiry and for the employer to be charged with attempted murder. The family is demanding she receive compensation since she will no longer be able to work. She also underwent back surgery as a result of the fall.
Across the Middle East, domestic workers typically hail from the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Ethiopia. They work as nannies and live-in maids, often for six and even seven days a week.
TV grab of Kasturi Munirathinam, whose hand was allegedly chopped off by her Saudi employer. (PTI)
More than 2.8 million Indians work in Saudi Arabia mostly in lower-paying jobs, including some 60,000 maids. Last year, India and Saudi Arabia signed a labor cooperation agreement to secure the rights of domestic workers and their employers.
But Rothna Begum, a researcher on women’s rights in the Middle East for Human Rights Watch (HRW), said actual application of the law often lags behind the formal legal protections on paper.
“There isn’t a sort of task force to check if domestic workers are being afforded their rights or not,” she said. “The problem is the system is designed to where that leaves (the worker) trapped and tied to her employer.”
In some cases, domestic workers who try to leave an abusive situation can be found guilty of breaching immigration laws because residency visas are tied to the employer, who has to give consent for a worker to transfer employment. There are also no shelters to turn to. Migrant workers can either try to seek refuge at their home country’s embassy or head to a deportation center, but Begum says “that’s not really a viable place to be in to pursue a claim against your employer.”
The kingdom issued a bylaw in 2013 for domestic workers that allowed for protections such as one day off a week and a paid vacation every two years. However, other workers under Saudi labor law are limited to eight hours of work daily - compared to domestic workers who could be required to work up to 15 hours.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), Saudi Arabia is one of the largest employers of domestic workers in the world, with approximately 784,500. The ILO says that around a third are men, who take on jobs such as driving or gardening, while the majority are women working on average about 64 hours a week.
Kuwait has the second highest number of domestic workers in the Gulf with around 660,000, according to HRW. This year, Kuwait’s parliament approved a law giving domestic workers rights such as a weekly day off, 30 days of annual paid leave and a 12-hour working day with rest, HRW said in a report.
Bahrain includes domestic workers under its labor law, but excludes them for a vast majority of its provisions, such as limits on working hours. Begum says in Oman, the UAE and Qatar, the country’s labor laws do not apply to domestic workers, though the UAE and Qatar are working on drafting laws to provide legal protections beyond the employment contract.
Rights group Amnesty International said last year that under Qatari law there are no limits on working hours for the country’s 84,000 female domestic workers and no requirement to allow them a day off. On Tuesday, Qatar announced new legislation aimed at reforming residency policies for its large population of migrant workers. The Qatar News Agency reported that the new law dealt with “the regulation of the entry and exit of expatriates and their residency.” It did not provide further details, and it remained unclear whether the new law would apply to domestic servants.
James Lynch, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said domestic workers face additional forms of discrimination that put them at greater risk because most are women and are physically living with their employers.
At times, it is the workers’ own embassies that tell them to walk away from pressing charges because the system might be skewed or the process too complex. Standards for proving sexual assault, for example, are much higher in Muslim countries where capital punishment is levied on rapists.
Women who report being raped could face charges of taking part in “illicit relations” until the rape charge is proven.
“There simply isn’t the kind of follow through and careful investigation that you can expect,” Lynch said. “It can give the impression that the legal system is protecting sponsors from scrutiny.”
First Published: Oct 29, 2015 12:10 ISTPreviously!
Part 1 got a pretty healthy, and encouragingly varied response on reddit (even if I did, a bit embarrassingly, stoop to feeding the trolls at one point). One point was reinforced in the reactions: the idea that Superman is a character open to many many interpretations, nearly all of which are valid. Hell, even Man Of Steel, of which I was not a fan, managed to inspire some new fans. Which, ultimately, is what matters.
Let’s clarify a few things: it may not need to be said, but I don’t actually believe that Dan DiDio is actually the Earth-One Lex Luthor. Nor do I bear any ill will towards him. But as an entity, DC doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. As Chris Sims has pointed out in his columns for Comics Alliance, they seem to spend a lot of time trying to convince us that Superman is “a serious adult character for serious adults in the serious adult medium of comic books.“
(And if you don’t read Comics Alliance, you’re missing some of the best, if not THE best, comics news and opinion on the internet. Chris Sims earns his title of “Batmanologist“)
So where does this defensiveness come from?
Spend enough time on the internet, or in the comics-related corners of it, and you’ll hear the same chorus; “Superman is boring,” goes the argument. “He’s too powerful. Nothing can hurt him except Kryptonite.” It’s a cliched, reductive argument (he’s also vulnerable to magic! They always forget about magic!) that stems from a “could Wolverine kick Batman’s ass?” mentality.
(Or, quite often, from people whose knowledge of Superman comes exclusively from Superdickery.com and have never read a comic in their lives, but I just feel sorry for those people)
Nothing can hurt Superman? Let me tell you about one of my favorite Superman stories. It comes, ironically, not from a Superman comic, but from DC’s Hitman, by Garth Ennis and John McRea.
(Which was a fantastic series anyway, and is possibly the only place you’ll see Zombie Sharks. At least until The Asylum reads this)
In the story, protagonist Tommy Monaghan is surprised to find Superman hanging out on a rooftop…brooding. They get to talking, and Superman ends up telling Tommy about how he rescued the crew of a nuclear-powered space shuttle after an accident – or so he thought.
That’s what can hurt Superman. The knowledge that he’s one guy – an impossibly strong, fast, and powerful guy, but a guy nonetheless – and while he’s saving a crashing plane in Australia, an earthquake in South America might be leveling a village. With too much power, if I can throw the haters’ words back at them, comes too much responsibility.
(That’s why, as much as Superman: The Movie resonated with my 8-year-old brain, the idea that he can just turn back time and save the ones he couldn’t the first time around is a cheat, on the level of reprogramming the Kobayashi-Maru test. Please don’t hate me, Richard Donner)
Not every great Superman story has to be around that theme, obviously. Sometimes he just punches giant robots, because Superman punching giant robots is never not awesome.
But it’s that sense of responsibility that makes the character great. As Tommy tells Superman at the end of the story:
“What can I do to help?” That’s a pretty good definition of that “American Way” thing they always talk about.
(Of course, after Superman leaves, we learn Tommy was on that rooftop to kill a guy with a sniper rifle. The series is called Hitman, after all)
So, enough of my proselytizing. I want to know, here or on reddit, what Superman means to you. What Superman stories inspire you, and get to the heart of the character, and why? Is it Alan Moore and Curt Swan’s Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman? Is it an episode of Super Friends? Hell, is it an episode of Smallville? I won’t hold that against you.
I mean, it’ll take a lot to convince me, but I won’t hold it against you.
On a slightly related note: anyone going to Emerald City Comicon?Meaty throws can be a powerful tool in Street Fighter V. Aside from the fact that the game does not have the same crouch tech option select as its predecessor, more than a few reversals also lack throw invulnerability on startup.
However, it seems that a way to beat meaty throws by making certain “reversals” invulnerable exists in the game, as Magus1234 demonstrates in the video below.
R.Mika’s EX Shooting Peach is normally not throw invulnerable, and you can see it get thrown when he tries to perform it normally. But later on, it comes out without being thrown. This is because Magus1234 is actually jumping on wakeup and then canceling the jump into EX Shooting Peach.
For those wondering how this works, Sleazoid has provided a detailed breakdown in our forums. This technique is based on the fact that most fighting games give their characters a certain number of pre-jump animation frames before they actually move. While characters are still grounded during these pre-jump frames, they system also counts them as already being in an airborne state, and characters in an airborne state cannot be thrown with grounded throws. By inputting the motion of the move, and then hitting up or up forward before hitting the attack button for it, characters will go into the pre-jump frames before the move comes out.
Combined with certain moves, this technique gives certain characters a very reliable way to beat meaty pressure. That said, these can still be beaten by the standing opponent simply baiting the reversal out and blocking it.
Sources: Magus1234, Shoryuken forumsThere’s a reason people travel from all over the world, spend ludicrous amounts of money on real estate if they have it or work shitty jobs if they don’t, just to live in a resort town. Sure, skiing powder is amazing, but skiing alone does not compel normal people to quit good jobs, leave loving relationships, and become seasonal pizza makers in small mountain towns. There’s something else at play: the pull of what I call The Bubble.
The Bubble is a feeling. It’s a slowed-down reality, a suspended equilibrium, a simplification and reprioritization of life. In The Bubble, conversation doesn’t have to get any deeper than today’s snow report. The most pressing thing on the agenda is making the tram opening and choosing which happy hour to attend. Every conversation starts with “Have you gotten out on the hill?” and ends with “Let’s ski soon.” Is it self-indulgent? Yes. Is it escapism? Without a doubt. Is it awesome? Absolutely.
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In places like Whistler and Jackson and Alta and Telluride, politics really matter only in cases of resort expansion and marijuana reform, and big local issues tend to stay somewhere between wildlife control and tourist taxation. The police reports in my mountain town are so whimsical and hilarious that they were published as a book. It’s Mayberry on ice.
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It’s not that bad things don’t exist when you live in The Bubble. They’re just way easier to ignore when the powder is deep and life is good. The worst things—North Korea, drone strikes, the band Creed—can wait until spring. We’ll deal with them after the snow melts.
In The Bubble, sexual orientation, religion, age, and social position all play second fiddle to skiing. Have you ever seen an elderly transvestite shredding on a monoski? Me neither, but I bet she’d fit right in. Which brings up another point: It’s funny how resort towns that cater to the rich, powerful, and extremely conservative frequently host things like Gay Ski Week or Marley in the Mountains. It’s like Republicans forget to be dicks when they get some elevation. How cool is that?
There aren’t many ugly people in The Bubble. I saw a bellhop in Whistler last year who could’ve been a Calvin Klein model with his golden locks and panty-dropping Australian accent. A waitress in Jackson, a Kate Hudson with a goggle tan, had me stuttering. And that’s not even counting the real models and actresses. It just sucks for them that people like me are there, uglying the place up.
Once you’ve had a taste of life in The Bubble, it’s hard to imagine living in reality. There are worse things than happiness, health, and the pursuit of powder. Living in the mountains is a richer life. By surrounding ourselves with pleasure, youth, wealth, and beauty, the shitty stuff ceases to matter. And that’s why some of us get stuck. Call me the Boy in The Bubble.Is a no carb diet the newest and most effective way to lose weight? These diets are the newest in a long line of weight loss plans, and they are gaining popularity quickly. A no carb diet is exactly what it sounds like, you eliminate all forms of carbohydrates from your daily diet. Many experts have called these diets a form of human carnivorism, because they usually only include only meat and fat from animal-based products.
One of the dangers with a no carb diet is the extra work that your liver, kidneys, and other organs must do to filter out your body wastes when carbs are eliminated. This is because this process forces your body to use stored fat for energy instead of the missing carbs. This state is called ketosis, and as a result more waste products are produced and need to be removed.
A high protein low carb diet can be followed without reducing your nutritional intake severely, and when used for short periods can be a safe and effective way to jump start your weight loss program. This may not be true if you follow a no carb diet, because serious side effects may occur that can be dangerous or even fatal. Most experts believe that not allowing any carbs at all can increase the risks of organ damage and other medical complications,some of which are permanent or can cause death.
One of the dangers with a no carb diet is an excessive intake of protein instead. You may be getting too much protein, which can be very hard on your body. The amount of protein required will vary with each individual, and this fact is not usually considered with most of the diet plans that completely eliminate carbs. High protein diet side effects can be mild or severe, and may require medical attention or even hospitalization.Father Leo Heinrichs, O.F.M. (August 15, 1867, Oestrich, now a part of the city Erkelenz, Kingdom of Prussia – February 23, 1908, Denver, Colorado, United States) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order. While assigned to St. Elisabeth of Hungary Church in Denver, Colorado, Father Heinrichs was fatally shot while distributing communion. The shooter, a Sicilian Anarchist, later described his motivations as hatred of Catholicism.
Biography [ edit ]
Joseph Heinrichs was born on August 15, 1867, in Oestrich, near Erkelenz, Rhineland, Germany.
Under persecution from Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf, the Franciscan Chapter of St. Elizabeth of Hungary fled their monastery in Fulda and settled at St. Bonaventure's Friary in Paterson, New Jersey. Although still studying in minor seminary, Joseph Heinrichs emigrated to America with them. In New Jersey, on December 4, 1886, Joseph Heinrichs received the Franciscan habit and the monastic name Brother Leo. He took his final vows on December 8, 1890, and was ordained to the priesthood on July 26, 1891.
Between 1891 and 1907, Father Leo served in various positions in the New York and New Jersey area including pastor at Holy Angels parish in Singac (Little Falls), New Jersey, at St. Stephen's in Croghan, New York,[1] and at St. Bonaventure's. During a smallpox epidemic in Paterson, Father Leo was known to spend many hours at a nearby "pest house" ministering to the sick and the dying. In September 1907, after the Provincial Chapter, the Minister Provincial appointed him pastor of St. Elizabeth's parish in Denver, Colorado.[citation needed]
Father Leo arrived at St. Elizabeth's on September 23, 1907. His term as pastor lasted exactly five months. Father Leo received permission to return to Germany to visit his family after an absence of over twenty one years; but he postponed his journey until after June 7, 1908, when he planned to give First Communion to a class of seventy children. A week before his death, he spoke at the Young Ladies' Sodality meeting. He remarked, "If I had my choice of a place where I would die, I would choose to die at the feet of the Blessed Virgin."[2]
Death [ edit ]
The murder of Fr. Heinrichs, contemporary Illustration
Father Leo normally celebrated the 8am Sunday Mass, but he requested to switch to the 6 a.m. Mass, normally celebrated by Father Wulstan Workman. Father Leo had intended to attend a meeting later that morning. Among those attending the Mass was fifty-year-old Giuseppe Alia, an unemployed shoemaker[3] who had recently emigrated from Avola, Sicily. Alia arrived before Mass and seated himself in the third row, in front of the pulpit. It was a 6 a.m. "Workingmen's Mass", and there was only a short sermon so the men would not be late for work.[2]
During Communion, Alia knelt at the Communion Rail and received the Eucharist. Then, Alia spat it into his hand and flung it at Father Leo's face. The Host dropped to the floor as Alia drew his revolver and aimed it at Father Leo's heart. An altar boy screamed, "Look out, Father!" Then, Alia opened fire. The mortally wounded priest exclaimed, "My God, my God!", before falling to the floor. Before dying, he placed the ciborium on the step of Our Lady's altar, and managed to place two fallen Hosts back into the ciborium before strength left him. In a last gesture, Father Leo pointed to the spilled Hosts that he was now too weak to pick up. Rose Fisher, an eyewitness, reported that Father Leo died smiling, at the foot of the Blessed Virgin's altar.
According to Deacon William Joyce, "The coroner found that Father Leo's upper arms and waist were wrapped in leather straps. Each strap was studded with rows of pointed iron hooks, which pierced the skin. Around the priest's waist the skin was calloused and scarred, but showed no sign of infection. Father Leo secretly practiced this extreme form of mortification, perhaps to help him master his temper. None of his confrères had any idea of his self-inflicted penances. When the friars entered Father Leo's room after his death, they found that he slept on a wooden door."[4]
Father Wulstan Workman, who had switched with Father Leo for the later Mass, administered the Last Rites. Father Wulstan told the Denver Post, "I would have been killed and he would be alive now. There is one way to solve the affair that I can see, and that is that God chose the better man."[4]
Legacy [ edit ]
Following his murder, the body of Father Leo Heinrichs was transported by rail to St. Bonaventure's Monastery in Paterson, New Jersey. Thousands of people, including large numbers of non-Catholics, attended his wake and requiem mass. Father Leo was then buried in Totowa, New Jersey's Holy Sepulchre Roman Catholic Cemetery.[5] Father Leo Heinrichs rests in the same cemetery as Father Mychal Judge, a fellow Holy Name Province Franciscan who was killed in the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Father Leo's cause for beatification was opened in 1938 and his grave continues to be visited by pilgrims.
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary parish continues to serve the Roman Catholic Church,[6] while also ministering to Denver's Russian Catholics.
In his native city of Erkelenz, there is a street named for Fr. Leo Heinrichs.[7]
Alia's arrest, trial, and execution [ edit ]
After fatally shooting Father Leo, Giuseppe Alia attempted to flee St. Elizabeth's Church. However, a parishioner, E.J. Quigley, a conductor for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, tripped him. Daniel Cronin, an off-duty Denver police officer, then followed the Sicilian to the church steps and attempted to arrest him. After a struggle over Alia's revolver, Cronin overpowered the murderer and delivered him to the city jail.
At the police station, Alia said,
I went over there because I have a grudge against all priests in general. They are all against the workingman. I went to the communion rail because I could get a better shot. I did not care whether he was a German priest or any other kind of priest. They are all in the same class. I left Italy three months ago and went first to Central America, and then came to Denver. I am an Anarchist, and I am proud of it. I shot him, and my only regret is that I could not shoot the whole bunch of priests in the church.[8]
The people of Denver were enraged by Alia's actions and there was even talk of storming the city jail and lynching him. With this in mind, Denver law enforcement transported Alia to Colorado Springs for his own protection.
Based upon eye-witness testimony and his own confession, Alia was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death by hanging within weeks of the shooting. Alia never expressed any remorse and made two escape attempts from death row. The first involved the attempted murder of a prison trustee and the second of the prison's deputy warden. In both cases, however, Alia was overpowered by corrections officers soon after leaving his cell. Denver police officers expressed a belief, however, that local anarchists had smuggled the knives Alia had used into the Colorado State Penitentiary.
Following Alia's first escape attempt, the Italian Consul, Baron Gustavo Tosti, was interviewed. The Baron expressed a belief that Alia's behavior proved him to be mentally deranged. Even so, the Baron declared, "I have no intention of appealing to the Italian Government, or of trying to make this an international affair. It is purely a local case."[9]
Despite the pleas of the Franciscan Order, Giuseppe Alia was hanged on July 15, 1908 at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City. The Washington Herald reported Alia's execution as follows,
He went to the gallows fighting, biting, and snarling. The night noises of the penitentiary had died away, when Warden Cleghorn summoned the murderer from his cell, and through an interpreter, told him that the hour of his death had arrived. Alia stood for just a moment glaring at the warden and the attendants. Then he raised his head, uttered a string of oaths, and offered his best physical resistance to accompanying the guards to the gallows. The murderer was held by the warden's assistants until he had exhausted himself; then he was supported to the trap, where the noose was adjusted and he was hanged.[10]
References [ edit ]Sara J. Chipps shipped a product last November that has already inspired about 4000 kids (aged 8-12) to learn to write C++. Want to know more? So do we, so we’ve invited her to present and give a workshop on Jewelbots at CppCon.
Her talk is Building for the Best of Us: Design and Development with Kids in Mind:
Building an API easy enough for kids to understand (in C++) is a challenge. Every design decision, from the circuit board to the plastic can effect the results. We’ll talk about product design, manufacturing, firmware, software, and Arduino AP as we cover the Jewelbots timeline from Kickstarter to shipping to distribution. Additionally, hear from the two girls who are the top Jewelbots from the Bellevue area! You’ll learn what they have built and how they view the future of C++.
Following her talk, Sara will host a Jewelbots Build Workshop for kids and grownups. This workshop is open to anyone to come and watch (even if you aren’t registered for the conference), but if you want to reserve a Jewelbot to work on during the workshop (and who wouldn’t?), you’ll need to reserve it here: https://cppcon2017.eventbrite.com/On a street corner, under a garbage dump, at a construction site -- pre-Inca archeological sites abound in Lima, where the ruins of hundreds of sacred places, or "huacas", are at the mercy of urban growth and public indifference.
In the middle of the Miraflores residential district, one of Lima's best restaurants opens onto the terrace of an ancient pyramid, offering fine food in a 1,500 year-old setting bathed in artificial lighting.
The Huaca Pucllana, the city's archeological star, has been impeccably preserved thanks to a partnership with the restaurant, but the rare public-private initiative is an exception to the rule.
About three kilometers (two miles) away, in the densely populated Chorrillos neighborhood, a sign marks the existence of an "intangible archeological zone". Its base is heaped with garbage. A small Catholic shrine sits in the middle of the huaca, built "thanks to the patronage" of the local mayor, as another sign says.
There is no registry that keeps track of the huacas -- which comes from the Quechua word "wak'a" meaning sacred place -- but archeologists say more than 300 of the adobe structures are spread around this city of nine million people.
"Most huacas are officially the cultural patrimony of the nation, but the area around them that cannot be touched is not delineated," bemoans Cristian Vizconde, an archeologist who heads a project at the biggest site in northern Peru.
"This omission allows developers and |
new chips appropriate for Macs at the IFA Berlin trade show on September 4-9.Skylake processors will feature improved Iris Pro integrated graphics capable of driving up to three 4K monitors at 60Hz, whereas Haswell architecture could drive a single 4K monitor at 30Hz and Broadwell architecture could handle a single 4K monitor at 60Hz. Skylake will also have fixed-function support for 4K video processing in hardware and support for the latest APIs: DirectX 12, OpenCL 2 and OpenGL 4.4.PC World:Skylake architecture is also more power efficient thanks to a new power-saving feature called Speed Shift, which allows the CPU to intelligently adjust its power state for extended battery life. Skylake CPUs are also more efficient overall and feature eDRAM+, which can cache information, for increased performance.In June, Intel introduced Thunderbolt 3 with a USB Type-C connector and support for USB 3.1, DisplayPort 1.2 and PCI Express 3.0. The new spec, rumored to launch alongside Intel's next-generation Skylake chips, is capable of driving up to two 4K external displays at 60Hz or a single 5K display at 60Hz running off a single cable.Last month, a leaked Intel slide deck revealed that Skylake processors will provide a 10%-20% CPU performance boost in single and multi-threaded applications, with lower power consumption, and 30% faster Intel HD integrated graphics performance on average compared to current-generation Broadwell processors. The improved energy efficiency will also result in up to 30% longer battery life.Intel's Skylake processors appropriate for the MacBook Air were also leaked last week.The front cover of one of some 2,000 calendars featuring nostalgic photographs of former dictator Benito Mussolini framed by rousing Fascist-era slogans. Mussolini's portrait appears on everything from key-chains, lighters and cuff links to bottles of a perfume. Picture taken January 4, 2000. REUTERS/File
ROME (Reuters) - An Italian right-wing party is offering 1,500 euros ($1,930) to parents who name their babies after wartime fascist dictator Benito Mussolini or his wife Rachele, saying their names are under threat.
The MSI-Fiamma Tricolore party, the descendant of Mussolini’s fascist party, said the initiative in the poor, southern region of Basilicata was meant to keep alive names “at risk of extinction” and pay tribute to the movement’s roots.
“Benito and Rachele are nice names and I hope our original initiative will get people going,” party official Vincenzo Mancusi told Reuters.
The bonus — intended to pay for baby clothes and food — applies to babies born in 2009 in five villages where the birth rate is especially low, Mancusi said.
Mussolini ruled from 1922 to 1943 when he was ousted after leading Italy to ruin by entering World War Two as an ally of Germany. He was executed along with his mistress Claretta Petacci in 1945. His widow Rachele died in 1979.Karpelès was first arrested by Japanese authorities on August 1st, on suspicion of creating fake bitcoins worth more than $1 million in 2013. Authorities extended his detention after issuing a new arrest warrant on charges of embezzlement.
"Technically, it's very easy for the CEO of a bitcoin exchange to steal from his customers, because he has access to their bitcoin wallet," explained Justin Ganivet, an expert at cybersecurity and risk management firm Lexsi.
Authorities suspect the 30-year-old former CEO to have personally made off with $2.6 million worth of his customers' bitcoins. Karpalès — who faces up to five years in prison if he is found guilty — has denied the charges. According to AFP, Karpalès may have spent the money on software rights. There are also reports he used some of the cash to buy a $48,000 bed for his luxury apartment in Tokyo.
Frenchman Mark Karpelès, who has lived in Japan's capital Tokyo since 2009, was arrested six weeks ago in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins — a decentralized, virtual currency that saw the light of day in 2009.
The former CEO of failed bitcoin exchange MtGox, which filed for bankruptcy in 2014, has been charged in Japan with embezzlement and falsifying data.
Read more
The former CEO of failed bitcoin exchange MtGox, which filed for bankruptcy in 2014, has been charged in Japan with embezzlement and falsifying data.
Frenchman Mark Karpelès, who has lived in Japan's capital Tokyo since 2009, was arrested six weeks ago in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins — a decentralized, virtual currency that saw the light of day in 2009.
Authorities suspect the 30-year-old former CEO to have personally made off with $2.6 million worth of his customers' bitcoins. Karpalès — who faces up to five years in prison if he is found guilty — has denied the charges. According to AFP, Karpalès may have spent the money on software rights. There are also reports he used some of the cash to buy a $48,000 bed for his luxury apartment in Tokyo.
"Technically, it's very easy for the CEO of a bitcoin exchange to steal from his customers, because he has access to their bitcoin wallet," explained Justin Ganivet, an expert at cybersecurity and risk management firm Lexsi.
Karpelès was first arrested by Japanese authorities on August 1st, on suspicion of creating fake bitcoins worth more than $1 million in 2013. Authorities extended his detention after issuing a new arrest warrant on charges of embezzlement.
Born in 1985, on the outskirts of the eastern French city of Dijon, the former CEO has had several run-ins with the law. In 2010, a court in Paris sentenced Karpalès to one year in jail and ordered him to pay 45,000 euros in damages to his former employer, Linux Cyberjoueur, who accused him of stealing client data.
Related: Unable to Get Dollars, Venezuelans Turn to Bitcoins
Described by his former employer as "an IT genius," Karpalès bought MtGox in 2011, by which point the website had already started trading bitcoins. An abbreviation of "Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange," the site had started off as a market for trading cards used in the "Magic: The Gathering" fantasy game.
In June 2011, just three months after the handover, the company lost $9 million worth of bitcoins. The security breach caused the value of a bitcoin to plummet from $30 to $10 in one day.
Despite the incident, MtGox soon became known as the world's "main bitcoin exchange," French economist Philippe Herlin told VICE News.
In Januray 2014, a leaked document surfaced, claiming that MtGox had misplaced nearly 750,000 bitcoins. Karpelès — whose name also came up in the Silk Road case — blamed the loss on new security breaches. Furious MtGox customers found that they were unable to withdraw their bitcoins, and in February 2014, the company filed for bankruptcy. It admitted losing 850,000 bitcoins, worth an estimated $397 million.
Related: Ross Ulbricht, Convicted Mastermind Behind Silk Road Website Sentenced to Life in Prison
"We don't know what happened. Mark Karpelès said it was theft. But it looks like he's trying to protect himself. It could be an inside job, or even a computer error. To lose the private key to accounts is like losing the key to a safe, and not being able to break in," Herlin told VICE News.
In a June 2014 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Karpalès said his biggest mistakes had concerned the company's security.
"Not just security on the system, but in the office," he told the interviewer. "We had some cases where a stranger sneaked in and took things away. We also have at least one former employee stealing the company's data."
In a blog entry from June 2015, Karpalès said he was surprised to see "most Bitcoin exchanges […] still running in a way where they hold customer funds and coins."
It is surprising too see that despite all that happened — Mark Karpeles (@MagicalTux)June 1, 2015
"It's true that all this is bad for the image of bitcoins," said Herlin. "But I don't think this will undermine [the currency], because people now know that there's a difference between the bitcoin and the exchange. When a bank files for bankruptcy, it doesn't undermine the euro," said the economist.
"The biggest challenge for an exchange is building trust," said cybersecurity expert Ganivet. "For now, we haven't observed any breach in the protocol of the actual bitcoin."
Related: This Is Why Bitcoin Is Being Launched Into Space
To avoid such losses, explained Ganivet, individuals can stock their bitcoins on their computers instead of in an echange. "Once the money has left the exchange, it can no longer be stolen. Exchanges mean you rely on a third person. Which is, in fact, at odds with the philosophy behind the currency," he explained.
Storing your own bitcoins is slightly more complicated, he conceded, since the user has to install a special software and create his or her own wallet. The solution may be less practical for those making frequent transactions.
MtGox customers who lost their virtual money can file a complaint and try and get some of it back through American exchange Kraken.
Follow Lucie Aubourg on Twitter: @lucieabrg
Watch VICE News' documentary Launching Balloons into North Korea: Propaganda Over Pyongyang:LA Weekly reports that a tip jar thief is on the loose on the Westside. There's a pretty lucid video of the thief, a female in her 20s, that's going around popular eateries and swiping their tip jars. Overall, she's made off with hundreds of hard-earned tip dollars. Last Thursday, the thief took the tip jar money from Seoul Sausage, but ended up throwing it back after staff threatened to call the police. Maybe they should have regardless.
After taking off with $50 some dollars in multiple incidents at Komodo, owner Eric Tjahyadi is now offering a year of free tacos to anyone with information that could help stop the perpetrator. If your tip jar has easy access, make sure you secure it or keep an eye for anyone who hangs out near the front counter for a long period of time.
Check out the video below of the perpetrator's M.O.:“We have freedom of speech, we have freedom of religion,” says Megyn Kelly, in this segment about the coalition-building impulses of an overripe pumpkin from Halloween 2007. “And we’re opening up a very dangerous door if we get the government getting to go into a religious institution and decide what amounts to hate speech.”
Katrina Pearson, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, starts spewing an assortment of nouns and verbs with all the coherence of that girl in your dorm who decided to major in sociology because she just really liked people. Megyn Kelly takes the question and throws it to Saba Ahmed, president and founder of the Republican Muslim Coalition.
“Megyn,” says Ahmed, very, very calmly, “we go to the mosque to pray.”
I recommend this video if only to truly appreciate the nonverbal performance of the third person being interviewed, which is that hijab, which is all, “WHAT UP, BITCH, U SEE ME? I KNOW U SEE ME BITCH.”
Image via TwitterRAMALLAH – Israel is lashing out at international criticism and attempting to crush local dissent in what appears to be growing sensitivity to reproach of its policies.
Several recent incidents have dominated media headlines, including the arrest of a Jewish-American journalist on the grounds of security, threats by an Israeli minister against international diplomats and the arrest of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.
The raid on a foreign activist’s home in Ramallah, supposedly under full Palestinian control, by a large Israel Defense Forces (IDF) contingent allegedly for a visa infringement, and her subsequent arrest at gunpoint and deportation has also raised eyebrows.
"We will not allow a situation where every country will kick us. If there will be an attack on Israel, we will leave all options open, including the expulsion of ambassadors," Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon said on Saturday.
"We do not want to argue with anyone, but we will not sit idly by," he added. Ayalon’s outburst followed, amongst other incidents, a much publicized political confrontation with Turkey over a Turkish TV program critical of Israel.
This outburst led Israeli analyst and journalist Zvi Barel to comment acerbically in the Israeli daily Haaretz, "Britain wants to boycott Israeli goods? We’ll summon the British ambassador and have him sit on a bed of nails’’.
"The United States handles the settlements unfairly? We’ll point an unloaded gun at the American ambassador’s head and pull the trigger, just to scare him. We’re not murderers. We’re just trying to frighten, which, as is well known, creates respect. Just ask the Godfather," was Barel’s scathing comment.
Furthermore, Haaretz recently broke a story over the extent of Israel’s political blackmail of the Palestinian Authority (PA) over last year’s Goldstone report, which has received unanimous support internationally, and highlighted how sensitive the Jewish state is to negative publicity.
Justice Richard Goldstone was sent by the U.N. to the region to investigate war crimes committed by both Palestinian resistance groups and the IDF during Israel’s military assault on Gaza last year.
His report overwhelmingly criticized Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians and its disproportionate use of force.
Goldstone’s report was due to be transferred from the U.N. General Assembly to the Security Council after receiving overwhelming support from the U.N. Human Rights Council.
To everybody’s surprise, not least the Palestinians, PA President Mahmoud Abbas asked for a vote on the report’s recommendations to be postponed until March this year.
According to Haaretz, Abbas’ request to the U.N. Human Rights Council to delay the vote followed a meeting with Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet.
Abbas was warned by Diskin that "if he did not ask for a deferral of the vote on the critical report on last year’s military operation, Israel would turn the West Bank into a ’second Gaza’." A senior IDF officer is alleged to have made similar threats to the PA at around the same time.
Diskin, who reports directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also warned the Palestinians that the easing of restrictions on movement within the West Bank would be revoked as well as permission to operate a second mobile phone company Wataniya.
The PA would have lost tens of millions of dollars in compensation payments to the company.
Israeli sensitivity to its critics was highlighted again several weeks ago in the early hours of the morning when the Ramallah apartment of Czech national Eva Novakova, 28, was raided by Israeli soldiers after they broke her door down.
Israeli armed personnel carriers surrounded the area while about 20 heavily armed soldiers took up positions on surrounding rooftops.
Novakova was forced at gunpoint to dress and was subsequently arrested and deported to Prague on the grounds she had overstayed her visa. She was denied access to a lawyer.
As Ramallah is supposedly under full Palestinian control, this kind of military operation is usually reserved for arresting armed Palestinian resistance fighters who are suspected of involvement in attacks against Israelis.
Critics allege Novakova’s political involvement in peaceful protests against Israel’s separation barrier, which expropriates Palestinian farmland illegally for the benefit of Israeli settlers primarily, and the international support received for the protests, is a more likely explanation for the overkill.
In a further crackdown on an increasingly critical media, the arrest and detention of Jared Malsin, a Jewish-American journalist and English editor at the Palestinian news agency Maan, at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport last week has sparked outrage.
Malsin, who has been based in the West Bank for two years, was accused of being a security threat for writing reports hostile to Israel and reporting from within the Palestinian territories.
On Friday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) called for Malsin’s deportation order to be revoked while The Committee to Protect Journalists called for his immediate release.
"We condemn this intolerable violation of press freedom," said Aidan White, IFJ general secretary. "The ban of entry in this case appears to be a reprisal measure for the journalist’s independent reporting and that is unacceptable."
Meanwhile, in another development Hagai Elad, the Israeli head of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was amongst a group of 13 activists arrested last week for a peaceful assembly in East Jerusalem against Palestinian home demolitions and expulsions.
(Inter Press Service)
Read more by Mel Frykberg"I was kinda skeptical at first... I got this app after a bad two weeks of poison ivy. The videos and tutorials have helped me make sure my success rate with the algorithm stays high- big thanks for that! As I continue to “collect” new flowers and plants that grow on my property, I’m really enjoying the fun info and feeling like I have a botanist in my pocket at all times. I would recommend for future updates: 1) mushroom and fungus descriptions to know if it’s safe for eating raw, cooking, is hallucinogenic, or deadly. The idea of knowing what’s edible out there from dandelions to whitecap mushrooms would be really cool to capture and enjoy. 2) augmented reality... live video collecting various plants and flowers, and the algorithm can be focused to know its a location based collection, so there’s no overseas plants, etc which could aid in faster live identification. This could also help see where poison ivy, poison oak, or various toxic plants are. I could see some sort of game of collecting or helping identify could help you collect points, and redeem them to have someone plant a tree... idk. Great app! Thanks!"SAN JOSE — When city leaders last year persuaded voters to approve new taxes, they said the money would pay for more police, faster emergency response, smoother roads and other improvements to services slashed during the last economic downturn.
But a chunk of the $52 million a year in new sales and business tax revenue voters approved last year will be consumed by a hefty spike in the city’s retirement costs — spurring some elected leaders to wonder if taxpayers are getting what they were promised.
“I feel it’s very unfair to taxpayers,” said Councilman Johnny Khamis, who opposed putting the sales tax hike on the ballot and preferred a measure dedicating the money to police and roads, which would have required a greater margin for approval. “We can make a claim that the money will go to street pavements and improving services, when in fact, most of it is going to pensions. It reduces the accountability and trust in government.”
Mayor Sam Liccardo, who supported last year’s tax measures, acknowledged that some of the new money will pay for the spike in retirement costs — but said city voters are still getting what they were promised.
San Jose is on the hook for the higher pension costs regardless of whether voters approved the tax measures, Liccardo noted. But the extra revenue ensures nothing else gets cut, he said, adding that San Jose is using some of the sales tax revenue to re-open fire stations and increase the number of community service officers. A spending plan pegged $3.9 million for hiring community service officers and maintaining minimum staffing levels at the fire department.
“With the benefit of better revenues as well as the measures’ passage, we are able to avoid a cut in services to pay the bill we are legally required to pay,” the mayor said.
Last June, San Jose voters approved Measure B, a quarter-cent sales tax for 15 years expected to generate about $40 million a year. In pitching it to voters, the city said it would pay for “improving police response to reduce violent crimes and burglaries,” speeding emergency response times, “repairing potholes and streets” and “expanding gang prevention.”
City voters in November approved Measure G, which increased tax revenue from businesses by an estimated $12 million a year. The city said it would “fund essential services such as police, emergency response, and pothole repair.”
Both were general tax measures that required only majority approval and whose revenues go into the city’s general fund to be spent as a majority of elected leaders see fit.
But since those measures passed, officials who oversee the city’s retirement plans delivered some bad news: the city’s projected pension and retiree healthcare costs will rise sharply, by $28.8 million more than previously projected in 2018, and up by $57 million by 2021, according to city reports.
Because most city workers are paid out of the city’s general fund, most of those higher retirement costs will come from the same pot as the new tax revenues, effectively offsetting them.
“Funding pensions is like funding the department of the past,” said Pete Constant, a former city councilman and the vice president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers’ Association. “The majority of the pension increases we’re seeing are not paying for benefits of current officers — you’re paying debt from the past and you’re not getting anything for it.”
The retirement bill spiked primarily because the independent boards that oversee San Jose’s two retirement plans adopted less rosy assumptions about the benefits’ cost: They now assume employees and retirees will live longer, and that annual returns on pension fund investments will average 6.875 percent rather than 7 percent.
Pension reform advocates have long pushed for such steps. Overly optimistic assumptions that mask the real costs of benefits can leave pension systems badly underfunded, as most California public pension funds currently are, and force significant tax hikes and service cuts to cover obligations to retirees. In the worst cases, cities can wind up in bankruptcy and retirees can see their benefits cut.
But prudent steps to ensure pension plans are properly funded means higher costs to cities and their workers.
“If we expect to make less money in the future, that money has to come from somewhere,” said Roberto Peña, San Jose’s director of retirement services. “So the city and employees must contribute more.”
San Jose in 2012 famously tried to slash its rising retirement bill — which had more than tripled over a decade — with a ballot measure that called for reducing benefits for current workers, future hires and retirees. Nearly 70 percent of city voters approved that Measure B, which Liccardo supported.
But cops and other city workers answered by quitting or retiring in droves, and through their unions waged a furious legal battle to block the measure. After years of legal wrangling and with the police force depleted by a third, city and union leaders agreed to a settlement that effectively preserved cost savings that had survived an early court ruling. City voters blessed that deal with approval of Measure F in November.
But San Jose and its taxpayers still are on the hook for an estimated $3.8 billion in unfunded liability in the city’s pension funds and other retirement benefits.
“The voters were not told their money was going to go to pensions,” said San Jose dentist Ernie Giachetti, 75, who voted against the sales tax hike. “If they had been told, I’m sure they would not have voted for the increase.”“Karl Marx got it right, at some point capitalism can destroy itself,” said Mr. Roubini, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We thought markets worked. They're not working.”
The world economy is in shambles and about to get worse, according to even mainstream economists. How bad is anybody's guess. Some things, however, are certain: the recovery that politicians have been promising for years existed only in their heads. The reality of the situation is now apparent to millions of people across the globe, who, before, clung to the empty promises of economic recovery. This newfound consciousness will inevitably find expression in the political realm and, more importantly, the streets.
A key aspect of this sudden mass awareness is in response to high unemployment and the deeply unpopular measures that politicians are forcing upon working people, both byproducts of the Great Recession. Politicians are blaming “the markets” for demanding austerity measures, but “markets” are simply places where wealthy people invest their money. To guarantee a profitable return on their money these investors demand that labor laws be squashed and social programs be eliminated, all over the world.
Spain, for example, is one of many countries having austerity measures forced down their throats. Reuters reports:
“Analysts see the shaking up of the country's inflexible labor laws [laws that protect workers] and the easing of hiring and firing [so older, activist, or slower workers can be fired] as vital to restoring the country's competitiveness. The labor reforms are crucial. They will help to restore growth [profits] in the long term. Growth is the only way out of these adverse fiscal trends,' said Luigi Speranza, analyst at BNP Paribas.” [May 27, 2010]
To summarize, creating new laws that enable Spanish corporations to work their workers harder will be better for profits.
Greece faces a similar austerity plan, according to The Guardian UK:
“Tax increases, spending cuts and wage reductions and a sweeping privatisation programme have led to violent protests in Greece, with many arguing that the International Monetary Fund and European Union have demanded too high a price for their financial support.” [August 2, 2011]
In the United States, these policies find expression in the attack against public-sector unions and the targeting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for cuts, while mass unemployment is allowed to act as a very efficient way to lower wages for all workers.
Politicians have made it clear that economic growth, especially corporate profits, will increase in response to these anti-worker policies. They are only partially right. Corporate profits in fact have been on the rise, but the austerity measures have been responsible for the depressed economies throughout Europe and the US. When workers' wages are lowered and social programs are decimated, working people and the poor are left with little money for any purchases other than the bare necessities. Without consumer demand for their products, corporations curtail operations even more. This global dynamic has been decades in the making, with the recession having finally forced the issue into the forefront.
The Reagan and Thatcher administrations were the first Western representatives during the post-World War II era of this now dominant trend, which aimed at pushing back the social programs and wages won by the labor movements. Their policies were in response to the lower corporate growth rates that began in the 1970s and continue to this day. Now, all of Europe is suffering because banks and corporations demand a more profit-friendly business environment: universal health care and education programs are in jeopardy, plus wages and other benefits are under attack.
For the wealthy and corporations this is a life-and-death struggle. The Great Recession has already bankrupted the banks and corporations who were not fit enough to survive under a crumbling market economy. The existing companies are thus forced to squeeze more work for less pay out of their workers, since labor is the most flexible cost of any business. Pushing labor costs down – and by extension cutting social programs – is thus the priority of the corporations and their paid-for politicians across the globe, since the global economy is tightly connected and they all play by the vicious rules of the market. In fact, the intensity with which the corporate elite is pursuing these policies is a reflection of their negative outlook for the global economy.
This constitutes a new era in global capitalism, one that mimics the market economy of past generations. The 2008 recession was not a temporary phenomenon, but the ushering in of a new period in which the corporate elite attempt to restructure social relations, meaning that past assumptions regarding wages and social programs must be destroyed, as a new, more profitable equilibrium is sought between the corporate elite and working people.
Implied in this nation-by-nation restructuring is a restriction of democracy, since these anti-worker policies negatively affect the vast majority of the population. The riots in London are an expression of this, as are the mass demonstrations throughout Europe as well as the Middle East. In the United States, democracy is circumvented via the so-called Super Congress, whose duty it is to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Austerity programs throughout Europe are being implemented against the wishes of the general working populations.
Also included in this attack on working people is the corporate elite's doubled efforts to divert the working-class anger toward fake populist movements – like the Tea Party in the US – or against minorities, such as Muslims and immigrants in the US.
This will require that working people stay focused on who exactly is attacking them, while focusing on measures that can serve as alternatives to what the corporate elite are forcefully implementing.
The most immediate and important demand of working people must be taxing the rich and corporations, since social programs need to be funded and expanded and a massive jobs program with a strong green component is desperately overdue. It's not by coincidence that taxing the rich is rarely used in austerity plans; and when, on rare occasions, the rich are taxed, it's at low levels with high publicity, so the angry public will think the illusion of “shared sacrifice” is a reality.
For example, in the US, President Obama is again calling to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich (after allowing them to continue less than a year ago). It is doubtful that the Bush tax cuts will be ended, but if they were, it would be insufficient. Working people must demand that taxes on the rich be raised to at least pre-Reagan levels (70 percent), while President Eisenhower levels would be best (90 percent). Over the decades, the tax burden has shifted dramatically, causing wealth to accumulate into the bank accounts of the top 1 percent of the population, the same people who are now demanding that social programs be destroyed so that their investments are secured and their corporate profits remain high.
Since illusions of an economic recovery have now been shattered, it's up to working people to demand that their labor unions and community groups unite to tax the rich and corporations in order to finance a massive jobs program. Fortunately, the AFL-CIO is organizing actions for the first week of October to demand jobs and oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Many within the labor movement are calling for massive demonstrations across the country for October 1. It will take these types of actions to unite working people to fight for a positive solution to the economic crisis.Japanese manga and anime are two of the country's most recognizable pop culture exports, with the likes of One Piece and Attack on Titan attracting die-hard followers across the globe. Obsessed fans — often referred to as otaku — pay tribute to their favorite two-dimensional characters in a variety of ways. On the milder side are those with sprawling action figure collections, and others who play dress-up at cosplay conventions. Hardcore otaku take the obsession further: "marrying" their 2D crush, and even sleeping with objects bearing the character's resemblance.
Japanese entrepreneur Koichi Uchimura (pictured above) falls into the latter category. When I met him at a coworking space for startups in Fukuoka, he introduced me to his significant other: Rina Makuraba, a 160-centimeter body pillow.
Rina, a portmanteau of makura (the Japanese word for pillow) and ballerina, is an original 2D character that Koichi created to resemble his "dream girl." She's blonde with blue eyes, and Koichi — who's 33 — describes her as a 14-year-old junior high school student.
Koichi stands proudly beside her, with a hand on Rina's waist. I ask him if she's his girlfriend.
He lets out a laugh and tells me, with confidence: "She's my wife."
Turning his gaze back to Rina, who's sprawled out on the table between us, Koichi gives her an excited pat on the thigh.
"Stop talking, you pig!" she shouts, via the smartphone sitting next to her.
Koichi Uchimura with Rina. Image: Tech in Asia
Heavy breathing
Otaku have been fond of body pillows for quite some time, as printed pillowcases allow them to literally sleep with their favorite character. But Koichi is taking the craze a step further. His product, Itaspo, uses sophisticated sensors that — when touched — allow the pillow to talk.
Itaspo's sensors were created at the Kyushu Institute of Technology, where Koichi worked as a researcher before founding his startup, Joyas, in May 2014.
"Typical touch sensors don't work with a cloth over them," he tells Tech in Asia. "They also can't tell the difference between a hit, a stroke, or a soft touch."
To give your dakimakura (the Japanese term for body pillow, or literally "hug pillow") the gift of gab, simply insert Itaspo's three sensors beneath the pillowcase and connect the device to your smartphone via Bluetooth. The sensors can be positioned "wherever a user wants," says Koichi — who opted to stick one on Rina's head, one beneath her breasts, and another on her left thigh. One small caveat is that the sensors are connected to a slightly bulky box that houses an Arduino board and battery, which could be uncomfortable to roll onto in your sleep. Koichi is working on scaling its size down as much as possible.
Companion app for Itaspo, available for iOS and Android. Image: Tech in Asia
Itaspo's companion app, available for iOS and Android, receives feedback based on how a user interacts with the sensors. Hits will elicit negative responses ("Stop it!"), which get increasingly nasty if the abuse continues ("You're worthless!"). Stroking can go either way — from "No way" to "It's getting hot." Gentle touches produce both positive replies ("I like you") and — if sustained — heavy breathing, moans, and screams of sexual ecstasy.
Over time, different touching styles will put Itaspo into one of five modes: "wife mode" being the best (if you touch it softly) and "extreme hate" being the worst (if you use it as a punching bag).
The sounds — 500 in total, so there's not much concern about hearing the same response over and over — come from the connected smartphone's speaker. Koichi hopes to monetize the app by offering additional voices and phrases that can be downloaded for a fee. Rina's responses were recorded by a professional anime voice actress (who appears to be over 18).
"We're not trying to get copyrights for existing characters, as we'd rather deal with [third parties] who have permission to produce official pillowcases, or sell the technology and APIs to them" he says. "We'll also have a maker marketplace where users can sell original goods."
Consumer ready
Joyas is a two-man team, bootstrapped with JPY 1.2 million (US$10,000) of Koichi's own money. They were able to make Itaspo a reality thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign on Makuake — Japan's version of Kickstarter. Originally seeking just JPY 500,000 (US$4,200), Itaspo went on to raise more than JPY 3.7 million (US$31,000). A YouTube video (below) made for the campaign has 580,000 views and counting.
"I didn't have a girlfriend and I was very lonely [before starting my company]," Koichi says. "I thought that 2D characters were cute and sexy — I was attracted to them."
Two additional Itaspo character pillowcases are available.
The Itaspo kit — which includes the sensor set and a custom pillowcase featuring one of three original characters (Rina included) — will retail for JPY 20,000 (US$166) when it goes on sale next month. Joyas already struck a distribution deal with Amazon Japan, and it can also be purchased directly through the app itself. Koichi plans to sell additional voice and phrase packs for roughly JPY 500 to 1,000 (US$4.15 to 8.30).
While he has no concrete plans for scaling internationally, Koichi hopes to eventually capitalize on the growing anime and manga fan base outside of Japan.
"I think that in Asia, especially, otaku culture is just going to get more and more popular," he says. "Anime, manga, and goods associated with these 2D characters are booming. The market will only continue to grow."
For Koichi, at least, Itaspo is already something he can't live without.
"I use it every night," he says with a grin.
This article originally published at Tech in Asia hereProtesters turned out in force at a Scarborough school Thursday night, disrupting efforts by two local MPPs to discuss Ontario's new sex ed curriculum.
The information session at Agincourt Collegiate Institute was cut short when demonstrators moved inside — chanting "We say no" at MPPs Soo Wong and Bas Balkissoon.
The new curriculum has drawn criticism from some parents and religious groups who say it is too explicit for young children.
It marks the first time sex-education courses in Ontario have been updated since 1998, and touches on subjects including consent and the role of technology in sexuality.
But when Wong and Balkissoon realized their message wasn't being heard, they ended the meeting.
This didn't sit well with angry parents, who crowded in, insisting they listen.
Protesters gather outside Agincourt Collegiate Institute, where an information session about Ontario's new sex ed curriculum was cut short on Thursday night. (Greg Ross/CBC) "Can you justify to me why a Grade Six needs to know about masturbation," said one angry mother. "Can you answer that?"
Police were on hand and managed to separate the two sides.
Protesters left frustrated, feeling like the Liberal government is not listening to them.
"We want our premier to hear our voice to hear our concerns," said protest organizer Kevin Xu.
Balkissoon said the protesters were not from the area.
"The public protest is an organization that is not residents in our riding," said. "They decided they are going to disrupt any meeting that deals with this issue."At the New York Coffee Festival, the alternative milk mavens at Pacific Foods hosted a Latte Art Throwdown with a twist. Baristas were given the opportunity to “throw down” (compete to see who can pour the most beautiful latte art) on the floor of the festival, using a couple of products from the Pacific Foods “Barista Series” line, including almond and coconut milks. When it comes to latte art, nut milks are known amongst baristas for their high level of difficulty; most alternative milks steam and pour quite differently than your typical cow’s milk. But here at the fest, baristas in attendance were easily convinced to play. Perhaps it was because of the competition’s inspiringly hefty twin prize pot, dol |
was drafted in at centre-back alongside Hummels. For the most part, the rest of the team picked itself, while Leon Goretzka was preferred to Müller in the withdrawn attacking role behind Werner on the right-hand side.
With the hour mark approaching and no opening goal in sight – by which time Sweden were already leading Mexico and on course to join the Central Americans in the last 16 – Löw began to send on the attacking reinforcements. In the space of 20 minutes, Gomez (striker), Müller (forward) and Brandt (attacking midfielder) replaced Khedira (defensive midfielder), Goretzka (attacking midfielder) and Hector (left-back) as Germany’s formation got progressively more attacking.
Despite Germany coming close, it was South Korea who found the target with a pair of injury-time goals – both scored on the counter – thanks to Young-Gwon Kim and former Leverkusen hero Heung-Min Son.
Now what?
That accounts for the future, but what about the here and now? If there were any lingering questions on Germany’s strength in depth, how about the above for a team of players who didn’t even get on the plane to Russia?
How quickly Die Mannschaft bounce back remains to be seen. Löw may not have got his selections dead right this time; although perhaps luck simply deserted him. One thing is for certain though: with the embarrassment of riches outlined above, the German national team shouldn’t be licking their wounds for long.Dec. 21, 3:30 p.m. ET, Las Vegas (ABC)
USC TROJANS BREAKDOWN
It's fair to say that probably no team in the nation dealt with more drama than USC this year. How many teams can say they've had four head coaches since August?
Offensive coordinator Clay Helton will step in as head coach for the Trojans in their bowl game. Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
Lane Kiffin started the season on one of the nation's hottest seats, and that seat melted at Arizona State during a 62-41 defeat that dropped the Trojans to 3-2 on the year and 0-2 in the Pac-12. Kiffin was fired at LAX by athletic director Pat Haden, and Ed Orgeron took over as interim coach. He beat Arizona in his debut, lost 14-10 at Notre Dame, then rolled off five consecutive victories.
At that point, many saw Orgeron as a serious candidate to take over the job full time. But his chances were doused when the Trojans were whipped 35-14 at home against archrival UCLA. When Haden told Orgeron he wouldn't get the job, he promptly resigned, and offensive coordinator Clay Helton will lead the Trojans in their bowl game.
On Dec. 2, news broke that Washington coach Steve Sarkisian, a former USC assistant under Pete Carroll, would be the Trojans’ next coach.
This was a far better team after Kiffin's termination, in large part because the offense got better with Helton calling plays instead of Kiffin. A unit that managed just seven points in a home loss to Washington State with Kiffin calling plays averaged 30 points per game during its 6-2 stretch under Orgeron.
The biggest win was a 20-17 takedown of then-No. 4 Stanford. But the Trojans’ biggest strength is defense. Coordinator Clancy Pendergast's unit ranked among the nation's top 25 in scoring, total and rushing defense.
vs.
FRESNO STATE BULLDOGS BREAKDOWN
Derek Carr has 48 TD passes and just seven interceptions in 2013. Marco Garcia/USA TODAY Sports
Fresno State was just a couple of plays from an undefeated season and a BCS bowl berth, but a 62-52 loss at San Jose State -- the college football season's ultimate offensive barn burner -- ended those hopes. The Bulldogs therefore had to settle for a Mountain West Conference title and a Las Vegas Bowl berth opposite USC.
The story with the Bulldogs was offense, and the leader of that offense was one of the best quarterbacks in the country in Derek Carr, who led the nation with 405.5 yards passing per game, 39 yards more than anyone else. Carr threw for 4,866 yards and 48 touchdowns with just seven interceptions.
The Bulldogs still have something to prove in their bowl game because their pillow-soft scheduled was ridiculed most of the year. It featured an overtime win over Rutgers to open the season and victories over Boise State and Utah State that secured the conference crown. In terms of quality foes, that was about it.Introduction
Welcome to yet another installment of Legacy Lessons! As you're reading this, I will be traveling in China and won’t be able to answer any comments or questions for some time. Apologies for that! However, my being away should never stand in the way of new content and I have prepared a two-part article on a rather big topic while I'm gone! This is the first part, and the second part will be posted in two week's time!
This article is about Delver of Secrets. But first, we will tackle a couple of underlying strategic topics that are essential to the deck's existence before moving to what I consider to be the best variant of Delver in the current metagame.
I also talked to a couple of people whose opinion on the deck matters a lot. Similar to the article on Aggro Loam I will use quotations from our conversations to highlight other points of view or fortify a certain claim.
The "Definition" of Tempo in Legacy
If you talk about Delver of Secrets in a Legacy context, you will not be able to elude the word “tempo”.
Despite the term "tempo" being used in many ways and, despite its popularity across the spectrum, I haven’t found one that really fits the Legacy standards of tempo. I do not presume to have found the god given truth about what tempo is or what it means but I’ll try my best to find an elegant way to describe this term in the context of Legacy.
Most conventional depictions of tempo revolve around creatures. This depicts a problem as Legacy is not as creature centric as most other Magic: The Gathering formats.
Games of Legacy are not generally really defined by how creatures attack, block and trade when matched up against each other. So it appeared natural to me to take a look at what role creatures have in Legacy, with a nod to tempo.
Creatures are not a good point of reference to identify the true nature of tempo for Legacy due to reasons listed above. But all tempo decks play creatures. So how does this work out?
Well, as stated above, Legacy does not revolve around creatures. It does, however, utilize said cards to win the game in a very traditional way, which is the attack phase. And due to the fact that all decks across the tempo spectrum rely on creatures as their primary means to end the game it’s necessary to include that card type in the analysis, though it shouldn’t be the focus of attention, merely a mandatory point of observation.
Two Scenarios of Tempo
There are two scenarios of Tempo.
One is the classic one that all of us remember from playing against Canadian Threshold. Their deck is beating down on you with a minor creature and they are trading cards 1 for 1 until you are dead. This scenario does look at the match and tries to determine tempo that way.
The second possibility is quite different.
You can also look at cards in a vacuum, straying away from the big overarching context and trying to identify the value of a card simply by looking at it out of context. Both ways of looking at things have their up- and downsides and I believe it to be impossible to exclude either.
The Relationship Between Mana and Tempo
So what are the individual parts that the phrase tempo semantically consists of?
In my humble opinion the most important, the most important thing tied to tempo is mana.
Trying to understand the effect of a single card in a late game scenario with many cards and possibilities involved is hard, and evaluating the level of tempo a certain card might have created isn’t very obvious.
It’s rather easy to identify a certain degree of tempo based on mana (efficiency) though. A very simple way to measure tempo is the efficient usage of mana, acting on the assumption of that the match we are talking about is a Delver based Tempo deck playing versus any deck that worries about the battlefield. One of the key features of Delver Tempo decks is the incredibly low mana curve, best highlighted in the classic Canadian Threshold.
One way to look at Tempo is to measure the amount of mana used in any given timeframe.
If the Delver player starts with Delver of Secrets on turn 1, plays Ponder into Lightning Bolt on the second turn and casts Brainstorm into Tarmogoyf on the third turn then the player has maximized his mana usage, and, as these cards did affect the board in a fundamental way, created tempo.
If the opposing player started with a Deathrite Shaman on turn 1, skipping on plays on turn 2 and casting Lingering Souls on the third turn, he is now at the disadvantage of 2 mana, that he didn’t use while his opponent did.
You can look at this scenario of Canadian Threshold vs Esper Control as a match and analyze how the cards match against each other but you can also see both examples as individual scenarios, looking at the concept from an abstract point of view. Funnily enough, both ways to look at the very same topic adduce the very same conclusion.
Mana Efficiency
Another crucial point of the mana efficiency topic is the interaction of cards with each other.
This cannot really be looked at with the whole match in sense and has to be examined with a very specific scenario in mind. The underlying idea is how much mana you have to invest to get rid of a creature.
It’s not the absolute numbers that matter here but more relation between mana invested to create a threat (doesn’t necessarily have to be a creature, as we will discuss later) and the mana you need to raise in order to deal with said threat. If your Delver of Secrets gets exiled by Council's Judgment then the casting of Council's Judgment cannot be considered a tempo play and is therefore a tempo negative move.
If you cast Swords to Plowshares it is a tempo neutral play, if you’re looking at the mana investment. And if you manage to take out Tarmogoyf with Swords to Plowshares you are performing a tempo positive play.
The strange thing about Legacy is that removal spells are insanely cheap.
It’s not like only removal spells are incredibly powerful as the format as a whole is a collection of very good cards but the fact that Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt exist forces the format in a certain direction. That’s why creatures like Knight of the Reliquary aren’t widely played, as these cards kind of have to be tempo negative plays as quite literally all removal spells cost less than the card itself. This isn’t a problem if the threat card in question wins the game, but if it doesn’t then you need a very specific plan to justify playing such expensive threats.
Summing up, creatures are essential to a beat-down focused tempo plan and function as the primary focus of attention, no matter whether the opponent has creatures or not. Tempo can be viewed at in the form of individual cards or the match in general. Terminus may be a tempo card, despite Miracle very rarely getting to play the tempo role though. Non-tempo decks may pack tempo cards. Tempo decks should try to decrease the maximum amount of non-tempo cards. These established premises are essential to the rest of the article, so please keep them in mind.
The Best Delver Deck
What would be the best Delver deck? Is it the best tempo deck? Is it the Delver deck with the best cards or is it the Delver version that can kill the fastest? In my opinion it’s neither of those.
The best Delver Deck in Legacy seems to be the one that combines as many different aspects of other well-known Delver variants and combines them somewhat gracefully.
And as well know three colors is considered stable in Legacy so the combination of several Delver variants must therefore be at least four colors. But before we jump towards the list and its position in the current metagame it might be a good idea to take a look at the history of said deck.
To give you the best insight into the inception of this deck I virtually sat down with Tempo expert Carsten Linden from Germany, the driving force behind what should later become the best Delver deck. The initial point of construction was the best tempo Delver variant of the time, also known as Canadian Threshold, which has the lowest mana curve of them all and shines with an incredible versatility of cards.
So what made him change towards what is later known as BURG Delver? (Burg is the german word for castle and makes exaggerated german pronunciation of it very entertaining) That’s what Carsten had to say:
"After Deathrite Shaman has risen in popularity it became apparent that this card was very good against traditional Canadian Threshold builds. This also came with a surge in Tarmogoyf prevalence, yet another factor that was not very easily dealt with.”
Deathrite Shaman was a pretty strong card and one of the best non-blue additions to the Legacy metagame in a long time. It’s also often described as a 1 mana planeswalker, which isn’t really far off.
Its ability to suppress the graveyard of the Canadian Threshold player, however was a real struggle as it often meant that Nimble Mongoose couldn’t attack profitably due to being constructed in the progress of growth. So the card was adopted. Coincidentally there was also a new card printed that could deal with Tarmogoyf, Abrupt Decay which fit quite nicely into this newly emerging deck.
This version of BURG Delver was basically an evolution, starting at Canadian Threshold, which means that it tried to keep as much tempo cards (cards that are very likely to perform tempo positive moves or fortify the pro-active creature based tempo approach) as possible in deck.
The deck features 11 creatures that only cost one mana and had the usual cards that are also prominent in Canadian Threshold like Stifle and Lightning Bolt. Deathrite Shaman came and so Tarmogoyf had to, partially, go.
This was one of the biggest weaknesses of this list, in my humble opinion. It did take away a creature that could close the game out fast as soon as the first creature has been dealt with, because let’s be realistic, how often does the first turn Delver actually win the game? But this wasn’t as much of a problem back then as it would be, as we’ll see next week.
This drop in velocity was made up for with the Shroud ability of Nimble Mongoose and different cards that are certainly falling on the control spectrum of cards just like Bitterblossom or various Planeswalkers that were introduced to the deck at a later point.
The deck itself was described as a “Shroud Control Deck” by Carsten which appears to be a perfectly fitting description. However it also highlights that it couldn’t really pursue the purely tempo oriented approach that its predecessor Canadian Threshold has been acting out so proficiently quite as much as it initially wanted to, a notion that it shares with its later inceptions.
Here’s the old list that was played back at GP Strasbourg by Carsten Linden.
This deck is close to what many considered optimal but it still has, or had, a couple of areas that I believe could’ve been worked around. But due to the advent of Dig Through Time we cannot really use this deck as a baseline for an up-to-date build any more as said Delve card doesn’t really have a good synergy with Nimble Mongoose.
These two just won’t ever become friends.
But there’s still much that held true back then and can be used for our future discussion about the deck. When I asked Carsten what the inherit advantages of his deck over other Delver variants were he answered very card centric, though in a way that didn’t only concern his deck but also the BURG variants of now.
"The advantage of this deck is the option to have another 1 mana threat in Deathrite Shaman, which doesn’t only shore up bad match-ups like Dredge but also accelerates the deck and is unbelievably flexible. Additionally you have the best out to an opposing Deathrite Shaman in Lightning Bolt while still having access to all the good cards in the sideboard.”
That’s it for this week, I hope you enjoyed it!
Please let me know what you think in the comments, but keep in mind that I won’t be able to answer your comments for a couple of weeks. I will answer them eventually, though, promised. In two weeks we will focus on what BURG Delver has developed into and what position it holds in the current metagame.
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Feb. 6, 2014, 2:55 PM GMT / Updated Feb. 6, 2014, 3:34 PM GMT
Virginia isn’t for all lovers.
An antiquated state law that makes it a crime to have sex outside of marriage remains on the books after an effort to decriminalize it failed to move out of a House subcommittee Wednesday.
HB914 would repeal the state statute that classifies it as a misdemeanor for “any unmarried person to voluntarily have sexual intercourse with any other person.” Those convicted face a $250 fine but no jail time.
Lawmakers decided not to move the fornication bill forward because they had concerns over potential loopholes the change would make in relation to incest and other sex crimes, the Virginian-Pilot reported. The House Courts of Justice committee decided to table the bill.
A spokesman for Delegate Mark Sickles, a Democrat who introduced the proposal, told NBC News that members want to make sure the bill is redrafted correctly and sent to the state Crime Commission for review before it is taken up again.
Eight people were convicted of fornication last year, according to the Virginian-Pilot. Prosecutors might charge someone with it as part of a plea deal to avoid a stiffer sentence.
So-called morality laws, meanwhile, remain a hot topic in Virginia. Adultery also is a misdemeanor in the state, and carries a $250 fine. Suicide is considered a common-law crime.
“I think we generally support the idea of taking these no longer enforceable, moral laws off the books,” Anna Scholl, executive director of advocacy group ProgressVA, told the Virginian-Pilot. “Government shouldn’t be peeking through your bedroom window to see what’s going on.”We may earn money from the products/companies mentioned in this post. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Melt in your mouth chicken, covered in a rich creamy sauce with fresh basil. An easy weeknight supper that’s sure to impress!
The first time I ever remember using fresh basil was in a homemade Parmesan meatball recipe. Oh, those meatballs were so good!
I grew up using the dried basil. But once I tasted the fresh, I knew my life was changed. Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but I knew I loved fresh basil!
Fast forward to one week ago. I was grocery shopping on Tuesday, as I always do, when I came across a package of boneless, skinless chicken thighs marked down at Walmart. Total price – $3.24. That sounded like a pretty good deal to me, so I picked them up and my mind immediately began whirling! Cream cheese, cream, and fresh basil! Yes!
This recipe is the product of that whirling. The sauce is much like a cream-cheese based Alfredo and it tastes delicious. I actually made it again this week with boneless skinless chicken breast and we ate it as Alfredo with Dreamfields pasta. The fresh basil just kicks it up a notch.
My husband was so impressed with the sauce, that he immediately began coming up with other uses for it. (Perhaps some of those ideas will become future recipes!) He declares it is the best Alfredo sauce I have ever made (and I wasn’t even intending for it to be Alfredo)! He would have been happy to just eat the sauce with a spoon!
I’m sure your family will love it just as much as mine. It doesn’t require any special ingredients, and it is super easy to put together.
Print Recipe Creamy Basil Chicken Thighs {THM-S, Low Carb} Ingredients 2 Pounds Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs or chicken breasts
1 8 ounce Block of Cream Cheese softened
1 Tablespoon Butter
1/2 Cup Chicken Broth
1/2 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream
1/4 Cup Grated Parmesan Cheese from the green can
1/4 Teaspoon Mineral Salt
1/4 Cup Fresh Chopped Basil lightly packed
Garlic Powder and Italian Seasoning to taste Instructions Season chicken on both sides with garlic powder and Italian seasoning.
In a skillet, brown chicken with a small amount of oil until cooked through.
Meanwhile, in a sauce-pot, melt softened cream cheese and butter. Whisk with a whisk until smooth.
Add chicken broth, whipping cream, Parmesan, and salt to cream cheese mixture.
Add chopped fresh basil to sauce and stir until combined.
Remove chicken from skillet, and drain drippings.
Return chicken to pan, and pour sauce over top.
This post contains affiliate links which provide me with a small commission when you make a purchase through those links. The profits go to the support of my family and this blog. Thank you!Filipino ex-priest faces US extradition on sex charges 1517 SHARES Share it! Share Tweet
By Agence France-Presse
A Filipino ex-priest is facing extradition to the US for allegedly sexually abusing minors there in the 1990s, authorities said Wednesday.
Fernando Sayasaya, 53, was tracked down by police in a province outside Manila on Sunday nearly two decades after he fled the US and went into hiding in the Philippines.
He was accused of molesting two boys in the state of North Dakota where he worked for the Catholic Church, police said.
He was put on administrative leave in 1998 following the allegations, but a US court only issued an arrest warrant for Sayasaya in 2002.
“He was charged of gross sexual imposition, that he (allegedly) made sexual contact on two young brothers who were aged under 15 at that time,” Chief State Counsel Ricardo Paras told AFP.
Before fleeing the US, Sayasaya apparently told his superiors he wanted to spend Christmas in the Philippines but never returned, Paras added.
He said the suspect, since defrocked, would be sent to the US for trial in compliance with a 2006 US extradition request that was approved by a Filipino court in 2012.
An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said he was not aware of Sayasaya’s case.
“Even if he is a Filipino but he is not (assigned) in the Philippines, we don’t have any jurisdiction over him,” Father Jerome Secillano, the conference’s executive secretary for public affairs, told AFP.
Tags: administrative leave, Fernando Sayasaya, Filipino ex-priest faces US extradition on sex charges, Manila Bulletin, Ricardo Paras, Sayasaya254
68718 E Palm Canyon Dr
Cathedral City, CA 92234
(760) 328-2300
WOW!!! First time here and very impressed! Very nice vibe and friendly people. The staff were very attentive and the food was excellent. I had a wedge salad (which was huge) and the broiled salmon which was cooked to perfection! Definitely NOT bar/food type of establishment. A great place in a great location that you will love to take family/friends to! Thank you for a great experience! I will certainly be back again!
Trilussa is one of the gems of an otherwise kind of bleak, amorphous area in Cat City. Why the city hasn't developed this area, which varies from half-hidden restaurants to desert-y fields, is a mystery. It's a perfect location but just so weirdly laid out that it's offputting. A fountain here, a theater there, intermittent parking areas, some shops set way back from the street and barely visible, with no sense of a cohesive space. Some interesting restaurants have popped up here - Justin, Pollo Dokey (Peruvian food), and a little cupcake/pizza place whose name escapes me - but you'd almost never know it, as signage is poor. You just have to park and start wandering until you know the exact location of your destination. But enough complaining; back to Trilussa, one of the anchors in this area. Service is brisk, food is excellent, ambiance is sort of casual elegant. Our group has been there several times, ordering spaghetti & meatballs, rack of lamb, basa filet piccata (a fave with five of eight of us ordering it), beef with peppers, and the new york steak. Only the beef and peppers disappointed, seeming too heavy. The others were excellent. The summer fixed price menu is a deal at $18.95, with appetizer, main dish, and dessert. The standouts in the latter category are a creamy cheesecake that's wonderful and yummy homemade canoli. Homemade spumoni also got the thumb's up from our bunch. Only down side is that the acoustics are muddy, making it hard to hear the live singer unless you're sitting next to her (it's a large space). Takeaway? We've been here several times and will keep it on the list of good restaurant options, in or out of season.
I am a frequent patron for happy hour and have always enjoyed the delicious cuisine, delightful live entertainment, and most importantly, the attentive service by the dedicated staff...bartender Marco, server Hector, runners/bussers Oscar and lovely Ana. Tonight, an unruly customer refused to give up the available seat next to him at the bar to help accommodate my small, polite party of 4. He said he would never allow a "faggot" next to him and demanded that we "get the f*@# out." The manager Pablo quickly intervened and escorted the belligerent fool out while he protested with homophobe profanities. We ended up having a wonderful evening and I will always return where I feel appreciated and respected.
The last time I was here was when it first opened, so I didn't really know what to expect. The olive tapenade served with the hot bread is amazing. I probably could've eaten that for my dinner. Instead, I got the mussel and clam linguini, which was good, but probably could've used some extra flavor (garlic, chili...something) in the sauce. The waiter was friendly, but the man that seated us (not sure if he was the full time host) was frazzled and hardly greeted me. Overall, the food is good and isnt the typical Olive Garden Italian, but it also isn't the best compared to others in the area (it is the desert after all, not a huge city...expectations needs to be adjusted accordingly).
I was in Palm Springs for a conference and my vendor took a bunch of us here for dinner. This area of Palm Springs seems to be very quiet and empty at night. We had a 8pm reservation and the place was practically empty. We also had a very rude taxi driver drop us off. Luckily the hotel driver picked us up afterwards. But once inside the restaurant, our waitress was wonderful and the food was delicious. We were in a nice side room that was private. I had the Chicken Carciofi: chicken breast, pancetta bacon, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts in a cream sauce. This was really tasty. Loved the mushrooms and artichoke hearts. Sauce was flavorful. Chicken was nicely cooked. The others in my party had a variety of dishes and everyone seemed to enjoy their meals. For dessert I had the Cannolo: mascarpone & ricotta filling in a crispy pastry tube & topped with confectioner's sugar. This was very traditional and was so tasty. I ate the whole thing even though I was stuffed from my entree. I really enjoyed the food and service from our waitress. If I am ever in Palm Springs again, I will check it out a bit earlier in the evening when more people are there.
We didn't have a reservation so we had to sit at the bar. Blessing in disguise! Fun, friendly vibe, live music and amazing happy hour deals on food and drink made us glad we ended up there. Local regulars obviously have made a home of this place. Excellent italiAn near Mary Pickford theater. Friendly, professional staff. Love Trilussa! I will be back.
Best Italian!! Love the Chicken Carbonara. Deliciously creamy. Happy hour is great value. Lemon drop very good. Atmosphere authentic old school comfortable with great service.
Wow! This place was amazing. Close to Palm Springs; great service and wonderful menu. Loved the low key live music!
Absolutely perfect in every way. We needed to dine before seeing a movie at the nearby Pickford theater. The service was friendly, the food was 100% satisfactory, the service was the top, and everyone was so punctual, we were able to walk to our movie completely satisfied!
I really don't know what to give this restaurant. So it averages out to 3.5 stars. It was so dark and elegant but the energy of the patrons was stuffy. High ceilings nice formal table settings but the flower reliefs on the wall did not invoke any feeling. A live duet was playing in the background which was a lovely touch. The gnocchi was delicious and my son loved the medium rare rack of lamb. My hubby said the ribeye was cooked medium instead of medium rare. My veal scallopini was slightly on the chewy side but the mushroom sauce was yummy. Maybe to mask the veal. The pricy cost did not meet the evaluation of the food. However Jorge our server was knowledgeable and gave good service. He gets a 5 stars.I would definitely go back and get the tiramisu for carry out. It was out of this world. It's actually made on the premises.
We had a lovely time here. Highly recommend this for a bit of upscale family dinner. You should request Hector as your server he's the best here! My oldest loved the espresso! Ana was fantastic as well!
Second time here two days in a row because my partner and I wanted to go back. Nice restaurant, nice ambience. They have a lounge singer sometimes. Came here for dinner yesterday at 7pm without knowing reservations were required, but William, the manager accommodated us in a heartbeat. Very gracious and nice. This is why they earned the 5 stars in my review. Next is the food. They serve exceptional Italian food. We had the filet mignon and we are in love. From the calamari to the pasta to the pizza and the wine, all is perfect. Will definitely recommend.
Won't be disappointed!!!!! I had been here a few times for dinner and always enjoyed my meals and the atmoshere. So when I decided to throw a birthday party with 30 guests I picked Trilussa and boy am I glad I did. They did a most excellent job. Turned over the patio to my group... came up with a special menu of many delicous items for my guests to chose from... and provided super service. The whole evening was a success. So if you are looking for a lovely dinner for two.... or a party that will wind up a blast... Trilussa can't be beat.
We are in Palm Spring for summer vacation (yes we are crazy).. We found this place on yelp and we loved it. They have an amazing 3 course summer special and it is sooo worth it. The calamari is amazing my daughter almost ate the whole plate. The seafood pasta was amazing and had fresh fish salmon mussels and huge prawns.. The vodka pasta had pancetta so of course it was yummy. Must try great place and fun atmosphere.
Hadn't been to Trilussa in years, too many "meh" experiences and better choices for Italian in the Valley but I've gotta say they've clearly kicked it up a notch in quality of their food and ambiance. Our group had pizza, veal parmigiana, sole, buffalo mozzarella, Caesar salad--each pretty damn good. Recommended---we'll definitely be back soon!!!
The food was great. The manger Pablo was awesome. We had an issue with a Togo order and the manager smoothed it all over. The only issue we had was that Sandy was very rude multiple times. We are all in the industry and we understand that things can happen. But multiple times is not ok. Even when he knew that he messed up the first time. Things definitely need to change and I won't be back until they do. It really takes a lot for me to leave a review, good or bad.
I ordered a lot from this restaurant via postmates I ordered custom pasta (fresh prawn) with linguni and Alfredo sauce. I checked the box for jumbo prawn. So I'm assuming this means extra shrimp. The order arrives and I literally have one shrimp. Extremely disappointed.
Great Food and Great Service! We ordered a bunch of appetizers, salads / soup and entrées and they were all awesome. I highly recommend you give these guys a shot.
Great food, great wine, and great atmosphere! They had a live jazz singer and it was totally relaxing to have dinner and listen to her voice. I definitely recommend coming here for the food and everything else!It only seems like a week or two since HERE maps were updated for the World Cup, but already there’s another update out, with a host of new features and details on the way. So what can you expect from the latest map update? We take a look.
The latest HERE update includes a mass of extra details, covering everything from more comprehensive mapping in smaller countries, to better quality 3D landmarks in some more-established cities, to point address rendering in several new territories.
To update the maps, grab your Windows Phone and open the Settings app, then tap applications > maps > check for updates. Because the update only contains the streets and other details we refreshed or improved, the amount of data you have to download is limited to the minimum.
What can you actually expect from the new update though? Mauritius is one of the main locations to benefit, with the map getting a comprehensive overhaul. Island shapes and rough street coverage has now been upgraded to a detailed coastline and comprehensive street network coverage, making it far easier to plan your holiday and explore the likes of Port Louis using your Windows Phone.
More impressive 3D landmarks
3D landmarks can make a massive difference when you’re navigating an unfamiliar location, making it easy to compare exactly what’s around you with what you’re seeing onscreen. And the latest update brings better quality textures to important 3D landmarks, with more detail on offer for the more famous locations.
Point address rendering introduced for new countries
The latest update also sees ‘point address rendering’ for a lot more countries – that’s to say, you can browse the map and see at-a-glance where addresses and buildings are on along the streets. A visual representation of exact addresses makes it a lot easier to find your destination, so good news.
Point address rendering has now been enabled in the following countries and regions:
France, South Africa, Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Russian Federation, Ukraine, Baltics, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Puerto Rico.
Have you already updated the maps on your Windows Phone? Let us know in the comment section belowWhen I was six or seven years old, I would spend my Saturday afternoons at the local Korean Baptist Church. A pink textbook opened in front of me, oversized hangul lightly sketched on sheets of paper. I kept my eyes turned downward behind a veil of straight brown hair as I avoided speaking. My face would become red and hot with embarrassment, as the guttural sounds got caught in my throat and I fumbled over words — the syllables swirled around in my mouth, only to be spit out awkwardly, a jumble of sounds always a little off.
Korean school was a short-lived experience — I hated going because even though I wasn’t sure what it was, I knew I was different. I looked different. I was shy and out of place. I hated my limited Korean and I hated feeling like an outsider. I spent more afternoons hiding in the secret places of a little garden than talking to my peers.
I am — like 4.2 million Americans — multiracial. My mother is Native American and white; my father, Korean and white. If my parents had followed the life paths their families had in mind, I would not be here. A product of teen parents, I stumbled through life and grew up with them. And when they came into the picture, my two younger brothers joined our little family.
Among American children, the multiracial population has increased almost 50 percent to 4.2 million people since 2000, according to The New York Times. The 2000 census report was the first time that Americans had the option to select more than one race — and reports flooded in, indicating the number of mixed race people in the United States.
Reports from the 2000 census data determined that 2.4 percent of the U.S. population identifies with two or more races and California is second in the country for largest percentage of multiethnic populations, beat out only by Hawaii. According to the 2010 census, 2.9 percent of the population identified as two or more races, and the numbers are likely to continue to increase. As a result, federal groups like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have added a “two or more races” category to their documents in response to the growing numbers of multiracial individuals.
But growing up in a mixed race family has meant knowing there is something different about our mismatched family and negotiating what this has meant. I had to determine what exactly being multiracial encompassed and what it meant to exist simultaneously in two very different cultures.
With the rising number of people who identify as multiracial, conflicts concerning self-identity, social and legal issues, as well as community relations are appearing within private and public lives.
The Numbers on a Growing Population
Recently, The New York Times has run a series of articles and multimedia projects on multiracial people and the growing number of self-identified multiethnic people in the United States. The Times even incorporated a family tree application where users could upload a family history, detailing how different ethnic and cultural lines met and mingled. Sifting through family histories, the migration of people, communities and cultures becomes clear — borders, continents and oceans have been crossed, culminating in the history of everyday families.
The rise in multiracial couples is a sign of the continuous growth of mixed ethnic families. Since 2008, 1 in 7 |
for whistleblowers that are saying things about the State Department that you don't like. And I believe that all that comes from the top of any organization. So I think that's where the questions are increasingly leading, and it's embarrassing for the country. These are things you typically see in the third world, from unestablished republics and other places. You don't see that here. That's what's troubling about the recent string of events.By Lord Chris Smith, Special to CNN
Editor's note: Chris Smith is a member of Britain’s House of Lords and a former Secretary of State for Culture and Media in the Tony Blair government. This is the second in a new series looking at how the world sees the U.S. election, and what the Obama presidency has meant for ties with other countries. The views expressed are the author's own.
When Barack Obama was running for office four years ago, and then being triumphantly elected that November, the overwhelming view in Britain was that he was exciting, intelligent, inspirational, and offered the chance to move away decisively from the dark shadow that George W. Bush had cast over virtually the whole of the rest of the world. Polls taken here regularly showed between 70 percent and 80 percent favorability for Obama, a view shared right across the political spectrum.
The Bush effect should not be underestimated. We had all watched with fascinated horror as the Florida ballots were counted and re-counted back in 2000. We had been shocked and moved by 9/11, and had wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends. But we had been appalled by the decision to go to war in Iraq, and the mishandling of everything that followed. We were already puzzled by the close affection apparently demonstrated by our own prime minister, Tony Blair, towards Bush; but when he plunged into Iraq alongside him Blair’s popularity and support in Britain took a nose-dive – and has never really recovered. Obama offered something very new and different, and we loved what we saw.
Four years on, things are different – inevitably – but not hugely so. There is less of the excitement and inspiration, yes, and there is considerable disappointment that he hasn’t lived wholly up to the promise of the earlier campaign. The disappointment, though, is tempered by an acknowledgment that it has been almost impossible for him to get anything through a deadlocked Congress, and most British politicians are heartily glad that we don’t have the same extreme balance of power here. A British government can, within reason, get on and do what it sets out to do: held to account by the court of public opinion, of course, but able to govern with a much greater degree of certainty.
Despite the deadlocks and the willful “oppositionalism” of the Republicans, however, there is general admiration for the fact that he has managed to achieve quite a lot: the stimulus package (in contrast to the austerity approach that is bedevilling European recovery), the health care reforms, and a more open-hearted approach to international relations, especially. A clear majority of the British people would endorse a second Obama term without hesitation.
In case you might be thinking that “he would say this, wouldn’t he” – being a politician of the center-left – I would hasten to point out that this is a view shared by most of my Conservative friends and colleagues too. You have only to look at the nature of the Republican Party to see the reason why. The Republican Party of Eisenhower and Rockefeller has vanished, and in its place has come a hard-right, anti-government, socially conservative, economically extreme-liberal party that somehow manages to convey a combination of callousness and nastiness almost as a matter of pride. The labeling of the British National Health Service as a creation of Soviet-style tyranny is a case in point. The NHS carries massive support across every single political party in Britain, and is deeply loved and cherished. The denial of the reality of climate change is another. The fact that our global climate is changing, already, as a result of man-made emissions is – again – accepted across the political spectrum here. The proposal to legislate for gay marriage has come, here in Britain, from a Conservative prime minister. The Republicans are simply way out of step with the British center-right.
There’s another worry with the Republicans, too. If a Romney-Ryan administration were to take over, especially with a Republican Congress behind them, dominated by voices from the Tea Party, the likelihood is that economic policy in America – pulling back sharply on public spending and programs whilst liberating the wealth of the wealthy – would plunge the U.S. economy back into recession. The world needs a growing U.S. economy in order to begin to recover, itself. Our British economy needs a progressive, growth-orientated American administration in order to be able to pick itself back off the floor.
So “Obama without illusions” is where the British are placed right now. We know the current president isn’t perfect – even if we permitted ourselves a brief hope, four years ago, that he might be. But he’s the very best we have, or are likely to have, and we’re all keeping our fingers firmly crossed for November 6.Last day Texas had no traffic deaths: 11/7/2000
Houston firefighters work to remove two people trapped inside a SUV after a Chevrolet Trailblazer driven by a fleeing shooting suspect crashed into the SUV and several other vehicles during a police chase along the inbound feeder of 290 at Hollister Wednesday, June 27, 2012, in Houston. Houston police say the suspect died at the scene but it was unclear if he was fatally shot by the officers or died from his injuries after the car wreck. less Houston firefighters work to remove two people trapped inside a SUV after a Chevrolet Trailblazer driven by a fleeing shooting suspect crashed into the SUV and several other vehicles during a police chase along... more Photo: Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle Photo: Melissa Phillip, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Last day Texas had no traffic deaths: 11/7/2000 1 / 12 Back to Gallery
Over the course of 12 years, a lot can happen. We could elect multiple American presidents, take part in the census twice and watch the Chicago Cubs continue their never-ending World Series drought.
It's a long time especially when you consider this little-known stunning fact: The last day there wasn't a single fatality on Texas roads was 12 years ago Wednesday, on Nov. 7, 2000.
The statistic puts a stark perspective on the 41,252 people who have died in fatal traffic accidents on state roads during that time frame.
Texas Department of Transportation officials on Wednesday said the majority of wrecks on 80,000 miles of state roads were caused by people not wearing seat belts, drinking and driving and distracted driving.
"One fatality on a Texas roadway is one too many, and to see as many as eight or 10 in a single day is unacceptable," said TxDOT executive director Phil Wilson.
The Houston area alone has more than 10,000 miles of state-run roadways. Experts have historically called the area the nation's leader in alcohol-related road fatalities among populous cities, citing its limited public transportation and urban sprawl that causes people to drive many miles.
Harris County Sheriff's Office spokesman Thomas Gilliland said deputies have worked to combat the problem with aggressive awareness programs and initiatives that expedite search warrants for blood samples from drunken driving suspects who refuse breath tests.
Road safety advocates point to legislation as a possible solution to decreasing traffic fatalities.
John McNamee, M.A.D.D. Southeast Texas affiliate executive director, said the Houston area has had "horrific" crashes recently. "Almost every week there have been one or two fatalities due to alcohol," McNamee said. "It's still a big issue."
He lauded local law enforcement's efforts to inform the public about safe driving and hopes the state Legislature passes a requirement to put an ignition interlock system in first-time DWI offenders' vehicles.
Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the National Governor's Safety Administration, said Texas' independent anti-government intrusion culture could be detrimental in preventing traffic deaths. He said 39 states have passed distracted driving bans. In 2011, Gov. Rick Perry vetoed a texting while driving ban.
Adkins also pointed to the dangers of a new toll road near Austin that allows motorists to drive 85 miles per hour.
"We have to create a culture in Texas and across the country where traffic deaths are not acceptable," he said. "Traffic crashes continue to kill people every day, and they are preventable."
erin.mulvaney@chron.comIn his 2008 Environmental Update, Steve Jobs, the C.E.O. of Apple, highlighted the company’s new product environmental performance reports — part of Apple’s efforts to design more efficient and eco-friendly products.
“We are constantly working to reduce the emissions associated with Apple’s products,” Mr. Jobs wrote. “This means making them more efficient in size and energy consumption.”
That was the thinking behind the new MacBook, released last month and described on the company’s Web site as “the greenest MacBook ever” — and there are quite a few design upgrades, green and otherwise.
Worth noting at the outset: just as the Prius comes at a premium over non-hybrid vehicles, the new 13-inch MacBook costs more than comparable notebooks running Microsoft Windows. The MacBook model I tested was the pricier $1,600 model, with bigger hard disk and faster processor than the less pricy version, which retails for $1,300.
Gateway’s $1,000 MC7803u notebook, by comparison, boasts a 16-inch widescreen display that’s similar to the MacBook’s in fit and finish, twice the video memory (512MB v. 256MB) for better game-time performance, a 320 GB hard disk, and more ports and expansion slots than any one person could ever use.
Still, there are standout performance and usability improvements in the new MacBook — from the lighter weight (4 lbs.) to the brighter, instant-on backlight LED screen and backlit keyboard. And while you wouldn’t know by looking at it, the new trackpad surface is made of glass, and responds to a number of iPhone-like gestures for flicking back and forth through Web pages, or zooming in and out with a pinch of the fingertips.
I also thought the lack of a dedicated click button would be a deficit (the pad itself is clickable in the new model), but I took to the new press-to-click method in a matter of minutes.
But what about the new MacBook’s green credentials?
Well, as green gadgets go, the machine performs well. It achieves both Energy Star 4.0 compliance, as well as a gold rating from the Green Electronics Council. (Of course, 103 other notebooks have received gold status, too.)
The new MacBook has received mostly positive reviews from green-gadget watchers elsewhere — albeit with caveats. “Its new laptops are definitely better,” Casey Harrell, Greenpeace International’s toxic campaigner, told the technology news service Newsfactor, adding: “But not all toxic pieces have been eliminated yet.”
The toxic contents he’s referring to are generally made of polyvinyl chlorides (PVCs) or brominated flame retardants (BFRs), which are noxious when burned — something that happens frequently, Newsfactor pointed out, in the polluted overseas recycling markets for discarded Western electronics.
Hank Green, founder and editor of EcoGeek.org, saw a different problem. “Although the computer is very efficient and uses less toxic and more recyclable materials,” Mr. Green said in an e-mail message, “the one revolutionary aspect of the MacBook — its solid aluminum brick construction — is not green at all.”
The Apple Web site touts that the body of the laptop is made of “a single piece of solid, recyclable aluminum that replaces dozens of extraneous pieces once destined for landfill.” That may be true, but writing at EcoGeek last month, Mr. Green highlighted unnecessary energy expenditures:
The new process slices the computer case out of a 2.5 lb. brick of highly processed aluminum. At the end of the process, there’s a 0.5 lb. case. So, right off the bat, Apple is creating a block of metal with a huge amount of embodied energy (from the mine through the final milling process) and the vast majority of it is just going into the recycling bin to be re-melted and re-processed.
“The one revolutionary change is a step backward,” Mr. Green said.
Following is a breakdown of some of the green and not-so-green parts that go into the MacBook (and sometimes come out as recyclables).
***
Aluminum All-Around: A single slab of solid, recyclable aluminum – which Apple refers to as the “unibody enclosure” — defines the machine’s external anatomy. The MacBook’s lid and base are also aluminum, and together the three pieces comprise an easily separable chunk of metal when it comes time to recycle. As mentioned above, however, some reviewers have suggested that a lot of excess aluminum processing may be involved.
Mercury/Arsenic-Free Glass Screen: While all LCD screens are glass, most manufacturers cover the front with protective plastic shields. The MacBook’s LCD LED backlit screen is fronted with recyclable glass, and contains none of the mercury or arsenic contained in traditional CCFL (that is, cold cathode fluorescent lamp) displays. One advantage of backlit LED displays is they light to full brightness when turned on, yet consume 30 percent less energy than conventional CCFL LCDs.
Brominated Flame Retardant and PVC-Free (Mostly): Apple eliminated “brominated flame retardants” — or BFRs — from the MacBook’s circuit boards, and discontinued use of polyvinyl chlorides, or PVCs, in the unit’s internal cables and connectors. Both materials have poor health and environmental reputations, and their elimination allows the company to claim that MacBook is — internally speaking, anyway — completely PVC-free. But because the external power cord and adapter contain PVCs, Apple is unable to claim PVC-free status for the whole consumer package. The company said it is working to achieve PVC-free status for its external parts.
Less Packaging: Made from a minimum of 25 percent post-recyclable material, the MacBook’s completely recyclable packaging is 41 percent smaller than the previous model’s packaging — a reduction that’s not only appreciable to the buyer, but also to the environment, since Apple says it can fit 25 percent more units into shipping containers, thereby reducing greenhouse gases by way of reduced shipping sizes and materials.By all accounts, 2015 was a stellar year for music. Across many different pop-adjacent genres, newcomers and career artists alike were innovating, synthesizing, reinventing, and galvanizing their approaches, resulting in a handful of career peaks for some of the most vital artists walking. Just take a look at EW’s list of the 40 best albums of the year, a remarkable cross-section of incendiary hip-hop, exploratory electronic pop, sparse indie rock, at least one revelatory covers album, and whatever you want to call Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (besides awesome, obviously).
RELATED: The 5 worst singles of the year
But you can’t truly appreciate the greatness of the year without acknowledging that there was also plenty of garbage foisted on the universe in 2015. Below are the five worst albums of the year, and whether they have been singled out for embarrassing ideas, poor execution, or a horrifying worldview (or all three), take solace in the fact that this will probably be the last time we have to deal with them. Let’s dance on their graves, shall we?
To continue reading more on EW’s Best and Worst of 2015, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on newsstands Friday, or buy it here.It was one of the several big looming deadlines Congress is confronting as it hurdles towards the end of the year: The exhaustion of the part of Social Security that supports disabled people when they're unable to work.
It was also an opportunity. Over the past year, as lawmakers puzzled over how to shore up the fund, they also entertained a host of ideas for how to make the program better. Primarily, as we wrote last week, they were hoping to make changes that would support beneficiaries as they transitioned back to employment, given the abysmally low number of people who do that now.
[An essential safety net program is still a barrier, not a gateway, to employment.]
Well, turns out congressional leadership was working up a budget deal that would take a crack at both things. The current draft borrows from another part of Social Security to replenish the disability fund for about seven years, and also authorizes a number of tweaks that could amount to the biggest adjustments the disability insurance program will see for years.
Several of the changes are aimed at rooting out waste: The bill expands the use of investigation units that partner with local law enforcement agencies to track down people who might be gaming the system. It also forbids ex-felons from making disability benefits determinations, beefs up penalties for fraud, and instructs the Social Security Administration to move everyone onto electronic recordkeeping, in an effort to avoid overpayments.
Why something needs to happen to make it easier for disabled people to work. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
The thing that advocates for the disabled had advocated was a way to smooth out the "cash cliff," which is shorthand for how benefits disappear if a disabled person decides to work and makes more than $1,090 per month for more than nine months. The budget deal orders up a test to see what happens when you make that cliff into more of a slope, by decreasing a person's benefits by $1 for every $2 they earn. (A similar experiment has been underway for years, yielding moderately greater earnings for participants; this change would allow for the offset to kick in even when people make less than that $1,090.)
Now, this return-to-work incentive probably wouldn't save much money in the short term, even if it were to be implemented more generally. "I don’t have much confidence that ending the cash cliff with a one for two programs is likely to do much to reduce the rolls," says Cornell University professor Richard Burkhauser, who studies the economics of Social Security. "It is more likely to increase the number of people on the rolls but increase the share who do some work."
That might be good for disabled people and the economy writ large, which would benefit from their participation in the workforce. But Burkhauser thinks the more effective route would be to help people stay at work if they're able before ever needing to apply for disability insurance, since returning to a job after an extended period away can be extremely difficult. There are a number of ways to do that, including asking employers to pay more of the cost of disability insurance, which would incentivize them to provide better accommodations for injured or sick employees.
Congressional aides expect the disability insurance tweaks in the budget will save $5 billion over 10 years, which is peanuts compared to the program's $141 billion annual cost. The fact that Republicans didn't win bigger cuts, however, is a victory for the Obama administration and a relief for disabled people and those who work with them.
More thoroughgoing reforms may have to wait for another year, or another Congress. Without the specter of the disability trust fund running out, there's less pressure to make programmatic changes -- and in a still-Republican Congress, it appears that the changes that were going to happen have happened in this budget.CHAMPAIGN — Both candidates for state representative in Champaign-Urbana’s 103rd District say they favor decriminalizing marijuana and allowing its recreational use.
Thoughts? Tell Tom here
Republican Kristin Williamson and Democrat Carol Ammons made the remarks Thursday evening at a candidate forum at Mike N Molly’s in downtown Champaign. The event was sponsored by Smile Politely, a local online magazine.
The two are running in the Nov. 4 election to succeed retiring state Rep. Naomi Jakobsson, D-Urbana.
“I would support decriminalizing it and putting regulations in place that allows us to bring it to market in the state of Illinois. I think that at a time when we are in such a budgetary crisis we have to consider it as a revenue source,” Williamson said.
“We’ve also seen the studies about the impacts that marijuana arrests have on our criminal justice system,” she said. “I think it’s important to make sure that we are keeping streets safe and that we have the resources we need to handle the most violent offenders, that decriminalizing marijuana is something we have to consider.”
She said she favored a permitting process, much like the state is doing now to grow and sell medical marijuana legally.
“There’s going to be some costs associated with it, and the state would have to be able to recoup that through tax dollars,” she said.
Williamson said the state would have to collaborate with municipalities on the issue.
“The estimated revenue per year off of decriminalizing marijuana in Illinois is about $126 million, just from the actual cash crop itself. That doesn’t even include the estimate of new businesses that would come in. There’s new businesses and an influx of people entering Colorado every day,” she said.
Ammons said she would vote to permit the recreational use of marijuana, particularly because of the tax dollars it could generate.
“We have seen this throughout the other states that have taken this issue on and I support it,” Ammons said.
Later she added, “I think it’s good for the community to generate revenue. We’ve seen that in California and Colorado, and it’s done a very good job of helping them close their budgetary gaps and providing people ready access to its medical use as well.”
Although Illinois lawmakers have approved a medical marijuana pilot program, state officials say it’s about six months away from becoming operative.
A marijuana decriminalization bill was introduced in the House last year and cleared one committee, but was sent back to the rules committee where it remains. Jakobsson recently signed on as a cosponsor of the measure. It would make possession of 30 grams of marijuana or less a petty offense subject to a $100 fine.
Last month, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called on legislators to decriminalize marijuana possession in order “to free up our criminal justice system to address our real public safety challenges.”
Also at Thursday’s forum, Ammons said she supports increasing the Illinois minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, and then “indexing that number so it will continue to go up.”
Williamson declined to say what she thought the minimum wage should be.
“I can’t put a number that will sound reasonable on what a minimum wage should be. My focus is on creating living wage jobs that allows people to pay their bills, and that their life is not based on getting up and going to work every morning,” she said.
“We absolutely have to change Illinois’ fiscal and political climate so that we can attract employers and make even local businesses confident enough to expand.”Yahoo researchers think spam filters could trust an Honest
Abe e-mail, while charities could get penny-rich in the experimental CentMail program.
Yahoo’s researchers want you to voluntarily slap a one-cent stamp on your outgoing e-mails, with proceeds going to charity, in a bid to cut down on spam. Can doing good really do away with spam, which consumes 33 terawatt hours of electricity every year, not to mention way too much of our time?
The idea behind CentMail is that paying to send e-mail — even a single cent — differentiates a real e-mail from spam blasts, and thus, spam filters can be adjusted to let the stamped mail sail right through, according to a report from New Scientist. Users would get to choose which charity benefits from their penny missives, which the researchers hope will convince people to pay CentMail for something that’s currently free.
Anti-spam companies estimate that spam comprises more than 90 percent of e-mail, a situation explained, in part, by the lack of real expense in sending e-mails. The idea is to create a class of certified e-mail which will allow spam filters to concentrate on, well, messages touting “Rolexes”, Viagra and very cheap copies of expensive software.
Users would pre-pay, and then a stamp would be automatically added to each outgoing e-mail (presumably, no licking is necessary) and the proceeds would go to the approved charity of the user’s choice. Centmail is currently in a private beta, but you can add your e-mail address (for free!) to be notified when it launches.
This is not the first attempt to add certification and/or money to the e-mail environment to cut down on spam. Microsoft has its own research project, while AOL’s Goodmail successfully offers anti-spam protection to large marketers.
But perhaps the most widespread authentication solution is the Sender Policy Framework, which helps prevent spammers from pretending to send e-mails from a company’s domain name — but is largely invisible to every day users, even if, as customers of services such as Gmail, they use it every day.
It’s also not clear how the system will prevent spammers from sticking stamp codes in their e-mails to pretend they paid the tax. That same problem doomed a company called Habeas, which in 2004 offered legitimate users a copyrighted haiku to stick in their e-mail headers, with the threat to use the heavy penalties of copyright law to crack down on abusers.
That didn’t stop the spammers.
It’s not clear how much the proposal would help, however, since so much of the spam is now sent using botnets, which are networks of zombie PCs whose owners have no idea their computers are part of a massive spamming organization.
Considering how much legitimate e-mail ends up in the “dead letter office” of today’s spam filters, consumers’ tendency to prefer free stuff, and the vastness of the spam problem, perhaps this is better thought of as anti-anti-spam filter protection for real people, rather than as a true anti-spam solution.
Update August 17: The story was corrected to say that spam wastes up 33 terrawatt hours per year, not 33 terrawatts per year. As reader CB explains, “Watts give you energy per time already so it doesn’t make sense to add ‘per year’. A watt-hour is the energy used by a 1 Watt device running for 1 hour, so you can talk about watt-hours per year as the amount of energy wasted.” As G.I. Joe once said, math is hard.
Photo: Flickr/matthiasxc
See Also:GALVESTON - When you live on a narrow strip of sand next to the ocean, resilience isn't optional.
But even storm-toughened Galvestonians weren't prepared for a second wave of tragedy that washed over them some six months after Hurricane Ike struck the city in September 2008.
Many of the trees that blanketed the island were not leafing out in the spring of 2009. Saltwater from the hurricane's storm surge was killing the great live oaks on the esplanade of Broadway Boulevard. Enormous trees that had shaded elegant Victorian homes for 100 years were meeting the same fate.
"When everything went brown, it was like going to Mars," said Rebecca Jaworski, who has lived in an East End home since 1995. "There was a canopy of oaks that shaded about three-quarters of our side of the block - the houses as well as the yards. They all were lost."
Like many others around the city, the Jaworskis turned the remains of a beloved tree into a shrine. A sculpture fashioned from the trunk of a live oak stands on a pedestal in their front yard with an inscription: "In Memoriam - Galveston's Lost Oaks."
More than 40,000 trees were lost to Ike, according to the nonprofit Galveston Island Tree Conservancy. A replanting campaign that began in 2010 has made significant progress: Volunteers have spent more than 17,000 hours planting more than 16,000 trees, including 250 live oaks and 60 palm trees on Broadway.
Now this effort faces a new threat - not from nature, but from politicians in the state Capitol. Gov. Greg Abbott wants the Legislature to strip cities of the authority to regulate - and essentially protect - trees on private property. It's one of 21 items the Republican governor has placed on the agenda for a special session that begins July 18.
This action would weaken tree-protection ordinances in more than 50 Texas cities.
Local leaders across the state oppose the idea, but the issue has particular resonance in Galveston because of Ike's devastating effect on its tree canopy.
In the storm's aftermath, trees became precious jewels. Homeowners agonized for months, hoping in vain that their treasured oak or magnolia would somehow recover, before accepting the inevitable. Every dead tree that was felled and hauled away left the island a little barer, its people a little more sorrowful.
"Everyone was just so devastated by the loss," said Jackie Cole, president of the nonprofit Galveston Island Tree Conservancy.
To bolster the recovery effort, the City Council passed a tree-protection ordinance in 2015. The measure requires property owners to seek a permit before removing trees considered significant based on their size or other factors. Trees that are unhealthy, that pose a hazard or that meet certain other criteria may be removed without penalty; others may be cut down only if the owner replaces them with trees of a specified size or pays into a local tree fund.
Issue of property rights
Many of the large trees that survived Ike stand on private property. Most qualify for protection under the ordinance, but they would be at risk if Abbott gets his way. The current owners might be devoted to the trees, but property is often sold and redeveloped.
"With the huge loss of trees that Galveston suffered, the idea that these magnificent trees would be lost because a developer wants to save some money makes me very sad," Jaworski said.
Abbott and his supporters say laws like Galveston's trample on property rights. Abbott, who has complained about his personal experience with Austin's tree regulations, has called such rules "socialistic."
"I feel like those who own their trees have the right to do with their trees what they want," state Sen. Konni Burton, R-Colleyville, told the Texas Tribune.
Urban infrastructure
Comments like those push the right buttons among Abbott's conservative base. But property rights must be balanced against broader community interests.
That tree in your front yard belongs not only to you, but also to your neighbors; its roots and its shade don't recognize property boundaries.
Jackie Cole makes a persuasive case that trees should be regarded as essential urban infrastructure, like streets and sewers.
Trees absorb massive quantities of water that otherwise might rush into people's houses during floods. They improve air quality. They cool off everything around them. They increase property values. They make people healthier. And, of course, they're pretty.
Galveston is grieving its lost trees. Now its leaders must worry about losing an important tool to help replace them and maintain those standing.Derby County are leading the race to sign Manchester United Forward Jesse Lingard, according to FLW sources.
FLW understands that Derby County are the favorites to capture Manchester United striker, Jesse Lingard, on loan until the end of the season. Lingard made his United debut in the Premier League opener against Swansea this season but only lasted 24 minutes, having to come off thorough injury.
Lingard made 16 appearances for Brighton and Hove Albion last season, scoring four goals and helping them into the play-off semi-finals. The 22-year-old has plenty of experience in the Sky Bet Championship having had spells with Leicester and Birmingham previously to his time at Brighton. Lingard has also played for England at U17 and U21 level.
Derby currently sit 2nd in the Sky Bet Championship and a player with the ability to score important goals such as Lingard could be crucial in helping Derby knock AFC Bournemouth off the top of the table.
Sky Sports News HQ are reporting that Derby are also linked with a loan move for Hull’s winger Tom Ince before the 11pm deadline tonight.
FLW understands that despite Ince supposedly signing tonight Lingard may have to wait until the emergency loan window on 10th February, to make his move to the iPro Stadium.After deciding to shut down its print magazine and lay off most of its online staff, IDG is hitting pause on its annual gathering where big products like the first iPhone were once unveiled. Of course that stopped when Apple pulled out of its regular attendance of the show and began holding its own events in 2009. However, the Macworld Expo lived on as an event for third-party Apple companies and the Apple community to get together each year.
According to the show's planners, it's not the death of the event, but rather a break. "We are announcing today that Macworld/iWorld is going on hiatus, and will not be taking place as planned in 2015," Paul Kent of IDG's World Expo told Six Colors today. "Our MacIT event, the world's premiere event for deploying Apple in the enterprise, will continue next year with details to be announced in the coming weeks."
"It's safe to assume that the Macworld Expo as we knew it won't come back."
"While technically this is a 'hiatus,' I think it's safe to assume that the Macworld Expo as we knew it won't come back," says Jason Snell, the former editor in chief of Macworld. "Maybe it will take some other form — there are lots of amazing Apple-themed events out there — but I've got my doubts."
Ahead of the change in Apple's participation, the annual show had played host to numerous product launches, something Apple now does at its own events — just like the one coming up on Thursday. That list includes the original iPhone unveiling in 2007, the iPod mini in 2004, Mac OS X in 2000, iTunes in 2001, and its Safari browser in 2003. It also played host to major events in Apple's history, including the announcement that Microsoft was effectively bailing it out from the brink of bankruptcy with a $150 million partnership deal in 1997.New Delhi: The Aadhaar biometric authentication failure rate in the ambitious rural job guarantee scheme is as high as 36% in Telangana, data collated by the state government shows.
Telangana is the first state to release such detailed data about the failure rates of Aadhaar payments, but analysts fear that this could be reflective of a nationwide trend.
This comes at a time when the government is moving swiftly to link all social security schemes and government benefit programmes with Aadhaar in an effort to plug leakages and ensure that the government payments reach the intended beneficiary.
The main reason for the payment failure in the operation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was biometric mismatch, the data showed. Due to wear and tear of their fingers, rural labourers have failed the biometric authentication. And since iris scanners, largely because they are expensive, have not been deployed widely, workers have been denied wage payments due to them.
“I would say that this is due to human error in several blocks. The officials have been instructed to rectify the errors. This issue has been taken up with Telangana state officials as well as with other states and I am confident will be corrected soon," said Aparajita Sarangi, joint secretary in the ministry of rural development in New Delhi.
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues Aadhaar, declined comment.
However analysts were critical.
“This essentially shows that the Aadhaar technology is flawed specially when it comes to biometric mismatches. It is hurting the livelihood of the people. In case of ATMs, the failure rate is only 0.5%. But for Aadhaar authentication for MGNREGA wages and social security pensions, the failure rate is as high as 30%, which is completely unacceptable," said Himanshu, associate professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
In 2016-17, the total provisional expenditure of both the centre and the states combined for MGNREGS was the highest at Rs58,056 crore. Out of the 101 million active workers under the MGNREGS, around 44 million workers are given payments through Aadhaar.
As per the official data put up on the Telengana government’s website, the authentication failure rate for Aadhaar-based transactions was at 36% for the period between January to till date; this was higher than the failure rate of 34% recorded in the October-December period last year.
In fact, the failure rates in the two districts of Adilabad and Wanarapathy was as high as 46% and 38% respectively in the period between 1 January and 6 April.
Himanshu pointed out that none of the developed countries are using this technology. “UK had similar technology model like that of Aadhaar, but they too have abandoned that completely," he said.06-14-2016 (Photo: Rex Tillerson, CEO of #Exxon #Mobil Corp, attends the 12th St. #Petersburg International ) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow
NATO Besieges Russia. Exxon-Mobil Breaks the Siege. Stephen F. Cohen, NYU, Princeton University. EastWestAccord.com.
“…We will agree to deploy by rotation four robust multinational battalions in the Baltic states and in #Poland,” said the Secretary General. He underlined that these battalions are part of a much bigger shift in NATO’s defence and deterrence posture, including a larger #NATO Response Force, a new Spearhead Force and 8 new small headquarters in the eastern part of the Alliance. “All together this strikes the right balance between a greater ability to reinforce, and boost our forward presence,” he added. NATO has also taken action to ensure that Allied troops can move faster across Europe, for exercises or reinforcements, if needed. “Last month, the Spearhead Force conducted an exercise which showed how far we have come. One thousand troops and four hundred military vehicles moved from #Spain to #Poland within four days,” said Mr. Stoltenberg. He stressed that NATO will continue to work to improve freedom of movement for Allied troops and equipment, because speed can make the difference when a crisis emerges. The Secretary General underscored that Allies must spend more on defence to sustain this shift in NATO’s defence posture. He highlighted that, following a long decline in defence spending, 2015 was the first year after many when the Alliance registered a small increase in defence spending. “Our estimates for 2016 show a further increase,” said Mr. Stoltenberg. The annual real change stands at around 1.5 percent, an increase of over 3 billion dollars, with twenty Allies planning to spend more on defence in real terms this year. “So this is real progress. After many years of going in the wrong direction, we are starting to go into the right direction,” he said.
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_132275.htm
“… |
study indicates the relative importance of certain lifestyle factors in increasing the risk of cancer. Factors such as a poor diet, smoking, being overweight and drinking too much are already known to increase the risk not only of cancer but also of a range of serious chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and kidney and liver problems. This study provides another good reason for people to live a healthy lifestyle.
It’s important to note, however, that the individual risk of different cancers depends not only on lifestyle but on other factors including genetic make-up, family history and getting older. Leading a healthy lifestyle is not a cast-iron guarantee against cancer, but it does reduce the risk of getting it.Disgraced former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik walked free from a federal lockup in Maryland and went home to New Jersey today, ending a three-year prison stint for corruption.
Kerik, otherwise known as federal prisoner No. 84888-054, was released from the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Cumberland, and strolled into his Franklin Lakes, NJ, home at about 1:40 p.m.
His wife Hala and two daughters greeted and hugged him outside. Kerik, wearing blue jeans a striped gray sweatshirt, waved at reporters and photographers gathered across the street.
Later today, the whole family and more than a dozen pals will celebrate with a feast provided by Brownstone caterers, owned by the Manzo family of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.”
“He’s looking forward to getting home and seeing his family and his house,” said a friend.
Kerik, once eyed for the post of national homeland-security chief, was freed a year earlier than his four-year sentence called for, but will be confined to his home until October.
Kerik has told friends he’s looking forward to having a good meal on the outside. Brownstone’s repast will include shrimp scampi, fresh mozzarella and brownies.
Kerik went to the slammer for a scandal that forever tarnished that once-respected lawman’s reputation.
He pleaded guilty to tax fraud and making false statements in connection with $250,000 in free renovations to his Bronx apartment.
A phone call into Kerik’s home this afternoon was picked up by a woman, who said the family would not make any comment today.
Additional reporting by David K. Li and Andy SoltisPaul F. Tompkins here, to talk “No, You Shut Up!” and anything else.
HI, I’m Paul F. Tompkins. I host No, You Shut Up! on Fusion.
I host a bunch of podcasts. And I’m a stand-up comedian.
“No, You Shut Up!” airs Thursdays at 10PM pt/et on Fusion (which can be a little tricky to find, so here’s a handy guide)
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Or you can just use the channel finder: http://fusion.net/tv-channel-lineup/
https://twitter.com/PFTompkins/status/581231915514068993
Victoria’s helping me get started. Go ahead and AMA.
http://paulftompkins.com/image/114702666199
Which was your favourite Speakeasy interview and who would you most like to interview that you haven’t already?
So difficult to pick a favorite! I loved chatting with Tony Hale & Judy Greer spring to mind. I’d love to interview Stephen Colbert.
Growing up, did you realize that growing a mustache and having excellent taste in clothing would help define you as a person?
Yes.
Will we be seeing a Beyond Belief TV show? Please say yes!
Fingers crossed!
If you had to choose one of your characters to live as for the remainder of your life – including all of their CBB canon (eg, cake boss being bit by a cake scarab) – which would you choose and why?
Garry Marshall. He seems the happiest and most easygoing and just generally seems to LOVE LIFE.
Any further information on this picture?
There is further information! I am not at liberty to divulge it.
Who is the funniest person you know?
My wife.
If you had to pick one, what would be your favorite memory of working with Bob Odenkirk?
One time Bob despised a sketch of mine so much at a readthru, he told me what was wrong with it for a full ten minutes before concluding, “So I guess I’m saying I hate this sketch and it’s trying to kill me,” as he dropped it on the ground.
Since you are a fan of the Comedy Bang Bang podcast yourself, who is your favorite character that someone else plays?
I am a huge fan of James Adomian’s Tom Leykis, Lauren Lapkus’ Traci Reardon, and anything Andy Daly ever does.
Have you started recording for BoJack Horseman season 2?
Recording for Bojack Horseman Season 2 is completed! It is now being animated.
When you decided to do an AMA, did you realize you’d get over 600 questions in less than half an hour?
Technically, it’s ten actual questions and 590 “When did you first learn about U2″s
Now that TAH is coming to an end live showswise, I was wondering, have Paget Brewster’s and your portrayal of Frank and Sadie changed a lot since the first shows a decade ago?
They really haven’t! It’s rare, but it sometimes happens that a character emerges fully formed right out of the box, and that was certainly the case with Frank and Sadie. We are still performing them the way we did a decade ago! And i could do it for decades more.
Do you have advice for other celebrities regarding how to treat and interact with fans?
“Be nice.”
The answer was right there, in “Roadhouse,” all along.
Your interviews on “Speakeasy” on youtube have been great. What do you think makes for a better interview?
I am lucky on Speakeasy because I can listen in a way that late night hosts can’t; they have to be looking for jokes and keep the comedy going. I can listen to what my guest is saying with no agenda other than, what more can I find out? In either case though, being present is the key.
My friend and I are big fans and met you last October and she was so happy she was crying. How did that make you feel? And is that how you know you’ve made it? When women cry when they meet you?
It is a strange thing. I am not famous, not by the way fame is measured by the average person. It is very touching to me to have touched someone else’s life. It shrinks the world in a lovely way.
What is a joke that you’ve heard that you can’t forget?
Jonathan Katz had a joke in his act where he goes home to Boston and hadn’t heard the accent for a while. He’s in an elevator and someone said [in a Boston accent] “Call out your floors” and he says, “I’m impatient with the elderly.”
Who was the biggest influence on your comedy?
I don’t think I could point to one person as my biggest influence. Like most creative people, I am a collection of a thousand influences. That said, SCTV had a profound impact on me when I was younger. Still holds up.
Did you think about going after the Colbert job? Does that type of nightly chat/magazine/political show interest you at all?
I would have loved a show like that but I am not on those lists of people. Luckily, the show I CURRENTLY have expanded from 15 minutes to 30, and we were able to expand it from a kind of one-joke idea into a really weird, silly show that I very much love doing. Honestly, check out “No, YOU Shut Up!’ It really makes me laugh.
Can you tell us the process that went into producing the Pod F. Tompkast?
Man oh man. It was involved. I had to write the sketches– both the Great Undiscovered Project and the Live at Largo sketches– I had to book time in Eban’s studio, book Daamen and, later, guests; had to arrange a phone call with Jen Kirkman, record & edit that phone call; record multiple voices for the aforementioned GUP; then Eban had to edit everything together and get it back to me to upload.
What would you say to a friend who recently had their heart broken?
“Will you marry me?” Sometimes ya just gotta shock ’em out of it!
I saw the other day that the wonderful Steve Agee made you break on stage really hard. Is there another time that you can share with us where you broke character really hard?
There have been many instances of my breaking onstage, many of me breaking other people, but that Steve Agee thing was just nuts. Look for it on the Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast on the coming weeks
When you start doing Spontenation, will that mean less or more appearances on Comedy Bang Bang?
It will probably be the same amount!
Will Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber be gracing us all with his musical genius on your new cast of pods?
Doubtful! The new podcast is not about creating characters in the way I did on The Pod F. Tompkast or as I do on Comedy Bang Bang. The episodes will be self-contained, so any characters are created on it will probably just live for that hour.
I love your work and cannot wait for your next standup album. When will it ‘drop’?
I’ll be recording a special/album in Los Angeles this coming June. I hope to have all relevant information shared soon!
What podcasts do you listen to regularly? What’s a podcast that doesn’t exist, but you’d like to listen to/appear on if it existed?
I listen to a lot of Earwolf stuff, one of my absolute faves being Hollywood Handbook. I also love Stop Podcasting Yourself and Judge John Hodgman. Baby Geniuses. Too many to mention them all!
On Dead Author’s Podcast, generally do you prefer those who do research on their respective author or those who completely improv it and/or do you have a favorite example of each?
BOTH ARE GREAT! Honestly. If someone knows the subject well, they are so confident and relaxed that it’s a breeze. If they are completely ignorant of their subject, things get REALLY silly.
Do you write your stories down in full, or do you write the main bits down and improv the sections in between?
I do bullet points and shape them live in front of the audience, then edit or add as needed with successive performances until it hums and it’s stored in my head.
What would you make if you had unlimited money and resources and creative freedom to do it?
A weekly variety show.
What is your favorite alcoholic & non-alcoholic beverage?
Beer Ice-cold Coke in a glass bottle Honorable mention: Water
Have you ever considered turning the Dead Authors Podcast into a television show? It’s one of my favorites and I’m so sad to see it go!
I’d love that, but I cannot IMAGINE what American network would go for it.
We are huge fans of yours and subscribed to Fusion just to get your show. We love it! Do you have any input on the puppets that are used in the show? Do you write for the show as well?
I do not have input on the puppets– we mostly use existing puppets from the Henson Creature Shop. Some of them have been discovered, literally, in desk drawers. But our amazing puppeteers are able to take these misfit toys and create characters and voices for them that are perfect for our show. It starts with the writers having need of a character. They look around the shop to see what we haven’t used, then collaborate with the puppeteers on what the character will sound and act like. It’s a really great team.
THANK YOU FOR ASKING ABOUT “NO, YOU SHUT UP!”
What do you like to do in your spare time?
ABSOULTELY NOTHING
Say it again!
What is it about podcasts that draws you to host and/or guest on them?
The freedom you have with podcasting is tremendous. Let’s hope it stays that way.
What can we expect from your new podcast? Something we are all familiar with about yourself (characters, etc.) or something completely new?
Somethings will be old. Some things will be new. I will not be borrowing anything. Blue makes my eyes pop.
How much of NYSU is improvised?
A good chunk! It was much more improvised in the first two seasons. But since we expanded, there’s a solidly funny script that we embroider around the edges. And we keep ourselves open to changing things on the fly, no matter what the script says.
Do you think the rise in social media usage has improved comedians’ relationships with fans or made it a little too personal?
It gets difficult sometimes! Lines get blurred and one sometimes has to remember, oh, we’re all strangers and there are subtleties and nuances of expression that are lost in typing. Overall, though, I think it’s good.
Any advice for wearing a suit when there’s snow and dirt everywhere?
Wear a coat over it and get a roof.
How do YOU balance work and family?
It is actually very difficult, and I do not have kids! people should stop asking this question of moms because there’s no answer that doesn’t make the mom feel bad!
I was wondering if Sponteanation is going to put an end to the Pod F Tompkast once and for all? Will it be a restructured version of it, or something completely new?
The Pod F. Tompkast will never truly be over. I reserve the right to make an episode of it any time I feel like it. But I am doing this weekly show now, and it’s about all I can handle in addition to my various other projects.
I hope everyone will enjoy SPONTANEANATION!
I listened to your story about getting a driver’s license late on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. How old were you when you got it, and what was the reason you didn’t have it earlier (besides maybe Philly’s public transport)?
The entire story of my adventures in driving will be included in my upcoming special/album “Crying and Driving,” to be recorded this coming June!
Who decides which authors are on The Dead Authors Podcast? Is it you or the guests who decide which authors to play?
The guests always decide!
I’d love to know your prime motivations for dressing so fancy, for so long? Even the young PFT was festooned with a bowtie. What is the fashion philosophy that drives your inimitable style?
Fashion is absurd. Wear what you like!
What did you think of this AMA Highlight?
commentsChelsea-lee's organic lemonade and cake stand was shut down following a complaint about health and safety.
An 11-year-old girl's cupcake and lemonade stand has been shut down by Bunbury city council officers over health and safety concerns.
Chelsea-lee Downes had set up a roadside stall in the South-West city, selling homemade lemonade, cupcakes and lemon meringue pie.
Her step-mother Marissa said Chelsea-lee was simply trying to make some money before Christmas.
"It is such a sad day when a kid can't make a bit of extra cash just selling a few cupcakes and lemonade," Ms Ruderforth told 720 ABC Perth.
She said Chelsea-lee was devastated when council staff shut the stall down before it had even opened.
The council was alerted after the Ruderforths promoted the stall on social media several days before it was set up.
A member of the public then reported the stall to the council.
Environmental health manager Sarah Upton said when staff arrived to shut it down, Chelsea had not even finished setting up.
"The city actually received a complaint about the type of food products that she was using, and also where she was set up was unsafe for people to pull over," Ms Upton said.
I just think customers go there knowing it's an 11-year-old girl's stall. If you don't want to buy, then don't. Marissa Ruderforth
"The city applauds her efforts in trying to be entrepreneurial, but it is important to seek professional advice in relation to legal requirements.
"Custard and cream are very high risk products. Those products cannot be manufactured at home for sale.
"She was also set up on a busy road on a council verge so there was nowhere for people to pull off the road safely."
Ms Ruderforth said it was disappointing that the council did not tell them of the complaint earlier, and she felt buyers could have used their discretion.
"When we did it, we did a big cafe set up so we moved quite a bit of furniture and Chelsea got up at 4am to start cooking, so it was all fresh," she said.
"We had our four-wheel-drive with a fridge, we had ice - everyone is aware what you need to do with food.
"We did understand the principle, but I just think customers go there knowing it's an 11-year-old girl's stall.
"If you don't want to buy, then don't."
Ms Ruderforth said Chelsea-lee had been boosted by the community support.
"On the day she was quite devastated, but now she's quite motivated by everyone's support," she said.
The unsold cakes were given away to family and friends, and the council said it would look at helping Chelsea-lee set up another stall - this time within the regulations.
"If she can look at manufacturing food in a commercial kitchen, then there is a possibility that she will be able to do it in the future," Ms Upton said.
"We would obviously give her some advice to make sure that it was safe for everybody in how she was manufacturing and storing it, but it is mainly the high-risk products that are causing the issue."American author and radio host Stephen Lendman says Muslims have been vilified in the United States for a very long time, but after the September 11, 2001 attacks America officially declared war on Islam.
Lendman made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday while commenting on the incident of Ahmed Mohamed, the American Muslim boy from Texas who was arrested and handcuffed for taking a homemade clock to school.
“Young schoolboy Ahmed Mohamed brought a clock that he made in a school in Texas, and he was accused of bringing a bomb, a terrible incident that just abused him and his rights terribly,” Lendman said.
“This is what goes on in America. Ordinary Muslim children or adults are viciously assailed or assaulted or vilified, because America declared war on Islam officially after 9/11,” he stated.
“But Muslims have been mistreated in America for a very very long time,” he added.
“As a young boy going to the movies in the 1040s, I remember films where Muslims were bad guys, and other people were good guys. Well at seven or eight or nine years old I didn’t know that this was plot,” the analyst noted.
Mohamed, who is the son of a Muslim immigrant from Sudan, was arrested on September 14 after his clock was inexplicably mistaken for a bomb by a teacher at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. He was suspended for three days, though not charged.
His arrest highlights how minorities and Muslims suffer from racism and Islamaphobia in America, observers say.
According to a report, Mohamed has decided to leave the United States and move to Qatar with his family to continue his education there.
Mohamed, 14, has accepted a scholarship from the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, his family said in a press release on Tuesday.
On Monday, Mohamed met with US President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington. After his detention, Obama invited him to bring his clock to the White House.
In addition to being invited to the White House, Mohamed received an outpouring of support from scientists, politicians and celebrities.PERTH, AUSTRALIA — Last August, I wrote an eXiled piece about an Australian protest group called the “Convoy of No Confidence,” calling it out – correctly – as a Koch-ite Astroturf scam, and shaming Rupert Murdoch’s national broadsheet, The Australian, for its misleading coverage of the event. My article got a wider audience when the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) put up a shorter, politer version of my eXiled article on their opinion site, The Drum.
The Murdoch monkeys didn’t like me messing up their corporate Astroturf campaign, but since they couldn’t find fault with my reporting, they fell back on the old hack’s smear by labeling my article “conspiracy theorist.” Lobbyist-turned-Murdoch-columnist Christian Kerr wrote, in a feature article titled “The pernicious effect of conspiracy theories”:
The ABC’s The Drum website published a 1300-word dissertation hinting at dark links between the rally organisers and US industrialists David and Charles Koch, the alleged bankrollers of the Tea Party movement.
Christian Kerr thinks: “From sleazy lobbyist to Murdoch propagandist, I’ve come a long way!”
Kerr, a Murdoch monkey who apparently still refuses to believe the Koch brothers bankrolled the Tea Party (despite the Koch brothers’ own proud boasts admitting as much), went crazy with his conspiracy-theory smears, lumping myself and the environmental movement together with Holocaust-denier conspiracists like David Icke:
British journalist and author David Aaronovitch warns of a relativism in debate magnified by the web. In his book, Voodoo Histories, a debunking of conspiracy theories, he offers the bleak assessment: “if all narratives are relative, we are lost”. Relativism, Aaronovitch reminds us, “doesn’t care to distinguish between the scholarly and the slapdash, the committed researcher and the careless loudmouth, the scrupulous and the demagogic”. Next month another British author will visit Australia. David Icke, a former BBC sports presenter and spokesman for the Green Party, believes the human race was engineered and is secretly controlled by a band of reptilian shape-shifters from the Draco constellation. He has sold out all his four lectures, in Perth, Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Sydney, the venue for which, in a clear sign of the relativism Aaronovitch warns of, has been kindly provided by the University of NSW. Icke’s conspiracies may appear to be curious but harmless fantasy. Yet Jewish groups have been horrified to discover that new-age magazines available in most newsagents have carried advertising for the League of Rights publishing arm that still peddles older, darker conspiracies, such as the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. …Talk of “big tobacco”, “big pharma”, “big oil” and “big coal” stems from conspiracies, and yet has become part of the mainstream. Writing on The Conversation website, the ANU’s Will Grant and Rod Lamberts slammed “the mindless and counterproductive demonisation of Big Oil and Big Coal in tackling climate change”. The industries, the pair explained, were not run by the equivalents of Monty Burns of The Simpsons, Maxwell Smart’s KAOS adversary, Siegfried, or the diabolic mastermind of three Bond books and films, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. “Those who got into the coal and oil industries did so for the simple goal of making a profit by providing us with the energy we need for the modern economy,” Grant and Lamberts wrote. “They didn’t do it to be evil. They don’t want to destroy the world. They are not the nefarious oligarchs that so many would have you believe.”
This, it seems, is the libertarian Right’s latest line of attack here in Oz: pretending that the Koch Brothers are just another conspiratorial catch-all – another unreal-sounding bogeyman, like the Bavarian Illuminati, or the Trilateral Commission. [In the USA, Koch apologists at the Cato Institute, Reason magazine, and Koch whores like Megan McArdle and Slate’s David Weigel once argued that the Koch brothers were little more than conspiracy theory catch-alls too, but they’ve since dropped that propaganda strategy—our Aussie libertarians are a little slower than yours.] Not just the Koch brothers, in fact, but any possibility that Big Oil and Big Coal might have a vested interest in fighting environmental protections is, to a lobbyist-turned-Murdoch-monkey like Kerr, just a “pernicious” conspiracy theory. Move along, people – there’s nothing to see here.
Christian Kerr should get ready to eat his words, because his favourite libertarian think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, has spent the past three weeks hosting British conspiracy theorist (and climate change denier) James Delingpole and subsidising the Australia-wide book tour of his magnum opus, Killing the Earth to Save It – a sleazy pamphlet claiming that climate science is a dastardly plot, by the Club of Rome, to form a world government. Yes, the same think-tank that lists Christian Kerr as a member promotes the real thing in whacko conspiracy theory propaganda. Our lobbyist-turned-Murdoch monkey might want to get some toothpicks, I hear those crow pies leave a lot of small bones.
* * *
If last Monday’s issue of The Spectator is to be believed – which is an open question – then Delingpole’s tour has been a smashing success with the Right. He’s appeared on Andrew Bolt’s TV talk show, met with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, visited five capital cities, spoken at the Royal Perth Yacht Club and stayed at an “exclusive safari camp” near Exmouth with single rooms valued at AUD $1028.00 a night. (They really look after you, those right-wing think tanks!)
Delingpole can’t help but gloat about how much the local Tories adore him:
My first Sydney gig, as we rock stars call them (hosted by the Centre for Independent Studies), went down a storm, helped hugely by two hecklers. (I do love a bit of argy bargy.) Someone said, apparently, that I was the second-best thing they’d heard after P.J. O’Rourke, which is good enough for me. [The Spectator Australia, 5 May, 2012]
And, as I noted when Mark Steyn was touring Australia, conservatism in this country has become a Gogolian comedy scenario, with a pack of corrupt, provincial squires falling over each other to please the first huckster who rides into town: “Please, Mr. Delingpole, tell us all about London… It must be very exciting, going to all those Heartland Institute conferences… Would you like a cigar, Mr. Delingpole? Some scotch? Ah! Here come my daughters! Go on, take your pick!”
Quality doesn’t matter here. Think-tank culture will make VIPs out of the rankest puffballs, the nuttiest tin-foil-hatters, as long as they walk in lockstep.
James Delingpole: A real-life Nathan Barley, and proud of it!
One of Delingpole’s sponsors has even asked him if he would consider moving to Australia. He weighs the pros and cons in his regular, British, Spectator column:
‘Ah but you’d miss the culture [in London],’ Aussies tell me. Well, maybe. Except that unlike, say, Barry Humphries or Clive James or my Oxford tutor (Tasmanian-born) Peter Conrad, I’ve spent my formative years so super-saturated with all that arty-farty-literary stuff I don’t have the craving to escape and broaden my mind that ambitious Australians have. It’s all in there, stored like the fat in a camel’s hump.
Charming. After everything his Aussie sponsors have done for him, he still can’t resist patronising them – and they only love him more for it. In fact, even as his hosts ply him with fine food and expensive hotels, Delingpole still finds things to bitch about. His “exclusive safari camp” might provide “canapés and… Bombay Sapphire gin and… five-star cuisine,” but it gets a thumbs-down from our “rock star” conspiracy theorist because the showers have a 20-litre-a-day water limit.
His biggest complaint, though, is this:
Who the hell is Jon Faine and what is his problem? Ever since our sticky encounter on his ABC Melbourne talk radio show I’ve had conservative Aussies coming up to pat me on the back for having stuck it to him good and proper. Really? Had I realised just how brusque and negative his line of questioning was going to be, I would have been much, much ruder. My policy in interviews is much the same as Israel’s in international diplomacy: be courteous to me and I’ll be lovely to you; step out of line and it’s mass retaliation time.
Oh, Jamie! It must hurt so much, having to deal with all these non-sycophants and their negative vibes. I can’t imagine how much it hurts – how much it hurts to be a precious little yuppie conspiracy theorist, to be so selectively bred for incest that the tiniest whiff of real debate fills your House-of-Usher nervous system with searing pain! (It’s a good thing Delingpole has those “conservative Aussies” around to pat him on the back and heal the wounds of his fragile self-esteem.)
* * *
But there’s something missing from The Spectator’s coverage of Delingpole’s “sell-out” book tour: we never hear much about the actual book, Killing the Earth to Save It (or Watermelons, as it’s titled in the US).
So I guess I’ll have to describe it.
Like all climate-change deniers, Delingpole faces a challenging problem: explaining why anyone would want to fabricate global warming – and take so much effort to maintain this “hoax.” Delingpole’s answer is to borrow a page from the John Birch Society playbook and claim it’s all a conspiracy by the Club of Rome to form a world government, “an eco-fascist tyranny so powerful and all-encompassing it makes Nazi Germany look like Mary Poppins’ nursery.”
The Club of Rome, says Delingpole, “is the Macavity the Mystery Cat of the global green movement. Its invisible paw prints are all over everything, but by the time you get to the scene of the crime, the sinister feline has vanished.”
Anyway, the conspiracy in Delingpole’s book goes like this:
1) In the 70s, the Club of Rome invented the “weasel concept of ‘sustainability’” as a ploy to make governments surrender their sovereignty to the “New World Order agenda” and submit to the misanthropic religion of Gaia worship.
2) The UN got in on the scheme after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, developing “a document known as Agenda 21,” which is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” intended to strip local, state and national governments of their power and “[give] unelected bureaucrats from the UN the right to decide how much meat you eat, how much fuel you use, even how habitable your office is in the sweltering heat of high summer.”
This Agenda 21, Delingpole tells us, is “a little like returning after a long holiday to your local church. You discover that it has been decorated with pentacles and that the vicar is now wearing a cloak and preparing to sacrifice a goat where the altar used to be.”
This feverish metaphor continues for another paragraph:
“What’s going on?” you ask, in horror. “Well, it’s what we all agreed on,” says the vicar. “When did we agree to all this? No one asked me!” “We put a message on the notice board. We held consultation meetings for anyone who was interested. Did you not get a call from young Damien, on our steering committee? The general feeling was that Christian worship was too old-fashioned, patriarchal and Western for our younger members, and that Satanism was a more vibrant, diverse and inclusive way forward for the community.” “But I want the old church back. I liked the old church!” “I’d love to help but I’m afraid it’s out of my hands. You see, as a signatory of Agenda 666 this church is now statutorily committed to our new code of practice…”
Delingpole seems to have a curious obsession with the Number of the Beast. Earlier, attacking the UN’s 1987 Brundtland Report on sustainable development, he writes:
The idea that began a decade earlier as a twinkle in the eyes of [Club of Rome founders] Alexander King and Aurelio Peccei had finally been made flesh. Few were capable of spotting at this stage that this oh-so-nice-looking, bonnie, bouncing, gurgling babe had a birthmark on his scalp that read “666.”
Amber Alert! Someone, please give James Delingpole a shirt! Better yet, a straightjacket!
By now you might be wondering about Delingpole’s sources, and where he picked up all this Agenda 21 conspiracy stuff. Well, he tells you, right on page 174: “Probably the best analysis of the Club of Rome’s tangible effects on global environmental policy comes courtesy of a website called ‘The Green Agenda.’”
It seems Delingpole gets a lot of his information from that site, because two pages on, he cites its expert “analysis” once again:
Yes, Sustainable Development sounds like a good thing too – but that is only because we have been culturally programmed to think that way. We associate it with pleasant notions like wild flower meadows left to flourish and Icelandic waters teeming with cod (unlike the poor, overfished, never-to-be-restored Grand Banks), but in fact its underlying philosophy has much more to do with taxation, regulation and control. As the Green Agenda website puts it: It is an all-encompassing socialist scheme to combine social welfare programmes with government control of private business, socialised medicine, national zoning controls of private property and restructuring of school curriculum which serves to indoctrinate children into politically correct group think.
So what is this Green Agenda website which Delingpole cites as evidence? It’s a page maintained by an obscure Christian fundamentalist group in New Zealand calling themselves the “Gethsemane Olivet Fellowship.” Their main website, The Watchman’s Post, which is only a click away from the Green Agenda site, has this greeting for visitors: “WELCOME to this Christian/Messianic End Time Messenger!”
That’s right! End Time Messenger! It’s a website full of apocalyptic prophecies about One World Governments, the Antichrist, the coming “Magog War” and the Second Coming of Jesus. And it even has a little text box reading: “Significant Link: The Green Agenda – We strongly recommend that you make time to read our sister site for some vital information.”
So we have two sites; the Green Agenda webpage, which offers the “factual, SECULAR material” about the dastardly One World Government conspiracy, and The Watchman’s Post, which punctuates the same information with millennial ravings from the Book of Revelations:
WE NOW CONSIDER THE ISSUES OF THE ‘ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT’ OR: ‘GLOBAL GOVERNANCE’ FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE SCRIPTURES, THE HOLY BIBLE, AND WHAT ARE THE DANGERS FOR THIS WORLD AND FOR YOU. The present reality is that influential individuals and groups since 1970 have been working very carefully to develop plans, TO UNITE THE WORLD, which are all based on totally anti-Creator God principles, in deliberate rebellion against the Most High God, Creator of Heaven and Earth! They have chosen Environmental changes to use as a ‘whip’ to bring Individuals (especially teenagers) and Governments to do what they want! […] The POWER BEHIND THIS GOAL of a single Government for the entire World – is a very real, EVIL, SPIRITUAL BEING: SATAN. […] Satan’s LAST Plan – the biggest prize of all – is for his MAN to dominate the entire world and eliminate those ‘other people of God,’ God’s ‘treasured possession,’ chosen, called and redeemed ~ Gentile Christians!
Delingpole, it seems, lifted the “secular” version of this conspiracy from the Green Agenda website and put it straight into Chapter Eight of his book. He claims that Mikhail Gorbachev is “now involved with this conspiracy. Big time.” Gorbachev’s a villain, according to Delingpole, because he co-produced the Earth Charter (“yet another master plan for global, socialist eco-tyranny”) with former UN under-secretary general, Maurice Strong.
The original Earth Charter document, Delingpole writes, is “kept in a specially constructed ‘Ark of Hope,’ painted with panels representing the flora and fauna of the world ‘as seen through the images of the world’s traditional artists.’”
To Delingpole, this isn’t merely symbolic, but all part of “the New Age religion of the New World Order.”
Now here’s the same conspiracy theory, as it appears on Green Agenda’s non-“secular” sister site:
THE MODERN STRATEGY – THOSE PLANNING FOR A ‘ONE WORD [sic] GOVERNMENT’ ARE USING The basic idea, (or excuse) being used by the ‘World Planners’, to build the platform for WORLD CONTROL, (without the God of Heaven) will be:
“DANGER TO PLANET EARTH”. 1. Concern for the environment has provided a useful strategy to bring the concept of world unity and control, into focus! It appears to be sensible and caring, but it has a sinister and sad hidden agenda. We strongly recommend you see our partner web site: http://www.green-agenda.com/index.html for a full description of these programmes. We give some background information below. 2. The beginnings of ‘concern’ for the future of the world.
It started with 2 books, the 2nd published by The Club of Rome in 1971 called “Limits to Growth”. This is a sinister plan to limit the world’s population, which spells out population growth as the basis of future world disaster. Along with other causes of the world’s problems such as misuse of chemicals, and later environmental mismanagement, Christians, and Muslims were seen as responsible for most of the world’s problems, along with ‘over-population’. 3. More arguments added. Gradually many more concepts were developed and were initiated, which we haven’t room to explain. But a group of people like Mikhail Gorbochev [sic], through to Robert Muller, David Rockefeller, Sir James Lovelock and Al Gore have been active in developing all their sinister strategies, ‘to save the Planet’. [The Bible indicates it is all based on lies! 2 Thess 2: 9 – 12]
These strategies are already affecting rules and regulations of national and local |
his old club, helping them win promotion.
He made only four appearances for the Red Devils and joined Cardiff on loan for the second half of last season.
"I'm just buzzing to be back, to be in and around the lads again," he said.
"There have been rumours for a while, but it was only yesterday that it got sorted out and I am happy because I just need to get out and play.
"The best place to come back to is Palace where I am loved."
Zaha came through the youth ranks at Palace and was helped in his development by Neil Warnock, who returned to the south London club for a second spell as manager on Wednesday.
Warnock was previously in charge between 2007 and 2010, although he had left for QPR by the time Zaha made his first-team debut against Cardiff in March 2010.
Zaha went on to score 18 goals in 143 appearances.Viz Media announced on Tuesday that the first four episodes of its Sailor Moon English dub will premiere on Hulu and Neon Alley on Friday at 11:00 p.m. EST. Dubbed episodes 5-23 will begin streaming on Sunday at 3:00 a.m. EST.
Viz Media staff will also host a "Moonlight Party: A Celebration of Sailor Moon Reborn!" live streaming event on its YouTube channel.
Viz staff will accept questions during the live stream on Facebook or with the hashtag #MoonlightParty on Twitter and answer the questions during the event. Prizes will also be awarded to participants during a trivia contest.
The dub cast is as follows:
Stephanie Sheh as Usagi Tsukino/Sai lor Moon
lor Moon Kate Higgins as Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury
Cristina Vee as Rei Hino/Sailor Mars
Amanda C. Miller as Makoto Kino/Sailor Jupiter
Cherami Leigh as Minako Aino/Sailor Venus
Robbie Daymond as Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask
Michelle Ruff as Luna
Johnny Yong Bosch as Artemis
Danielle Nicole as Naru Osaka
Ben Diskin as Gurio Umino
Tara Platt as Ikuko Tsukino
Keith Silverstein as Kenji Tsukino
Nicolas Roye as Shingo Tsukino
Cindy Robinson as Queen Beryl
Todd Haberkorn as Jadeite
Liam O'Brien as Nephrite
Lucien Dodge as Zoicite
Patrick Seitz as Kunzite
Part one of the first season's Blu-ray and DVD release will ship on November 11. The Blu-ray box set will include three Blu-rays, a chipboard box with space for part two, and a collectible 88-page booklet filled with art, character profiles, episode guides. Video extras include an interactive art gallery, dub recording behind the scenes, announcement panel and fan reactions, hype trailer, clean opening and ending, and trailers.‘I cried. I haven’t slept.”
Susan Hung was still coming to terms with the fact that almost her entire crop of bedding plants, flowers and herbs — worth more than $80,000 — has been destroyed after a business deal turned sour.
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Hung, 70 — who has run Henry’s Greenhouses on Sidaway Road near Steveston Highway with her husband, Henry, 74, for more than 40 years — now has virtually nothing to sell, aside from some hanging baskets, to her chain of wholesale and retail clients.
The Hungs claim the vast majority of their crop in their 14 greenhouses was sprayed with weed-killer, likely Roundup, in the last couple of weeks and suspect it was done by people who were working on their property.
And with the week before Mother’s Day being the couple’s busiest of the year, they’re “devastated” at the potential loss of many major clients and may now have to put their retirement plans on hold.
“I feel very upset. I don’t understand how people could do this,” said Susan.
“These are my babies that I raise in here. There is at least $80,000 worth of crop lost, but that’s a really low estimate, it’s probably higher.
“We have almost nothing left to sell, we have no business and we will lose customers; they will go somewhere else.
“It’s a very short season, it will be over at the end of June.”
Susan, who lives in the family home on the five-acre property, said she first noticed something was wrong about a week ago, when the sun started to shine, after a few cloudy days.
“It was only then that it started to show on the plants and I noticed the smell; it was giving me a headache it was so strong,” she said.
“It was clear that Roundup had been sprayed on everything.”
The people the Hungs suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had, according to the Hungs, been working in the greenhouses almost every day since January, learning the ropes with a view to leasing the business at the end of the season.
But a fall-out, the reason for which has not been made clear by either party, led to them not showing up over the last 10 days or so.
It was only then that the Hungs started to inspect the greenhouses more closely and they noticed that many of the plants hadn’t been watered for some time and that personal items had gone.
“My mom is really upset; she’s upset that she’s going to be letting people down with their orders,” said the Hung’s daughter, Marshalla Loland, who was helping to interpret for her parents.
“She’s still hoping that some can be salvaged.”
The Hungs made a complaint to the Richmond RCMP last week. The police declined to comment on the matter on Tuesday.
The News contacted one of the people who had been working with the Hungs. The man indicated he didn’t speak English and, at first, that he didn’t know Susan or Henry Hung.
A phone call was then received by the News from an English-speaking friend of the man, and then his lawyer, Lawrence Woo.
Woo told how his client paid the Hungs $40,000 and made a verbal agreement to eventually lease the business, which included the Hungs’ client list.
According to Woo, that list failed to live up to expectations and the reason the crop died was because Henry Hung was out of the country for the month of March and the plants in questions were simply neglected, as opposed to poisoned.
He also claimed his client has been harassed almost daily by the Hungs, who were demanding more money as part of the aforementioned verbal deal.
Woo couldn’t say whether his client intends to take legal action against the Hungs, but indicated that his client has received very little in return for his investment.Dollywood has done it – Lightning Rod is open to the public. While the public was able to ride Lightning Rod during its technical rehearsals these past few weeks, Dollywood continued to work to ensure that the ride was officially open to park guests. As technical rehearsals continued into the first weekends of June with minimal downtime, it was apparent that the park was getting close to opening it up. All systems seem to be a go, and the park is confident Lightning Rod is READY! Sure, the ride might still have slight downtime as any ride will, but Lightning Rod is ready to be consumed by the masses. A heavy candidate for Best New Ride for 2016, Lightning Rod is sure to deliver!
Thousands and thousands of hours have been put into making Lightning Rod a reality. The coaster track is a masterpiece, the coaster trains are fantastic, and the Dollywood staff is trained and energized! This unique, first-of-its-kinds coaster offers quite the experience! For more information about the ride, check out Dollywood.com and look for our ride review and tips in the coming days!THE spectacular rise of the stock market is bringing back memories of 2007, when the market showed dramatic rises as political uncertainty mounted. To what extent is the continuous upward spiral of the market being driven by corporate earnings and dividend payouts, and to what extent is it speculative buying in the context of a declining interest rate environment? Ever since the State Bank started cutting interest rates, the only measure of economic activity that has risen is the stock market, with values and volumes both registering steep increases. Corporate earnings in the listed companies are encouraging, but investment is still nearly zero, and private-sector credit off-take from the banking system is similarly low. Given this context — the refusal on the part of the corporate sector to invest — it is surprising that the earnings alone could be generating such enthusiasm on the trade floor.
It’s noteworthy that the Securities and Exchange Commission has initiated a high-profile probe into the stock market crash of 2008 at precisely this time, when the market is touching record highs all over again. It’s important to understand why the stock market tends to register such sharp increases in times when all other indicators of economic activity show a moribund economy and deteriorating investor confidence. In the present case, for instance, it’s interesting to note that different categories of stocks have played their role in driving up the index at different points in time. Not too long ago, we were told that penny stocks is where the rally is, with large purchases being made by a single bank. Today, the activity has moved to cement and other blue chips. The shifting winds of trader interest belie most economic analyses given by the market players themselves. The hype surrounding these spikes needs to be carefully scrutinised. Let the buyer beware.The First Take Thanksgiving crew break down the careers of former Packers QB Brett Favre and current QB Aaron Rodgers and debate who will have the better career legacy when all is said and done. (2:24)
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The unveiling of Brett Favre's retired No. 4 on the Lambeau Field facade on Thanksgiving night is a major event for the Green Bay Packers and the NFL's smallest city.
Hours before the game, Favre was presented with a key to the city, and Cherry Starr said her ailing husband, Bart, will attend the game against the Chicago Bears.
"Bart has limited strength," Cherry Starr said Thursday afternoon. "But he is going to walk on that field tonight."
No wonder Packers coach Mike McCarthy called it a "once-in-a-lifetime event" earlier this week.
Editor's Picks Wilde: Green Bay to give thanks to Favre There's something poetic about the Packers celebrating Brett Favre on Thanksgiving. If not for him, the Lambeau Field in which his retired No. 4 will be unveiled on Thursday night might not look the way it does today - and maybe the iconic franchise would have relocated by now, Jason Wilde writes.
But back at Favre's home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the monumental event barely registered in his household. Speaking at a Thanksgiving luncheon for the Rawhide Boys Ranch -- a charity Bart and Cherry Starr helped start nearly 50 years ago -- Favre said the significance of it all didn't hit him until he arrived in Green Bay on Wednesday.
"I never really thought about it," Favre said. "No one wants to hear around our house what I did. I don't walk around, saying, 'Hey, I was pretty good.' No one cares, because two nights ago I was taking out the trash. I was carrying the trash out, and I was like, 'I'm getting ready to have my jersey retired, and here I am taking out the trash.' Oh well.
"I guess the point in all that, it's pretty amazing, it's pretty cool.... I never dreamed of the unveiling of my jersey. I never dreamed of the Hall of Fame. Granted, that's awesome. But I dreamed of playing. Very few people can probably say this: The dreams that I had as a kid, mine have come true and then some."
"I never dreamed of the unveiling of my jersey. I never dreamed of the Hall of Fame.... Very few people can probably say this: The dreams that I had as a kid, mine have come true and then some." Brett Favre, on his No. 4 jersey being retired by the Green Bay Packers
It will be Favre's first time at a game in Lambeau Field since 2010, his final NFL season with the Minnesota Vikings.
"[Packers fans] were giving me the No. 1 [sign], but it was a different No. 1," Favre said. "It was like, 'Oh, that's not a wave.'"
But the mending process began over the summer, when Favre was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame. As part of that event on July 18, Favre made an appearance in the stadium bowl in front of more than 67,000 fans, who welcomed him back after an ugly split in 2008.
Brett Favre will have his No. 4 retired by the Green Bay Packers during halftime of Thursday's game against the Chicago Bears. AP Photo/Mike Roemer
"We had a good thing going here," Favre said Thursday of his departure in 2008. "But it's all worked out now. It's unfortunate how things worked out, but in the end, it's all worked out."
It also will be the first time Favre will see Aaron Rodgers play in person since their last head-to-head meeting. Favre heaped praise on his successor, saying, "He's almost too good."
"I mean that with all due respect," Favre said. "It's like, 'Crap, why don't he make a mistake every once in a while?' All my good records are going to be taken, and all my bad ones I'm going to keep. Throw four picks in a game, would you? Or six. I tried that one time, too. Four of them were not my fault.
"When I watch him, he's good. I don't know what else to tell you. To me a really great quarterback, you really know if a guy's great if he can carry his team when the rest of the team's just OK and they lose guys and they plug guys in, but yet they still win."Tax Buoyancy in OECD Countries
Author/Editor:
Vincent Belinga ; Dora Benedek ; Ruud A. de Mooij ; John Norregaard
Publication Date:
June 19, 2014
Electronic Access:
Free Full Text. Use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this PDF file
Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate
Summary:
By how much will faster economic growth boost government revenue? This paper estimates short- and long-run tax buoyancy in OECD countries between 1965 and 2012. We find that, for aggregate tax revenues, short-run tax buoyancy does not significantly differ from one in the majority of countries; yet, it has increased since the late 1980s so that tax systems have generally become better automatic stabilizers. Long-run buoyancy exceeds one in about half of the OECD countries, implying that GDP growth has helped improve structural fiscal deficit ratios. Corporate taxes are by far the most buoyant, while excises and property taxes are the least buoyant. For personal income taxes and social contributions, short- and long-run buoyancies have declined since the late 1980s and have, on average, become lower than one.It’s not enough that a national survey released Tuesday found atheists were the highest-scoring group on basic religious knowledge — now members of Metro State Atheists are being regular goody-two-shoes.
The group began a three-day campus food drive Tuesday dubbed “Food for Freethought.”
The atheists take in nonperishable food items or cash donations from fellow students or other passers-by. In return, they hand out free books.
These are books that have been banned, censored or at least roundly criticized, said group co-founder Joel Guttormson.
The event dovetailed with “Banned Books Week,” the last week of September, when hundreds of libraries and bookstores draw attention to what they believe is the mounting problem of censorship.
When best-selling atheist authors Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett heard about the Metro State event, they sent signed copies of their books for Guttormson to give away.
The atheist group’s little table of books on an Auraria campus plaza attracted quite a bit of attention.
“It think this is great,” said Anna Parsons, 32, a junior at the University of Colorado Denver. “I’m a devout atheist. That’s what I believe in.”
Other atheist groups have held “fiction for fiction” drives, in which they collect Bibles and hand over novels in exchange. But that struck Guttormson, 24, as disrespectful.
“I’d much rather try to change our image by giving food to the homeless,” Guttormson said.
He had heard about the nationwide survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life but wasn’t gloating.
During the survey, about 3,400 Americans were called in May and June and asked 32 fairly basic questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions. On average, Americans answered correctly 16 of the 32 questions.
Atheists, people who do not believe in god, and agnostics, those who are unsure of the existence or nature of god, averaged 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons performed next best. Catholics correctly answered fewer than half (14.7).
“Believe it or not,” Guttormson said, “at my house, I have two Bibles, two Korans, a Bhagavad Gita and Hindu poems. I have tons of books on Scriptures.”
According to a 2009 Pew report, people with no religion make up 16.1 percent of adult Americans: atheists, 1.6 percent; agnostics, 2.4 percent; and those who say they are simply not part of organized religion, 12.1 percent.
Yet many people treat atheists like second-class citizens, Guttormson said. “We’re generally not trusted.”
Guttormson said he lost his faith in his teens. The thing he missed about his religious upbringing, he said, was a sense of community.
Now he has a community — about 30 people are part of Metro State Atheists. There are 11 atheist groups in Colorado.
Guttormson said he gets hate mail every time his group does a public event.
“We’re feeding the hungry,” he tells his critics. “What more can we do besides converting that can make you stop hating me?”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.comThis article is about a garment. For the material itself, see sackcloth
Not to be confused with Chalice
A hairshirt belonging to a Christian, with a set of prayer beads hanging off a belt loop used to hold the girdle that tightens the garment around the waist
A cilice, also known as a sackcloth,[1] was originally a garment or undergarment made of coarse cloth or animal hair (a hairshirt) worn close to the skin. It is used by members of various Christian traditions (including some communicants of the Anglican,[2] Catholic,[3] Lutheran,[4] Methodist,[5] and Scottish Presbyterian Churches[6]) as a self-imposed means of repentance and mortification of the flesh; it is often worn during the Christian penitential season of Lent, especially on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and other Fridays of the Lenten season.[7]
Cilices were originally made from sackcloth or coarse animal hair so they would irritate the skin. Other features were added to make cilices more uncomfortable, such as thin wires or twigs. In modern religious circles, cilices are simply any device worn for the same purposes.
Etymology [ edit ]
The word cilice derives from the Latin cilicium, a covering made of goat's hair from Cilicia, a Roman province in south-east Asia Minor.[8] The reputed first Scriptural use of this exact term is in the Vulgate (Latin) translation of Psalm 35:13, "Ego autem, cum mihi molesti essent, induebar cilicio." ("But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth" in the King James Bible). The term is translated as hair-cloth in the Douay–Rheims Bible, and as sackcloth in the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer. Sackcloth can also mean burlap, but is often mentioned as a symbol of mourning and was probably a form of hairshirt.[citation needed]
Use [ edit ]
There is some evidence, based on analyses of both clothing represented in art and preserved skin imprint patterns at Çatalhöyük in Turkey, that the usage of the cilice predates written history. This finding has been mirrored at Göbekli Tepe, another Anatolian site, indicating the widespread manufacturing of cilices. Ian Hodder has argued that "self-injuring clothing was an essential component of the Catalhöyük culturoritual entanglement, representing 'cleansing' and 'lightness'."[9]
In Biblical times, it was the Jewish custom to wear a hairshirt (sackcloth) when mourning (Genesis 37:34, 2 Samuel 3:31, Esther 4:1), but not in order to cause harm to oneself, which is forbidden in the Jewish religion. In the New Testament, John the Baptist wore "a garment of camel’s hair" (Matthew 3:4). Historically, some Christian denominations have worn sackcloth to mortify the flesh or as penance for adorning oneself.
Cilices have been used for centuries in the Catholic Church as a mild form of bodily penance akin to fasting. Thomas Becket was wearing a hairshirt when he was martyred, St. Patrick reputedly wore a cilice, Charlemagne was buried in a hairshirt, and Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany, famously wore one in the Walk to Canossa during the Investiture Controversy. Prince Henry the Navigator was found to be wearing a hairshirt at the time of his death in 1460.[citation needed] St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Therese of Lisieux are known to have used them. In modern times they have been used by Mother Teresa, St. Padre Pio, and Pope Paul VI.[10] In the Discalced Carmelite convent of St. Teresa in Livorno, Italy, members of Opus Dei who are celibate (about 30% of the membership), and the Franciscan Brothers and Sisters of the Immaculate Conception continue an ascetic use of the cilice. According to John Allen, an American Catholic writer, its practice in the Catholic Church is "more widespread than many observers imagine".
Some high church Anglicans, including Edward Bouverie Pusey, wore hairshirts as a part of their spirituality.[2]
In the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, influenced by the evangelical revival, penitents were dressed in sackcloth and called in front of the chancel, where they were asked to admit their sins.[6]
In some Methodist churches, on Ash Wednesday, communicants, along with receiving ashes, also receive a piece of sackcloth "as a reminder of our own sinful ways and need for repentance".[13]
In popular culture [ edit ]
Closeup of a metal cilice with inwardly-pointing tines
In Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, one of the antagonists, an albino numerary named Silas associated with the religious organization Opus Dei, wears a cilice in the form of a spiked chain around his thigh. The sensationalized depiction in the novel has been criticized for its inaccuracy in subsequent books and by Opus Dei itself, which issued a press release responding to the movie's depiction of the practice, claiming "In reality, they cause a fairly low level of discomfort comparable to fasting. There is no blood, no injury, nothing to harm a person's health, nothing traumatic. If it caused any harm, the Church would not allow it."[10]
In Molière's play, Tartuffe, the title character is shown to be a hypocrite when he wears a hair shirt with the hair lining facing outward, so that it can be seen, rather than felt.
The Marvel Comics character Robbie Baldwin commissioned the creation of a suit with 612 internal spikes to represent each person who died in an explosion for which he felt responsible, so that he would be reminded of their pain in everything he did.
In Gustave Flaubert's "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler", Julian wears a hair shirt with iron spikes to do penance for his parricide.
In Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood, the protagonist Hazel Motes is discovered by his landlady to be wearing a barbed wire cilice around his torso after he has blinded himself. She also finds that he has been walking miles each day with small rocks and glass in the bottom of his shoes.
In George R. R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire, members of the militant branch of the Faith of the Seven known as Warrior's Sons and Poor Fellows commonly wear hair shirts. The High Septon appointed in A Feast for Crows known as the High Sparrow also wears one. Martin also mentions in his new book Fire and Blood that Aegon the Third, also known as Aegon the Unlucky or Aegon Dragonsbane, was said to wear a hair shirt under his clothing which added to his melancholy demeanour, probably due to the trauma he experienced during the Dance of the Dragons.
In the U.S. WGN America television series Salem, Increase Mather is shown wearing a metal cilice in season 1, episodes 10 and 11.
In Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, Sir Thomas More wears a hair shirt as is repeatedly mentioned by the narrator, Thomas Cromwell.
In The Nun, the main character Suzanne, when pressured to wear a cilice by the new mother superior, hastily throws it into a fire.
In Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth several characters, including Thomas Becket, are described as wearing hairshirts.
In The Walking Dead, the priest, Gabriel, in season 5 mentions the making of and wearing a hair shirt to atone for sins.
R.E.M. released the song "Hairshirt" on their 1988 album Green.
The Birthday Party released the song "The Hair Shirt" on their 1980 album The Birthday Party.
In Barenaked Ladies song "What a Good Boy", singer Steven Page sings about a hair shirt.
Pile released an album in 2017 called "A Hairshirt of Purpose".
In Philippa Gregory's novel The King's Curse Katherine of Aragon and several other characters are described as wearing hair shirts. In her "Three Sisters, Three Queens" King James IV of Scotland wears a cilice consisting of "a circlet of metal rings around his waist".
In Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson mentions a hair shirt when Leslie is being interrogated by government officials.[15]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
^ Jeffrey, David L. (1992). A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 673. ISBN 9780802836342. a b Knight, Mark; Mason, Emma (16 November 2006). Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. p. 96. ISBN 9780191535017. Pusey regularly endured a hair shirt as well as self- imposed flagellation and fasting routines. ^ Stravinskas, Peter M. J.; Shaw, Russell B. (1998). Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia. Our Sunday Visitor Publishing. p. 483. ISBN 9780879736699. ^ Neve, Juergen Ludwig (1914). The Augsburg Confession: A Brief Review of Its History and an Interpretation of Its Doctrinal Articles, with Introductory Discussions on Confessional Questions. Lutheran Publication Society. p. 150. ^ Bergen, Jeremy M. (31 March 2011). Ecclesial Repentance: The Churches Confront Their Sinful Pasts. A&C Black. p. 255. ISBN 9780567523686. In fact, it was scandal of disunity within Methodism that led UMC leaders to address the issue of racism as the underlying cause.... The petition for forgiveness proceeded on two distinct but interrelated levels. Each of the approximately 3,000 persons in the assemble was called to silent personal confession of the sin of racism before God, publicly symbolized by receiving... sackcloth... and the imposition of ashes. a b Yates, Nigel (11 June 2014). Eighteenth Century Britain: Religion and Politics 1714-1815. Routledge. p. 87. ISBN 9781317866480. The Evangelical revival in Scotland encouraged both much stricter conditions being placed on admission to Holy Communion and the maintenance of traditional discipline within the established church.... Lesser transgressors could be ordered by the kirk session to stand before the congregation for up to three Sundays, sometimes wearing sackcloth, and publicly acknowledge their sins before 'being subjected to a "rant" from the minister'. ^ Beaulieu, Geoffrey of; Chartres, William of (29 November 2013). The Sanctity of Louis IX: Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres. Cornell University Press. p. 89. ISBN 9780801469145. ^ "Cilice". Online Etymology Dictionary. ^ Ian Hodder, "Çatalhöyük: The Leopard's Tale", Thames & Hudson, 2006. a b "Opus Dei". opusdei.us. 17 May 2006. ^ Ice, Roy E. (11 March 2017). "Sackcloth". St Paul's United Methodist Church. ^ Michael McCullers (director) (April 30, 2009). "Boys' Club". Parks and Recreation. Season 1. NBC.Six months in the making, the Goldfinch has landed. After a week of soft opening, the ribbon will be cut (really) on Ethan Stowell's new Four Seasons restaurant the Goldfinch Tavern this morning at 10 a.m.
If you knew the hotel's former ART Restaurant in residence for the last six years, you'll find the space and the spirit, to a large degree, transformed. Oh, it's still the Four Seasons, but there's more of a cool, mid-century ("a little Madmen," says Stowell), slightly funky feeling now, though nothing too over the top.
A few specifics: The restaurant has a much wider entrance now, with lounge seating spilling to the lobby where guests can also be served. The bar, previously on the north end of the restaurant, has moved to the center, and the south side now hosts two private dining rooms (previously just one). Most of all, a much more open, bright, natural feeling prevails now—the walls have been redone in natural wood, and the servers are clad more casually (jeans), replacing the uniforms and nametags of the Four Seasons days of yore.
Most of all, a much more open, bright, natural feeling prevails now—the walls have been redone in natural wood, and the servers are clad more casually (jeans), replacing the uniforms and nametags of the Four Seasons days of yore.
These aesthetic decisions have been a collaboration between the Four Seasons staff and Stowell, which he says have been smooth, because they share the same priority for taking top care of guests. Also, the chance to meld the two parties' (quite different) styles has been fulfilling. Case in point: among the 355 Four Seasons restaurants and bars worldwide, the Goldfinch is one of just two with "Tavern" in the name. "The best part has been learning from each other," Stowell says.
In Stowell's twelfth and largest venture yet, the hope is Goldfinch Tavern will revamp the Seattle Four Seasons into a more food-centered destination, rather than one largely known for drinks and meetings. Given the hotel's downtown location and proximity to Pike Place and the water, the concept for Goldfinch's Northwest cuisine evolved easily, Stowell says. The dinner menu (headed up by Mkt.'s Joe Ritchie) is big on seafood (oysters, Hamachi crudo, and more), local beef, and appetizers; view it in full below:
Goldfinch Tavern Dinner Menu
The Goldfinch Tavern is open daily from 6:30 to midnight. Breakfast is served until 11, then lunch from 11 to 2, an afternoon menu from 2 to 5, and dinner from 5 on. Happy hour is also available from 4 to 6.The press conference at a GO station in Burlington had nothing to do with the province’s plan to build a series of new stops.
It was the first time Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca had faced reporters since the controversy began.
Going forward, experts say, the way transit has been planned in the Toronto region promises more boondoggles amid a lack of evidence-based decision-making.
Put on the spot Tuesday, Del Duca deflected : “Yeah, so you’re focused on the historical details. I’m focused on the go-forward.”
But the minister had not yet directly answered why two proposed locations — Kirby, in his own Vaughan riding, and Lawrence East, part of Mayor John Tory’s “SmartTrack” campaign promise — had been approved against expert advice. Nor had he explained why the board of Metrolinx, which is meant to be an arm’s-length agency of the province, reversed its early position to not support those stations under pressure from his ministry.
There couldn’t be more at stake: Potential misspending of billions of taxpayer dollars meaning the wrong projects get built at a time when the city — and region — is growing at an unprecedented pace. And once a project is built, it remains in place for decades.
Read more : Scarborough residents question why subway plan gives them just one new stop
These recent projects, including the contentious Scarborough subway, have brought accusations of political interference, missing and misleading information and a lack of transparency.
“Politicians see building new rail transit as a shortcut to getting elected,” said Murtaza Haider, a Ryerson University professor who specializes in transportation planning and statistical models. “The public transit infrastructure investment is a taxpayer subsidy to politicians’ political ambitions because there’s no rationale for it most of the time. What gets built and what should have been built are completely two different things.”
Emails obtained by the Star show Del Duca’s ministry sent Metrolinx officials draft press releases outlining his intention to announce the stations at Kirby and Lawrence East, even though studies had recommended against them and the board had decided not to support them.
Recently approved projects have seen politicians interfering with transit plans, changing direction after a plan has been studied and approved.
And emails from then-president and CEO Bruce McCuaig indicated Del Duca was “disappointed” with the analysis and McCuaig requested staff produce “alternative analysis.”
Former mayor Rob Ford didn’t rely on facts when he insisted a subway was what was needed in Scarborough. It was Ford’s chief-of-staff, Mark Towhey; unlikely ally, Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker; and his hand-picked Speaker, Councillor Frances Nunziata, that together led to the reopening of the agreement with the province to build a fully funded light rail line (LRT) to replace the Scarborough RT,
a move the city clerk has said broke council procedure.
These and other plans have been bolstered by sometimes missing and other times misleading analysis. Consider these:
After the Metrolinx board approved the stations at Kirby and Lawrence East, it took almost nine months for the business cases for each station to be released. The new Kirby analysis excluded hired consultants’ earlier opinion that it showed “poor results.”
An inflated ridership figure was produced and attributed to the city’s planning department just days ahead of a crucial vote on the Scarborough subway. Emails obtained by the Star show chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat had herself questioned TTC CEO Andy Byford about the subway figure’s origins, unaware it apparently came from her own department.
When the subway debate resumed at council last year, the TTC produced a briefing note that cast doubt on whether the LRT plan was still viable. It suggested the price of the LRT was now almost on par with the subway, which Byford later clarified was simply a figure the TTC was “asked to provide.” It is unclear who asked for that number.
There has also been much secrecy clouding transit planning in the region.
The original discussion by the Metrolinx board during which it first decide not to support Kirby and Lawrence East stations was conducted behind closed doors.
Following a Star investigation, Metrolinx has since said notice of closed-door meetings will be given, with minutes published afterward. Although a review to reassess the merits of building a station at Kirby and Lawrence East has been ordered, it will not scrutinize the process that led to Metrolinx approving them in the first place.
The Scarborough subway briefing note has to this day never been made part of the public record at city hall.
And today, the mystery of the pivotal ridership number has not been solved.
Eric Miller, the director of the University of Toronto’s Transportation Research Institute, said a lack of evidence-based transit-planning is one of the driving factors behind the region’s failure to build transportation infrastructure fast enough to keep up with population growth.
“Somebody whispers in somebody’s ear, somebody thinks it’s a good idea for whatever reason. It gets announced, and then maybe if you do the analysis you discover, well, there’s problems. Then there is opposition to it because it hasn’t been thought through,” he said.
In addition to technical analysis of transit plans, there will always be quantitative decisions that will require political judgment, he said. But analysis of transit projects should be made public before decisions are made and if elected officials decide to deviate from the evidence they need to explain why.
“They should be clear about why they’re making that decision. And just winning the next election isn’t a good enough reason for doing that,” Miller said.
He argued that while watchdogs like auditor generals should be able to scrutinize transit decisions, they should be the last resort. Instead, he said he would prefer to “fix the system” by subjecting government analysis of transit plans to independent peer reviews, something he said is regularly done in the United States in his field of travel-demand modelling.
“I think we’ve gotten into such a toxic situation… (The public doesn’t) believe the numbers even if the numbers are there, because they don’t trust the process.”
University of Toronto Prof. Matti Siemiatycki, an expert in transportation policy and planning, said there is an important role for both politicians, who set objectives and priorities |
he had long since fallen out with Khan over the latter’s support for equal marriage.
This swiftly followed prime minister David Cameron’s intervention in the mayoral contest yesterday, when in an attack upon Khan he alleged that Gani “supports IS” (Islamic State). Gani has denied this and challenged Cameron to repeat the allegation outside the House Commons, threatening to sue him if he does. Parliamentary correspondents have reported being unable to extract from Cameron’s office any evidence that Gani “supports IS.” Meanwhile, a picture of a poster advertising an event organised in Mitcham in January has been circulated on social media. The event was headlined The Evils of Isis and Gani was billed as one of the speakers. This hardly suggests that Gani is an Islamic State fan.
In view of what had already emerged about Gani’s connections with Tooting and other Tories, Cameron’s attack on the imam on Wednesday raises puzzling questions. Why did he launch his PMQ’s attack when it had already been reported in several places that Gani had been actively supporting the Conservative Party in Tooting against Khan both before and after the general election? Had he somehow been unaware of this? Had neither he nor Goldsmith’s campaign actually noticed? Or could it possibly be that Cameron knew perfectly well about Gani’s falling out with Khan and his support for Khan’s Tory opponents but decided to make the attack on Khan anyway in the belief that he would get away with it?
It’s all very perplexing. But it certainly puts a different slant on the issue of politicians’ judgment as it relates to the London mayor campaign. Whatever else Gani may believe that is disagreeable, he is owed an apology by Cameron unless he can make the “supports IS” allegation stand up.
And what is to be made of Goldsmith’s role all of this? What, indeed, is to be made of him and his mayoral campaign as a whole? The “Corbyn’s man in London” line is highly disingenuous. His team has failed to respond to a request for the outcome of an investigation it said it would conduct into a report that one of its canvassers had disparaged Khan as “the Muslim.”
Goldsmith has said he sees and approves every piece of literature put out in his name. Yet he has failed to explain why special material, some of it signed by Cameron, has been aimed at selected South Asian Londoners and not at other groups, including Muslims as a whole and Pakistani Londoners. Until he provides a convincing alternative explanation, suspicions that a nasty motive lies behind them remain.
What part, precisely, did Goldsmith’s campaign have in Cameron’s decision to make his onslaught on Khan at PMQs on Wednesday? Does Goldsmith really approve of what Cameron said? What does his poisonous, devious, dishonest campaign say about the “principled” Goldsmith’s judgment? Exactly what kind of man is he?Trooper with history of discipline suspended seven days for Kingsport crash Copyright by WJHL - All rights reserved Video
SULLIVAN COUNTY, TN (WJHL) - Tennessee Highway Patrol suspended Trooper Ashlee Hill seven days without pay for causing a crash in Kingsport last year, according to a THP internal memo. It marks Hill's fourth disciplinary action in her first two years with the department.
"You have been involved in two (2) previous departmental crashes which resulted in an oral warning and a one (1) day suspension since being hired in 2014," the October memo from Commissioner David Purkey said. "Trooper Hill, you are expected to maintain the highest standards of efficiency while carrying out the functions and objectives of the Department. You are also expected to conform to work standards established for a Tennessee State Trooper. Your conduct is a violation of the afore-cited Departmental General Orders. Any future incidents of this nature may result in a more severe disciplinary action."
A judge previously found Hill guilty of failure to use due care when she crashed into another car on John B. Dennis Highway last April. Her crime was expunged after she paid a $25 fine.
As we reported in June, Hill has faced discipline previously for her driving and for a series of sexually suggestive text messages sent to a supervisor, including pictures of her either partially clothed or nude.
Lt. Bill Miller says Hill is assigned to road duties in Greene County.
We again shared our contact information with Hill's supervisors in case she wanted to share her side of the story. We also reached out to her attorney today, but have not heard back.
Copyright WJHL 2017. All rights reserved.Mr Obama reportedly signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks.
Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorise secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and the White House declined immediate comment.
The New York Times reported that the CIA has had clandestine operatives who have been gathering intelligence for air strikes and making contact with the rebels for several weeks.
News that Mr Obama had given the authorisation surfaced as the president and other US and allied officials spoke openly about the possibility of sending arms supplies to Col Gaddafi's opponents, who are fighting better-equipped government forces.
In interviews with American TV networks on Tuesday, Mr Obama said the objective was for Col Gaddafi to "ultimately step down" from power.
He spoke of applying "steady pressure, not only militarily but also through these other means" to force Col Gaddafi out.
Mr Obama said the US had not ruled out providing military hardware to rebels. "It's fair to say that if we wanted to get weapons into Libya, we probably could. We're looking at all our options at this point," the president said.
US officials monitoring events in Libya say that at present, neither Col Gaddafi's forces nor the rebels, who have asked the West for heavy weapons, appear able to make decisive gains.
While US and allied air strikes have seriously damaged Col Gaddafi's military forces and disrupted his chain of command, officials say, rebel forces remain disorganised and unable to take full advantage of western military support.
People familiar with US intelligence procedures said that Presidential covert action "findings" are normally crafted to provide broad authorisation for a range of potential US government actions to support a particular covert objective.
In order for specific operations to be carried out under the provisions of such a broad authorisation – for example the delivery of cash or weapons to anti-Gaddafi forces – the White House also would have to give additional "permission" allowing such activities to proceed.
Former officials say these follow-up authorisations are known in the intelligence world as "'Mother may I' findings."
In 2009 Mr Obama gave a similar authorisation for the expansion of covert US counter-terrorism actions by the CIA in Yemen. The White House does not normally confirm such orders have been issued.Async in C# and F# Asynchronous gotchas in C#
Back in February, I attended the annual MVP summit - an event organized by Microsoft for MVPs. I used that opportunity to also visit Boston and New York and do two F# talks and to record a Channel9 lecutre about type providers. Despite all the other activities (often involving pubs, other F# people and long sleeping in the mornings), I also managed to come to some talks!
One (non-NDA) talk was the Async Clinic talk about the new async and await keywords in C# 5.0. Lucian and Stephen talked about common problems that C# developers face when writing asynchronous programs. In this blog post, I'll look at some of the problems from the F# perspective. The talk was quite lively, and someone recorded the reaction of the F# part of the audience as follows:
Why is that? It turns out that many of the common errors are not possible (or much less likely) when using the F# asynchronous model (which has been around since F# 1.9.2.7, which was released in 2007 and have been shipped with Visual Studio 2008).
Gotcha #1: Async does not run asynchronously
Let's go straight to the first tricky aspect of the C# asynchronous programming model. Take a look at the following example and figure out in what order will the strings be printed (I could not find the exact code shown at the talk, but I remember Lucian showing something similar):
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: async Task WorkThenWait() { Thread.Sleep( 1000 ); Console.WriteLine( "work" ); await Task.Delay( 1000 ); } void Demo() { var child = WorkThenWait(); Console.WriteLine( "started" ); child.Wait(); Console.WriteLine( "completed" ); }
If you guessed that it prints "started", "work" and "completed" then you're wrong. The code prints "work", "started" and "completed", try it! What the author intended was to start the work (by calling WorkThenWait ) and then await for the task later. The problem is that WorkThenWait starts by doing some heavy computations (here, Thread.Sleep ) and only after that uses await.
In C#, the first part of the code in async method is executed synchronously (on the thread of the caller). You could fix that, for example, by adding await Task.Yield() at the beginning.
Corresponding F# code
This is not a problem in F#. When writing async code in F#, the entire code inside async {... } block is all delayed and only started later (when you explicitly start it). The above C# code corresponds to the following F#:
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: let workThenWait () = Thread. Sleep ( 1000 ) printfn "work done" async { do! Async. Sleep ( 1000 ) } let demo () = let work = workThenWait () |> Async. StartAsTask printfn "started" work. Wait () printfn "completed"
It is quite clear that the workThenWait function is not doing the work ( Thread.Sleep ) as part of the asynchronous computation and that it will be executed when the function is called (and not when the async workflow is started). The usual F# pattern is to wrap the entire function body in async. In F#, you would write the following, which works as expected:
1: 2: 3: 4: let workThenWait () = async { Thread. Sleep ( 1000 ) printfn "work done" do! Async. Sleep ( 1000 ) }
Gotcha #2: Ignoring results
Here is another gotcha in the C# asynchronous programming model (this one is taken directly from Lucian's slides). Guess what happens when you run the following asynchronous method:
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: async Task Handler() { Console.WriteLine( "Before" ); Task.Delay( 1000 ); Console.WriteLine( "After" ); }
Were you expecting that it prints "Before", waits 1 second and then prints "After"? Wrong! It prints both messages immediately without any waiting in between. The problem is that Task.Delay returns a Task and we forgot to await until it completes using await.
Corresponding F# code
Again, you would probably not hit this issue in F#. You can surely write code that calls Async.Sleep and ignores the returned Async<unit> :
1: 2: 3: 4: let handler () = async { printfn "Before" Async. Sleep ( 1000 ) printfn "After" }
If you paste the code in Visual Studio, MonoDevelop or Try F#, you get an immediate feedback with a warning saying that:
warning FS0020: This expression should have type unit, but has type Async<unit>. Use ignore to discard the result of the expression, or let to bind the result to a name.
You can still compile the code and run it, but if you read the warning, you'll see that the expression returns Async<unit> and you need to await it using do! :
1: 2: 3: 4: let handler () = async { printfn "Before" do! Async. Sleep ( 1000 ) printfn "After" }
Gotcha #3: Async void methods
Quite a lot of time in the talk was dedicated to async void methods. If you write async void Foo() {... }, then the C# compiler generates a method that returns void. Under the cover, it creates and starts a task. This means that you have no way of telling when the work has actually happened.
Here is a recommendation on the async void pattern from the talk:
To be fair - async void methods can be useful when you're writing an event handler. Event handlers should return void and they often start some work that continues in background. But I do not think this is really useful in the world of MVVM - but it surely makes nice demos at conference talks.
Let me demonstrate the problem using a snippet from MSDN Magazine article on asynchronous programming in C#:
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: async void ThrowExceptionAsync() { throw new InvalidOperationException(); } public void CallThrowExceptionAsync() { try { ThrowExceptionAsync(); } catch (Exception) { Console.WriteLine( "Failed" ); } }
Do you think that the code prints "Failed"? I suppose you already understood the style of this blog post... Indeed, the exception is not handled because ThrowExceptionAsync starts the work and returns immediately (and the exception happens somewhere on a background thread).
Corresponding F# code
So, if you should not be using a programming language feature, then it is probably better not to include the feature in the first place. F# does not let you write async void functions - when you wrap function body in the async {... } block, its return type will be Async<T>. If you used type annotations and demanded unit, you would get a type mismatch.
You can still write code that corresponds to the above C# using Async.Start :
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: let throwExceptionAsync () = async { raise <| new InvalidOperationException () } let callThrowExceptionAsync () = try throwExceptionAsync () |> Async. Start with e -> printfn "Failed"
This will also not handle the exception. But it is more obvious what is going on because we had to write Async.Start explicitly. If we did not write it, we would get a warning saying that the function returns Async<void> and we are ignoring the result (the same as in the earlier section "Ignoring results").
Gotcha #4: Async void lambda functions
Even trickier case is when you pass asynchronous lambda function to some method as a delegate. In this case, the C# compiler infers the type of method from the delegate type. If you use the Action delegate (or similar), then the compiler produces async void function (which starts the work and returns void ). If you use the Func<Task> delegate, the compiler generates a function that returns Task.
Here is a sample from Lucian's slides. Does the following (perfectly valid) code finish in 1 second (after all the tasks finish sleeping), or does it finish immediately?
1: 2: 3: Parallel.For( 0, 10, async i = > { await Task.Delay( 1000 ); });
You cannot know that, unless you know that For only has overloads that take Action delegates - and thus the lambda function will always be compiled as async void. This also means that adding such (maybe useful?) overload would be a breaking change.
Corresponding F# code
The F# language does not have special "async lambda functions", but you can surely write a lambda function that returns asynchronous computation. The return type of such function will be Async<T> and so it cannot be passed as an argument to methods that expect void-returning delegate. The following F# code does not compile:
1: 2: 3: Parallel. For ( 0, 10, fun i -> async { do! Async. Sleep ( 1000 ) })
The error message simply says that a function type int -> Async<unit> is not compatible with the Action<int> delegate (which would be int -> unit in F#):
error FS0041: No overloads match for method For. The available overloads are shown below (or in the Error List window).
To get the same behaviour as the above C# code, we need to explicitly start the work. If you want to start asynchronous workflow in the background, then you can easily do that using Async.Start (which takes a unit-returning asynchronous computation, schedules it and returns unit ):
1: 2: 3: Parallel. For ( 0, 10, fun i -> Async. Start ( async { do! Async. Sleep ( 1000 ) }))
You can certainly write this, but it is quite easy to see what is going on. It is also not difficult to see that we are wasting resources, because the point of Parallel.For is that it runs CPU-intensive computations (which are typically synchronous functions) in parallel.
Gotcha #5: Nesting of tasks
I think that Lucian included the next one just to test the mental-compilation skills of the people in the audience, but here it is. The question is, does the following code wait 1 second between the two prints?
1: 2: 3: 4: Console.WriteLine( "Before" ); await Task.Factory.StartNew( async () = > { await Task.Delay( 1000 ); }); Console.WriteLine( "After" );
Again, quite unexpectedly, this does not actually wait between the two writes. How is that possible? The StartNew method takes a delegate and returns a Task<T> where T is the type returned by the delegate. In the above case, the delegate returns Task, so we get Task<Task> as the result. Using await waits only for the completion of the outer task (which immediately returns the inner task) and the inner task is then ignored.
In C#, you can fix this by using Task.Run instead of StartNew (or by dropping the async and await in the lambda function).
Can we write something similar in F#? We can create a task that will return Async<unit> using Task.Factory.StartNew and lambda function that returns an async block. To await the task, we will need to convert it to asynchronous workflo using Async.AwaitTask. This means we will get Async<Async<unit>> :
1: 2: 3: async { do! Task. Factory. StartNew ( fun () -> async { do! Async. Sleep ( 1000 ) }) |> Async. AwaitTask }
Again, this code does not compile. The problem is that the do! keyword requires Async<unit> on the right-hand side, but it actually gets Async<Async<unit>>. In other words, we cannot simply ignore the result. We need to explicitly do something with it (we could use Async.Ignore to replicate the C# behaviour). The error message might not be as clear as the earlier messages, but you can get the idea:
error FS0001: This expression was expected to have type Async<unit> but here has type unit
Gotcha #6: Not running asynchronously
Here is another problematic code snippet from Lucian's slide. This time, the problem is quite simple. The following snippet defines an asynchronous method FooAsync and calls it from a Handler, but the code does not run asynchronously:
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: async Task FooAsync() { await Task.Delay( 1000 ); } void Handler() { FooAsync().Wait(); }
It is not too difficult to spot the issue - we are calling FooAsync().Wait(). This means that we create a task and then, using Wait, block until it completes. Simply removing Wait fixes the problem, because we just want to start the task.
You can write the same code in F#, but asynchronous workflows do not use.NET Tasks (which were originally designed for CPU-bound computations) and instead uses F# Async<T> which does not come with Wait. This means you have to write:
1: 2: 3: 4: let fooAsync () = async { do! Async. Sleep ( 1000 ) } let handler () = fooAsync () |> Async. RunSynchronously
You could certainly write such code by accident, but if you face a problem that it does not run asynchronously, you can easily spot that the code calls RunSynchronously and so the work is done - as the name suggests - synchronously.
Summary
In this article, I looked at six cases where the C# asynchronous programming model behaves in an unexpected way. Most of them were based on a talk by Lucian and Stephen at the MVP summit, so thanks to both of them for sharing an interesting list of common pitfalls!
I tried to find the closest corresponding code snippet in F#, using asynchronous workflows. In most of the cases, the F# compiler reports a warning or an error - or the programming model does not have a (direct) way to express the same code. I think this supports the claim that I made in an earlier blog post that "The F# programming model definitely feels more suitable for functional (declarative) programming languages. I also think that it makes it easier to reason about what is going on".
Finally, this article should not be understood as a devastating criticism of C# async :-). I can fully understand why the C# design follows the principles it follows - for C#, it makes sense to use Task<T> (instead of separate Async<T> ), which has a number of implications. And I can understand the reasoning behind other decisions too - it is likely the best way to integrate asynchronous programming in C#. But at the same time, I think F# does a better job - partly because of the composability, but more importantly because of greate additions like the F# agents. Also, F# async has its problems too (the most common gotcha is that tail-recursive functions must use return! instead of do! to avoid leaks), but that is a topic for a separate blog post.
namespace System
namespace System.Threading
namespace System.Threading.Tasks
val workThenWait : unit -> Async<unit>
Full name: Csharp-async-gotchas.aspx.workThenWait
Multiple items
type Thread =
inherit CriticalFinalizerObject
new : start:ThreadStart -> Thread + 3 overloads
member Abort : unit -> unit + 1 overload
member ApartmentState : ApartmentState with get, set
member CurrentCulture : CultureInfo with get, set
member CurrentUICulture : CultureInfo with get, set
member DisableComObjectEagerCleanup : unit -> unit
member ExecutionContext : ExecutionContext
member GetApartmentState : unit -> ApartmentState
member GetCompressedStack : unit -> CompressedStack
member GetHashCode : unit -> int
...
Full name: System.Threading.Thread
--------------------
Thread(start: ThreadStart) : unit
Thread(start: ParameterizedThreadStart) : unit
Thread(start: ThreadStart, maxStackSize: int) : unit
Thread(start: ParameterizedThreadStart, maxStackSize: int) : unit
Thread.Sleep(timeout: TimeSpan) : unit
Thread.Sleep(millisecondsTimeout: int) : unit
val printfn : format:Printf.TextWriterFormat<'T> -> 'T
Full name: Microsoft.FSharp.Core.ExtraTopLevelOperators.printfn
val async : AsyncBuilder
Full name: Microsoft.FSharp.Core.ExtraTopLevelOperators.async
Multiple items
type Async
static member AsBeginEnd : computation:('Arg -> Async<'T>) -> ('Arg * AsyncCallback * obj -> IAsyncResult) * (IAsyncResult -> 'T) * (IAsyncResult -> unit)
static member AwaitEvent : event:IEvent<'Del,'T> *?cancelAction:(unit -> unit) -> Async<'T> (requires delegate and 'Del :> Delegate)
static member AwaitIAsyncResult : iar:IAsyncResult *?millisecondsTimeout:int -> Async<bool>
static member AwaitTask : task:Task -> Async<unit>
static member AwaitTask : task:Task<'T> -> Async<'T>
static member AwaitWaitHandle : waitHandle:WaitHandle *?millisecondsTimeout:int -> Async<bool>
static member CancelDefaultToken : unit -> unit
static member Catch : computation:Async<'T> -> Async<Choice<'T,exn>>
static member FromBeginEnd : beginAction:(AsyncCallback * obj -> IAsyncResult) * endAction:(IAsyncResult -> 'T) *?cancelAction:(unit -> unit) -> Async<'T>
static member FromBeginEnd : arg:'Arg1 * beginAction:('Arg1 * AsyncCallback * obj -> IAsyncResult) * endAction:(IAsyncResult -> 'T) *?cancelAction:(unit -> unit) -> Async<'T>
static member FromBeginEnd : arg1:'Arg1 * arg2:'Arg2 * beginAction:('Arg1 * 'Arg2 * AsyncCallback * obj -> IAsyncResult) * endAction:(IAsyncResult -> 'T) *?cancelAction:(unit -> unit) -> Async<'T>
static member FromBeginEnd : arg1:'Arg1 * arg2:'Arg2 * arg3:'Arg3 * beginAction:('Arg1 * 'Arg2 * 'Arg3 * AsyncCallback * obj -> IAsyncResult) * endAction:(IAsyncResult -> 'T) *?cancelAction:(unit -> unit) -> Async<'T>
static member FromContinuations : callback:(('T -> unit) * (exn -> unit) * (OperationCanceledException -> unit) -> unit) -> Async<'T>
static member Ignore : computation:Async<'T> -> Async<unit>
static member OnCancel : interruption:(unit -> unit) -> Async<IDisposable>
static member Parallel : computations:seq<Async<'T>> -> Async<'T []>
static member RunSynchronously : computation:Async<'T> *?timeout:int *?cancellationToken:CancellationToken -> 'T
static member Sleep : millisecondsDueTime:int -> Async<unit>
static member Start : computation:Async<unit> *?cancellationToken:CancellationToken -> unit
static member StartAsTask : computation:Async<'T> *?taskCreationOptions:TaskCreationOptions *?cancellationToken:CancellationToken -> Task<'T>
static member StartChild : computation:Async<'T> *?millisecondsTimeout:int -> Async<Async<'T>>
static member StartChildAsTask : computation:Async<'T> *?taskCreationOptions:TaskCreationOptions -> Async<Task<'T>>
static member StartImmediate : computation:Async<unit> *?cancellationToken:CancellationToken -> unit
static member StartWithContinuations : computation:Async<'T> * continuation:('T -> unit) * exceptionContinuation:(exn -> unit) * cancellationContinuation:(OperationCanceledException -> unit) *?cancellationToken:CancellationToken -> unit
static member SwitchToContext : syncContext:SynchronizationContext -> Async<unit>
static member SwitchToNewThread : unit -> Async<unit>
static member SwitchToThreadPool : unit -> Async<unit>
static member TryCancelled : computation:Async<'T> * compensation:(OperationCanceledException -> unit) -> Async<'T>
static member CancellationToken : Async<CancellationToken>
static member DefaultCancellationToken : CancellationToken
Full name: Microsoft.FSharp.Control.Async
--------------------
type Async<'T>
Full name: Microsoft.FSharp.Control.Async<_>
static member Async.Sleep : millisecondsDueTime:int -> Async<unit>
val demo : unit -> unit
Full name: Csharp-async-gotchas.aspx.demo
val work : Task<unit>
static member Async.StartAsTask : computation:Async<'T> *?taskCreationOptions:TaskCreationOptions *?cancellationToken:CancellationToken -> Task<'T>
Task.Wait() : unit
Task.Wait(millisecondsTimeout: int) : bool
Task.Wait(cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : unit
Task.Wait(timeout: TimeSpan) : bool
Task.Wait(millisecondsTimeout: int, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : bool
val handler : unit -> Async<unit>
Full name: Csharp-async-gotchas.aspx.handler
val throwExceptionAsync : unit -> Async<unit>
Full name: Csharp-async-gotchas.aspx.throwExceptionAsync
val raise : exn:Exception -> 'T
Full name: Microsoft.FSharp.Core.Operators.raise
Multiple items
type InvalidOperationException =
inherit SystemException
new : unit -> InvalidOperationException + 2 overloads
Full name: System.InvalidOperationException
--------------------
InvalidOperationException() : unit
InvalidOperationException(message: string) : unit
InvalidOperationException(message: string, innerException: exn) : unit
val callThrowExceptionAsync : unit -> unit
Full name: Csharp-async-gotchas.aspx.callThrowExceptionAsync
static member Async.Start : computation:Async<unit> *?cancellationToken:CancellationToken -> unit
val e : exn
type Parallel =
static member For : fromInclusive:int * toExclusive:int * body:Action<int> -> ParallelLoopResult + 11 overloads
static member ForEach<'TSource> : source:IEnumerable<'TSource> * body:Action<'TSource> -> ParallelLoopResult + 19 overloads
static member Invoke : [<ParamArray>] actions:Action[] -> unit + 1 overload
Full name: System.Threading.Tasks.Parallel
Parallel.For(fromInclusive: int64, toExclusive: int64, body: Action<int64,ParallelLoopState>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For(fromInclusive: int, toExclusive: int, body: Action<int,ParallelLoopState>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For(fromInclusive: int64, toExclusive: int64, body: Action<int64>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For(fromInclusive: int, toExclusive: int, body: Action<int>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For(fromInclusive: int64, toExclusive: int64, parallelOptions: ParallelOptions, body: Action<int64,ParallelLoopState>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For(fromInclusive: int, toExclusive: int, parallelOptions: ParallelOptions, body: Action<int,ParallelLoopState>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For(fromInclusive: int64, toExclusive: int64, parallelOptions: ParallelOptions, body: Action<int64>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For(fromInclusive: int, toExclusive: int, parallelOptions: ParallelOptions, body: Action<int>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For<'TLocal>(fromInclusive: int64, toExclusive: int64, localInit: Func<'TLocal>, body: Func<int64,ParallelLoopState,'TLocal,'TLocal>, localFinally: Action<'TLocal>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
Parallel.For<'TLocal>(fromInclusive: int, toExclusive: int, localInit: Func<'TLocal>, body: Func<int,ParallelLoopState,'TLocal,'TLocal>, localFinally: Action<'TLocal>) : ParallelLoopResult
(+0 other overloads)
val i : 'a
val i : int
Multiple items
type Task =
new : action:Action -> Task + 7 overloads
member AsyncState : obj
member ContinueWith : continuationAction:Action<Task> -> Task + 9 overloads
member CreationOptions : TaskCreationOptions
member Dispose : unit -> unit
member Exception : AggregateException
member Id : int
member IsCanceled : bool
member IsCompleted : bool
member IsFaulted : bool
...
Full name: System.Threading.Tasks.Task
--------------------
type Task<'TResult> =
inherit Task
new : function:Func<'TResult> -> Task<'TResult> + 7 overloads
member ContinueWith : continuationAction:Action<Task<'TResult>> -> Task + 9 overloads
member Result : 'TResult with get, set
static member Factory : TaskFactory<'TResult>
Full name: System.Threading.Tasks.Task<_>
--------------------
Task(action: Action) : unit
Task(action: Action, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : unit
Task(action: Action, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : unit
Task(action: Action<obj>, state: obj) : unit
Task(action: Action, cancellationToken: CancellationToken, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : unit
Task(action: Action<obj>, state: obj, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : unit
Task(action: Action<obj>, state: obj, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : unit
Task(action: Action<obj>, state: obj, cancellationToken: CancellationToken, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : unit
--------------------
Task(function: Func<'TResult>) : unit
Task(function: Func<'TResult>, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : unit
Task(function: Func<'TResult>, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : unit
Task(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj) : unit
Task(function: Func<'TResult>, cancellationToken: CancellationToken, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : unit
Task(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : unit
Task(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : unit
Task(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj, cancellationToken: CancellationToken, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : unit
Multiple items
property Task.Factory: TaskFactory
--------------------
property Task.Factory: TaskFactory<'TResult>
Multiple items
TaskFactory.StartNew<'TResult>(function: Func<'TResult>) : Task<'TResult>
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew(action: Action) : Task
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew<'TResult>(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj) : Task<'TResult>
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew<'TResult>(function: Func<'TResult>, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : Task<'TResult>
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew<'TResult>(function: Func<'TResult>, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : Task<'TResult>
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew(action: Action<obj>, state: obj) : Task
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew(action: Action, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : Task
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew(action: Action, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : Task
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew<'TResult>(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : Task<'TResult>
(+0 other overloads)
TaskFactory.StartNew<'TResult>(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : Task<'TResult>
(+0 other overloads)
--------------------
TaskFactory.StartNew(function: Func<'TResult>) : Task<'TResult>
TaskFactory.StartNew(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj) : Task<'TResult>
TaskFactory.StartNew(function: Func<'TResult>, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : Task<'TResult>
TaskFactory.StartNew(function: Func<'TResult>, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : Task<'TResult>
TaskFactory.StartNew(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions) : Task<'TResult>
TaskFactory.StartNew(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj, cancellationToken: CancellationToken) : Task<'TResult>
TaskFactory.StartNew(function: Func<'TResult>, cancellationToken: CancellationToken, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions, scheduler: TaskScheduler) : Task<'TResult>
TaskFactory.StartNew(function: Func<obj,'TResult>, state: obj, cancellationToken: CancellationToken, creationOptions: TaskCreationOptions, scheduler: TaskScheduler) : Task<'TResult>
static member Async.AwaitTask : task:Task -> Async<unit>
static member Async.AwaitTask : task:Task<'T> -> Async<'T>
val fooAsync : unit -> Async<unit>
Full name: Csharp-async-gotchas.aspx.fooAsync
val handler : unit -> unit
Full name: Csharp-async-gotchas.aspx.handler
static member Async.RunSynchronously : computation:Async<'T> *?timeout:int *?cancellationToken:CancellationToken -> 'TAstronomers have finally solved a long-standing mystery about the origins of cosmic rays, the highly energetic particles that zoom throughout space. For half a century, scientists haven’t been able to pin down where the most energetic rays in our Universe come from. But thanks to more than a decade of detecting cosmic rays from South America, astronomers have confirmed that these super energetic particles are coming from outside our galaxy.
Space is filled with cosmic rays — tiny fragments of atoms — all with varying amounts of energies. Many of the low- or medium-energy ones are thought to originate from within our galaxy, likely from supernovae, or exploding stars, which hurl high-speed particles out into space when they die. Then there are what are considered ultra high-energy cosmic rays: particles with energies millions of times greater than any particle ever observed on Earth. These types of rays are puzzling, mostly because no one is quite sure what is causing the particles to get so energetic. “We don’t know of a mechanism that can accelerate particles up to the energies we observe,” Greg Snow, a professor of physics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and one of the collaborators on this research, tells The Verge.
“This is solid evidence that they are not coming from our galaxy.”
Now, astronomers are significantly closer to getting an answer, thanks to new research detailed today in Science. International astronomers spent 12 years detecting cosmic rays at the Pierre Auger Observatory, a facility in Argentina specifically designed to pick up these particles when they reach Earth and pelt our atmosphere. After observing more than 30,000 of the most energetic particles, the researchers created a map of their distributions in the sky. Sure enough, they found that most of these particles seemed to come from a part of the sky away from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. “This is solid evidence that they are not coming from our galaxy,” David Nitz, a professor of physics at Michigan Tech University and another researcher on the study, tells The Verge.
It still doesn’t explain what is producing these particles, but the research does point scientists in the direction they need to look. The patch of sky that these rays seem to be coming from is known to have a large clustering of galaxies. It’s still unclear exactly which galaxies may be sending these energetic particles our way, but now researchers can start learning more about this general region of the Universe. “I predict there will be a flurry of papers now that this result has been confirmed where people try to correlate where the rays are coming from,” says Thomas Gaisser, a physics professor and cosmic ray researcher at the University of Delaware, who was not involved |
virulent undercurrent of anti-Americanism which was briefly glimpsed in the revelations surrounding Psy's political history have their basis in incidents such as these, Korea is far from being the most anti-American country in the world.
Polls of regions such as Latin America have shown anti-American sentiment to be even more rife; a legacy of US military interventionism in the continent which has been most vividly expressed in the form of torture, murder and the subversion of democratically elected leaders over the past several decades.
However, a 2012 Pew Research poll showed the least favourable perceptions of the US today to be in countries within the Arab and Muslim worlds; negative views which are thought to have briefly abated upon the election of Barack Obama but which can now be seen to have returned to their historic lows during the George W Bush era.
Among countries polled the bottom echelon are exclusively countries with Muslim majority populations. Even those such as Turkey and Jordan whose governments are traditionally allied with the US showed overwhelmingly negative attitudes towards America, with the latter polling at a mere 12 per cent favourability.
Tellingly, Jordan also happens to be home to a massive population of refugees from the American invasion of Iraq, the civilian victims of a war who have been forgotten by Americans but continue to live on in desperation and misery in many countries scattered throughout the region.
While an incredible amount of research has gone into formulating complex theories to explain this widespread disdain for the US, Occam's Razor, the logical principle that the simplest explanation is most often the correct one suggests that the American militarism which once ravaged Korea and which has now been set upon the Muslim world is the cause of this growing antipathy.
Pakistan, which polled at roughly 9 per cent favourability towards the US in a 2010 BBC World poll, once had a vibrantly pro-American polity where Jacquelyn Kennedy was mobbed in the streets with flower garlands by thousands of admirers during a state visit and where American popular culture was once widely revered and emulated.
Inside Story Americas - US post-Iraq legacy
In recent decades however, all of this has changed, as Pakistanis have been left to witness the staggering human cost of US warfare in neighbouring Afghanistan as well as to deal with the millions of refugees that conflict has sent into Pakistan.
Pakistanis themselves have also increasingly become the direct target of American violence; being gunned down in the streets by rogue CIA officers, murdered by remote operated drones and renditioned for torture at clandestine "black-sites" throughout the world.
By starting a massive war and occupation in Afghanistan which caused widespread destabilisation and social chaos in Pakistan, a country which shares deep ethnic and religious bonds with its neighbour, the US has helped turn a once reasonably benign relationship into an increasingly dangerous one which has fuelled virulent anti-Americanism even among liberal and secular Pakistanis.
The degeneration of American popularity in Pakistan is however only one illustration of a broader trend where wanton militarism has generated negative popular perceptions towards the US.
Arrogance and atrocity
For Americans who are commonly feted with reassurances of their country's benevolent role in the world, it may come as a surprise that half of all refugees on the planet today are running from American wars.
The wanton, industrial-scale violence, which the US has unleashed upon the civilians of countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia has naturally generated a tidal wave of negative feeling within these countries which many Americans utterly fail to grasp.
Episodes such as the gang rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family by US troops are emblematic of the fundamental sadism of American policy towards the region. However, in a type of bizarre dark comedy, popularly elected American leaders continue to question the lack of gratitude among the populations upon whom they have let loose this violence.
What this appears to represent is a type of brazen ignorance and egotism which has come to represent mainstream government policy; the type of myopia under which a country can launch a full-scale war, invasion and occupation of another sovereign nation under entirely false pretences, kill hundreds of thousands in the process and create millions of refugees and still at the end sincerely ask the question "Why they do hate us?".
While the US military, whom the American public puts forth as the unquestioned heroes and proud symbols of the apex of their society, finds new and innovative ways to inflict violence upon the populations of Arab and Muslim countries - including wanton, lawless and often completely anonymous target killings, and even recently the sanctioning of killing so-called "hostile children" in Afghanistan, the popular reputation of America as a country naturally sinks to new depths among the countries in the Middle East and around the world.
An illustrative example of the essentially self-destructive arrogance of US policy in the region pertains to that of Afghanistan; where the US in 2001 categorically refused to negotiate with the Taliban when the latter expressed a desire to co-operate with the full spectrum of US objectives and hand over Osama bin Laden, on the rhetorical grounds of "refusing to talk to evil".
Fast forward 11 years - with tens of thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars wasted, and America is doing exactly this, negotiating with the Taliban exactly as it could have done a decade earlier were it not for flagrantly irrational government policymaking informed by a mixture of arrogance and bloodlust.
"A 2012 Pew Research poll
showed the least favourable perceptions of the US today to be in countries within the Arab and Muslim worlds."
For the self-proclaimed preeminent global power to behave in such a shockingly ignorant and destructive manner and to still express wonderment over others' negative perceptions of it speaks to a deep lack of national self-awareness and perspective which could seriously impede the country from operating an effective foreign policy in the future.
An increasingly poisoned relationship
Even among those within the Arab and Muslim worlds and beyond who admire purported American values such as secularism, free speech and free enterprise, the past decade of increasingly wanton and unrestrained violence has worked to permanently stain the reputation of a country which was at one time held in high esteem across social strata.
American policy towards the Middle East today is popularly perceived to be informed by a cruel, arrogant and fundamentally racist worldview in which subject populations are essentially lesser peoples whose suffering is an accounted-for externality of hegemonic policies.
The type of brutality which Americans inflicted upon Korea decades ago still manifests in the undercurrent of anger held by many Koreans today, so it bears asking how long it will take for negative perceptions of America in the Muslim world to dissipate.
As long as unchecked American militarism in the region continues, these negative perceptions will only escalate and the phenomena of anti-Americanism will continue to spread and damage the ability of the US to find necessary allies in a strategically-important part of the world.
Regardless, as evidence has shown even when such negative feelings are sublimated for the sake of pragmatism, they seldom truly cease to exist. When its history is written, the US will have to come to terms with the legacy of global disdain, distrust and resentment it has engendered over its time as a superpower - a history which may very likely be unkind and incongruent with the image most Americans hold of themselves and of their country.
Murtaza Hussain is a Toronto-based writer and analyst focused on issues related to Middle Eastern politics.
Follow him on Twitter: @MazMHussainWhen it comes to atomizers, RDA’s have always been my preference. Don’t get me wrong I own plenty of tanks, but to me drippers provide a whole new vaping experience. Maybe it is because I came from rolling my own cigarettes and I enjoy the constant refilling to satisfy my need to keep my hands busy while vaping. It could also be my eLiquid ADD where my palette constantly changes and I don’t have the patience to wait for a tank to go dry.
By the time I realized my love for drippers, I was late for the Origen v1 train and after weeks of waiting to find one on the second hand market and lusting after my friends Origens, the new v2 was announced. Right then I knew I had to get my hands on the Origin v2 and be active about getting one of these treasures. Constantly hopping between vendors on launch, I finally was able to score a Origen of my own!
Here are some of the differences between the v1 and v2:
Shorter in height, for a smaller chamber producing more flavor and vapor
Drip well changed from a split design to one united well.
Serial numbers.
A new wide bore drip tip.
O-ring relocated to the top cap.
Aesthetics:
The Origen looks fantastic on top of any mod, no matter the type of metal. I find the nice cylindrical step taper to be very nice styling that gives it a unique modern look without being too flashy. Also the mixed media finished –brushed ring and matte cap– help make it universal to your mod finish.
The fact it sits at 22mm means it will be flush with most mechanical mods on the market, however if you happen to favor bigger diameter mods, the styling still fits due to the top cylindrical steps.
Finally they included a simple, clean wide bore drip tip which complimented the atomizer perfectly, to me a huge improvement over the v1 drip tip.
Quality:
Norbet did not cut any corners with this iteration. They clearly took an industry leading product and improved it based on community feedback. The O-rings on the inside of the top cap seem to help improve the longevity of the sealing. You can configure the airflow to your build preference, whether you are a single or dual coil fan. The air holes on the adjustable air flow are perfect for any draw and are drilled at 2mm, 1.5, and 1.2mm.
All the pieces of the atomizer are machine for a perfect, snug fit.
Performance:
The performance of the atomizer carrying the Origen pedigree is to be expected, fantastic! This is clearly built for amazing flavor and in that department it does not disappoint.
Also because the Origen has adjustable airflow it can produce some pretty amazing clouds. The biggest adjustment is 2mm and for me that seems to be the perfect amount where I am still having to feel like I have to draw for my clouds without inhaling it.
Lastly, the unified well is a major improvement. No longer do you have to worry about one well going dry or balancing between the two. I also like the increase in size it means I can store more juice when I don’t want to be constantly dripping, as long as I am diligent about keeping the mod upright.
Ease Of Build:
The Origen has never been known as the easiest mod to build, but at the same time it is not difficult. I feel like they took some innovative steps on the center post with a nice knurled cap that can be tightened with fingers. However, they lose some points on requiring a small allen wrench for the screws on the sides. I can understand why they did this, to ensure the lifetime of the atomizer by avoiding stripping. The downside in this means I have to carry an extra tool in my kit and it is harder to see if my allen wrench is properly seated while building. Also since my fingers are too big this point is moot, but I feel like the knurled sides of the screws on the v1 may have made it easier for someone with smaller fingers to build.
I my experience I find that a vertical build with u-wick cotton produces the most flavor and best wicking. From reading other reputable builders comments they seem to concur.
Pricing:
At the time of writing this article there are still some Origen v2’s to be had at $120 dollars. This price puts the Origen at the high-end price range for drippers. However, considering this is the most suggested atomizer online from experts you are truly getting what you are paying for! Also do not forget it includes a very nice, wide bore drip tip. This is where Norbet serializing the v2 becomes good as you are able to be proud of your authentic, quality product.La Liga : Eibar routs Granada 4-0 Posted: Feb 14, 2017 • 01:32 PM by Akshay Somani
Eibar (Spain), Feb 14 ( ) Eibar outplayed Granada 4-0 and vaulted to the seventh place in La Liga here. Facebook to live stream Liga MX 2017 season
Granada, mired in the 19th spot, were hoping to post a second consecutive victory for the first time this season on Monday though they have never claimed all three points from a match at Eibar's Ipurua stadium here, reports Efe.
The hosts took the lead in the 10th minute as Adrian Gonzalez converted from the spot after Sergi Enrich was fouled inside the area.
Enrich put Eibar up 2-0 with a goal in the 38th minute that left the visitors dazed and discouraged.
Granada managed a shot on goal early in the second half, but Ivan Ramis' tally off a Pedro Leon corner kick in the 51st minute put the match out of reach.
Leon added a fourth goal 10 minutes later.
The win brings Eibar to 35 points from 22 matches, just a point behind sixth-place Villarreal.No, this isn’t an article from The Onion that’s landed here by mistake. Following the shock announcement that Ben Affleck will play the new Batman, incensed fans really have asked Barack Obama to condemn the casting choice.
A petition launched on the ‘We The People’ section of the White House’s official website urged the US President to “denounce the selection of Ben Affleck”.
[Photo: Getty]
It has since been taken down, as it violates the site’s Terms Of Service. Apparently the casting controversy is simply not a matter of importance for the leader of the free world.
Before it was removed, the original petition read:
“Fans/citizens are outraged at the selection and we want to send a message to Warner Brothers, DC Comics, and Zack Snyder using an outlet that could garner the appropriate media attention to do so.”
Another petition demanding that Warner Bros remove Affleck from the planned Superman vs Batman movie is however still very much alive, with thousands of people having signed it so far.
Revealing Affleck as the new Batman, Warner president Greg Silverman insisted:
“We knew we needed an extraordinary actor to take on one of DC Comics’ most enduringly popular superheroes. Ben Affleck certainly fits that bill – and then some.”
Barack Obama has so far neglected to comment on the issue.
What do you think about the casting decision? Would you like to know what Obama thinks?
Have your say in the comments below (just register first), on Twitter with #wow247 or at our Facebook pageThe St George Illawarra Dragons announced on Sunday that Eto Nabuli has agreed to a one-year contract extension that will see him remain at the Club until at least the end of 2016.
The Fiji Bati international made his first-grade debut for the Club in the opening round fixture against the Melbourne Storm this season and has played 10 NRL games to date.
Nabuli, 26, who can play on the wing and has scored four tries so far this season, was previously part of the Penrith Panthers team which won the NSW Cup Premiership in 2014.
“I am very pleased to be able to continue my development here at the Dragons,” said Nabuli.
“Head Coach Paul McGregor and the coaching staff have helped me to improve as a player and I look forward to continuing to represent the Club.
”Dragons Director of Recruitment and Retention Peter Mulholland is delighted by the representative’s decision to remain at the Club.
“Eto is a very strong and exciting player who has really benefitted from a complete pre-season with the Club,” said Mulholland.
“He has demonstrated the right attitude to the way he conducts himself at training and his efforts have been rewarded with the number of first-grade games he has played so far this season.
“We all look forward to watching Eto continue his development both on and off the field here at the Dragons.”The Move From Large Size Dollars To Small Sized Dollars - From Concept To Reality - A Brief History Of The United States Small Dollar - The Dollar Coin has been the main staple of the United States' monetary system since it was authorized by Congress on April 2, 1792 and first struck in 1794. Even though it was large in size (38.1 to 40 mm), it was a popular denomination and circulated well due to its buying power. The "silver dollar" was discontinued in 1935. By the mid to late 1960's, the price of silver rose to the point that "silver dollars" no longer circulated. In 1971, due to the needs of gambling casinos for a dollar coin, and the public's desire to honor the first landing on the moon, the dollar coin was again struck, i.e. the Eisenhower Dollar. The coins failed to circulate widely, primarily due to their large size and the acceptance and convenience of the paper dollar.
SIDE-BY-SIDE SIZE COMPARISON OF AN EISENHOWER
DOLLAR (38.1 mm) AND A SUSAN B. ANTHONY DOLLAR (26.5 mm)
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT EZERMAN In the mid 1970's, attention turned to a smaller size dollar coin, culminating in the Susan B. Anthony Dollar in 1979. Miss Anthony was chosen to honor her life long fight for women's suffrage. From day one the Anthony Dollar was rejected and ridiculed. The portrait was considered ugly and the coins were not easily distinguished from the quarter dollar. Besides being the same color, there was less than nine-hundredths of an inch difference in the diameters of the Anthony Dollar and the quarter dollar. They were given nicknames such as "Agony Dollars", "Carter Quarters", "Susan B. Edsel", and "JC Pennies" (Jimmy Carter was in the White House at the time). They were discontinued at that time after only being struck for circulation for two years, 1979 and 1980. The 1981 Anthony Dollars were struck for mint sets only. Curiously, this was not the first time this criticism was accorded a United States coin. In 1875 a Twenty-Cent piece was struck. Besides having virtually the same design as the quarter dollar, it was a mere eight-hundredths of an inch smaller. The Twenty-Cent piece ceased being struck for circulation in 1876 after only two years production. Here's "Proof" that the Mint also had t rouble distinguishing an Anthony D ollar from a Quarter. In the early 1990's, discussion of striking a new small size dollar coin was begun. This time government officials were armed with the knowledge of the mistakes of the Anthony Dollar. Discussions centered on striking a new small size dollar coin that would be golden in color and have a distinctive edge so that it could be easily distinguished from the quarter dollar. The striking of a new small size dollar at that time was not to be. Besides the queasiness of the mint to venture into another failed dollar coin, there was one other major problem. That is, more than a decade after the Anthony Dollar was discontinued, there were still millions of them in Federal Reserve vaults. By the late 1990's the supply of Anthony Dollars was finally dwindling down. After congressional and public hearings, it was decided that a new small size dollar coin with a plain edge and golden in color would be struck in 2000. The obverse would have the likeness of Sacagawea, the Shoshone Indian girl that helped guide Lewis and Clark through the northwest on their exploratory expedition of the Louisiana Purchase. In the mean time, the Anthony Dollar supply was decreasing so quickly that the mint struck 1999 dated Anthony Dollars to fill the need for a dollar coin until the Sacagawea Dollar could be struck and placed into circulation. The Sacagawea Dollar made its debut early in 2000 to the praise and acceptance of both collectors and the general public. However, after the honeymoon period was over, it began to fall out of favor. Just like its predecessor, the Anthony Dollar, it too was struck for circulation for only two years. It remains to be struck for sale to collectors in mint sets, rolls, and bags. In 2007, the United States began honoring our Nations Presidents by issuing $1 circulating coins featuring their images in the order that they served. The United States Mint will issue four Presidential $1 coins per year, and each will have a reverse design featuring the Statue of Liberty. The composition of the new Presidential $1 Coins will be identical to that of the Sacagawea Dollar. Living Presidents are excluded from the series, however they may be added only if they have been deceased for two years prior to their coins release. The "Presidential Dollar Coin Act of 2005" had stipulated that the mint would continue issuing the Sacagawea Dollar in quantities no less than one-third of the years total dollar mintage. This stipulation was set to begin with the 2007 Sacagawea Dollar, however, the "Native American Dollar Coin Act of 2007" eliminated this requirement. The "Native American Dollar Coin Act of 2007" was signed into law on September 20, 2007 by President George Bush. It superseded the Presidential Dollar Coin Act of 2005's requirement that one Sacagawea Dollar be struck for every three Presidential Dollars struck. Instead, it required that beginning in 2009, one Native American Dollar be struck for every five Presidential Dollars struck. It also states that "the design on the reverse shall bear images celebrating the important contributions made by Indian tribes and individual Native Americans to the development of the United States and the history of the United States". The reverse of the Native American $1 Coin will feature a new design each year. In addition, the date, mint mark, E PLURIBUS UNUM, and IN GOD WE TRUST were moved to the edge. The year 2009 also saw some changes made to the Presidential Dollar design. IN GOD WE TRUST was moved from the edge of the coin to the obverse, and the edge had 13 stars, representing the thirteen original colonies, added to it.By Rob Kelly at Meadow Park
Arsenal produced an exhilarating first-half performance to beat a talented Aston Villa side 4-2 at Meadow Park on Tuesday night.
Steve Gatting’s side were in sensational form during the opening 45 minutes and once Serge Gnabry gave them the lead, there was no stopping them.
Jon Toral struck a brace - although the returning Benik Afobe may yet claim the second - and Emmanuel Frimpong headed in a fourth just before half-time.
Villa grabbed one back through Michael Drennan and soon started to exert some real pressure on the Gunners, with Graham Burke putting Arsenal nerves on edge with a second in the 75th minute.
But despite the visitors’ spirited fightback, the Gunners’ first-half masterclass proved enough to claim the points on a satisfying night for the Club’s rising stars.
SETTING THE SCENE
It had been more than a month since the under-21s’ previous match, the 2-1 victory over Wolves at Emirates Stadium, and Gatting made seven changes for this contest.
The big news was the return of Afobe up front after eight months out with a knee injury, while Frimpong was called in to bolster the midfield. Gnabry, fresh from his appearance off the bench at Old Trafford on Sunday, was also included in a strong team.
Villa, meanwhile, included eight members of the squad that won last season’s NextGen Series, including former Gunner Lewis Kinsella.
FIRST HALF
With Arsene Wenger in attendance, this was a real opportunity for some of Arsenal’s rising stars to stake their claim for first-team action - and they certainly took it.
Gatting’s side made a bright start to the game, with Gnabry’s testing Benjamin Siegrist with a curling shot after nine minutes that the Villa keeper palmed away.
With Afobe causing real problems for the visitors, Arsenal were clearly in the mood and in the 16th minute they grabbed the lead. Brandon Ormonde-Ottewill found Toral in space to the left of the Villa box and the Spaniard kept his composure to pick out the onrushing Gnabry to slot home from six yards.
Nine minutes later the roles were reversed as Thomas Eisfeld played in Gnabry on the right and the German picked out Toral with a low cross that the teenager coolly converted from close range.
By now the Gunners were playing with a real swagger and it came as no surprise when they added a third in the 36th minute. Afobe raced on to a lofted through ball and lobbed the onrushing Siegrist, with the ball bouncing down for Toral to force over the line as Villa scrambled to try to clear it.
Afobe was in fine form, playing on the shoulders of the Villa backline and he came close again with another lob over Siegrist that drifted narrowly wide. With the game so open, another goal seemed inevitable and it arrived right on half time as Frimpong headed in Gnabry’s corner. It had been quite some first-half display.
SECOND HALF
If the visitors had hoped for any let-off from Arsenal in the second half, it was immediately dismissed as Afobe was played through straight from kick-off. The striker tried to take it around Siegrist, but the keeper did well to get a hand to it and push it away from the forward.
Minutes later Toral fired wide from close range after good work from the impressive Ormonde-Ottewill down the left flank.
However, in the 53rd minute a momentary lapse by Matt Macey presented Drennan with a great opportunity, and the Villa youngster slotted the ball home for the visitors.
The goal seemed to stir Villa into life and they suddenly set about the Gunners with real gusto - and pulled another one back in the 75th minute when Burke forced the ball in after a scramble in the area.
Despite some uncomfortable moments towards the end, that sensational first-half display proved enough for Gatting’s side to claim another hard-earned victory.BEIJING (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has removed the New York Times Co’s (NYT.N) English- and Chinese-language news apps from its iTunes store in China following a request from the local authorities, the companies said separately on Thursday.
The apps, which the newspaper said were removed on Dec. 23, are the latest Western services to fall foul of Chinese authorities, whose other scalps include Apple’s own iBooks and iTunes Movies stores which have been blocked since April.
REUTERS RECOMMENDS: China to plow $361 billion into renewable fuel by 2020 Child monks in the Indian Himalayas
Their removal comes just over a month after the Cyberspace Administration of China called for greater media scrutiny, citing fears of social disorder, moral harm and threats to national security. The internet regulator did not respond to a faxed request for comment about the Times’ apps.
“The development of the internet in China must respect China’s laws and regulations, in principle,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in response to a question about the apps.
New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told Reuters that the newspaper has asked Apple to reconsider.
“The request by the Chinese authorities to remove our apps is part of their wider attempt to prevent readers in China from accessing independent news coverage by The New York Times of that country,” Murphy said.
The government has blocked the Times’ websites since 2012 after a series of articles on the wealth of the family of then-Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, the New York Times reported.
“We have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations,” Apple spokesman Fred Sainz in California told Reuters.
An Apple spokeswoman in China declined to comment on specific reasons or which regulatory body made the request.
Apple has previously removed news apps from its China app store, but none as high-profile as the New York Times. At least three other apps have been removed from the app store in recent years on the grounds of “illegal content”, according to news reports and the apps’ developers.
Apps from other international publications whose websites are blocked, including CNN, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, were still available on Thursday.
Chinese mainstream media has not reported the app removal but it was discussed widely on social media.
“This must be coming from the request of The Wall right?” said one user on microblogging service Weibo, referring to state-backed internet censorship. “Apple has made enough money in China, it’s OK for it to take the blame this time for the sake of the money.”
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Other users said they would attempt to change their country of residence within the app store to restore access.
While the New York Times’ websites have been blocked, mirroring sites managed by anti-censorship advocates have periodically made their content available.Not the actual test subject. Dan Muntz When else would you need a beer more than the nuclear end of days? But you wouldn't want it to kill you, that's for sure. Well, good news, A 1957 US government study discovered that beer and soda would be safe to drink, if it survives a nuclear explosion.
From Robert Krulwich's NPR blog:
...in 1956, the Atomic Energy Commission exploded two bombs, one "with an energy release equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT," the other 30 kilotons, a test site in Nevada. Bottles and cans were carefully placed various distances from ground zero....
The closest containers were placed "less than a quarter mile away," says Alex [Wellerstein, science historian], "a mere 1,056 feet", the outliers a couple of miles off. Some were buried, some left in batches, others were placed side by side.
Beers close to the blast site were slightly radioactive and still totally drinkable in dire situations. Those further away were less radioactive.
The researchers even taste tested the beers and sodas, most of which they deemed good (except those nearest the blast).
See the NPR article and hit up Wellerstein's blog post to glance over the actual document.Season 2 of True Detective just didn’t quite work. But it came very close in many ways and so I think it’s worth exploring why it missed the mark. The short answer is that it tried to do too much. It tried to leapfrog Season 1 both in form and in function – and the form part didn’t really work, either. And so it Icarus’d. And we were disappoint.
First, function:
Last year I wrote a short article about True Detective and why it worked. Basically I said that there are dark little corners of this country, where the local custom and culture has not yet been homogenized into the national norm, and in these places weird shit can go down. The exploration thereof is the basis of a lot of Twin Peaks and The X-Files and now True Detective. It defines a genre: New Weird America.
True Detective Season 2 took this to its next level. It showed that you can have this same kind of atavism, nasty and weird, right smack in the middle of the modern world. It hides in plain sight. It actually exists! It doesn’t reach up from the darkness to steal our children; it reaches down from above to manipulate our everyday lives. In this way, Season 2 was an advance upon Season 1. Season 1 was fantasy with elements of realism; Season 2 approached the level of journalism – The Wire moved from B-More to The OC.
Functionally, then, Season 2 was a level above Season 1. But they didn’t stop with function. They tried to do the same with form.
Season 1 was told in a fairly linear fashion. In the present day, two dudes are being interviewed. They talk about the past. Eventually their narrative catches up to the present. Then, they go forth and conquer.
It’s a great storytelling device. But if you took it away, the series would not suffer. This particularly because the two narrators are telling the same story. It’s one frame around one narrative. Classic storytelling – Citizen Kane with a cherry on top.
Season 2 was not simple or linear. There were four protagonists instead of two. They didn’t even meet until the end of the first episode. They didn’t really start working together until the end of the sixth episode – the point in the first season when the detectives resume their partnership. And they had a great deal of their own shit going on – some of which ended up affecting the other characters, but much of which did not.
There was a definite madness to this method. The other point of Season 2 was that, as Jordan says,”Everyone gets touched” – the consequences of little choices, the interconnectivity of things and lives and the world. Heady stuff. Hence the season’s near-constant motif of California highway interchanges – the huge land-spanning Gordian knots that the detectives realize they cannot cut, but must untangle, from the beginning.
So there was a point to this. But saying “I meant to do that” only gets you so far. Making your TV show really disjointed and complex in order to prove a point does not excuse you from having made your TV show really disjointed and complex. It’s just not good storytelling. Certainly not for an eight-episode season of TV. Do you know why House of Leaves should not serve as the basis for the next season of House of Cards? Yes! Yes you do! I don’t need to explain it to you! Don’t do it!
True Detective Season 2 had two functions. One was to show that the weird and evil of the bayou can be found just as easily in Bel-Air. Phenomenal stuff. This too would have been enough. The other was to show that The Detective Story needs improvement. This is a tough nut to crack even when your audience is not defined by having liked your first season – a classic detective story! It’s doubly tough when it means you have to make a story which is noticeably hard to follow… and also get them to follow it. (The Night Of barely pulled this off, barely). And it’s triply tough when you are trying to leapfrog your first season in both form and function simultaneously.
There is one final point I’d like to make, and that is tone. True Detective Season 2’s tone was off. Even if it had been nothing but another Season 1 it still would have had problems. Too many furrowed brows, too many intense internal monologues made agonizingly external. Too little wit and too many purposeless homages. The first season found drama in small things; the second took nothings and belabored them like pinatas. It felt like it set out to put “an epic spin on topics that don’t [usually] get the epic treatment” – which is what PT Anderson said about Magnolia, for chrissakes. Season Two set out in function to avoid the sins of the genre; in form, to critique them; in tone, to commit them, each and every one. The first is a triumph; the second, a failure; the third, Brumaire-like, a farce. The three together was season two of True Detective.
There was also that five-minute-long dream sequence where a Conway Twitty impersonator in a powderpuff-blue tuxedo sang background to a prophecy that turned out to be right with no explanation and for no reason. But if I’d started with that, you wouldn’t have bothered with my analysis. And, uh, maybe there’s something to learn from that, too.
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Posted in ReviewsHome > Japanese Entertainment > "Attack on Titan: End of the World" World Premiere Got 3,000 fans in Hongkong
Japanese Entertainment
The world premiere of live-action film "Attack on Titan: End of the World", the second installment of the film "Attack on Titan", was held in Hongkong on September 15th. The actor Haruma Miura and Kiko Mizuhara attended the event. About 3,000 fans gathered in the red carpet and welcomed the two Japanese actors who greeted the audience in Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese on the premiere stage.
Hongkong was chosen to be the very first and only place for the world premiere of the film since the first part was very successful and the Japanese films are especially popular there even compared with other Asian areas.
Miura and Mizuhara appeared with two Shishimai that are the lucky symbol in Hongkong and responded to fans by giving autographs or being taken pictures with a big smile.
Miura said, "Please look forward to our great challenge. I hope this film remains deeply in your mind." Mizuhara said "I will be glad if you could enjoy Mikasa's evolution and growth", and also commented "What you are looking forward to seeing the most must be the Titans. I am very sure they will not disappoint you."
"Attack on Titan: End of the World" is scheduled to release on September 19 in Japan and will be distributed in 83 countries and regions worldwide.EQ is pretty simple, right? Crank a knob, hear the sound’s tone change?
Not quite. Just when you think you know everything there is to know about EQ, something new comes up. Here are a few advanced EQ techniques that you might not be using to full potential:
1. Mid/Side EQ
Any true stereo sound might be able to be enhanced with mid/side EQ.
Mid/side EQ basically turns your stereo EQ into a frequency-specific stereo width adjustment tool. You’ll get the most natural results by only processing the side channel. You can boost the top to increase clarity and dimension. You can narrow the mids to provide focus and punch. You can high-pass the bass to easily collapse the bass to mono without touching the mids and highs.
2. Spectral Matching EQ
This one’s usually a multi-step process.
First get the EQ to ‘listen’ to some reference audio (such as another track or commercial mixdown), then get the EQ to ‘listen’ to the audio you want to process. Finally, the EQ can then either match the two (so that the processed audio sounds similar to the reference audio), or it can compliment the two (so that the processed audio sounds very different to the reference audio).
Matching EQ can be useful whenever you want one track to sound like another. Obviously, this might be useful in mastering, but it can also come in handy when working with samples from a variety of different sources.
Compliment EQ can be useful if you want to make sure two tracks do not interfere with each other.
3. Dynamic EQ
This is an interesting one. It allows the gain of each EQ band to change dynamically with the level of the audio. It can work a lot like a multi-band compressor, except that the envelope follower controls the gain of an EQ band instead of a frequency range. This allows you to |
, mostly overlapping with the Seward Peninsula. As of the 2010 census, the population was 9,492.[2] It is part of the unorganized borough and therefore has no borough seat. Its largest community by far is the city of Nome.
Geography [ edit ]
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the census area has a total area of 28,278 square miles (73,240 km2), of which 22,962 square miles (59,470 km2) is land and 5,316 square miles (13,770 km2) (18.8%) is water.[3] It also includes the large offshore St. Lawrence Island, which has about 14 percent of the census area's population and two of its larger cities in Gambell and Savoonga. Nome Census Area is the 7th largest county-equivalent in the state of Alaska.
Adjacent boroughs and census areas [ edit ]
National protected areas [ edit ]
Demographics [ edit ]
As of the census[9] of 2000, there were 9,196 people, 2,693 households, and 1,898 families residing in the census area. The population density was 0.3 people per square mile (0.1/km²). There were 3,649 housing units at an average density of 0/sq mi (0/km²). The racial makeup of the census area was 19.32% White, 0.38% Black or African American, 75.20% Native American, 0.67% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.20% from other races, and 4.21% from two or more races. 1.00% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 16.32% reported speaking a Yupik language at home, while 8.75% speak Inupiaq; a further 2.02% reported speaking "Eskimo", a term that covers both Yupik and Inupiaq. [10]
There were 2,693 households out of which 45.80% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.40% were married couples living together, 15.30% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.50% were non-families. 23.20% of all households were made up of individuals and 3.30% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.33 and the average family size was 4.01.
In the census area the population was spread out with 37.10% under the age of 18, 9.30% from 18 to 24, 29.00% from 25 to 44, 18.60% from 45 to 64, and 5.90% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28 years. For every 100 females, there were 117.60 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 122.70 males.
Communities [ edit ]
Cities [ edit ]
Unincorporated communities [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:PoliZette Clinton Glo-Bull Initiative: Gravy Train to Graft Clintons brazenly refuse to shut down foundation
Decades of scandal must have left the Clintons either totally tone-deaf or inured them to perceptions of corruption — in either case, they aren’t about to allow public controversy and public outcry derail their precious gravy train.
Although Bill Clinton announced Monday he would step down from his role at the Clinton Foundation, it was reported Wednesday the Clinton Global Health Access Initiative would not join the Clinton Foundation in ending corporate and foreign donations entirely if Hillary Clinton wins the election. It was also reported Chelsea Clinton will continue to sit on the boards of both organizations regardless.
“The Clinton Foundation has been way too inattentive to the appearance of impropriety.”
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One can safely add bad optics to the long list of things the Clintons have been accused of not caring about, which currently include: honesty, the lives of endangered Americans abroad, and women’s sexual consent.
When Dana Bash asked Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook Sunday why the Clinton Foundation wouldn’t cease taking foreign donations immediately, given the staggering scope of enveloping scandal, Mook gave an unconvincing response.
“It takes time when you’re in a number of countries around the world to retool, refocus the mission, and adapt,” Mook said. “They receive a great deal of funding through these streams. And it will just take some time for them to readjust.”
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According to Mook, the public has been so focused on the possibility of systemic corruption occurring while Clinton was secretary of state that we forgot to think about the Clinton Foundation and how it would redirect the steady streams of money from corrupt oligarchs and Islamic dictatorships to which it is accustomed.
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But even if Clinton wins the election that won’t stop her family’s charity from accepting foreign donations. Officials said Wednesday the Clinton Health Access Initiative could continue to accept donations from foreign governments and corporations, even as the Clinton Foundation turns off its foreign spigots.
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Bill Clinton defended the apparent semantics. “If there is something wrong with creating jobs and saving lives, I don’t know what it is,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
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As for Chelsea Clinton’s continued involvement, a spokeswoman explained the young Clinton “is committed to ensuring that those benefiting from the foundation’s work will be able to continue receiving that often life-changing help.”
Of course, to normal, regular folks, it appears she is committed to ensuring her family continues to personally benefit from the foundation’s existence, and the charity will continue to receive vast sums of money from foreign sources, now redirected to the Clinton Global Health Access Initiative.
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“The Clinton Foundation has been way too inattentive to the appearance of impropriety,” Ray Madoff, a Boston College Law School professor and director of the Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good told The Wall Street Journal Wednesday. “Chelsea clearly has access to her parents so the appearance of impropriety continues.”A south Fulton County man was in critical condition early Tuesday after being shot during an overnight home invasion.
Channel 2 Action News reported that just before midnight Monday, two masked men kicked in the back door of the victim’s home on Sand Bar Lane, in a neighborhood off Old Bill Cook Road near College Park.
When the 28-year-old homeowner tried to fight off the men, he was shot in front of his wife, mother and three children, Channel 2 reported.
The victim, whose name has not been released, was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital in critical condition. No other injuries were reported.
The gunmen stole the victim’s silver 2009 Infiniti FX with Georgia tag BZE4050. Channel 2 reported at noon that the SUV was recovered by police late Tuesday morning.A Corp in Netrunner is in a fairly unique position for a CCG. In most card games, the uncertainty comes from the cards in the opponent’s deck and their cards in their hand. A few card games also have some face-down traps, which put a little guessing into the game. But in Netrunner, every card you play that enters play does so face down, giving you massive bluffing potential. In addition, the only way the runner can really win the game is by braving your face-down ICE and Traps and hopefully snagging enough agendas to win. So obviously, there’s a massive amount of bluffing in this game for the Corp.
But since this is fairly unique to Netrunner, a lot of people don’t really know what to do when they’re given this access to bluff. Many people don’t know what to do with this great bluffing potential, as it’s not something you run into in most games. They want those shiny traps to hit, but they don’t know how to make it work. It seems like every time they play a trap, the opponent seems to know, and just avoids it.
Don’t worry; it’s not actually that hard. I’m going to lay down a couple of guidelines for when and how make your bluffs believable, and a couple of bluffing philosophies. Next, we’ll talk about the differences between traps with different numbers of tokens on them. Then, I’ll go into some detail on how to play around Infiltration, how to take advantage of predictability in your local metagame. Then, we’ll look at the other side of the coin and discuss how to beat your opponent’s bluffs. Finally, I’ll briefly discuss more unorthodox advancement patterns and why I don’t think they’re worth the trouble.
(This article will not cover the concepts of physical tells, like nervous tics, false tells, or anything else like that. Those kinds of things vary greatly from person to person, and are really outside the scope of this article. There is something to be gained in studying this, though, and if you really want to dive down that rabbit hole, there’s a lot of information online about reading physical tells.)
Sell your traps as if they were agendas
The most important point to make is that your traps will never catch the opponent if you don’t sell them on the idea that it’s actually an agenda or an upgrade. A trap with a couple of advancement tokens on it which sits there for 3 turns isn’t going to fool anyone… Who leaves an agenda sitting around with 2 or 3 tokens on it?
Also, the idea of playing your traps and agendas unprotected as if they were kind of a shell game doesn’t really work out that well. Installing assets into a ton of remote servers with no ICE on them and advancing random cards falls apart if the opponent plays intelligently. If your opponent only runs when they have enough cards in hand to eat a trap, then they’ll be able to run those servers with near impunity, and their ability to make 2 or 3 runs a turn will quickly outstrip your ability to lay traps and put enough tokens on them to be effective. (Wyldside in particular really hurts this strategy, and that card sees very heavy play.) And if they play Infiltration or Satellite Uplink then you’re just totally hosed.
So how exactly do we play our traps and actually get the opponent to fall for them? You probably won’t be surprised to know that we can steal a good lesson from poker. In one of the bibles of Poker, ‘The Theory of Poker’ by David Sklansky, he describes how strong poker play must involve bluffs to keep the opponent from knowing your intentions every time you bet. He says that you should not be on the lookout for situations in which to bluff, but instead that you should try to mix in your pure bluffs randomly, and should play them in the same way as you play your legitimate hands. A large portion of this information applies very well to Netrunner. (Really, I could practically write an entire article applying things from this book to Netrunner, it’s an amazing book.)
So, following this advice, we’re going to play our traps exactly as if they were agendas or upgrades. We’re not going to give up information by only playing our traps in under-defended servers, only in certain situations, and so on. We’re going to pick a strategy to use for playing all our cards into our servers, and use it for both our agendas and traps to make sure that we’re not letting anything slip when we try to trick the opponent. In addition, we are going to try to mix in our bluffs as randomly as we can. (With a few exceptions where bluffs have very low expectation due to the rules or the game… Those situations will be noted below.)
Playing things randomly is something we can get out of the way quickly. We don’t always have the option to bluff randomly, because we are required to have certain cards in your hand in order to lay a trap. But if you have the option to play a trap or an agenda and you want to do so randomly, you can use any number of randomizers, like a watch, a scentence from your favorite book, and so on. Exactly how often to bluff is too complex for this entry-level article, and something which I have not researched enough to comment on, but I might look into that later.
As for the more complex issue of playing things the same and how exactly to play your traps and agendas, read on.
Over-Protect everything or Under-Protect everything?
Now that we know that the traps only work if we play our traps and our agendas in the same way, we’re led to the next obvious question… How should we play all our agendas and traps? There are two basic schools of thought here. One is to protect everything and make sure that it’s difficult for your opponent to access your traps and your agendas. The other is to protect everything a little more lightly than you otherwise would, and rely on the fact that you’re playing some traps to provide your extra protection.
In over-protecting everything, you’re making it look like it’s always going to be difficult to get in, and there may still be a trap waiting for them after they spend 10 credits to get in. The basic idea here is that it’s the safest way of bluffing. You’re trading ease of access for your traps away in order to make it more difficult and more expensive for your opponent to run away with an agenda.
On the plus side for this strategy, it’s fairly resistant to Infiltration and other peeking abilities. A server which is difficult to access serves as a second layer of protection if your opponent peeks and realizes that there’s an agenda in the server. You’re essentially using your ICE as a backup plan, just in case your opponent picks up a tell or peeks at the card in the server. And of course, if your opponent thinks they’re outsmarting you or tricking you by playing that Inside Job they splashed in, then they’re probably very much caught off-guard by a trap they’re not expecting, and there’s a greater chance that they weren’t prepared for it. A problem with this strategy is that sometimes your traps are going to fail just because the opponent will be too scared to run. If you’ve got a server with three pieces of ICE and a fourth unrezzed one on top, he might just decide he’s unlikely to be able to run that server, and all you’ve done is waste a turn.
In under-protecting everything, you’re leaving your servers a bit easier to access, so your opponent likely knows that he can get into a server, but he also knows that it may be a trap. This way of playing is slightly more consistent with the philosophy of playing traps; we don’t need to protect our servers quite as heavily when we have the added protection of traps.
On the plus-side, your traps will always have a chance of hitting if your opponent knows they can likely get in. In addition, if you do this, you can either get away with running less ICE, or play the same amount of ICE and use it to protect other servers you might otherwise have to under-protect. If you only need to play three pieces of ICE on your remote server because you are expecting traps to scare the opponent, then you might be able to afford that extra piece of ICE protecting your discard pile from the Sneakdoor Beta that Gabe has out. On the downside, it’s not expensive for your opponent to try and call your bluff. If your opponent has four or five cards in hand just in case that 2-token card is a Project Junebug, then they can pretty much run your lightly-defended server with impunity. If you under-protect your servers, expect your opponent to run your servers more often, ‘just to keep you honest.’ In addition, this strategy can fall to Infiltration-type cards. If your server is relatively easy to get into, then if your opponent somehow knows there’s an agenda in there, then it’s simple to steal it.
There’s no right answer to how to play your traps, as long as you’re playing your traps and agendas in the same way. Under-Protecting and Over-Protecting are both fine, as long as you’re doing it in a way which doesn’t give your opponent any information. You can play safer against Criminal decks which are likely to have Satellite Uplink, and riskier against a Chaos Theory deck which doesn’t have enough space for such niceties. You can even start off under-protecting, and then over-protect after your opponent uses their first infiltration to spot a trap. Under-Protecting versus Over-Protecting is not a scale of correctness; it’s a scale of riskiness.
So now that we have a good idea of how we are going to play our traps, let’s look at some specifics about each type of trap you can play and how you can trick people with them.
Assets without Advancement Tokens
There’s something to be said for traps and assets which you can’t install tokens on. These traps only take one click to lay down, and they work without any extra investment. They don’t usually kill the opponent, but are very low risk, and they also have the most bluffing potential by a long shot.
Traps which work without agenda tokens have a subtle advantage over the ones which do. They can sometimes sit in servers for a very large number of turns without being suspicious, because of multitude of options they can represent. For example, if I install an Edge of the World into a server, I am attempting to pass it off as a 3-point agenda which I will score next turn. If the opponent does not access it on that turn, though, it does not look as suspicious for me to leave it in the server. In fact, even if I leave it in a server for two or three turns, it regains its threatening potential once again if I install an upgrade into the server, like Akitaro Watanabe or Corporate Troubleshooter. Now it looks like my original trap which has been sitting there untriggered was the protective upgrade, and the second card is finally my attempt to put an agenda into the server.
In fact, you can even use non-trap assets as traps on occasion. While traps usually cost the opponent cards in hand or installed programs, a harmless asset costs credits. For example, in a recent game, I was at 5 points playing Jinteki, and had a reasonably well-protected server, but one which the opponent could get through at a high cost. (About 10 credits) This was something that both of us knew, all the ICE was face-up. Nothing was going to change the fact that he could access that server. But the risk of me scoring immediately pretty much meant he had to run the server and try and stop it, no matter what I put in. My opponent was prepared for the worst, with a Wyldside in play keeping his hand big enough to stop any crazy traps from killing him. So I simply played a Zaibatsu Loyalty into that server and next turn, my opponent paid 10 gold to make sure it wasn’t a Braintrust and I couldn’t win next turn. If Zaibatsu Loyalty’s card text said, “Next turn, your opponent loses one click and ten credits” I would play it all day long. And if he didn’t access it, I wouldn’t feel too bad about just trashing it and trying again later after installing some more ICE and making him guess again.
The real killer trap here is Edge of the World. Brain damage really hurts, and makes your future traps even more threatening. But since it has to be in a server which has ICE in front of it, you pretty much have to install it in your main remote server, and pass it off as an agenda or an upgrade. Snare is a great surprise, but there’s a big benefit to just keeping it in your hand and trying to punish people for accessing that. (Although passing off a Snare as an unprotected Pad Campaign very early game can work pretty well.)
Bluffing with 1 or 2 advancement tokens
Assets which require advancement tokens to work (like Project Junebug or Aggressive Secretary) are much more straight-forward. When you install a trap like this, you are attempting to convince your opponent that it is a 4 or 5 cost agenda that you will score next turn if they do not stop you. If you fool the opponent and they access your trap, you will probably get a nice payoff, which, in the case of two tokens, is probably greater than the traps which you can’t advance. If the opponent doesn’t run them, you just wasted a couple of credits and clicks, and it’s time to trash them and install something else, starting the guessing game again. That’s the biggest issue with these traps. They take so much setup that it’s pretty painful if the opponent does not fall for them. If I install and Aggressive Secretary and advance it twice and the opponent doesn’t run it, then I’ve wasted an entire turn.
These traps have their best chance of ‘trapping’ the opponent when they are dropped and advance them once or twice immediately, because that looks so unsuspicious. But once you advance them, they basically have a one-turn window to fool the opponent, because nobody leaves partially-scored agendas sitting around if they can help it. You might be able to drop the asset on one turn and then advance it on another turn, but that starts to look a little suspicious. You might be able to sell it if your remote server is much more protected than your hand and it looks like you’re installing it there for safety. And, of course, if the runner accesses these assets with no tokens, then they don’t get trapped, but they waste the money to access the server, which is a nice return on the investment. (But it lacks the subtle pleasure of yanking four cards out of the opponent’s hand.)
At one advancement token, Aggressive Secretary stands out. With only one token, Project Junebug just tickles the opponent a bit, which Aggressive Secretary can get rid of a key Magnus Opus or Yog-a-saurus. With two tokens, Project Junebug really starts shining, as losing four cards is really painful. (If not outright deadly.)
Bluffing with more than two advancement tokens
Here’s where things get silly. Traps with more than 2 advancement tokens are a much rarer scenario, as they usually represent an investment of more than one turn into tricking the opponent. It can be incredibly costly if these traps fail, but of course, the payoff is huge. A three-token Project Junebug kills just about any runner, and a three token Aggressive Secretary can practically wipe the runner’s whole rig. (And a three-token Ghost Branch… tags them three times.) And like the other examples, if the trap is accessed the turn you laid it down with no tokens on it, then you’re presumably draining the runner’s credits.
But if you want the big payoff, the big issue is to actually convince the opponent that the card with three tokens on it is an agenda. This is difficult; the only agendas which really make sense to play in this way are Mandatory Upgrades, and agendas like Project Atlas or Project Vitruvius which can be advanced beyond the amount they need to be scored. (And really, three or so tokens is kind of a practical limit to how many tokens you can put on a card before the opponent gets suspicious. After you fish out your Sea Source and your two Scorched Earths, how many other cards do you need to get out of your deck with Project Atlas, anyway?)
If your opponent sees that you’re running these kinds of cards, then you’re good. For example, if he steals a Project Atlas from you, then he knows there’s potential for it to pop up and be advanced more than three times. But think about the story you’re trying to sell the opponent. If they stole your first Project Atlas and it looks like you’re desperate to fish out those pieces of the Scorched Earth combo a few turns later, then that looks believable. If the opponent has seen both a Sea Source and a Scorched Earth by accessing your hand, are they really going believe you need more cards from Project Atlas?
This is the main reason I like to play Mandatory Upgrades in HB. It gives me the ability to really sell a Project Junebug with three tokens on it as if it were an agenda. If I score one, if definitely doesn’t preclude me from trying to score another. And aside from the obvious benefits of scoring it, it makes laying down an asset/agenda and immediately giving it three tokens on the same turn a very reasonable course of action; it looks like I want to score another Mandatory Upgrades. So we can make it look like we have a valid reason to have 3-token agendas multiple times in a game, which really helps to make those game-ending traps land.
But the real problem here is that some opponents simply won’t run on a card with that many tokens, ever. Here, mixing in a random bluff has a low expectation, so it’s not worth it to throw in those three-token bluffs. If you find yourself playing in that kind of environment, you can only really expect these traps to work when your opponent must run, or they just lose. You might be about to get away with feigning a big Project Atlas at any time if you’re playing Tag and Bag, since a 6-point Project Atlas gets all the points you need to kill almost anyone… But that’s really only an option for a player who is willing to devote almost all of their deck’s influence to throwing traps on top of the typical Tag and Bag setup. If you’re playing traps out of HB, you might want to consider only playing these traps when you have 5 points scored already, and another Mandatory Upgrades would win you the game.
Infiltration
If your opponent plays cards that reveal your traps, then as we pointed out earlier in the article, you might want to swap to a more protected method of play, which makes your traps a little less likely to hit, but makes it so Infiltration doesn’t give the opponent a very cheap agenda. You can’t do anything else about it if they have Infiltration in their deck, so just keep playing the traps and agendas and mix things up like you normally would, and hopefully, you will be able to force them to take a guess without a copy of Infiltration in your hand. Smile, congratulate them on spotting your trap, and move on quickly.
Your deck construction shouldn’t change because of the existence of this card in your meta-game either. If you’re playing a Jinteki deck which is relying on only traps to win, throw in Zaibatsu Loyalty (which should probably already be in the deck anyway.) If you’re playing a deck with a few traps here and there to surprise people, then just leave your deck be and tune your play a bit.
Local meta-game
If the player you are playing against or your local meta-game plays in such a way as to give up information or removes uncertainty, then you can take advantage of it. For example, I have heard a disturbing number of players in my area say that they simply refuse to run on any server which does not have an advanced card in it, for fear of it being Edge of the World. If you are a situation where you opponents will play this predictably, then there are two ways you can take advantage of the situation.
First, you can only play traps which take advancement tokens. If you only play traps like Aggressive Secretary and Project Junebug, then you’re simply tweaking your traps to make them more likely to hit these players. This will work just fine, and as we know, those traps with 2 or 3 tokens on them can be truly brutal when they hit.
Second, you can play more agendas which can be advanced in a single turn, essentially calling their bluff. If you know that your opponent refuses to run anything without advancement tokens, then you can take advantage of this by either running more 3-cost agendas and scoring them the turn after they are installed, or by simply playing a fast-advance deck which scores agendas on the same turn they are dropped. So if you’re playing HB, for example, you might consider running both Accelerated Beta Test and Project Vitruvius. Or you might want to pull out your NBN Fast-Advance deck and never let an agenda sit on the board all game. Once you opponent catches on that you’re taking advantage of this hole in their game and starts running on un-advanced cards again, you’ll be able to play in a more regular style. And if they don’t catch on? Great, take advantage of it all day long.
Beating Bluffs
So how do we beat a good bluffer? If your opponent is bluffing perfectly, then there’s nothing you can do about it. The simple answer is you can’t really BEAT them, the best you can do is make your guesses as good as you possibly can. Since we’re playing a good bluffer and we have no tells to work with, we have to use game theory and think about risk versus reward. If we are at 5 agenda points and our opponent is at 3 agenda points, and he lays an unrezzed card in an empty server with three pieces of ICE protecting it, there are four real possibilities we need to consider:
It’s a Snare It’s an Edge of the World It’s an Agenda It’s some upgrade or unadvanced trap.
If we have no other information about what could be in server, then we have to make an educated guess about whether or not to run it. If we had all the time in the world, we would make this decision with game theory. We’d assign a probability and a payoff to every event. For example, we might say that the odds that he played Edge of the World are 20%, the payoff if we don’t run it is 200, and the payoff if we do is -800. Then we’d multiply everything together, hope our percentages are accurate, and make the decision which gives us the best payoff.
However, coming up with good probabilities is hard (if not impossible), this is a lot of mental math to do, and we’ve got a time limit in this game. So instead, we’ll try to do a more shorthand form of this. We’ll see how many of his traps and agendas he has played so far and make a guess based on that. So let’s say that we’ve seen two of his Edge of the Worlds already, but none of his snares, and he has about half his deck left. So we suspect that the odds of it being an Edge of the World are fairly low, but the odds of it being a Snare are much higher. And the odds of it being an agenda are also fairly high. If we run into an agenda, we likely win the game, if we run into a Snare it’s kinda bad, but if we run into the last copy of Edge of the World, it will really hurt. So we balance the risk versus the rewards and take a guess. Since we can’t assign real percentages to everything, there’s no real right guess here, you kind of just have to trust your gut. (Which just seems poetic and right when there are bluffs involved.)
Unorthodox advancing
As a final point, this entire article is based on the use of fairly normal patterns people use to advance agendas, such as installing a 3-cost agenda on one turn and scoring it next turn, or installing a 5-cost agenda and putting two tokens on it in one turn and scoring it on the next turn. These normal methods of advancing agendas are in place for good reason; they expose your agendas to the opponent for the fewest turns possible, making it harder to steal them.
If you play all of your traps AND agendas in strange ways, lackadaisically putting tokens on them here and there, then sure, you’re bluffing your opponent well by playing your traps and agendas in the same way, but there’s going to be more times when you have agendas with one or two tokens on them which your opponent can decide that they’ll only run whenever they have the protection. And since you’re stretching the game out by leaving things in play longer than they normally would be, you really aren’t in a place to take advantage of the fact that they are being so slow and cautious. (And really, the Corp can make things dangerous for themselves by playing too slowly, as they’ll have more chances to draw agendas they have to protect.
But if you DO regularly leave advanced agendas sitting around for multiple turns before scoring them and kill your opponents off with five-token Project Junebugs, you might want to get into poker. I think you’d do well there.Social rules and conventions governing time
In sociology and anthropology, time discipline is the general name given to social and economic rules, conventions, customs, and expectations governing the measurement of time, the social currency and awareness of time measurements, and people's expectations concerning the observance of these customs by others.
The concept of "time discipline" as a field of special attention in sociology and anthropology was pioneered by E. P. Thompson in Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism, published in 1967. Coming from a Marxist viewpoint, Thompson argued that observance of clock-time is a consequence of the European industrial revolution, and that neither industrial capitalism nor the creation of the modern state would have been possible without the imposition of synchronic forms of time and work discipline. The new clock time imposed by government and capitalist interests replaced earlier, collective perceptions of time that Thompson believed flowed from the collective wisdom of human societies. While in fact it appears likely that earlier views of time were imposed instead by religious and other social authorities prior to the industrial revolution, Thompson's work identified time discipline as an important concept for study within the social sciences.[citation needed]
The natural world [ edit ]
In societies based around agriculture, hunting, and other pursuits that involve human interaction with the natural world, time discipline is a matter governed by astronomical and biological factors. Specific times of day or seasons of the year are defined by reference to these factors, and measured, to the extent that they need measuring, by observation. Different peoples' needs with respect to these things mean sharply differing cultural perceptions of time. For example, it surprises many non-Muslims that the Islamic calendar is entirely lunar and makes no reference at all to the seasons; the desert-dwelling Arabs who devised it were nomads rather than agriculturalists, and a calendar that made no reference to the seasons was no inconvenience for most of them.
In Western societies [ edit ]
In more urban societies, some of these natural phenomena were no longer at hand, and most were of much less consequence to the inhabitants. Artificial means of dividing and measuring time were needed. Plautus complained of the social effect of the invention of such divisions in his lines complaining of the sundial:
The alarm clock is for many people a reminder of the intrusion of socio-economic time discipline into their sleep cycle
The gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
Who in this place set up a sun-dial,
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small portions. When I was a boy
My belly was my sun-dial; one more sure,
Truer, and more exact than any of them.
This dial told me when 'twas proper time
To go to dinner, when I had aught to eat.
But now-a-days, why, even when I have,
I can't fall-to, unless the sun give leave.
The town's so full of these confounded dials,
The greatest part of its inhabitants,
Shrunk up with hunger, creep along the streets.
Plautus's protagonist here complains about the social discipline and expectations that arose when these measurements of time were introduced. The invention of artificial units of time measurement made the introduction of time management possible, and time management was not universally appreciated by those whose time was managed.
Western religious influences [ edit ]
In western Europe, the practice of Christian monasticism introduced new factors into the time discipline observed by members of religious communities. The rule of Saint Benedict introduced canonical hours; these were religious observances that were held on a daily basis, and based on factors again mostly unrelated to natural phenomena. It is no surprise, then, that religious communities were likely the inventors, and certainly the major consumers, of early clocks. The invention of the mechanical clock in western Europe, and its subsequent technical developments, enabled a public time discipline even less related to natural phenomena. (Highly sophisticated clepsydras existed in China, where they were used by astrologers connected with the imperial court; these water clocks were quite large, and their use limited to those who were professionally interested in precise timekeeping.)
The invention of the clock [ edit ]
The English word clock comes from an Old French word for "bell," for the striking feature of early clocks was a greater concern than their dials. Shakespeare's Sonnet XII begins, "When I do count the clock that tells the time." Even after the introduction of the clock face, clocks were costly, and found mostly in the homes of aristocrats. The vast majority of urban dwellers had to rely on clock towers, and outside the sight of their dials or the sound of their bells, clock time held no sway. Clock towers did define the time of day, at least for those who could hear and see them. As the saying goes, "a person with a clock always knows what time it is; a person with two clocks is never sure."
Improvements of the clock [ edit ]
The discipline imposed by these public clocks still remained lax by contemporary standards. A clock that only strikes the hours can only record the nearest hour that has passed; most early clocks had only hour hands in any case. Minute hands did not come into widespread use until the pendulum enabled a large leap in the accuracy of clocks; for watches, a similar leap in accuracy was not made possible before the invention of the balance spring. Before these improvements, the equation of time, the difference between apparent and mean solar time, was not even noticed.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, private ownership of clocks and watches became more common, as their improved manufacture made them available for purchase by at least the bourgeoisie of the cities. Their proliferation had many social and even religious consequences for those who could afford and use them.
Before time became standardized, clock masters used “True Time”. The day work began and ended with the sun. This time period was divided into 12 equal hours. This meant that these hours would vary with the seasons, as the length of daylight changed. Each town would have their own variance of this “True Time”. Eventually, cities adopted “Mean Time”, which is how we think of time nowadays. Astronomers used the Earth’s rotation and the stars to calculate the time, and divided the day into 24 uniform and equal hours. Geneva was the first city to adopt mean time in 1780, followed by London in 1792, Berlin in 1810, Paris in 1816, and Vienna in 1823.[1]
Religious consequences [ edit ]
Religious |
[17] credit (inside money); and fourth, the development of arrangements for the routine exchange (clearing) of inside monies of rival banks. The historical time that separates these stages is not crucial. Also, innovation, rather than consisting of steady progress as pictured here, is likely to involve many dead ends and much “creative destruction.” What matters is that each stage is a logical outgrowth of the preceding stage. Moreover, though every step is a result of individuals finding new ways to promote their self-interest, the final outcome is a set of institutions far more complex and important than any individual could have contemplated, and one which was not consciously aimed at by anyone.
Another approach, which also helps in interpreting historical evidence, is to base assumptions on a logical (but also conjectural) story of the evolution of a “typical” free banking system, as it might occur in an imaginary, unregulated society called Ruritania. The story can be supported along the way by illustrations from actual history. But it only accounts for features of past banking systems that were predictable (though perhaps unintended) consequences of self interested, individual acts, uninfluenced by legislation.
Unfortunately, there have been few free banking episodes in the past, none of which realized it in a pure form. Thus history furnishes an inadequate basis for drawing theoretical conclusions about free banking. To rely exclusively on it would invite generalizing from features unique to a single episode or from features attributable to regulation.
In recent years several studies have been made of the properties of hypothetical, unregulated payment systems. The value of these studies is limited, however, by their authors’ use of ad hoc assumptions, ranging from the proliferation of competing fiat currencies at one extreme to the complete absence of money at the other. To be really useful in interpreting the effects of regulation in the past, or in predicting the consequences of deregulation in the future, a theory of unregulated banking should be based on realistic assumptions drawn, if possible, from actual experience.
Obviously these brief remarks do not add up to an historical argument for free banking. Nor do they adequately describe the complex political and intellectual forces responsible for the universal adoption of central banking. The reason for mentioning them here is to show the reader that the historical record does not provide any clear evidence of the failure—except politically—of free banking. Since past experience provides no motive for the rejection of free banking, we are justified in examining its theoretical and practical implications.
The United States did have one experience with more or less unregulated, plural note issue. This was the New England Suffolk system of the antebellum period. New England had been more generous than other regions in granting charters to note-issuing banks. But prohibition of branch banking slowed the evolution of an efficient system of note exchange and clearing, thwarting normal competitive checks against overissue. Eventually the Suffolk Bank of Boston, in an effort to improve its note circulation by reducing the Boston circulation of country bank notes, set up an innovative system of note exchange which eventually formed the heart of America’s most praised banking system. The Suffolk is sometimes said to have performed as a free-market central bank. This is misleading. Unlike Edition: current; Page: [15] central banks the Suffolk did not have even a local monopoly of note issue; rival banks did not reissue its notes, and they held only such minimum deposits with it as it required as a condition for par acceptance of their notes. Thus the liabilities of the Suffolk Bank were not high-powered money. It could restrict the issues of other banks by promptly redeeming their notes, but it could not cause a general expansion of bank money by increasing its own issues. The Suffolk’s position was, in this crucial sense, more like that of contemporary commercial banks competing among co-equal rivals than like that of a privileged bank of issue.
These conditions set the stage for the great money panics of 1873, 1884, 1893, and 1907. Each of these crises came at the height of the harvest season, in October, when it was usual for large amounts of currency to be withdrawn from interior banks to finance the movement of crops. The crises provided the principal motive for creating the Federal Reserve System, which ended the era of plural note issue. Yet the crises would never have occurred (or would have been less severe) had it not been for government regulations that restricted banks’ powers of note issue in the first place.
Even the more responsible examples of bond-deposit banking had a critical flaw: they linked the potential growth of the currency component of the money stock to the value of government debt. This flaw became evident when, with the onset of the Civil War and the tremendous financial burden brought by it, Treasury Secretary Chase decided to employ bond-deposit finance on a national scale. Thus arose the National Banking System, in which the supply of currency varied with conditions in the market for federal bonds. The new system first revealed its incompatibility with monetary stability in the years after 1865, when state bank notes were taxed out of existence. After 1882, when surpluses began to be used to contract the federal debt, the system’s shortcomings were magnified: as the supply of federal securities declined, their market values increased. The national banks found it increasingly difficult and costly to acquire the collateral needed for note issue. This precluded secular growth of the currency supply. It also meant that cyclical increases in the demand for currency relative to total money demand could not be met, except by paying out limited reserves of high-powered money which caused the money supply as a whole to contract by a multiple of the lost reserves.
Though bond-deposit requirements were ostensibly aimed at providing security to note holders, they only served this function if the required bond collateral was more liquid and secure in value than other assets that banks might profitably invest in. In reality, the opposite was often true, particularly in free banking states in the west and midwest. In these places, “banks” emerged whose sole business was to speculate in junk bonds—especially heavily discounted government bonds. Bond-collateral, purchased on credit, was duly deposited with state officials in exchange for bank notes equal to the better part of the face value of the bonds. The notes were then used to finance further rounds of bond speculation, with any increase in the market value of purchased bonds (which remained the property of their buyers) representing, along with interest earnings, a clear gain to the Edition: current; Page: [14] bankers. The infamous “wildcat” banks were mainly of this species, most of their issues being used to monetize state and local government debt.
1837 was, however, also the year in which increased public dissatisfaction with the charter or spoils system of bank establishment led to the adoption of “free banking” laws in Michigan and New York. These laws, later adopted in other states as well, brought banking into the domain of general incorporation procedures, so that a special charter no longer had to be secured in order for a new bank to open. This was an important step toward truly free banking, but it stopped well short of it. State governments, having relied for years on financial assistance they had received from privileged banks, sought to retain such assistance while still allowing free entry into the banking business. To accomplish this they included “bond-deposit” provisions in their free-banking laws. These provisions required banks to secure their note issues with government bonds, including bonds of the state in which they were incorporated. Typically, a bank desiring to issue 90 dollars in notes would first have to purchase 100 dollars (face value) of specified state bonds, which could then be deposited with the state comptroller in exchange for certified currency.
Nevertheless, U.S. experience does not demonstrate the failure of unregulated banking, for the simple reason that banks have been heavily regulated throughout American history. As Bray Hammond notes (1957, 186), legislators in the early years of the republic never applied the principle of laissez faire to the banking business. “The Edition: current; Page: [13] issue was between prohibition and state control, with no thought of free enterprise.” Banks were outlawed except when specifically authorized by state legislatures, and permission to set up a bank was usually accompanied by numerous restrictions, including especially required loans to the state. The situation after 1837—when the charter of the Second Bank of the United States expired—has been aptly referred to as involving “decentralism without freedom”; many note-issuing banks were established, but all were subjected to inhibiting regulations by the State governments that chartered them, and entry into the business was tightly restricted. Many western states and territories, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Oregon, Arkansas, and Texas, for a time allowed no note-issuing banks whatsoever. Other states restricted the business to a single, privileged firm. In most places branching was also outlawed.
More than any other nation the United States has bolstered the myth of free banking as an historic failure. It cannot be said that central banking emerged in the U.S. in direct response to the government’s quest for funds. The Federal Reserve System was the end result of a long monetary reform effort, aimed at correcting real problems of the previous system—a system that involved plural note issue. The new institution also commanded the approval of an overwhelming majority of economists.
Three other Dominion nations, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, also had plural note-issue systems and also adopted central banking in the wake of wartime financial measures. (The experience of Australia is discussed below in chapter 3.) In these cases also it is not clear that central banking was adopted because of any inherent defects of unregulated banking. The desire of these governments to borrow money on favorable terms, together with theorists’ recognition that wartime legislation had undermined natural checks against monetary expansion, were the most obvious reasons for the creation of central banks in these places. Other Dominion nations were urged by the Home Government to follow suit on the grounds that there was need for “intra-imperial co-operation.” By this time central banking had become a matter of national pride, and the opinion developed that “no country could be considered to have attained maturity until it had given birth to a central bank.”
The Canadian banking system was an example of a well working free banking system which suffered few crises and included some of the world’s most prestigious banking firms. It was frequently referred to by American writers anxious to correct the defects of their own system but, unfortunately, equally anxious in most cases to find the answer in some piece of legislation. At the beginning of the Great Depression (several years before the Bank of Canada was established), when thousands of banks in the United States went out of business, the Canadian system proved its worth by not suffering a single bank failure.
Although Canada returned to the gold standard in the 1920s, it went off it again (once more in sympathy with Britain) in 1931. Canadian monetary experts soon became disenchanted with the “half-way house” measures affecting note issue, in which the Treasury was able to manipulate the money supply like a central bank but was not guided by any set policy. This fact, together with the desire of the government to escape permanently from the confines of private Edition: current; Page: [12] finance, led to demands for the creation of a true central bank. To satisfy these demands the Bank of Canada was established in 1935. It secured a monopoly in note issue shortly thereafter.
Canadian experience also contradicts the view that free banking is inferior to central banking. During the 19th century Canada had a much more liberal banking policy than the U.S., and its banking system performed much better than the U.S. banking system of the same era. Canadian laws allowed plural note issue, permitted branch banking, and encouraged the growth of an elaborate clearing system. After 1841 the only serious restrictions on banking freedom had to do with capital and note issue. To receive a charter and limited-liability status a bank had to have $500,000 (Canadian) or more of paid-in capital soon after opening. Note issue was limited to the amount of this paid-in capital, but this restriction had no effect until the severe currency drain of 1907. In 1908 the law was changed to allow an emergency circulation exceeding capital by 15 percent during crop moving season. The government also monopolized the issue of notes under five dollars, but government note issues were restricted by a 100 percent marginal reserve requirement modeled after Peel’s Act. For this reason government note issue did not become a source of inflation until World War I, when Canada joined Britain and the other Dominion nations in going off the gold standard. It was then that the government allowed, even pressured, the chartered banks to suspend payment, which they did. Meanwhile government (Dominion) notes were made legal tender and issued in large denominations to encourage their use for the settlement of clearings among the chartered banks. Since neither the government nor the banks were paying out gold, this was in effect a fiat-money central banking system, with the Treasury acting as the issuer of high-powered money. Though the war ended, the government did not retire the large Dominion notes, nor did it abolish the legal tender laws which made them high-powered money, and so the Treasury retained its power to manipulate the money supply.
Francesco Ferrara, the leading Italian economist of the era of the risorgimento, argued vehemently against the forced currency laws and other legislation that limited banks’ obligations to redeem their notes (Ferrara 1866). Ferrara also objected to the limitation of entry Edition: current; Page: [11] into the note-issue business, arguing that free competition among issuers of convertible currency was the best means for ensuring monetary stability (Ferrara 1933). These opinions were seconded by Guiseppe Di Nardi in his definitive study of this era in Italian banking (Di Nardi 1953). The findings of these writers suggest strongly that interference by the Italian government ruined what might otherwise have been a successful example of free banking.
During the first decades of its independence, Italy, too, had a plurality of note-issuing banks. But the risorgimento left the new state with an immense debt, in which several of the banks, and the National Bank of the Kingdom in particular, were involved. As an alternative to retrenchment the Italian government sought further help from the note-issuing banks. It secured this help by allowing the notes of the Bank of the Kingdom issued in connection with loans to the state to pass as inconvertible (forced) currency, while at the same time awarding limited legal tender status to the notes of other issuing banks. This arrangement continued until 1874, when all Italian banks were placed on an equal footing, in that all were allowed to participate in the issue of irredeemable paper for the purpose of monetizing the national debt. This reform also prohibited further entry into the business of note issue. In consequence of these reforms the Italian money supply became extremely unstable. Its growth followed the growth of government expenditures. In 1883 gold convertibility was officially restored, but lack of strict enforcement, including severe limitations placed on the exchange of bank notes and settlement of clearings between competing banks, caused the system to remain in a state of de facto inconvertibility. Ten years later, a scandal erupted when several banks made unauthorized issues of legal tender notes. This gave rise to reforms leading to the establishment of the Bank of Italy, which had a monopoly of note issue conferred upon it in 1926.
Unlike France, Spain had a relatively liberal banking policy in the years just prior to 1873. It had many note-issuing banks, most of which were monopolies solely in their province of establishment. The exception was the Bank of Spain which, although begun as a financially conservative enterprise, became involved in large-scale loans to the government that eventually made it fiscal agent to the state. In return for this it was eventually given exclusive rights to interprovincial branching. Then, in 1874, six years after the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy, in return for a loan of 125 million pesetas the new republican government gave the Bank a monopoly of note issue. The government also offered generous concessions to other banks in return for their becoming branches of the Bank of Spain. Most of the smaller banks accepted.
The fall of Napoleon led to the establishment, throughout the country, of local banks of issue. These defied the monopoly of the Bank of France, although the latter remained the sole nationwide supplier of currency. After 1840 the government refused to grant any more charters for new note-issuing banks, and in 1848 those already in existence were absorbed by the Bank of France. Thus the period of limited competition was short lived. But its end gave rise to a prolonged debate between the champions of free banking and defenders of the Bank of France, with the majority of French economists on the former side. The French free banking theorists were again active in 1857, when the charter of the Bank of France came up for renewal. The 1860 annexation of Savoy, which had its own note-issuing Edition: current; Page: [10] bank, generated the most intense discussion of all, but soon their repeated failure to win any practical victory for their beliefs caused the free bankers to abandon their cause. The close of the decade marked the end of significant anti-monopoly agitation.
Renewed attempts to establish banks of issue in the 1790s were defeated by Napoleon, who reacted to private banks’ refusal to discount government paper by establishing a rival institution, the Bank of France, in which he was also a shareholder. Support for the new bank, at first unimpressive, improved when one of the private banks decided to consolidate with it. Nonetheless Napoleon remained dissatisfied, and in 1803 he passed a law giving the Bank of France the exclusive privilege of issuing bank notes at Paris and forbidding the establishment of banks in other regions without official approval. This forced the Bank of France’s principal rival, the second Caisse d’Escompte, into merger with it. Finally, in 1806, the Bank of France was placed under formal government control, and in 1808 it was given an exclusive right of note issue in every town in which it established branches.
In France merchants’ attempts to establish banking on a sound, competitive basis were repeatedly frustrated by the government’s desire to borrow money that it could not, or would not, repay. The spectacular failure of John Law’s Banque Royale in 1721, which had become a government bank three years before, prevented for half a century the establishment of any new bank of issue. In 1776 a new bank, the Caisse d’Escompte, was established to engage in commercial lending, but soon became involved in large loans to the state that caused it to suffer a liquidity crisis. The bank appealed to the Treasury to repay its most recent loan, but instead the government authorized a suspension of specie payments. The bank remained solvent, however, and when the government loan was repaid it resumed specie payments. After this, repeated forced loans to the state so entwined the bank with the government that it became, in effect, a branch of the Treasury. Its notes were made redeemable in Treasury assignats, which were made legal tender in 1790. The government soon sank into bankruptcy under a torrent of assignats, dragging the Caisse d’Escompte down with it.
Centralization of note issue in China was finally accomplished during the 1950s by the Communists, whose People’s Bank took over the branches of the Central Bank of China as well as offices of many remaining local banks. Though little information exists concerning the performance of the People’s Bank, what there is suggests that China continued long after the war to suffer from hidden inflation, disguised by an extensive system of official prices. Despite the general superabundance of money that this inflation implied, local communities also suffered from a shortage of convenient, small-denomination exchange media, such as had been well provided in Foochow during the non-inflationary, free-banking era.
The downfall of free banking in Foochow following the Republican revolution of 1911 was caused by the new central government’s restrictive regulations. These favored several very large, non-local or “modern style” banks which had given financial support to the revolutionaries. The Nationalists, when they gained power in 1927, were especially beholden to the modern banks (which issued silver-based monies) and favored them by prohibiting the issue of copper notes. At last, in 1935, the Nationalist government made notes of the three largest modern banks legal tender. The government eventually intended to give its greatest financial benefactor, the Central Bank of China, a monopoly of note issue. But its program was interrupted by the Japanese invasion of 1937, which caused it to concentrate on maximizing revenues from increased issues of legal tender. The consequence was yet another instance of paper money issued by the Chinese government becoming absolutely worthless.
Unlike government issues this private paper currency, which grew greatly in importance during the 19th century, was highly successful. Typically it did not depreciate, and it was widely preferred to bulky and non-uniform copper cash. Notes of larger banks circulated throughout Foochow at par, thanks to an efficient note-clearing system. Though smaller banks often failed, only one large local bank did so in the entire history of the industry. The large banks (of which there were 45 in the system’s last decades) commanded a high level of public confidence and respect.
Still another free-banking episode took place in Foochow, the Edition: current; Page: [8] capital of Fukien province, in mainland China. China went through numerous, disastrous experiences with reckless issues of government paper money, starting as early as the 9th century. At last the Ch’ing dynasty (1644-1911) decided to let note issue be an exclusively private undertaking, except for two brief, unsuccessful government issues during the 1650s and 1850s. In Foochow (and also in some other cities) local banks prospered under the Manchus, issuing paper notes redeemable (usually on demand) in copper cash and free from all government regulation.
From 1831 to 1902 Sweden also had a nearly unregulated free banking system (Jonung 1985). At the end of this period there were 26 note issuing private banks with a total of 157 branches. The note issues of these private banks competed successfully with those of the Riksbank (the bank of the Swedish Parliament) despite taxes and other restrictions imposed upon private notes and despite the fact that Riksbank notes alone were legal tender. One measure of the success of the Swedish private note-issuing banks is that, throughout their existence, none failed even though the government had an explicit policy of not assisting private banks in financial trouble. The system was also orderly in that there was an organized system of note exchange, with all notes accepted at par by the various banks. Finally, the absence of banking regulations in Sweden was crucial to its exceptionally rapid economic growth during the second half of the 19th century. In this private note issue played a major role, both as an instrument for marshalling loanable funds and as a means for promoting overall development and sophistication of the Swedish financial system. Still, despite its success, Swedish free banking was dismantled in stages beginning in 1901 when the government, resenting the loss of state revenue from reduced circulation of Riksbank notes, sought by means of regulations and offers of subsidies to restore to the Riksbank a monopoly of note issue. The private banks’ right to issue notes was formally abrogated in 1904.
If England’s was a model central banking system, then Scotland’s was its antithesis. From 1792 to 1845, Scotland had no central bank, allowed unrestricted competition in the business of note issue, and imposed almost no regulations on its banking firms. Yet the Scottish system was thought to be superior by nearly everyone who was aware of it. Its decline after 1845 was caused, not by any shortcoming, but in consequence of the unprovoked extension of Peel’s Act, which ended new entry into the note issue business in Scotland as well as England.
In the meantime the reputation of all note-issuing banks suffered as a result of the suspension of 1797-1821. It was further eroded by a crisis in 1826. The authorities clamoured for restrictions upon note issue, making no effort to distinguish the powers of the Bank of England from those of other less privileged note-issuing banks. The country banks thus shared the blame for overissues that originated in the policies of the Bank of England. The consequence was Peel’s Bank Act of 1844, which prohibited further extension of country-bank note issues while placing a 100 percent marginal specie-reserve requirement on the note issues of the Bank of England. The Bank Act eventually gave the Bank of England a monopoly of note issue, as the Bank assumed the authorized circulation of country banks when they closed. It also added to the rigidity of the system by increasing the Edition: current; Page: [7] dependence of country banks on the Bank of England for meeting their depositors’ increased demands for currency. Since the Bank of England was itself restricted in its ability to issue notes, the system was incapable of meeting any substantial increase in demand for currency relative to the demand for checkable deposits. For this reason the Bank Act had to be repeatedly suspended until the desirability of having the Bank of England free to function as a “lender of last resort” during “internal drains” of currency was made conspicuous in Bagehot’s Lombard Street (1874). When it formally acknowledged its special responsibilities the Bank of England became the first true central bank, the prototype for other central banks that would be established in nearly every nation on the globe.
The Bank of England was established by King William III in 1694. It was designed to secure “certain recompenses and advantages... to such persons as shall voluntarily advance the sum of fifteen hundred thousand pounds towards carrying on the war with France.” In the age of mercantilism the granting of special privileges to business firms in exchange for financial assistance to the state, especially during wartime, was common. Yet in banking this pattern continued even into the twentieth century. The Bank of England followed it faithfully until 1826, routinely securing for itself additional monopoly privileges in addition to extensions of its charter. In 1697, in exchange for a loan of £ 1,001,071, it was given a monopoly of chartered banking, limiting competition to private bankers. In 1708, in return for a loan of £ 2,500,000, the Bank’s owners were rewarded by an act prohibiting joint-stock banks (private banks of six partners or more) from issuing notes. To extend its privileges through the remainder of the century the Bank made further, large loans to the government in 1742, 1781, and 1799. In 1826 it suffered its first setback: a campaign led by Thomas Joplin gained for joint-stock banks the right to engage in note issue and redemption outside a circle with its radius extending 65 miles from the center of London, where the Bank of England was headquartered. But this threat of competition was made up for in 1833 by a law officially sanctioning the use of Bank of England notes by “country” banks as part of their legal reserves and for use instead of specie for redeeming their own notes. This encouraged country banks to use Bank of England notes as high-powered money (a role the notes were already playing to a limited extent as a result of the Bank’s monopoly of London circulation), expanding the Bank’s power to manipulate the English money supply.
Although this study will look at free banking from a theoretical point of view, it will help to sketch briefly the history of central banking in various leading nations. Conventional wisdom holds that central banks were established, at least in large part, in response to Edition: current; Page: [6] defects of unregulated banking. Recent works that contradict this view have already been mentioned. The following survey highlights historical evidence from these and other sources.
The reader should also note that this book does not attempt to discuss the relative political merits of free versus central banking. There is much to be said in favor of deregulation and choice in currency as means for freeing the monetary system from political manipulation. Nevertheless this study seeks to explore the theoretical merits and demerits of free banking quite apart from any political considerations. Therefore, in discussing the operations of central banks, it generally assumes that they are governed solely in the interest of consumers. As a result, the argument must be somewhat biased in favor of centralized control, since it is assumed that free banks operate only for the sake of private profit.
The argument is straightforward: nothing about free banking requires it to be approached with technical sophistication beyond what might be found in a graduate money and banking textbook. Money and banking professors might even assign this book to their students as a complement to standard theory. In fact, many of the theoretical arguments that appear in these pages should be familiar: what is new is the effort to put old concepts to work in examining a banking system with different institutional features. The reader needs to realize this. If he pays attention only to particular arguments (the trees), he might think little of what is being said is new or controversial. If, instead, he only pays attention to the conclusions (the forest), he might think that what is being said is not merely new but also the product of some new and bizarre reasoning.
Throughout the study emphasis is placed on the distinctive, macroeconomic implications of free banking. Its microeconomic consequences, though not unimportant, are less controversial. In fact, the emphasis is even more narrow: as the subtitle indicates, the study concentrates on the macroeconomic implications of competitive note issue, free banking’s most distinct and unconventional feature. Other features, such as deregulated deposit banking (with payment of interest on checkable accounts), branch banking, use of special electronic means for transfer of funds, etc., have not only been extensively dealt with elsewhere but are currently being put to practice in existing banking systems around the world. Moreover, scholarly opinion Edition: current; Page: [5] decidedly favors deregulation in these areas. The competitive issue of currency—and of redeemable bank notes in particular—is, on the other hand, a relatively unfamiliar and unexplored possibility, and one that most economists dismiss. The reason for this is not far to seek: monopolization of the supply of currency is essential to modern central banking operations. Therefore, to consider this form of deregulation is to consider a radical restructuring or abandonment of conventional views on the conduct and necessity of centralized monetary policy. Such revisionism is far removed from the everyday concerns of money and banking theorists, who need to study arrangements as they find them. But it is precisely what the present investigation undertakes.
The sequence of chapters reflects this tripartite purpose. Chapters 2 through 6 offer a positive theory of free banking. The purpose of chapter 2, “The Evolution of a Free Banking System,” is to motivate and justify assumptions concerning the institutional make-up of free banking. These assumptions provide the framework for the rest of the study. Chapter 3 considers the limits to the expansion of free bank liabilities (inside money) when the demand to hold them is unchanging; it also discusses the special status of monopoly suppliers of currency that places them beyond the pale of the usual forces of control. Chapter 4 defends a particular view of monetary equilibrium, which serves as a criterion for evaluating the response (discussed in chapters 5 and 6) of a free banking system to changes in the demand for inside money. Chapters 7 and 8 contrast free banking to central banking, with a focus on their abilities to keep the quantity of money and currency at their equilibrium levels. Chapters 9 and 10 complete this comparison by examining some alleged shortcomings of free banking that central banking is supposed to avoid. Finally, chapter 11 looks at free banking as a practical alternative to other means of monetary reform; the chapter ends with a sketch of a plan for deregulating and decentralizing the existing mechanism of currency supply.
The purpose of this study is threefold. Its principal aim is to advance the theoretical understanding of free banking. Despite recent and excellent empirical work, the theory of free banking is still more or less where it was when Vera Smith (1936) reviewed the literature on it. Second, it seeks to employ the theory of free banking in a critique of banking systems with monopolized currency supply, including all central banking systems. Finally, the study will suggest practical means for improving existing monetary and banking arrangements.
As a consequence of these developments, the theory and implications of unregulated and decentralized currency supply have been largely ignored. Indeed, central banking has been taken so much for granted that for many years no effort was made to examine alternative systems, even to show why they must fail. Lately, though, a new interest in unregulated or “free” banking with decentralized currency supply has surfaced, spurred on by the poor performance of central banks. F. A. Hayek’s pioneering work on Choice in Currency (1976) and his later monograph on Denationalisation of Money (1978) challenged the view that governments are more fit to provide media of exchange than private firms. This opened the gate to an entire new field of inquiry, to which there have already been numerous contributions. Most have been studies of the history of decentralized banking systems. The studies show that, of past systems involving decentralized currency issue, those that were least regulated actually worked rather well, whereas those that worked poorly were also not free from inhibiting regulations. By questioning the claim that free banking has failed in the past these studies justify renewed theoretical inquiry into its operational characteristics compared to those of central banking.
That competition in production serves the interests of consumers, and that monopoly in production is opposed to those interests, is a maxim which has guided mainstream economic thought and policy since the days of Adam Smith. Most enterprises have been influenced by it. One exception, though, is the issue of currency. Only a handful of theorists objected to governments setting up privileged banks, with monopolies or quasi-monopolies in note issue, during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and fewer still took exception later on, as central banking—a supposedly conscientious version of monopolized currency supply—came to be viewed as an indispensable part of national monetary policy.
Edition: current; Page: [ 35 ]
Students of banking theory often get the impression that central banks are uniquely capable of preventing monetary disequilibrium: they are not inclined to think of them as throwing a wrench in the works. Yet, in contrast to deposit banks and to banks in a free banking system, central banks (or any bank with a monopoly or quasi-monopoly in currency supply) have a unique capacity for generating monetary disturbances. The question that has to be asked, therefore, is whether the disturbances central banks perhaps prevent outweigh the disturbances they cause that would otherwise not occur.
In their later work, on Banking in a Theory of Finance, Gurley and Shaw commit the even more serious error of claiming that all financial institutions are equally capable of actively creating credit. Because of its failure to recognize the role of monopoly banks of issue as the ultimate source of created credit this view has served as a rationale for maintaining legal restrictions on credit expansion by deposit banks and for imposing similar restrictions on savings institutions and other non-bank financial intermediaries. Such restrictions not only interfere with efficient intermediation, but reinforce the erroneous notion that competitive financial firms are independent sources of inflation, which the central bank has to “control.”
The early Gurley and Shaw view does not really differ from Cannan’s “cloakroom” approach, which also failed to recognize that certain kinds of banks, namely those having a monopoly or quasi-monopoly in the issue of currency, can indeed create credit, and that deposit banks also could contribute to this credit creation by responding to chaScientists say they may have found a way to inhibit coronaviruses, of which the latest version is Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, more commonly known as the MERS virus.
MERS has claimed the lives of 193 people across 636 confirmed cases since it was first discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2012.
The newly-discovered compound, K22, was discovered by scientists to inhibit the virus' ability to use the host's cells to reproduce itself. Specifically, the MERS virus, which reproduces in the lining of the respiratory system, uses cells' membranes to shield itself before its starts reproducing. But K22 prevents the virus from taking over these membranes.
The process by which the virus uses the membrane of the host cell is a highly sensitive one, the researchers wrote in their PLOS Pathogens article, and can be influenced by anti-viral medications.
The coronavirus family also includes the common cold and SARS, which caused some 800 deaths in 2003. MERS causes coughing, fever and sometimes fatal pneumonia and reported cases have tripled in the past several weeks. Researchers believe the source for the virus is in the vast camel herds of Saudi Arabia, and nearly all confirmed MERS cases were of people who have recently been to the kingdom or its neighbors.
The approaching month of Ramadan is raising concerns of the spread of the virus, as the numbers of Muslims making the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia's holy sites are expected to rise.At last, the Marvel Cinematic Universe receives its own guidebook! Starting with the 2008 blockbuster Marvel's Iron Man, this series will profile fan-favorite Marvel Studios films and Marvel Television series! But this isn't your daddy's Official Handbook - the MCU Guidebooks are completely overhauled, slicker, sleeker and packed with vital information about the people, places, and objects that make the Marvel Cinematic Universe so compelling! Chock full of "fast facts," movie-to-comic comparisons, behind-the-scenes artwork and production stills, this inaugural issue features Tony "Iron Man" Stark himself; allies like Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, Ho Yinsen and Agent Phil Coulson; enemies like Obadiah Stane and the Ten Rings; Tony's armors and equipment including JARVIS, the Arc Reactor, Stark Mansion...and don't forget "Dum-E!" And much more! Relive the big-screen thrills of Marvel's Iron Man, and begin building your indispensable library of Cinematic Universe reference books!Both billionaire donors are close to Mr. Trump, a fellow tycoon. Mr. Adelson played a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s election, showering Republican groups last year with tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Wynn is the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and oversaw a fund-raiser on Wednesday at the president’s Washington hotel that Mr. Trump said had raised about $7 million for the party committee and his re-election campaign.
Earlier that day, America First Policies held a donor meeting for those who were in the capital for that evening’s fund-raiser. Every contributor who raised the issue of the anti-Heller campaign — an extraordinary offensive against a vulnerable senator in one’s own party — expressed approval of the attacks, according to an attendee.
Ronald M. Cameron, a major Republican donor who gave the maximum $5,400 donation to Mr. Heller’s re-election campaign this year, said he would consider investing in primary race challenges to Republican lawmakers who oppose the health care bill or other White House legislative priorities.
“I might support a challenger, and would certainly withhold support from someone that I thought was against Trump’s agenda,” said Mr. Cameron, an Arkansas poultry magnate who donated more than $2 million to committees supporting Mr. Trump’s |
as fictional Hamptons locations include Northport Village in the Town of Huntington, Old Westbury Gardens, Freeport's Nautical Mile, which served as the exterior and parking lot of Hampton Heritage Hospital (in one scene, Freeport's charter coat can be seen across the bay) Caumsett State Historic Park[citation needed] and Oyster Bay Town Hall, which was transformed into the entrance of the Hamptons Heritage Hospital emergency room. Catalina Beach Club in Atlantic Beach, New York was transformed for the pilot episode into the fictional Hampt Inn, the hotel Hank and Evan stayed in upon their arrival in the Hamptons. Downtown Locust Valley, another haunt of the wealthy on Long Island's Gold Coast, plays downtown East Hampton in at least one episode (where Evan and Paige go shopping), with interior shots in a store as well as street scenes. Other areas of filming include Roslyn, New York and Manhasset, New York, where the North Hempstead, New York Town Hall was used as a police station.
For several beach scenes, West Neck Beach (Huntington) was used and a food shopping scene was filmed in Southdown Market in Huntington. Huntington Hospital was used for Hamptons Heritage Hospital.
Two episodes of the second season take place in Cuba, but were filmed in Puerto Rico.[2]
Development and production [ edit ]
The pilot was filmed on location on Long Island, New York in the spring and fall of 2008.[3] The pilot was directed by Jace Alexander, who also filmed the pilot of Burn Notice, another USA Network show, which aired in the hour before Royal Pains. Andrew Lenchewski wrote the pilot and Rich and Paul Frank executive-produced the project, with Lenchewski co-executive producing and John P. Rogers producing. The series was then picked up for a 12-episode season.[4] On February 24, 2011, the show completed its second season. The show was renewed for a sixth season[5] which was filmed in New York and premiered on June 10, 2014.[6]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Awards and nominations for Royal Pains Year Award Category Recipient(s) Result 2012 Young Artist Awards Best Performance in a TV Series - Guest Starring Young Actress 14-16 Sami Gayle Nominated 2012 People's Choice Awards Favorite Cable TV Comedy Royal Pains Nominated 2013 ASCAP Awards Top Television Series Royal Pains Won 2016 GLAAD Awards Outstanding Individual Episode Royal Pains Won
Reception [ edit ]
Royal Pains has become one of the highest-rated shows on cable.[7] The series premiere was watched by 5.57 million viewers, the highest series premiere for the USA Network since Psych in 2006.[8][9] With episodes two and three watched by 5.59 million and 6.5 million viewers, respectively, it was the first show in five years to have viewership increase from week two to week three.[7][10]
Ratings [ edit ]
Season Timeslot (ET) # Ep. Premiered Ended TV Season Viewers
(in millions) Date Premiere
Viewers
(in millions) Date Finale
Viewers
(in millions) 1 Thursday 10:00 pm (June 4 – August 27, 2009) 12 June 4, 2009 5.57[11] August 27, 2009 5.90[12] 2009 7.47[13] 2 Thursday 10:00 pm (June 3 – August 26, 2010)
Thursday 9:00 pm (January 20 – February 24, 2011) 18 June 3, 2010 5.84[14] February 24, 2011 4.05[15] 2010–2011 7.33[16] 3 Wednesday 9:00 pm (June 29 – August 31, 2011)
Wednesday 10:00 pm (January 18 – February 22, 2012) 16 June 29, 2011 5.00[17] February 22, 2012 3.16[18] 2011–2012 TBA 4 Wednesday 9:00 pm (June 6 – September 19, 2012)
Sunday 9:00 pm (December 16, 2012) 16 June 6, 2012 3.95[19] December 16, 2012 3.25[20] 2012 TBA 5 Wednesday 9:00 pm (June 12 – September 11, 2013) 13 June 12, 2013 3.68[21] September 11, 2013 3.75[22] 2013 TBA 6 Tuesday 9:00pm (June 10 – September 2, 2014) 13 June 10, 2014 2.38[23] September 2, 2014 1.78[24] 2014 TBA 7 Tuesday 9:00pm (June 2 – July 21, 2015) 8 June 2, 2015 1.67[25] July 21, 2015 1.57[26] 2015 TBA
Home media [ edit ]
Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the first season of Royal Pains in Region 1 on May 25, 2010, and released it in Region 4 on August 25, 2010. Season 2 was released in Region 1 on May 17, 2011.[27] A DVD released on January 3, 2012, contained the first 10 episodes of the third season.[28] Episodes are also available on iTunes.
Novel series [ edit ]
Beginning in 2011, D.P. Lyle began publishing a book series based on the television series, under Signet Books' Obsidian imprint.[44]
Title Author ISBN Publication date First, Do No Harm D.P. Lyle, M.D. 0451234146 June 7, 2011[44] Sick Rich 0451235533 January 3, 2012[45]
Legal issues [ edit ]
On July 6, 2010, actor Hayden Christensen and his older brother Tove filed a lawsuit against USA Network in a Manhattan Federal Court. In the suit, the brothers claimed to have pitched USA Network an idea for a new television series, called Housecall, which involved a concierge doctor who made house calls to the rich and famous. The two brothers also claimed that a USA Network executive told them, "prior to learning about Housecall, he was unaware of concierge doctors and that he thought it was a fascinating idea." A USA Network spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit.[46] On May 10, 2011, a Manhattan judge ruled not enough evidence was available to justify a breach-of-contract claim because the claim concerns "materials that are not copyrightable, such as ideas." The decision was reversed on appeal in June 2012, the court holding that Christensens' claims were not pre-empted by copyright law. The opinion stated, "There are several qualitative differences between such a contract claim and a copyright violation claim," and added that sister appellate circuits recently had come to this same conclusion.[47] The case was settled in May 2013, with no details made public.[48]There is no such thing as a free market. Not in the United States, at any rate. You are free to buy what they (the people who comprise the apparat of government) allow you to buy.
Nothing more – and nothing less.
But what might we be able to buy if we did have a free market? Or even a more free market than the one we’ve got right now?
Almost certainly, we’d have access to new cars that are much more fuel efficient – and much less expensive – than the current crop of government-mandated cars.
These cars – the government-mandated ones – are both expensive and not particularly fuel-efficient because they must be designed and built to satisfy two at-odds directives: That they be “safe” – i.e., meet the government’s crashworthiness standards (which now include making the car “safe” for a pedestrian in the event the car strikes one). And that they be economical – i.e., they must meet the government’s fuel-efficiency mandates.
But the former puts the arm on the latter – and vice versa.
It’s a case of demanding to have one’s cake and eat it, too – which is the sort of thing the government specializes in.
Government-mandated cars (all types) are heavy cars. Because adding structure (steel, typically) is the only economically feasible way to make a car physically more resistant to impact forces. This, however, means increased curb weight. And the more a car weighs, the more fuel it takes to get it moving – and keep it moving. Especially if a minimum level of performance (and here we still have some free market influence on the thing) is necessary. People – generally – will not accept a car that takes 15 seconds (or even 12) to get to 60 MPH. The “bar” – the slowest most people will accept in a new car – is about 10 seconds, about what it takes a Prius hybrid. Most 2015 model year subcompact economy cars get to 60 in 8 seconds or so. They also weigh well over 2,000 pounds (the ’15 Toyota Yaris I reviewed recently weighed just under 2,400 lbs.) which is hundreds of pounds more than subcompact economy cars once weighed – in the era before government got heavy-handed with the “safety” mandates.
For example, a 1975 Honda Civic weighed about 1,900 pounds – about 500 pounds less than the ’15 Yaris. Which tells us why the ’75 Civic – a car 40 years older than the ’15 Yaris and lacking direct (or any other kind of) fuel injection (it had a carburetor) or a computer to precisely meter the fuel, and which came with a four-speed manual transmission without overdrive (a fuel-saving feature all modern cars have) nonetheless achieved nearly 30 MPG.
The Yaris tops out at 36 MPG.
Not much to show for 40 years’ work.
But what would a car like the Yaris – with fuel injection, an overdrive transmission and all the benefits of the past 40 years’ engineering advances – be capable of if it weighed 500 pounds less?
Probably 50 MPG. Possibly more.
Especially if it weighed 1,000 lbs. less – which is almost certainly doable given advances in manufacturing, metallurgy and the availability of plastic and composite materials.
But up wells the cry: It’d be “unsafe”!
Define “unsafe.”
And – who gets to define it?
Such a car would not be unstable, difficult to operate – a car more likely to lose control of. In fact, it’s very arguable that a car like the ’75 Civic is in a very meaningful way a safer than a car like the ’15 Yaris because it’s less likely to be be involved in an accident in the first place. Why is that? Because in a car like the ’75 Civic, you can see other cars better – and are thus more likely not to pull out in front of one. And that’s so because a car like the ’75 Civic does not have the awful blind spots most new cars have, because the ’75 doesn’t have “A” pillars (the structural supports at either side of the windshield) thicker than Hulk Hogan’s biceps, “B” pillars as thick as his legs and sail panels/”C” pillars as thick as his torso. Modern cars do because the government mandated that the roof be able to support the car in the event it rolls over. But the ’75 is less likely to roll over in the first place.
Which, then, is “safer”?
Also, “safe” is a continuum.
There is no such thing – yet (and probably never will be) – as the perfectly safe car. Even parked in your driveway, a meteor could crash into it. Must the car be made meteor-safe? An exaggeration, perhaps – but the point stands:
There are cars that are more – or less safe – than others, in terms of their ability to protect occupants from being injured in the event of a wreck.
A Mercedes S-Class sedan is “safer” than a Yaris. Drive each into a tree and see for yourself. The person who chooses the S-Class values its physical size, which confers an inherent safety advantage. Or maybe he just likes a big, imposing car. In any event, he values fuel efficiency – a function of lightness – less. He is still allowed the choice. Just as the Yaris buyer – for the moment – is still allowed to go with the car (the Yaris) that is lighter – and so, more fuel-efficient. Even if it entails owning a car that is objectively less “safe” than the Mercedes.
Why, then, should the person who places an even higher value on economy – who would be willing to accept a potentially increased risk of being hurt if there is an accident in exchange for much-improved fuel economy on an everyday basis – be denied that option?
The fact is most people don’t die in car accidents. Serious car accidents are actually fairly rare – and the truth of it is, they’re mostly avoidable because most “accidents” aren’t. They don’t just happen, like lightning strikes. They take place because the driver made a mistake. He wasn’t paying attention; he over-corrected the steering; he drove the car above his abilities or inappropriately for conditions. All of these factors are under the driver’s control. They are mistakes he didn’t have to make. There are drivers who do not make them. Who go a lifetime without ever wrecking a car. For them, the hundreds of extra pounds of “safety” they’re forced to lug around is expensive deadweight. Over a lifetime of driving, they are paying – are forced to pay – thousands of dollars for fuel they’d otherwise not have burned and thousands more for “safety” they never needed.
A good driver might weigh the (small, if driver error is excluded) risk of his being involved in a serious accident and – if he could – would buy the 1,500 lb. aluminum/plastic/composite car – perhaps with a small diesel engine – that gave him 75 MPG every day.
Unfortunately, he’s not allowed the choice. Neither are you.
We buy what we’re allowed to buy – as determined by the arrogance and presumption of people we’ve never met, who – somehow – regard themselves as entitled to parent us.
It’s become so ingrained and accepted that most of us don’t even question it anymore.
We ought to.
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PS: EPautos stickers are free to those who sign up for a $5 or more monthly recurring donation to support EPautos, or for a one-time donation of $10 or more. (Please be sure to tell us you want a sticker – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)Acetaldehyde is a highly toxic and mutagenic product of alcohol fermentation and metabolism which has been classified as a Class I carcinogen for humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Many Candida species representing oral microbiota have been shown to be capable of marked acetaldehyde production. The aim of our study was to examine the effects of various sugar alcohols and sugars on microbial acetaldehyde production. The study hypothesis was that xylitol could reduce the amount of acetaldehyde produced by Candida. Laboratory and clinical isolates of seven Candida species were selected for the study. The isolates were incubated in 12 mM ethanol and 110 mM glucose, fructose or xylitol at 37°C for 30 min and the formed acetaldehyde was measured by gas chromatography. Xylitol significantly (p < 0.0001) reduced the amount of acetaldehyde produced from ethanol by 84%. In the absence of xylitol, the mean acetaldehyde production in ethanol incubation was 220.5 μM and in ethanol-xylitol incubation 32.8 μM. This was found to be mediated by inhibition of the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme activity. Coincubation with glucose reduced the amount of produced acetaldehyde by 23% and coincubation with fructose by 29%. At concentrations that are representative of those found in the oral cavity during the intake of proprietary xylitol products, xylitol was found to reduce the production of carcinogenic acetaldehyde from ethanol by Candida below the mutagenic level of 40-100 μM.
Copyright © 2010 UICC.“Is that MacBook Pro you are wearing?”
There is nothing like the smell of a new Apple product. The smell that encompasses your nose as you rip into your new iPhone, Macbook Air, or iPad is memorable—and hey, maybe something that you would like to smell all the time. Melbourne-based artists Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer, and Simon McGlinn teamed with Air Aroma to create a unique fragrance that smells just like a new Apple product, specifically a MacBook Pro opened for the first time. How awesome.
To replicate the smell a brand new unopened Apple was sent to our fragrance lab in France. From there, professional perfume makers used the scents they observed unboxing the new Apple computer to source fragrance samples. On completion the laptop was sent back to Australia, travelling nearly 50,000kms and returned to our clients together with scent of an Apple Macbook Pro.
The fragrance will be used at the artists’ art show in Melbourne, where it will disperse throughout the exhibit with a Air Aroma Aroslim diffuser. Sadly, it does not sound like the scent will go into mass production.
If only they would package this stuff up and sell it in a can. Learn more.Von Jürgen Fritz
Für die SPD kommt es immer härter. Der Kampf um Platz 1 ist lange schon verloren. Jetzt droht den Genossen, die von Monat zu Monat, von Woche zu Woche immer mehr an Zustimmung verlieren, sogar, von der AfD überholt zu werden.
Der beispiellose Absturz der SPD
Wer hätte das gedacht? Schulz sah sich vor einigen Monaten schon als den nächsten Bundeskanzler. Und die AfD hofften alle gemeinsam mit massiver Hilfe der Massenmedien und gezielten Diffamierungskampagnen, unter fünf Prozent drücken zu können. Und jetzt das. Die AfD steigt und steigt, trotz all der konstruierten Skandale. Die SPD aber ist von den 32 Prozent aus Februar, März meilenweit entfernt. Jetzt fällt sie sogar auf den niedrigsten Wert, den Infratest dimap (ARD Deutschlandtrend) jemals gemessen hat. Vor einer Woche waren die Sozialdemokraten bereits von 23 auf 21 Prozent gefallen, doch der Absturz geht immer weiter. Inzwischen steht die SPD gerade noch bei 20 Prozent.
AfD steigert ihre Zustimmungswerte in fünf Wochen um 50 Prozent
Die AfD kann ihre Zustimmungswerte dagegen innerhalb der letzten fünf Wochen um 50 Prozent (4 Prozentpunkte) von 8 auf 12 Prozent steigern und hat die Nase im Kampf um Platz 3 jetzt klar vorne. Ja langsam stellt sich sogar die Frage, ob die AfD die SPD vielleicht noch einholen kann, sollte sich dieser Trend in den letzten zehn bis zwölf Tagen vor der Bundestagswahl fortsetzen.
Umfrageergebnisse im Überblick
Hier die die gestern Abend veröffentlichten Ergebnisse von Infratest dimap für den ARD-Deutschlandtrend:
Die Umfrage, die am Abend des 14.09. publiziert wurde, ist im Gegensatz zu anderen Umfragen, wie die von Allensbach oder Forsa, die ihre Hochrechnungen erst ein, zwei Wochen nach Erhebung veröffentlichen, brandaktuell. Infratest dimap befragte am 12. und 13.09. insgesamt 1.503 Personen.
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Bild: Youtube-Screenshot
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Spendenbitte: Wenn Sie diesen Blog und meine Arbeit wichtig finden und finanziell unterstützen möchten, dann können Sie entweder einmalig oder regelmäßig (Patenschaft) einen Betrag Ihrer Wahl auf das folgende Konto überweisen. Jürgen Fritz, IBAN: DE44 5001 0060 0170 9226 04, BIC: PBNKDEFF, Verwendungszweck: Spende für Blog.While the Pixar films Finding Nemo and Finding Dory feature the voice of famous lesbian Ellen DeGeneres, a new Finding Dory trailer released Tuesday led fans to speculate that a lesbian couple may be featured in the film.
Throughout the trailer, an octopus named Hank helps main character Dory, a fish with short-term memory loss, on her journey. In the hijinks, the octopus ends up in a baby carriage which appears to belong to a lesbian couple. Fans took note.
That new #FindingDory trailer released this morning? I think that's the first lesbian couple in a @DisneyPixar film.pic.twitter.com/S1wwJEOeWT
omg finally, Pixar put a lesbian couple in #FindingDory this is the time to celebrate pic.twitter.com/uPiV1nFp7A
While it's not certain that the women depicted are actually a lesbian couple, fan speculation suggests just how much people want to see Disney films embrace LGBT characters.
In May, two separate hashtag campaigns asked that Disney incorporate LGBT characters into its franchises. #GiveElsaAGirlfriend rallied for Frozen's Elsa to get a woman for a partner, while #GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend called on Marvel to let superhero Captain America to bring his relationship with his best friend Bucky to the next (read: a non-platonic) level.
Frozen featured an LGBT couple in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. When a male character named Oaken points to his family (at 2:12 in the video below), he points to another man and four children.
Both hashtags surfaced after LGBT advocacy group GLAAD gave Disney a "Failing" grade for the representation of LGBT characters
While a short scene with a white lesbian couple isn't a cinematic revolution, it's a small step forward and a sign of Pixar's and Disney's willingness to show the kids (and adults!) who watch their films that LGBT people exist — in the real as well as the animated world.
Watch the Finding Dory trailer below:We’ll know soon enough which 23 players will start the season in the NHL for Dallas. Cuts will be announced, players will be passed through waivers (or claimed while on them), and we’ll all start to reconcile ourselves to the second Ken Hitchcock iteration of the Stars. This is a meaningless opening paragraph that is just saying “hockey is going to start soon,” which you already knew. Let’s talk about the defense.
All the most recent comments from Ken Hitchcock indicate that Jamie Oleksiak is starting the season as a Dallas Stars defenseman in the NHL, and significantly so. The battle for an NHL roster spot—Hamhuis*, Lindell, Methot and Klingberg are likewise not being waived or re-assigned—is now between Greg “Greg” Pateryn, Julius Honka, Patrik Nemeth, and Stephen Johns. You can keep three if you’re okay with carrying eight defensemen, so that’s—*ducks a hail of rotten fruit and thrown bricks*—right, yes, seven defensemen, like I said. That means you get two of those players.
Honka can go to the AHL without being claimed on waivers, so that’s something. Unfortunately, of all four players, he’s the one you’d probably least want in Texas at this point. He can transition the puck, create offense, and generally just make things happen. Sometimes there is risk to that game, in a similar (though not identical) fashion to the game of John Klingberg. P.K. Subban’s game is not risk-free, but there comes a point where you take the bad with the good because the good is way, way bigger. Honka seems to be at that point, but Hitch is holding his cards close to his vest.
Johns? He’s also in a good spot, though with some learning still to be done, if his lapses in judgment last year are any indication. That learning would seem to be done best in the NHL with a solid partner—if Lindell isn’t the definition of “solid” in Hitch’s book by this point, I don’t know who is, but maybe Esa sticks with Klingberg—but there just isn’t room for Johns alongside Julius Honka and Jamie Oleksiak, right now. You see the dilemma.
Patrik Nemeth, by the way, is easily the one most negatively affected by the Stars’ handling of their defense over the past couple years. Without the draft pedigree of Oleksiak or the skating, physicality and big shot of Johns, Nemeth has been forced to take whatever ice time was left over. Once Honka start getting looks last season, that time shrunk even further. Nemeth has, by all accounts, had a fine camp. He seems the least likely to start the season on the NHL roster, if only because Pateryn is probably a better 7th defender at this point in his career. The next time you get frustrated at this logjam, just think how Nemeth must feel. In the last three years, he’s averaged about 30 games played per year. Some of that was injury-related, but at this point, there just isn’t room for a stable-but-unspectacular player to grow into NHL form. The Stars don’t have the ice time for him, but they’re unwilling to lose a 25-year-old NHLer for nothing.
Greg Pateryn is older than these kids, was ready to be given away by Montreal, and frankly speaking, he’s closer to the Like It level of Coldstone Roster Decisions than the Gotta Have It tier. The Stars traded Jordie Benn for a draft pick, and Greg Pateryn came back along with it. You don’t build rosters around players like him, but good teams often have players like him on them. Like Nemeth, he’s not someone you risk losing if you don’t have to; unlike Nemeth, the Stars wouldn’t really lose any good will by scratching him 50 times this season.
From Jim Nill’s perspective, why would you want to lose players? Trades may have been sought for Nemeth, but a player with zero NHL goals and minimal ice time to impress any takers just isn’t going to make GMs give anything up unless they’re desperate. Injuries might strike, and then you’re plenty glad to have a Nemeth (or a Pateryn) waiting in the wings. The only problem is that injuries have primarily struck the forwards or Nemeth himself over the last few years. And so Patrik Nemeth presses on, waiting for his rights to mature as he heads into his later 20s.
Julius Honka is the easy fan (or blog writer) pick of those four players for the simple reason that he’s the best defender among those four players, and you won’t find much argument otherwise from anyone watching these games or other games or looking at the statistics. Honka can help the Stars move the puck up the ice, and magical things happen once it gets to the other end. Search him on YouTube if you don’t believe me.
Anyway, you know all this. (You really do know an awful lot, it turns out.) You’ll be furious if the Stars choose a less-good defender than Julius Honka to play hockey simply to avoid losing Nemeth and/or Pateryn for nothing. You’ll be furious if Jamie Oleksiak, whose promise as a first-rounder has thoroughly fizzled after a too-early promotion to the NHL, winds up getting the prime treatment that you are sure Julius Honka would do better with. You’ll be furious if Nemeth sits another 40 games in the press box “just in case” the Stars get stricken with another bout of roster-wide gout. You’ll be furious if the Stars don’t play Honka, Johns, and Klingberg on the right side.
What I’m holding onto right now is that, all-told, my ideal blue line of Klingberg-Methot, Hamhuis-Honka and Lindell-Johns might happen a bit later in the season, but not too much later. Hitchcock probably is truthful when he is saying the team has made up its mind on Oleksiak starting the season with prime minutes, but then, we started last season with literally Jordie Benn playing as Klingberg’s partner. That did not last long. (Aside: Jordie Benn might also start this season as Shea Weber’s partner in Montreal, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much.)
I guess what I’m saying is, the results are going to be the thing. If the Stars are winning and Oleksiak keeps playing top-four minutes, that probably means he’s not doing badly. That is only going to be a good thing for Dallas, as it either boosts Oleksiak’s trade value or means he’s actually becoming a reliable defenseman for the Stars, which is kind of what we’ve wanted all along. It’s a bit of cruel irony that it might happen in this particular fashion, of course, but cruelty is practically an old friend at this point. It will be a good think if Oleksiak turns into a top-four NHL defender for the Dallas Stars. Hitch is the only one saying that he has already done so, but for now, we can only remain skeptical, not wholly dismissive.
So when the Stars announce their presumptive Opening Night lineup for the final preseason game on Saturday and it’s nowhere near what you’d want, just remember that this isn’t last year. This isn’t Tyler Seguin between shifted over to the wing because the coach doesn’t trust him. This situation is about last chances, multiple good options, and hope. The Stars can stash Honka in the AHL for a little bit, but there’s no way this team leaves him there for more than a month or two unless they’re winning plenty of games and staying perfectly healthy.
Jim Nill kept Honka two years ago even though it meant rolling with Antti Niemi over Cam Talbot. If you think Honka has lost value in that time, you’re wrong. The Stars know what they have in Honka, but if this situation is a last chance for anyone on the team, it might well be Oleksiak. After all, he’s finally being handed trust, optimism, and encouragement right out of the gate. Tom Gaglardi didn’t let Nill drop a hundred millions bucks or whatever this summer just to keep feeling things out. Result are going to be the thing, and Oleksiak is being asked to deliver the goods. If he doesn’t, the Stars have other options, and good ones. It’s possible to root for Oleksiak to succeed, and for Johns to figure things out, and for Honka to start making you look smart for buying his jersey last year.
This has gone on way too long, but let me leave you with my suspicions: there are other ways to make things work. I’m not sure I can see the Stars trading Dan Hamhuis to keep Oleksiak and Johns as Mike Heika suggested last week, but it’s one way things could shake out that doesn’t mean jettisoning a young defender for nothing right out of camp. Remember what Jim Nill did with Gonchar in 2014-15, trading him in early November to make room for John Klingberg. The Stars won’t keep Honka in the AHL if they need him, and I doubt they’ll be willing to wait until November to make that call. If that means Hamhuis gets traded to make room, I’ll be sad. If it ultimately makes the Stars better, I’ll end up happy.
Or perhaps Brenden Dillon is a better example. Despite overall strong play and optimism around his future with the team, Dillon was traded 10 days after Gonchar for Jason Demers, etc. in what ended up being a steal of a trade for Dallas, as Demers was great for two years while Dillon was exposed in the expansion draft. Stephen Johns is certainly a sort of a Dillon figure this time around, someone who has some great tools but has fought some tough circumstances in playing a complete game for sustained periods of time. The undrafted Dilllon was found money, however; Johns was a much-sought-after trade piece, and one would think the Stars would rather see how he does in a stable defensive system before giving up on him.
Still, I can see Nill deciding to get value for an extra asset if he can get something even more useful in return, as the Stars did with Dillon. Trades are ludicrous until they make sense. At the time, Dillon for Demers was a shocker of a trade, as we had all fallen in love with Dillon to one extent or another. Johns is better than Dillon was, but his situation is eerily similar. Lots of teams would love to have a player like that, and if trading him means making Dallas even more ready to contend this season, I could see it happening, although I wouldn’t be watching it dispassionately. Far from it, really.
Any scenario that keeps Oleksiak in the roster, of course, is contingent on one thing only: some measurable improvement. If Oleksiak isn’t markedly better this year, then Jim Nill will solve this issue for Ken Hitchcock, one way or another. We’ll be baffled if Hitch’s praise of Oleksiak doesn’t match the results on the ice for an extended period of time, but if Hitch has made one thing clear, it’s that he wants to have the best six defensemen he can have for the longest period of time possible. Jim Nill’s job with Hitch is similar to Hitch’s with Oleksiak: to give him what he needs to do his job as best he can. Sometimes that might mean giving him things, and sometimes taking them away. Managing a roster of decent NHL players is very difficult. Before much longer, the Stars will have a roster full of players much more than decent. We just can’t be sure of their names quite yet. It’s always annoying not to know things, but just remember that you get to keep your job no matter who succeeds on the Dallas blue line. We have it easy, really.Lesbian bars have been closing for years. Lesbian websites may not be far behind.
On Tuesday, AfterEllen editor-in-chief Trish Bendix announced on her Tumblr that the 14-year-old site for lesbian and bisexual women “will be effectively shutting down as of Friday.” She added that Evolve Media, which bought AfterEllen from Viacom in 2014, “found we are not as profitable as moms and fashion,” and decided to shutter the site save for a “promise of periodically publishing publishing freelance pieces in the future.”
On Wednesday, Emrah Kovacoglu, a manager from Evolve Media’s TotallyHer brand, called Bendix’s post a “false rumor” and said they would “continue to work with our freelancers and contributors” to cover LGBT issues. But between the lines of Kovacoglu’s post, his message is clear: The archives will be left up, sure, but the editor-in-chief is getting the boot, and investment will not continue “at the same levels.”
Now reports are emerging that Bendix was denied her severance. Evolve Media, which also publishes sites like Momtastic and The Fashion Spot, did not immediately return a voicemail left by The Daily Beast.
The imminent loss of AfterEllen—at least as we know it—leaves queer women with just one major website devoted to them: Autostraddle, an independent outlet that uses a premium membership program to stay afloat. Even then, as Autostraddle senior editor Heather Hogan wrote candidly on Tuesday, “We’re often on the brink of not existing anymore.”
So why is it so hard to keep a queer women’s website in business? After all, a not insignificant number of women are something other than straight.
A 2015 study from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 7 percent of millennials identify as LGBT. A full 14 percent of millennial women, in particular, reported being sexually attracted to someone of the same gender, which even includes 8 percent of women who don’t explicitly identify as bi or lesbian. There’s clearly a sizable population that might be interested in guides to flirting with other women or lists of lesbian sex scenes or an interview with Tig Notaro—all of which can be found on AfterEllen.
Turning that population into ad revenue, however, appears to be a different story.
In his “false rumor” post, Kovacoglu admitted that AfterEllen did not have “enough advertiser support to justify continuing to invest at the same levels.” Autostraddle’s editor-in-chief Marie Lyn Bernard, known as Riese to the community, acknowledged Tuesday that "the percentage of our revenue generated from advertising income has been in decline" since 2011 and the "actual amount of advertising-generated income" has been falling since 2013, hence the site's premium membership program. And as LGBT site The Advocate noted after Bendix’s announcement, The Advocate's lesbian-focused sister site SheWired stopped operating as “a stand-alone business” this February for “similar reasons.”
In a series of tweets on Tuesday night, AfterEllen founder Sarah Warn laid the blame squarely at the feet of advertisers.
Warn continued: “At MTV, we constantly had advertisers wanting to advertise to gay men (on AfterElton), but not lesbians, and I developed a theory that stereotypes work for gay men as consumers (travelers, affluent) and against lesbians (no money, don’t care about clothes, etc.). I had hoped time and data would change minds, but [it] still seems the same.”
Warn is right: Lesbians do make more money than straight women—but, of course, still less than men. Market research also suggests that gay men and lesbians are also more likely to be current U.S. |
agencies were tapping the major SEA-ME-WE-3 cable that runs from Japan, via Singapore through the Middle East to northern Europe. Australia is connected to the cable via a link from Singapore to Perth in Western Australia.
The article explained: “Australian intelligence sources have told Fairfax Media that Singaporean intelligence co-operates with Australia in accessing and sharing communications carried by the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable which lands at Tuas on the western side of Singapore Island…The Australian Signals Directorate also accesses the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable traffic from the cable’s landing in Perth.”
A former Australian Defence intelligence officer explained that access to cable traffic “gives the five-eyes and our partners like Singapore a stranglehold on communications across the Eastern Hemisphere.” The article cited Australian intelligence sources as confirming that ASD and Singapore’s Security and Intelligence Division played “key roles” in intercepting communications traffic in Asia.
Last week’s Washington Post article explained that the NSA exploited non-US listening posts to circumvent the US constitution: “The NSA has not been authorised by Congress or the special intelligence court that overseas foreign surveillance to collect contact lists in bulk, and senior intelligence officials said it would be illegal to do so from facilities in the United States. The agency avoids the restrictions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by intercepting contact lists from access points ‘all over the world’, one official said.”
The official told the Post that when information passes through “the overseas collection apparatus, the assumption is you’re not a US person.” In reality, however, the “harvesting” of contact lists includes many American citizens as their data passes internationally through the Internet, and is part of the vast illegal NSA spying operations on the population of the United States and the world.
Similarly, the Australian government blandly denies that the ASD’s operations are infringing the rights of Australian citizens. In response to last week’s revelations, a spokeswoman for Attorney General George Brandis told the Fairfax press that all interceptions carried out by Australian agencies were conducted in accordance with Australian law. But the ASD’s data collection undoubtedly intercepts and records information from Australian citizens. Moreover, via the Five Eyes network, Australian intelligence agencies have access to the huge amounts of electronic data stored by the NSA on millions of individuals in Australia and internationally.
Like the previous Labor government, the present Coalition government is continuing the practice using the broad umbrella of “national security” to refuse to answer questions and to block the release of documents. Edward Snowden’s revelations, however, make clear that in Australia as the US, the state apparatus has developed a huge electronic spying operation based on the premise that the population as a whole constitutes a “national security threat.”The new God of War will feature an all new voice actor in the leading role of Kratos. This time out it's Stargate SG-1 actor Christopher Judge.
Judge recently confirmed the role on Twitter. He is best known as Teal'c on Stargate SG-1, though he's no stranger to video game voice acting having previously had roles in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, Turok, and Def Jam Fight for NY.
As for previous Kratos voice actor TC Carson, he offered the following somewhat bitter response to the whole thing:
To my folk, you've been wondering if I am Voicing Kratos in GOW4
I am not. Sony went in a new direction. let em know what you think — TC Carson (@TCCarson) June 15, 2016
On that note, what do you make of Kratos' new voice?RTÉ is to make an application to the High Court on 2 June for permission to broadcast statements made in the Dáil about businessman Denis O'Brien by Independent TD Catherine Murphy.
In a statement this afternoon, the broadcaster said it has "consistently maintained that greater levels of disclosure is in the public interest; however we have complied fully with the court’s decision."
The statement goes on: "we await the outcome of the judge’s ruling on 5 June as regards what level of detail in the court’s judgement can be disclosed.
"Lawyers acting on behalf of RTÉ have already raised concern about the scope of the proposed orders to be made by the court.
"Every effort will continue to be made by RTÉ to report on this matter as comprehensively as possible, as early as possible, within the limits of the law", the statement said.
It comes after calls for the Dáil to be recalled in the light of what Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin claimed had been the silencing of media outlets in relation to comments about Mr O'Brien by Independent TD Catherine Murphy yesterday.
The subject of her remarks is at the centre of an injunction granted against RTÉ earlier this month and cannot be reported by the broadcaster.
Mr Martin said in a statement that it was unprecedented that a matter of serious public interest raised in the Dáil could not be reported on by the national broadcaster or other media outlets.
Speaking to RTÉ, Fianna Fáil spokesperson on health Billy Kelleher said the matter raises grave concern for freedom of speech and the independence of the Dáil.
A spokesman for Mr O'Brien insisted that individuals, no matter who they were, had an entitlement to their good name and privacy relating to their financial affairs.
James Morrissey questioned the accuracy of what Ms Murphy had said, maintaining Dáil privilege had an important role but could not be abused to have falsehoods misrepresented as facts.
Mr Morrisey said a core principle of a democracy is the right of every individual to their good name and reputation and it was important that people "stand up for democracy inside the Dáil and outside the Dáil".
He said Mr O'Brien had sought an injunction against RTÉ as "a point of principle".
Responding to a request by Mr Kelleher to recall the Dáil over Ms Murphy's allegations, Mr Morrissey said it was "a little bit rich from Deputy Kelleher" as Fianna Fáil never did that when this country was "going down the tubes."
Mr Morrissey said: "There had always been a separation of powers but a fundamental and core principle of a democracy is the right of every individual to their good name and reputation and privacy in matters that are private."
When responding to an article that appeared in today's Guardian concerning press freedom in Ireland, Mr Morrissey said that RTÉ was "the largest media entity in Ireland".
Mr Morrissey said if there is wrongdoing involved it should be examined and investigated, but until then Mr O'Brien was entitled to his good name.
He also pointed out Mr O'Brien's record of job creation in Ireland.
Reacting to Mr Morrisey's comments, Ms Murphy said "simply that she stands by her right, as an elected parliamentarian, to utilise her democratic mandate to put information that has come to her in the public interest into the public domain".
She added: "The people that continue to accuse me of falsehoods refuse to provide evidence to refute any of the issues I've questioned in the Dáil."
Only Taoiseach can request Dáil recall
Speaking earlier on RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke Mr Kelleher said that he has written to the Ceann Comhairle calling for the Dáil to be recalled over the allegations.
However, a spokeswoman for the Houses of the Oireachtas has said that: "In accordance with Standing Orders, the Ceann Comhairle can only recall the Dáil if requested to do so by the Taoiseach.
"A deputy cannot request the Ceann Comhairle to do so as it is not provided for in standing orders."
Mr Kelleher wants the Dáil to discuss the fact that what she said, under Dáil privilege, cannot be reported.
He said the matter raises grave concern for freedom of speech and the independence of the Dáil.
He said he would like the Dáil to reassert its validity as a chamber of free speech, and a chamber that upholds democracy.
Mr Kelleher said the principle of a parliament being unafraid to speak is critically important and fundamental to any democracy.
He added that it is important that issues in the Dáil can be reported by the media and he said it would be very disturbing if we now have a situation, whereby journalists cannot report and comment on the Dáil.
He said that any attempt to block the reporting of something said in the Dáil by a TD is an attack on the basic essence of democracy.
Mr Kelleher said the issue here is not the actual substance of the debate, but the freedom for journalists and others to be able to report exactly what is said in the Dáil.
Mr Kelleher said if an issue raised by a TD turns out to be wrong or what they have raised in the Dáil is not in the public interest, then sanctions should be placed on that individual by the Dáil.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said he has written to the Taoiseach to ask that the Dail be recalled next week "to discuss this important constitutional issue."
In a statement, he said: "The Government should also immediately seek clarification from the Attorney General on the rights of Oireachtas members in respect of Dail privilege and the media in reporting this".
Renua has said it would like to express its total support for Ms Murphy.
Renua leader Lucinda Creighton said: "We wish to express grave concern over the restrictions placed on the tax-payer funded state broadcaster RTÉ in covering this issue.
"We wish to express grave concern over the courts definition of the public interest and what is of public interest" she continued.
Speaking on RTÉ News at One, Ms Creighton described the silencing of media outlets as a grave situation.
Ms Creighton said she believes Deputy Murphy had the right to, and continues to have the right to, speak in the Dáil chamber and to put a matter of public interest on the Dáil record.
She has called on all 166 TDs to stand up and defend the individual right of TDs to comment and to raise issues of public interest and public concern.
She also said the Taoiseach now needs to answer where he stands on the integrity and independence of the Dáil.
She said it is a matter for the Oireachtas to determine whether comments made by Deputy Murphy in relation to Mr O'Brien are right or wrong.
But, she said, she believes Ms Murphy is acting in good faith and that Ms Murphy is convinced of the truth of what she is saying and that she has the right, as a member of parliament, to say it on record.
She said the media not only have a right, but an obligation to report it.
Deputy Creighton said there is also a Constitutional question surrounding the issue of powers. She said the courts do not have the right to silence the Houses of the Oireachtas.
She said that in relation to TDs abusing Dáil privilege, it is the Oireachtas that has to hold members to account, not private individuals, not big corporations and not the courts.
Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has said Dáil deputies have privilege for specific reasons of public interest and when they use it for that reason they are entitled to be heard and entitled to the space to express their views.
He said that has been happening effectively.
Asked about the issue of media being effectively silenced in reporting of Ms Murphy's speech, Mr Noonan said you could not expect him to criticise a court decision and he was not going to get into that space.
Asked whether the Dáil should be recalled to discuss the issue, Mr Noonan said the Dáil schedule has been published for a long time and a lot of arrangements have been made and everyone knows the Dáil is in recess next week.
He said Ms Murphy is a very effective deputy and she should get an opportunity when the Dáil returns to raise her issues.
'Defining moment' for media
The National Union of Journalists has welcomed the decision by RTÉ.
NUJ Irish Secretary Séamus Dooley said urgent clarification was needed on this.
He also said it is in the interests of democracy and in the interests of freedom of expression.
Earlier, the NUJ criticised the media for not publishing the statement Ms Murphy made in the Dáil last night.
Mr Dooley warned faith in the media would be "shattered if proprietors and editors did not challenge threats to parliamentary democracy and freedom of expression".Colts receiver T.Y. Hilton was critical of the team's offensive play calls and his coach is not happy about it.
Hilton said Tuesday that offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski has not been utilizing the team's speed at receiver properly. Colts coach Chuck Pagano said Hilton's thoughts on the offense should have been kept in-house.
MORE: Top NFL moments of 2015
"We have a sign in the locker room that says what you see and hear in here stays here," Pagano told reporters Thursday, via ESPN. "I don't think anybody should air our dirty laundry outside this building, to be quite frank and honest with you."
The Colts' offense has been hampered all season with starting quarterback Andrew Luck dealing with a lacerated kidney and 40-year-old backup Matt Hasselbeck beaten up. But Hilton said things could be different with the Colts' 26th-ranked offense.
"Donte (Moncrief), me, Phil (Dorsett), we're fast guys, and we're not going down the field like how we're supposed to be," Hilton said to the media Tuesday. "Running stick routes, chain routes, we can we do that, but at some point you have to take your shot and get the defense going back. The throws have been there but we haven't been calling them."
The Colts' offensive line has had issues, which have resulted in the quarterbacks not having enough time to stretch the field for what Pagano called "chunk plays." As for Hilton airing his frustrations to the media, Pagano said, "there's a right way to do stuff and a wrong way."
Clearly, Hilton did not do things in what Pagano said is the right way, as the Colts are fighting for their playoff lives with two games remaining in the regular season.There is certainly a lot of waste in health systems, but one area that seems to have escaped close scrutiny is the waste in private drug plans in Canada. Estimated at over $5 billion a year, this represents over half of the annual prescription drug bill paid by private insurers in Canada and is money that could be better spent on increasing salaries and improving other benefits such as dental care.
The biggest part of an employee's benefits package is their drug plan. And unlike public drug plans in Canada, private plans are notoriously inefficient, often covering higher priced drugs that do not deliver better health outcomes for users or using sub-optimal renewal intervals.
But why are private plans so inefficient in Canada? We can learn a lot about why companies squander tons of money on prescription drugs by looking at how they negotiate drug plans with their employees and other players in the insurance universe. Our new study in Health Policy analyzes how drug plans are negotiated in the private sector.
By carrying out interviews with experts from private sector companies, unions, insurers and plan advisors, the study was able to drill down into the experience of the interviewees to understand the basics of "how things work" in negotiating drug benefits in unionized settings.
Our findings show that everyone keeps each other in the dark about the drug plans they negotiate. Employers who understand the technical details of their drug plans withhold data on drug spending from employees, thus awarding them an advantage in the negotiating process. Union experts may understand that their drug plans are inefficient but they often lack sufficient detail of drug spending in order to convince employees about the need to introduce cost-containment measures.
Employers want their drug plans to be as competitive as those offered by other employers. So what happens when the norm is to cover all new drugs at any cost, even if the drugs do not provide additional therapeutic value? Well, the end result is that everyone buys "generous" plans instead of increasing employee compensation.
Everyone we spoke with agrees about the need to educate employees and employers alike. And in fact, everyone agrees (even insurers) that exorbitant drug costs are a big issue for Canadians.
Insurers could raise awareness to change this irrational norm of covering everything, since covered drugs often do not provide additional therapeutic value for money. One solution would be to proactively implement managed drug formularies. However, insurers' financial incentives are not aligned with those of their clients because inefficient drug plans are unfortunately very profitable for insurers.
The problem is that insurers are paid as a percentage of the drug bill. So the bigger the bill, the more they make -- a principle that absolutely counters the drive to root out and eliminate waste in the compensation package. Sometimes drug companies explicitly target private drug plans for their products because such plans do not implement restrictions to get value for money.
During our study, we also learned that unless unions and employers demand drug plans that deliver only drugs that are safe and cost-effective, they will remain incapable of cutting out wasteful spending on drugs. And because of the lack of trust and of information-sharing between unions and employers, it is unlikely to happen any time soon.
Most of the interviewees agreed that a universal pharmacare program in Canada makes sense and we need to move in that direction.
It is time to seriously consider what can be done to reform drug coverage and eliminate wasteful spending on prescription drugs. The system will not change by itself. Tackling the wastefulness of private drug plans would not only increase the disposable income of all Canadians, it would reduce labour costs and increase the competitiveness of Canadian enterprises.
By Alan Cassels and Sean O'Brady. Sean O'Brady is a PhD student at the School of Industrial Relations, University of Montreal.
ALSO ON HUFFPOST:By Peter Huntoon
Frequent contributor Bob Liddell provided five consecutive notes from a spectacular run of mismatched serials that was found in the $1 Series of 2001 New York BB block.
The problem involves the right serial numbers which are 76445938, 49, 50, 61, 72. Notice that they usually dance upward by an increment of 11 instead of one.
The right serial number jumps by 10 each time this happens, thus accounting for the growing disparity between the right and left numbers.
The number wheel with the faulty behavior is the second in from the right in the right serial number register.
This article was originally printed in Bank Note Reporter. >> Subscribe today.
More Collecting Resources
• The Standard Catalog of United States Paper Money is the only annual guide that provides complete coverage of U.S. currency with today’s market prices.
• Liked this article? Read more by subscribing to Numismatic News.The Viennese Sub Audio Records returns with their second plate, as usual delivering the smoother and melodic, soft quality of bass music. This time with already familiar for the label collaboration of Elefant Doc & Dillard, they printed a 2-track EP, available now on both digital and physical formats.
The duo offers us tracks locked in fluid, but vibrant groove, strongly resembling the signature sounds of Deep Heads’ productions – fixing together the melodic and distant textures with clean and firm drum section. “Vision of” opens the EP with emotive, light arpeggios that extend into mid range of endlessly delaying saxophones and synth pads, overlapping into a dreamy, nostalgic sequence. The decided, compressed beat keeps the track present and rolls it through till the end through breakdowns loaded with white noise and delays, that throw occasional sounds into distance.
The B-side delivers more indulging and major chords. The round and silky pads that loop throughout the track are regularly disturbed by synthesised throbbing in the low end, entering the deeper, distorted frames of the genre. The feathery high hats compliment the sounds well, filling the rhythm and space in the sound field. The recurring pauses allow the listener moments of reflection and spice up the repetitive character of the loop. The dual pattern of harmonies in the pads, keeps the track in a reflective, questioning mode, highlighting the ambient, introspective nature of “4000”.
Elefant Doc & Dillard produced an EP soaked in deep, harmonious sounds from the smoother end of the genre, perfectly representing the subtle character of the scene that Sub Audio Records represent. For those who enjoyed these flavours, the rest of label’s catalogue is worth checking out, both for the mild and heavier tones of dubstep.
SUBA002 is out now and available from the Sub Audio Records Store.This information was submitted to Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry on 17 August 2017. Thornberry responded on 3 October 2017 and again on 6 November 2017. See also BBC Panorama: on location with ISIS and BBC cheek by jowl with ISIS: email to Emily Thornberry MP.
Scenes in the 2013 BBC Panorama special Saving Syria’s Children reveal that the award-winning team of reporter Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway OBE were embedded with jihadi group Ahrar al-Sham which, according to Human Rights Watch, had three weeks earlier worked alongside Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra as one of “the key fundraisers, organizers, planners, and executors” of an attack in which at least 190 civilians were killed and over 200 – “the vast majority women and children” – were kidnapped. [1]
In its October 2013 report “You Can Still See Their Blood” – Executions, Indiscriminate Shootings, and Hostage Taking by Opposition Forces in Latakia Countryside Human Rights Watch identifies 190 civilian fatalities “including 57 women and at least 18 children and 14 elderly men” killed by opposition forces including Ahrar al-Sham on August 4, the first day of the 2013 Latakia Offensive. [2]
Pannell and Conway began filming for Saving Syria’s Children on 23 August 2013 [3]. The programme professed to show Syria’s humanitarian crisis through the eyes of two British doctors, Rola Hallam and Saleyha Ahsan.
On the morning of 26 August 25 August [corrected 28/7/18], in order “to see what medical care is available for children closer to where the fighting is”, Hallam and Ahsan travel to a frontline clinic. Pannell states (10:18):
“Western journalists have been targeted in Syria, so I have to travel with my own security. The doctors are able to be more low key and take their own vehicles.” [4]
A number of vehicles are shown setting off in Pannell’s convoy, including a white pickup truck with a distinctive ornament and the Ahrar al Sham emblem on its bonnet:
Stanford University’s Mapping Militants Project states that “Ahrar al-Sham worked with the Islamic State (IS) until January 2014″. The partnership would seem to be amply borne out by the scenes of Pannell and Conway’s entourage passing unmolested through an ISIS checkpoint at 11:00 in the programme. [5]
As the convoy passes through the checkpoint Pannell narrates:
“This is an ISIS group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. This is a group that’s affiliated with Al Qaeda.”
Pannell’s tone is dramatic, but he neglects to divulge the links between Al Qaeda and the very group within which he and his cameraman are embedded. Wikipedia notes:
[Ahrar al-Sham] aims to create an Islamic state under Sharia law, and in the past has cooperated with the al-Nusra Front, an affiliate of al-Qaeda.
Stanford University fleshes out the picture:
Ahrar al-Sham has been coordinating operations with its closest ally, former Al Qaeda (AQ) affiliate Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Tahrir al-Sham), formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Nusra), since late 2012, and both groups are part of the Jaysh al-Fatah umbrella organization.
Prior to his death in 2014, a “leading figure” in Ahrar al-Sham – its co-founder, according to Stanford – was Abu Khalid al-Suri, real name Mohamed Bahaiah.
In 2013 the Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported that Spanish investigators had identified Bahaiah as “one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted couriers”:
Bahaiah is a longtime al Qaeda operative who worked as a courier for the terror network. Spanish authorities think he may have delivered surveillance tapes of the World Trade Center and other American landmarks to al Qaeda’s senior leadership in Afghanistan in early 1998.
In addition to being a senior member of Ahrar al Sham, Bahaiah today serves as [current al-Qaeda leader] Ayman al Zawahiri’s representative in the Levant.
At the wheel of Pannell’s convoy car in Saving Syria’s Children is the programme’s credited Fixer/Translator Mughira Al Sharif. On the same day Al Sharif posted an image to Instagram indicative of the camaraderie between the Panorama team and the Ahrar al-Sham “security” men who accompanied them. It is possible that these men were among those who had participated in the mass slaughter and kidnap of civilians in Latakia twenty-one days earlier. [6] [7]
Later the same day Pannell and Conway travelled with Hallam, Ahsan and Al Sharif to Atareb Hospital, Aleppo where they were on hand to record harrowing scenes of the alleged victims of an alleged incendiary attack in footage which formed the dramatic climax of Saving Syria’s Children. (See links below for discussion of these sequences).
In May 2017 it was announced that Ian Pannell was leaving the BBC to join ABC News [8] as a senior foreign correspondent, stationed in London. In a note to staff ABC News President James Goldston paid this tribute:
He has an uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time…
Recent videos and articles on Saving Syria’s Children
Notes
[1] The five groups which Human Rights Watch identifies as primarily responsible for the August 4 attack are:
– Ahrar al-Sham
– Islamic State of Iraq and Sham
– Jabhat al-Nusra
– Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar
– Suquor al-Izz
[2] The report states:
Eight survivors and witnesses described how opposition forces executed residents and opened fire on civilians, sometimes killing or attempting to kill entire families who were either in their homes unarmed or fleeing from the attack, and at other times killing adult male family members, and holding the female relatives and children hostage.
[3] “Mr Pannell has confirmed that his “journey” began on 23 August 2103 [sic]. The visit to the frontline clinic occurred on the morning of 26 August”, BBC Editorial Complaints Unit Final Report, 19 May 2014 (p2 of PDF download). Full complaints correspondence with the BBC re: Saving Syria’s Children is logged here.
[4] Pannell’s narration in the sequence from 10:28 to 11:40 is as follows:
Western journalists have been targeted in Syria, so I have to travel with my own security. The doctors are able to be more low key and take their own vehicles.
The war in Syria is now in its third year. Sectarian differences and extremism have taken hold on both sides and the conflict threatens the stability of the region.
Travelling around Syria has never really been more dangerous, both foreign journalists and foreign aid workers have been targeted, some have been killed. We’re just going through a checkpoint now, put the camera down a bit.
Rival rebel factions now fight each other as well as the government. Lawlessness prevails and areas that were once safe can become dangerous almost overnight.
This is an ISIS group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. This is a group that’s affiliated with Al Qaeda. Increasing numbers of Jihadis have come into Syria, they’re setting up checkpoints so it means that any foreigners in particular travelling around the country, run the gauntlet of these checkpoints every few miles or so.
And the worst thing about driving around is that you’re never sure what lies behind the next corner.
[5] Despite Pannell’s assessment (10:47) that “travelling around Syria has never really been more dangerous” it would appear that Conway is able to hop between vehicles with impunity in the immediate vicinity of an ISIS checkpoint. At 10:55, seated in the rear of his saloon car, Pannell states “we’re just going through a checkpoint now” and instructs the cameraman – presumably Conway – to “put the camera down a bit”. Seconds later, in footage presumably also shot by Conway but filmed from the rear of another vehicle (the white pickup truck), we see an ISIS guard inspecting vehicles at a checkpoint.
[6] In 2012 Al Sharif was photographed bearing the standard of the now defunct Idlib Martyrs Brigade:
Another of Al Sharif’s Instagram photos is jarring when one considers that it was uploaded on 27 August 2013, the day after he had driven Pannell’s car through the ISIS checkpoint and, later, supposedly witnessed appalling carnage as dozens of child victims of an incendiary attack were rushed into Atareb Hospital:
These images and other material were submitted in a 2014 appeal to the BBC Trust which argued that Al Sharif’s involvement in Saving Syria’s Children breached BBC Editorial Guidelines. In rejecting the appeal the Trust’s Editorial Standards committee did not deign to address the point.
Some of Al Sharif’s more recent Instagram images demonstrate the prestigious connections he currently enjoys:
[7] The identity and/or role of other uniformed and/or armed or professionally equipped individuals filmed by Darren Conway and others at Atareb Hospital on 26 August 2013 remains unclear:
[8] “ABC News is the news division of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), owned by the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company” – Wikipedia
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Like this: Like Loading...There are few things more disappointing than a game that explores a novel concept in new and exciting ways only to fail at almost everything else. It can be a real bummer, not just because you’re watching that game slowly crash and burn despite its fun idea, but that you know that mechanic probably won’t be explored again anytime soon by more competent games. This is the story of Sylvio.
Sylvio actually debuted on Steam back in heady, bygone days of 2015. The world is different now, though. It’s 2017 and Sylvio has achieved a full release on Steam, Playstation 4, and Xbox One. It wasn’t worth the wait.
Here the player is cast as Juliette Waters, an intrepid audio technician who specializes in using electronic voice phenomenon to capture the voices of the dead. During an investigation at an old abandoned amusement park, Juliette becomes trapped with nothing but her wits, her flashlight, and her dandy old reel-to-reel audio recorder.
Gameplay consists of navigating ugly environments, ignoring the visual bugs and attempting to decipher the dark surroundings you find yourself in with nothing but a poorly working flashlight. By poorly working, I don’t mean that there is some story reason that the thing flickers on and off, or any clever tense element, but that the light provided is so inconsistent that I often found myself checking to see if it was on at all.
Occasionally you’ll find yourself being menaced by a malevolent black orb. Touch the thing and you’re one dead paranormal investigator. Luckily, if you shove some sharp stuff into your gas powered detritus gun you’ll be able to pop the hovering nasty like the inky black balloon that it appears to be. Note that blunt objects loaded into said armament won’t serve this function, those are for puzzle solving. There is no way to cycle to different ammo types without firing them off.
The core gameplay loop in Sylvio gets tedious fairly quickly. Find yourself in another area that has gated you off so that you cannot progress, find an item, progress. Deal with nasties as they arrive and puzzles as they present themselves. Repeat for about four hours. The story is slowly drip fed to you and isn’t compelling enough to make it worth it. You’re talking to ghosts in an abandoned amusement park; something sad and depraved happened here, that was also thoroughly generic.
Sylvio does do one thing alarmingly well, however, and that is the acquisition and investigation of recorded ghostly messages. As you traverse the world you’ll find spots where your recorder starts picking up weird interference. Follow it through and you’ll eventually find a single cryptic ghostly part of a message. That’s neat and all, but the goodness comes from the longer audio recordings you find in the world, pick up after dealing a wayward spirit, or acquire through a séance. With these recordings you are given control of the playback speed and the ability to scrub through them forward or in reverse to uncover hidden messages.
While the act of searching for these little bits of joy feels like solving a mystery all their own, they really have little to no impact on the actual game. Such a cool mechanic being dragged down with this mess is the true horror of Sylvio.A team of University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers has identified unexpected and powerful cell-regulating functions in a protease known as ADAM 13, a discovery that holds promise for understanding tumor cell migration and the spread of cancer in the body. The finding, reported in the current issue of Developmental Cell, could also help identify genes active in such birth defects as cleft palate.
Dominique Alfandari, Helene Cousin and colleagues at UMass Amherst, with support from the National Institutes of Health, track individual cells in frog embryos to learn how the ADAM 13 protease controls proteins in the cranial neural crest to form the jaw and face. Cranial neural crest cell migration is common to all vertebrate embryos, including humans, and defects in their production or migration leads to severe facial malformations.
ADAM 13 belongs to a group of proteins called proteases that cut other proteins to change their function. Alfandari and colleagues’ protein studies led them to discover a previously overlooked, \”amazing\” ability of ADAM 13 to direct cells to migrate. Once they understand how the protease functions, Alfandari adds, \”anything we find can be adapted to cancer research. For example, this discovery may teach us how cancer cells migrate in the body to invade new organs. We may learn to prevent it.\”
He adds, \”Medical research looks at proteins that are out of place. In cancer, they could be marking a tumor suppressor gene. And, many tumors use ADAM proteases to grow by stimulating blood flow or angiogenesis. They also help cells migrate from the original tumor site to create metastases.\”
Like others, the molecular biologist describes the two-part ADAM 13 protease as acting like a pair of scissors, with the blades always found at work on the outer surface of a cell and the handles always on the inside. Unlike the role of ADAM 13’s extra-cellular segment in directing migration, activities of its counterpart inside the cytoplasm weren’t noticed. \”For the past 15 years, everybody thought that all the action was on the outer surface,\” Alfandari explains. \”But our experiments changed that.\”
He and his colleagues were astonished to discover, in part by mutating ADAM 13, that the cytoplasmic, interior part took off in a new direction, went inside the cell nucleus and started to act totally independently. \”A key experiment was when we expressed two different proteins, one corresponding to the cytoplasmic domain and the other to the extracellular domain, which showed that ADAM 13 was acting differently in the two areas,\” he says.
Further, this form of ADAM 13 activates the expression of genes related to its new identity, marking a complete role transformation. It’s as if the scissor handle, when it reached the cell nucleus, suddenly changes itself into a cell phone, Alfandari suggests. \”We used to think the part of proteases found in the cytoplasm was only important to control protease activity on the outside. Now we’ve shown that the inside part is different and can play an important role in development and regulation of cell function.\”
Alfandari and colleagues also point out that their experiments are particularly strong because they’re carried out in individual cells in living frog embryos rather than isolated in plastic dishes. \”We study the architecture in three dimensions and in living tissue, how it all fits and works in a real embryo. The holy grail is to understand gene function in real life.\”
The molecular biologist summarizes his laboratory’s studies as \”Like having all the parts of a car scattered in your backyard. Without the step-by-step instructions, you’re never going to make a car from that heap of parts. Our work is to use all of the information available to understand how these individual cells come together to function and built something greater than the sum of the parts.\”Episode 128 comes straight at you showing off some cool new kits, some cool just announced kits, and even images taken at the Chara Hobby 2013 event which featured a prototype of the MG Sazabi Ver Ka! On top of that, Syd takes a look at Valvrave kits while Ryan divulges his choice of color for the Nutcracker.
Kits featured in this video:
– 1/144 HGUC Zogok (Unicorn Ver.)
– 1/144 Valvrave I Hito
– 1/144 Valvrave I Innocent Zero
– 1/35 P.K.H. 103 Nutcracker
– 1/12 Super Street Fighter Arcade Edition Vewlix Arcade Game by Wave
– Robot Damashii (Side MS) Leo (Flight Unit Equipment) by Bandai
– 1/72 RZ-001 Gojulas (Limited Production) by Kotobukiya
Kits seen at the Chara Hobby 2013 event:
– 1/100 MG MSN-04 Sazabi Ver. Ka
– 1/144 RG ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom Gundam
– 1/100 MG Strike Rouge Ootori Ver.RM
– 1/144 HG Gundam Astray Gold Flame Amatsu Mina
– 1/144 HGUC Gundam F91
– 1/144 HGUC Victory Gundam
– 1/144 HGAC Wing Gundam
– 1/100 MG Wing Gundam Proto Zero EW Ver.While Windows 10 PC users are now getting the big November update today with build 10586, Windows Insiders will have to wait some more to get a new build of Windows 10 Mobile.
When asked by a fan on Twitter if a new mobile build was going to be released today as well, Windows Insider head Gabriel Aul responded:
" We're focused on the broad delivery of 10586 to customers right now, it will be a few more days before a new Mobile build."
While Windows Insiders will have |
. It’s not until we all play these first releases that we’ll really know just how impressive and powerful the PS4 really is. It’s not until you have Need for Speed: Rivals, Contrast and all the like actually running on your slim 42 inch LCD will you truly be able to understand and marvel at the power in front of you. And if you’re not sure yet, remember the early PS3 days – the potential is there, it’s just a wait until the full power is realised and transposed into these games that will blow your mind. But looking at what we have seen? Our minds are blown already.103 SHARES Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit
OSVR has launched a display upgrade kit for the HDK headset which allows users to swap a new, higher performance panel into their existing HDK headsets.
The $220 screen upgrade kit, sold at the OSVR Store, offers HDK 1.3 & 1.4 owners a way to upgrade to the same display found in the recently launched HDK 2 headset. The upgraded OLED panel has a resolution of 2160×1200 and refresh rate of 90Hz, bringing the screen’s on-paper specs up to that of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. The display found in the HDK 1.3 and 1.4 is 1920×1080 running at 60Hz.
OSVR says that upgrade should take as little as 15 minutes, but notes that inserting the new display will mean the loss of an auxiliary USB connector on the side of the headset. No specialized tools are needed; the 10-page instructions appear simple enough for anyone who has opened up their desktop computer to replace RAM or other components. You’ll be exposing the inside of the headset, and could do damage if you aren’t careful, but it isn’t anything unexpected for a product bearing the name ‘Hacker Development Kit’.
This is good news for HDK 1.3 and 1.4 owners who were promised an open, modular device. From our understanding of OSVR’s open-source nature, this display could even be used (and sold) in other VR headsets made by other companies.
Availability of the HDK screen upgrade kit brings hope for further modular upgrades for the headsets, like the Leap Motion-embedded faceplate which the company announced more than a year ago, and forward-looking upgrades like the possibility of a Lighthouse tracking upgrade (now that Valve is licensing the technology).
Disclosure: At the time of writing, OSVR is running advertisements on Road to VR.Russian experts believe that both Russia and the U.S. have borrowed elements of spacecraft designs from each other, but nevertheless they caution that direct replication of foreign technology is extremely difficult due to structural issues in each country's industrial sector.
A curious theory recently emerged in the Russian media after the failed launch of a Falcon 9 vehicle carrying a Dragon cargo spacecraft as part of a mission to the International Space Station. Some Russian engineers claimed Dragon, developed by the US company SpaceX, possessed several features that brought to mind Zarya, a Soviet cargo vessel designed in the late 1980’s. This is not the first time similarities between Russian and American spacecrafts have been noticed. For example, the Soviet shuttle, Buran, bears heavy resemblance to NASA's Space Shuttle. But are those really borrowed technologies, or is it just a coincidence?
Is Zarya a Dragon’s babushka?
Dragon and Zarya do have a lot in common. Both spacecraft are designed to be equipped with landing rocket engines, and with carrying capacity that exceeds 3,000 kilos.
V-2: The rip-off that worked According to Russian scientists, some spacecraft designs were successfully replicated by foreign countries. The most famous was the V-2, the world’s first long-range ballistic missile, developed by the German aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun. Both the U.S. and the USSR copied its design in the late 1940’s. Experts say the V-2 was the original role model for the first space rockets. The V-2 missiles – both those captured in Germany after the War, and the modified versions – started the American Hermes missile program, as well as the counterpart Soviet projects, including those in the field of space exploration. The Donfeng-1, the first Chinese ballistic missile, was a licensed copy of the Soviet R-2 missile which was in turn based on the V-2.
Moreover, the crew capacity of Zarya and Dragon is up to 8 and 7 members, respectively. Both also possess a conical re-entry capsule, and are reusable.
Led by the brilliant Soviet engineer Konstantin Feoktistov of the NPO Energia design bureau, the development of the Zarya spacecraft began in the 1980’s, but the project was eventually shelved. Feoktistov himself believed the spacecraft's design was not refined enough to guarantee the required landing precision. Speaking of landing, Russian engineers point out that Dragon has a parachute braking system in addition to the engines – just like Soyuz, another spacecraft designed in the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, some Russian experts mention that since the spacecraft are designed for essentially identical purposes, similarities are inevitable. “Obviously, they had to be similar, since they were created with the same tasks in mind, and the only difference is the shape of the capsule - we stick to the traditional form, while the Americans prefer cones,” says Ivan Moiseev, scientific supervisor of Russia’s Space Policy Institute.
“As for the rest of it, the resemblance is not unusual, especially considering that both spacecraft were supposed to land using engines, which is pretty risky from the technological point of view. Normally, other solutions are preferable.”
Stealing a spacecraft design - harder than rocket science
As it turns out, no country has ever managed to successfully copy even a space rocket engine. A recent matter involving the U.S. buying a license to manufacture Russian RD-181 rocket engines illustrates this point. According to the agreement between the two countries, the Russians were supposed to assist their American partners with everything, from constructing the plants to installing the engines on launch vehicles. The whole endeavor, however, proved to be a waste of time and money because the entire technological chain of engine production was optimized for Russian industry and proved unsuitable for the U.S. In the end, the Americans chose to buy RD-181 engines from Russia.
Full-size mock-ups of docked Rusisan modules - the Zvezda Service Module, the Zarya Functional Cargo Block, the Pirs Docking Compartment and a multi-role laboratory module. 2010. Source: Mikhail Fomichev / RIA Novosti
“We received an offer to purchase the engines after [the Americans] unsuccessfully tried to produce them,” said Vladimir Solntsev, president of OAO RSC Energia, in an interview with RBTH. “The current contract includes restrictions on the use of RD-181 engines for military purposes, and we will supply 60 engines worth a total of $1 billion.”
The Americans rejected the idea of producing the engines themselves since they would have to completely rebuild their industry.
“For instance, some components made of carbon fiber in the U.S. are made of metal here, while some of the alloys used in the production are also different,” said Ivan Moiseev. “Even if some intelligence agency manages to steal the blueprints of a whole rocket, all it can really do is help engineers to come up with a couple of new ideas, but even that is highly doubtful --- all the catalysts for any number of new ideas are openly available in textbooks on rocket science.”
All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.A Rotorua beneficiary who has been overpaid by Work and Income says it will take him five years to repay the extra money.
Bryce Sinclair says his fluctuating weekend work means he continues to be overpaid.
Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
As reported recently by RNZ, Work and Income is owed $1.28 billion, and $672 million of that is due to unintentional overpayments.
Mr Sinclair has been on a Work and Income benefit for about nine months.
He told Nine to Noon he also had two part-time jobs that he loved, but his fluctuating hours of work meant the amount he was paid by Work and Income was often incorrect to the point where he and his wife now owed $2800.
"There are people out there who are suffering, they're tortured because of this injustice.
"I go online, they have a couple of online portals where I can enter our income and they require that I declare my income for the current working week for Monday through to Sunday, and they require that that declaration be completed by Friday.
"Now, the nature of my work is such that I work sometimes on weekends and sometimes I don't, so WINZ [Work and Income] says to me - basically they're going to ask me to lie to generate a figure of what I think I'll be working on the weekend."
He said the overpayments were not accidental but rather they were occurring, and continuing to occur, because Work and Income was using a faulty system to estimate his income.
Despite trying to declare his income accurately, he had been overpaid 14 times this year, he said.
"I go to WINZ for help, I want help, and what I end up getting is that help but dumped on top of that is their system which allows errors to be made.
Photo: Supplied
"How does that help me, WINZ is not helping me by creating these overpayments and there are a lot of other people who are suffering the same as well."
Ministry of Social Development Associate National Commissioner Te Rehia Papesch said income was considered for the period it was earned and it was simplistic to view the issue as a system issue.
She said the vast majority of overpayments were incurred due to clients not informing Work and Income "in a timely manner of any change to their income and other circumstances that affect their entitlement".
She said that was the law, and Work and Income had to be committed to administering the system consistently.
"In Mr Sinclair's case, we've suggested ways he can avoid incurring overpayments," she said.
"We have met with him on three occasions last month to explain our requirements, and the options available to him including providing us with estimates that can be confirmed or corrected on receipt of a payslip.
"Mr Sinclair has not been receptive to these suggestions."
"Given clients are best placed to know when their circumstances change, we've made it easier to declare income online as soon as they earn it, or estimate their income to avoid or reduce the incorrect benefit being paid.
"Their income can be amended and confirmed, and their benefit payment adjusted accordingly."
Mr Sinclair said while the agency presented the income declarations system as providing estimates rather than concrete numbers, it had a real effect and the debt worried him.
"There are some dire consequences mentioned about what could happen if I have underdeclared and they end up overpaying me. So I have pretty bad feelings about that."
He said he had approached Work and Income managers about the debt but said he was getting no direct feedback and all that happened was that $5 was taken from his ongoing payments.
He had recently bought a house with his wife and because of that it would be very difficult for him to repay the money quickly, he said, but Work and Income managers had told him not to worry about the debt.
"What sort of attitude is that? That's just extravagance, it's a waste of taxpayers' money."
"WINZ needs to find out why they're making these overpayments, how can they put procedures in place to stop them."
"Their system is defaulting to producing far too many overpayments, it is a design fault."
Ms Papesch said that with 280,000 beneficiaries, it was not possible for Work and Income to tailor the system on an individual basis.
"It is not accurate to describe Mr Sinclair's situation as typical of people incurring overpayments - people incur overpayments for a range of reasons, including not declaring income, and not updating us in a timely manner of a change to their circumstances which may impact their eligibility."
"Of course we would welcome anyone looking to pay off their debt in full, and would encourage people to get in touch to arrange full repayment of any outstanding debt."They Who Sow The Wind
A D'Island fan project
01 [NEXT >]
DISCLAIMER
This whole project is being executed for entertainment purposes and therefor entirely fictional.
Its purpose is not to asperse either SeaSaltShrimp or SkipSkid or the characters taking part. It is also not meant to prize Avidrian or myself above them or their creative content.
Avidrian's actions do not resemble my true thoughts about the artists as persons, nor their art or characters.
- - -
un Fact
IT'S HAPPENING! RODNACIRA crosses D'Island, please ladies, contain yourselves.My first Fan-Comic ever. If you may call it like that. Dedicated to the one and only Told ya guys, I'm still not done doing comics :]After cancelling my RODNACIRA main comic (for other reasons), it's time for my next big project, this time involving Avidrian and Shrimp's D'Gang And judging by what is seen here, things won't turn out pretty^^ It actually turned out a little more sinister as originally planned, but not less... bloody. I think we are off to a good start here :] (Oh boy, I can already see myself writing a disclaimer on future pages...)It is just so much fun working with her characters, I already had the honor to experience that on The New Hierarchy. So I thought, Why not throw them into a completely new scenario? At least I have not seen anyone messing with the D'Gang like Avidrian is about to. And I hope that Shrimp will still talk to me after thisCredits also go tofor, once again and as always, keeping a good eye out for anatomy issues and overall quality checking. Additionally, I'd like to credit my reallife friendfor giving me valuable feedback on the logo design. And hopefully I'll also geton the train again, who has been of really neat language support throughout my last comic.I hope you'll have fun with this one! Next page is right around the corner. s:- While cleaning my harddrive I (presumably) deleted a wrong file, corrupting Krita's autosave function. So later after a program crash, instead of 5 minutes, I lost like 3 hours of progress. Luckily, I had been mainly working on the logo during that time, which actually turned out even better on the 2nd try- Actually, this project was the main reason for me to make my character sheet series begin with Avidrian- During this artwork's progress, I was confirmed that it's vey good for me to be in a music mood for constructive sketching. This one was majorily powered by one song, noisuF-X - Let's Get Started from the Album. Both very fitting titles for the comic's theme- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Avidrian © The D'Gang, D'Island ©Story, Text & Illustrations byQuality Assistance:It’s Friday 12th September. Usually, I would have just finished my second week back at work teaching at an east London secondary school after a five-week summer holiday. New exercise books would have been distributed and sullied with fresh graffiti. The students’ (and teachers’) initial enthusiasm at the start of a new year would be beginning to wane. And, if it hadn’t happened already, I would be starting to regularly raise my voice in anger at the students’ general indifference as their first coursework deadlines start to loom.
As I’m sure you can tell – just take a look at the rest of our site – I’m not teaching at the moment. I’m not working at all in fact – not in the nine-to-five, 40 hours a week sense anyway. Instead, I’m sat on a wooden deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean, tapping away at my laptop while the waves gently roll in and the evening tide rises. I’m not trying to rub it in, just setting the scene. Well, maybe I am trying to rub it in a little.
I handed in my notice back in April. It was earlier than necessary, but I knew in April what I knew right back at the beginning of the academic year last September: that my time in the teaching profession was finite. When I was leaving the teaching profession at the end of July, I knew that it would be for good. I had been teaching for seven years and for at least a year too long.
I won’t write yet another aggrieved teacher rant – I’ll just say that, despite the fact that I was a committed and successful teacher, the salary and holidays weren’t enough to balance out the stifling bureaucracy and relentless pressure put on teachers by central government. The holiday allowance so often cited by friends as an unparalleled benefit just wasn’t incentive enough for me to stay in the profession and isn’t incentive enough for me to return.
Will I miss teaching? Maybe. There will be times I’m sure that I’ll miss the interaction and fulfilment that comes with working in a school. However, I expect that whenever I have these pangs of nostalgia, accompanying anxiety will follow too.
What will I do when I get back? I don’t know. In fact, I have no idea. And I love not knowing. It’s the first time in nearly 10 years, probably since being a student, that I’ve not known what I’m going to do professionally. I may end up teaching English as a foreign language again – my TEFL qualification is hopelessly underutilised. However,I know that whatever it is, it will be likely quite different to what I’ve ever done before.
I’m happiest when I’m outside. I’m happiest when I’m close to nature. Not in a tree-hugging hippie kind of way – it’s just that I’m not an inherent urbanite. I spent most of my time in London trying to escape the city and find areas of seclusion where I didn’t feel like I’m in the “Big City”. Whether that was wild camping on the Moors or Downs, scaling mountains in Scotland midwinter or simply jogging round Fairlop Waters at the weekend, it still makes me a country boy at heart who can’t ignore his formative years and upbringing.
I suspect, that when (or if) I do return to the UK, I’ll be forced to do some short-term or supply teaching just to make ends meet. But it will have to be temporary. My biggest fear in life, and I suspect in most people’s lives, is to feel unhappy. And the wrong profession can easily make a person feel unhappy. I think I left in the nick of time.
I need to be careful not to badmouth my former profession as many of my good friends and former colleagues remain in teaching and continue to do great work. Teaching is a great and worthy profession – but I know I’ve made the right decision. About once a week, I wake up anxious from a dream about the classroom. After a few seconds, I realise where I am and a wave of relief washes over me. Knowing that I’m not going to be back anytime soon makes me feel happy.
With this in mind, I don’t regret my time as a teacher. I enjoyed much of it, met many fascinating people (adults and children) and made some of the best friends I’ll ever have. At the same time I look forward to the future, knowing only that I don’t really know what I’m going to do. And I like it.
I’ll end with the anecdote that got me thinking about all this. We are currently camping on Taveuni Island in Fiji. It’s a pretty basic campsite with a kitchen and communal area overlooking the ocean. There are two books on a table and when we came up to make breakfast this morning, Kia picked one up and leafed through it. Pausing, she read the following quote to me:
“Every schoolmaster knows that for every one person who wants to teach there are approximately 30 who don’t want to learn – much”
I just smiled and made some eggs.CTVNews.ca Staff
A bill to give residents in Quebec the right to request “medical aid to die” has been introduced in the province’s National Assembly.
Bill 52 spells out the conditions for someone to get medical assistance to die, as well as the necessary conditions for a doctor to become involved. If the bill passes, it would be the first legislation of its kind in Canada.
The controversial bill received its first reading Wednesday, just a few days before members of the legislative assembly break for the summer. While the bill is not likely to be debated before the fall, Quebec Social Services Minister Veronique Hivon had promised she would table the bill before the break.
That promise followed the release of a report in March 2012, prepared by a non-partisan committee that had consulted with Quebecers on the issue of assisted suicide for close to two years.
The 175-page report concluded that doctors should be allowed, in exceptional circumstances, to help terminally ill patients to die, if the patients make that request.
The report made 24 recommendations, including a call to overhaul the province’s palliative, or end-of-life care services.
The bill will have to receive the support of at least one of Quebec’s opposition parties to move forward.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are both illegal under the Criminal Code. But a panel of legal experts came to the conclusion in January that provinces have jurisdiction to propose legislation in matters of health.
The wording of the legislation is also expected to clarify how certain acts to end a life cannot be considered assisted suicide.
Canada's laws are in stark contrast to European countries, such as Belgium -- one of the few places where euthanasia is legal.
Dr. Marcel Boulanger of the Quebec Association for the Right to Die with Dignity says as Canada’s population ages, end of life care is becoming a greater concern.
“Palliative care is really a good answer for most of those cases, but it’s not a response to every case,” Boulanger told CTV News Channel on Wednesday. “Some people cannot be relieved of their suffering, whether it’s physical or psychological, some people cannot be relieved in the end and we have to find another way out for these patients.”
Boulanger said the Quebec legislation is essentially a “copy and paste” of the euthanasia laws in Belgium.
“It’s proven to be quite safe,” he said.
However, Hugh Scher of the Euthanasia Prevention Council said there are plenty of examples of abuse in the Belgium system.
“In Belgium, 32 per cent of people who are killed under this law are killed without their requests and without their consent,” he said.
“This is the first time in Canada that any government has suggested that the intentional killing of a patient should form part of any level of health care delivery,” he said. “And that is most disturbing.”
Deb Hanscom, a lawyer representing charity Dying With Dignity said she was “grateful” to the Quebec government for proposing legislation that gives vulnerable Canadians options.
"Most people don’t really want to die, what they want to have is an option if their suffering is unbearable,” she told CTV’s Power Play Wednesday.
However, the question of dementia-related illness and voluntary consent is a missing gap in the legislation, Hanscom said.
“Very integral to all of it is voluntariness and consent,” she said. “And once you no longer have competence, you can’t make a choice, and a pre-made choice isn’t considered to be applicable,” she said. “So there is still going to be a gap for certain afflictions.”
Views on medical aid for death vary among those who face terminal or degenerative illness.
Nicole Gladu, who was struck by polio as a child and now copes with post-polio syndrome, said she will one day want her suffering to end.
“I’m not afraid to die, I don’t want to die, but I am afraid of agony,” she said in an interview with CTV News.
Gladu is studying the Quebec bill, and said she wants it to go further – specifically, to allow those with a degenerative disease to choose when they want to end their lives, not only when they are near death.
Frank Humphrey, who is in the final stages of ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, does not support the bill. Humphrey cannot move or breathe without assistance.
“He wants to live because he feels he has a lot left to give still,” said his wife, Daria Humphrey.
His doctor, Paul Saba has advocated against medical aid in dying.
“It’s wrong medically and there’s going to be abuse,” he told CTV News.
In a statement, Attorney General Rob Nicholson said the federal government will review the implications of the proposed legislation.
“The laws that prohibit euthanasia and assisted suicide exist to protect all Canadians, including those who are potentially the most vulnerable, such as people who are sick or elderly, and people with disabilities,” he said.
He noted that “a large majority” of parliamentarians voted not to change the laws in 2010.
“This is a sensitive issue for many Canadians, with deeply held beliefs on both sides of the debate,” Nicholson said.
With a report by CTV’s Genevieve BeaucheminLast weekend I went home to absolute madness. Expecting a quiet afternoon in rural Maryland, I walked through the front door and proceeded to the back porch where a Chinese man and an Indian man dressed head to toe in fishing clothes and floppy hats, were laughing hysterically. My dog was squared off in an epic battle with a renegade crab that had escaped from a pot on the ledge, and in the background two young children squealed and screamed as they jumped in and out of the pool. I sat down next to my dad on the porch, and he turned to me and said, “Welcome home.” It used to be such a quiet place.
This summer, my father rented out three spare rooms to help pay the mortgage and escalating college tuition. By the end of the month, the house was full. There’s Song, the Chinese man with an NBA addiction and a taste for liquor in plastic bottles; Vanki, the soft-spoken Indian man who cooks some of the best food I’ve ever tasted; and Matt, the laid-back graphic designer from Pittsburgh, a guitar player with whom I’ve planned a long-awaited jam session.
My mother calls it the “frat house,” and I guess that’s fairly accurate. They’re a wild bunch, throwing occasional parties and blaring music from the bedrooms, but most evenings, their time is spent sitting on the back porch or in the living room, talking long into the night. These are the times when I really get to know them. I’m tutored in their specific heritages, and also, I learn a little bit about how American culture is viewed from a foreign eye.
Song and Vanki wear t-shirts of rock bands to which they’ve never listened, and football jerseys for teams they don’t follow. They listen to the songs from the Top 100 pop charts. They make trips to the Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic City, and even the baseball games that my father umpires. They go for fun, but also to experience traditional aspects of the American way of life. Fishing, gambling and baseball. That’s about as American as it gets.
Even when they describe their home countries, you can sense a faint American twist. Song has the uncanny ability to pinpoint any spot in China with its relative proportional location in the United States, which is the only reason I know that Beijing is in relatively the same area of China that Massachusetts is to the United States.
However, despite this Americanization of culture, Song and Vanki’s emulations are not a disguise or an attempt to “fit in” by any means. They are not Clark Kents, merely wearing an American mask. From sitting down and talking with them, I’ve seen both strong and subtle elements of their own home nation traditions.
First, there’s the food. There’s a wok in the kitchen, bags of rice everywhere, and strange things I can’t identify in the fridge. The two of them are amazing cooks, and the smorgasbord of Indian and Chinese cuisine is a nice change from my normal diet of Subway foot-longs and cheeseburgers, but it’s also an example of a part of their culture that they’ve hung on to. They shop at the international food stores in town, and they’ll eat steak and burgers if my dad cooks them, but for the most part, their taste is international. But in the end, that’s just food. Where I see their cultural ideals really poke through, especially with Song, is during those late-night discussions on the back porch.
It’s like an episode of The O’Reilly Factor. In one corner, Song and Vanki, two young, liberal, eco-friendly men, versus my dad, a die-hard conservative whose television-watching is pretty much limited to Fox News. The discussion will start with a casual reference, pick up speed, and quickly accelerate into a full-on debate that stretches past midnight.
One discussion particularly demonstrated the influence of Song’s Chinese heritage. It was subtle, but once I noticed it, it was hard to ignore. They were discussing the war and whether or not the loss of human lives could be justified for a conflict that they had both determined to be economically-based. What was strange about this was that the ideologies of Song and my father seemed to have switched during this talk. My conservative dad was delivering an anti-war argument and Song was doing the opposite.
Song said, though I don’t remember the exact phrasing, “If your country is at war, you should be proud, whether you agree with their reasons or not. You should be willing to die in battle for the honor of your country.” This blew me away. It demonstrated a total inverse of the post-Vietnam anti-war, government-mistrusting sentiment that has become a part of the American mindset since the 1960s. This belief encompasses ideals that are passed down through generation: ideals of honor, virtue, pride in one’s nation. Those are beliefs that once they’re ingrained into one’s mindset, will stick with a person no matter where he travels or ends up living.
The cultural gap put the debate in a stalemate, and it fizzled off and died without resolution as most arguments tend to do. I went inside for the night around 1:00 a.m. with no new opinions on Iraq, but I went to bed with a very clear image of what one’s home means for an individual. Where you go and what you do after childhood can change a lot about who you are, almost everything at times. But some elements never die, and those are worth hanging on to. Home for me is a melting pot, and despite what America has become in the years since its inception 232 years ago, at least that’s close to its origins."There's no evidence that it occurred in such a significant number that would have changed the presidential election, and I don't think we ought to spend any federal money investigating that," Mr McConnell told CNN. "I think the states can take a look at this issue."
On other issues, Mr Trump said:
California's consideration of legislation to create a statewide sanctuary for people living in the country illegally is "ridiculous." He suggested withholding federal funding as possible punishment.
Plans to enact a replacement for the Affordable Care Act could slip into next year. "I would like to say by the end of the year, at least the rudiments, but we should have something within the year and the following year," Trump said.
Living in the White House is "a surreal experience in a certain way, but you have to get over it, because there's so much work to be done."
The Trump administration on Thursday revised recent US sanctions that had unintentionally prevented American companies from exporting certain consumer electronic products to Russia. The change allows companies to deal with Russia's security service, which licenses such exports under Russian law.
The products were not intended to be covered by the sanctions the Obama administration imposed on December 29 after US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the presidential election. The White House denied it was easing sanctions.
Useful links
Trump slams judge who blocked his travel ban
President Donald Trump has declared that the judge who blocked his travel ban will be responsible if America is attacked.
Mr Trump said Judge James Robart had placed America in "peril", by allowing citizens of seven Muslim majority countries that had been barred from entering the US to come "pouring in" to the country.
Meanwhile the Trump administration says it will use “every legal means” to reinstate Mr Trump’s executive order on refugees and immigration, but will comply with the judge’s order as the legal battle continues.
Read the full story...
Airbnb says #weaccept in ad as Super Bowl LI gets political
Airbnb debuted a politically charged ad during Super Bowl LI in an apparent dig at Donald Trump's travel ban.
The 30-second ad, reportedly a last-minute addition to the commercial line-up, featured a diverse array of faces as words strung out: "We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love, or who you worship, we all belong. The world is more beautiful the more you accept," followed by the hashtag #weaccept.Morgan Stanley Cuts Flipkart Valuation By 27% ; Values It At 11 Billion USD!
28th Feb 2016, Bangalore : India’s largest ecommerce company,Flipkart, is seeing a 27% drop in its valuation from $15 billion to $11 billion after one of its minority but key investors, Morgan Stanley marked down its investment value.
Flipkart has raised $3.15 billion so far. Morgan Stanley has marked down the value of its investment in Flipkart to $58.9 million in Dec. This is 27% down from what the company had valued its investment in Flipkart to be in the month of Jane 2015. This could affect the company’s plans of raising $1billion in the next round.
Flipkart valuation shot up almost 5 times in June 2015 when it received $700 million from $700 million from Tiger Global Management, Qatar Investment Authority and other investors in June. Flipkart has set a target of achieving a GMV of $8 billion by Dec 2015. But the company has been able to achieve a GMV of $5 billion in the last year.
Related Read:
New Flipkart CEO Binny Bansal Wants To Be The One True King Of Ecommerce; Will Focus On Commerce & Supply Chain To Take On Alibaba, Baidu!
Alibaba Now Eyes At Flipkart To Acquire Stake In India’s Largest Online Marketplace
Binny Bansal To Head The CEO Post Of Flipkart
Flipkart Plans For Raising $1 Billion Funding To Keep Its Dominance On Online Retailing Business
The competition in the Indian ecommerce space is heating up with Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal competing for the top spot. Amazon has recent ramped up its efforts in the Indian market. The company has been investing a lot of money and slowly but steadily has been making a lot of moved to capture the Indian market.
Comments
commentsEarlier this year, Claire Enders was suffering from such excruciating pain in her joints, she thought she could not go on.
“I was absolutely showing signs of mental illness. I was going to kill myself because I was in such extreme pain. I was in a grip of a downward spiral. I couldn’t live like this. I put all my affairs in order, I drew up a will, I wrote a letter of wishes.”
Despite frequent trips to the doctors and specialists, nobody knew why she was so ill and not getting any better. She had Lyme disease.
Claire Enders, who is suffering from a second bout of Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread to humans by infected ticks, Credit: Clara Molden/Telegraph/Clara Molden
What makes her lack of diagnosis so remarkable was that not only had she suffered from the disease – which is usually curable with a short course of antibiotics – for a full decade, so too had her husband. More than that, she had caught it near Lyme itself.
There are not many diseases named after a place. Most of them conjure up pretty inhospitable spots: Ebola, Lassa fever, West Nile virus. Lyme disease, however, is named after the small, wealthy marina town in New England (itself named after the prosperous Lyme Regis in Dorset).
"I thought: you are the smartest girl on the planet, you can run one of the top businesses ever created by a woman in this country, and still be a complete fathead" Claire Enders
Here, in 1975, a strange arthritic condition affecting children was diagnosed as being caused by a tick that grew on local deer, which passed on a bacterial infection to humans through bites.
Lyme was a place Enders knew well. Her family had an estate a mere five miles away in Waterford. “My family founded the state of Connecticut. That’s how posh I am. I was the 40th member of my family to go to Yale.”
In her Alexander McQueen coat and with perfect, white teeth, she is the epitome of elegant New England aristocracy: at 57, she could easily pass for 10 years younger.
Now a British citizen, having lived and worked in London for 25 years, she would occasionally return to the family estate. She did not know it was cursed. She contracted the tick-borne disease twice, but no one made the connection between her excruciating pain and Lyme, the town, until it was almost too late.
When she was eventually diagnosed after her second bout, nearly a year after a visit to New England, her reaction was: “I thought: you are the smartest girl on the planet, you can run one of the top businesses ever created by a woman in this country, and still be a complete fathead. I said to myself, I should have known. I felt like an idiot.”
Enders founded and still runs Enders Analysis, acknowledged to be one of the top industry research firms, covering the media and telecoms sector. She is speaking to me – with a shortage of breath, and stretched out on a sofa – determined to share her horrific experiences now that Lyme disease has escalated in Britain. Ian Burgess, an entomologist, has estimated there could be as many as 35,000 annual cases in Britain, rather than the 2,000-to-3,000 cases estimated by NHS Choices, the health service website.
Also, she wants to dispel some of the myths surrounding this disease.
The most high-profile sufferer of Lyme disease in Britain is John Caudwell. The billionaire founder of Phones4U has not only had it himself, but his eldest son was stricken for a decade, and his ex-wife and daughter tested positive, too. Mr Caudwell now believes the disease “could be congenital or transmitted person to person”, and fears his relatives are not the only family suffering in the UK.
"It’s ridiculous to say that you can get it from hugging someone. If you go to an affected area, everyone will get it eventually. That’s probably happened to Mr Caudwell and his |
far, proved unsuccessful. In the absence of the text it is not possible to authenticate, completely, the prayer in question. As to Mr....'s question concerning the Universal House of Justice's perspective on the status of the prayer and its inclusion in the U.S. Bahá'í prayer book, while the Research Department has not, to date, been able to identify any precise information to this subject, we provide for his consideration an extract from a letter dated 6 June 2004 written on behalf of the House of Justice that appears to pertain, in a general way, to his question. The letter was written in response to a question from an individual believer concerning two slightly discrepant translations of the prayer and the believer's request for guidance concerning which translation should be used. From the answer, it is evident that the House of Justice is aware of "the degree of authenticity" of the passage, i.e., the fact that, as yet, the original text of the prayer has not been located. It also permits the continuing use of the prayer. The letter states, Regarding the two English translations of a prayer attributed to 'Abdu'l-Bahá beginning with the line "O God! Refresh and gladden my spirit", the text of this prayer in the original has not been found and the friends should feel free to use either version. With regard to the status of the prayer, "O God! Refresh and gladden my spirit", as indicated in the 1998 Research Department memorandum, referred to above, all attempts to locate the original text of the prayer have, so far, proved unsuccessful. In the absence of the text it is not possible to authenticate, completely, the prayer in question. As to Mr....'s question concerning the Universal House of Justice's perspective on the status of the prayer and its inclusion in the U.S. Bahá'í prayer book, while the Research Department has not, to date, been able to identify any precise information to this subject, we provide for his consideration an extract from a letter dated 6 June 2004 written on behalf of the House of Justice that appears to pertain, in a general way, to his question. The letter was written in response to a question from an individual believer concerning two slightly discrepant translations of the prayer and the believer's request for guidance concerning which translation should be used. From the answer, it is evident that the House of Justice is aware of "the degree of authenticity" of the passage, i.e., the fact that, as yet, the original text of the prayer has not been located. It also permits the continuing use of the prayer. The letter states, Regarding the two English translations of a prayer attributed to 'Abdu'l-Bahá beginning with the line "O God! Refresh and gladden my spirit", the text of this prayer in the original has not been found and the friends should feel free to use either version. Notes A letter dated 9 March 1977 written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer states that the ruling of the Guardian concerning the use of such compilations also applies to the use of "Star of the West". Back to: Letters from the Universal House of Justice Home Site Map Forum Links Copyright About Contact
.Adrian Peterson Cake Delivery for My Favorite 'N-Word'
Adrian Peterson -- Cake Delivery for My Favorite 'N-Word'
EXCLUSIVE
was like a living, breathing genie last night... 'cause when his "n-word"asked for a red velvet cake, AP made it his personal mission to deliver the baked goods.Whoo Kid made the plea for his favorite cake on TMZ just a few days ago... saying he'd wave his $10,000 fee if a Super Bowl MVP asked him to DJ his party and provided his favorite dessert.Whoo Kid said if anyone could make that happen, "I'll be your n-word for the night."Clearly, Adrian got the message... because he rounded up an RV cake with the message, "n-word we made it"... and presented it to the DJ at W.i.P. nightclub in NYC last night.Now, technically, Adrian isn't a Super Bowl MVP... but he IS an NFL regular season MVP.So... does that count?Toyota's hybridized take on self-driving comes in the wake of research that suggests drivers can take about eight seconds or more to readjust and gain control of a formerly fully autonomous vehicle. The "guardian angel" system could alleviate that disconnect by activating only to avoid a collision, much like automatic braking does.
Testing for this new system will soon be underway at a TRI location near Mt. Fuji in Japan, although the company also intends to run simulations at its US-based research facilities. To clear the system for eventual use in commercial vehicles, Toyota will first need to amass a trillion miles worth of road testing. And it's hoping to do this with a combination of simulations and real-world driving. Further testing will also be carried out at TRI's three US-based facilities, one of which is currently under construction.A person was found dead in the Northwest Branch Trail creek near the Capital Beltway's Inner Loop in Silver Spring, Maryland.
WASHINGTON — Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of a person found Tuesday night in the Northwest Branch Trail creek near the Capital Beltway’s Inner Loop in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Police have not said whether the person was a man or a woman.
Major crimes detectives located the body in the creek along the trail around 11:10 p.m.
Police classified the case as “an active and ongoing death investigation,” according to a news release.
The medical examiner in Baltimore will conduct an autopsy.
Anyone with information should contact police at 240-773-5070 or contact Crime Solvers of Montgomery County at 1-866-411-TIPS (8477). Callers may remain anonymous.
Follow @WTOP on Twitter and WTOP on Facebook.
© 2015 WTOP. All Rights Reserved.Snubbed Bay of Plenty No 8 Colin Bourke is "dumbfounded" to miss out on a Super Rugby job for 2012 and will reluctantly head overseas to continue his professional rugby career.
Bourke was the shock omission when New Zealand's five Super Rugby squads were announced this week, with new Chiefs coach Dave Rennie deciding the Bay skipper's face didn't fit and the remaining four franchises electing not to pick him up via the draft.
The Steamers loose forward is a multi-talented No 8 who in previous seasons had even been mentioned in despatches as an All Black contender after some fine form at provincial level.
However he appears to have paid a high price for a 2010 trip to play for the Barbarians in the UK that saw him suffer a serious shoulder injury and miss the entire Super Rugby season this year.
But he's fit again now and proved that in the pre-World Cup ITM Cup campaign.
Bourke's omission is even more mystifying when you consider the Highlanders have gone for England No 8 James Haskell among their loose forwards and the Blues are largely bereft of topline No 8 talent in their squad. Pat Lam is gambling on Brad Mika, who has been out for a year with a succession of injuries, to fill the back-of-scrum role.
Bourke told Radio Sport today he was disappointed to effectively be forced to take his game overseas.
"We had a talk to Dave towards the end of the last Super 15 campaign, and got the word he wasn't too keen on my services again," he said.
"We were interested in playing another Super 15 if the chance arose, but the hand has been dealt and I guess I'll go overseas a little bit earlier than I thought."
Bourke, at just 27, still has plenty of rugby in front of him and it has mystified a number of pundits that he is not among the 153 contracted players unveiled on Wednesday.
Bourke said to Radio Sport that Rennie had told him he was too similar a player to Liam Messam and Fritz Lee and there was no point in having all three in the Chiefs.
"I was a little bit dumbfounded by that. But at the end of the day he's the coach and he's responsible for the team. I didn't want to argue with him," added Bourke.
"Up till a couple of days before the squads were named I think there were a couple of franchises interested, but I was called by my agent just before and told that they wouldn't be proceeding any further, so we could start looking overseas."
Bourke said he has no problems with the decision by Highlanders coach Jamie Joseph to sign England's Haskell ahead of him.
"It's all gone franchise now, it's a job and they see him as a good acquisition. All the best to him and I guess I've got to get on with my own career now."
Bourke had no firm offers in front of him as yet, though Japan and France both appealed as potential destinations.
And he said the mass rejection had not dented his confidence too much.
"I'm confident in my ability and myself and I'm proud of what I've done with Bay of Plenty. Obviously I haven't played too many Super Rugby games for whatever reason, but I'm looking forward if something does come up overseas getting over there and showing what I can do as well."
Bourke supporters, of which there are many, will say New Zealand's loss is someone else's gain. Just who that someone else will be should become clear sooner rather than later.Introduction, Products Inside, Testing, RvR Wi-Fi System Backhaul, Capacity Capacity- more, Routing, Closing Start
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Introduction
Updated 11/21/17: eero, Deco specs corrected
Updated 9/29/17: Inside section added
It's been almost a year since the first Mesh Wi-Fi Mashup and the follow-on review that added NETGEAR's original Orbi. A lot has changed since then. The industry seems to have settled on "Wi-Fi System" as a better way to refer to this new breed of products designed to blanket your home with fast, seamless Wi-Fi. But, more importantly, a slew of new products have appeared, all aiming to unseat NETGEAR's original Orbi, which currently sits at the top of the market share heap.
So, it's time for a long-overdue look at four new Wi-Fi Systems, including NETGEAR's two Orbi "minis", eero's second generation trio and TP-Link's Deco M5 first mesh-based effort. To provide some context, I also retested Google Wi-Fi, because, as the low-cost leader, it's putting the most sales pressure on Orbi.
The Products
At some point, I hope to go back and do individual reviews. But with the backlog that has built up while the kinks were worked out of the Wi-Fi System test process, that may not happen any time soon. So here's a quick rundown of key product features.
Because their feature sets are very different from conventional wireless routers, I've created a different product category for Wi-Fi Systems. So they have their own Charts, Ranker and Finder. The feature tables below are taken from the Finder, which has more information than I've chosen to highlight here. Although there are two main types of Wi-Fi system—mesh and extender—both are treated the same in the Charts and Ranker.
You may notice eero Beacon is not included in this test because eero sent only one Beacon along with the three-node Pro. I'd prefer to test a one-Pro, two Beacon configuration, so will arrange that for a future test.
First, let's focus on what's the same about this group of products. All use multiple mini dual-band 802.11ac access points, that can themselves connect via Wi-Fi, to cover more area with higher bandwidth than a conventional single-point router, or at least that's the plan. Three of the five use a mesh architecture, in which APs (aka mesh nodes), can connect to each other to get back to the one node (the "root") that's connected to your modem. The Orbis use a more familar router / extender (aka "satellite") approach, where satellites can connect only to the router.
The advantage of mesh systems is that they can reach farther by having each node relay your data until it reaches the root. The disadvantage is that each relay point (aka "hop") usually reduces the bandwidth available to the devices connected to the farthest node.
Although the marketing folks have played the usual games with class designations, these are all 2x2 systems. Both flavors of the "mini" Orbis, which NETGEAR would prefer I call the Orbi WiFi System AC2200, adding RBK40 for the version with the desktop satellite and RBK30 for the version with the wall-plugged satellite, still have 2x2 client-facing radios. But the Original Orbi's dedicated 5 GHz backhaul radio has been downgraded from 4x4 to 2x2 to enable the mini's lower cost.
The takeaway here is to not let the difference in numbers fool you, all the products in this group connect to your devices with maximum link rates of 867 Mbps in 5 GHz and either 300 Mbps for Google Wi-Fi or 400 Mbps for the others in 2.4 GHz.
WiFi System Product features
The key difference in this group is in backhaul, or the way they connect among themselves to get back to the one node that's connected to your modem via Ethernet. The Feature table above shows eero, TP-Link and Google nodes can be connected via Ethernet, while the Orbis can't. Yes, yes, NETGEAR says Ethernet backhaul is on Orbi's roadmap, but they've been saying that since the original Orbi launched and have yet to provide a definite timeframe. By the way, if you have Ethernet where you want to place system nodes, you should perhaps be looking building a less expensive system using conventional access points, like Ubiquiti's UAP-AC Lite or PROs...
Another backhaul difference is how it is managed. Orbi does this locally, while the other three products require a companion cloud service to do the heavy lifting. eero Gen 2, Deco and GWiFi can all continue to operate if the cloud service temporarily goes away (eero originally couldn't, but they fixed that). But each cloud service is an essential part of its product, making the products not very useful without it.
Assuming Ethernet backhaul isn't an option, the more significant difference is in wireless backhaul options. Both Orbis and eero Gen 2 have a third 5 GHz radio, for a total of one 2.4 GHz and two 5 GHz. Both Orbi and eero dedicate one radio to the 5 GHz low band (channels 36 - 48) and the other to the high (channels 149 - 165). However, Orbi dedicates the 5 GHz high band radio to backhaul; clients can't connect to it. eero has a more flexible arrangement; devices can connect to any of its three radios.
WiFi System Wireless Features
Note all the products are based on Qualcomm silicon, although not all use Qualcomm's Wi-Fi SON's mesh software platform. Google Wi-Fi is perhaps the furthest away from Wi-Fi SON, using a variant of ChromeOS and 802.11s compliant mesh routing. eero is rumored to have a descendant of the open mesh B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced protocol beating under its off-white shell.
Another glance at the Wireless table above shows all products in this group except eero support band-steering between the radios in a mesh node and node-to-node AP steering. But eero is the only one to implement 802.11r fast-transition, which makes for faster and smoother moves when a device decides it's time to look for a better connection. TP-Link and NETGEAR support 802.11k and v and Google Wi-Fi supports no roam-assistance protocols. See the articles linked from this SNBForum thread for help figuring out the differences among the three roaming assistance standards.
It's important to note that older devices don't support 802.11r and some may have problems interpreting the extra information it includes in Wi-Fi management frames. This is why other manufacturers may have shied away from implementing it. The Pal test device, which uses a Qualcomm chipset not commonly found in wireless devices, in fact could not connect to eero's 5 GHz radios. Fortunately, eero was able to disable 802.11r on my network so that I could complete testing. octoScope is looking into the incompatibility.
Wi-Fi System routing and firewall features are intentionally simplified and won't satisfy anyone who either likes a lot of router knobs to twiddle or needs routing features beyond reserving DHCP addresses or opening a few ports through the firewall, either manually or via UPnP. But in an effort to provide another reason to look their way, both eero and TP-Link's Deco have added features designed to keep you out of trouble on the internets.
These features are indicated by the Content Filtering, Rogue Device Block and Threat Protection attributes in the table below. Threat Protection means devices are blocked from accessing known-bad IP addresses/domains. Rogue Device Block means compromised devices that start showing abnormal behavior are taken offline. An example would be a smart plug that suddenly starts sending a lot outbound traffic, which would be sign it could be a slave bot in a DDoS attack.
WiFi System Firewall / QoS Features
It's tough sorting through the marketing-speak, but both eero's Plus and Deco's HomeCare both have Threat Protection and Rogue Device Block features. Deco's Trend Micro-based HomeCare also includes category-based website filtering. TP-Link includes three years of HomeCare in the Deco M5's cost, while you need to pay $10/month or $99/year for eero Plus.
QoS features are usually limited to Device Priority, which enables setting one device at a time as a "high priority" device that gets first crack at available internet bandwidth. But Deco also supports automatic application-based QoS. Orbi supports neither.
I probably should have mentioned up top that Wi-Fi Systems typically use iOS and Android apps for setup and management. A Bluetooth connection is also typically used during the "onboarding", i.e. setup, process, with a switchover to management over Wi-Fi thereafter. While Orbi has an app for setup and management, you don't need to use it. You can do everything you need to do via web interfaces for both router and satellite.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Gifts were handed out to fans mourning the star, as James Cook reports
Prince has been cremated with a small, private service for family, friends and musicians, his publicist has confirmed.
The cause of his death is still unknown and the results of Friday's autopsy could take at least four weeks.
Prince, 57, was found dead in a lift on his Paisley Park estate, near Minneapolis, on Thursday, where fans are still paying tributes.
Officials said there were no signs of injuries to his body and no indication that he had killed himself.
Publicist Anna Meacham said the singer's "final storage" would be kept private.
"A few hours ago, Prince was celebrated by a small group of his most beloved: family, friends and his musicians, in a private, beautiful ceremony to say a loving goodbye," she said.
Among the people who attended the ceremony were percussionist Sheila E, bassist Larry Graham and Prince's sister Tyka Nelson.
Meanwhile in Brooklyn on Saturday night, rock star Bruce Springsteen opened his concert with a cover of Prince's Purple Rain.
The stage at the Barclay's Centre was flooded in purple lights as Springsteen sang the lyrics accompanied by the crowd.
Prince's innovative music spanned rock, funk and jazz. He was at his peak in the 1980s with albums like Dirty Mind, 1999 and Sign O' The Times. He sold more than 100m records.
The singer was last seen at about 20:00 on Wednesday night (01:00 GMT on Thursday) and was found unconscious by some of his staff at about 09:30 the next morning.
Prince had been rushed to hospital in Illinois six days earlier, while flying home from a concert in Georgia, but was treated and released a few hours later.
Quoting unnamed sources, US entertainment news site TMZ reported that Prince was treated in Illinois for an overdose of the painkiller drug Percocet.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Prince's sudden death shocked people around the world
Image copyright AFP Image caption Many of the fans have left purple balloons and flowers
Born Prince Rogers Nelson in 1958, he was a prolific writer and performer from a young age - reportedly writing his first song when he was seven.
He was also an arranger and multi-instrumentalist, and recorded more than 30 albums. Hits included Let's Go Crazy and When Doves Cry.
In 1984, he won an Oscar for the score to Purple Rain, a film in which he also starred.
Throughout his career he had a reputation for secrecy and eccentricity, once changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol.
Prince's latest album, HITnRUN Phase One, was released last year and he had been touring as recently as this month.Missouri County Votes to Fly Flags At Half-Staff for a Year to "Mourn" SCOTUS Marriage Ruling
The Dent County Courthouse and Judicial Building in southeast Missouri will be flying flags "below half-staff" on the 26th day of each month in observance of a year of "mourning" over the Supreme Court's landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage across the country.
The three-member Dent County Commission - all Republicans - voted unanimously on Monday to observe the practice beginning this month until June 2016.
The Salem News reports the vote came after Presiding Commissioner Darrell Skiles filed a letter into the public record protesting, “the U.S. high court’s stamp of approval of what God speaks of as an abomination.”
"Instead of choosing to honor and respect all residents, the Dent County Commission chose to send a dangerous message that LGBT people are unwelcome in Dent County. This action is disheartening and disappointing," said Stephanie Perkins, Deputy Director of PROMO, Missouri's statewide LGBT advocacy organization.
PROMO asserts that the Dent County vote is illegal as only sitting governors or presidents can order government flags to be flown at half-staff.If it wasn't clear by now, I'm not a fan of Snap's (NYSE:SNAP) initial public offering (IPO). The offering was severely overhyped and a thinly veiled effort for insiders and early investors to cash out. Joshua Brown, better known as The Reformed Broker, makes a really compelling case (save for the use of Comic Sans to annotate the chart) that the company intentionally kept the IPO float artificially low -- only 200 million shares -- specifically in order to engineer an opening pop. Well done, underwriters. Well done.
Co-founder Evan Spiegel expectedly cashed out as part of the offering, selling 16 million shares at the $17 offer price for $272 million. Yet Snap just compensated Spiegel with a massive equity award for successfully taking the company public. In other words, Spiegel got paid to cash out.
There's more where that came from
In a fresh SEC filing, Snap disclosed a restricted stock unit award that was granted to Spiegel. This award was crafted a couple years back as part of his employment, and was amended in October. From the prospectus:
Under the terms of his offer letter, Mr. Spiegel will be granted an award of RSUs for shares of Series FP preferred stock representing 3% of our outstanding capital stock on an as-converted basis on the closing of this offering, which will be fully vested on the closing of this offering and such shares will be delivered to Mr. Spiegel in equal quarterly installments over three years beginning in the third full calendar quarter following this offering.... Our board of directors approved the award to Mr. Spiegel in July 2015 to motivate him to continue growing our business and improving our financial results so that we could undertake an initial public offering, which we regard as an important milestone that will provide liquidity to our stockholders and employees.
How many shares are we talking about? Spiegel just received an additional 37.4 million shares, which more than replenishes the 16 million shares that he sold in the offering. At yesterday's closing price of $21.44, those shares are worth a little over $800 million. The shares fully vested yesterday, too, although delivery will occur over time. In other words, the Snap IPO was a massive payday for Spiegel in more ways than one.
It all adds up
An executive receiving an equity grant or bonus based on a successful IPO is not uncommon, so at face value, this is not a red flag. But when you factor in other questionable aspects about the offering, most notably the lack of voting rights for public investors buying Class A shares, you can't help but wonder if Snap is a) a company with long-term potential and public investors now have an opportunity for a promising investing opportunity, or b) an overhyped startup looking to financially take advantage of said hype while public investors are doomed to suffer an underperforming investment.
Considering the fact that Snap couldn't even answer a basic question about where management sees the company in five years -- a perennial interview question that all job candidates are familiar with -- during the IPO roadshow, I'm going to go with b).Police in Seattle are still searching for 30-year-old Ali Muhammad Brown, the man they have charged with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder in connection with a brutal hate crime they believe was premeditated and arranged on a gay social networking app like Grindr.
The bodies of two gay men, 27-year-old Ahmed Said and 23-year-old Dwone Anderson-Young were found in the early morning hours of Tuesday not far from Seattle’s Capitol Hill gayborhood. According to police, they were both executed by Brown no more than 17 minutes after they had picked him up via a social networking app near a popular gay bar in town.
Both victims were shot in the head and police say there was no evidence of a struggle, robbery, exchange of drugs or any other type of crime. Neither of the victims had a criminal history, leading police to believe the crime was motivated exclusively by hate.
“It is evident that the murders were premeditated and unprovoked and part of a common scheme or plan,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Wyman Yip wrote in the court documents, obtained by KIRO TV. “The evidence from the crime scene, Said’s vehicle, and the autopsies suggest that the victims were essentially executed.”
Friends of Said and Anderson-Young told police they had been hanging out among friends at R Place earlier in the night. The two left shortly after they told friends they were “meeting a friend outside the club,” a man who was later identified as Brown. One of Said’s friends told police he didn’t believe Said had ever met Brown previously, and that he was “creeped out” by the man when he saw the three get into Said’s car together.
The car Said had picked Brown up in was later found in South Seattle, the interior covered in blood, including an incriminating bloody palm print belonging to Brown in the back seat. Police believe Brown may now be in New Jersey, and is possibly connected to a robbery in the Point Pleasant Beach area.
Brown has been charged with two counts of aggravated first-degree murder, a sentence that could get him the death penalty if convicted. Seattle police have also identified Brown as a convicted sex offender, and want him in connection to a third homicide in Washington. They’re urging anyone with more information to call Crime Stoppers at (206) 343-2020.
Though court documents don’t directly implicate Grindr as the app used by the victims in this case, a friend of Said’s is quoted telling police officers that Said was texting frequently on “an app like Grindr or Jack’d” before his murder.
In April, a Philadelphia man claimed he was raped by a man he met on Grindr. Last December, an elderly man was murdered by three men he allegedly also met on Grindr. Just a simple reminder to stay safe and always remember our five great tips on how to protect yourself while hooking up with strangers, if you must.A few days ago I was tagged by good friend Simon King. When I saw the post I thought oh dear. Not another one of these. It was regarding Adolf Hitler. Simon wanted to know where I stood on this. First though, I’d like to briefly outline what I feel is a far more accurate version of history –
A prerequisite to being a true authority for this period is understanding Rothschild’s role in manufacturing WWI. Their consequent meddling & influence both during the war & the peace treaty of Versailles in 1919 resulted in Germany being well & truly shafted. Initially a barrage of propaganda in the form of media lies in 1916/17 singled out Germany as the bad guy for the purpose of conning America into the war. This scuppered a peace deal England & Germany had all but signed in 1916. Few people realise WWI should have ended then!
The Rothschilds offered the Allies certain victory by getting America into the war & the added bonus they’d see to it that Germany would foot the bill for England & France’s war effort. In return the Rothschilds were promised Palestine. This would later be confirmed in the Balfour Declaration of 1919, as was the whopping reparations bill that was slapped upon Germany, effectively rendering the possibility of another World War inevitable.
What we’re taught in history lessons in school avoids any mention of how the Zionist Rothschilds were directly responsible for untold millions of deaths & the fact Germans in particular suffered terribly. Not only is this issue conveniently side-stepped but in typical Zionist fashion, the media has conducted a non-stop campaign to make us all believe the German people always had it in for the Jews, when in fact the reverse is true.
Before WWI Jews lived happily & prospered in Germany. So-called anti-Semitism was non-existent. Benjamin Freedman, a Jew who participated in the Peace Treaty of Versailles, pointed out this crucial detail out in his superb speech at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC in 1961. He also revealed the sinister truth regarding the underhand shenanigans of the all-powerful Rothschild banking dynasty. As well as being a shrewd businessman, Freedman devoted the millions he’d made into exposing the Zionist Rothschild role in both WWI & II. He was brave & generous too.
Another incredible detail is indeed a moot point – when Hitler seized power in 1933, Germany had little or no military firepower. There was a good reason – they weren’t allowed to. Well? We all know what happened 6 years later! The trouble is few people ever bother to ask patently obvious questions –
1) WHO THE HELL COULD HAVE FINANCED ALL THIS?
2) WHY IN PARTICULAR DIDN’T THE MEDIA MARK EUROPE’S CARD?
This for me is the big giveaway. England & France especially were caught off guard. For the world it seemed they only realised Germany was tooled up & ready to go when it was way too late. How could this possibly be? Remember in the previous 30 years the entire media apparatus which ultimately was under the control of the Rothschilds, burst blood vessels declaring – ‘Germany’s doing this; Germany’s doing that’, forever ramping up the fear factor, warning the world of the terrifying Hun & yet….. the one time Germany was REALLY up to something to have everyone’s alarm bells ringing, the media suddenly clams up! If you don’t think something seriously stinks here…….
This is where controlling the flow of information is absolutely critical. All this was possible not just because the public was being told blatant lies but because the real agenda remained hidden from public gaze. So, now onto my exchange with Simon King who tagged me for my opinion of Adolf Hitler. I’ve just explained how history is a version that suits those calling the shots but even though I know countless lies have been told about Germany & indeed Hitler, do I feel an urge to try & make people think again about him? NO WAY DO I! So I said to Simon –
“ My take on this is all to do with getting priorities right. Our job is to raise awareness. Therefore utilising the correct tactics is of paramount importance. If I choose to talk about WW II, I have certain options – 1) Do I focus on how so many lies were told about Hitler? Bear in mind, his refusal to surrender 6 months earlier when all was lost resulted in his own people suffering horrendously. Indeed, soldiers who’d served him admirably, when finally surrounded by the Russians, were told that had to fight to the death, even though their situation was hopeless. Far as I’m concerned Hitler’s actions here were unforgivable! 2) Do I focus on the Zionist Rothschild role where their skulduggery in WW I was directly responsible for making WWII inevitable? 3) Do I focus on the fact they financed Hitler? 4) Do I focus on the outrageous war crimes committed by the Allied bombing of German civilians?The App Review guidelines were updated this week to accommodate App Store policy changes and new rules for usage of frameworks introduced in iOS 11, like MusicKit.
One change is the addition of section 1.1.7. This new paragraph requires developers to use the official in-app rating UI added in iOS 10.3 and states that they ‘will disallow custom review prompts’ going forward …
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When the new App Store rating API was introduced in the iOS 10.3 beta period at the start of the year, adoption was optional but Apple warned that it would eventually become mandatory.
It seems that time has come. Here’s the relevant addition to the App Store Review guidelines:
Use the provided API to prompt users to review your app; this functionality allows customers to provide an App Store rating and review without the inconvenience of leaving your app, and we will disallow custom review prompts.
The language is pretty clear-cut, use the Apple API and stop using custom implementations. The change to the Apple API has some advantages and drawbacks for developers and users.
Developers like the new API because it allows customers to provide a rating without leaving the app; custom implementations would pop an alert that ultimately navigated to the App Store. The integrated Apple rating prompt lets users pick 1-5 stars and press Done, without losing the context of what they were doing in the third-party app.
However, Apple also imposes limits on how often the rating prompt can be displayed. The alert can only be presented three times a year (and this is enforced by the system). If a user leaves a rating, the app can not show the alert for at least a year afterwards and after a new version has been released. This behavior is an obvious response to customer complaints of a subpar App Store experience where apps beg for reviews and ratings far too frequently.
This is naturally user-friendly but some developers are not happy with the constraints. For example, soliciting a review after a major feature-changing update is not possible if the user already rated the app a few months earlier.
Users are also given more control about whether they want to be asked to review apps at all. In Settings, there is a global switch to suppress these alerts from ever appearing (Settings → iTunes & App Store → In-App Ratings & Reviews).
There is still the open question of how stringently app review enforces the rule, of course. There are many clauses in the App Review Guidelines that are consistently violated by apps and allowed to slip through the net seemingly forever.
It’s worth pointing out that as part of the iOS 11 App Store redesign, Apple has addressed one of the top complaints developers had when it came to reviews. In the past, releasing an app update would reset the app’s star rating in the store back to zero (as it was based on reviews for the current version rather than the all versions aggregate). From iOS 11, developers can preserve their star ratings across app updates.Washington Wizards All-Star John Wall is unhappy with the performance of his team in games against losing teams this season.
Coming off Wednesday's 113-99 loss against the 9-25 Atlanta Hawks, Wall said the Wizards only play for stats against the bad teams.
"We talk about it," he said, via Candace Buckner of the Washington Post. "We say when we play these teams that are not above.500 or not one of the great teams, we go out there playing for stats. It's simple as that. We can see it. I think we all can see it when we play."
The Wizards fell to 19-16 after losing to the Hawks, who have the NBA's worst record.
That defeat came after a Christmas Day win over the Boston Celtics, owners of the best record in the Eastern Conference at 28-10.
In addition to the loss against Atlanta, the Wizards have dropped games this season to the Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks, Charlotte Hornets, Utah Jazz and Brooklyn Nets.
Those six teams are a combined 61 games under.500, with the Hornets the only team among that group not currently in last place in their division.
Despite making the playoffs in three of the last four seasons, the Wizards have been inconsistent with win totals, ranging from 41 to 49 during that span. They currently lead the Southeast Division by one-half game over the Miami Heat.Malaysia's transport minister confirmed for the first time that the pilot of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had simulated a flight over the remote southern Indian Ocean, where the jet is believed to have crashed. Photo: Zaharie Ahmad Shah
NEW analysis of automated signals from MH370 has revealed the missing plane took a massive dive at up to 20,000 feet a minute, as it plunged into the sea.
The Australian reports that Defence scientists found the crash occurred at 8.19am (WA local time) on March 9, 2014 in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia, after the plane ran out of fuel.
The plane’s left engine flamed out first and then the right went about 15 minutes later.
The Australian also reports that simulation tests by Boeing showed that after the plane’s engines lost power, MH370 would have slowed and lost lift.
The plane’s nose would have dropped and it would have plunged into downward swoops where it would have gathered speed and lifted, then fell down repeatedly before hitting the ocean.
Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood told The Australian that the pilot would not have been in control of the plane when it crashed.
Mr Hood said the new data showed it is likely to have crashed in the 120,000sq km area now being searched.
The new data comes as Malaysian officials said that one of MH370’s pilots plotted a path over the Indian Ocean on a home flight simulator, but warned this did not prove he deliberately crashed the plane.
The Malaysia Airlines jet was carrying 239 passengers and crew when it disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
It is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean, but an extensive hunt off |
more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets. (Veterans committed suicide at the rate of between 18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000, compared to other Americans, who did so at the rate of 8.9 per 100,000.)
One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)
"Wow! Those are devastating," said Paul Sullivan, a former VA analyst who is now an advocate for veterans rights from the group Veterans For Common Sense.
"Those numbers clearly show an epidemic of mental health problems," he said.
"We are determined to decrease veteran suicides," Dr. Katz said.
"One hundred and twenty a week. Is that a problem?" Keteyian asked.
"You bet it's a problem," he said.
Is it an epidemic?
"Suicide in America is an epidemic, and that includes veterans," Katz said.
Sen. Murray said the numbers CBS News uncovered are significant: "These statistics tell me we've really failed people that served our country."
Do these numbers serve as a wake-up call for this country?
"If these numbers don't wake up this country, nothing will," she said. "We each have a responsibility to the men and women who serve us aren't lost when they come home."
An update: The chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, responded to thestory Tuesday.
"The report that the rate of suicide among veterans is double that of the general population is deeply troubling and simply unacceptable. I am especially concerned that so many young veterans appear to be taking their own lives. For too many veterans, returning home from battle does not bring an end to conflict. There is no question that action is needed."BALTIMORE (WJZ) — There were two shootings in Baltimore in broad daylight, just blocks apart. A teenager is dead and police are hoping anyone who witnessed these shootings will step up and report what they saw.
Ava-joye Burnett reports police believe the shootings are connected.
Three teenagers were shot in just a matter of hours; now one of them is dead.
“Oh, now that’s upsetting, yes. That’s upsetting,” said Barbara Phares.
Phares just learned that the young man shot in the chest on her street was only 16.
“When I came to the door and looked out, I saw the young man laying flat on the ground,” she said. “He was right here.”
That 16-year-old, identified by police Tuesday as Joseph Payne of 4th Street, later died at the hospital.
Just two hours earlier, another shooting also involved teenagers. Young kids forced to walk through crime scene tape to get home.
“My greatest fear is there is going to be a lot more shootings and a lot more killings in this area,” said Sabrina Johnson.
Both shootings happened on Patapsco Avenue just blocks apart in broad daylight. Police are urging people to come forward if they saw anything.
“At some point, we have to say enough is enough. The only way we are going to get that small number of people that are responsible for these violent crimes over and over again is by providing information so we can bring them into custody,” said Lt. Jarron Jackson.
A violent day in the Brooklyn neighborhood left residents on edge.
“Heartwrenching. I don’t want to see anybody get hurt. It’s not good,” said Paul Matusky.
The 16 and 18-year-olds who were also shot were both taken to the hospital but are expected to survive.
Police questioned some people in the area Monday but if you know anything, please call Metro Crime Stoppers at 1-866-7-LOCKUP.Millions of Puerto Ricans are again without power after a high-voltage transmission line that had been repaired by Whitefish Energy, a Montana contractor now facing an FBI investigation, failed again Wednesday.
The outage comes at an especially embarrassing time, following an announcement from government officials that they had restored electricity to 50 percent of utility customers.
Minutes after announcing it had reached its goal of 50% power generation in Puerto Rico, a massive outage swept San Juan this morning. — Frances Robles (@FrancesRobles) November 15, 2017
This new blackout comes after an outage on November 9 that sank power generation across the island from 40 percent to 18 percent, a major blow to the island’s recovery after Hurricane Maria struck nearly two months ago.
PREPA reports power out in Puerto Rico due to “failure of the Cambalache Manatee 230KV line”
*This is the same line where there was failure last week
-Yesterday, PREPA boss Ricardo Ramos said last weeks outage was caused by a “crane”, signaling human error caused it — David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) November 15, 2017
And so again the majority of the island’s 3.4 million residents are again without power, extending what was already the longest power outage in US history.
Without electricity, many health and sanitation systems will go offline or go back to relying on diesel-powered generators.
As Vox has reported, Puerto Rico’s electric grid was vulnerable and dilapidated before the storm due to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s long history of financial woes and minimal maintenance and investment. But since the storm, the rebuilding of the grid has been further compromised by questionable decisions.
The largest repair contract, valued at $300 million, was awarded to Whitefish, then a two-person company, rather than invoking mutual aid agreements with other utilities as power companies in Florida and Texas did after Hurricanes Irma and Harvey.
The power line that has failed in Puerto Rico (Cambalache Mantaí 230KV line) appears to be a line where @WhitefishEnergy did work, as recently as October 25th.
Municipalities in the North have been affected.
It could be tonight or tomorrow morning before power is restored., pic.twitter.com/iJffaSaZNm — David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) November 9, 2017
The deal drew scrutiny from lawmakers and was later canceled. The line that failed in both blackouts had been repaired by Whitefish, according to a company press release. A spokesperson for the company told BuzzFeed last week that the company was not responsible for the blackout.
"None of the issues reported today with the outage have anything to do with the repairs Whitefish Energy performed," he said.
Legislators on Tuesday grilled Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló and PREPA executive director Ricardo Ramos over the Whitefish deal as new documents showed exorbitant billing rates from the contractor and incompetence on the part of the government.Donald Trump's ego may be the size of his financial empire, but that doesn't mean he's the picture of mental health. The same can be said about the self-esteem of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, or unemployed. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, underscores this mind-wallet connection.
UC Berkeley researchers have linked inflated or deflated feelings of self-worth to such afflictions as bipolar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, anxiety and depression, providing yet more evidence that the widening gulf between rich and poor can be bad for your health.
"We found that it is important to consider the motivation to pursue power, beliefs about how much power one has attained, pro-social and aggressive strategies for attaining power, and emotions related to attaining power," said Sheri Johnson, a UC Berkeley psychologist and senior author of the study published in the journal Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice.
In a study of more than 600 young men and women conducted at UC Berkeley, researchers concluded that one's perceived social status -- or lack thereof -- is at the heart of a wide range of mental illnesses. The findings make a strong case for assessing such traits as "ruthless ambition," "discomfort with leadership" and "hubristic pride" to understand psychopathologies.
"People prone to depression or anxiety reported feeling little sense of pride in their accomplishments and little sense of power," Johnson said. "In contrast, people at risk for mania tended to report high levels of pride and an emphasis on the pursuit of power despite interpersonal costs."
Specifically, Johnson and fellow researchers Eliot Tang-Smith of the University of Miami and Stephen Chen of Wellesley College looked at how study participants fit into the "dominance behavioral system," a construct in which humans and other mammals assess their place in the social hierarchy and respond accordingly to promote cooperation and avoid conflict and aggression. The concept is rooted in the evolutionary principle that dominant mammals gain easier access to resources for the sake of reproductive success and the survival of the species.
Studies have long established that feelings of powerlessness and helplessness weaken the immune system, making one more vulnerable to physical and mental ailments. Conversely, an inflated sense of power is among the behaviors associated with bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, which can be both personally and socially corrosive.
Recent studies have found that people living in developed countries with the highest levels of income inequality were three times more likely to develop depression or anxiety disorders than their more egalitarian counterparts. Similar results were found in a state-by-state comparison of income and mental illness in the United States.
For this latest study, 612 young men and women rated their social status, propensity toward manic, depressive or anxious symptoms, drive to achieve power, comfort with leadership and degree of pride, among other measures.
In one study, they were gauged for two distinct kinds of pride: "authentic pride," which is based on specific achievements and is related to positive social behaviors and healthy self-esteem; and "hubristic pride," which is defined as being overconfident, and is correlated with aggression, hostility and poor interpersonal skills.
And in a test for tendencies toward hypomania, a manic mood disorder, participants ranked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with such statements as "I often have moods where I feel so energetic and optimistic that I feel I could outperform almost anyone at anything," or "I would rather be an ordinary success in life than a spectacular failure."
Overall, the results showed a strong correlation between the highs and lows of perceived power and mood disorders.
"This is the first study to assess the dominance behavioral system across psychopathologies," Johnson said. "The findings present more evidence that it is important to consider dominance in understanding vulnerability to psychological symptoms."Self-driving cars need to be more intelligent, regulated, safer and not be able to be hacked before they are able to be common place on our roads.
Professor Timothy Gordon, from the University of Lincoln, told Factor he believes it will be around 20 years before cars will be able to automatically take us places we want to go.
He said: “In the advanced area of the self-driving ‘take me to work’ function, there is no legal framework so far. That is needed to allow the kind of vehicles we are talking about going on to the public highway, doing everything they are going to do in a controlled, and hopefully safe, way.
“My guess is you could have something in 20 years where you might be able to get on a dedicated lane of the M1 and press the auto cruise and be able to let the car drive, eyes-off-the-road style.”
Gordon, who is working with car manufacturer Volvo on their own self-driving vehicles, said the UK’s announcement to provide funding and, importantly, develop a framework for their use was a positive step.
Gordon said, as well as legal issues in their implementation, there will need to be enough public trust that wireless systems in the cars cannot be hacked – as well as the cars’ intelligence and safety.
Wireless technology could play a large role in the future of self-driving cars as it has the potential to allow cars to communicate with their surroundings. For example, Honda has been developing traffic lights which can interact with their cars.
Gordon said: “I think another thing that will concern people is that when these vehicles use wireless and network communications, whether anyone can hack into it, there may be malicious people who would disrupt such systems, so their security becomes a really big thing.
“This is another reason why smart systems using wireless technology – so called connected vehicles – need to prove the security as well as the safety.”
He also said there needs to be further advancement in the technologies used before the public level of trust, as with all emerging technologies, reaches a level where everyone will want to use the cars.
This can be seen from Google, in recent days, agreeing to add a steering wheel to its driverless cars after new rules were passed by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles.
Gordon said that to some extent self-driving cars already exist on our roads as they are able to use technology such as adaptive cruise control, which changes the speed of a car based on the distance between itself and others.
However, he said, for the more speculative cars, which are able to take more control, they need to be more intelligent.
“The cars can definitely drive themselves but the question is that can they drive themselves safely? And therefore do they have the higher level of intelligence that means that they can work under all conditions, snow, rain, dark, strong winds, but more to the point in the real-world traffic environment?
“The need for hazard perception and suitably safe operation is going to be the factor that keeps this on a fairly slow track.”
Featured image courtesy of Google. Image one and two courtesy of VolvoKristian Jack TSN Soccer Analyst Follow|Archive
It was the character Colin Frissell in the movie Love, Actually who declared so proudly that he was coming "to America."
"American girls would seriously dig me with my cute, British accent," declared Colin, who took off to a place his accent broke down into three syllables: "Wiss-Conn-Sin."
Colin’s move turned out to be a tremendous success, as he accomplished exactly what he set out to do when he arrived.
Not even David Beckham can say that.
There is a unique charm about an Englishman’s view of the United States.
Many refer to it as a one-worded nation: "America" - a big country full of big people with big mouths, big expectations, big portions, big dreams and big ideas.
Introverted by nature, the Brits, from their quiet, reserved perch, have a tendency to look down and both judge and envy their allies.
Americans can be an easy target for the Brits and, as much as they can mock them for their tendency to "be massive," there is a large amount of respect across the water when it comes to seeing them push out their chest and believe in themselves.
English people often wish they could be more American in that way - to fly their flags proudly, not just when it’s during a World Cup or an Olympics, and not be afraid to show the world exactly how they feel.
When he arrived to play in Los Angeles, Beckham repeatedly said how much he enjoyed how much the country itself and everything in it.
“It's one thing I like about America - they respect the sportsman," he said. "They put them up on a pedestal. They don't try to knock them down. And that's a great thing, to be respected by the whole country. It's so patriotic."
"America." That one word again.
“I can tell the supporters I will be going to play in America,” said Steven Gerrard this past week when announcing he was leaving Liverpool at the end of the season.
Gerrard, an Englishman not afraid to push out his chest and proudly represent a city or country, is heading to the Los Angeles Galaxy as its new designated player. He will arrive in the sunshine with his family by July and, at 35, some are wondering if he will be a success.
Many articles in the English press have been written over the last couple of days asking whether Gerrard will be a bust "like a Defoe or Lampard" or a success "like a Beckham."
In truth, all the comparisons are as nonsensical as the judgments based on the other players.
Gerrard is his own man and has the potential to be far more successful than any of the others, including Beckham...on the pitch.
Brand Beckham will always be royalty when the discussion of Major League Soccer designated players is broached. This week, in the wake of the news that Gerrard was coming to MLS, the BBC ran an article called "10 things you need to know about MLS" in which they explained Beckham had a rule named after him. In truth, more people refer to it as the DP rule these days, but they had a point.
When Gerrard makes his LA debut, he will not have the movie stars in the crowd that accompanied Beckham, but also gone will be the high maintenance issues that followed him around. There will be no constant flirting elsewhere with loan deals, subsequent injuries on the pitch that came from that and, to be frank, regular adequate performances at best on the field.
In Gerrard, the Galaxy are getting a fully committed player who has always approached the game that way. They're getting a player who has rarely been injured, who plays in central midfield, an area where he can both dictate the tempo of the game and the overall final score.
We must remember Beckham rarely dominated MLS matches. For all of the glitz and glamour he brought, the spotlight was rarely deserved for the actual talent he showed on the field. Yes, he could pass a ball like no other, but he has never had the drive, workrate or talent to impact a big game from a central position. He made the annual MLS Best XI, which is awarded at the end of each season, just once, despite it regularly being a place for All-Star names to be given recognition.
MLS, first and foremost, offers Gerrard a significant pay packet. That should not be forgotten, but along with it comes an opportunity to play every game in a position he has succeeded in throughout his career - something he was no longer able to do every game for Liverpool.
For the Galaxy, he will be able to influence more games than Beckham did and play as a box-to-box midfielder. The modern day game has seen a turnaround in fortune for central midfielders in the past decade, thanks, in part, to the popularity of the 4-2-3-1 formation and with more and more emphasis on transitions.
The modern day box-to-box midfielder is no longer looked upon first as a physical threat or a stopper. This is a valuable asset, but more and more successful teams have central midfielders in their team who are all around footballers. Gerrard fits the bill in MLS. He is an adequate tackler, an outstanding reader of the game and a great passer who can give the first pass out of a transition or the final one in a move that ends in a goal. He can play in the Galaxy’s 4-4-2 or have them evolve, against better teams, into a fluid 4-3-3 with a trio of Juninho, Marcelo Sarvas and Gerrard. He gives Bruce Arena options and is a big-game player for a big name club. In America.
His loyalty to Liverpool throughout his career means he is more than likely to do the same during his time in MLS.
Gerrard does not walk into something without his eyes being fully open to the task ahead. It is that determination that has seen him carry a club on his shoulders for the best part of a decade and a half.
This is not going to be an English DP who is going to call out the media when he suddenly sees them approaching his locker inside the changing rooms.
This is not going to be an English DP that will annoy fellow players who will devote full chapters in a book to talk about him.
“When David first came, I believed he was committed to what he was doing,” said Landon Donovan in The Beckham Experiment by Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl. “He cared. He wanted to do well. He wanted the team and the league to do well.”
According to Donovan, at the time, things changed.
“I can’t think of another guy where I’d say he wasn’t a good teammate, he didn’t give everything through all this, he didn’t still care,” Donovan added. “But with [Beckham,] I’d say no, he wasn’t committed.”
Defoe and Lampard have also seen their commitments rightfully questioned of late.
With Gerrard, it will be different.
This is not going to be an English DP who other players will look on with envy and wonder why on earth he is getting paid the amount he is. It is impossible to find any of his fellow professionals who will talk badly of Gerrard. He is a grounded star who, throughout his career, has been a role model to many of his teammates and opponents.
When he was a 15-year-old schoolboy on the books at Liverpool, the club asked him to fill out a self-appraisal survey. His answers showed then what kind of man he would turn out to be.
“I am easily approachable, always up for a laugh and try to get on with everyone,” he wrote.
He added: “In five years’ time, I see myself hopefully playing first team football, settled with a girlfriend and talking of houses and family.”
The Gerrard Plan came true. Twenty years on, it has been diverted to a place some call "America."
An Englishman is coming to America and finally, the potential is there for love to be all around.“My advice is not to allow into your house someone who will put you out of it.” —Cuitlahuac
“He added that we could look for no help or assistance except from God, for now we had no ships in which to return to Cuba. Therefore we must rely on our own good swords and stout hearts.” — Bernal Diaz
“We knew that they had come determined to leave none of us alive except those who were to be sacrificed to their idols.” — Bernal Diaz
In the 1500s, two highly militaristic peoples fueled by religious ideologies requiring bloodshed clashed with one another. This is the tale of what happened when a band of Spaniards run into the Mexica (Aztec) empire. By the time the dust will settle, out of the 25 million indigenous inhabitants of Mexico, little over a million will be left standing.
In this second episode:
The first battle ever featuring horses in Mexico
Enormous, angry dogs wearing armor and trained to eat human flesh
Malintzin and her choices
From slavery to becoming one of the most important women in Mexico
The tale of Quetzalcoatl
“If the Spaniards want to eat you, let them”
Apparently, the Spaniards don’t appreciate food sprinkled with a sauce of human blood
Rescuing five sacrificial victims before returning them to be sacrificed
Cortes deserved an Academy Award for best political theater
The Fat Chief
Cortes and his ships
Moctezuma and his Blues Brothers excuses
War and peace in Tlaxcala
This episode is sponsored by www.blueapron.com/onfire For less than $ 10 per meal, Blue Apron delivers straight to your door seasonal recipes along with pre-portioned ingredients to make delicious, home-cooked meals. Get your first three meals free—with free shipping—by going to www.blueapron.com/onfire
Thank you to Geek Nation Tours, a vacation company which creates tours focusing on geek culture including conventions, movie locations and historical battlefields.
This October, they will be time-traveling to Feudal Japan and the battlefields of Sekigahara…. Join them as they watch Kendo, Kyudo, Iaido, and sword making demonstrations at the Seki Cutlery Festival, visit the most famous Japanese medieval castles, hike through spectacular natural landscapes and of course visit the Sekigahara re-enactment festival where you will see samurai walking the streets in full armor and battling in a commemoration of that singular battle of 1600.
http://geeknationtours.com/tours_post/signature-battlefield-series-feudal-japan-and-the-battlefields-of-sekigahara-2017/
Please, also show some love to my regular sponsors by shopping for supplements, special foods, clothing and exercise equipment at http://www.onnit.com/history and receive a 10% discount.
And if you are in the market for backpacks, computer bags and other hemp gear, check out my favorites at http://www.dsgear.com and use the code “daniele” at checkout for a discount.
Please check out www.alphadynamicshealth.com for their line of medicinal mushrooms
Master podcaster Darryl Cooper has created a companion series to go with this particular History on Fire series. Check out his episodes exploring themes of human sacrifice, religion, psychology and much more at http://www.martyrmade.com/
My lady (and author of History on Fire logo, plus producer and editor of History on Fire) has a FB public page about her art & fighting: https://www.facebook.com/NahryEm/. Thank you to Onnit, Datsusara, Float Clinic, Shaman’s Simple Solutions, War Fuel, Proven Nutrition, and Fight Chix for sponsoring her for her first MMA fight. If you’d like to check out Fight Chix merchandise, you can get a 20% discount by going to http://www.fightchix.com/ and entering the code Fire20 upon checkout.
This is my public FB page: https://www.facebook.com/danielebolelli1/
Here is a link to the audiobook of my “Not Afraid”: http://www.danielebolelli.com/downloads/not-afraid-audiobook/
For those of you who may be interested, here is a lecture series I created about Taoist philosophy: http://www.danielebolelli.com/downloads/taoist-lectures/Bob Marley's Redemption Song - the Canadian connection
I was listening to Bob Marley's Redemption Song the other day. I was struck by how different it is from most of his music. It's only him on acoustic guitar and his singing has an old fashioned blues or spirituals quality to it that I find striking. It reminds me of the early music by Blind Willie Johnson.
If you want more information about Bob Marley please see this blog post by John P.
"Redemption Song" originally appeared on Uprising and later on Legend and other collections including, for those who have children, Rockabye baby! Lullaby renditions of Bob Marley.
We also have many options available in sheet music / score for Bob Marley's music:
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
These are the most famous lines / quotation from the song. It is a paraphrase from a speech that Marcus Garvey gave in Menelik Hall in Whitney Pier / Sydney (often stated as Halifax) Nova Scotia October 1937:
“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind, because man is related to man under all circumstances for good or ill."
Google books has much of the original speech available online from the book "The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers" around pages 788-791.
In doing research for this blog post I came across a lot of writing that speaks to how inspirational and important these couple of lines are.
If you are looking to learn more about Marcus Garvey the Library has a wealth of material for adults and kids.
If you're wondering why Black Nationalist / Pan Africanist Marcus Garvey would go to speak in Nova Scotia then you may want to explore the long and rich history of Blacks in Africville and the East coast.
If you are looking for more information on Black History Month then you would be very interested in the North York Central Library blog post How Black History Month Became A Canadian Tradition.
If you're interested in the history of Reggae in Toronto you will really enjoy the following Toronto Public Library blog post Research Guide to Reggae Lane: Toronto's Jamaican Music Scene, 1960s to the Present.A man convicted of causing the deadly 2005 Metrolink crash in Glendale has been sentenced to 11 consecutive life prison terms.Superior Court Judge William Pounders called Juan Manuel Alvarez a remorseless killer and said if it were possible he would impose a sentence of "forever" on him. Alvarez will not be eligible for parole.
A jury recommended Alvarez get life in prison without the possibility of parole. They did have the option of recommending the death penalty. The judge said at the time that he would not contest the jury's recommendation and would abide by its decision.
Alvarez was found guilty of parking his car on the train tracks, resulting in a crash that left 11 people dead and 180 injured. He claimed he had parked his Jeep on the tracks in an attempt to commit suicide, but then had a change of heart and couldn't get his car off the tracks in time. He said he never meant to hurt anyone else.
The prosecution argued it was murder and the jury agreed. On June 26, jurors convicted Alvarez of 11 counts of first-degree murder, along with one count of arson, in connection with his actions on Jan. 26, 2005, which resulted in the deadliest crash Metrolink's history.
Jurors did not believe Alvarez was trying to take his own life, but they also did not believe that he had intended to derail three trains and decided he didn't deserve the death penalty.
Many relatives of the victims spoke through fears as they faced Alvarez in court Wednesday and unleashed their feelings.
"Mr. Alvarez would you please look at me," said one family member. "Because of the stupid thing that you did, you have brought so much sadness to a lot of people."
"I haven't found it in me yet to forgive you Mr. Alvarez," said Deanna Forbes, granddaughter of a Metrolink victim. "I resent you for taking my sweetie away from me and my brother, and my family. I miss her so much. I would do anything to have her back for just one second, just to tell her thank you or at least to say goodbye."
"I am a retired prison guard for the state of California for the Department of Corrections," said Robert Parent, brother of a Metrolink victim. "The only satisfaction for me that I can think at this time is where Mr. Alvarez is going and what he will be up against for the rest of his life. Mr. Alvarez, in prison there are rules that you must live by. The number one rule is respect. Even the inmates do not respect what you have done."
"I hope someday your God will forgive you, right now I can't and my family can't," said Todd McKeown, brother of a Metrolink victim.
The sentencing ended the criminal proceeding but a civil trial is on the way. Many family members of the victims say Metrolink is also to blame for the disaster.
- Get more L.A. breaking news, weather, traffic and sports
- Have a news tip? Send your tips, video, or picturesToday Is The Best Day Of Your Life (so stop procrastinating)
by DARIUS FOROUX
Darius Foroux Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 29, 2016
Tomorrow has the potential to be better than today. But this day is the only day you have. And it’s the best day of your life.
“I’ll start tomorrow.” I’ve said that hundreds of times. I’ve said it when I talked about running, writing, working, eating healthier, saying thank you, or any other habit that I wanted to start/improve.
And did that behavior help me? You know the answer to that.
Procrastinating is a bad habit. Research shows that the best way to get rid of a habit is to replace it with another habit.
“What day is it?”
It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day,” said Pooh.”
― A.A. Milne
The best way to replace procrastination is by adopting a habit of taking action.
So how does that look like in real life? It can be as simple as replacing the word ‘later’ with ‘now’ in your vocabulary.
That’s exactly what I did. I don’t even use the word ‘later’ anymore. I always do it now.
You know why? There’s no ‘later’, and there’s also not a ‘tomorrow’. Not because you will die, that chance is very little. No, tomorrow doesn’t exist because time doesn’t exist.
“..for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” — Albert Einstein
I don’t believe in later because it’s an illusion. As Einstein said, it’s a very convincing one.
We all think that we have seas of time. “There’s always tomorrow.” Nope—I’m sorry to disappoint you.
Today is the only day you have. And if you only have one thing, don’t you want to make it your best thing?
The email that you have to send. The unpleasant conversation that you are dodging for weeks. The family trip that you have to plan. The sheets that you have to change. The gift you have to buy for your partner.
Make it count by doing it now.
What About Chasing Your Dreams?
Don’t confuse this concept of ‘your best day’ with the pressure of ‘living your dream’. Don’t get impatient because your life is not exactly the way you want it.
When it comes to chasing your dreams, I’ve adopted Steve Job’s philosophy:
“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
I don’t make rash decisions or think I should party all night and get wasted, just because this ‘might’ be my last day. Job’s philosophy is about the long term.
And yes, when you wake up every day and think ‘this is not what I want to do,’ it’s time to do something about it. The answer is not procrastination, but action.
That’s what I did almost a year ago when I decided to quit my corporate job — my answer to Steve Job’s question was ‘No’ for years. Not days.
Every day you are lazy, you’re wasting your best day. That doesn’t mean you have to change your whole life in one day. People who believe that are delusional.
Instead, you can build a habit of doing stuff — take action, solve problems, create something.
Just take one micro action every day. Don’t postpone anything you have to do, don’t even think about it too long. Like Bruce Lee said:
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
This reminds me…It’s time to go for a run. Shall I do it lat..? Shit, I almost said it. No, I’ll do it now.After being made fun of by comedian Jimmy Fallon, bitcoin operator BitStamp may have gotten the last laugh. The world's third-largest bitcoin exchange reopened for business Friday.
A bitcoin logo is displayed at the Inside Bitcoins conference and trade show on April 7, 2014 in New York. Bitcoin users exchange cash for digital money using online exchanges, then store it in a computer program that serves as a wallet. The program can transfer payments directly to merchants or individuals around the world, eliminating transaction fees and the need for bank or credit card information. (Photo: Mark Lennihan, AP)
NEW YORK — After being made fun of by comedian Jimmy Fallon, bitcoin operator BitStamp may have gotten the last laugh.
BitStamp, the world's third-largest bitcoin exchange, saved its reputation on Friday by reopening for business within a week of losing upward of $5 million worth of bitcoin to a security breach.
A letter from BitStamp CEO Nejc Kodrič posted on the newly launched site promises that the new service will be "safer and more secure than ever," including new cloud support from Amazon.
Kodrič celebrated the relaunch by tweeting to comedian Jimmy Fallon.
Fallon joked about BitStamp this week, saying, "If you're not safe to keep your money in a Slovenian bitcoin exchange, where can you keep your money?"
Hey @jimmyfallon good news. Turns out you CAN keep your bitcoin in a Slovenian exchange. @Bitstamp is open for business and better than ever — Nejc Kodrič (@nejc_kodric) January 9, 2015
Kodrič also reiterated his earlier promise that any bitcoin held with BitStamp prior to the suspension of services will be "fully honored."
Slovenia-based BitStamp suspended operations on Jan. 5 after discovering some 19,000 bitcoins, worth about $5.4 million, had been lost to a security breach.
BitStamp sought to reassure customers about the breach by saying the lost cybercoins represent "a small fraction of Bitstamp's total bitcoin reserves," and by promising to reopen within 48 hours.
The relaunch took longer than expected, however, causing some consternation among bitcoin enthusiasts.
Kodrič attributed the delay to efforts to rebuild and improve the service.
Bitcoin investors have been skittish since the world's largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, collapsed last year after hackers allegedly stole 850,000 bitcoin, worth close to $450 million. The Japan-based exchange has since been accused of mishandling customers' accounts, leading to investigations in both Japan and the U.S.
In the wake of Mt. Gox, the controversial cybercurrency took a severe price beating. It has been blasted as the worst investment of 2014 after closing 2014 at $319.70 per bitcoin, down a whopping 58% from the start of the year.
On Friday, it traded at $297.96 per bitcoin.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1IzgLW9Sure, everyone's heard of stay-at-home moms. But in the past decade, the Christian Patriarchy Movement has produced another offshoot: stay-at-home daughters.
The faces of this movement — which encourages young women to stay at home, forsake education and devote themselves to their fathers (until they're given to husbands, of course)— are two sisters, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, authors of the Visionary Daughters blog, the book So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God and the resulting documentary, Return of the Daughters. They're far from alone: there are networks of blogs by SAHD's and their married counterparts, extolling the beauty of surrendering independence and the folly of conventional expectations fostered by "radical feminists." And, naturally, there are patriarchs at the fore. An in-depth profile in Bitch (linked by the estimable Christian Nightmares |
got to be honest, I feel like… Read more Read
The day after the election, I tweeted that I was glad that "middle-aged, middle-class white men like me no longer have sole control of the levers of power." A friend in my same demographic shot back grimly that "after all, we are the cause of all that is wrong and soul-less in the world, or so the narrative goes." We've all heard a variation on that point before, as white dudes complain that they're unfairly held accountable for historic and contemporary injustices. Whining about "reverse racism" or about being "blamed" for the exclusionary practices of those who shared (and share) our color, our class, and our sex doesn't change the reality that we're the ones who've enjoyed unearned advantages for eons.
So instead of mourning, it's time for middle-class white dudes to look on the bright side. Not only do we get a more inclusive, fairer nation, we also get these priceless benefits that come along with the loss of our once vaunted power.
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1. We'll probably live longer. The life-span for white men without a college education is actually shrinking, while Hispanic males are the longest-lived American men. For affluent white guys, being in control all the time takes a toll on the heart; for poorer white men, rage at not having what you think is rightfully yours by virtue of your skin color can lead to lethally reckless behavior. The sooner white men let go of the anxiety and resentment that accompany unearned privilege, the healthier and happier we'll likely be.
2. We can finally stop the unhelpful whining about our white guilt. Of course, the fact that white men don't have the power they once did doesn't mean they don't still benefit from unmerited privilege. But perhaps this dramatic loss of influence is a good opportunity to listen to anti-racism advocates like Tim Wise. Guilt over what our ancestors did is useless and self-indulgent, Wise says; instead, we "have to take some responsibility for the unearned advantage, which means working to change the society that bestows that advantage." So quit it with the sulking and the navel-gazing about whether your ancestors' sins apply to you.
3. Women –- and everyone else –- will be more likely to tell us the truth. The more privilege you have (or are perceived to have) the riskier it is for someone who doesn't share that privilege to be honest with you. Anglican feminist theologian Janet Morley suggests that when the privileged use power to dominate, they force the less privileged to use their "weakness to manipulate." Most people dislike being manipulated — and yet a system in which women and non-whites lack equal access to power is one in which honesty often comes with dangerously high risks. We soothe people whom we fear, and we flatter when we've got few other options to get what we need. The more power white men hold in public and private, the less likely that they can fully trust the smiles and the nods and the "yesses" of those who don't share their privilege. Put simply, when we lose our privilege, we'll start to be able to trust what we hear.
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4. We can –- maybe –- trust our successes are due to our merit. One of the most pernicious tropes in the affirmative action debate is that minority and gender-based preferences in admissions or hiring make it impossible for non-whites and women to be sure of their own abilities. For two generations, angry white men have complained that they aren't given any special benefits by the state. This lament, of course, ignores what's obvious to everyone who isn't wearing blinders. (Privilege conceals itself best from those who possess it.) The benefits of whiteness and maleness are so numerous (Peggy McIntosh's famous 50 point list hardly covers them all) that most white men just can't see them. Though middle-aged white men like me may never know just how much of our success is due to unmerited advantage, the eclipsing of our power means that our sons and grandsons have at least a better chance of growing up in a world where their triumphs will be due solely to their merits, not their skin or their sex.
The choice is stark. On the one hand, we can retreat, as conservative columnist John Sullivan warns we might, into "defensive minority consciousness… defending every item of privilege and resenting every loss." That's a recipe not only for electoral defeat but also increasingly bitter alienation from the two-thirds of our fellow Americans who aren't white men.
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On the other hand, we can begin to let go of this self-imposed burden that hasn't made us happy and has frequently served to make everyone else justifiably miserable. It may not be a brave new world, but it's a better and fairer one for being browner and more female. The sooner we acknowledge that, the more content — and fully human — we'll get to be.
Jezebel columnist Hugo Schwyzer teaches history and gender studies at Pasadena City College and is a nationally-known speaker on sex, masculinity, body image and beauty culture. He also blogs at his eponymous site. Follow him on Twitter: @hugoschwyzer.Derailed: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The government has asked the Delhi Jal Board to stall the water ATM project
Ever since it came to power in the Capital, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been hogging the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Days after it faced criticism for its failure to prevent a farmer from committing suicide at a rally, the party now seems all set to lose a major chuck of its loyal vote bank.
The AAP government’s unrelenting tussle with private power distribution companies has put the installation of 100 water ATMs in the Capital in jeopardy. The AAP-led Delhi government has put on hold the installation of water ATMs in unauthorised colonies in the Capital by Tata Power, which supplies electricity to the North, North West and outer Delhi areas.
The Tata-owned TPDDL had taken up the project of installing 100 water ATMs in JJ clusters and unauthorised colonies under corporate social responsibility (CSR) scheme.
Official sources said the government has directed the Delhi Jal Board to put on hold the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the private discom and the water utility.
They said the government is ‘averse’ to the idea of having ties with a company against which it has ordered an audit by the CAG.
The move, however, will derail the project, which Tata Power said, was for a social cause. The water ATMs with reverse osmosis (RO) systems were being installed in areas where the DJB has so far failed to provide water connection. “The government has asked the Delhi Jal Board to stall the project. These water ATMs would have provided the residents in unauthorised colonies with clean drinking water at minimal cost. The work was on. Tata Power was set to install 10 water units by April-end,” an official said.
However, the decision would hit the slum dwellers and residents of unauthorised colonies that formed a major vote bank of AAP in the successive Assembly polls in Delhi, enabling it to clinch a landslide victory in polls.
The Delhi government has put on hold the installation of water ATMs in unauthorised colonies
With the project getting stalled, around 10 lakh people will be affected. More than 40 lakh people are estimated to be living in unauthorised colonies and JJ clusters in Delhi that constitute nearly 30 per cent of Delhi’s total votes.
A TPDDL official said on the condition of anonymity that the projects under CSR had nothing to do with company’s stake in Delhi’s power sector. “The project (water ATM) was for a social cause. The government’s move is unfortunate. We were set to install the system very soon,” said an official. TPDDL had fixed an estimated budget of Rs 5 crore on the installation of 100 water ATMs.
Notably, the project was part of DJB’s plans to extend its ‘Water ATM’ initiative across the city, with installation of 500 water ATMs in a phased manner. A MoU was signed in January this year between the then DJB CEO Vijay Kumar and Tata Power-DDL CEO Praveer Sinha in the presence of Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and senior officials of the Delhi government.
As part of the MoU, 100 ROs with water dispensing units were to be set up — 10 plants to be installed by March 2015, followed by 45 each in 2016 and 2017. While the DJB was responsible for providing raw water, the capital and operation & maintenance (O&M) costs was to be borne by Tata Power.
Yogendra Yadav at a recent Swaraj Samvad meeting
Setback to AAP in Maharashtra
In a massive jolt to the Maharashtra unit of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), five members of the 13- member Thane party committee put in their papers on Monday, declaring their support to Swaraj Samwad Abhiyan launched by rebel leaders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan.
Akshay Bothale, former district secretary of the party, had resigned soon after Yadav was voted out of the AAP national executive on March 28.
The members, who put in their papers on Monday, sent their resignation via email to state and national committee office bearers. Also, the party’s Thane district convener Vikrant Karnik has given up his party responsibilities along with other leaders Hemant Sharma, Subroto Bhattacharya, Sameer Pradhan and Ramesh Verma. Apart from Bothale, others have not relinquished their pri mary membership of the party.
Karnik and others have claimed that they are upset about the way senior party leaders, including Yadav and Bushan, were treated by the AAP brass. “All party office bearers of Thane city unit have condemned and expressed their disappointment over the recent developments in the party over the past few months. They had conveyed the same to AAP’s state office bearers. However, they have not received any response from them,” the resignation letter sent by the leaders stated.
Digital: The Delhi government is planning to create an information superhighway
As many as 70 AAP leaders and volunteers had met on Sunday for Swaraj Samwad. Sources said it was decided that office bearers would resign first and those who would not agree with the new changes in the party might tender their resignation en masse as primary party members.
Capital to get 1,000 Wi-Fi hotspots by 2016
With an aim to make the Capital a digital city and bridge the digital divide, the Delhi government is planning to install 1,000 operational Wi-Fi hotspots by early next year under the first phase of implementation of its project to provide free Wi-Fi across the city.
“The IT department of Delhi government envisions the rollout of 1,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the time of completion of first year of AAP-led Delhi government early next year with further scaling of coverage every year. As a next step, government will ensure mesh coverage across the city,” an official said.
The government is also considering installing Wi-Fi in 5,000 DTC buses and laying a common fiber infrastructure network across the city. The dec sion comes after Delhi Government’s IT department in association with the Delhi Dialogue Commission’s Wi-Fi Task Force conducted a three-day consultation with various system integrators, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), hardware and software providers as well as ISPs and Telecom operators.In August of 2015, against considerable backlash, we stood firm on a fundamental position that Senator Ted Cruz did not have a pathway, a roadmap, to victory in the 2016 GOP presidential primary.
Despite the fundamentally sound reasoning for our prediction, which was entirely based on congressional district by district analytics, our position drew an immense amount of criticism and even a quick response from the Cruz campaign itself (Brian Phillips).
Unfortunately, tonight’s South Carolina results vindicate a massive amount of historical research. There simply is no pathway to victory when you rely almost exclusively on “proselytizing as an electoral strategy“:
(link)
REMINDER
It’s not personal, it is simply a factual reality. The Ted Cruz Road Map is non-existent; and beyond the SEC primary states there is little to no organization at all. Nothing in the state of Florida. The campaign is NOT what most people have been led to believe it is.
We strongly urge people to do their own research and to connect their own dots. The campaign will NOT stop sending you donation requests, that much is certain.
AdvertisementsMASSACRE IN INDIA MASSACRE IN INDIA Photos: Mumbai rocked by attacks Anti-terror effort: Attack forces India onto front lines U.S. deaths: At least 5 Americans identified History: Attacks in India since 2005 CHRONOLOGY CHRONOLOGY A timeline of the attacks by suspected Muslim militants in Mumbai that have killed at least 140 people: • About 9:20 p.m. Wednesday shooting starts at Chhatrapati Shivaji rail station, one of the world's busiest, handling thousands of passengers each day. • Within the hour, other attacks occur at four other locations: the Nariman House, home of the ultra-orthodox Jewish outreach group Chabad Lubavitch; Leopold's restaurant, a landmark popular with foreigners; the Oberoi hotel, a five-star landmark; the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, a landmark of Mumbai luxury since 1903, and a favorite watering hole of the city's elite. • At 10:50 p.m. shooting breaks out near Times of India newspaper offices in southern part of the city, quickly followed by attacks near the Bombay Municipal Corporation, the civic body that governs Mumbai, and the Cama hospital in southern Mumbai and the GT hospital in the city center. • Just after midnight gunman attack the Vidhan Sabha, the legislative assembly, the lower house of state legislature in India. • Around 3 a.m. Thursday, large fire breaks out at the Taj hotel and an hour later authorities begin escorting people out of the Taj hotel. • At 9:15 a.m. Indian security forces are brought in to try to retake the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and the Oberoi hotel. • About 10:30 a.m., members of the National Security Guard start doing room-to-room searches at the Taj hotel and within the hour surround the Nariman House and local media shows people being rescued from the Oberoi hotel. — The Associated Press Indian forces assault besieged Jewish center after 143 die MUMBAI, India (AP) Commandos ended a siege of the luxury Oberoi hotel on Friday while other forces rappelled from helicopters to storm a besieged Jewish center, two days after a chain of militant attacks across India's financial center left at least 143 people dead and the city in panic. While explosions and gunfire continued intermittently at the elegant Taj Mahal hotel Friday afternoon, officials said commandos had killed two gunmen inside the nearby Oberoi hotel and ended the attack there. "The hotel is under our control," J.K. Dutt, director general of India's elite National Security Guard commando unit, told reporters, adding that 24 bodies had been found. Dozens of people — including a man clutching a baby — had been evacuated from Oberoi earlier Friday. PHOTO GALLERY: Mumbai reacts to attacks MUMBAI ATTACKS: Indian police surround Jewish center The airborne assault on the center run by the ultra-orthodox Jewish outreach group Chabad Lubavitch was punctuated by gunshots and explosions — and at one point an intense exchange of fire that lasted several minutes — as forces cleared it floor by floor, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. By Friday afternoon, the commandos had control of the top two floors. One camouflaged commando came out with a bandage on his forehead, while soldiers fired smoke grenades into the building and a steady stream of gunfire reverberated across narrow alleys. Israel's ambassador to India, Mark Sofer, said they believed there were up to nine hostages inside. Their fate was not clear. Sofer denied reports that Israeli commandos were taking part in the operation. More than 143 people were killed and 288 injured when suspected Islamic militants attacked 10 sites in Mumbai starting Wednesday evening. Security officials said their operations were almost over. "It's just a matter of a few hours that we'll be able to wrap up things," Lt. Gen. N. Thamburaj told reporters Friday morning. The group rescued from the Oberoi, many holding passports, included at least two Americans, a Briton, two Japanese nationals and several Indians. Some carried luggage with Canadian flags. One man in a chef's uniform was holding a small baby. About 20 airline crewmembers were freed, including staff from Lufthansa and Air France. "I'm going home, I'm going to see my wife," said Mark Abell, with a huge smile on his face after emerging from the hotel. Abell, from Britain, had locked himself in his room during the siege. "These people here have been fantastic, the Indian authorities, the hotel staff. I think they are a great advertisement for their country," he said as security officials pulled him away. The well-coordinated strikes by small bands of gunmen starting Wednesday night left the city shell-shocked. Late Thursday, after about 400 people had been brought out of the Taj hotel, officials said it had been cleared of gunmen. But Friday morning, army commanders said that while three gunmen had been killed, two to three more were still inside with about 15 civilians. A few hours after that, Thamburaj, the security official, said at least one gunman was still alive inside the hotel and had cut of electricity on the floor where he was hiding. Shortly after that announcement, another round of explosions and gunfire were heard coming from the hotel. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed "external forces" for the violence — a phrase sometimes used to refer to Pakistani militants, whom Indian authorities often blame for attacks. On Friday, India's foreign minister ratcheted up the accusations over the attacks. "According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks," Pranab Mukherjee told reporters in the western city of Jodhpur. "Proof cannot be disclosed at this time," he said, adding that Pakistan had assured New Delhi it would not allow its territory to be used for attacks against India. India has long accused Islamabad of allowing militant Muslim groups, particularly those fighting in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, to train and take shelter in Pakistan. Mukherjee's carefully phrased comments appeared to indicate he was accusing Pakistan-based groups of staging the attack, and not Pakistan itself. Islamabad has long denied those accusations. Earlier Friday, Pakistan's Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, in Islamabad, denied involvement by his country: "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents." The gunmen were well-prepared, apparently scouting some targets ahead of time and carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy. "It's obvious they were trained somewhere... Not everyone can handle the AK series of weapons or throw grenades like that," an unidentified member of India's Marine Commando unit told reporters, his face wrapped in a black mask. He said the men were "very determined and remorseless." A U.S. investigative team was heading to Mumbai, a State Department official said Thursday evening, speaking on condition of anonymity because the U.S. and Indian governments were still working out final details. India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on Muslim militants in recent years, but most were bombings striking crowded places: markets, street corners, parks. Mumbai — one of the most populated cities in the world with some 18 million people — was hit by a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people. These attacks were more sophisticated — and more brazen. They began at about 9:20 p.m. with shooters spraying gunfire across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station, one of the world's busiest terminals. For the next two hours, there was an attack roughly every 15 minutes — the Jewish center, a tourist restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals. There were 10 targets in all. Indian media showed pictures of rubber dinghies found by the city's shoreline, apparently used by the gunmen to reach the area. Both the luxury hotels targeted overlook the Arabian Sea. Analysts around the world were debating whether the gunmen could have been tied to — or inspired by — al-Qaeda. A previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility in e-mails to several media outlets. The Deccan is a region in southern India that was traditionally ruled by Muslim kings. Survivors of the hotel attacks said the gunmen had specifically targeted Britons and Americans, though most of the dead seemed to be Indians and whoever else was caught in the random gunfire. One of the gunmen "stopped once and asked, 'Where are you from? Any British or American? Show your ID," Alex Chamberlain, a British citizen dining at the Oberoi, told reporters. Among the dead were two Australians and a Japanese, said the state home ministry. An Italian, a Briton and a German were also killed, according to their foreign ministries. The United States, Pakistan and other countries condemned the attacks. Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80% of India's 1 billion population, and Muslims, who make up about 14%, have sporadically erupted into bouts of sectarian violence since British-ruled India was split into independent India and Pakistan in 1947. Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read moreAdalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle EastMedia Contact: info [at] adalahny.org Stars’ Photos Removed from Leviev Website as Celebs Seek Distance from Rights AbuserAfter letters from Adalah-NY to Eight Stars, Leviev Removes Celebrity Photos(for release with hyperlinks: http://adalahny.org/index.php/press-releases/268-celebrity-phote-leviev-website-removed New York, NY, December 19, 2008 – Following complaints by at least four major Hollywood stars whose photos were posted on Israel diamond mogul Lev Leviev’s website, Leviev staff removed the entire celebrity photo section from his website http://www.leviev.com this week. The photos’ removal came after Adalah-NY and Jews Against the Occupation-NYC sent letters to and spoke with representatives for Salma Hayek, Halle Berry, Drew Barrymore, Brooke Shields, Andie MacDowell, Lucy Liu, Whitney Houston and Sharon Stone, all of whose names and photos, apparently wearing Leviev jewelry, were featured in a Celebrity section of Leviev’s website.After learning of Leviev’s involvement in rights abuses in Palestine and Southern Africa, representatives of four of the stars told Adalah-NY that they had contacted Leviev to have the stars’ photos removed. Subsequently, on Monday, December 15th, Leviev staff removed the entire Celebrity photo section of the website. Back in October, Oxfam Ambassador Kristin Davis’ photo was removed from Leviev’s website.Ethan Heitner from Adalah-NY explained, “We are gratified that these stars have joined UNICEF, Oxfam and a growing list of others who have distanced themselves from Leviev over his companies’ settlement construction in violation of international law in Palestine, and rights abuses in Angola and Namibia. Some immediately expressed concern when we explained that Leviev was using their photos to whitewash his unethical business practices. Their actions show that Leviev’s wealth and diamonds can’t buy impunity.”From December 1st – 15th, Adalah-NY sent letters to and spoke with representatives of eight of the sixteen stars whose photos were featured on http://www.leviev.com - Salma Hayek, Halle Berry, Drew Barrymore, Brooke Shields, Andie MacDowell, Lucy Liu, Whitney Houston and Sharon Stone (December 8th screengrabs of their photos on the Leviev website are available on request by emailing info [at] adalahny.org ). Adalah-NY had not yet been able to contact the other celebrities on the site – HRH Princess Michael of Kent, Ginnifer Goodwin, Katharine McPhee, Teri Hatcher, Lauren Graham, Estelle Lefebure, Zara and Dita Von Teese – before all the photos were removed.In addition to UNICEF and Oxfam’s renunciation of Leviev over rights abuses, Leviev was also dropped from the sponsor list of the star-studded Carousel of Hope Ball last October. On top of his companies’ construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank in violation of international law, Leviev’s companies have been accused of human rights abuses in the diamond trade in Angola and Namibia. In December, the Israeli financial journal Globes published an expose of Leviev’s serious rights abuses and failure to fully comply with the Kimberley process in Angola (English translation).Signaling growing outrage at Leviev’s businesses’ global rights abuses, on December 12th and 13th human rights advocates in Dubai, London and two West Bank Palestinian villages held protests against his settlement construction. According to Gulf News, the December 12th Dubai protest, unprecedented in the UAE, focused on Leviev’s sale of his diamonds through Arif Bin Khadra’s Levant jewelry stores in Dubai, despite a commitment by a Dubai official to ban the sale of Leviev’s jewelry. In London, on December 13th, rights activists protested outside Leviev’s Bond Street store. The British government is under pressure not to rent space for its new Tel Aviv embassy from Leviev. On December 12th in the West Bank, the villages of Bil’in and Jayyous protested the construction by Leviev’s companies of settlements and the construction of Israel’s wall on those villages’ land. Both Bil’in and Jayyous have been devastated by Israel’s seizure of at least half the villages’ agricultural land for settlement construction, despite hundreds of nonviolent protests.Adalah-NY will hold yet another protest on Saturday, December 20th at 1:00 PM at Leviev’s Madison Avenue store, with participants singing parody holiday carols highlighting Leviev’s rights abuses.This week we are joined by co-host of Hockey Prospect Radio on Sirius XM NHL Network, Shane Malloy, to preview the 2016 World Juniors and talk about Canucks prospects.
Along with hosting Hockey Prospect Radio, Shane is the author of The Art of Scouting, which is a fantastic resource for learning what to look for when scouting players. Shane also works with EA Sports to provide scouting reports and analytics for the NHL series. Shane has worked with Hockey Canada, USHL, Fox Sports, TSN, Rogers, and the Abbotsford Heat.
We get Shane’s thoughts on the upcoming World Juniors in Helsinki, and break down each team to figure out their strengths and weaknesses. We talk about Canucks prospects playing in the tournament: Brock Boeser, Jake Virtanen, and Lukas Jasek. Then we turn our attention to some of the Canucks prospects making waves in Utica.
Lastly, Shane shares some behind-the-scenes scouting stories about Canucks GM Jim Benning at the U18 tournament last May.
This is a great episode to get ready for the World Juniors, that starts on Saturday.
Enjoy!Real Madrid midfielder Sami Khedira has accused the club of freezing him out and dropping him even though he was fit to play.
Germany international Khedira will leave Real for free at the end of the season after talks on a contract extension broke down, with Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Juventus all reportedly keen to sign him.
The 28-year-old has barely featured since the turn of the year, with Real citing a series of minor injuries as the reason for his absence, but Khedira told Spanish newspaper Marca the club had decided he was no longer wanted.
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"I did have a small injury, a pain in my right heel, but that wasn’t why I wasn’t playing," he said.
"It wasn’t a complicated injury, I was able to play.
"I’ve always felt that I’ve had the coach’s backing, but the message indirectly came through to me that I was no longer needed, I was frozen out and wouldn’t have a chance to continue playing.
"It’s not the end that I wanted. It hurts that I’m accused of a lack of professionalism because I’ve always put the team ahead of myself. I’ve always gone with the truth."
Khedira is not in the squad for Real’s final match of the season in La Liga, when they host Getafe later on Saturday.
"Nobody from the club said anything to me directly," he added.
"It’s all feelings, incidents and comments saying I wouldn’t play anymore. But nobody approached me.
"What has happened this season has hurt me to the bottom of my soul."
Real will end the campaign without a major trophy after failing to defend their Champions League crown and finishing second to Barcelona, after the Catalan club wrapped up the league title with a game to spare.Florida State University (Florida State or FSU) is a public space-grant and sea-grant research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the state of Florida.[2][4]
The university is classified as a Research University with Very High Research by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.[11] The university comprises 16 separate colleges and more than 110 centers, facilities, labs and institutes that offer more than 360 programs of study, including professional school programs.[12] The university has an annual budget of over $1.7 billion and an annual economic impact of over $10 billion.[13][14] Florida State is home to Florida's only National Laboratory, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, and is the birthplace of the commercially viable anti-cancer drug Taxol. Florida State University also operates The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida and one of the largest museum/university complexes in the nation.[15] The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).
For 2019, U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida State as the 26th best public university in the United States in the national university category.[16] Florida State University is one of Florida's three state-designated "preeminent universities."
FSU's intercollegiate sports teams, commonly known by their "Florida State Seminoles" nickname, compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). In their 113-year history, Florida State's varsity sports teams have won 20 national athletic championships and Seminole athletes have won 78 individual NCAA national championships.[17]
History
Main entrance to Dodd Hall, built in 1925. Dodd Hall was the location of Florida State's library until 1956. Rendered in gold leaf, is the phrase “The half of knowledge is to know where to find knowledge.”
In 1819 the Florida Territory was ceded to the United States by Spain as an element of the Adams–Onís Treaty.[18] The Territory was conventionally split by the Appalachicola or later the Suwannee rivers into East and West areas. Florida State University is traceable to a plan set by the 1823 U.S. Congress to create a system of higher education.[19] The 1838 Florida Constitution codified the basic system by providing for land allocated for the schools.[20] In 1845 Florida became the 27th State of the United States, which permitted the resources and intent of the 1823 Congress regarding education in Florida to be implemented.
The Legislature of the State of Florida, in a Legislative Act of January 24, 1851, provided for the establishment of the two institutions of learning on opposite sides of the Suwannee River. The Legislature declared the purpose of these institutions to be "the instruction of persons, both male and female, in the art of teaching all the various branches that pertain to a good common school education; and next to give instruction in the mechanic arts, in husbandry, in agricultural chemistry, in the fundamental laws, and in what regards the rights and duties of citizens." [21] By 1854 the City of Tallahassee had established a school for boys called the Florida Institute, with the hope that the State could be induced to take it over as one of the seminaries. In 1856, Tallahassee Mayor Francis W. Eppes again offered the Institute's land and building to the Legislature. The bill to locate the Seminary in Tallahassee passed both houses and was signed by the Governor on January 1, 1857. On February 7, 1857, the first meeting of the Board of Education of the State Seminary West of the Suwannee River was held, and the institution began offering post-secondary instruction to male students. Francis Eppes served as President of the Seminary's Board of Education for eight years.[21] In 1858 the seminary absorbed the Tallahassee Female Academy, established in 1843, and became coeducational.[22]
The West Florida Seminary was located on the former Florida Institute property, a hill where the historic Westcott Building now stands. The location is the oldest continuously used site of higher education in Florida. The area, slightly west of the state Capitol, was formerly and ominously known as Gallows Hill, a place for public executions in early Tallahassee.[23]
Civil War and Reconstruction
In 1860–61 the legislature started formal military training at the school with a law amending the original 1851 statute.[24] During the Civil War, the seminary became The Florida Military and Collegiate Institute. Enrollment at the school increased to around 250 students with the school establishing itself as perhaps the largest and most respected educational institution in the state.[24] Cadets from the school defeated Union forces at the Battle of Natural Bridge in 1865, leaving Tallahassee as the only Confederate capital east of the Mississippi River not to fall to Union forces.[25][26] The students were trained by Valentine Mason Johnson, a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, who was a professor of mathematics and the chief administrator of the college.[27] After the fall of the Confederacy, campus buildings were occupied by Union military forces for approximately four months and the West Florida Seminary reverted to its former academic purpose.[28] In recognition of the cadets, and their pivotal role in the battle, the Florida State University Army ROTC cadet corps displays a battle streamer bearing the words "NATURAL BRIDGE 1865" with its flag. The FSU Army ROTC is one of only four collegiate military units in the United States with permission to display such a pennant.[29]
First state university
Chemistry lab in 1900, at what was then known as the West Florida Seminary
In 1883 the institution, now long officially known as the West Florida Seminary, was organized by the Board of Education as The Literary College of the University of Florida. The legislative act passed in 1885, bestowing upon the institution the title of the University of Florida, has never been repealed.[21] Under the new university charter, the seminary became the institution's Literary College, and was to contain several "schools" or departments in different disciplines.[30] However, in the new university association the seminary's "separate Charter and special organization" were maintained.[31] Florida University also incorporated the Tallahassee College of Medicine and Surgery, and recognized three more colleges to be established at a later date.[30] The Florida Legislature recognized the university under the title "University of Florida" in Spring 1885, but committed no additional financing or support.[21][32] Without legislative support, the university project struggled. The institution never assumed the "university" title,[32] and the association dissolved when the medical college relocated to Jacksonville later that year.[30]
However, the West Florida Seminary, as it was still generally called, continued to expand and thrive. It shifted its focus towards modern-style post-secondary education, awarding "Licentiates of Instruction", its first diplomas, in 1884,[21] and became Florida's first liberal arts college in 1897.[21] and by 1891 the Institute had begun to focus on modern post-secondary education; seven Bachelor of Arts degrees were awarded that year.[21]
In 1901 it became Florida State College, a four-year institution organized in four departments: the College, the School for Teachers, the School of Music, and the College Academy. Florida State College was empowered to award the degree of Master of Arts, and the first master's degree was offered in 1902. That year the student body numbered 252 men and women, and degrees were available in classical, literary and scientific studies. In 1903 the first university library was begun.[21]
Buckman Act
Florida State College for Women, c. 1930
The 1905 Florida Legislature passed the Buckman Act, which reorganized the Florida college system into a school for white males (University of the State of Florida), a school for white females (Florida Female College later changed to Florida State College for Women), and a school for African Americans (State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students).[33] The Buckman Act was controversial, as it changed the character of a historic coeducational state school into a school for women. An early and major benefactor of the school, James Westcott III (1839–1887), willed substantial monies to the school to support continued operations. In 1911 his estate sued the state educational board contending the estate was not intended to support a single-sex school. The Florida Supreme Court decided the issue in favor of the State of Florida stating the change in character (existing from 1905 to 1947) was within the intent of the Westcott will.[34] By 1933 the Florida State College for Women had grown to be the third largest women's college in the United States and was the first state women's college in the South to be awarded a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, as well as the first university in Florida so honored.[35][36] Florida State was the largest of the original two state universities in Florida until 1919.[37]
"Florida State University"
Returning soldiers using the G.I. |
5 by the Linux Foundation, which legally and financially supports the open-source operating system, on the premise that infrastructure designed to redefine how organizations interact would be best developed in public. “It needs to be a shared asset rather than a technology controlled by a single vendor,” says Chris Ferris, chief technology officer for open technologies at IBM, which was a founding member of the project.
One reason Behlendorf joined Hyperledger, he says, is that the current moment reminds him of 1995, when Apache was in the works and he had just helped launch the world’s first ad-supported website for Wired.
If you know where to look, the pieces are there to build something momentous, he says. “There’s this sense that there are major new business models and companies that could emerge from this,” says Behlendorf.
Building on his experience shepherding open-source communities, Behlendorf is trying to make Hyperledger into a home for many different blockchain technologies. The project will vet and select the best ideas and offer administrative support, but work on them will rely entirely on companies and individuals pitching in ideas and code.
The most mature plans for using blockchains aim to cut costs for financial institutions in tasks such as settling transactions involving bonds or other financial instruments. “All the back office stuff can be simpler and more reliable, and they can save a tremendous amount of money,” explains David Yermack, professor of finance at New York University. “Today there are a lot of people working in banks just checking the work of other people.”
Behlendorf is happy to be helping those efforts, but becomes more animated when talking about less conventional uses for financial blockchains. One example is a project—unconnected to Hyperledger—at Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp using a blockchain to help residents establish a financial identity through their dealings with aid agencies. Behlendorf says this shows how the technology could widen access to banking.
Hyperledger itself formed a working group last month that will propose projects in health care. Making it easier for patients to move their medical records between providers is one area of interest. The government has spent billions to advance the idea of portable electronic health records. But progress has been slow because organizations see keeping patient data siloed as a competitive advantage. Attempts by Google and Microsoft to build repositories for health data have fallen flat.
Companies, researchers, and even the U.S. government are now considering how blockchains could break the deadlock. Behlendorf argues that the technology could create infrastructure that gives patients primary control over their data. “This is an industry that is in need of additional ideas on how to share,” he says.
Over the next year, experimentation from Hyperledger and others will start to provide more concrete evidence of whether the technology can deliver disruptive ideas like that, says Chris Curran, chief technologist at PwC, which is working with companies in finance and other sectors interested in blockchains. “We’re coming to a moment when we’ll find out if this really can reinvent industries,” he says.FRDI bill could make money deposited in banks less safe
India
oi-Vikas
By Vikas
The provisions in the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017, (FRDI) will allow banks to have more control over the money deposited by you. It allows banks to use depositors' money to stay afloat if its financial condition begins to go downhill.
It means that if a bank is facing financial problems, then it can use depositors' money to reduce its liabilities. An India Today report said that banks may even lock your money for a long time or be asking you to take a hit on your deposits.
Certain other provisions in the bill concerning the insurance of the money deposited in a bank may leave you worried. According to the 1961 Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation Act, up to Rs 1 lakh of your money deposited in a bank is insured if a bank were to fail.
What has usually been happening so far is that when a bank is about to shut down or incurring huge losses, the RBI steps in and merges or allows it to be taken over by healthier banks including their liabilities. What happened with the Global Trust Bank (GTB) in 2004 is an example of how RBI stepped in to protects the depositors. When the GTB was in financial distress, the RBI decided to amalgamate it with the Oriental Bank of Commerce. It is a different thing that depositors' accounts remained frozen for three months.
The FRDI bill has proposed changes in this. It has proposed setting up of a Resolution Corporation which can use your money in case the bank sinks. Instead of government money being used to bailout banks in distress, the new bill provides for bank's own deposits to be used to rescue the bank or reduce its liabilities.
The rescued body will have powers to cancel even the Rs 1 lakh insurance deposited in the bank. In this case, a bank can even declare that they don't owe you any money at all.
The bank, if needed, can change the lock-in period (like that of FD) without consulting you. The bank may turn your savings into a fixed deposit without asking you, said a report.
All in all, the bill will greatly weaken depositors' rights and the money deposited will be in great jeopardy if the bank sinks.
OneIndia NewsArvind Kejriwal, the corruption-crusader turned politician and leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), is probably fighting the toughest electoral battle of his life.
The AAP leader, who is contesting from northern Indian city of Varanasi, is pitted against Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi.
Kejriwal came to national prominence when he defeated Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit in assembly elections last December. His nearly two-year-old AAP party came to power, but Kejriwal quit after 49 days.
The 45-year-old leader's contest against Modi is being seen as a David versus Goliath fight, as the holy city is considered a bastion of the BJP.
In a freewheeling interview with Al Jazeera, Kejriwal insists that Modi's election to power will not only harm India's secular fabric at home but also its image overseas. Excerpts:
Al Jazeera: When you first came to Varanasi, the crowd turned hostile, but you continued campaigning. Is there a change in people's attitude now?
Arvind Kejriwal: I am seeing great enthusiasm amongst the people of Varanasi every time I am out on the roads to meet them. The eagerness of the people to shake hands with me has increased. Many climb rooftops to watch me address the gatherings and they even record my speeches.
AJ: What are your speeches mostly on?
AK: I tell them that Modi never comes to meet a common man. I tell them that they can never shake hands with him (Modi). Same goes with Murli Manohar Joshi (winner in 2009). Both the BJP leaders never see the locals of Varanasi. To tackle local issues, one needs to spend time in the city that one is contesting from.
So, when a leader does not meet his voters before elections, what is the guarantee the leader will see them after winning the elections.
Feature: Varanasi all set for India's key poll battle
AJ: You outdid Modi in the Time magazine survey, to emerge as the top most influential person in the world? How is the feeling like?
AK: It feels good but I care more about the love of people that I am getting on the roads than focusing on surveys. These days, my focus is more on the Varanasi and its issues.
AJ: Some Indian intellectuals are warning against the rise of Modi. The negative voting in the Time magazine survey also shows fear of people overseas? How do you read it?
AK: Narendra Modi is not only a threat to the secular fabric of India but also to the country's international image. His rhetoric on Pakistan, Bangladesh and China are just few examples.
Feature: Indian parties indulge in Bangladesh bashing
AJ: Why are you contesting against Modi? You could have chosen any other constituency with less competition?
AK: I am contesting because Modi has sold Gujarat to the industrialists. About 14,500 acres (56.65 sq km) of land have been sold to Adani group at the rate of one rupee per metre by snatching it from farmers. I have the documents to prove.
And about 5,872 farmers committed suicide in Gujarat state (in the last 10 years). India's first Walmart showroom, which caused shutting down of smaller shops has been opened at Anand district of Gujarat. I have also the documents that show how gas price is being manipulated by corporates. AAP lodged an FIR, till date no one has dared to do so against a big corporate.
From April 1, the gas price was about to increase, and I wrote to Manmohan Singh (Prime Minister of India) to stop it. We insisted that it will hurt common man the most, but the prime minister did not reply.
Both Modi and (the ruling Congress party leader) Rahul Gandhi are agents of the corporates. So while Kumar Vishwas is contesting against Rahul, I am contesting against Modi. And both of them are going to lose.Mumbai: India’s submission for the Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars is not The Lunchbox, as was widely predicted, but the Gujarati movie The Good Road.
The Film Federation of India’s secretary general, Supran Sen, said the decision by the 16 jury members to select The Good Road over other films, including The Lunchbox, Ship of Theseus, Celluloid, Shabdo, Viswaroopam, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Lucia and English Vinglish, was a unanimous one.
According to a press release issued by the federation, whose selection committee is headed by Bengali director Goutam Ghose, “The jury saw a wide range of films that had entered from many Indian languages before deliberating long and hard to reach a decision by consensus." The names of the jury members are not shared with the media.
“For the committee members, The Good Road was a new experience," Ghose said. “It explores strange and unknown territory, and it has different characters. There were other very strong contenders such as The Lunchbox, which I personally loved."
Gyan Correa, whose debut feature also won the Best National Award (Gujarati) this year, reacted with elated stupefaction. “The news is staggering, fantastic, it has blown my socks away," said Correa, who has previously directed advertising commercials and worked on television series. “When I started writing the story, I never thought anything like this would happen. We made the film with commitment and integrity."
A still from the movie The Good Road
Produced by the National Film Development Corporation, The Good Road is about two children who lose their way in the Great Rann of Kutch. “I am absolutely delighted and we are very proud," said Nina Lath Gupta, the NFDC’s managing director. “It is our mandate to promote films in various Indian languages." The NFDC had three films in the running—apart from The Good Road, NFDC co-produced The Lunchbox and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.
The journey towards a Foreign Language Film trophy has only just begun for Correa and the NFDC. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars every year, will whittle down the submissions from various countries to nine films, whose names will be announced in January. Select committee members will watch these films over the course of a weekend to further trim down the list to five. The Oscars will be held on 2 March 2014.
India has never won a Foreign Language Film Oscar. Only three Indian films (all in Hindi) have been nominated—Mehboob Khan’s Mother India in 1957, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! in 1989, and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan in 2002. Anxiety over India’s inability to secure even a nomination has been increasing in recent years, and the problem seems to have been finally been identified: it is not about sending a movie that best represents the country’s filmmaking traditions, but about sending a movie that actually has a chance of impressing the all-American members of the Academy.
For the producers and promoters of The Lunchbox, which opened to rave reviews on 20 September, The Lunchbox represented India’s best possible bet. Ritesh Batra’s debut feature, about a romance that develops over a mis-delivered lunchbox, has several Oscar-friendly elements: it has a local yet universal story, it’s dexterously directed and assembled, and stars at least one actor who is known to American filmmakers—Irrfan Khan, who has previously headlined the British production The Warrior and appeared in small parts in Mighty Heart, Slumdog Millionaire and The Amazing Spider-man. More importantly, The Lunchbox will be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in the US in late December or early January. The independent cinema division of Sony Pictures Entertainment would have likely put its muscle behind the movie when the time comes to select the final five.
“We were on the same path as other films that had clinched the award before," pointed out Batra. “The film won good reviews at festivals like Telluride. The Hollwood Reporter (the American trade publication) picked the film as one of the contenders. I don’t want to play spoilsport, and I wish Gyan luck, but we have squandered a great opportunity here. When the Argentinean film The Secret in Their Eyes won the award in 2009, it shone the spotlight on Argentinean cinema like never before. We had a chance to do the same thing with The Lunchbox, to shine the spotlight on new Indian cinema." The producers behind The Lunchbox do have the option of sending their film independent of the Indian government.
The Good Road doesn’t yet have an American distributor. It was released only in Gujarat on 19 July. The movie does have one Oscar connection—its sound designer, Resul Pookutty, won a statuette for Slumdog Millionaire in 2009.
The process of selecting the Indian entry for the Oscars is rarely free of criticism and controversy. The biggest complaint among other language filmmakers is that the Hindi film industry dominates the show. The jury of the 2011 edition of the National Film Awards had recommended that movies that win the Best Film trophy should be sent from India to compete in the Foreign Language Film category.
Contentious choices in previous years include mainstream films such as Anurag Basu’s Barfi!, Amol Palekar’s Paheli, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas and Shankar’s Jeans. Barfi! especially kicked up a fuss because it contained sequences plagiarized from Hollywood classics. Movies such as Paheli, Jeans and Devdas had too many mainstream Hindi cinema elements (song-and-dance sequences, for one thing) to make sense to American selectors. India has also sent art-house films such as Salim Ahamed’s Abu, Son of Adam (in 2011), Anusha Rizvi’s Peepli Live (in 2010) and Kalpana Lajmi’s Rudaali (1993), but none of these films made it to the final list.Redskins owner Dan Snyder, right, needs team president Bruce Allen to finesse negotiations for a new stadium deal. (Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
Sports Columnist
Bruce Allen isn’t going anywhere.
Washington might undergo another massive offseason rebuild. Normally, that would put the Redskins’ team president in danger of losing his job. So would failing to sign quarterback Kirk Cousins to a long-term deal and firing general manager Scot McCloughan in an apparent power struggle.
It doesn’t matter that the Redskins are 5-8 this season and 50-74-1 since 2010, Allen’s first full season presiding over the front office. He should have been let go long ago for poor performance that he once tried to counter with the embarrassing assertion that the team was “winning off the field.”
[‘We’re not going to hit the rewind button’: Jay Gruden and the Redskins look ahead]
But owner Dan Snyder desperately needs Allen to negotiate a stadium deal in coming years. Allen might save Snyder hundreds of millions of dollars on a new venue that will cost at least $2 billion to build and is expected to open by 2027.
That alone makes Allen invaluable to Snyder.
Allen is a gregarious deal-maker who’s comfortable with Virginia legislators. His brother George was governor from 1994-98, and Bruce can work a room like a true politician with jokes and handshakes. Snyder is the opposite, an introvert who prefers balance sheets to bargaining.
Without Allen, Snyder would have to hire pushy lawyers and lobbyists who would try to intimidate lawmakers in either Virginia, Maryland or the District to overpay for housing a new stadium. Former Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke struggled to do that, and the “Billionaire Bully” was one of the last local power barons not working in politics.
Snyder can’t bully legislators into nine-figure concessions. He needs an insider like Allen who can work out a deal. It would be nice if Allen would concede football duties to focus solely on the stadium. But Allen likes being involved.
[Sternberg: This is the scariest number for the Redskins]
There is some benefit to Allen serving as a buffer between Snyder and the football operation. Allen’s predecessor Vinny Cerrato simply carried out Snyder’s wishes, and the club crumpled. It took a full fan revolt and half-empty stadiums for Snyder to fire Cerrato.
Under Allen, the Redskins’ days of free-spending and compulsive decision-making have largely ended. Allen’s conservative approach insulates Snyder from expensive mistakes. But Allen’s cautious nature led to his biggest mistake, lowballing Cousins and getting cornered into two years of franchise tag deals that add up to $44 million. Another tag for Cousins would cost $34 million next year, and a long-term agreement looks increasingly unlikely.
After being fired in February, McCloughan is seeking fulfillment of his contract in a Dec. 18 arbitration hearing that could reveal embarrassing details about Snyder and Allen from Redskins Park.
Still, Snyder needs Allen for the stadium deal, and both sides know it. Maybe Snyder will publicly downsize Allen’s role, but that’s doubtful.
For now, Allen remains in control.
Read more columns from Rick Snider:
Jay Gruden’s fate in Washington may be tied to Kirk Cousins’ future
These Redskins are still trying to prove their worth for next year
The Redskins’ run game has been shoddy. It’s time to give up on it.
The Redskins’ defense has historically employed mercenaries. This year it has leaders.
While Redskins fill up the training room, their season is heading to the morguePhoto: SI.com
Lars Eller of the Washington Capitals and Kris Letang of the Pittsburgh Penguins had quite an interesting offseason workout at Adrenaline Performance Center in Montreal. If you’re also an NFL fan, you may remember Terrell Owens, the standout at wide receiver known for his funny touchdown celebrations. Owens, or as many fans call him by his initials T.O., is now 43, but the former NFL player is still athletic with great speed. If you don’t believe me check out these videos below.
The big story here however isn’t T.O. still having it in him at age 43. It’s about how two current NHLers fared against him in footwork drills.
First up, Eller.
Pretty good, Lars. Now let’s see how Letang looked.
Wow, Letang got burned! Eller takes the win.
By Michael Marzzacco
Follow @marswaggoIt was not unusual for Sean Suiter to be roaming through one of the city's most violent neighborhoods as night fell.
The 18-year police veteran spent his early days as an officer patrolling West Baltimore, returning often as a homicide detective seeking closure for those mourning loved ones lost on its streets.
Looking for answers is what Suiter was doing Wednesday while investigating the triple shooting of three young men left to die last December in a boarded-up house.
Suiter was working the case with his partner from the homicide unit and wanted to speak to a suspicious-looking man in a vacant lot between rowhomes. But shortly after Suiter approached, the man pulled a gun and fired.
With a single gunshot to Suiter's head, the gunman transformed a detective charged with solving Baltimore's murders into the city's 309th homicide of the year.
The slaying of the father of five became yet another tragic symbol of violence in this crime-battered city, where the killings continue to soar and the mayor says crime is "out of control."
Baltimore Police Detective Sean Suiter was fatally shot while investigating a triple homicide. (N/A/Baltimore Police)
"I pray for Baltimore," said Dana Bell, the mother of one of the victims in the triple homicide Suiter was investigating. "If people don't respect the law and life, they aren't going to respect anything."
As of Thursday night, law enforcement officials said they were actively searching for the gunman, whom Police Commissioner Kevin Davis called a "heartless, ruthless, soulless killer."
"We remain dedicated and committed to finding the person who ended such a beautiful life of such a wonderful detective, husband, father and friend," Davis said. "We will find the person responsible for this ridiculous, absurd, unnecessary loss of life."
[Baltimore Police detective gravely wounded by gunman]
Suiter, 43, was a U.S. Navy veteran who had grown up in Washington, D.C., and lived with his wife and family in Pennsylvania. Suiter's relatives could not immediately be reached.
Police cadets arrived to canvass the neighborhood near the scene of the fatal shooting of a Baltimore homicide detective. (Peter Hermann/TWP)
Suiter was transported Wednesday to the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center shortly after the shooting at about 5 p.m., where he remained on life support until he was pronounced dead at noon Thursday.
Police had only a vague description of the suspect, saying he is a black man who wore a black jacket with a white stripe and may be injured. The reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case was increased Thursday to $169,000 after Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) had the state boost the amount by $100,000.
Though Davis said, "it shouldn't take 69 cents" for someone to "do the right thing."
After the shooting, tactical units and helicopters fanned out in the area, with the neighborhood still taped off well into Thursday as police cadets went canvassing door-to-door.
It is the second time this month that a police officer has been shot in Baltimore. On Nov. 4, an off-duty D.C. police sergeant was fatally shot while sitting with a woman in a car in Northwest Baltimore. The case also remains under investigation with no publicly named suspect.
Crime has long been entwined with Baltimore's identity, but the violence took on a renewed urgency when homicide rates reached historic record levels after Freddie Gray died in police custody in April 2015. Residents rioted and protested in the wake of Gray's death, and already fragile relations between police and the community further deteriorated.
Before Wednesday, Baltimore had logged 308 homicides for the year, up 14 percent from 271 this same time in 2016.
In April, the 22-year-old son of a Baltimore police officer who was fatally shot during a 2007 attempted robbery also died by gunfire.
Months later, the brother of Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith was killed in his own apartment.
And weeks after that, a 97-year-old vet was bludgeoned to death in his pajamas during a break-in.
A prominent Baltimore defense attorney, a state delegate and a city councilman also count themselves among the grieving families who've had a relative killed this year.
"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of crime in the city of Baltimore," City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young said.
[In a city reeling from 200 killings, a Baltimore police fortress gets a makeover]
Suiter was shot in one of the most dangerous pockets of Baltimore, which has one of the county's highest per capita murder rates.
Johnny Felder, 41, who lives on Fremont Avenue, said he was at work when his wife called him about the Wednesday shooting two blocks from their home. Mayor Catherine Pugh is right in saying that crime is "out of control," Felder said.
"We hear gunshots all the time down that way," he said, pointing south to Fremont Avenue and Bennett Place, where the detective was shot.
Felder added: "I blame all sides. I blame the youth. I blame the parents. I blame the schools." Felder did not mention the police on his list, and he said that was intentional. "I feel for them. I can't imagine being in their shoes."
Those who knew Suiter described the detective as a dedicated officer, who was respected by both residents and colleagues.
Bell, the mother of one of the triple homicide victims, said she talked to Suiter every week and that he had recently told her he had developed promising leads.
Suiter had told her, she said, that the gunman was targeting someone else and that her son, Antonio Davis, was caught "in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"He was my rock," Bell said of Suiter through sobs, shortly after learning he had died. "He always took my calls. I had no one to help me through this and he was it. He held my hand all the way. He promised me he would find my son's killer. I don't know what I'll do without him."
Bui and Hedgpeth reported from Washington. Clarence Williams and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.An early winter has descended on the northeast, ushered in by a 100 year storm that has left the coastal portions of much of the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states reeling. Our quadrennial demonstration of the degree to which the entire country is divided and politically irreconcilable was once again upon us last night.
Moving into last night's contest, the only things we could be sure of was that climatic change would leave us exposed to more frequent storms in the future (although half the country seems intent on disagreeing with that statement), and that our federal government would remain deeply divided and dysfunctional.
Seems pretty clear, right? But allow me to advance an alternative narrative.
President Obama's victory last night provides the country with an opportunity that was, unfortunately, squandered during the president's first term. The White House, chastened by a narrow victory and benefiting from the freedom to operate that historically characterizes second term Democratic administrations, is likely to move into next week and next year with a far more combative message than the milquetoast and entirely elusive "bi-partisanship" of the president's first term.
Moreover, the Republicans in the House of Representatives, and to a lesser extent in the Senate, will today come face to face with the reality that their message could not defeat a Democratic president suffering from a nearly 8% unemployment rate, and a massive 14.5% underemployment rate, to say nothing of a generally anemic economy and a lackluster set of policy responses to same.
They blamed the president for four years for an economic and financial crisis that misguided Republican supply-side and deregulatory policy wrought upon this nation on-and-off for nearly three decades. The Republicans pounded the president - attempted to obstruct and generally succeeded in blocking even the most moderate of Obama's initiatives.
But they couldn't pull it off, they failed. The tens of millions upon tens of millions, from the.01%, injected into the Republican juggernaut—ineffective. And now they face a president empowered to pin them with outright blame for continuing to thwart progress.
So here is what I believe will result from the new status quo. A newly re-elected president will finally be outraged enough to call out those on the Hill who have essentially shut down the federal government. He will, this go-round, take his case directly to the American people and leave the obstructionists with a clear and unambiguous choice: put partisanship aside and get with the program, or be prepared to see the full dismantling of the post-Reagan Republican misadventure in the 2014 congressional mid-term election.
That the country didn't buy the Republican argument is now established fact. That they are exposed to the power accruing to a president who no longer needs to be concerned with his re-election is equally obvious. And that Republicans in congress must now choose between holding their seats and going down in a blaze of ideological glory will be pretty much the only two options available…if a re-elected Barack Obama has any sense of the political advantage that he was graced with yesterday.
I'm betting that the somnambulant Obama of the first debate is wide awake today. And I'll wager that a large number of Republicans will choose their hides over their failed message.After getting blown out in back-to-back games while giving up 50-plus points in each, there isn't much Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman could do other than state the obvious.
"It's like I told our football team at halftime and after the game: 'We're not a very good football team right now,'" Trestman said after Chicago's 55-14 loss to Green Bay. "We've descended over the last three weeks and didn't make any changes or any positive movement after the bye, and that starts with me."
As Around The NFL's Chris Wesseling pointed out last night, the Bears have entered halftime down 14-0, 38-7 and 42-0 the past three contests.
"I think we're all searching for answers right now," Bears quarterback Jay Cutler said. "For sure, I thought we had a great bye week. We had a heck of a three practices, and I told Marc that on Saturday. And I thought we'd bring that into this (game), and to play like that is pretty much embarrassing."
Cutler threw two picks Sunday -- including one that bounced off his own offensive lineman's helmet -- completed 59.5 percent of his passes, fumbled and ended with a season-low 68.8 passer rating.
While Cutler will end up getting most of the blame from fans, the entire operation is a dumpster fire. The defense couldn't stop a child from crossing the street, the offense can't get its playmakers the ball and the lack of overall talent (specifically on defense) is damning to the front office.
Defensive coordinator Mel Tucker's job already seems lost. The question is, will the seat warming under Trestman get hot enough in the coming weeks to burn the rest of the staff?
The latest Around The NFL Podcast recaps every Week 10 game from an action-packed Sunday. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.Don’t Re-invent Finite State Machines: How to Repurpose Unity’s Animator
Darren Tsung Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 31, 2016
Finite state machines are one of the most popular patterns in game development for good reason. They can reduce complexity and create more readable programs by encouraging modular, re-usable states. While FSMs (finite state machines) fail to scale to more complex situations, they’re excellent solutions for most common-place situations like dealing with application state or making simple AI.*
*I won’t explain the basic concepts and use-cases of FSMs because I think there are already a lot of good articles online like this article from Bob Nystrom’s book on game programming patterns.
There are two main approaches for creating and using FSMs: writing a quick and dirty implementation or buying an asset from the asset store to use. But there is a third option: using Unity’s built-in animator system (Mecanim).
Why would you use Unity’s animation system?
It can seem a bit weird to reuse the animation system to create finite state machines, but the animator is a finite state machine. While it has animation specific features that can get in the way, the animator system does almost everything you’d want. It comes with tools for editing and visualizing the state machine during run-time. Also, it’s supported by Unity, tested by millions of developers, and any Unity animation experience you already have is applicable.
Why not build a quick and dirty implementation instead?
A quick and dirty implementation works well for the task that it’s designed for, but once you need to use this pattern elsewhere, you’ll find yourself re-writing the same code over and over again. The animator system can easily create different state machines with re-usable state behaviors.
Then how about using a third-party asset?
There are third-party assets that rival the animator system in complexity and power (like NodeCanvas). They also have the advantage of a cleaner API because they don’t deal with animations. I’ve even built my own implementation that I eventually stopped using in favor of re-repurposing the animator. Because you’re going to using the animator to, well, animate, re-using it for state-machines means you don’t have to switch contexts between two similar systems.Democrats, meet the Tree that’s prepping to take you down on November 2nd.
This is Pterocarya fraxinifolia.
Common name: Caucasian wingnut.
Yep, get ready for this leafy badboy to make an appearance soon at a polling place near you.
Now I’ll be honest. When TPM Reader JB told me about Pterocarya fraxinifolia earlier today, I thought there was a pretty decent chance I was being punk’d. Or maybe JB had been punk’d. Someone was getting punk’d. But some simple googling showed that if this is a put-on someone has spent a ton of time posting spoof pages on tons of arboreal and nursery websites around the world. More than 16,000 according to Google. So I’m going with the Caucasian Wingnut being the real thing.
Ironically, this Caucasian Wingnut is most common, or at least started out, in Northern Iran, which isn’t necessarily what you’d figure for your garden variety Tea Partier. But there you go. JB says it’s the official tree of the Tea Party Movement. But I’ll just say you’ve been warned.Hey there! Join us on Instagram and Pinterest to keep up with our most recent projects and sneak peeks!
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Good Morning!
I hope you all had a great weekend! We had some beautiful weather here, so I tackled a few projects that have been on my list. Yesterday I threw together a hose holder for the back patio! Here is how it turned out…
How cute is that? And guess what? The whole thing cost me $15. Makes it even cuter… I know.
Let me first start by saying why I tackled this project…
I got some new pots for my back patio last week. I shared them HERE on Instagram for those of you that follow us! Here is what they look like…
I love them. I knew these bad boys had about a 2% chance of survival if I didn’t have a quick and easy way to water them. It has to be quick and easy or I just flat don’t do it.
So… Along came cute water hose holder.
This took me about 20 minutes to throw together. It is super easy to do!
You will start with a 4x4x8′ pine board from the hardware store. I bought mine at Lowe’s for around $9. I would have Lowe’s cut it in half for you. Now you will have enough post to make 2 of these. You can tag up with a friend and build them together, or you can make 2 for yourself!
Now you will need 2 pieces of wood. You can skip this part and jump straight to the finial, but I like how the wood pieces beef the top up a bit! I was able to pull mine from my scrap pile. You might be able to do the same. You will only need 2 small pieces.
This piece will go first…
Then this piece on top of that…
I just used Gorilla Wood glue between each piece….
and my Ryobi AirStrike Battery Nailer to attach the pieces. LOVE this nailer!! It is super easy to use. My kids even like using it to “build” with me!
Now, just drill a hole for the wood finial.
I use these finials from Lowe’s. I know some of you have mentioned that your Lowe’s doesn’t carry them. You can also find lots of different ones here on Amazon!
Here it is screwed into the top!
For the water hose holder I found this wall mount holder for $5 at Walmart. You can also find them at Home Depot for $9.
I used some exterior wood screws to attach it to my post like this…
That’s it! My final step was painting it! I gave mine 2 good coats of Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch in semi-gloss black.
Now… this is how I put mine in the ground. I am lucky enough to have a 7 year old who loves dirt and digging in it. So, I put him to work digging me an 18″ hole where I wanted to post to go.
They do come in handy sometimes, huh? Hehe 🙂
Then, I just put my hose holder into the hole, added a few rocks to help stabilize it and filled the dirt back in. I put mulch over all of that to make it pretty again. Simple!
Here are a few more pics!
Hope you love it! I do and I am pretty sure my pots will too 😉
Thanks so much for stopping by! Make sure to check out my new outdoor dining table I made for $85 too!
I would love for you to share and PIN this project below! You guys are great!
Thanks so much!
~WhitneyAfter the hugely popular Pokémon Go app was released last week and downloaded by at least 15 million users, singles started using the virtual reality game for more than just catching Pokémon. Our intrepid reporter Melkorka Licea decided to jump into the Poké-dating pool — head first.
Right after I booted up the app on my iPhone, a Rattata popped up on the stairs of Union Square Park next to two guys. They were pointing their phones at the rat-like creature too, so I knew they were playing.
“Gotta catch ‘em all,” I told myself, smoothing out my flyaways and putting my game face on.
I moved up next to them and tried to get the creature with a single flick of my pointer finger, but the screen froze.
Pokémon Go is the best way for a single woman to catch an actual nice guy.
“Hey, could you guys help me out?” I said. A classic damsel-in-distress move.
“Sometimes the game glitches,” said the cute one, Mark “MJAce” Joseph, 28, wearing all-black workout clothes and a warm smile.
After a few minutes of Poké-flirting, I was ready to make a move.
“Hey, this may sound a bit crazy, but would you want to go out with me?” I said nervously.
“I don |
bring back memories, and nostalgia is nourished with a lightweight, steel and glass pavilion (with solar panels above) on the terrace level overlooking fabulous views down the hillside. This approach is reinforced again in the interior materials and elements. It plays up this contrast between the old and the new, the traditional and the contemporary, the rough and the finished. One finds use of recycled materials like old textile blocks, Flooring out of old Burma teak rafters and purlins, colonial furniture, fabric waste (chindi) along with new ways of using traditional elements and materials like carved wooden mouldings, beveled mirrors, heritage cement tiles, etc.
A language emerges that is both new but strangely familiar at the same time and that makes us rethink notions of beauty that we take for granted around us. To make this mélange more “acceptable”, it is encased in a “garb of modernity” (Nehru). This concrete frame - in a rough aggregate finish outside and in a smooth form finish inside - wraps and connects all the spaces from back to front and across all three levels.
To build on top of a hill is always exciting, until the architects discovered here that they were surrounded by neighbours on all sides. This led early on in the design process to look inwards and build around the quintessential Indian courtyard, albeit slightly modified. The court is actually raised a floor above the ground level and hidden below is a large rainwater harvesting tank wrapped with rock that was removed from the hillside during excavation. It is the core around which this large four-generation family is organized and comes together.The research into India's genetic origins was led by archaeogeneticist Marine Silva. Photo by University of Huddersfield
May 8 (UPI) -- Where did the earliest Indians come from?
The origins of the peoples of the Indian Subcontinent remains a much debated topic among scientists. But new research has offered some clarity on the matter.
The latest analysis suggests India was populated by a succession of migrations from Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Previously, a lack of ancient DNA samples has hampered the search for India's genetic origins. The subcontinent has yielded few well-preserved skeletal remains.
RELATED Cave sediments yield DNA of early human relatives
Marine Silva, an archaeogeneticist and doctoral student at the University of Huddersfield, was able to skirt this impediment by using modern DNA sourced from people living in India today.
Their analysis, detailed in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, showed India hosts some very ancient lineages and was populated by several waves of migration.
The earliest Indians were hunter-gatherers from Africa. They arrived on the subcontinent 50,000 years ago. More settlers arrived from what is now Iran between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, shortly after the end of the last ice age. The migrants brought early farming techniques with them.
RELATED Married couples with shared ancestry tend to have similar genes
African and Middle Eastern origins are most apparent among the male genetic lineage, the Y-chromosome. The female lineage, mitochondrial DNA, suggests a large influx of people from Central Asia migrated to India 5,000 years ago.
Researchers believe these Bronze Age migrants were Indo-European speakers who populated the grasslands between the Black and Caspian seas. These male-dominated, roaming pastoralists domesticated the horse and spoke an early iteration of Sanskrit.
Some 200 years ago, linguists showed Sanskrit is related to Greek and Latin. Previous studies have suggested the same population of horse-riders settled Europe. The latest findings suggest Europeans and Indians share a common ancestor.
RELATED Local indigenous groups related to the first inhabitants of northwest North AmericaEDMONTON — A rural community wants the NDP government to directly pay for the cost of police officers who work in Alberta schools. Sturgeon County is to present a resolution to the Alberta Association of Municipal District and Counties this week that calls on the province to provide dedicated funding for school resource officers. Coun. Susan Evans said some rural school boards and municipalities that have been sharing the cost are struggling to pay for the program. "Because the funding isn't sustainable and not predictable from year to year you never know if that program is going to be there," she said in an interview.
"A school has to make a choice either to fund student safety or education."
"A school has to make a choice either to fund student safety or education." School resource officers mentor students, teach anti-drug courses and online bullying prevention and enforce the law, mainly in high schools. Many rural communities depend on RCMP for these officers. In Edmonton and Calgary the officers are city police. Evans said the officers benefit students, families and their communities. The lack of direct funding represents a downloading of the province's responsibility to fund safe and secure schools onto communities and school boards, she said.
Police association blames inadequate funding
Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley said the province already spends more than $500 million for municipal and provincial policing services throughout the province. "Our main priority is ensuring front line officers are available to keep Albertans safe," she said in an email. "Under the current model, smaller municipalities are permitted to fund enhanced resources, such as school resource officers, that will benefit their communities." In 2013 the association that represents Alberta's police commissions said inadequate funding was limiting the placement of police resource officers in schools.
"It is time to recognize the value of this program."
The Alberta Association of Police Governance passed a motion calling on the former Progressive Conservative government to take action. Former justice minister Jonathan Denis responded with a letter in 2013 saying he supported the idea in principle, but, "given the current fiscal climate of restraint the province is not planning to provide financial assistance in the foreseeable future." The government at the time said it was up to municipalities and police to decide how to best spend their funding. The Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties represents 69 communities in rural areas. Evans said she believes the resolution will receive solid support when it comes to a vote. "I think other communities feel the same way," she said. "It is time to recognize the value of this program."
Also On HuffPost:By Wael Mahdi
Brent crude prices will be lower by the end of the year, as production is set to increase from Iraq and Iran, shale oil output stabilizes and demand slows, according to OPEC’s former head of research.
Brent, which serves as a major benchmark for oil prices worldwide, will trade between $40 to $50 US per barrel in the fourth quarter, Hasan Qabazard, who was research head from 2006 to 2013, said in an interview in Vienna. That compares with Wednesday’s close of $63.80. The lower end of the range is below the price at which the benchmark bottomed in January.
Oil climbed 11 per cent this year on signs of more demand and speculation of reduced U.S. supply as OPEC maintained output to crowd out higher-cost producers. Qabazard’s outlook for a renewed decline follows bearish forecasts from banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which said last month the rally was premature and Brent would drop to $51 in six months. The end of the U.S. driving season will mean slower demand, Qabazard said.
“The fourth quarter is going to be a real test,” Qabazard, who’s now chief executive officer of Kuwait Catalysts Co., said on the sidelines of an OPEC seminar on prospects for the oil industry. The meeting was attended by chief executives from Exxon Mobil Corp. to BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, as well as oil ministers from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait and United Arab Emirates.
The European benchmark’s low was of $45.19 on Jan. 13. It has averaged $58.64 this year.
Global Glut
“There is a serious oversupply in the market,” Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told reporters in Vienna on Thursday.
Brent’s recovery from the six-year low in January is stalling on signs a global glut estimated by Venezuela at two million to 2.5 million barrels a day will persist. OPEC ministers will convene in Vienna on Friday to discuss policy.
Zanganeh said he’s delivering a letter at the meeting alerting OPEC to make room for a rise in the country’s output. Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden and BP CEO Bob Dudley said they are interested in investing in Iran if sanctions related to its nuclear energy program are removed.
OPEC will keep its production target unchanged when the ministers gather, according to a Bloomberg survey last month. The 12 members including Iraq and Iran pumped 31.58 million barrels a day in May, exceeding the 30-million barrel target for a 12th consecutive month, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Prices are attractive for non-OPEC producers to keep drilling, Qabazard said. U.S. shale oil output is now steady at about four million barrels a day, and will grow to 5 million barrels a day by 2018, he said.Antlered Crown and Standing Stone
Antlered Crown and Standing Stone
(Damh the Bard)
A rousing anthem dedicated to the male principle of nature – the Pagan Horned God. Continuing the theme of previous songs such as Green and Grey, Noon of the Soltice and Pipes of Pan. This is a song to honour Cernunnos, Pan, Herne, and the Green Man.
I am the face within the leaves,
I’m the voice within the trees,
I am boy, I am man,
The face of the changing land,
And I have been your constant guide,
From your caves on the mountainside,
We have walked hand in hand.
And everywhere that I have been,
My passing turns the grey to green,
The birds sing to the dawn,
And the land has awoken,
Oh my lady lays with me,
And our love weaves a tapestry,
Eternal threads, unbroken.
(Chorus)
I am lover, I am father,
I am Horned God and King,
I’m the life in all of nature,
That is reborn every Spring.
Call of stag and cry of eagle,
I am Child of Barleycorn,
And I am the antlered crown,
And standing stone.
I am the oats the corn and grain,
A bearded man with a crooked cane,
Cut me down, I must die,
For the land to be born again.
But don’t you cry and don’t you grieve,
For soon the Wild Hunt I will lead,
On the night of Samhain.
The air is cold, the sky is grey,
Where am I this Winter’s day,
Bones of trees, fallen leaves,
The time of the Winter Queen,
But through the wind and snow and rain,
Know that a part of me remains,
Holly stands, evergreen.HALLOWEEN is supposed to last for one night only. At Yale University (motto: “Light and Truth”) it has dragged on considerably longer. As happens at many American universities, Yale administrators sent an advisory e-mail to students before the big night, requesting them to refrain from wearing costumes that other students might find offensive. Given that it is legal for 18-year-old Americans to drive, marry and, in most places, own firearms, it might seem reasonable to let students make their own decisions about dressing-up—and to face the consequences when photographs of them disguised as Osama bin Laden can forever be found on Facebook or Instagram. Yet a determination to treat adults as children is becoming a feature of life on campus, and not just in America. Strangely, some of the most enthusiastic supporters of this development are the students themselves.
In response to the Yale e-mail, a faculty member wrote a carefully worded reply. In it she suggested that students and faculty ought to ponder whether a university should seek to control the behaviour of students in this way. Yes it should, came the reply, in the form of a letter signed by hundreds of students, protests and calls for two academics to resign for suggesting otherwise. Tellingly, the complaint made by some students at Yale’s Silliman College, where the row took place, was that they now felt unsafe.
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On the face of it this is odd. New Haven, which surrounds Yale, had 60 shootings in 2014, 12 of them fatal. Thankfully, there has never been a shooting at the university. The choice of words was deliberate, though. Last year a debate on abortion at Oxford University was cancelled after some students complained that hearing the views of anti-abortionists would make them feel unsafe. Many British universities now provide “safe spaces” for students to protect them from views which they might find objectionable. Sometimes demands for safe space enter the classroom. Jeannie Suk, a Harvard law professor, has written about how students there tried to dissuade her from discussing rape in class when teaching the law on domestic violence, lest it trigger traumatic memories.
Bodies upon the gears
Like many bad ideas, the notion of safe spaces at universities has its roots in a good one. Gay people once used the term to refer to bars and clubs where they could gather without fear, at a time when many states still had laws against sodomy.
In the worst cases, though, an idea that began by denoting a place where people could assemble without being prosecuted has been reinvented by students to serve as a justification for shutting out ideas. At Colorado College, safety has been invoked by a student group to prevent the screening of a film celebrating the Stonewall riots which downplays the role of minorities in the gay-rights movement. The same reasoning has led some students to request warnings before colleges expose them to literature that deals with racism and violence. People as different as Condoleezza Rice, a former secretary of state, and Bill Maher, a satirist, have been dissuaded from giving speeches on campuses, sometimes on grounds of safety.
What makes this so objectionable is that there are plenty of things on American campuses that really do warrant censure from the university. Administrators at the University of Oklahoma managed not to notice that one of its fraternities, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, had cheerily sung a song about hanging black people from a tree for years, until a video of them doing so appeared on the internet. At the University of Missouri, whose president resigned on November 9th, administrators did a poor job of responding to complaints of unacceptable behaviour on campus—which included the scattering of balls of cotton about the place, as a put-down to black students, and the smearing of faeces in the shape of a swastika in a bathroom.
Distinguishing between this sort of thing and obnoxious Halloween costumes ought not to be a difficult task. But by equating smaller ills with bigger ones, students and universities have made it harder, and diminished worthwhile protests in the process. The University of Missouri episode shows how damaging this confusion can be: some activists tried to prevent the college’s own newspaper from covering their demonstration, claiming that to do so would have endangered their safe space, thereby rendering a reasonable protest absurd.
Fifty years ago student radicals agitated for academic freedom and the right to engage in political activities on campus. Now some of their successors are campaigning for censorship and increased policing by universities of student activities. The supporters of these ideas on campus are usually described as radicals. They are, in fact, the opposite.LONDON: The Climate Group said today that a rapid transition to clean energy could provide the economy with a major boost, and pointed to forecasts that the clean tech sector could soon be worth over $5 trillion. You can explore and share our related infographic below.
Representing a coalition of business and government leaders, The Climate Group makes its comments in advance of the launch of ‘Mitigation of Climate Change’, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III which is expected to advocate a major global switch to renewable energy.
Mark Kenber, CEO, The Climate Group, says: “The Climate Group has been working with business and government partners to drive a ‘clean revolution’, a swift scale-up of clean energy, infrastructure, and of smart technologies. The IPCC reports make it clear this needs to happen now. This is no longer a theoretical discussion, though: 70-80% of the necessary technology is available today. What is needed is a combination of coordinated policy and corporate leadership to accelerate the transition.
“What is now beyond doubt is that the clean tech sector is an attractive proposition for any investor: the global market is now worth more than US$2.56 trillion* a year, and is expected to be valued at more than US$5.13 trillion by the mid-2020s. Just less than the combined GDPs of Germany and France. It is growing 12% a year and has been doing so steadily since 2007, a rate many of the world’s major economies would give an arm and a leg for. Top solar stocks averaged 302% over the past year, for example. A clean revolution is good news for consumers too - solar energy currently costs the same as electricity generated by coal and gas in many countries such as Germany, Italy and Mexico, with the cost trajectory on an ongoing downward path.”
Global challenge
Changhua Wu, Greater China Director, The Climate Group, says: “We have most of the technologies and tools to decarbonize economic growth. What is needed is the right policy incentives and political will to direct the capital flows towards a low carbon future.
“An ‘ecological civilization’ has been embraced as the philosophy to guide China’s future development. If you zoom in on this transformation unfolding now, you will see that what is recommended by the IPCC Working Group III is happening in the world’s second largest economy. Decarbonizing both energy production and consumption, maximizing energy efficiency potential, scaling up renewable energy, and improving society’s awareness and behavior change are all among the priority actions.
“Climate change is a global challenge. The solution requires consensus and cooperation among countries, especially among the major economies. This is not simply about reducing carbon emissions. It is about how we grow our economy and achieve prosperity in a totally different philosophy and paradigm. Scaling finance and scaling deployment of clean technologies available today will set us on the track towards the future we want.”
Bob Inglis, Energy & Enterprise Initiative Executive Director and former Republican Congressman, said: "We need innovation, and innovation will come most rapidly from free enterprise. Individual governments can spur that innovation by bringing accountability to emitters and by pricing carbon dioxide. America should pair that pricing with an income tax cut. That way we'd empower free markets to deliver innovation without growing government."
Security and faith leaders' views
Brigadier General Stephen Cheney, USMC (Ret.), the CEO of the American Security Project says: “Climate change is an accelerant of global instability that presents clear threats to national security for countries around the world. Last month, for the first time, the IPCC showed in its Working Group II report, how climate change is already harming security around the world – and how instability will grow worse without action.”
“We know that militaries and governments around the world are aware of the threat: ASP’s Global Security Defense Index showed that over 70% of the countries in the world have identified climate change as a threat to their national security. We see that militaries are preparing for the effects of climate change. However, proper risk management means that we must go further: we should act now to reduce emissions. That means switching to low and no-carbon sources of energy available now, and it means investing in the R&D needed to develop new sources of energy for the future. The military can lead on this, but we need the rest of society to come along as well.”
Deborah Fikes, Representative to the United Nations for World Evangelical Alliance and Clean Revolution Ambassador, also called for concerted leadership from faith communities: “The challenges our world faces in mitigating climate change now requires uniting with an unprecedented global-community mindset. Some soul-searching is in order for faith based organizations and houses of worship who are abdicating our moral responsibility to our most vulnerable neighbors in the developing world when we don’t lead by example and refuse to tolerate any less from our business and government leaders on climate change. Sustainability for the “bottom billion” is not an option, it is a lifeline that we have the ability and obligation to provide if we really believe in “loving our neighbors as ourselves.”
Governments back call for scale-up
Scotland’s Environment and Climate Change Minister, Paul Wheelhouse, said: “Climate change is happening across all continents. It is contributing to heatwaves, drought, storms and flooding across the globe. And it is hitting hardest the poorest and the most vulnerable in the least developed nations – those who have done least to create the problem. In acknowledgement of this, Scotland is championing Climate Justice, putting people and human rights at the heart of action on climate change. The case for global action is compelling, which is why the Scottish Government, with unanimous support from the Scottish Parliament and the support of civic Scotland, has set world-leading, annual greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. This is also why we have published detailed plans on how to meet our target to reduce Scotland's emissions by 42% by 2020, as Scotland's contribution to international efforts to restrict global temperature increase to 2°C.
“Scotland’s climate change targets are challenging. The warnings from the IPCC emphasise that they should be, and the global community needs the rest of the UK, our European neighbors, and indeed all countries to share our commitment to averting damaging global temperature increases, through agreeing, in 2015, an ambitious global deal to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
South Australia’s Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation Ian Hunter said climate change was having an impact on both the local economy and lifestyle: “In just 90 days across 2013-14, we had over 156 records broken around Australia, including the driest January on record and five days in a row over 42°C in South Australia.”
“The Government of South Australia accepts the IPCC’s clear message that we must take rapid action, and transition to a low carbon economy. I believe the release of the next installment of the IPCCs comprehensive review of global climate science will only increase our commitment to making this transition. South Australia has already committed through legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% of 1990 levels by 2050 as part of our response to climate change. In 2010-11, South Australian emissions were almost 9% lower than 1990 levels, and South Australian targets for renewable energy are 33% by 2020.
“We are proud that more than 27% of our electricity generation now comes from over US$3 billion worth of privately-funded wind farms with an additional 4% from solar panels. South Australia understands the importance of reducing emissions, but we also need to be proactive in adapting to the changes that have already occurred.”
Welsh Minister for Natural Resources, Alun Davies said: “This latest IPCC report reinforces the need for us to accelerate action on climate change and underlines the economic, business, social and environmental reasons for doing so.
“Wales is a progressive sub-national government and we have already been working hard to reduce our emissions and prepare for a changing climate. We are also committed to driving forward green growth which presents us with tremendous opportunities. We have a good story to tell in terms of action and innovation on climate change but we are focussed on increasing our efforts and doing more.
“We are currently legislating to make sustainable development our central organizing principle though our Future Generations Bill, refreshing our climate change policy to accelerate our progress and support green growth and legislating for sustainable natural resource management through our Environment Bill. Working to meet the challenge of climate change presents us with opportunities to improve our resilience and ensure the long term prosperity of our nation and we are keen to collaborate with others to achieve this and to share our experiences with others.”
Business perspective
Stephanie Pfeifer, Chief Executive of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which represents 91 European investors worth €7.5 trillion, says: “The IPCC reports leave no doubt that climate change will have significant social and economic consequences unless substantial emissions reductions are achieved. This requires a significant scaling up of investment in low-carbon energy. The most effective way to stimulate this investment is through the implementation of ambitious policies which create incentives to invest in low-carbon technologies and reduce incentives to invest in fossil fuel energies. The longer investors wait for strong regional and global climate policy which could drive the transition to a low-carbon economy, the greater the risk of climate change which would inflict serious economic losses. By taking action now, policymakers can put the world on a low-carbon growth path."
Mark Way, Head Sustainability Americas, Swiss Re, says: "We are facing an ever starker choice between two visions of the not so distant future, both of which will transform society as we know it today. From a risk management and business development perspective we need to finally take on board what the IPCC is telling us. The transition to a low carbon future is the only sensible choice."
Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-Chair IPCC Working Group III, will be delivering a keynote address at The Climate Group’s 10 year anniversary event, Low Carbon Growth and Opportunity: Paris and Beyond in London on 28 April.
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*Figures correct at time of writing, based on PwC researchWomen, according to the received wisdom frequently cited by exasperated male drivers, can't read maps.
Now scientists have come up with one rather uncharitable explanation for the supposed phenomenon. It could be the result of binge drinking in adolescence.
A group of American researchers have found that heavy drinking during the teenage years, when the brain is still growing, can affect the development of spatial memory – the ability to orientate oneself on a map and remember how to get from place to place – in both sexes.
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Studies among almost 100 students at schools in San Diego, California, found that the heavy drinkers performed less well on measures of spatial memory performance, with women feeling the effects more than men.
Susan Tapert, acting chief of psychology at the Veterans Administration San Diego Health System, who led the study published in the journal Alcoholism, said: "Our study found that female teenage heavy drinkers had less brain activation in several brain regions than female non-drinking teens when doing the same spatial task.
"These differences in brain activity were linked to worse performance on other measures of attention and working memory ability. Male binge drinkers showed some but less abnormality as compared to male non-drinkers. This suggests that female teens may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of heavy alcohol use."
The students were normal healthy teenagers who drank socially and might have four or five drinks at a weekend party and then not drink again for some weeks. They drank at a level that was widespread in their age group, she said.
"Long after a young person recovers from a hangover, this study shows that risk to cognitive and brain functions endures. The effects on the developing brain are only now being identified."Crude oil futures rose in New York trading on Monday amid concern that the ongoing war in Gaza may disrupt Middle East crude supplies.
Crude oil for February delivery rose $2.31, or 6.1 percent, to settle at $40.02 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the day, it touched $42.20 a barrel in the biggest gain in two weeks.
Futures have declined 73 percent from a record $147.27 a barrel in July.
Israeli aircraft attacked Hamas targets in Gaza on the third day of an offensive that has killed more than 300 Palestinians in retaliation for ongoing rocket fire originating from Gaza directed at Israeli towns and cities.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that his country is fighting a “war to the death” with Hamas.
The latest violence has heightened concern that Middle East supplies of crude oil may be cut off. Iran, Hamas’s main backer, holds the world’s second-largest oil reserves.
But others don’t see the current fighting as much of a threat to the world’s oil supply.
“As tragic as the situation is, it is somewhat irrelevant to the price of crude unless the conflict expands,” says Tom Kloza, Chief Oil Analyst at the Oil Price Information Service. “If Arab and Israeli-aligned countries choose up sides, it’s a big deal. But that has only happened a couple of times in 40+ years and there probably have been two dozen or so incidents that measure up to the ongoing violence.”
Another factor in today’s rise in oil prices can be attributed to China, the world’s second-biggest energy consumer, announcing that it will supplement its emergency oil stockpiles while prices are low.
Signs that OPEC member nations are complying with their latest agreed upon output cut are also beginning to affect the market.
Libya announced that it will exceed its required production cut, and from the start of January will curb output by 270,000 barrel per day.
Abu Dhabi National Oil, the UAE’s main producer, said it would cut January and February oil exports by much more than some refiners had expected.In what is being called a "huge win for voting rights" and a resounding defeat of "Jim Crow-era tactics," a federal judge on Wednesday struck down a major voter ID law passed by the Republican-dominated Texas state legislature on the grounds that it would place a "disproportionate burden" on black and Latino voters.
"The real crisis we face is not voter fraud. It is voter suppression."
—Sen. Bernie SandersNelva Gonzales Ramos of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas had previously found that the original version of the Republican bill—which was passed in 2011—was designed with discriminatory intent. In the face of legal challenges, the Texas GOP attempted to soften the law.
These attempts did not go far enough, Ramos ruled on Wednesday, arguing that the changes to the legislation were superficial, and that its discriminatory nature remained "essentially unchanged."
The New York Times summarized the ruling and its implications:
The decision was only the latest chapter in a yearslong court battle over the state's voter ID rules, and comes amid concerted efforts by the Trump administration to enact tougher voting restrictions. The stakes are particularly high for Texas: As a result of previous court rulings, the state could be forced to undergo federal oversight of its election procedures... Judge Ramos not only tossed out the revamped voter ID law, but also struck down the original version, known as Senate Bill 14. She did not rule on whether Texas’ election laws would be put under federal oversight, but said she would consider the issue during the next phase of the case.
Ramos's ruling was celebrated by civil rights groups and activists.
Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement Wednesday that Ramos's decision to block enforcement of the Texas law "is an important victory for voting rights and those who fight for them every day."
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"Despite the Trump administration's reversal of a longstanding [Department of Justice] position that Texas engaged in intentional race discrimination in enacting its voter ID law, the court today threw out both the 2011 law and the 2017 version that did not fix the original law’s racially discriminatory purpose," Gupta concluded. "It's time for Congress to finally act to restore the Voting Rights Act, and put an end to these kinds of efforts that deny voters of color access to the ballot."
A recent analysis by the Brennan Center found that "at least 99 bills to restrict access to registration and voting have been introduced in 31 states" in 2017 alone.
Highlighting this research on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) declared on Twitter: "The real crisis we face is not voter fraud. It is voter suppression."
"It's time for Congress to finally act to restore the Voting Rights Act, and put an end to these kinds of efforts that deny voters of color access to the ballot."
—Vanita Gupta, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Civil rights groups have also expressed alarm at the Brennan Center analysis, which came amid the Trump administration's push for "suppressive policies" under the guise of rooting out mythical "voter fraud."
Further, as Buzzfeed's Chris Geidner notes, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions the Department of Justice has "reversed the position it held during the Obama administration beginning in February, when it stopped backing the challengers to the [Texas] voter ID law."
In a series of tweets, Kristen Clarke—president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law—celebrated the Wednesday ruling while cautioning that the fight against voter suppression efforts at the state and federal level is sure to continue.
"This is the most important victory yet in the long-standing battle against one of the worse voter suppression measures," Clarke declared. "States like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and others have relentlessly pursued voter suppression. We will continue to use the courts to fight!"We heard throughout our formative years that lugging around a heavy backpack was terrible for our backs. But now that we're older, the damage may have already been done — and we may even be shorter because of it. The textbooks we carried to class have literally made us shrink.
The pain starts in middle school. A 2010 study in the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which studied a small test group of children around the age of 11, found that the constant weight of the bag was actually causing spinal cords to compress and cause significant back pain. Those test backpacks were, at their heaviest, about 26 pounds.
Dr. Harvinder Sandhu, a spinal surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, says 26 pounds is on the lighter side. "Schoolchildren these days are carrying these huge backpacks with around 40 to 60 pounds of weight," he told Mic. "Seemingly they think it's only for a short distance. But when you add it up, the total weight is enormous."
How much of a strain is that weight, exactly? Here's an example: Say you're a high schooler in some advanced placement classes. Each of your textbooks is roughly 5 pounds, and you have one for each of your seven classes. You have a locker, but it's on the fourth floor and all of your classes are on the first and second floors. You are, on any given day, carrying a 40-pound backpack, maybe more if you've got school supplies in there. If you weigh somewhere between 105 and 115 pounds, your backpack is nearly 40% of your body weight — around twice of what the NCBI study estimated as fit for testing.
For an adult weighing around 160 pounds, that's the equivalent of walking around all day with a golden retriever hanging from your shoulders.
That NCBI study also tested the Cobb angles of its subjects. Cobb angles are the angles between the edges of the vertebrae that can be used to show where there's risk of scoliosis, or a sideways curve in the spine. Think of an X-ray: When you look at a skeleton from the front, a normal, healthy spine should be straight up and down. The Cobb angles in a healthy spine will be less than 10 degrees — mostly undetectable. But when that number rises, you're facing trouble.
When the Cobb angle is between 10 and 20 degrees, the signs of scoliosis are detectable but generally don't require treatment in someone who's reached adulthood. In a child, however, progression becomes an issue. "That might require the use of a brace, or at least close observation," Sandhu told Mic. "But beyond 40 degrees, you're more likely to continue progressing, even as an adult, to the point you'd require surgery."
Of those eight test subjects in the NCBI study, four had Cobb angles greater than 10 degrees — and they were only carrying backpacks weighing between 13 and 18 pounds.
Medscape How a backpack can cause an asymmetric lumbar spine.
Even if your spine stays straight through years of hauling your life on your back, compressing the spine by carrying a heavy backpack can actually affect how tall you'll grow to be — and how tall you'll stay.
There are bones in your lower spine called lumbar disks. When we're young, the disks are full of water, which makes our spines move more easily. The disks contribute to about an inch of our height. As we age, that water starts to dry up. It's why, as Sandhu describes, between the ages of 20 and 60 we're likely to lose an inch to an inch and a half in height from that water leaving your spine. That's just normal wear and tear.
When you add an extremely heavy backpack, five days a week for over a decade, we're basically crushing those water-filled gaps, compressing the spine with all the extra weight. A backpack accelerates the rate at which we lose water in the lumbar disks, causing us to shrink a little bit more quickly.
"You lose disk height from prolonged damage," Sandhu told Mic. "When it loses water content, it begins to shrink." Think of driving a car with an underinflated tire. "You can still drive the car, but the tire is becoming sloppy," Sandhu said. "You wear the tread down. It's the same with disks: If they're under mechanical stresses, they'll get damaged much faster."
Your spine isn't all that's in jeopardy. The soft tissue around it — supporting structures like ligaments and paraspinal muscles that attach to the spine — suffer a decreased range of motion. Like construction workers who frequently lift heavy loads, our bodies experience tendonitis, degenerative disc disease and back pain.
According to Dr. Nathan Wei, a rheumatologist at the Arthritis Center in Frederick, Maryland, carrying around a 40-pound backpack can lead to the inability to rotate your neck and move your shoulders in a full circle.
"A lot of neck and shoulder discomfort that occurs initially is episodic," Wei told Mic. "But if you chronically stretch the muscles with the associated ligaments attached to the bone, it can become chronic."
When the pain becomes chronic, Wei says it takes roughly a month of treatment, using everything from physical therapy and anti-inflammatory drugs to relearning correct posture — and that's after just a year of frequently carrying a heavy load.
Dr. Robert Marx, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery, primarily does surgery on knees. He says his work goes to waste when people can't reduce what they carry around. "I frequently see people going back to work and delaying their recovery by carrying heavy bags," Marx told Mic. "It can cause the operated knee to swell or become sore and make physical therapy more challenging. In this case, even a backpack puts more load on the knee after surgery and it can be detrimental."
Sandhu and Wei both referenced 40 pounds as a common backpack weight, though the kids who carry them |
of my ex of 14 years who one day made the comment of "let the stupid mutt die", that was my deal breaker. How could I stay with someone for the rest of my life after that statement???? My Shaggy girl had been diagnosed with Immune Dificiency Thryombocytopenia (sp) yeah I know I spelt it wrong... Anyhow, I was so upset at that comment and the fact that he held the majority of the purse strings in the household - that I took my engagement ring and pawned it to pay for her treatment. At the time, she was not only my beloved dog, but she was my working partner as we were under contract with the Humane Society to visit community centers and schools to speak to kids about, How to Behave around dogs. He moved out and Shaggy who was 8 at the time lived to be the grand ole age of 15 and 1/2.
I ended up working four jobs to buy out his share of the home and filled it up with numerous rescues (which was always my life long passion). I keep missing my ex......my aim has to get better. nyuck nyuck.
Next, I met someone who while he never had a dog in his life but several cats understood my love for animals and never complained and accepted they were important to me. We have three big dogs, cats bunnies, guinea pigs and chickens, the majority are special needs and we even purchased a place specifically to have an animal sanctuary
He did have one rule that he didn't like to sleep in a room with animals (that includes cats too) and while my dogs are downstairs and the upstairs is the cat's domain - I did respect that and compromised. I always knew his dream was to live in a condo downtown while we ended up purchasing a house on acreage to fulfill my dream so I felt that I could compromise too.
I didn;t know your story but I am certain you made the right choice - that comment was a deal breaker indeed!!!!!! You can have a partner who loves animals to bits but doesn't like them in the bedroom. As you can see My own DH is anti animals in the bedroom! lol However - Bertha our sick hen died in the bedroom last week and now he has a Bator full of chicken eggs in a bedroom! - So much for animals downstairs or even in the yard? DH just spent ages making a new chicken run and coop to help the "girls" get over Bertha passing! This evening now he is out on the lawn with Bailey trying to teach him "fetch" but he is daft and it will take time? - or never! It is good to have a partner who is able to share what you concider important!
Oes
every night my baby brings a bone, and chews herself to relaxation and sleep. We have a special blanket for the foot of the bed so she can. My first OES came in after playtime and snuggled between my friend & I. After a divorce, my first, second and third OES snuggled up next to me, and I decided that although it gets lonely at times, a warm fuzzy baby doesn't say hurtful things, never argues, and never demands, is always thrilled to see me (and shows it), and loves me always.
An OES on the bed is better than any brand of electric blanket you can buy. An OES on the bed can be cleaner than many (and you are in charge - try telling a spouse its bathtime or sleep elsewhere, or to leave when gassy...).
You... tell an OES how to behave........ set the standard of cleanliness....... set rules of behavior.........., a boyfriend/girlfriend/partner wants compromise, and to coin an old girlfriend of mine... "so one of us is unhappy because the other of us got what they wanted".
An OES wants love.
If I ever find someone that loves me as much as Dudley did, Isabelle did, or Chloie does, I am certain that a furry beast also there, will just mean more love present.
Deal breaker - yea, a few times (and every time).
I am with Mark on this one. Dogs in beds? Sherwood has never slept on the bed and he has never tried but as for Georgie any where she plonks her bum she tries to stay and she is a bit of a sneak. They do like the cold floor. We all need our own space and the bed is mine and would not invade there's but only to tidy up also de flea the area and it must be a girl thing.
I never realized having dogs was an issue to so many guys! This has been a very eye opening post and I feel like I should be asking a guy if he minds dogs when I first meet him now! I told my last boyfriend that I sleep with my dogs and his reply was "There's only room for one dog in the bed". Whatever I felt for him instantly ended. How could he be so insensitive to something that means a great deal to me...my dogs! What else would he have wanted to change in my life? I can only imagine! My advice is if you are a true animal lover your partner is going to have to except and love that about you or leave! Nobody should get rid of their dog for a man. If a man can't respect how you feel or recognize and compromise on something so important to you leave him now...text him right now that things are not going to work out!!!!! My life has been much better since I dumped this dude and I am actually seeing someone that has dog he treats like one of his kids...we are so much better matched. And I found that he genuinely cares about all things that matter to me. That's how a lady should be treated! I believe that my dogs are less of a dog than my ex... How ironic!The Obama administration announced Tuesday that all U.S.-bound travelers from three Ebola-stricken African countries will be required to fly into one of five airports that are conducting additional screening.
The change comes as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle call for a travel ban from those countries -- Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. While administration officials continue to resist that step, the Department of Homeland Security said the new restrictions will go into effect starting Wednesday.
The change means all travelers from those three countries will have to arrive at one of the five designated airports: New York's JFK, Newark, Dulles, Atlanta and Chicago.
DHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month implemented "enhanced screening measures" at those airports. According to the department, the five airports already account for about 94 percent of travelers from those countries. Also, there are no direct commercial flights from West Africa to the United States.
However, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson cast the changes as an additional protective measure. "We are continually evaluating whether additional restrictions or added screening and precautionary measures are necessary to protect the American people and will act accordingly," he said in a statement.
The new requirement means that people traveling from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea who were not originally passing through one of those five airports will have to rebook their flights. "We are working closely with the airlines to implement these restrictions with minimal travel disruption," Johnson said.
Passengers from the Ebola hot-zone traveling through those airports are subject to additional screening measures, including having their temperature taken.
In response to the DHS change, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he's "glad that the Obama administration is showing more concern about the possibility of people infected with Ebola entering the United States and spreading this deadly disease."
But he said the government still "must do more to protect Americans."
Goodlatte suggested the administration at least consider a temporary ban on foreign nationals trying to enter the U.S. from the Ebola-stricken region.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., praised the changes as an "added layer of protection against Ebola entering our country."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest indicated President Obama still opposes a travel ban, but described Tuesday's announcement as an example of travel restrictions that can be "put in place to protect the American public."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.This conversation feels like when the monks of the middle-ages would debate over how many angels can fit on the end of a pin. In other words its starting to feel religious, futile and incorrectly focused.
Mini-rant ensues (feel free to ignore):
If you don't want to continue reading.. My short response to the above topic is: I don't agree with logic-less templates. I think of it as a programming form of extremism. :-) :-)
Now my rant continues in full swing: :-)
I think when you take many ideas to the extreme, the outcome becomes ludicrous. And sometimes (ie this topic) the issue is that we take the "wrong" idea to the extreme.
Removing all logic from the view is "ludicroous" and the wrong idea.
Step back for a moment.
The question we need to ask ourselves is why remove the logic? The concept, obviously is separation of concerns. Keep the view processing as separate from the business logic as possible. Why do this? It allows us to swap out views (for different platforms: mobile,browser,desktop etc) and it allows us to more easily swap out the control-flow, page sequence, validation changes, model changes, security access etc. Also when logic is removed from the views (especially web views), it makes the views much more readable and therefore more maintainable. I get that and agree with that.
However the overriding focus should be on separation of concerns. Not 100% logic-less views. The logic within the views should relate to how to render the "model". As far as I'm concerned, logic in the views is perfectly fine. You can have view-logic that is not business-logic.
Yes, back in the day when we wrote JSPs, PHP or ASP pages with little or no separation of code logic and view logic, the maintenance of these web-apps was an absolute nightmare. Believe me I know, I created and then maintained some of these monstrosities. It was during that maintenance phase that I really understood (viscerally) the error of my and my colleagues ways. :-) :-)
So the edict from on high (the industry pundits) became, thou must structure your web-apps using something like a front-view controller (that dispatched to handlers or actions [pick your web-framework]) and thy views must contain no code. The views were to become dumb templates.
So I agree in general with the above sentiment, not for the specifics of the items of the edict, but rather the motivation behind the edict - which is the desire for separations of concerns between view and business logic.
In one project that I was involved in, we tried to follow the logic-less view idea to the ludicrous extreme. We had a home-grown template engine that would allow us to render model objects in html. It was a simple token based system. It was terrible for one very simple reason. Sometimes in a view we had to decide, should I display this little snippet of HTML.. or not.. The decision is usually based on some value in the model. When you have absolutely no logic in the view, how do you do that? Well you can't. I had some major arguments with our architect about this. The front-end HTML people writing our views were completely hamstrung when they were faced with this and were very stressed because they could not achieve their otherwise simple objectives. So I introduced the concept of a simple IF-statement within our templating engine. I cannot describe to you the relief and the calm that ensued. Problem was solved with a simple IF-Statement concept in our templates! Suddenly our templating engine became good.
So how did we get into this silly stressful situation? We focused on the wrong objective. We followed the rule, you must not have any logic in your views. That was wrong. I think the "rule-of-thumb" should be, minimize that amount of logic in your views. Because if you don't you could inadvertently allow business logic to creep into the view - which violates separation of concerns.
I understand that when you declare that "You must have no logic in the views", it becomes easy to know when you are being a "good" programmer. (If that is your measure of goodness). Now try implementing a web-app of even medium complexity with the above rule. Its not so easily done.
For me, the rule of logic in the views is not so clear cut and frankly that's where I want it to be.
When I see lots of logic in the views, I detect a code-smell and try to eliminate most of the logic from the views - I try to ensure business logic lives elsewhere - I try to separate the concerns. But when I start chatting with people who say we must remove all logic from the view, well, to me, that just smacks of fanaticism as I know you can end up in situations like I described above.
I'm done with my rant. :-)
Cheers,
DavidBelgian newspapers: Google blocking us on searches
BRUSSELS Google blocked several Belgian newspapers from its web search results Friday in what the papers called retaliation over a copyright infringement lawsuit.
Google said an order issued in the case required it to exclude the newspapers' websites.
The newspapers filed a lawsuit against Google in 2006 claiming the web giant had no right to post links to their articles on Google News without payment or permission. They won, and a Belgian appeals court upheld their victory in May.
The paper La Capitale said on its web site Friday that Google had begun "boycotting" it. Google searches late Friday showed that the websites of the newspapers who sued Google, who were members of an organization called Copiepresse — a Belgian, French-language newspaper copyright management company — did not appear in search results, as they have in the past.
Google spokesman William Echikson said the court decision applied to web search as well as Google News and the company faced fines of 25,000 euros, or $35,359, per infringement if it allowed the newspapers' websites to keep appearing.
"We regret having to do so," he said. "We would be happy to re-include Copiepresse if they would indicate their desire to appear in Google Search and waive the potential penalties."
An article Friday on the web site of one of the newspapers, La Libre, took issue with Google's interpretation.
"It is necessary to distinguish the Google search engine from the Google news service," the article said. "The news editors do not oppose having their content referenced by the Google search engine, they refuse on the other hand for their informational content to be included in Google News," the article said.
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.comAllegedly, Russia invaded Ukraine because Russians and Russian speakers there were in danger of losing their cultural-political rights to a supposedly neo-Nazi, Fascist government there. Of course, these charges were wholly mendacious. But they do highlight the salience of Russian language use in the countries of the Russian diaspora of the former Soviet Union as having a direct bearing on the security of those states. Indeed, a 2009 Russian law that Russian President Vladimir Putin directly invoked to justify the invasion of Crimea permits the Russian president to order troops into other countries to uphold the “honor and dignity” of Russians and Russian speakers if it is being violated. Given that, it should be clear that linguistic policy in Central Asian countries is a matter of the utmost importance, requiring considerable subtlety on the part of Central Asian leaders.
Nevertheless it has been clear for some time, and recent news reports confirm it, that the Russian language is steadily losing ground in Central Asia in educational institutions and in much of the media throughout Central Asia. To be sure, Moscow is trying to counter this, for instance with recent attempts to saturate the Kazakh media. Yet this trend towards establishing the primacy of national cultures and languages at the expense of Russian builds on twenty years of steady nationalization of the culture of these states as a matter of deliberate policy, on their deliberate efforts to maintain an openness to the larger globalizing trends in the world economy, and on a generation of growing restrictions on Russian language use in broadcasting and other media.
Of course, Central Asian leaders will not publicly attack the use of Russian language or create situations that could tempt Moscow to intervene in Central Asia on the same pretexts as it employed in Ukraine. But while the invasion of Ukraine created and still generates considerable anxiety in Central Asia, the crisis that Russia faces as a result of its action makes intervention in Central Asia a less likely prospect for the foreseeable future. Given the steep economic decline Russia has experienced following its Ukrainian adventure a third front on top of Ukraine and the North Caucasus is the last thing Moscow seeks. Nonetheless, leaders like Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev point with pride to the growth of Kazakh as the native language and more younger students are preferring English or Chinese to Russian.
In Kyrgyzstan, a recent report showed different forces at work but similar outcomes. The poverty of the Kyrgyz school system means that despite Russian claims of large-scale support for Russian-language teaching abroad, means that only 11 percent of Kyrgyz students are going to superior Russian schools in that republic. Students otherwise are not learning Russian and competent teachers are hard to find. All this, of course, generates a vicious cycle. Similarly, in December 2013, Veniamin Kaganov, Russia’s deputy education minister, was quoted in Tass as saying that the number of Russian speakers had fallen by 100 million since the break up of the Soviet Union. Neither is this outcome unique to Kyrgyzstan or Central Asia. Although globalization certainly plays a role here, all these states have taken serious policy steps since 1991 to create a stronger sense of national identity among their peoples, a policy line that inevitably translates into privileging native languages over Russian and English and now Chinese over it as well.
This outcome strongly suggests that while state support for the propagation of he Russian language abroad is a point in Russia’s 2009 national security strategy, Moscow is apparently steadily if somewhat unobtrusively failing to achieve its goals. And this testifies to a continuing failure to actualize Russia’s soft power despite an enormous state investment. The manifestations of this failure may be quiet and not immediately visible but they do point to the steady erosion over time of Russian power of all kinds in Central Asia, although its military capabilities there remain potentially formidable.
Moreover, Central Asian states have proven to be rather more adroit that was expected at defending themselves against Russian encroachments. Nazarbayev even publicly threatened to leave the Eurasian Economic Union, the centerpiece of Putin’s grand design when Putin made threatening statements about Kazakhstan’s former lack of statehood. Similarly, in Uzbekistan a 2013 decree by President Islam Karimov mandated the teaching of English in first grade and Russian in second grade, a sure sign of his priorities and that of the state. Non-Uzbek schools in the republic, Tajik, Kyrgyz, and Kazakh have also cut their teaching of Russian while increasing English language instruction. Thus the Russian language is steadily being marginalized in Uzbekistan as well.
It is by no means clear what Rusisa can do about this. Its economy, even before the recent sanctions and crisis, was sputtering and its record of follow through on implementing its grandiose decrees and plans is quite poor. Moreover, these states are clearly determined to ensure and consolidate the primacy of the native language narrative across all dimensions of its use and to defend their national security and integrity to the fullest short of war. Moreover, it is quite clear that Russia, even at its best times, lacks the capacity to deploy soft power on the requisite scale in Central Asia and win the support either of the local governments or the population. In some states, such as Turkmenistan, migration back to Russia has long since begun because of an increasingly inhospitable socioeconomic if not cultural environment. So while Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan will not directly challenge Moscow here, they will proceed by other means to strengthen their own national identity at the expense of the past Russian supremacy in culture and politics. Russian culture will hardly disappear anytime soon from Central Asia but it is steadily losing ground and will increasingly be more of a historical relic than a working alternative except in certain specific environments. English and Chinese, especially as China keeps building Confucius Institutes and consolidates its primacy as Central Asia’ main commercial partner, will displace Russian. And increasingly it appears that under the circumstances there is not much Moscow can do about it.
Stephen Blank is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.CLEARWATER, Fla. – Who knows the secret? Who knows the secret to unlocking the mystery that is Hector Olivera?
Defected from Cuba in September of 2014. Signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers last May for $62 million. Then traded away abruptly last July to the Atlanta Braves.
Fredi Gonzalez's journey to visit Hector Olivera gave him insight into the slugger long before Olivera joined the Braves in a trade from the Dodgers. Scott Cunningham/Getty Images
Traded away after just 19 minor league games. Traded away in a complicated three-team deal that required the Dodgers, essentially, to eat nearly half of Olivera’s contract and left the Braves on the hook for only about $33 million of it. Traded away for reasons no one has ever fully explained.
But whatever the Dodgers thought of Olivera, he’s now a puzzle for the Braves to solve. And who knows the secret? Who knows the secret to solving that puzzle?
Well, here’s a thought: It’s possible no one knows better than his manager.
Long before Hector Olivera became a Brave, Fredi Gonzalez established a connection with him. And now, all these months later, the Braves need that connection to pay dividends.
Back in January of 2015, when Olivera was still a man without a team and, for all intents and purposes, a man without a country, the Braves manager flew to the Dominican Republic to pay him a visit. So what was he doing there?
He was there, Gonzalez said Friday, because “the guy is 30 years old -- 29 years old at the time. And we’re considering investing a lot of money in him. So we’ve got to make sure what kind of guy this guy is.”
Gonzalez had already been to the Dominican twice that winter -- once to take a look at a number of Cuban defectors who were working out, a second time for a showcase just by Olivera. But this third time? This time was just “to talk,” Gonzalez said.
“And I ended up talking with him,” the manager remembered, “for quite a long time.”
Asked Friday what struck him about Olivera, Gonzalez replied, with zero hesitation: “His maturity, obviously, because he was 29 years old. And he wasn’t talking about getting race cars and stuff like that.
“We talked about how many games he played in Cuba,” the manager went on. “You know, he only played three or four times a week. But he goes, `You know, Fredi, the stuff that I’ve got to go through to play three or four times a week, it’s almost the equivalent of playing 160 games a year. I’ve got to wash my uniform. I’ve got to drive 2 ½ hours to practice. There’s no food.’”
But the conversation kept going. Gonzalez asked “about what would happen in certain situations, what kind of guy you are when you’re 0-for-30, or 0-for-27.” He was assured Olivera could handle it. Gonzalez asked how Olivera treated umpires -- and was told: “You can look at the record. I’ve never been thrown out of a game.”
Gonzalez remembers it all vividly -- in part because he had to cancel his birthday party to take this trip. But he knew this was something he had to do, because these are the types of questions a manager has to ask. And the type of questions an organization has to answer.
“Those are things you want to find out about the character, not about the talent,” he said, “because we felt like, if we had to invest that type of money on a guy... we wanted to know what kind of character he was.”
Gonzalez had never done anything like this before, he said. First time ever. Except, in the end, it didn’t matter. Or it seemed as if it didn’t matter. The Braves made an offer....
“And then the Dodgers got him,” Gonzalez said. “And I was like, 'Crap, I spent my birthday in the Dominican.' And the Dodgers got him.
“But who knew,” Gonzalez said with a laugh, a moment later, “that we’d make that trade.”
It’s funny how the world spins. It’s funny how, in the end, Olivera wound up getting his big chance with the Braves, a team with two Cuban-born coaches (Carlos Tosca and Jose Castro) and the only manager in baseball who was born in Cuba.
So even though Gonzalez’s family left Cuba when he was two and Olivera left Cuba when he was 29, they still shared something that no other manager could with Olivera. A bond over their heritage. And a bond from a conversation that took place many months before the trade that brought them together wearing the same uniform.
“There was a connection there,” Gonzalez said. “He was really open with me. And he goes, 'If I do something wrong, I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me because I don’t know.' And for me, I thought it was maturity when he started saying that.
“He said, 'Look, I don’t know what time I’ve got to go to the ballpark. I don’t know anything. If I don’t do something right, if I don’t wear my uniform right, if I don’t run the bases, whatever, I want you to tell me everything.' So it was good.”
But now, can that connection help turn Olivera into the right-handed middle-of-the-order masher the Braves need him to be? A guy who can balance their lineup and hit behind Freddie Freeman? A guy who can learn to be a reasonably passable big league left fielder?
We’re about to find out.
In Cuba, Olivera once strung together five straight seasons with an OPS of.924 or better, including three with an OPS over 1.000. But the last of those seasons came five years ago.
He has played just 59 games since 2015 -- all of them in the final few months of last season. And there was nothing special about them. A.272/.326/.376 slash line, with just two home runs, in 35 minor league games. Then a.253/.310/.405 cameo with the Braves in September.
His team is willing to chalk that up to rust on the field, and hamstring issues and major cultural adjustments off the field. But that was then. And now, the Braves need him to prove he’s the talent so many teams thought he was following his defection. And they don’t have much time to wait around to see if that happens. After all, he turns 31 years old in a month.
“He’s not 23,” Gonzalez said. “He’s 30. And... how many big leaguers play to the age of 35? Not many. And the guys who do have been playing since the age of 19 or 20 in the big leagues. They’ve had long careers. So shoot, I’m not worried about (what he’ll be at) 35 years old. I’m worried about now.”
For what it’s worth, Olivera went 1-for-3 on Friday in a 12-11 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies. He has gone 4-for-10 this spring, in his first three games. And early on, it looks as if he can handle left field, even if he won’t ever be Alex Gordon out there.
Meanwhile, off the field, he finally has a home, finally knows where he’s going to be living and playing, finally has gotten his family out of Cuba and over to America. So his team’s hope is that peace of mind will help bring out the best of him.
But who knows? Who knows the secret? Who truly knows the secret to unlock the mystery that is Hector Olivera?
“I’m always optimistic,” his manager said. “I think (he has) a year, or almost a year in the United States now. Everybody’s home. He just got his green card the other day. He’s thinking about just baseball now.
“So I think that we’re going to see something that our scouts saw,” Fredi Gonzalez said. “I really do.”The Bee Explains: Main Differences Between Popular Bible Translations
Have you noticed how many Bible translations are available these days? There are so many to choose from that it can get downright overwhelming. Lucky for you, we at The Babylon Bee are world-class Bible experts—fluent in the original Hebrew, Greek, and King’s English—and we are here to explain the main differences between the most popular versions of the Holy Scriptures.
NIV
The Nearly Inspired Version continues to be the best-selling Bible translation, even after it was revealed that radical left-wing feminist Lena Dunham sat on the translating committee for its 2011 textual update and convinced the rest of the folks that it was time to smash the patriarchy. This version of God’s word strives for a optimal balance between dynamic equivalence, formal equivalence, and gender term inaccuracies.
NLT
The Not Literal Translation is very popular among those who like God’s Word delivered through slang, emojis, and internet shorthand. It was developed by a group of teens in a Christian high school as a class project. Example: the NLT carefully renders John 3:16 as “lol smh #YASSS tbh”
KJV
The Knoweth Jesus Version has legions of disciples who herald it as the only legitimate form of the Scriptures, claiming that all others have been developed through a partnership between the New World Order and Satan himself in order to make sure they don’t knoweth Jesus. KJVers contend that modern Satanic versions intentionally obscure important Christian truths like the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the NASA flat-earth cover-up. Also a top choice for readability, memorization, and open-air preaching at sporting events.
NKJV
A coalition of Masonic cultists and homosexuals decided it would be a good idea to tamper with the KJV for some reason, ripping out sacred words like “thee” and “thine” and replacing them with words you can actually understand, giving rise to the Not Knoweth Jesus Version.
NASB
A group of really lazy translators in the early 1960s decided to just copy the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Scriptures word for word, throwing readability to the wind, and the result was the Nerdy Academics’ Snooty Bible. Parsing convoluted renderings and scratching your head trying to figure out what a sentence could possibly mean is half the fun of Bible reading, anyway.
ESV
For the Bible nerd who wants everyone to think he’s cool, the Elect Standard Version is perfect. Crossway has pumped out literally billions of different varieties so people will know that you’re one of the unique elect. We highly recommend the authentic mink cover with real tobacco-scented pages—you haven’t read the Bible until you’ve read a designer ESV.
CSB
The Cool Southern Baptist version is the new kid on the block, made by and for Southern Baptist believers, in an effort to poach some of the ESV’s cool factor. It seems to be pretty popular so far, even though it has stoked a bit of controversy by its rendering of Esau selling his birth right for “casserole.”
The Message
Renowned author and Bible scholar Eugene Peterson painstakingly translated the Scriptures from the original languages into a lit freestyle rap. Peterson reportedly spent decades undercover with a violent Detroit gang in order to develop the rich vocabulary and colorful metaphors packed into The Message. There are also rumors that heavy marijuana and LSD use aided him in his translation process.
What are the main differences between the most popular Bible translations? Now you know!WATCH: Nancy Grace Attempts to Rewrite Gay History, Fails Miserably
Nancy Grace put her misunderstanding of history on display in a recent segment on CNN’s HLN channel, when she claimed that noted antigay activist Anita Bryant was just a sweet, mild-mannered gospel singer and orange juice pitchwoman, unfairly “stalked” by gay activist Thom Higgins, who famously threw a pie in Bryant's face.
In a May 29 report on Brad Pitt's stalker, Grace’s guest, psychologist Bethany Marshall, defined stalking as the behavior of someone seeking agency over the lives of celebrities. That prompted Grace (watch below) to use the pie attack on Bryant as an example of a similarly motivated attack. Grace’s reasoning completely ignored the political context of the pie attack in light of Bryant’s well-known antigay views.
“Do you remember Anita Bryant? Anita Bryant was a religious singer,” said Grace. “I think she represented the orange industry. She had a lot of conservative views, but she had this beautiful voice, and she was everywhere, singing all the time. A lot of times it was Christian inspirational music. I still remember when I was a little girl and somebody came up and did this to her in public. I mean, she was speaking on some issue dear to her heart.... Why would you do this to a sweet lady — whether you agree with her politics or not?”
That issue, of course, was homosexuality. Bryant had been on a public crusade against homosexuality before the pie attack, launching the “Save Our Children” campaign in Miami-Dade County, Fla., and regularly making hateful and unsupported statements about homosexuality and gay people in the media. Bryant was on record claiming that “if gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail-biters.” As one of the first to popularize the false connection between homosexuality and pedophilia, Bryant also said, “As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.”
Reaction to Grace’s historical rewrite came swiftly from gay activists and commentators, including a scathing takedown by Huffington Post blogger Domenick Scudera that details the myriad of differences between the two attackers and the contexts in which the attacks took place.Loan words sometimes take on whole new meanings: for example the word ‘parka’ in Japan refers to a ‘hooded sweatshirt’ or ‘hoodie’ as opposed to the jacket commonly called a ‘parka’ in English:
I’d be really curious to dig into the etymology of these kinds of words, and it’s probably fairly easy to trace their emergence because they came into use so recently. Perhaps parka entered Japanese not from english but from another language where the term already had this different meaning? Or, perhaps it was originally used as a brandname for a hooded sweatshirt?
Or, perhaps it’s illustrative of the nature of loan words themselves, where their lack of history makes them especially malleable and prone to mistaken meanings shortly after they’re introduced.
Regardless, here is a list of ‘loan words gone wrong,’ which sound as if they’ve come from english, but who’s meaning may not be immediately apparent to english-speakers, and words that sound like loan words but are in fact neologisms:
Paper driver – Peipaa doraibaa – ペーパー ドライバー – someone who has their driver’s license but doesn’t actually drive or know how to drive well.
Y-Shirt – Wai Shatzu – Y-シャツ – Dress Shirt. Business Shirt. Like a T-shirt, get it?
Tension – Tenshon – テンション – something like energy, spirit, excitement. Often heard in context of it rising or lowering. So if ‘Tenshon’ rises, (テンションが上がる) that means spirits or energy are rising, whereas ‘Tenshon’ dropping (テンションが下がる) means becoming disappointed or discouraged.
Juice – Juusu – ジュース – A pet peeve of mine, in Japanese ‘Juusu’ refers to fruit/vegetable juice and sodas. Basically any non-alcoholic beverage. To be fair there was already a word for fruit juice ‘Kaju-’ (果汁). And, don’t even get me started on – Juusu – ジュース – A pet peeve of mine, in Japanese ‘Juusu’ refers to fruit/vegetable juice and sodas. Basically any non-alcoholic beverage. To be fair there was already a word for fruit juice ‘Kaju-’ (果汁). And, don’t even get me started on watermelon not being considered a fruit
Bitch – Bicchi -ビッチ – to try to not be crass a… promiscuous woman. ヤリマン, whereas in english, according to the mirriam webster dictionary a bitch means ‘often offensive : a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman —sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse.’
Manshion – Manshon – マンション – Large apartment building. High-rise apartment building, as opposed to the American English palatial personal estate. Though, dictionaries mention the British english definition of ‘a large building divided into apartments’
Apartment – Apa-to – アパート – Smaller, usually cheaper, apartment building. Can kind of resemble a motel.
Jet Coaster – Jetto Kousuta – ジェットコースター – A rollercoaster. This is a great word, much more poetic than the rollercoaster.
Ice – Aisu – アイス – Ice Cream
Soft Cream – Sofuto kuriimu – ソフトクリーム – Soft Serve (Ice Cream)
Cooler – Kuuraa – クーラー – Air Conditioner (A.C.)
Stove – Sto-bu – ストーブ – HeaterImage copyright Airbus
Airbus has more than halved its delivery target for its super-jumbo A380 planes.
The company said it would supply 12 of the aircraft per year from 2018, down from the 27 it delivered in 2015.
It announced the cutback at the Farnborough Airshow.
The A380's disappointing demand is in contrast to that for its smaller planes. The European plane maker earlier announced $20bn in orders for smaller planes,
There are 193 two-deck A380s in operation.
The aircraft only began breaking even last year. Airbus said it would still achieve that next year with as few as 20 deliveries but gave no further guidance.
The announcement of a fall in deliveries raises fears it could revert to making losses.
Airbus said: "The company will continue to improve the efficiency of its industrial system |
, four servings later, one for me and three for Todd...I ended up surrendering a big bowl of the pesto pasta to Todd for his lunch. I brought a PB&J to work. Best wife ever? Dang, now I really want some of that pesto!
This creamy pesto, lightened up by using a smaller amount of oil gets it's zing from lemon juice and miso. Pine nuts, move over because walnuts are taking center stage here. And for real, fresh basil in Alaska in January can be hard to come by. Plus, I'm not a bajillionaire. Broccoli it is!
Broccoli Walnut Pesto
Serves 6
Broccoli:
1 large head of broccoli, florets only
dash of salt
Pasta:
16 oz. of dry pasta
dash of salt
Pesto Sauce:
1/3 cup of walnuts, chopped
2 garlic cloves, whole
1 Tbsp. fresh basil paste or small handful of fresh basil (optional)
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. walnut oil (olive oil will work, too)
1 Tbsp. miso paste
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
Notes: Be sure to reserve about 1/2 cup of the pasta water for the pesto sauce.
Start by bringing a medium pot of salted water to boil. Chop off the broccoli florets and once the water is boiling, place them in the water. Allow them to boil for about 3 minutes. Then, remove the florets with a slotted spoon and submerge in a large bowl of cold water. Allow to rest in the water until ready for use.
Keep that water boiling and add another dash of salt. Add the dry pasta and cook according to package. I like to use a pasta that is dense and sturdy, so it can stand up to being stirred with the pesto. Once the pasta is al dente, strain, but not completely. Leave about 1/2 cup of pasta water at the bottom, with the noodles. Place the pot of noodles aside until ready to use.
In a food processor, combine all the pesto sauce ingredients and process until it's reached a fine consistency. There will be a lot of scraping down the sides of the bowl, but it's a small price to pay.
Now, strain the broccoli from the cold water and add the florets to the processor. Process until very smooth and creamy.
Add the pesto sauce into the pot of noodles and stir very well, ensuring to combine the water at the bottom. You can add a pinch of salt here too.
Serve hot with crushed walnuts on top, if you like!
Listening to Portugal. The Man – Modern Jesus
[yumprint-recipe id='66']Read the details for yourself, but from what I’m picking up, resolution of the fiscal cliff before New Years still requires Rep Boehner to bring a vote up in the House that will pass with majority D votes, and I’ve seen no indication that this will happen.
[Update: OK, I take that back…I can see a weedy, pot-hole-filled path to a deal before New Years. Based on sketchy details I’m picking up in the air, McConnell and Reid are apparently huddling over a deal. If they come up with something acceptable to both of them, McConnell will allow it to come to an up-or-down vote. The word on the street is that if that deal passed the Senate, Boehner would allow it to come up in the House, where, depending on what’s in it, it could pass with mostly D’s. This could all happen quickly, over the next two days.]
In their big meeting today, the President apparently stuck to his $250,000 threshold for the tax increases, though there’s behind-the-scenes chatter of a deal being discussed in the Senate with a $400,000 threshold.
That deal–if it should come into play, which it currently is not–may also keep the estate tax where it is now ($5m exemption, 35% rate) instead of accepting the WH reset to $3.5m exemption and 45% rate. I suspect that if Congressional R’s (and probably some D’s) are inflexible on that point, the WH will not accept the change…nor should they. Remember, the estate tax resets to $1m exemption and a 55% mere hours from now.
I suspect a deal that kept the threshold at $250K, suspended the sequester, patched the AMT and doc fix, and extended UI, would pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the President. The question then is: will McConnell and Reid agree on such a deal (or something close to it–I can see McConnell pushing for a higher tax threshold)? If not, it’s hard to envision, with a few days to go, any alternative path that doesn’t lead us off the cliff. In which case, what they should be talking about now is how quickly they can reverse the damage.
Me, I’m feeling intense whiplash from all of this and while there’d be signs of relief were there a deal before the deadline, I’m not sure there’s cosmic economic significance between a small bore deal on Dec 31 or the same deal a few days later. I rather them not cram out a deal if that means accepting bad decisions.So it didn’t make sense to fill children with facts, which they would forget as soon as the test was over. The goal was to help them recognize relationships between facts. You didn’t have to be a physicist or a historian to understand gravity or the Civil War. But you did need a teacher who could help you think like a physicist or a historian, ordering and analyzing information just like they did.
A half century after Bruner laid out these ideas in his magnum opus, The Process of Education, they have become the accepted “best practice” in American schools. But few teachers and students actually practice them. There’s an enormous gap between the story the United States tells about education and the way it actually does happen.
The first reason has to do with the preparation of America’s teaching force. To instruct children in the manner that Bruner imagined, you need to have a deep knowledge of the subject that you teach. I’m a professor of education at a major research university, but I couldn’t teach middle-school biology. I could make the kids memorize the parts of an atom or a cell, but that wouldn’t help them understand how biology “works”: how it asks questions, frames theories, and collects evidence.
And here’s the truly depressing fact: Many of the country’s teachers don’t have that kind of knowledge, either. Although most states now require future teachers to major in the subject they will instruct, they don’t demand that they exhibit a true mastery of it. Drawn overwhelmingly from the middle-to-low achievement range of their college cohorts, many of America’s teachers simply lack the strong disciplinary background to induct kids into a discipline.
Meanwhile, teachers who do possess such expertise are hamstrung by the beast of “accountability.” Since Congress passed the landmark No Child Left Behind law in 2001, federal and state rules have tied school funding—and, in some places, teacher salaries—to students’ performance on standardized tests. Especially in poorer communities, the result has been the antithesis of what Bruner imagined: a joyless pedagogy of rote memorization, preparing kids for the next high-stakes exam.
Finally, it’s simply not clear that American citizens—you know, the people who elect school boards and pay taxes—want the type of instruction that Bruner did. He learned that the hard way when he developed a federally funded curriculum in the late 1960s called Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), which used examples from different times and places to ask basic questions about human behavior and morality.
But some of the curriculum’s content—especially its description of the Netsilik Eskimos, who practiced infanticide and euthanasia—caught the eye of conservatives, who wanted their children to be taught a single moral code. Congress eventually defunded MACOS, which reminds us about the dangers of encouraging kids to think for themselves. They might end up disagreeing with their parents, and a lot of Americans—maybe, most of them—don’t want that.
Later in his career, Bruner turned to the question of culture and education: how different societies influence human growth and development. My fear is that American culture doesn’t really accept the story that Bruner told about teaching. But I’ll always be grateful to him for telling it, over and over again, in the hope that the nation might one day learn it by heart.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.That Kraft cheese slice you might chomp for lunch today? It came from a mammoth subterranean dairy bunker the company uses as dirt cheap refrigeration and storage, Wired reports. Inside a 70 year old mine that's still rocked by explosions.
The cheesy compound is filled to the ceiling with 680-pound drums of sandwich wonderfulness, kept at a chilly 36 degrees Fahrenheit through a combination of being one hundred feet below ground, and a powerful liquid cooling system. The adjacent area is still an active limestone mine, but luckily, thick walls keep the cheese cache safe. Phew. So it's incredibly huge, a little cold, and a little dangerous. This is fine with me. I would gladly put on my warmest coat and skip through this grand hall of lunchtime glory, this Valhalla of heavily processed fluorescent "food," spraying Velveeta into my mouth and stuffing my pockets with delicious orange treasures. [Wired]
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Photograph by Christoph MorlinghausAn NDP proposal to limit political parties’ election campaign spending might have a folksy air about it, but it would be a serious blow to democracy.
Calgary-Shaw MLA Graham Sucha, who talks about “getting big money out of politics,” has forwarded a motion to a legislative committee stating that campaign costs should be capped at $1.6 million per party, or about 60 cents per elector.
The government has already rightly banned political contributions from corporations and unions, but it’s an overreach to now contemplate dictating how much parties can spend in their efforts to connect with voters.
“We really want to make sure that we have a level playing field in ensuring elected officials are accountable to citizens of Alberta and not those with the deepest pockets,” says Sucha, who has also proposed local candidate spending limits of $40,000 for most ridings and $50,000 for northern constituencies.
There’s something unseemly about the notion of putting politicians in a financial straitjacket and telling them there’s a limit to how much they can engage with the people they hope to represent. It smacks of arrogance to think the government knows best how much parties should spend in trying to win the hearts and minds of Albertans.
One would hope Sucha would be wise enough to know there isn’t a clear correlation between how much parties spend and how many votes they attract. In the 2015 election campaign, for instance, the NDP spent about $1.7 million in its successful attempt to end the four-decade-old Progressive Conservative dynasty. The Tories spent a whopping $4.3 million and finished in third place, while the Wildrose spent just $1.2 million to become the official Opposition.
The NDP’s opponents have it right about Sucha’s worrisome proposal.
“Our biggest concern is that we’re not handcuffing parties so much they can’t actually get out and communicate with Albertans,” says Wildrose MLA Jason Nixon. He’s not opposed to a spending cap, but believes the NDP is setting the threshold too low.
Nixon observes that a low spending cap may hand incumbents an unfair advantage because they begin a campaign with better name recognition than their rivals.
And as Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark says, the NDP may end up giving itself an edge if it accepts Sucha’s recommendation, given it has the resources of government at its disposal during the approach to the election call in 2019.
The NDP might have the best of intentions in considering a cap on campaign spending, but some decisions are best left to political parties and the voters they hope to court.New Orleans has elected its first female mayor in the city’s history.
Fox 8 News projected Saturday night that LaToya Cantrell would be elected mayor of New Orleans.
Cantrell, a former New Orleans city council member and a Democrat, defeated opponent Desiree Charbonnet to win the election. She succeeds Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
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"Almost 300 years, my friends, and New Orleans, we're still making history," Cantrell told supporters, according to The Times-Picayune.
Cantrell ran on a platform advocating criminal justice reform, creating an LGBTQ outreach office at city hall and increasing affordable housing in the city, according to her campaign website.
Cantrell’s victory follows a wave of historic mayoral elections in recent weeks, including the city of Seattle electing its first lesbian mayor; Helena, Mont., electing a Liberian refugee as its mayor and the city of St. Paul, Minn., electing its first African-American mayor.About
The Mae Sot Blind Centre was established by Boon. Boon is a partially blind woman who has fought all her life to prove that she deserves a place in society. After showing everyone that she is more than capable she decided to start a school for poor blind children from her community in Thailand.
Boon has an amazing story and it deserves to be told well. We will use the funds for this project on video equipment including audio recorders, camera, lens, editing, hiring a translator, paying music royalties and traveling to different locations.
One year ago I met Boon; she had posted on a Facebook group for our little town that her fence had blown over and she needed help because she didn't want her students getting hurt or her dogs getting out. So, a friend and I headed over, fixed the gate, and cleared a lot of trash that had accumulated in her side yard.
Since then I have gotten to know her and her students better and better. About 6 months ago I started filming some of the stuff they have been doing. At the beginning it was for a short youtube video to share with her friends back home (which is the video posted here) and after a few interviews, pizza parties, and awards we decided we needed to put it together into a full length documentary.
We are hoping to make something that we can submit to film festivals to share what is going on with the children at the Mae Sot Blind Centre and that even though their lives are tough, they are more than capable to live them.The answer to that is a little tangled, but it isn’t Linden Lab.
Without its users, Second Life is almost entirely tabula rasa (a blank slate). It’s users who create the content, produce the goods, provide the services, and are responsible for pretty much everything you see and hear while you’re logged in. Yes, that also includes a couple hundred or so Linden alts. The users are, for all practical purposes, beyond any reasonable control.
But does that mean that the users control Second Life? No, it doesn’t.
Users are like drivers. I decide I want to go someplace; I drive there. You want to go somewhere; you drive there (just work with me on this analogy for a moment). Everyone drives themselves wherever they need or want to go, whenever they want to do it.
We each decide where and when we do that, based on our personal desires, needs and circumstances.
Sometimes that leads to traffic snarls, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Linden Lab is like the office of the Department of Transport, in this little analogy
It can set speed limits, put in (or take out) speed bumps and road-signs, issue licenses, and even change some roads around, but it can’t tell drivers where and when to travel. It can, however, make a complete mess of things if it tries to exert too much control over traffic patterns.
In a sense, then, Second Life is a collective expression of our activity as users, and that’s beyond any effective control.
The closest Linden Lab can hope to come is to influence it slightly with pricing, policy, features, support and enforcement; and those can be powerful influences, but they’re not controls, and they’re not remotely precise or predictable. The only genuine control that Linden Lab really has over Second Life is the power to switch it off, and that’s probably the last thing that it would ever want to do.
Now, remember what I just said about making a mess of things?
That’s what happens when the goals of the transport authority fail to align with the goals of road users. You get vast, tree-lined avenues or freeways that are largely unused, while drivers struggle with impossible tangles of one-way streets and dead-ends instead.
You cannot have all those drivers without the transport authority, though. The Web wouldn’t be what it is without standards-bodies, domain regulatory authorities and the like. A certain amount of regulation improves things for everyone, when it is properly aligned with the needs of users, even if it means that you grumble about speed-limits and seat-belt laws.
There’s talk of Second Life having lost its “frontier feel” and in a sense that’s partially correct. What it has lost is the sense that Linden Lab is in partnership with the users of Second Life and has those users’ collective goals in mind. The relationship between the Lab and the users feels unnecessarily adversarial at times, perhaps due to the impression that Linden Lab’s direction is diverging from the needs of its users – whether that perception is actually correct or not.
But if Linden Lab tries to control Second Life, rather than just influence it, or the Lab tries to influence it in ways that are increasingly incompatible with the aggregate direction of users, then Second Life eventually will effectively cease to exist, as surely and as inevitably as if it had been switched off. Which is no good for anybody.
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Tags: Linden Lab / Linden Research Inc, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual Environments and Virtual WorldsA HISTORIC vote to legalise cannabis in California could pave the way to end the war on drugs in the UK and across the globe, it has been claimed.
GETTY HISTORIC: Campaigners believe the California vote could end the war on drugs
As the US decides on a new president, Californians will also choose whether to legalise marijuana in a vote that could shape drug policy across the globe. Campaigners believe legalising cannabis in the US state – the world’s 6th largest economy – could trigger a domino effect around the world. If the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA) is passed, adults will be legally allowed to possess up to an ounce of cannabis and grow up to six plants for personal use. Because California – population 38.8 million – is such a large state, experts believe this could lead to a federal ban across every state.
GETTY BUSH: Growing cannabis for medical purposes is legal in some US states
Peter Reynolds, president of CLEAR – a pro-cannabis reform UK political party, believes it is a big day for the war against cannabis prohibition. He exclusively told Daily Star Online: “With a population of 38 million and the sixth biggest economy in the world, legalisation in California will make progress unstoppable throughout the rest of the world. “At last, the lies and misinformation that governments and the media have been publishing about cannabis for so long are giving way to truth and common sense." Massachusetts and Maine also have upcoming votes on cannabis legalisation in November. While Arizona and Nevada will vote on plans to ditch marijuana prohibition next month. Under current federal law in the US, cannabis is not recognised as having any therapeutic value. Therefore anyone using and caught in possession of the drug can be prosecuted. Cannabis is classified as a Schedule 1 drug - the same as heroin – meaning the drug is deemed to have “high potential for abuse”.
GETTY LEGALISED: There is strong support for pot legalisation in California
GETTY GREEN: Smoking cannabis can be harmful to health
“Legalisation in California will make progress unstoppable throughout the rest of the world.” Peter Reynolds, president of CLEAR The latest polling from LA Times suggests 58% of likely voters support Proposition 64, California's legalisation initiative, against 37% who oppose it. Data from the World Bank found California was the sixth largest economy in the world in 2015 - and legalisation could allow it to grow even bigger. Experts from research firm Arcview Group believe the market for recreational and medical cannabis could grow from $7 billion (£5.6 billion) to $22 billion (£17 billion) within the next four years if the law is passed and comes into force on January 1, 2017. Due to the state’s economic clout, legalising the recreational use of cannabis would be seen as a landmark moment in drug policy reform. Troy Dayton, chief executive of Arcview, said: “This is the vote heard round the world. “What we’ve seen before has been tiny compared to what we are going to see in California.”
Global cannabis legalisation march Tens of thousands of people across the globe took to the streets to march for the legalisation of marijuana. 1 / 16 Getty Thousands of people across the globe take part in a march for the legalisation of cannabis
GETTY POT: The drug is currently illegal in the UK
Steve Rolles, senior analyst at UK-based Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told Daily Star Online the “game-changing” vote will “inevitably” prompt the UK to end its ban on the drug. Cannabis is currently classified as a Class B drug in the UK, with possession carrying a maximum sentence of five years in jail or an unlimited fine. Rolles said: “This is the beginning of the end of cannabis prohibition. “Polls show that Californians are highly likely to repeal this bad law so that their government takes control of cannabis supply from gangsters. “They recognise that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has conspicuously failed to protect young people, promote health or reduce crime. “From Canada to Uruguay, and from Jamaica to Spain, more and more jurisdictions are regulating cannabis. “But California’s size makes it the real game-changer. It will inevitably lead to the end of both US federal prohibition, and the international prohibition on cannabis - with the UK following suit sooner rather than later."
GETTY BENEFITS: Marijuana has been used to treat cancer sufferersOkay—let’s get this point out of the way: this is from one anonymous source, though this person claims to be a high-ranking official within the FBI. Yet, it’s part of an ongoing narrative pointing to purported disagreements between FBI Director James Comey’s decision not to file charges against Hillary Clinton over her email server and the FBI agents tasked with investigating the matter. The source alleges that virtually no one involved in the investigation agreed with Comey’s decision to give Clinton a pass, and that the consensus to have Clinton have her security clearance yanked was unanimous (via Fox News):
The source, who spoke to FoxNews.com on the condition of anonymity, said FBI Director James Comey’s dramatic July 5 announcement that he would not recommend to the Attorney General’s office that the former secretary of state be charged left members of the investigative team dismayed and disgusted. More than 100 FBI agents and analysts worked around the clock with six attorneys from the DOJ’s National Security Division, Counter Espionage Section, to investigate the case. “No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute -- it was a top-down decision,” said the source, whose identity and role in the case has been verified by FoxNews.com. A high-ranking FBI official told Fox News that while it might not have been a unanimous decision, “It was unanimous that we all wanted her [Clinton’s] security clearance yanked.” “It is safe to say the vast majority felt she should be prosecuted,” the senior FBI official told Fox News. “We were floored while listening to the FBI briefing because Comey laid it all out, and then said ‘but we are doing nothing,’ which made no sense to us.”
On July 5, Comey unveiled the devastating details from the investigation, including citing that Clinton and her team were “extremely careless” concerning handling classified information. There were also 110 emails on 52 separate chains that were determined to have classified information on them. If anything, Comey offered an indictment of Clinton’s judgment, which NBC’s Chuck Todd noted would make for an effective GOP attack ad that never came from the Trump campaign. The FBI found just three emails that were determined to be classified at the time they were sent and received, though they were not properly marked. Then, we had the revelation that Clinton didn’t know that “c” meant classified. Wikileaks’ Julian Assange disagrees, noting that Clinton certainly knew what those markings meant, as she’s an original classification authority as our top diplomat.
Still, there are suspicious instances that were revealed prior to and after Comey’s July 5 announcement. For starters, how Bill Clinton delayed departure in Phoenix to ensure a run-in with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who proceeded to have a meeting with Clinton on her private jet for about 30 minutes. Katie noted that FBI agents feel a deal was struck on that plane. The optics were enough to cast doubt on Comey’s presser held after Independence Day. We’ll see what comes of this, but it’s another episode in this apparent consternation between the agents and the FBI Director.Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
As January 1865 drew to a close, Lt. Gen. William T. Sherman readied his army, then camped around Savannah, Ga., to march north into South Carolina. Some 60,000 men strong, Sherman’s troops sensed the Confederacy’s flagging will. Four years of carnage had cost Southerners dearly, and Sherman’s campaign across Georgia had dealt the Confederacy a devastating blow. With the Army of Northern Virginia crouched in defensive positions around Richmond and Confederates scrambling to defend the Palmetto State, Sherman’s men prepared to push on, determined to bring the long and bloody war to an end.
No one better captured the drama of the moment than Capt. Henry Orlando Marcy, a surgeon assigned to the 35th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops, who kept a keen-eyed diary throughout the campaign. Marcy, a Massachusetts native, had enlisted upon graduating from Harvard University in the spring of 1863. Abolitionist sentiments made him a minority among Union officers and a keen observer of race and class. As his unit moved into South Carolina, he took note of conflicts at the heart of Southern society. Marcy’s powers of perception, however, did not extend to his own prejudices. He held deep commitments to the men of the 35th but viewed slaves with a combination of paternalism and pity, and at times he showed affinity for Southerners of comparable social rank. Marcy’s writings simultaneously revealed the nobility of the Union cause and its limits.
The Carolinas campaign began in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, when Union troops broke camps in lower Beaufort County, S.C., and surged into the interior of the state. Sherman divided his army into two formations. The 14th and 20th Corps marched along the Savannah River before turning north, a move designed to confuse the enemy. The 15th and 17th corps, which included the 35th U.S.C.T., marched from the vicinity of Beaufort in the direction of Branchville and Fort Motte. They met somewhat greater resistance than their counterparts, but nowhere did Confederates mount a strong defense. Outmanned and caught off-guard by Sherman’s erratic movements, rebel forces found themselves unable to do more than slow the Union advance.
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Marcy’s duties included more than medicine. Although he tended to the sick and wounded and administered vaccines, he also supervised foraging parties, destroyed rebel property and carried out patrols. Save for front-line combat, he handled the full range of duties expected of midlevel officers.
As the 35th marched forward, Marcy took note of the changing landscape. Like other Union officers, he viewed the plantations of the coastal region with awe. East of Salkehatchie, he saw a spectacular expanse of rice fields “divided and subdivided into squares as regularly as a city.” Beyond lay “a range of low hills … all cleared and under cultivation.” Several groups of buildings appeared as “distinct villages.” “These are the finest plantations I have ever seen,” Marcy wrote.
Nearly three weeks later, as his unit moved along the Ashley River, Marcy saw some of the oldest plantations in the state. Here he encountered the stately mansion at Drayton Hall and the plantation of Henry Middleton, a one-time minister to Russia. Carefully ordered landscapes, handsome houses, and well-kept grounds demonstrated the authority and power the planter class had traditionally wielded.
Slaves rejoiced upon realizing that the moment of emancipation had arrived. At one plantation, Marcy encountered “slaves overjoyed at our coming. They thank God, and say they have long prayed for coming. Say they don’t want Massa anymore.” On another occasion, Marcy found himself surrounded by slaves giving “various demonstrations of joy.” “All wanted to ‘shake hands.’ Guess this is a custom of theirs,” he mused. Slaves looted the houses of former masters and quickly organized themselves. After watching a group clear land at a Cooper River plantation, Marcy noted, “They are willing to labor hard if they can have reasonable recompense. I encouraged them, promising they should have a part of the crop.”
Even as Marcy admired slaves’ enthusiasm and self-reliance, he sympathized with the planter class, even those he identified as “bitter rebels.” He chafed at an order to burn the house of Charles Heyward, a wealthy planter. “The destruction of such property seems a great pity,” Marcy remarked. In another instance, seeing a grand house in ruins left him despondent. “Tis very sad,” he wrote. “Yesterday it was the finest place I ever saw, now all destroyed. The house was erected before the Revolution and was in splendid keeping.”
The most revealing encounter that Marcy recorded occurred at the Stoney Plantation on Back River, in the vicinity of Goose Creek. As a small group of his men foraged nearby, Marcy found several members of the Stoney family at home. “Intelligent, but bitter rebels,” he noted. “The ladies plainly spoke of their sentiments and gloried in their struggle.” The only male present was “a lame son-in-law.” The family patriarch, Peter Gaillard Stoney, and five of his sons were serving in the Confederate army. The Stoney women invited Marcy and another officer to stay for dinner. “The ladies were so attractive, we accepted,” Marcy explained.
During the meal, Mrs. Stoney mentioned strained relations with the family’s slaves. “Mrs. S. said the niggers had become unruly and she feared trouble with them,” Marcy wrote. The difficulty had begun after a visit by a Union gunboat a few days before. A Union officer had told the slaves to remain on the plantation and continue working as before. Marcy surmised that the man must have been “overcome by the charm of the ladies, or some other motive.” The slaves protested. “This was not what … they had heard Massa Linkinn had promised them,” Marcy noted. Understandably, “They couldn’t exactly see how they were free if they must do just as before.”
Marcy agreed to speak to the Stoney slaves. From a small porch he addressed an audience of about 150 “colored people of all ages and sizes.” They stood “clothed in all sorts of garments, from the ordinary homespun to whole suits made of old carpets and blankets.” Nearly all had “feet and heads bare,” and few “were clothed sufficiently to prevent them from suffering.” No record of his remarks survives, but he noted that the slaves “seemed appreciative and happy, thanked God for freedom and promised to make good use of it.” The Stoneys took a different view. They retreated to a parlor “in silence.” When Marcy joined them, Mrs. Stoney made it clear that “she esteemed my remarks of less value than the colored people.”
The episode at the Stoney plantation revealed conflicts at the heart of the struggle over slavery. Even as emancipation arrived, masters expected blacks to remain subordinate and continue laboring without complaint. Freedpeople demanded autonomy and the ability to shape the circumstances of their lives. Fierce conflicts erupted. For their part, Northerners such as Marcy wavered in their commitment to black equality and large-scale social reform. Most Northerners celebrated slavery’s destruction but opposed African-American equality. Even the minority who supported black civil rights questioned what federal authorities could and should do to reshape the Southern social order.
In the months and years that followed, conflicts over Reconstruction gripped the nation. The untimely assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, left federal policy toward former Confederate states unsettled, and the lenient policies enacted by his successor, Andrew Johnson, enraged the northern public. Congressional Republicans quickly seized control of Reconstruction. For a time, it appeared that federal action might ensure voting rights, full civil rights and possibly even access to economic resources for former slaves. Yet support for such measures quickly faded, and by the time Ulysses S. Grant became president in March 1869, the bid to remake the nation in the name of liberty and equality for all had lost steam. Racialized terror, electoral strife and inadequate support by federal authorities sounded the death knell for a South where blacks rose above the status of a marginalized class.
Marcy’s view of affairs in the spring of 1865 hinted at reasons for the boldness of Reconstruction, and why it ultimately failed. The sincerity of his commitment to the men of the 35th and the cause of racial equality cannot be doubted. When he received his discharge orders on June 1, he professed his love and respect for the “honest, true faithful black men” with whom he had “labored for so long.” The following spring he returned to South Carolina with plans to buy and operate a plantation, a measure intended to help African-Americans “obtain justice.” Although the project failed, it nonetheless demonstrated his desire to create a more equitable South. Yet Marcy’s admiration for the planter class also showed inclinations that undermined the aim of wholesale social reform. When he admired grand houses without recognizing them as products of forced labor, he ignored crucial dimensions of the Union cause. The episode at the Stoney plantation showed how class interests conflicted with the aim of black empowerment. No matter how earnestly Marcy believed in racial equality, he identified more closely with the Southern elite than with newly freed slaves. Between him and the latter lay a social distance that would ultimately undermine efforts to secure black civil rights.
Marcy spent the remainder of the Carolinas campaign in Charleston, where the 35th U.S.C.T. acted as an occupying force. The news of Lincoln’s assassination left him shocked and angry, and he soon found himself questioning the price of victory. “At what terrible cost have we purchased the priceless jewel of liberty?” he asked. In the weeks that followed, he cared for freedpeople on nearby plantations, surveyed the condition of the Medical College of South Carolina, and vaccinated orphans at the Charleston Orphan Asylum. On June 8 he sailed from Charleston on the steamer Clyde. The view from the harbor led him to exclaim: “The war here began is finished, the object of our four years of fighting accomplished. The rebellion dead, arm[ed] treason sinking out of sight and slavery a thing of the past!”
Related Disunion Highlights Explore multimedia from the series and navigate through past posts, as well as photos and articles from the Times archive. See the Highlights »
Marcy reached his home in Cambridgeport, Mass., on June 15. He spent the remainder of the year caring for his ailing mother and practicing medicine. New Year’s Eve found him thinking about becoming a missionary in the South. After the failed bid to purchase the plantation in the spring of 1866, he returned to the North and then went abroad. He did postgraduate studies in medicine in London, in Scotland and at the University of Berlin. In 1870 he returned to the United States, having decided to specialize in gynecology. He went on to serve as president of the American Medical Association in 1891-92, became a founding member of the American College of Surgeons and published extensively in medical journals during a long and productive career. He died in 1924.
Marcy played only a small role in the Carolinas campaign, and he had little influence on Reconstruction. Yet his views illustrate the problems that beset the nation as Union victory gave way to new struggles over the postwar order. Reconstruction set bold ambitions for a nation that had always tolerated slavery within its borders, and the failure to achieve its loftiest goals revealed the limits of Northerners’ commitment to social reform in the South. Four years of horrific bloodshed left Americans weary and eager to resume whatever sense of normalcy they could find.
Marcy’s personal story mirrored the broader currents of the era. Though committed to slavery’s destruction, he found racial equality a step too far. In due course, the nation did too. Hence the need for a “Second Reconstruction” – the phrase historians sometimes use in referring to the civil rights movement – a century later. His diary shows the irony and the tragedy of a nation that freed 4.5 million slaves but could neither envision people of color as equals or a society where race did not divide haves from have-nots.
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Sources: Henry O. Marcy, “Diary of a Surgeon: U.S. Army, 1864-1866”; Irving A. Watson, ed. and comp., “Physicians and Surgeons of America”; Journal of the American Medical Association, Jan. 19, 1924; Henry O. Marcy, “The Semi-Centennial of the Introduction of Antiseptic Surgery in America,” in Transactions of the Southern Surgical Association 33 (1921); John G. Barrett, “Sherman’s March Through the Carolinas”; Eric Foner, “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877”; David Blight, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory”; Michael W. Fitzgerald, “Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South;” Anne S. Rubin, “Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and American Memory.”
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Daniel J. Vivian is an assistant professor of history at the University of Louisville.Numbers Rise, But State Compliance Varies
Criminal hate crime incidents reported to police increased 6.8 percent in the United States in 2015; according to official FBI data released Sunday. |
Clark said she didn’t know the answer when asked earlier this week what evidence workers on her campaign had for claiming the woman was an NDP operative.
“You’ll have to speak to the people who tweeted that out,” she added.
Voters go to the polls in British Columbia on Tuesday.FOR the eleventh time in sixteen seasons Kilkenny are All-Ireland hurling champions. Come September the Cats invariably found a way to secure the Liam McCarthy Cup.
FOR the eleventh time in sixteen seasons Kilkenny are All-Ireland hurling champions. Come September the Cats invariably found a way to secure the Liam McCarthy Cup.
This is not the greatest ever Kilkenny team that Brian Cody has ever assembled. It wasn't even the best performance from their particular bunch. Still, they found a way to secure the biggest prize in hurling against a Galway side that frankly failed to make any impact in the second half.
Cody, of course, is the constant in all of Kilkeny's 11 All-Ireland successes since the turn of the century. Such is the county's rate of success that Henry Shefflin's position as the most decorated All-Ireland winner of all time is under threat from two of his team mates!
Eoin Larkin and Jackie Tyrrell – who didn't feature due to a stress fracture – were each collecting their ninth Celtic Cross – just one short of Shefflin record total of ten.
For Galway the famine goes on. What will disappoint them most was their alarming second half fade out. Their three point half time lead (0-14; 1-8) didn't fully reflect how superior they had been particularly in the second quarter.
Displaying the characteristics one normally associated with the Cats, Galway had physically dominated their opponents. Sure, they got a couple of fortunate calls from the referee but the fact they recorded 14 scores compared to nine for Kilkenny underlined the extent of their dominance.
It was against this background that their second half capitulation was all the more surprising. They simply could never get any traction after the break in a contest that lacked fluency and was very stop-start in nature.
By the 42nd minute Kilkenny had drawn level and although Galway substitute David Collins briefly put the Tribesmen ahead again once Kilkenny went ahead in the 47th minute they never looked like relinquishing that advantage.
Kilkenny simply worked harder that Galway after the break; they formed a six man barrier across their half back and completely dominated the Galway puck out with Conor Fogarty, Padraig Walsh and Cillian Buckley outstanding in winning primary possession.
Their control of the game was underlined by the fact that the only Galway forward to score from play after the break was Conor Whelan.
Indeed, apart from Whelan and Canning – who hit 1-1 from placed balls- no other
Galway forward scored in the second half and no team can expect to win an All-Ireland by scoring 1-4 in the second period.
Against expectations Kilkenny opted not to send TJ Reid to the edge of the square. Instead their tallest player Walter Walsh was dispatched there where he formed a two man full forward line with Ger Aylward
Iarla Tannian ended marking the elusive Reid with Daithi Burke keeping tabs on the Kilkenny playmaker Richie Hogan. Initially Kilkenny's tactics appeared to be working.
After a tentative start which Galway shaded (0-5; 0-3) primarily due to the free-taking of Joe Canning Kilkenny struck for the game's first goal.
Hogan won the puck out before linking up with Walsh who used his strength to hold off John Hanbury and then teeing up TJ Reid for a goal.
But it was Galway who dominated the rest of the half. They were aggressive particularly in their half back line and successfully targeted Eoin Murphy's puck outs winning nine out of 20.
Kilkenny were forced into fouling and with Jason Flynn long range shooting on target – he converted three monster frees in the first half – Galway foraged ahead.
The Cats found it difficult to win frees and the decisions of referee James Owens clearly infuriated Kilkenny boss Brian Cody who confronted linesman James McGrath. Kilkenny had more ground for complaint just before the internal when Johnny Coen took out Colin Fennelly who looked set to set up a goal chance.
Coen was lucky to escape with a yellow card and the Tribesmen looked in with a real chance of securing the silverware at half time when they led 0-14 to 1-8.
That will annoy them most when they reflect on their performance is that they did a lot of things right. TJ Reid failed to score a point from play – though arguably he was the most influential player on the field while despite scoring 0-2 Richie Hogan was substituted.
But the qualities which has made Kilkenny so difficult to beat since the turn of the century carried them over the line: work rate, ruthlessness, ability to take their chances, denying their opponents space and creating plenty themselves. Collectively and individually Kilkenny won all the battles as the referee was less inclined to blow for Galway frees.
Kilkenny had already secured their 36th title long before Joe Canning's late goal put a gloss on the scoreboard.
Overall it's a final which won't live long in the memory but Kilkenny won't care as they retain their title despite losing marquee players such as JJ Delaney, Tommy Walsh, Brian Hogan and Shefflin at the end of last season.
Kilkenny: E Murphy; P Murphy, J Holden, S Prendergast; P Walsh (0-1), K Joyce, C Buckley; M Fennelly (0-2), C Fogarty (0-1); W Walsh (0-2), R Hogan (0-2), TJ Reid (1-7, 5f, 2 65); G Aylward (0-2), C Fennelly (0-2), E Larkin (0-2). Subs: R Power for Hogan 61m; J Power for Aylward 62m
Galway; C Callanan; J Coen (0-1 og), J Hanbury, P Mannion; A Harte, Daithi Burke, I Tannian; A Smith, David Burke (0-1); J Flynn (0-4, 3f), C Donnellan (0-1), J Glynn; C Whelan (0-2) J Canning (1-8, 5f), C Mannion. Subs: D Collins (0-2) for Harte 23m; C Cooney for Smith 56m; G Lally for Donnellan 64m; S Moloney for Flynn 66m.
Referee: James Owens (Wexford)
Online EditorsThanks to the digital revolution, film artists now have a spectacular array of powerful, new, inexpensive tools for creative expression through digital film. The once powerful studios can no longer stifle an artist's creativity. With the power of the Internet, film artists are finding once unimaginable ways to distribute their creations worldwide.
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Written in an engaging, accessible style, DV Filmmaking provides a solid foundation of tremendous value to a beginner, while addressing the fine points of filmmaking with a level of sophistication, detail, and insight that even the most worldly director or educator can appreciate. The author draws upon his years of experience teaching at the college and graduate level, his extensive professional background as a media producer, and his unmistakable love of cinema to create a text that's not only easy to learn from, but also fun to read.Describing demonetisation as only a "bump", Cisco Executive Chairman John Chambers Monday said India is well-positioned to maintain GDP growth rate of over 7 percent for the next few years and it should be a "top ally" for the US in the Asia Pacific region.
Allaying fears that the new Trump administration could make policy decisions that adversely impact the Indian IT companies, he said: "I think India should be our top ally in Asia Pacific. And the two countries have so much in common, including being the largest and most powerful democracies. I am optimistic."
Also read: Maha CM Devendra Fadnavis Rolls Out Largest Public Wi-Fi Service in Mumbai
Chambers, who also dons the hat of USIBC Chairman, is leading one of the largest delegations of US businesses at the 8th Vibrant Gujarat to be held later this week.
Asked if a sudden policy change like demonetisation had adversely impacted the way foreign businesses view India, he said: "If there is one GDP in this world I would bet on, it's India and this (demonetisation) will be a bump... Very few people in the financial world say this isn't the right thing to do. What it basically does is, it builds a foundation for every citizen in this country to participate truly in a digital world.
Also read: Nokia 6 Android Nougat Smartphone Launched For Around Rs 17,000
"Does it bother me? It's actually reverse... I know that innovation by definition is disruptive and uncomfortable and there are bumps. I think the country (India) is moving remarkably fast and it's moving with a strategy and vision," he added.
On the government's digital push and growth of Indian economy, Chambers said Internet will facilitate 3-5 times the economic impact at a much faster pace seen previously.
"A year from now your GDP will be stronger dramatically because of the changes. And you are the envy of the world... I think GDP growth is sustainable at 7 per cent...this is not PM's goal...but I think above 7, and it is not out of the question to be 8, 9 or 10," he said.
India, Chambers added, used to be known as a slow follower but now it is getting known as a fast innovator.
Cisco and BPM major Genpact have unveiled the Global Center of Excellence in the city as part of the US-based firms Lighthouse City project.
Also read: Lenovo P2 With Massive 5,100mAh Battery Launching Exclusively on Flipkart on January 11
Hosted and operated in Genpacts facility in Jaipur, the centre will serve as an innovation lab for Genpact and its partnering technology firms to rapidly test and deploy the latest smart technology advances from Cisco to help it become a fully responsive, smart and connected city.
Cisco has identified Jaipur as the first smart and connected Lighthouse City in South Asia in addition to cities in other regions, including Hamburg (Germany), Barcelona (Spain) and Adelaide (Australia).A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday evening, after the grand opening of the Free State Bitcoin Shoppe, dozens of people gathered in the Seacoast Repertory Theater in Portsmouth, NH to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the theatrical premiere of “Derrick J’s Victimless Crime Spree“!
After the screening, we gave away one of the few existing DJVCS movie posters to a lucky attendee and then director and star of the movie, Derrick J Freeman and I took a bunch of questions from the audience. We reflected on the last five years, where we are now, and looked to the future of the exciting, growing New Hampshire Freedom Migration.
Here’s the full video of the Q&A, in case you couldn’t be there:
What a pleasure and an honor it has been to executive produce this movie, working with the amazing talents of Derrick J Freeman and editing pro Beau Davis. I’m especially grateful to all the people who love and share Victimless Crime Spree with their friends and family. The pro-freedom message and spirit of the movie is infectious and fun, despite its ultimately sad ending. It’s an important documentary, and the first to come out of the community of libertarian migrants to the Shire. (In case you haven’t seen it, the second such documentary, also edited by Beau Davis, is “101 Reasons Liberty Lives in New Hampshire“.)
Here’s to another five years of new people seeing Victimless Crime Spree, becoming more libertarian, and ultimately migrating to New Hampshire!
Here are some more pics from the 5th anniversary screening:Version 4 (Post Qualifying) of the Nissan NISMO Spotter Guide for the 24 Heures du Mans 2014 is now available as a free High and Low resolution download.
The guide features all 56 cars, team, chassis, engine and driver details along with a timetable, map and current WEC points standings and is the perfect tool for watching at the circuit or from home.Each car has been illustrated in detail, with the assistance of virtually every team.
Thanks to these teams, we have the most up to date visual guide available anywhere including the official App!!
Version 4 has many changes including Marc Gene back at Audi, Pierre Kaffer at Ferrari and Sebastien Crubilé at Weathertech ProSpeed, all after accidents. Version 4 also has Marshal posts added to the map. (Full change list below). This should be the FINAL version of the guide which is available in a variety of formats.
The largest size is a 3 page A3-A2 size PDF, and 3 separate JPEG’s (4500pixels wide) which is perfect for desktop wallpaper and large printing. A smaller A4 size PDF is available in High and Low resolution. The A4 release is great for home printing and also viewing on a mobile device.
No apps or fees are required. Its free thanks to Nissan and NISMO
3 SHEET A3 PDF DOWNLOAD (16Mb)
6 SHEET A4 PDF DOWNLOAD-HIGH RES (16Mb)
6 SHEET A4 PDF DOWNLOAD-LOW RES (3.5Mb)
JPEG DOWNLOAD V3/4
Please feel free to share the guide (please link to this page rather than the PDF as links may change with update). Please respect the copyright notice and do not modify the guide.
Huge thanks to Nissan for partnering with the guide. Make sure you follow their Twitter Account @Nismo_Global
Thank you for the media partners who help to spread the word including DailySportsCar, RadioLeMans.om, Fourtitude.com,L’endurance, Sportscar365 and Ten-Tenths.
The guides are produce by Andy Blackmore Design
Thanks for the support.
Version 4 Changelist (13 June)
#71 – Pierre Kaffer replacing James Calado
#79 – Sebastien Crubilé repacing Bret Curtis
Marshal Post numbers added to map
Version 3 Changlist (11 June)
#1 – Duval replaced by Marc Gene
#12 – Red Windscreen Strip added with a white band added for car ID
#48 – Oliver Turvey replaces Marc Gene (see #1)
#29, #41, #57, #77 – Small livery updates
Version 2 Changelist (9 June)
#1,#2, #3 – WEC logos added to sidepod of Audi R18
#12,#13 – Sponsor additions on Sidepod and engine cover
#14,#20 – ID info for two Porsche P1 cars
#22 – Note confirming its withdrawl
#27,#37- ID Info update
#35 – #eatsleepRACErepeat branding and adjustment to chrome on air intake
#41 – Sponsor additions
#43 – New engine cover livery
#99 – LKM branding adjustment on Aston martin
#66 – Sponsor additions for JMW
#75 – New Art Car Livery for Prospeed
#77 – Updated livery with additional Blue triangles for Dempsey/Proton
#90 – New Bayshore brandingLong Before the Tiller Assassination Frederick Clarkson print page Thu Dec 31, 2009 at 09:44:34 PM EST I had to dip back into 2008 for the story I want to tell about the asassination of Dr. George Tiller last summer, as my final post for 2009. The ideology and culture of rightwing violence often exists side-by-side with mainstream conservatism -- and there is hardly a better example than the story that surfaced during the 2008 presidential campaign, about how Shelly Shannon, the woman convicted of the 1993 attempted murder of Dr. Tiller was in effect, celebrated by the then-Vice-Chair of the Oregon GOP while John McCain stood by. Raw Story reports that John McCain, against the advice of wiser heads, addressed a conference of the far right Oregon Citizens Alliance in the early 90s. He should have listened. The speaker just prior to McCain publicly expressed sympathy for Shelly Shannon, who then stood accused (and was eventually convicted) of the attempted murder of Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas -- as well as carrying out a multi-state spree of clinic arsons across the West. Shelly Shannon also considered herself a soldier in the underground terror organization, Army of God, which views Shannon as a "hero of the faith" and a "Warrior Soldier in the Army of God." The group devotes a section of its web site to celebrating her exploits and her martyrdom. Raw Story's Nick Juliano writes: Blogger Jed Lewison highlighted McCain's opposition to a 1994 law that made it a federal crime to bomb or blockade abortion clinics or to attack abortion doctors. McCain's vote against the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act put him in league with the Senate's most radical anti-abortion advocates, who split with more than two dozen anti-abortion senators who voted to crack down on clinic bombers as a matter of preserving law & order. His [McCain's] speech was preceded by some kind words for an anti-abortion activist accused of shooting a doctor. McCain quickly got a first-hand flavor for the OCA. Marylin Shannon, the vice chairwoman of the Oregon GOP, had a spot on the program to give an opening prayer. In short order, she praised the Grants Pass woman accused of shooting an abortion doctor in Wichita and thanked the Lord ``for Lon Mabon and the vision you put in his heart.'' Shannon, the GOP chairwoman, referred to the accused shooter of the abortion doctor as a "fine lady," who shouldn't be judged solely based on the single act of violence, according to a letter she wrote to The Oregonian, which was accessed via Lexis Nexis. While she did not endorse violence against abortion providers, she wrote, she recognized the "debate stirring within the anti-abortion movement" over whether killing abortion providers was a "just cause." My kind comments about Shelley Shannon, the Grants Pass woman accused of wounding abortion provider George Tiller, ("I'm not related to Shelley Shannon, but I think she's a fine lady,") reflected what I had learned about her from people who have known her for many years. They say she has led a responsible life as a wife, mother and concerned citizen and don't want her judged by this one action. Acknowledging this side of her does not meant that I approve of others doing what she did. I do not. However, since that night I have learned much about the current debate stirring within the anti-abortion movement: Is killing abortion providers a "just cause"? There's no indication that McCain took issue with Shannon's comments, and it's unclear whether any group members lobbied him regarding the abortion clinic protection bill. A search of the Congressional Record in 1993 and 1994 indicates McCain did not speak during debate over the bill, and McCain's campaign did not immediately return RAW STORY's request for comment. The Army of God's web site features an account of Shelly Shannon's transformation into a domestic terrorist. Here is a short exerpt: Shelley Shannon participated in her last blockade on November 17, 1992. Although she was a wife and the mother of teenagers, she committed herself to stop the killing of the innocent any way she could. The following year, she engaged in a holy war of arson and butyric acid (liquid) rescues across three states. "If I was going to spend what's left of my life in prison or die in an explosion, I was at least going to do so in the will of God!" The transformation of Shelley Shannon began as early as the summer of 1991 when the late term abortion mill operated by George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, was being exposed by Operation Rescue, and many other anti-abortionists. She was sick at heart over the extermination of the unborn. Shelley told a journalist at that time, she was convinced that the use of force was the way to save unborn children from being murdered. According to her sentencing report, Shannon had "the will, but not the way" until she read two books: When Bricks Bleed, I'll Cry by [convicted clinic bomber] Rev. Michael Bray of Maryland, and an early version of the "Army of God" manual. The so called Army of God manual was passed around and added to over the years and desccribes how to wage a terror campaign against clinics. The first copy to fall into the hands of federal law enforcement was dug up in Shelly Shannon's back yard. Some months later, abortionist David Gunn was shot by Michael Griffin as he attempted to enter the building where he was scheduled to murder approximately 30 pre-born babies. Shelley commented on Michael Griffin's action in her computer diary: He didn't shoot Mother Teresa, he shot a mass murderer such as Saddam Hussien or Hitler. I don't even think it is accurately termed'murder.'
God is the only one who knows whether Gunn would ever have repented or if he would have killed another 5,000 babies and probably 3 or 4 more women who probably weren't Christians either. Although Michael Griffin was condemned by many Christians, Shelley Shannon stood by him. She wrote: I'm not convinced that God didn't require it of Michael to do this.
It is possible. I'm praying God will push more of us 'off the deep end...' and: "He is definitely a Christian." The Army of God has posted most of the Army of God manual on its web site. Here is how it opens: This is a manual for those who have come to understand that the battle against abortion is a battle not against flesh and blood, but against the devil and all the evil he can muster among flesh and blood to fight at his side. It is a How-To Manual of means to disrupt and ultimately destroy Satan's power to kill our children, God's Children. Thus it is worth considering the disingenuous euphemisms of Marilyn Shannon (no relation to Shelly) who was not only public apologist for a notorious domestic terrorist, but served as vice chair of the Oregon GOP and as a McCain delegate to the Republican National Convention this year. Resources: I have written extensively about the AOG for Salon.com, (among other places) (notably Our Own Terror Cells, and in my book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. See also my commentary from Women's eNews: Anti-Abortion Terrorism Threatens All Americans.
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Long Before the Tiller Assassination | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden) comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)
Long Before the Tiller Assassination | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 hidden) comments (6 topical, 0 hidden)At age 27, Mike McNarland is embarking on a second exciting career.
Following nearly five years as an armoured crewman in the Canadian Forces operating and maintaining armoured fighting vehicles, McNarland is now apprenticing as a welder, working in heavy industrial construction.
“It’s very hard work, similar to the military,” McNarland said. “But I love it. There’s a broad variety of things you can do, and I enjoy the variety.”
The switch is going smoothly, he said, thanks to help from Helmets to Hardhats Canada, a national not-for-profit organization that gives people who have served in the Canadian Forces opportunities to enter careers in the trades.
Helmets to Hardhats “made the transition so easy,” McNarland said, by connecting him with a union and helping him receive credit toward his apprenticeship.
Helmets to Hardhats began operating in Canada in May 2012 following the lead of a U.S. program that started in 2003, said Greg Matte, a former CF-18 fighter pilot who is now executive director of Helmets to Hardhats.
“Military training is not always recognized directly in civilian positions,” Matte said. “We help to bridge that gap, and try to get recognition for the skills these people have.”
The program matches participants to the necessary training for their chosen trade, and depending on their existing qualifications and experience, the apprenticeship training process may be shortened.
The program has had “significant” uptake from veterans in Alberta, Matte said, as well as support from the provincial government.
“They’ve been progressive in recognizing the transferable skills vets have,” he said.
Both careers in the military and the trades require a strong work ethic, Matte said, as well as an ability to adapt to new challenges.
McNarland sees many similarities between his two careers.
“Training in the army is about camaraderie, that you’re together during good times and bad,” he said. With the trades, it’s hard work and long hours, but you build a bond with the people you’re working with. You look out for each other and make sure everyone is doing things safely.”
He also enjoys the variety of work and sense of adrenalin that are characteristic of both careers. As an armoured crewman, his squadron was part of security for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and was sent to Manitoba during severe flooding in 2011.
He now works in heavy industrial construction in Redwater, a town northeast of Edmonton. The job comes with “a big rush,” McNarland said, as he hangs high above the ground in a harness, welding heavy piping.
“I love my job,” McNarland said.
When to enter the trades
In 2013, 22,129 new apprentices registered in trades in Alberta. While the most common age for Alberta apprentices to register in their first trade is 20, there are many entry points to a career in the trades.
During high school, Alberta students can enter the Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP), which allows students to divide their time between school and work, while earning credits toward their apprenticeship.
Anyone who has served, or is currently serving, in the regular or reserve force components of the Canadian Forces can apply with Helmets to Hardhats, for assistance transitioning to a career in the trades.
Alberta has a Qualification Certificate Program that allows experienced tradespeople from other provinces or countries to obtain an Alberta trade certificate based on recognized credentials or work experience.
Numerous preparatory programs exist for people who want to enter an apprenticeship. NorQuest College, for example, offers a certificate program focused on preparing young immigrants and aboriginal adults for a career in the trades, while Women Building Futures offers various programs for women that include safety certificates, academic upgrading, and hands-on skill training and theory.
cklingbeil@edmontonjournal.com
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This story was produced by the Edmonton Journal’s editorial department as a result of Careers: The Next Generation’s interest in this topic. The organization was not given the opportunity to put restrictions onthe content or review it prior to publication.A State Grid employee works on an ultra-high-voltage transmission construction in Huainan, Anhui province. [Photo for China Daily by Song Weixing]
Officials have high hopes of landing ultra high voltage electricity transmission projects in India
China's top electricity supplier, State Grid Corp, is set to export its ultra-high-voltage technology to India soon, as it pushes to expand its large-scale network both at home and abroad, a senior official at the utility company said.
"We have been having talks in India about testing some ultra-high-voltage projects. Those talks are at an early stage, but there is a great chance that some Chinese technology will be used," said Li Peng, head of the high-voltage division at China Electric Power Research Institute, a unit of the State-owned utility company.
The talks concern ultra-high-voltage or UHV technology, which provides large-scale power delivery over long distances and can reduce energy loss during transmission, he said.
"China is a country with rich experience in building large-scale power transmission infrastructure, so it has become the first choice for other countries in need," he told China Daily.
Li made his remarks at a forum in Tianjin, where a 1,000-kilovolt transmission project is expected to be completed by October, marking the latest effort by State Grid to ease power shortages in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
After its completion, Tianjin will be able to receive as much as 50 billion kilowatt-hours of renewable energy, including solar and wind power, from Inner Mongolia autonomous region, said Wang Bin, manager of the Tianjin transmission project. He said that would slash coal consumption by 9 million metric tons.
Beijing-based State Grid is building an ultra-high-voltage cross-country transmission network in the world's biggest energy-consuming market, that will link major hydropower plants and coal-fired plants in the far southwest and northwest with big energy-consuming regions in the east.
The company plans to use its domestic experience to win more exports of its technology and equipment. Last year it inked framework deals with Russia and Kazakhstan for cross-country electricity transmission lines.
State Grid also scored with its bid to build and operate two transmission lines connecting the Belo Monte Amazon dam in northern Brazil to the southeast of the country, the first ultra-high-voltage transmission project it won overseas.CARSON CITY, Nev. — The Southern Nevada Water Authority's plan to pump water from remote valleys along the Nevada-Utah border to quench Las Vegas' thirst drew strong opposition at a hearing conducted by the Nevada official who will rule on the request.
The overwhelming majority of the nearly 100 people who spoke to state engineer Jason King on Friday were against the multibillion dollar project, citing its cost and harm to the environment, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
The opponents included members of the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation of Utah, the Paiute Tribe of Utah, and the Ely and Duckwater Shoshone tribes of Nevada.
"We were put here, including Las Vegas people, by the creator to take care of this Earth, not to abuse it," said Ed Naranjo, administrator of the Goshute reservation in Utah. "We need to have you listen to us. Think of all the little people, the people not yet born."
Rural Nevadans, environmentalists and Assemblyman Joe Hogan, D-Las Vegas, joined in opposing the project.
"That's not the way to solve a water problem," Hogan said. "It would be a disastrous blunder. The environmental damages are just unthinkable."
Critics say tapping 126,000 acre-feet of groundwater would result in economic and environmental catastrophe for those in and around Spring, Cave, Delamar and Dry Lake valleys.
They cited the dust and environmental problems created decades ago when Los Angeles tapped the water in Owens Valley in California, draining Owens Lake, the Nevada Appeal of Carson City reported.
Utah residents expressed concern that large-scale groundwater pumping would dry valleys in Nevada and send dust and lingering fallout from nuclear tests blowing east as far as the Salt Lake City area.
But representatives from the AFL-CIO, Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, a homebuilders association and the Nevada resort industry praised the proposed 300-mile, $3.5 billion pipeline.
Without a reliable water supply, the Las Vegas area will not be able to recover from the recession, let alone flourish again, said Danny Thompson, secretary-treasurer of the Nevada AFL-CIO.
"This is about more than an inter-basin transfer of water," Thompson said. "The economic viability of the state is at stake here."
Virginia Valentine of the Nevada Resort Association noted tourism is the top generator of jobs in southern Nevada.
"A water shortage in this area would have a devastating effect on our economy," she said.
The hearing on the water authority's request for unappropriated water began Sept. 26 and is expected to conclude Nov. 18.
Friday was the only day set aside for testimony by members of the public.
King is expected to make a decision on the request by March.
The state will accept written comments on the water authority's groundwater applications until Dec. 2.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
June 18, 2015, 1:46 AM GMT / Updated June 18, 2015, 2:42 AM GMT By Kristin Donnelly and Alex Johnson
The Sawbuck is getting a little less masculine.
The U.S. Treasury threw a curve ball at advocates who were pressing to get a woman on the $20 bill, announcing Wednesday that it's going to put one on a redesigned $10 bill, instead.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told reporters that the new notes are being timed for 2020, in part to mark the 100th anniversary of the constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote.
"Our democracy is a work in progress," Lew said, adding: "This decision of putting a woman in the $10 bill reflects our aspirations for the future as much as a reflection of the past."
The public will be able to weigh in on who should replace Alexander Hamilton — the first ever U.S. secretary of the Treasury — at the New 10 website or on Twitter at the hashtag #theNew10.
But don't bother suggesting a current movie star or any other recent celebrity — it's illegal to put a living person on U.S. currency. And anyway, Lew said, "democracy will be the theme of these new notes."
Until now, the push has been to put a woman on the $20 bill to replace Andrew Jackson — famously an opponent of the very idea of paper money. There are even bills in both houses of Congress to do just that.
Earlier this year, people cast ballots in an unofficial "Women on 20s" campaign — and more than 100,000 voters wanted to see Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill instead of Jackson. President Barack Obama boosted the movement in September when he revealed in a speech that "a young girl wrote to ask me why aren't there any women on our currency."
Related: Harriet Tubman Wins Unofficial Vote to Be on $20 Bill
But the Treasury said it chose the $10 bill instead because it's overdue for a redesign, attributable in part to the ease with which it can be counterfeited.
"While many factors are taken into consideration, the primary reason for redesigning currency is to address current and potential counterfeiting threats," the Treasury said. "In addition to featuring a woman, the new $10 note will include a tactile feature that increases accessibility for the visually impaired."
Women's suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony was honored on the $1 coin from 1979 to 1981, and Sacagawea, an American Indian guide on the Lewis and Clark expedition, has been on $1 gold coins minted since 2000.
Martha Washington briefly appeared on the $1 silver certificate beginning in 1886.
But none of those currencies caught on with the public, even though "throughout American history, intelligent, courageous and innovative women have struggled to fight for our rights, to expand opportunity and to build commerce," Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, said on the House floor Tuesday.
Related: Lawmakers Push Bills Campaign to Put a Woman on the Twenty
"These occasions are an occasion to take stock of where we are going as a nation," Lew said, and the new $10 bill is intended to be the first in a completely new series of paper currency beginning in 2020, all designed around the theme of democracy and what it means to Americans.
Bills featuring Hamilton — the nation's first treasury secretary and creator of its monetary system — will remain in circulation, and an unspecified proportion of new $10 bills will continue to feature him, Lew said.These GPS enabled Android smartphones presently give significant processing power in our palms. Are you a frequent traveler with GPS enabled Android device, so here we bring something special for you. The Android Market has an awesome selections of apps and we’ve picked out the Best Android apps every traveler should have. Whenever you drive, walk or fly these app can help you get around faster
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because this is a good thing yes it helps. Out. Children well homeless homeless youth in the community and helps and toward self sufficiency. And how we doing that by participating in this board game tournaments he had. Chris myself and old alumni from the end from wall oh yeah I'm Brandon hello Brandon Giroux actually bringing his better gaming half yeah apparently she's eyes checked everything I have fruitless. I think she's gonna be the ringer for us at this point 100% I'm so gonna gaming but we're gonna be doing this this is happening send they may fifteenth. At mosques boarding house you can go like Lila said on Friday as podcasts can be face paying there's going to be trivia games begin to build a watch just if you can't make you can also watch it on twit dot TV slash card kingdom. And the reason why we're doing this like I said is for youth care so you can donate to the cause and help us as we attempt to win the turn image. By heading over to our FaceBook page and clicking on the link that's pin towards adoption even if you can't donate please share that good or Twitter because we've been tweeting it out and now also share those tweets as well. On spread the word help donate it's for a great cause is to help get youths off of the streets and help them sustain themselves. And you know as a kid that was adopted I was so happy that somebody took me in because I could have easily been acute on the streets if it wasn't for a great Foster family that took me in engine pretty much is so that this is near and -- in my heart. And now the power ups of course in your near does seems all right so you're OK I tell you how we give them an advantage and believe me we you know Brennan's on our team right so we need all well and. Opening yet you know we have web you know helping out the kids and everything that is that is fantastic it's a wonderful cause. But us winning the tournament wouldn't be too bad either they're already ten. Yeah we need to practice. We need to nurture youth summit area seriously like I said the as a community if you can't donate they may be if you share this on one of your social media pages somebody you know would be interested in donating and that just helps us and we really appreciate everything he has into. And it makes the gamer community look good and I love making and Paris and and that's the key of solace to show that we have hearts to whom we can and we mobilize we can you make good things happen for people exactly. We did get a Twitter question this came in from Justin who else. What is it OKT used glitches in games examples like sorry hammer fallout I'd love to know your guises and the nationals opinion on this. And it's kind of interesting because sometimes there's bugs or glitches that will benefit you can calm in everyone hates the ones that don't like when you fall through the world or something like that. But when you left by the bug gives you infinite money usually you're pretty cool with it. Yeah exactly it's kind of OK I guess it a for a lot of a lot of times for me kind of depends on the situation if I'm playing game and I'm really into it and enjoying the story. And it's important to mean to sort of we need on my own if you will then I eat I you don't exploit one of those bug spread I've been playing this game. Called rebel galaxy and its it's a space that combat game kind of a kind of a grain hurts a little bit slow a bit like I'm destiny in space to focus our scrimmage. But protest is supposed to hints it's just. But they always in the space I guess you don't go down you don't go to any plans yet you issued illustrations as critical. But there's there's there's there's a mechanic in the game where you can go to a space station and you can hire a mercenary to help you in the fire on their own little ship. Besides your bill beside your capital shipping help you battles and things like this but you can only ever have one mercenary in the time. Was playing at a game completely guinier her day in May I'd went through jump gate to a different system and all of a sudden my knee mercenary had copied itself. Somebody's got an army so suddenly have got three ships basically going at our battle and IA and I was mopping up for the longest time that. I have final lead of the game figured it out her I don't know what exactly but I got into a battle and they couldn't quite win it's and they both got killed so it didn't matter I can only hire one or during and after that but. It's easy sometimes it's it's sort of OK when it's subtle little things like that but when it's a big deal and it is actually changes the game and makes it sort of my broken at that point that I I'm excited about it. I did very much depends ultimately get an airplane yeah like. Like there was Anna before the initial pageant oblivion on my favorite games ever there was you could do resort guy who you could lieutenant his gold would never go away right sega's kid not being able to go. And I never did that because of living is too important for me right when I played people three. But also about how. I also was passed out but there's a thing it and it fable three it is a point where they gave you your right. Two thirds of the way he gave me a little more right it's like Nell you need a bunch of money yeah suddenly you need aid insane amount of money like it. It would take you weeks to grind that money out you have yet to be had been planning from day one to do you don't yet have a real estate empire yet so I was like well this is the worst of the field did so far. I wanna see the complete Andy without having to spend months at a time to figure it out and yeah exploit on that game I'm not can reasonably because it matters for but what we can imagine Chris is a that you had no control over the strip and that I think also is like if they gave and gave just something on accident yeah men's what do I do when they fought for there's one of their companions McCready has worked is that if you if you do all of his quests. You get up plus 5% chance to hit on every head to head shot in acts. I don't know if it was just my gamer everybody before the patch but what happened to view is every time all these bats as long as I could see their head it was a 95% chance definitely is that because I was doing that too and I didn't realize they decide because they're already doing a sniper character. So I was like OK you all may be already had many hybrids and now your flaws head shots 100% of the time. Also of it seems to pass out yes I'm no longer on the computer that's outside you know being. But like what was happening you'll like this since I got it isn't just before it back. Well I think also it really depends on whether or not you're playing game with other people. If it's an online gaming you're using it and I birdies and people it's never exceptional enough at the same point if I'm doing a place through. Even if the game bugs out or something like that I usually just keep going through that happened in my first place your through fallout I couldn't do any of the settlement stuff because. All of my mail and on the Selma stuff but all the minutemen stuff because that's bugged out completely for me now. Embodies played it through on the other things and went through it but afterwards I'm kind of going through as they go this is a glitch shall try to out and see what happened and that. But I think it's just it is closure not affecting other people's enjoyment. Do what you want it you're not I mean yeah yeah I don't think you're gonna feel as fulfilled beating it that way but if you just wasn't the ending. Then just do it and you know her whole generation of games that came with Chico's there was always that was the thing where a lot of full they have the dean Jeannie the N Anaheim well. Have you put in codes to cheat asking and then as the go to them and ruin they gave no but if you I administer state when I was younger Roh as a kid and I would like eight games of the too hard for me out here it's cheat code. And outplay the written it was easy. And then I kind of would go back later and I never I never was able to appreciate the full. Game itself right plays doing really easily so don't want this challenge and I'm able to handle the challenge but I'm used to you know I don't have skillful First Act stuff when you play it yeah yeah yeah and early gains for yourself if you chief for cellular and I learned that let's. Let us know you feel about it be digging nation gmail.com sinister voicemail email all sorts of things like that. Let's move on because we've got a eight trio of special guests in a with us who we have had on previously back with us our. Trio of guests who we had on previously. For a show that is it's it's based in space but it is record in producing created in Washington State which we love we love to really highlight the geeks that are local. Amongst other things because what we get him to come amended talk about other stuff which is a lot of fun. The show would is dead drafting now you can check it out Ed Deaderick showed dot com we got magic cannot anywhere in the world you got to be a Washington State this is absolutely true Internet it's the internet's do those they ask for everywhere except for maybe North Korea I think they have a different Internet and that's why. You read into that. It did but we do you have met Ken and Chris with us from the dead drift. Tiger is doing and they're all awesome and so I'll will start Chris with you buddy because. Tell us a little bit about dead drip for those who may have missed the earlier of podcasts yes it did drift is fiscally the with the tagline we like to give it as a red door for me it's the office yes that is very excited it's it's silly it's it's comedy it's science fiction it's low budget but even on a low budget we like to try and put in excellence weekend. You know it looks fantastic and that's one of the things you guys talked about it before is that this this set that this sets that have been built. A you guys have created your cells and for the most part it's east lake you get that real life you because you've made them it's not all green screen it's a lot of a lot of hard work he's put into this happening there. And also with us like I said Matt Matt you play captain banks in feet what how would you describe your character. For the geek nationals up there. Telescope captain banks. Well and he's. I am. Well he's you did create him. I did yeah I need to have I would hope that anybody and I grabbed the bags it would be you now of the character you play and creating my boss played a character really up. How would you describe you're. Similarly. Used season we reflective of them for the icy. I'm real legs a sneak peek into the you know future episode then is see if you're paired here with doing some pretty weird stuff. Yet he is. You know he's the kind of guy who thinks he has an all figured out but he is just completely lost. And that's not likely get. 00 and so yeah it's. Funny because I remember we talked a little bit about he like he talked about red door pretty he does remind me a little bit about a little bit of Rimmer. And especially a little bit as we're getting along to some of the space madness there really seems to you easy to flex your acting muscles when he gets into that insanity yet that's what does that when my favorite part it's. Prostitute my dad clueless Kirk in a -- cool because he's some charm I mean you know no doubt about it bank says the charm of captain Kirk. If you really believe he knew what the hell he was Diller dad he I like an Acer America yeah exactly how much like this rumor back. Except he hasn't really done much yes hey Schumer actually did do some stuff but yeah at an all guy hey hey they can guys can you are Maurice Morris the third the engineer of this year. Obama cough mechanic so I had a whole series and we have to do that okay I had. Credit and fraternal lady. I am presser. And so on the you did drift again it's dead drift showed dot com you've got episodes out there now but we brought you back because starting on Friday. New episodes because. You're left with a pretty big cliff hanger. This is the only and it's it's it's a great great great show about basically a loser captain a loser mechanic and this is really not meant to do anything and yet on the precipice of discovering something that humanity has been hoping for for years and they've got the worst team out there. Did you know about to make this discover it. Yeah and add these as these incompetent boobs inadvertently stumble on one of the greatest discoveries in human history. And it's in it's astounding that not only that you have I've got a great third member who we had on before if he keeps the ship's computer hand. It played by Alyssa case. And I love the fact that you've got this super Smart computer that is slowly beginning humid no mode she ends. And not all of them are benevolent at this point a secret little bit of jealousy going on with this new discovery. And tell. Again radio show on for sure absolutely where she is the smartest machine yeah that's fresh season may all be dead if not for I think for sure it's so what can you tell us about this the new episodes going forward. Un and others are you gonna get pretty exciting you know we meant Aramis is Jeremy and nabbed the last Minnesota the first season so a second season it's gonna pick up the rhetoric. No way I was I was about to say some you know so my holy cow but I I noticed the last name of mrs. Germany. I'm wondering what relation to Shih Tzu mr. Armey over there. Is there you are well aware of how is she related do you server for a go further this is actually my sister OK well let you know what I don't girl. She Hulu looks really good it is that it is just like Bjorn purple yeah. Well she was born really good the only and a. Indeed yes she's great and there is as she is Chris is a sister the actor Aaron. But I mean you can tell with a name like mrs. Jeremy there's got to be a mr. fan and always there's a very me there there's absolutely mr. Fermi we'll get to meet him. And I think episode eleven. And he is actually while mrs. Armey is on titan. Anaheim honeymoon on titan he's away fishing on Enceladus which is saturn's ice man you know which has has a liquid ocean course of his ice fishing there. And he brilliance if that's the catch is something maybe a little weird. Cool well it's already it's already a little weird level. I love all the episodes that are out right now and I did get a chance to watch episode nine intent and it's it's a lot of fine. And just to see the interactions because. A lot of big goes back and forth in between like com windows you guys are BS and back and forth in doing that and it it's still fun because you guys are are you eat it seems like you guys are in the same room when you're doing it so it really go to the back and forth is very solid. The we actually filling ideally you look like you're just looking until played at I try picturing it without the the special effects everything how is just talking until Lawler just talking straight ahead. With no hologram in front of you. Think that's weirder and. I do this it was a bad I mean you're just essentially you're talking to the camera most of the time. The way here isn't just looking right at the camera like you're doing an interview almost or Skype chat and then now when you're talking to Hannah. We would have me an object set up that would represent Hannah so when you look at Hannah you just pretend you're talking to a person gets like players like Ted the smartest. In what I had a lot of okay I'm taking a big deal where they point the whole atmosphere and say look here it's NFL apparently not good when you're when I don't shot I am delighted that she was there okay. Okay. Mine and. There are screen talking TO. As someone off screen reading a script out so and so we were going back and forth like when he was doing captain banks. I was standing off screen reading whoever he was talking Jews lines so to get someone to responsive Thatcher and having someone to respond to a playoff loves it makes it hasn't worked really well. And then the performance is one cut together. Tended to somehow I don't know how. We're really well didn't seem like Lizzie and I had really good chemistry. We didn't meet until we were here last time doesn't really happy early birthday ask. So that's kind of amazing at that point that I mean through the magic of that deal Lotta times people don't ever get to experience anything like that they don't realize that all the work that goes behind the scenes to make something like this. And you guys are busting your ass on this and it's tunes closeness. Okay. Should get a good quality rather the quality is amazingly do you guys call a low budget but I mean you built the sets. And in this did the special procedure you do use a lot of fun including. There's a not so old school special effects when we see some show up on the screen now I'll just give a clue re Harry house in which I loved it because. Then and also the plot and you as we learn about mrs. Fermi and the other person on the planet mr. Fermi and we learn about the whole situation because when you meet them your life. What is interesting because. He sounded very much like they could be from earth and that's an odd even titled accent and then. You go into light what what's going on what's have a aware why do they have the same what do they do it and it's very clever I I I thought I knew what was about to happen. And that was it was about to happen. And I think that's really needed to be real that's clever in scifi because everything's been done. And you still have a something that surprised me I thought man along with the high quality production. I get these guys minute knock them not a party got a check out did literally do and again that's Deaderick showed dot com. But people can also fall you want Tumblr yes they stripped dot Tumblr dot com and also FaceBook can be just do FaceBook dot com slash dead drifter. A lot of different ways to get it didn't checked out leagues see it all those and you can check out there that does. The beauty really is now what is commute it is beautiful. This is what it is with the sets and the acting and everything done it's funny and I really I'm bumped into I don't want him prior to you guys but I'm really stoked I. A lot of them you don't think I need we'll see you guys needed just an expression you got to within a great job I'm not proud that you guys put this out when I. Good to leaders I don't know I don't know how would you muses I just don't say about the ability probably OK why Aaron are not handsome. I'm also just want to not say that I really really enjoying the show and I'm not looking forward to anymore for me yes. Thank you think yeah I. Yes so we we saw some that we saw some rough cuts for this interview area where where are we in the release schedule and -- because I will watch them again so where where are we now like coming here available right now is there as the time in his record and we know we and all the previous ones are out there and then on Friday when you you do episode you're answering for them. Yeah I tell what I want to meet the way things are the ones that are already out are out yeah and there will be more coming home and yes I know there are two guys who actually know any thing. I think from space and it's a lot of I didn't I I knew little bubble blowing pipe is when I mean I told him he's. Is there Susan so much time we have eight episodes currently Al that are available you can watch says it dad so does not. In his dorm where mrs. firm either may be more personal way that come announce an end zone and I ask. Next Friday April when he sat by and weeks from tomorrow and Chris I mean and especially your sister is a fine person. In the everything. Over an area way but is equality performer is equality yeah I tell him to go. Are similar guys thank you so much for cumin and now thank you thank you for having espionage appreciated. Again thank you so much the guys are dead have died Dedrick show dot com. Check it out if you have a before when we we're talking about it it's a phenomenal show it's really fun so good it's a web series so there short. And now IE still eight days they put in a lot of work into it. This is a risk based and Chris and I tell you about our review of a cool thing we saw what was the cool thing that you side that would be Star Trek the ultimate voyage she was a connoisseur I'll ask you. Sir turn of course almost it's that. It it's going on right now but I think at the end of the month it's done in the United States runs presently it started January actually it did four month run. Well yeah I had an N owning up to go to Paris sometimes it Cameron doing but it's the fiftieth anniversary of star turn this is a wonderful. All. Audio visual treat we're live orchestra. Obviously place some of the greatest music from Star Trek TV and movies while they show you some real iconic moments. On the screen including you know basically being the soundtrack to live than they play some of the great moments from the TV show and they provide the soundtrack lie with the orchestra. Yet there were several several points in the show where they actually just through a scene from a from an episode up. And then played the music that went with that scene and you know he was just won't let me being there why would this orchestra and you know if he if you watch a lot of Star Trek like Vijay and I have you know that did a lot of the music a lot of the sound during his. Very very sim funny and it's an end and it it's. It's supposed to get you excited or make you feel sad or you know make you afraid or did it's it generates these emotions on purpose. Which is what any its contract should do obviously but. Being there and listen to a live orchestra do it and having the scene play out in front of me about their I was just so amazing in just I I couldn't have. Can think of a better way to spend a few hours on and on a Friday night. The next step he can't do this Star Trek TV show the next I would spend ridiculous amount of money to see a screening of any Star Wars movie with a lives or I had I. I only have been cool good for me anyway John Williams score they give her hair hair hair that well plays of the Paramount theater could do that they did really well the set was amazing was so if there were elements. Off of there of basically be live delivery room set for next gen. And of course deep space nine made the space station. So I guess a few more dates left in. Oh. But you Czech Star Trek all starch and ultimate voyage. Just look for on you know I'm on the Google's new things in and then you'll see their concert tour and whenever and hopefully you to see was really awesome. And it took a couple of pictures from inside the showed two guys are to those up on the answer obscure kind of get an idea but the set looked like oh cool and how nicely you have Vijay and myself and have my beautiful wife for all dressed up for the evening check it out. And ate other grass seed outpouring well it did look they may looks fantastic I'm glad I brought a jacket and a half aspect because I we knew it was during high emerald city comic con so I was gaming and entirely now you know what I'll hide the T shirt by putting on a button down shirt but better have a jacket and a car device had his viva. And voiding Chris and his wife show up an address to the nines including Chris had some beautiful Alia start trick insignia. Cuff links down why how are area guys on the cuff links on this this is so perfect for you know. Yeah he he he was a they really it was it was a swanky evening and people that he's got a great if people were cheering and hollering Chris yeah course the only one cheering for any mention enterprise oh man okay Eric Cantor on that show what he was doing when I was like yeah I had. Or watching this thing and anytime somebody's favorite character came up on the screen you have you know day even thirty or forty people cheering for Ricardo much people June for for so I'm not I mean yeah. Hoot and Holler and when the wind cork showed up on the screen or whatever and then archer pops up yes jazz stylist oh you guys like now not my boy next time he comes on the screen on this thank you. Last I really I'm on my voice yeah I got the message that I don't care I met her head like I'm not look at. I don't know it's crazy person has amassed have moved twice then there that's that is awesome it's kind of cozy and unfortunately eighties said it's going to be touring Canada displays over everything Canadian people. Take it out twelve candidate herself only US west done and then access is immune Paris September. I am out there rather sort of yeah I mean I mean Costa Mesa Reno Salt Lake City Denver as well says they may have some places are going to bite each history check announcing a lot of East Coast locations so maybe they don't do that yeah. Moving on it this. Our own buddy but they edit it for Judas because they finally released graphic novel I've been waiting for one element earth wind I don't know like Greg Morrison Indiana Marquette and isn't fair Barrett are their team. It was at this this book's been years in the making. Dom and it was it was actually beautiful it was on lake. Most super her stories and there's no move fight scene. Any point the whole book the towel on it's it's it's actually paced like an aunt Mike and an hourlong TV drama. It's it's it through one woman on trial for beating paradise island. And and puberty she's being returned in chains in the beginning ensor explains why she left how she laughed and what she learned blossoms there throughout the book. It's it's great it's a wonderful introduction to Wonder Woman oh good it's it's under a 150 pages so it's easier read. Dark premise of all these earth one boxes are all worlds in which the superhero wouldn't. In question. Or team in case of teen titans. Is the only one on that planet's. So this is not want a woman get you know and Germans roles and their like Qaeda wanna hang out who made a bad man this is one woman answers a man's world she picks up a truck. And everybody is like that's not possible now I don't how okay on the Steve it's it's your interest in the two supporting characters the biggest creditors of the one will admit those are Steve Trevor her romantic. Partner who plans on tennis gear and caused her to leave and at a candy her best friend who she meets when she goes to man's world. This is probably the best at a candy I've ever seen. In any book she's fantastic. It's it's really equal how to play with teams off each other Steve Trevor on the is a black soldier. Who served in Afghanistan and so through him he sort of shows them that. Man's world still has the problems that caused them to leave but it's not exclusive to woman women as a black man easy plenty of adversity. And then edit candy who. These are short of shows that pay man's world isn't so bad for women look at how happy and it got comfortable and with myself and look at how much we can do together. Obviously play those these off each other while. One woman just plays the outside are sort of learning what. Does this world is it's a really great take on the woman who missed dose. A boom that come I started reading mockingbird mockingbird too came out last week and I found out that apparently everybody's taking it it's. It's a really intelligently put together a series the first issue came out last month and it. It's it's four consecutive weeks of mockingbird going to shield health clinic. And so in others like Hercules is always there'll beat up in pretty good. There is next Tony Stark in the waiting room holding a pamphlet about ST is yeah. A lot of fun but each in his three stench there's three different outrage I explained often explain why dog is with the tickets selling things. And so we get this sort of month as we see her power is growing because she was recently exposed to both the Infiniti formula as well as Steve Rogers who -- overseer general I'll watch a mockingbird sick because that's. So the first issue was this whole month and in the next few issues are all feeling in that month and explaining what's happened how are things going. It's by EI a novelist named Chelsea Kane. Who deserve first comic book and usually novelists write really wording comics and yes this is really is the comic book four is does this is overwhelming comic book content. I don't know which is a mockingbird at first because I figured it was just another series that was being made because the characters being on TV exactly this is not bad it's not like the agents of she'll series cool not that at all so I just that's the sort of dark horse pick out of north on the over the mockingbird series. And that pretty light week awesome thank you so. What's the goalie. What although we got what doesn't deserve more stuff up Telecom is true why. Well Star Trek of course you're fully ideally you Star Trek which is the JJ Abrams universe gas issues or. It has the rotten Mary's Star Trek cast on there. As Spock is gonna reflect on his life back for full time was altered and on the cover there is need more Spock shatters Kirk and DeForest always McCoy. First time in the history of this book. That they're gonna show us those people least on the cover. I'm intrigued about the story is the legend of Spock continues that story arc very exciting that's that's a cool biz. I just want to let that value and now because that's got to got to cover like well what is that get prepared now before we get to the geek she this is something I noticed in somebody wanted to if we want to bring it up because we has and he nationals talk about this because we did talk movie news. And apparently mean. There was a rumor that I thought was just a joke. That men in black and these 21 jump street. Universe is were going to mash up. And then almost holed it. Apparently this is true they put out me last week they put out a post Turks and McDonald's last week and yet and they showed it. MR IB 23. Is happening and what. Tears when he three is they play off of I twenty to jump street 21 jump street and now 23 jump street you know on that point in it. The team I guess you're just gonna smush the universe is together really this is something that they've been going on together all along. What's you know make Qaeda and it's interesting I thought it was just to joke. There are credits sequined or not this could just a joke that and credit sequence where they show you all the future oh yes and they had amassed several Saudi even things and look at they're actually going to do a mashup. I ordered that's how it started they had that met that yeah it OAS 43 through like 97 at the end of to Joseph Torre still. That you actually do imagine somebody was like. Well. And how it got it's like Clijsters didn't they just like sit around get leg really they can decide hey. What are we bring the men in black in with days and kind and at this point it looks like they're rebooting the franchise what I've read at this point is that they won't be any Will Smith nor Tommy Lee Jones in the men in black side but Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill will be back for the 222123. Jumps so it's always more going to be one of the jump street movies but instead of going to school they're gonna be men in what turned him and he added it would be kind of funny if there's shell that works out idea at all this sounds it's it's still sells to ridiculous and on senior right now. It just for it even happen to do. It sounds too weird to be birthed this is this is the gets a comic books have given the world right. Ten years ago the idea of the avengers doesn't marvel cinematic universe existing as wells that does this many movies and shared universe. Unbelievable blanket the fewest universe was like those we got to that in truth Defcon comedic characters that do that and we got. All these TV shows that share stuff and we've gotten Netflix and and then we got Constantine was on fox and and he was on CW would readers how to crossover between you your characters and ABC dink and now we've got. We've got men and black Detroit they jump street the I know scroll. And it's happened this feels very much like DA tier of back in the day when beetlejuice first now they're supposed to be a sequel right afterwards and Bil GU juice Hawaii yeah go to Hawaii or so so lie that's exactly what this feels like to mayor like even the skinny do crossovers are at play the globetrotters. Originally the plan Alan please it is anti French president should do that though. It's 22 Josh hey I can be no other hey Tony I'm chemistry I believe the men in black guy like any other one if they can. Imagine Reid didn't do very well. And they're looking for a way to revitalize the franchise and this may be very well that way do it. Eight I can't say I can't say that I'm not gonna go see it because as as people in the nation this is something we have to do it's ever think so yeah that point making going go to C didn't just do it well I have to go see kind of your guys this thing utterly new agenda or. Without this though I think I'm like his dad like yeah the last three kind of showed it it's not a franchise and it's great movie with these two guys he did it again it was really good but like. It's not the only two movies it's not one of those things that this might preserve because we have the two guys this time but do you really need more member plants and while this I think we'll just be the deciding factor I don't know any movies it's our it's comedy it happened. I happen aren't as intrinsic value. It's as seriously as. You know men are I. Other weren't ready for like stuff we haven't seen the glory now like comics and other Internet movies to all but I made sure our assures I'm totally can't think they are I had. Be well forever no more movies were no Donna it's gonna have to man lag gain a twenty dollar upgrade your Dumars I think toys for its going to be frightened however it's going to be she should just McKinney makes it was enough when lately we only for the series and I and IR. All of meant when he and orange jump street at this point Jack Bauer clear thinking alike weird doctor who'd Ted's excellent engine held pop your time in different numbers I don't I don't know. All right even pop and let us know while it is no easy about it. How do you rate incentives and Amy and citizen you know be digging needs did you know dot com citizen voicemail one nannies no did you 433530. Let's get to allow. She Swiss TV we got towards biggie. Hello I have this list it's a nineteen extremely useful things they'll prepare you for disaster in a month on the mound Justine and Mary you're old. You know emergency plan the having your office building I'm talking about. Actual full on apocalypse Sierra zombie outbreak or what ever RAI army and let's just as on the brink unless you just. The album or is more on what somebody's test the first one is not unbreakable glasses. Yes you have been listening to get your problem with your eyesight like moyo was in the Yiddish you might want to have some mistakes. I mean because we kind of hard to go to at least six Quincy Jones on these earning rounds of the other unbreakable glass as you prescription. At many go and merchant ship Israel Portman apocalypse where. There's this a flashlight and doubled as a flask. Knew hey hey hey at CAE a little cups on the end that's a good when he asked instrumental here I like a little comments like although the fact it is not called a flask light should be a punishable because I don't I don't worry it's not called the flashlight know it's right there are people if they're right. And for the next on the list a zombie targets that actually bleed so if you guys have seen those shows. Like to unify and solidly in the name. Yet like whether or who would like her. Yeah no I Arianna here they have like those test dummies really shoot the yeah out he had a ballistics dummies they have a ballistic dummy that actually bleeds. Coke she lives. Because value target practice you know I mean all of that is awesome natural Colombian and us really cool we said zombies there's an apocalypse so this could you liked him but that's a raiders shoot that says you pat yeah yeah yeah. Hello we got him rookies wouldn't that's Smart son number four an air pure fighter at fire that claims to destroy the influenza virus so now Mike Mena. My destroy some of the other Myers is that a floating around hopefully after hours I can view is that Al foot so I guess. Yeah how much money you can get shots that they'll act antagonize you know they sell on the Internet so go look it up you know studies actually buy right now always signaled a working from the gallery yeah and another on the next finally get firm you know high gear whatever if I ever went thinking. It's. Water you're not light peak guys who like going makings I issuer bid so water purified can take on the ghost it's basically a giant straw and then he did get |
said they have military options for dealing with North Korea, even if those would have "horrific" consequences.
[Jitters and surprise in South Korea and Japan over Trump U.N. speech ]
If Trump's words are aimed at calling Kim's bluff and forcing him to stand down, they will almost certainly backfire.
"His speech could give Pyongyang an excuse or incentive to redouble its nuclear and missile development, which means more testing," said Duyeon Kim, visiting senior fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum in Seoul.
The whole rationale of deterrence is to persuade the opponent not to carry out an intended action, because the costs outweigh their benefits, Duyeon Kim said. The question now is whether Kim's regime, which is struggling to interpret Trump's unconventional style, considers the threat real.
"Pyongyang might interpret his bluster as credible and work harder on its nuclear weapons," she said. "Or, Pyongyang might laugh and not take his warnings seriously, which is also a big problem, too. We just don't know for sure."
North Korea is, however, likely to glean one clear message from Trump's speech, analysts said: There's no point signing a denuclearization deal with the president, because he won't honor it.
Trump called the international nuclear accord with Iran an "embarrassment" and "one of the worst and most one-sided" agreements ever forged. He strongly hinted that his administration would soon back out of the deal with Iran's "murderous regime."
"His trashing of the Iran nuclear deal will raise warning signs for North Korea," said Pak, of Brookings. "This is not going to get them to talk if the U.S. is just going to tear it up."
Instead, North Korea will probably just wait out Trump, she said. "They think in terms of dynasties," she said, "and they know that we think in terms of electoral cycles."
Read more:
Trump’s menacing United Nations speech, annotated
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign newsBy Allison Scarbrough. OCP Editor.
HART — Five defendants, ranging in age from 19-23, stood before 27th Circuit Court Judge Terrence R. Thomas Monday morning, Nov. 17, and each of them received a stern a lecture about the drug charges they are facing.
Each defendant appeared for a pretrial stemming from drug arrests at last summer’s Electric Forest Festival in Grant Township.
“Are your parents here?” Thomas asked Aaron Alexander Moore, 19, of Charleston, W. Va. “I bet they’re delighted,” Thomas said facetiously. “No, they’re disappointed,” Moore replied.
Moore was the first EF defendant to go before the judge Monday, and he received the longest lecture, as the others were in the courtroom to hear it.
“There are more state cops down there than you can shake a stick at,” Thomas told the young defendant. “I assume you’re not going to the festival this year?” the judge asked. “No, Your Honor,” Moore replied.
Moore was facing a more serious 10-year felony of possession of MDMA (ecstasy) but pleaded to a two-year felony of possession of analogues with a recommendation for Holmes Youthful Trainee Act (HYTA).
HYTA is a “state law that allows a judge to place a youth between 17 and 20 who is alleged to have committed a crime and who has pleaded guilty to that crime to be placed in prison or on probation without a conviction to avoid a criminal record,” according to michigan.gov/corrections. “I could send you to prison for up to three years,” the judge said. “You’re going to have to behave yourself, and this will all go away. You can make your parents proud of you again.”
Stuart Andrew McMillan, Jr., 19, of Charleston, W. Va., had the same charge and plea deal as Moore. “You two were together?” Thomas asked McMillan. “Both of you are stupid enough to buy drugs down there? the judge asked. “I’ve learned my lesson, sir,” the defendant said.
“We will follow you for a year, and if you quit using drugs, you could end up without a record,” Thomas said. “Multiply this by 100 if you’re behind the wheel of a vehicle.”
As the court clerk set his sentencing for Dec. 29, the judge said, “Merry Christmas,” to McMillan.
The third defendant to stand before the judge was Emily Michelle Putz, 23, of Rochester, NY. Putz’s age makes her ineligible for HYTA, but she pleaded to a lesser one-year misdemeanor charge of possession of marijuana and was placed on a 10-month deferred sentence. She initially was facing a more serious charge of possession of ketamine. “The other stuff I told the guys equally applies to you,” Thomas said.
Putz testified that she found the drugs on the festival grounds; tested them with a drug test kit; and then began selling them. She eventually was arrested after selling the drugs to an undercover officer. “They sell test kits at these festivals, and I purchased one,” she said.
“You’re very scientific,” Thomas said.
“I didn’t want to kill anyone,” Putz said.
“You’re a smarter drug user than most,” the judge replied.
Tad Daniel Kochis, 22, of Beulah, received the same plea deal as Putz – pleading to a lesser one-year misdemeanor charge of possession of marijuana and placed on a 10-month deferred sentence. Kochis was initially facing a felony charge of possession with intent to deliver MDMA. “We will defer your sentence for 10 months if you behave yourself and quit using drugs,” Thomas said.
When Thomas asked Kochis to tell him what happened, he replied, “I brought MDMA to Electric Forest.”
“Where did you get this ecstasy? Did you get it up there (Beulah)?” Thomas asked. Kochis said, “Yes.”
The last EF defendant to face the stern judge Monday was Jacob Scott Lane, 20, Woodbridge, Va. He, too, is being offered HYTA like Moore and McMillan in exchange for a plea to possession of ketamine, which is a two-year felony. He was initially facing more serious charges of possession with intent to deliver to ketamine and possession of cocaine. “I’m sure your dad is delighted to be here today,” Thomas said. “If you behave yourself, you can get out of this without a criminal record.”
“I purchased it from someone walking around the campground,” Lane testified. “I took it into the concert area, and when I started breaking into one of the bags, security saw me.” He described ketamine as a “psychedelic tranquilizer.”
Lane told the judge that he’s been attending narcotics anonymous sessions. “These rehab places are terribly overrated,” Thomas said. “You’re a slave to these substances. It’s a lifestyle that leads to a dead end The main thing is that we want you to learn something from this.”10 Things More Likely To Kill You Than Refugees
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Refugees Are Not Remotely Dangerous, Despite What Scaredy-Cat Xenophobic Trump Nuts Claim
In the 1970’s, three people were killed amid a series of bombings that took place in Florida. Those attacks were carried out by Cuban refugees. They were the last terrorist attacks in the United States to involve refugees from any country on Earth.
In 1980, the Refugee Act strengthened the ever-loving hell out of the vetting process and procedures that our government uses to weed out dangerous individuals and terrorists from entering the United States posing as refugees. The law was a brilliant one; it allowed us to help those in need, but still keep the American people safe from terror threats.
Just how effective has the Refugee Act and subsequent improvements been at weeding out dangerous people? 100%. Seriously. Since the passage of the Refugee Act, there has not been a single act of terrorism in the United States carried out by a refugee. Not one. For real.
Alex Nowrasteh of the right-leaning Cato institute found that your odds of being killed by a refugee posing as a terrorist are 1 in 3.64 billion per year. Though realistically, since there hasn’t been a single attack in the past 37 years, it might be more fair to state that there are no odds at all.
So this got us thinking: what out there is more dangerous than refugees, Syrian or otherwise? What’s more likely to kill you than a terrorist posing as a refugee? Here are ten things you should definitely be more afraid of.
10 Things More Likely To Kill Your Face Off Than Terrorists Posing As Refugees
Death by coconut: The odds of being killed by a coconut falling from a tree and hitting you? 1 in 270 million.
Killed By A Vending Machine: Everyone hates it when the vending machine is all like “hey, you don’t really need that Snickers bar. I’m just going to hang onto this while you reevaluate your dietary choices.” But the odds of being killed by a vending machine — well, the odds of your rage exploding and you killing yourself with a vending machine, anyway — are 1 in 112 million. Let’s stick that stat up in the Reverb Press break room, shall we?
A Street Car Named DEATH!: Your odds of dying in a freak street car accident are 1 in 71.985 million.
Your clothes randomly igniting in your sleep: The odds of your clothes suddenly bursting into flames while you’re sleeping are 1 in 22.1 million. I’ve seen enough Trump rallies on TV to know that some people are better off sleeping in their clothes, despite this apparent fire hazard.
Mad (well, angry) cows: There’s a 1 in 15.945 million chance that cows will kill you, with 20 people dying in cow attacks ever year. I’d love to hear their campy action movie tag lines. “Where’s the beef? RIGHT HERE! *Blam!*”
Hot water: There’s a 1 in 5 million chance of being killed by scalding hot water, so please be careful when putting the kettle on, folks.
Legal Execution: Your odds of dying to lethal injection and other State-sanctioned execution in the United States is 1 in 4.29 million. I’m willing to bet that number goes up quite a bit for those of you in Texas. They seem to lethally-inject you over parking tickets down there.
Bee stings: The odds of being killed by bees is approximately 1 in 3.189 million. I was going to reference “My Girl” and Macaulay Culkin but I’m pretty sure most of you still can’t process the end of the movie.
Drowning In Your Bathtub: The odds of drowning in your bathrub are 1 in 818,015. Your rubber ducky unfortunately doesn’t know CPR.
Lightning: The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 700,000. Why is this even our go-to statistic anymore?SAN FRANCISCO, California (UPDATED) - A Filipino-American group is crying foul over derogatory statements against Filipinos allegedly made by former American Apparel CEO and founder, Dov Charney.
American Apparel recently filed court documents that detailed evidence of why they fired Charney last year.
This was in response to a defamation lawsuit Charney brought against American Apparel last month.
American Apparel’s internal investigation found that Charney told some Filipino workers that they were "Filipino pigs…with your faces in the trough."
He also reportedly told his Filipino staff he would be their 'Ferdinand Marcos' and he will tell them what to do.
The internal investigation found that he not only violated the company’s anti-discrimination policies, he was also sued for sexually harassing his employees.
American Apparel has not issued a statement beyond the recent court filing.
In reaction to these discriminating statements allegedly made by Charney, the San Francisco-based Westbay Pilipino Multi-Service Center is considering a class action suit against him and American Apparel.
The group said derogatory statements were allegedly made by Charney while he was working for the company.
"If Filipinos allow attacks like this, racial profiling attacks, to go unanswered, then it’s open season on other Filipino workers. So if we set the stage here and say there will be consequences to what you said about Filipinos, then that’s a shout across the board to other employers," said Rodel Rodis, legal counsel for West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center.
They are also calling on all Filipinos to boycott American Apparel products and requesting that the heads of the company meet with them to discuss ethical practices.
If American Apparel does not meet with them, the group said it is prepared to file a lawsuit on behalf of all former and current Filipino employees of American Apparel who were subjected to this discrimination.
"You cannot continue now without consulting our community on how to do your best practices. We need input. This is one of the ways that you can make amends. So, come here to San Francisco. We’ll meet you," West Bay Executive Director Vivian Zalvidea Araullo said.
Sources said American Apparel has reached out to West Bay and discussions are ongoing.
The company, in a statement, said it respects its employees.
“Respect for our employees is a core principle of American Apparel under Paula Schneider’s leadership. This is clear from proactive measures we have taken, including the adoption of our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, which reflects our efforts to ensure that American Apparel’s workplaces are free from harassment, bullying, and intimidation, and which promotes fair treatment of employees. American Apparel welcomes the opportunity to discuss these initiatives with the West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center,” American Apparel added.
Read more on Balitang America:Image: Steven Tee/LA Photographic
Cybersecurity should be a top priority in any business but it takes on an even greater significance when your organisation needs to protect intellectual property at the cutting edge of research and development -- as in the competitive world of Formula 1 racing.
Williams Martini Racing has to keep its F1 racing data secure, but its Williams Advanced Engineering division also works with clients in areas from transport to energy, designing and manufacturing products from tiny structural composites to electric motors.
"One the F1 side, everyone knows there's confidential information you're trying to protect: car design, race data, and so on. But at Williams, we have a bigger challenge than most other F1 teams face, because we have an advanced engineering division," Graeme Hackland, IT director at Williams, told ZDNet.
"Our advanced engineering division is either working with companies and their intellectual property, or developing our own intellectual property. The misuse of that data could be extremely costly to us, costly to our customers, and could really impact our reputation," Hackland said.
So what are the biggest cybersecurity threats Williams needs to protect against?
"There's one I hate to mention because people will looking at me strangely when I walk around the factory, but there's the trusted insider, that's the obvious one, that's where most companies are vulnerable," said Hackland.
"We talk a lot about trust and verification. We want people to be able to do their jobs, we don't want to block people from being able to do what they need to do, but we want to verify that they haven't misused -- even inadvertently -- confidential information from Williams or our customers," he said, adding that this is especially important when dealing with information from clients of the Advanced Engineering division.
"They trust us to either run a project in its entirety or to run it jointly with them. We may have some of their people on our site or our people may go to theirs and the project team needs to be sure that the data is safe, secure, and not being misused," he said.
Formula 1 is a hyper-competitive and good use of data can make all the difference between winning or finishing further down the field -- so teams are very sensitive about it.
"We don't want our staff to feel like we're constantly monitoring them, because we're not. We've put tools in place from Symantec that allow us to baseline what people do, protect their information and endpoints, and if they were to step out of line, we'd be notified about it," he said.
Of course, Williams also has to deal with outsider threats and there are plenty -- in just one month, almost 300 instances of malware were detected by email filters.
"It's all about IP; we're working on projects involving autonomous vehicles, and we work with other motorsports such as Formula E, motor manufacturers, and aerospace. All of that information is valuable and we know that brings risks of someone accessing information," said Hackland.
Williams uses Symantec Endpoint Protection for 1,200 computers, both within their headquarters and remotely at races around the globe, as well as for Advanced Engineering's projects and remote laptops sending live, detailed race telemetry data back to Williams's headquarters.
Viruses are a real threat in F1: in 2014 the Marussia F1 team said it had to cut short testing because systems got infected by a virus, something Hackland, described as "one of my nightmares".
In addition to using protective software, Williams fights threats with education at all levels -- especially given how authentic some phishing emails can look.
"What worries me is there's a lot of people out there in our staff who'll never have been exposed to these risks before, so education is required," he said.
"You used to be able to tell because the language would be bad and you could tell something was wrong. But that's not the case anymore; they're more sophisticated," Hackland added.
Nonetheless, for Hackland, the best way to reduce cybersecurity risks would be to make systems so robust that malware, phishing attempts, and hacks don't even reach employees inboxes.
"A lot of what used to get to [employees'] mailboxes doesn't get there anymore -- so better than education is to prevent stuff getting there," he said.
Read more on cybersecurityPerhaps one of the last barriers to the human conquest of space has been removed; a space-rated espresso machine has now been delivered to the International Space Station (ISS).
The device was made by two Turin-based companies, Lavazza Coffee and engineering firm Argotec. It is called the ISSpresso and was delivered by Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti in the early hours of Monday morning, when her Soyuz space capsule docked at the orbiting habitat.
Making coffee in space is difficult, especially espresso, which relies on 94°C water being passed through ground coffee under high pressure.
On Earth this is achieved with the help of gravity. The ground coffee is placed in a perforated container, the water is heated and shot on to the coffee to drip into the cup. In space there is no up and down, so things don’t naturally fall.
Water – and the scalding coffee – would simply form droplets and float away, presenting a hazard both to the astronauts and to the sensitive electronics on board. So the ISSpresso takes water from a pouch and pumps it round the machine.
The water is heated and placed under pressure then fired through a capsule of ground coffee. According to the Italian national espresso institute, the water must reach the coffee at 9 bar of pressure to be called a certified Italian espresso.
To guard against accidents, the piping in the ISSpresso can withstand pressures of up to 400 bar. The machine itself weighs 20kg, which is the same as all the science instruments on the Philae comet lander put together.
The resulting drink is pumped into another plastic pouch and the astronaut drinks it through a straw.
Not the pinnacle of chic usually associated with an espresso cup but Giuseppe Lavazza, vice-president of the coffee company, says that the taste itself will be indistinguishable from that bought in Earth-bound coffee shops.
Argotec have been working on the design since 2012, when a previous Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano, complained after only a week in orbit that the only thing he missed was a good Italian espresso.
Those hoping for cappuccino on the ISS however still have some time to wait. The process relies on frothing milk using steam, then separating the resulting foam from the milk. On Earth, gravity does the separation for you. In zero-G, the milk and the foam would be almost inseparable unless you placed the device in a centrifuge. But then, how do you get the milk foam to float on the coffee?
Nasa has designed its own version of an espresso machine but instead of making coffee it is going to look for life on Mars. The Mars Organic Analyser would grind samples of Martian rock and then pass hot, high pressure water over them to extract organic molecules.
The resulting liquid would taste about as good as the earlier ISS coffee but could be analysed to betray the existence of past or present life on the Red Planet.The mother of an Irish actor who earned more than €1m in the Harry Potter movies has told the High Court he spent his money on drink, cars and girls.
Devon Murray is being sued for €286,000 by his former agent, who claims the 27-year-old unlawfully tried to get out of his contract.
Neil Brooks signed Devon Murray when he was 11 or 12. Soon afterwards, he secured a role in the first two Harry Potter movies.
Seamus Finnigan, an Irish half-blood wizard, was a character he ended up playing for the entire series.
Devon Murray. Pic: Collins
Mr Brooks claims he secured a pay increase for his client ahead of the third movie, and said they agreed to an increase in his cut from 12.5% to 20%.
Devon told the court he fired him after a picture of him smoking on set emerged in the papers.
He said he thought agents would be “magically able to make things disappear”.
He also said he could never get a hold of him and his father would have to take him to the airport when his driver did not show up.
He, along with his parents Michael and Fidelma Murray from Celbridge, Co. Kildare, are being sued for €286,000.
In her closing speech, Fidelma said her son spent his money on drink, cars and girls.
She said he is her only child so she was not going to give out to him.
A decision is due tomorrow afternoon.Cast Iron Welding
We want to share some truths about cast iron welding with you. These truths are easy to understand, extremely important to know and yet, ironically, hardly known in the welding world.
About 40% of the casting repair work that we perform in our service department is performed by some type of welding procedure. Even though we are the world leader and only complete supplier of metal stitching supplies in the world, we are also the only company who will actually tell you the truth without bias. Some repairs require oven welding and some require metal stitching.
The most important thing for you to understand is that electric welding on cast iron is actually the very worst decision you could make to attempt to repair your cracked cast iron part. If you want to make a complete mess of your part, go ahead and arc weld it with nickel rod. Cast iron cannot stretch and withstand the contraction and hardening caused by cast welding with preheating below 1200 ° F. The brand of welding rod does not make a very big difference. It's the heat that causes the changes to the cast iron itself. Sure the nickel weld is machineable but the cast iron will become as hard as a drill bit or tap and therefore will prevent the proper machining that is often required. 50% of the casting repairs we see have been arc welded on with disastrous results often costing the owner at least twice as much to repair properly. Cast iron welding should not be attempted even by experienced welders without years of high temperature oven welding training. Cast iron requires preheat of at least 900 ° F. for brazing and 1300 ° F. for fusion welding.
If you want to know why and what the correct way is, read on.
Before we get right into the facts, we need to develop "clout" with you. If you don't already know our company, and the wealth of experience that is the foundation of our knowledge, you might be tempted to discount the information we want to share with you. Therefore this page is devoted to explaining the reasons you should listen, learn and prosper. If you already know us and have faith in us, skip to the links at the bottom of the page. Gary J. Reed is the inventor of the patented processes and developer of the proprietary products and procedures used and manufactured by LOCK-N-STITCH Inc. For over thirty five years he has amassed his hands-on casting repair experiences: successes and failures, testing and developing, compiling metallurgical data and results. No one else has contributed more or has had more experience than Gary. Many of the competitors of our service department purchase their supplies from us. Over the years Gary has personally welded over 5,000 castings ranging in size from less than one pound to over twenty tons. He has trained hundreds of people from all over the world. As of October, 2005, Gary has twenty US patents issued and many more foreign patents either issued or in the process of issuing, as well as many other patents pending in the US and abroad. His technologies have been used in millions of successful repairs.
Because of his experiences and his ability to teach others, Gary Reed is considered by many to be the most qualified person to render an opinion on the realities of what happens when heat is applied to cast iron.
Since one person obviously can't do it all, the company of LOCK-N-STITCH Inc. has grown to fill the increasing need for good information and great products for crack repair. LNS is a dedicated manufacturer. We manufacture all stitching and thread repair tools and supplies that we sell including our patented taps. We have a modern CNC machining and grinding facility with highly trained machinists, programmers, inspectors and process control management personnel. But we started from a repair shop and we are still a repair facility today. Our repair technicians are the ones you talk to when you call for technical support. And can you think of a better research lab for a manufacturer than to use its own products on a daily basis? If it doesn't work for us, it won't work for you. We test and prove Gary's products and knowledge with every repair we perform. Every satisfied customer of our service department helps us satisfy the customers of the manufacturing department. LNS provides the right tools, the right answers, the right experience and the right advice when you have a cracked or damaged casting.
Read the following information thoroughly. Ask yourself if it doesn't ring true. In fact, once you really understand it, you'll realize you knew most (if not all) of this already. You just hadn't put it all together in a conceptual package. Now you can take your own experiences and interpret them just a little differently. When you apply your new understanding to the concept of welding cast iron, you won't make mistakes ever again.
Cast Iron Welding Supporting MaterialExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) released earnings last week that turned some heads. Thanks to record high prices for natural gas and oil, the integrated energy giant made $11.7 billion in the quarter -- the most profitable quarter for any public company ever.
And that angered some people.
Presidential candidate Barack Obama called Exxon's money-making abilities "outrageous" over the weekend, as did Senator Joe Lieberman on Meet the Press. And Obama proposed a $1,000 energy rebate for working couples that would be funded by "a windfall profits penalty on oil selling at or over $80 per barrel."
Is such a move anti-capitalist, or necessary to return sanity to the market?
Tim Hanson: Overlooked in the attack on Exxon's record earnings is the fact that the company's stock actually dropped on the report since it fell short of analyst expectations. Further, the company's net margin in the quarter was just 8.5%, which ranks the company in just the 69th percentile in that category among all public companies. That's good, but not great, and certainly not worthy of a company deserving a "profit penalty."
The fact is that oil exploration and production is a capital intensive and cyclical industry. Thanks to sustained high prices in recent years, E&P companies have been able to search for and find reserves in places that were once uneconomical, such as the very deep water. In 2006, for example, Chevron (NYSE:CVX), Devon Energy (NYSE:DVN), and Statoil announced that they had drilled a successful test well called Jack 2 in the Gulf of Mexico through 7,000 feet of water and another 20,000 feet of earth. It was hailed at the time as the largest U.S. oil find in 40 years.
Yet progress on the Jack project has been slow-going as a result of a lack of supply of deepwater rigs and, I would guess, uncertainty about the economics of extracting oil from such deepwater given the threat of an $80 per barrel price cap.
While the current energy crisis is painful, the solution is not price caps or profit penalties. Rather, if we give entrepreneurs the opportunity to make money by finding creative ways to extract oil from exotic places or invent viable long-lasting batteries for electric cars, they will tap the capital markets and get after a solution. In the meantime, as consumers, we need to adapt.
Joe Magyer: We Americans are a funny bunch. Coca-Cola sells us sugar-water that rots our guts and fattens our children -- earning a near-20% rip in the process -- and we praise it as an American icon. Exxon risks billions annually in the quest to provide us with essential hydrocarbons, facing down wily dictators and geological challenges worthy of a History Channel special in the process. Its reward? Thin margins and being lambasted as the epitome of greed and corporate irresponsibility.
The biggest irony in this whole traveshamockery is that we're all stakeholders in the success of Exxon and its Big Oil peers. People tend to forget (or ignore) that Exxon, ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), and friends are publicly traded companies. That's right: Exxon isn't a clandestine organization owned by a small group of Texans who boast world-class ivory collections. If you're invested in an index fund or part of a defined-benefit pension plan, you own ExxonMobil.
And your stake in Big Oil's success doesn't stop with your Exxon shares. Did you enjoy your economic stimulus check? According to The Wall Street Journal, Exxon alone paid nearly $65 billion in U.S. taxes between 2003 and 2007. For perspective, that dwarfs the total tax bills paid by both Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and General Electric.
Finally, chew on this: You think gas prices are expensive now? Slap an arbitrary, reactionary windfall tax on oil at above $80 a barrel, and you'll find out what real gas pains feel like.
Brian Richards: This idea is a little bit like the McGriddle -- while I like the concept of bacon and eggs sandwiched between syrup-infused pancakes, the reality disappoints. After all, the theory behind taxing the greedy oil barons and rewarding Joe Consumer sounds good -- who doesn't like a good Robin Hood story? -- but it's a bit outdated.
For the record, I don't think this will ever go through, even though the idea plays well to some voters. For one (and as both Tim and Joe point out), the entire basis for this tax is mistaken -- it looks at profits, rather than profit margins. Exxon's margins are almost half those of McDonald's (NYSE:MCD), for example. (By the way, this windfall tax issue isn't unique to America -- BP (NYSE:BP) is facing the same issue.)
From gold to fertilizer, commodity prices have been on an absolute tear over the past year. But with the costs of filling up a gas tank, heating your home, or racing your cigarette boat at very high levels, the tax issue is (unsurprisingly) being arbitrarily applied to one particular commodity -- oil. As Warren Buffett recently said on CNBC, "I don't think that picking anybody that's had a commodity that's increased in price a lot and saying that there's a special tax because of that makes any sense."
In other words: Why not coal or steel or copper or the farmers benefiting from soaring food prices? Because even though they may do business in an identical fashion, and even though they may sell products that we need just as much as oil, and even though they may have better profit margins, they don't have the gaudy, headline-inducing profits of an Exxon.
Finally, the U.S. tried a windfall profits tax in the 1980s, and it didn't work out so well. Complying with the tax code was a burden for both the company and the IRS, and one study found that the tax back then had the effect of "increasing American dependence on foreign oil sources by 8% to 16%" because it decreased domestic production.
That's one thing we definitely do not want.
What do you think? Share your comments in the box below.Editor's note: This article was initially published at 6:37 p.m., EDT, on April 13 and has been updated.
Russian pilots rattled nerves aboard the destroyer Donald Cook, buzzing within yards of the ship in the Baltic Sea. Provocative, sure. But they weren't a credible threat.
So concludes a retired Navy commanding officer, who reviewed photos and videos from the run-ins on Monday and Tuesday, when unarmed Sukhoi Su-24 fighters flew within 1,000 feet of the ship — once coming as close as 30 feet in what U.S. officials called "simulated attacks." On Monday, a low-flying Russian Ka-27 Helix helicopter also appeared to take photos of the ship .
While the flybys were "Well, we’re not at war with Russia," Capt. Rick Hoffman said. "It would be one thing to be operating and have a threatening attack profile from someone who might not recognize me — that’s not the case here."
If you have visual identification of the jet, can see it isn't carrying weapons, and don't detect any electronic emissions suggesting there was a missile lock
ed
on the ship, there's nothing to be done.
And ultimately,
the
the rules of engagement allow the CO to take defensive action if they feel they safety of their vessel is in danger, according to U.S. European Command spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez told Navy Times. In this case the CO did not feel threatened, he added.
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put the CO in charge of how to respond.
"You don’t get to kill people just because they’re being annoying," said Hoffman, who commanded frigate DeWert and cruiser Hue City. Cruisers are the fleet's foremost air defense platform and are tasked with guarding flattops from incoming threats.
There's a possibility that the
However, the defense official said, the
"simulated attack"
posture
might violate a 1973 treaty between the U.S. and Russia that deals with this behavior
, and might prompt the U.S. to file a formal complaint with the country
.
Otherwise, Hoffman added, it just amounts to showboating.
"Only in 'Top Gun' does a war suddenly break out between two airplanes that is completely not related to something going on ashore," he said.
To be sure,
On the other hand,
the rules might be different in another situation.
Russia is still an ally and
The Baltic Sea is not a contested area of responsibility.
"We would probably not have accepted that from an Iranian aircraft in the Persian Gulf, although we’ve seen it," Hoffman said.
Or if it had been a civilian aircraft, he added, the CO would have been
much
more on guard for a potential suicide mission. But the likelihood that a rogue Russian pilot would take a shot at an American ship and then try to fly home through the airspace of multiple NATO partners is very low.
It's more likely that the stunt will end up as a public relations tool for Russian President Vladimir Putin, showing force against the Americans operating in his backyard.Biomimicry isn't new, nor are robotic hummingbirds, but the latest 'bot to come out of Chiba University in Japan makes even the DARPA-inspired Nano Air Vehicle -- which is very cool, needless to say -- look like last year's robotics.
Weighing only 2.6 grams and controlled by an infrared sensor, the tiny four-winged 'bot bobs and weaves through the air like a hummingbird, going as high as ten feet for up to six minutes at a time. By comparison, the makers of DARPA's Nano Air Vehicle were still working toward a 10-gram design last we checked.
While Chiba's robot has a hummingbird's agility, it has not yet achieved the stationary hover that makes designs like this so exciting. However, researchers there plan to have it hovering very soon, and by 2011 they hope to have it hovering with a microcamera so it can relay images to its handlers.
The idea is to use the 'bot in disaster scenarios in which search and rescue personnel need eyes in tight places or to perform recon in areas that are too dangerous for humans to go stomping around. But the military and intelligence benefits of a tiny, hovering robot like this are absolutely huge, offering an unparalleled means of surreptitiously looking around the next corner or inserting audio and visual devices into places where a special forces or intelligence operator might look out of place.
That is, until the army of cyborg insects spies is ready to deploy.Share. The saga continues. The saga continues.
Konami has begun hiring developers to start work on a brand new Metal Gear series.
The job postings (via NeoGAF) come just a day after rumours of franchise creator Hideo Kojima's departure began to spread following the quiet removal of his name from a series of promotional sites. Since then, unnamed sources have claimed the veteran developer and Konami are indeed splitting after the conclusion of Metal Gear Solid V, citing a "power struggle" as the cause.
Exit Theatre Mode
While there's yet to be any official announcement about Kojima's departure, these listings certainly seem to indicate Konami isn't wasting any time in shoring up the franchise should the dev be heading out the door. It also suggests the rumoured sequel for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance could still be on the cards regardless of what happens.
The posting seems to suggest Snake's story will indeed be concluding in Metal Gear Solid V, but this will be another series set in the same universe. Whether we'll see any familiar faces or not isn't clear.
This latest development in an increasingly murky story is likely to provoke mixed reactions from fans. While some may be glad to hear the franchise will |
Memphis, Tennessee, two former Memphis police officers were sentenced last Thursday to federal prison terms for stealing money and drugs during traffic stops and reselling heroin in the city. Terrion Bryson, 26, and Kevin Coleman went down after investigators got tips about their activities and set up a sting in which they agreed to protect drug loads. Bryson got eight years, while Coleman got 10.Hello,
I am at a LOSS of words for SENATOR BUNTING blocking unemployment benefits for me and my children. If I do NOT get my check next week I WILL HAVE NO FOOD AND WILL BE ON THE STREET.
What kind of people are you? 10 Billion goes to the war every couple days and to Wall street weekly. I want my benefits or there will be people starving and dying.
What is wrong with you people. NOW is NOT the time to play politics with childrens lives.
ARE you'all insane. NO checks equal no food for me. DO YOU GET IT??
IF THIS POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING DOES NOT END TODAY - WE WILL COME TO YOUR OFFICES AND MAKE OUR POINT. YOU ARE PLAYING A LIFE AND DEATH GAME HERE.
DO YOU GET IT.
Brad Shore
Louisville, KY 40202Map all coordinates using: OpenStreetMap Download coordinates as: KML · GPX
This list of the tallest statues includes completed statues that are at least 30 meters tall, which was the assumed height of the Colossus of Rhodes. The height values in this list are measured to the highest part of the human (or animal) figure, but exclude the height of any pedestal (plinth), or other base platform.
The definition of statue for this list is a free-standing sculpture (as opposed to a relief), representing one or more people or animals (real or mythical), in their entirety or partially (such as a bust). Monuments that contain statues are included in this list only if the statue fulfills these and the height criteria.
Existing statues [ edit ]
As of 2019, the main table includes 130 statues of height 30 m (98 ft) or taller.
Rank Country Number of
statues 1 China 35 2 India 25 3 Japan 19 4 Taiwan 8 5 Brazil 5 6= Indonesia, Thailand 4 8= Mexico, Malaysia 3 10 = Bolivia, Russia, Sri Lanka, United States, Vietnam 2 15 = Bhutan, Ecuador, Mauritius, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Philippines, Poland, Senegal, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela, France 1 (Total) 129
Destroyed [ edit ]
Proposed or under construction [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]Microsoft’s Xbox One console might have been on the market for nearly a year, but that’s not stopping the company from focusing on the Xbox 360. While the Xbox 360 has been available for nearly nine years, Microsoft has created a new blue edition for the holidays. It’s probably one of the best Xbox 360’s we’ve seen, with just color and no decorative images plastered over it.
It’s a special edition and appears to only be available at Walmart in the US, but for $249 you get a blue 500GB Xbox 360 with matching controller, a copy of Call of Duty: Ghosts and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Microsoft also has an identical bundle with a black version of the console available at all retailers for the same $249 price, and a 4GB Kinect bundle along with Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports, and Forza Horizon for $249 at Target. All of the bundles will be available on September 16th.Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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Confirmation hearings for federal appeals judges are usually dry affairs. They’re sparsely attended by the media, and senators don’t often stay beyond the time they have to be there. But this week featured some remarkable moments, as Democrats pressed several appointees of President Donald Trump on their exceptionally radical views. Ad Policy
Trump nominated John K. Bush, a lawyer from Louisville, to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Like so many of us, Bush tried his hand at blogging on various TypePad and WordPress accounts in the aughts. He blogged as “G. Morris” on his wife’s blog, “Elephants in the Bluegrass.” Unlike many of us, he frequently espoused phony stories from paranoid right-wing Internet corners, including those that advanced the racist conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. He often quoted stories from WorldNetDaily, which is run by conspiracy crank Joseph Farah and helped lead the early birther charge.
Senator Al Franken pressed Bush on this, and it made Bush so uncomfortable it’s almost painful to watch:
“You used the G. Morris alias when you wrote a series of posts about President Obama that seemed to focus on the president’s Kenyan heritage. One of those posts quotes freely from an article on World Net Daily, a website known for peddling conspiracy theories, fake news, and white nationalism,” Franken said. “How did you decide which sources to rely upon in your writings and how did you decide which sources were credible?”
Bush stumbled over his answer. “As a blogger, I was finding things that were in the news that were of note. I thought—I wasn’t intending to, through the post, to say that President Obama was not born in this country. I never—,” he stammered, before Franked repeatedly pressed him about his judgment, which is a pretty key quality for…judges.
The paper trail of “G. Morris” goes far beyond birtherism. He called slavery and abortion the “two greatest tragedies in our country,” and analogized Roe v. Wade to the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that said slaves could not be citizens.
Somehow, Bush wasn’t the only problematic blogger-cum-jurist under review by the Senate this week. Damien Schiff, Trump’s nominee for the US Court of Federal Claims, also ran a blog called “Omnia Omnibus” on Typepad. In June 2007, he called Justice Anthony Kennedy a “judicial prostitute.” He also expressed extreme anti-gay views on several occasions; in 2009, he criticized a California school district for advancing the idea “not only that bullying of homosexuals qua homosexuals is wrong, but also that the homosexual lifestyle is a good, and that homosexual families are the moral equivalent of traditional heterosexual families.” According to a Lambda Legal Foundation analysis, Schiff adheres to the idea that “natural law” trumps constitutional rights—that morality matters above all. (Gay identities and relationships, in his view, would be unnatural.)
Senators similarly pressed Schiff on these views, and Schiff went through the familiar ceremony of contrition and self-denunciation: He was a different person then, he doesn’t believe anything like that anymore, and he’s ready to be a serious jurist.
This was too much for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who made it clear he thinks Schiff was nominated because of his far-right views, particularly on the rights of corporations, which Schiff appears to think are near-absolute. “To have you say that that’s a door that you are closing, and that a whole new Damien Schiff is going to emerge in black robes, and all of the things you’ve said in the past don’t matter and aren’t things you can be held accountable for—when those are exactly the flags that you sent up that got you in that seat here in the first place,” Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse didn’t even bother to question Schiff; he made a three-and-a-half minute statement and then ceded his time by saying, “It’s just astounding to me to be sitting here and having this be treated as if it’s normal. It just isn’t normal, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.”
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The bigger picture is that Trump is rapidly filling up the federal bench, which is relatively barren thanks to eight years of Republican obstruction in the Senate. Trump is moving much quicker than Obama did: At this point in his presidency, Obama had made four appointments, including now–Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Trump has made 17 nominations, including Justice Neil Gorsuch.
And the records of his nominees are unprecedented. Kristine Lucius worked for 14 years as a top legal and policy adviser to former Senate Judiciary Chairman and ranking member Patrick Leahy. She is now an executive vice president at the Leadership Conference, and told The Nation she was shocked by the Schiff and Bush nominations.
“I’ve literally worked on hundreds of judicial nomination hearings, and I have never seen one with records like this,” she said. “I have found it stunning that two individuals with this kind of controversial written record made it through the vetting process.”
The public didn’t know about most of Schiff and Bush’s writings until they were disclosed in paperwork filed to the Judiciary Committee, but it’s an open question when the White House counsel’s office and the Senate Republicans who recommended the nominees knew about it. “Is this something they did not know, so they couldn’t calibrate in their recommendation, or is it something they knew and they thought [would be] good for what is supposed to be an independent or impartial branch of government?” said Lucius. “And if it’s the latter, it’s downright frightening.”
Radical appointees like this will ensure the radical policies of Trump and Mike Pence will be with us long after they leave the White House. And there are short-term dangers as well. “I think we are seeing the American people learn an important civics lesson right now, which is about separation of powers,” Lucius said. “Right out the gate in the Trump presidency, the judicial branch was a check on the executive branch with enjoining his biased Muslim ban. There was an instant civics lesson of, ‘wow, the courts are willing to stand up to this president.’ And now the question is, will the Senate stand up to this president?”
The Judiciary Committee votes on Schiff and Bush have not been scheduled yet. If they make it out of committee, a full Senate vote is next.Robert Mueller and his staff of fifteen lawyers, and counting, are sniffing around the 2016 Trump campaign looking for a Russia connection. Meanwhile, a clear Russia connection has been identified between Russia and the head of the 2016 Clinton campaign team — John Podesta.
Peter Schweizer has the details. To summarize:
In 2011, a small green-energy company, Joule Unlimited, announced Podesta’s appointment to its board. Months later, Rusnano, a Kremlin-backed investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin, pumped $35 million into Joule. Serving alongside Podesta on Joule’s board were senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, who has been appointed by Putin to a Russian economic modernization council.
Podesta owned 75,000 shares of Joule stock. When he joined the Obama White House, Podesta transferred his Joule shares to an LLC controlled by his adult children.
After leaving the White House and joining the Clinton campaign, Podesta resumed communicating with Joule and its investors. In fact, he received an invoice from his lawyers in April 2015 — a consent request for Dmitry Akhanov of Rusnano USA to join Joule’s board.
In an interview with Fox News, Podesta contended: “I was on the board of an American company that did business here and only here. The Russian company had a small investment in that company.” It’s true that Joule was based in Massachusetts, but its connection with Russia was clear. Schweizer points out:
While thanking Putin’s Rusnano, [Joule’s CEO and president] said the investment would help support “the development of our global presence” and “complements the company’s expansion plans in Europe, the Middle East, and Mexico.” Moreover, Stichting Joule [one of the three entities that made up Joule International] is itself an overseas entity. Indeed, Rusnano’s investment in Joule was in part to develop a manufacturing facility in Russia.
Tellingly, perhaps, Podesta did not disclose his presence on the board of Dutch-registered Stichting Joule when he went to work for the Obama White House, according to Schweizer.
Podesta told Fox News that Putin’s investment fund represented a “small investment” in Joule. But, says Schweizer, in 2012 the company claimed it had raised $110 million to date. Thus, the Kremlin-backed $35 million investment given to Joule after Podesta’s board appointment represented over 30 percent of Joule’s outside financing.
Schweizer also notes that in 2016, Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, where Joule board member Reuben Vardanyan formerly served as head of its investment banking division, had a $170,000 lobbying contract with the Podesta Group. The Podesta Group is owned by John Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta.
Schweizer concludes:
In short, Clinton’s top campaign chief and a senior counselor to Obama sat on Joule’s board alongside top Russian officials as Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund funneled $35 million into Joule. No one looking at the Podesta fact pattern can claim to care about rooting out Russian collusion and not rigorously investigate the tangle of relationships.
As I see it, though, the election collusion issue isn’t about the past business ties of a candidate, staffer, or “satellite” and a Putin-infected enterprise. These days, such ties will often be found.
The election collusion issue is about an exchange of promises (express or understood) — I’ll help you or your candidate in exchange for favors — or about a campaign coordinating with the Russians in harming the opposing campaign.
The Russians (we think) hacked Podesta’s emails to the detriment of the Clinton campaign. It seems clear enough that Podesta wasn’t colluding with the Russians during the campaign. (Would Podesta’s Russia connection have paved the way for Russian influence in a Clinton administration? We can only speculate.)
But there is also no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians during the campaign. Elements within our intelligence community, along with anti-Trump media types, have spent a year looking for such evidence. From all that appears, they have come up empty.
The closest thing I’ve seen to evidence of collusion, as I understand the term, with Russia in a presidential election is President Obama’s assurance to Russia in 2012 that he would be more flexible in dealing with the Russkies after he won. This was followed by Obama’s denial in his debate with Mitt Romney that Russia posed a serious geopolitical threat and by his contracting out aspects of our Syria policy to Putin.
But even here, I’ve seen no evidence that Russia did Obama any favors in exchange for his “flexibility.” That’s actually a sad commentary on Obama. It would be more impressive if Obama had received something in return.
The Russia obsession is a sad commentary on America. We’re acting more like a scared neighbor whose democracy is too weak to withstand Russian influence than like a great power whose democracy has long been the envy of the world.
Unless facts have been uncovered that we don’t know about — an unlikely scenario given all of the leaking surrounding the “collusion” issue — I think it’s time to conclude that “collusion” is a non-issue and “interference” is a very minor one.It's a great city. The people who live there love it openly and loudly, and it regularly appears on the lists of best American cities. But something has always felt weird to me about Portland. And not in the way Portlanders mean "weird" in their slogan "Keep Portland weird." It felt weird in an M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" way. Everything looks right, but something is definitely wrong. And I knew that before I had even been to Portland.
I travel a lot for comedy (and now for "United Shades of America"). So I have a thing I do before I visit any place in this country. It's actually two things, but I always do them in rapid succession. First, I look the city up on Wikipedia. I do this to check out the racial demographics of where I'm going, and also just to see if anything bad enough has ever happened in the city to justify its own section on Wikipedia. Trust me when I tell you that you want to avoid any city with a controversy section on its page.
Second, I Google the name of the city plus the word "racism." It's good to know a city's history. It's also a great way to find out if there are areas of town I should avoid. Once or twice a town has been small enough that when I do this, the number one thing that comes up is something like, "Comedian W. Kamau Bell Coming to Talk About Racism."
When I looked up Portland's Wikipedia page and checked out their racial demographics, I was stunned and confused. According to the 2010 census, Portland is 76% white. That's a lot for two reasons. 1) According to the 2010 census, the United States is 72% white, so Portland is whiter than America. 2) Portland is considered a major city. And we don't associate major cities with whiteness.
JUST WATCHED The changing face of Portland Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH The changing face of Portland 01:19
In fact, that is usually a big part of what makes major cities "major": Everybody is there because that's where everything is happening. Think New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta and Dallas. All those major cities have bustling populations with large, dense neighborhoods filled with people from all over the world. People from other countries flock to those cities because they know they will be able to find a piece of home there.
Even San Francisco, a city that is openly mocked by many (OK, maybe it's just me... and everybody I know... and everybody they know) for being incredibly white. And San Francisco, according to the 2010 census, is only 48% white. So while San Francisco has definitely pushed black people out of the city — the black population dropped from about 15% in the 1970s to somewhere south of 6 percent today — the city still has substantial Asian (33%) and Latino (15%) populations... for now.
Another list that Portland regularly appears on is "America's Whitest Major Cities." And while Portland moves up and down the lists of best American cities, it is usually number one with an ironic mullet on the list of whitest cities. So when I read that Portland was 76% white, I thought to myself, "What the Fox News is going on here?" How can a city that is so known for its liberal politics — and even more liberal lifestyles — be so conservative in its number of black people? With a 6 percent black population, Portland is just behind its fellow Pacific Northwest city of Seattle, which clocks in at almost 8 percent. Portland, how can you be so hip and yet so uncool? And let me be clear. When you are in Portland, it feels way more than 76% white. Because it's not like black people are sprinkled throughout the city like salt. Not at all.
Much like lima beans on a child's plate, the black people of Portland are pushed from the center out to the edges, where there seems to be a childlike attempt to forget them. So in my M. Night Shyamalan movie about Portland, I'm walking around the well-laid-out streets muttering to myself, "I see no black people." And this is not an accident. The history of Oregon is partially the history of a state that legislated not wanting black people around.
Yes, geography may have played a role in the lack of a big black population in Portland. Black people who escaped slavery generally said, "I'm headed North!" and not, "I'm headed Northwest!" But then Oregon also doubled down on that by passing anti-black laws
And what racist legislation couldn't accomplish, gentrification has stepped in to take care of the rest.
During my time in Portland, I talked to Ural Thomas, a local music legend and one of the last black homeowners living in one of Portland's many rapidly changing parts of the city. He described how his neighborhood shrunk from being two-thirds black-owned to now only four black homeowners. Four! Why? Redlining.
Redlining was a not-so-uncommon practice in which banks refused to extend mortgages and loans to black residents. It was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act in 1968, but can still be found in subtler forms, like realtors not showing houses in "white areas" to black people. Even those black folks who already owned their homes in Thomas' neighborhood couldn't qualify for a loan to keep them. And even though I only focus on these issues in Portland in this episode, these same issues are affecting cities all over the country. These problems just seem so severe in Portland that, to me, it seems like if Portland can figure it out then the rest of us can.
On this episode, I tried to remind the mostly white hipsters of Portland about the black residents whom their presence had pushed out. And almost to a person they had the same type of reaction when I brought up Portland's (to me) shocking lack of diversity. It was something to the effect of...
Hipster - "YAY, PORTLAND!"
Me - "Where are all the black people?"
Hipster - "Oh yeah..."
Hipster looks down at their feet until I go away.
And these are good people. I liked all of the people I met in Portland, from the hipsters to the hipsters who didn't want to be called hipsters. While a few of these hipsters were natives, most had moved to town with a dream of creating an artisanal, locally sourced, small batch lifestyle.
JUST WATCHED Is 'hipster' a dirty word? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Is 'hipster' a dirty word? 01:28
Still, scattered throughout Portland are black people like Beverly, who has lived in her house most of her life. But she has seen the block near her house that used to be filled with several local black-owned businesses transformed into one giant Organic Grocery store that is far too expensive for her to buy her groceries there, plus the addition of an eight-story apartment building. And the black neighbors — who used to surround her home, watching out for each other — are now long gone. And those black neighbors have been replaced by new white neighbors. And many of these white neighbors won't even look Beverly in the eye. Damn.
Literally, there goes the neighborhood. The neighborhood is gone. I met with a group of mostly black people at the Genesis Community Fellowship who are fired up and angry, but also sorrowful and mournful about their city. They miss their people.
And it's not just the people they miss. It's also the houses that are gone. The houses are replaced by high rises and parking lots for construction crews that are soon to be high rises. And Beverly's only interaction with these "neighbors" is when they park in her driveway or somebody knocks on her door asking if she is interested in selling her house. She's not. But that doesn't stop them from asking. Capitalism doesn't care about sentimentality.
But the hipsters do care about sentiment. I know they do. Their whole lives are a living paean to feeling connected to things you love. My hope in this episode was to remind a few of them that they love diversity. And they love respecting the neighborhood that they live in and not transforming these neighborhoods beyond the recognition of the people who made the neighborhood in the first place.PHOENIX — Did Noah’s flood create the Grand Canyon? Not a chance, say mainstream scientists, who maintain that the canyon’s layers of rocks were carved and chiseled by a persistent flow of water beginning some five million years ago. But Andrew A. Snelling — a geologist by training, a creationist by conviction — has a minority view, and he hoped to prove himself right.
In November 2013, Dr. Snelling — he has a doctorate in geology from the University of Sydney, in Australia, where he was born — asked administrators of Grand Canyon National Park for permission to remove some 60 half-pound rocks from certain areas along the edges of the Colorado River, which snakes through the canyon.
Last July, the administrators denied his request. This month, Dr. Snelling sued them, the National Park Service and the Interior Department, claiming the denial amounted to discrimination against his religious beliefs.
In an interview on Thursday, Gary McCaleb, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative Christian legal defense group that is representing Dr. Snelling, said, “It’s one thing to debate the science, but to deny access to the data not based on the quality of a proposal or the nature of the inquiry, but on what you might do with it is an abuse of government power.”ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police detained sons of three ministers along with some prominent businessmen in a corruption inquiry on Tuesday, state officials said, in what was widely seen as a challenge to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan by a powerful Islamic cleric.
Baris Guler (C in sunglasses), son of Turkey's Interior Minister Muammer Guler, is escorted by plainclothes police officers as he leaves a medical check-up in Istanbul December 16, 2013. REUTERS/Kursat Bayhan/Zaman Daily via Cihan News Agency
Police carried out dawn raids in the main commercial city Istanbul, detaining around 20 people including business figures close to Erdogan, and searched the headquarters of state-run Halkbank in the capital Ankara, state officials and banking sources said. Halkbank shares fell 13 percent.
Turkish commentators linked the sweep to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whose followers have long held influential positions in institutions from the police and secret services to the judiciary and Erdogan’s AK Party.
“Those who are supported by dark forces and gangs cannot set the course of this nation, of this country,” Erdogan said in an apparent reference to Gulen’s network during a speech in the conservative central Anatolian city of Konya.
“No one from outside or inside can stir things up in my country and lay ugly traps.”
Gulen could not challenge Erdogan at the polls and has shown no intention of forming a party. But with his influence, not least in the AKP, he could undermine the authority of a man who has dominated politics for a decade. Erdogan’s decline, though yet a distant prospect, would create huge uncertainty.
Gulen helped Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party win a growing vote in three elections since 2002; but a bitter row between the two in recent weeks risks fracturing their support base before local and presidential elections next year.
Asked in Konya about the detentions, Erdogan declined to comment on an active legal process. The AK Party said in a statement it had always fought corruption and would continue to do so and that everyone was equal before the law.
Erdogan has infuriated Gulen supporters with plans to abolish private “prep” schools, many run by their Hizmet (Service) movement, providing funding and new followers.
But the rift has deeper roots in ideological differences, with many of Gulen’s followers seeing him as a more progressive and pro-Western influence on Turkey than Erdogan, whose views on issues from abortion to alcohol consumption have led to growing accusations of interference in Turkish private life.
“It is a very bold move by the movement, one that you can’t possibly ignore. It is a battle to curb each other’s power,” Ahmet Sik, a journalist detained for a year over his book on Gulen’s life and influence, said of Tuesday’s events.
There was no direct comment from the Hizmet movement.
“There are efforts to deflect attention and point to the Hizmet movement in the ongoing operation,” Huseyin Gulerce, a columnist with the Gulen-linked Zaman daily, wrote on Twitter.
“How can people who are said to have been purged from the judiciary and police have carried out the deepest operation in the history of the Republic?” said Gulerce who, though respected in Hizmet does not speak for the movement.
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE
Turkey holds local polls in 2014 that will test Erdogan’s power after a year that has seen unprecedented protests and riots against what some opponents see as an authoritarian style of government. He remains broadly popular but an open rift with Hizmet could make him vulnerable to challenge.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party filed a parliamentary question asking Erdogan whether he would resign or seek a vote of confidence over the corruption operation.
Tuesday’s operation, launched by the chief prosecutor in Istanbul, appeared to consist of three investigations.
One involved Halkbank, one of Turkey’s biggest banks, which said it had been asked to supply information and documentation to the authorities. Police also searched the headquarters of the Agaoglu Group of construction magnate Ali Agaoglu, 59, its chief executive Hasan Rahvali told Reuters.
“We are talking about a wide-scoping investigation here. It is not focused on Ali Agaoglu,” Hasan Rahvali, chief executive of Agaoglu Group, said. “They searched the company in the early hours this morning but could not find any criminal evidence.”
He said Ali Agaoglu had been asked by the police to come and make a statement as part of the investigation.
Turkey’s largest housing developer Emlak Konut GYO, partly state-owned, said its general manager had also been summoned by police. Its shares were down 12 percent.
DEEPENING POLITICAL ROW
The sons of Interior Minister Muammer Guler, Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan and Environment and City Planning Minister Erdogan Bayraktar were detained, according to state officials in Ankara and Turkish newspaper reports.
Officials from the three ministries could not immediately be reached for comment.
Istanbul Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu told reporters the investigation was continuing and he could not comment. Officials from Erdogan’s ruling AK Party could not immediately be reached and police also declined to comment.
The developments, and fears of a deepening political row, weighed on Turkish markets. The main stock index fell almost five percent, well below a 0.2 percent rise in the wider emerging markets index.
“These are fairly seismic developments. I guess inevitably people will link these to internal AK Party fissures and the battle between Erdogan supporters and the Gulen movement,” said Timothy Ash, head of emerging markets research at Standard Bank. “The gloves will now be off.”
Gulen runs a network of schools and other social facilities across the Middle East, Asia and Africa from a compound in the United States. He moved to the United States in 1999 after being charged with attempting to undermine the secular state.
He was later acquitted but has remained in Pennsylvania, an enigmatic figure who gives little hint of his intentions in Turkish politics.
AKP member of parliament Hakan Sukur, a well-known follower of Gulen, quit the AK Party on Monday in protest over the prep school plans.
Since he came to power, Erdogan has built his own body of wealthy loyalists, largely from the same religiously minded professional class that reveres Gulen.
Erdogan was first elected in 2002 and has introduced sweeping reforms that have broken the political power of the military and stimulated the economy. Some secularists accuse him of imposing Islamist values, something he denies.ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused America of "double standards" in its response to comments he made accusing Israel of the turmoil in Egypt.
"What is it to the White House that it should respond. It should not have mentioned it, it should not had reacted like this. As two members of NATO, that one ally shows this kind of approach to the other is not appropriate," The Hurriyet Daily News quoted Erdogan saying Saturday.
"When I said that, an answer came from the White House. I was saddened. Because the interlocutor [of the comments] was not the White House. I did not mean the United States, but Israel," the paper quoted him saying. America's response to his comments only served to show the "double standard of the world," he said.
The Turkish prime minister was referring to the White House response over his statements concerning Israel earlier this month, who he said was responsible for the turmoil in Egypt.
RELATED Turkey calls for explanation over guns
"Who is behind [the coup]? There is Israel. We have documents in our hands," Erdogan said Aug. 21 when speaking to members of his ruling Justice and Development Party in Ankara. "What is said about Egypt?
That democracy is not the ballot box. Who is behind this? Israel is," Erdogan said.
"We strongly condemn the statements that were made by Prime Minister Erdogan.... Suggesting that Israel is somehow responsible for recent events in Egypt is offensive, unsubstantiated and wrong. Statements like these only distract from the urgent need for all countries in the region, and frankly many leading countries around the world to work together through constructive dialogue to address the fluid and dangerous situation in Egypt," deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at a daily briefing in response to Erdogan's Aug.21 remarks.A federal grand jury is looking into loans made to Gov. Sam Brownback’s re-election campaign and has ordered the state’s ethics chief to testify next week as part of its investigation, according to a subpoena.
Carol Williams, executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, was summoned to appear before the grand jury Wednesday in Topeka, according to documents obtained through an open records request. She also was ordered to provide documents pertaining to loans Brownback’s campaign received in 2013 and 2014.
The subpoena doesn’t say which loans are being investigated, but the only loans listed on campaign disclosure reports for those years are one from Brownback himself and others from Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer.
Colyer loaned Brownback’s campaign $500,000 in August – the third such loan the governor’s running mate made to their re-election bid – according to the last disclosure report, filed days before the November general election.
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Such large loans by candidates to campaigns are uncommon in Kansas, and the pattern of repaying one within days is an unusual move that generated unanswered questions about where Colyer obtained such a large amount of cash.
Brownback’s campaign paid Colyer back $400,000 on Nov. 21, about two weeks after the election, according to the finance report filed with the Secretary of State’s office on Thursday. There is still $100,000 from the loan not yet repaid as of Dec. 31.
“The campaign followed all applicable laws and ethics regulations and this investigation has no merit,” Eileen Hawley, the governor’s spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail. “It is a common practice for candidates to make loans to their campaigns and any loans were done in compliance with Kansas law and ethics regulations.
“The latest campaign financial report will be filed today and will clearly show those loans are in the process of being repaid.
“Governor Brownback’s focus is on doing the people’s work, preparing a budget and an agenda for the upcoming legislative session,” which begins next week.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined comment.
Brett Berry, general counsel for the ethics commission, released the document Thursday through the open records request, but otherwise declined comment. Williams also declined to comment.
Colyer said in August that the two $500,000 short-term loans he made to Brownback’s re-election campaign are examples of the good stewardship Kansas residents expect from government officials.
“It’s good money management, that’s all,” Colyer said at the time. “That’s what you’d expect for me to do with the state’s money, too, is to manage it well. We manage our campaign well – that’s it.”
Earlier finance reports indicate that Colyer, a reconstructive plastic surgeon, made his first $500,000 loan Dec. 31, 2013, the last day covered by a finance report due in early January 2014, and it was repaid Jan. 2, 2014.
He then made a second $500,000 loan July 23, 2014, the second-to-last day covered by a finance report due in late July. That loan was repaid two days later, when a new reporting period started.
The third $500,000 loan from Colyer was made Aug. 13. Brownback also loaned his campaign $200,000 during the last reporting period. Those are the only loans the Brownback campaign reported receiving in financial disclosure filings.
Colyer declined at that time to discuss other details about the loans, such as the source for them. He said the campaign didn’t keep his first loan because it wasn’t going to earn much interest.
Reporters also asked Brownback, after an unrelated statehouse news conference in August, whether he could explain the loans, and he declined.
“I’m not going to explain the thought process,” Brownback said at the time.
Democrat Paul Davis, who lost to Brownback in November, made the loans an issue on the campaign trail. Davis’ spokesman, Chris Pumpelly, said before the election that voters “deserve to know where this money came from.”
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, called the subpoena “a dark cloud” that hovers over the administration less than a week before Brownback is inaugurated for a second term.
“Gov. Brownback and his people have a lot of explaining to do,” Hensley said in a statement Thursday. “The loans were clearly a tactic to deceive Kansas voters. My questions are, where did the money for the loans come from and were they made in accordance with state and federal law?”
“Hopefully the Grand Jury will find the answers the people of Kansas deserve to know,” he added.A couple weeks ago Toronto’s Bellwoods Brewery officially announced their intention to open a second brewery on the corner |
Greenlight is a bold move, even if it has a cool mechanic or premise. It's a shame, but I can understand why so many users are getting tired of seeing the same old artwork and hearing the same music."
For as little as labels like triple-A and indie mean these days, the RPG Maker branding still carries a nasty stigma.
Nevertheless, Tunney believes that the benefits of RPG Maker far outweigh the stigma it carries. "With some custom artwork and soundtrack, anyone can still make a unique-looking game, and if that's coupled with a decent story and characters, then there's still appeal."
The rising popularity of RPG Maker also feeds into the narrative that Steam is being flooded with samey, low-quality games— more than 5,000 games were released on Steam in 2016, according to SteamSpy. But even though new RPG Maker releases seem like a daily occurrence on Steam, they still represent a tiny slice of the total pie. 2.6 percent of Steam's new games, in 2016. That may change with Steam Direct in 2017: it's possible that the fee Valve settles on will lead to fewer RPG Maker games and fewer games in general. But if current trends are any indication, RPG Maker releases will continue to rise on Steam.
That explosive growth.
Phil Hamilton, too, sees signs of the stigma fading. "The 'not real games' thing is a thing. I don't know how big it is—I suspect it is a loud minority. Skyborn has seen enough success that it simply doesn't get those comments anymore. People still criticize it, but because of legit things, not because it's made in RPG Maker."
With games like Oneshot and Actual Sunlight redefining what RPG Maker is capable of, the humble engine has a bright future ahead. Behind its simple pixel art lies tremendous depth, and developers are only getting more creative with how they use the engine.
"It really is a circular thing," concludes Nick Palmer. "The more games made, the more people learn it exists, and then the more they make games. More games, more innovation. And hopefully, more people discovering that they can fulfill their dreams of making a game."We have gotten our asses kicked in America, but part of it is for a good reason. There was an incredibly long list of offenders before us, dilettante actors who put out an album just because they had the opportunity and finances to do so. We’ve been doing this for a long time, and I think that story has righted itself.
You got down to 116 pounds in less than a month to play an AIDS-afflicted transgendered person in “Dallas Buyers Club.” I’d love to be 25 pounds lighter for a wedding in a couple of weeks. Any tips?
Yes. The No. 1 rule is you have to stop eating. The No. 2 rule is you have to stop eating. And the No. 3 rule is you have to drink a lot of water. It’s really about calories and math. There were some days where I had maybe like half a cucumber. I ate very, very little.
Did the director say you needed to do it for the part?
No, nobody told me to lose any weight. Not only was the character dying of AIDS, but he was also a drug addict, and I thought it was appropriate to put myself in that place.
But you lost a ton of weight for “Requiem for a Dream” too. Should we be worried?
No, not at all. I gained 60 pounds for ‘‘Chapter 27.’’ For me, it’s a job, it’s something that I do to serve the character. It is not fun at all. I love to eat.
For years, it seemed as if talking about playing Jordan Catalano in “My So-Called Life” made you itchy. Why?
It was my first job, a really small period in my life. We only did 19 episodes. It was a matter of months. I certainly feel really grateful about it.EFF is launching a new extension for Firefox and Chrome called Privacy Badger. Privacy Badger automatically detects and blocks spying ads around the Web, and the invisible trackers that feed information to them. You can try it out today:
Privacy Badger is EFF's answer to intrusive and objectionable practices in the online advertising industry, and many advertisers' outright refusal to meaningfully honor Do Not Track requests. This week, Mozilla published research showing that privacy is the single most important thing that users want from their web browsers. Privacy Badger is part of EFF’s growing campaign to deliver that privacy by giving you the technical means to disallow trackers within the pages you read on the Web.
This is an alpha release; we've been using it internally and don't think it's too buggy. But we're looking for intrepid users to try it out and let us know before we encourage millions of people to install it. If you find bugs, you can file them on github against either the Firefox or Chrome repos as appropriate.
How does Privacy Badger work?
Privacy Badger is a browser-add on tool that analyzes sites to detect and disallow content that tracks you in an objectionable, non-consensual manner. When you visit websites, your copy of Privacy Badger keeps note of the "third-party" domains that embed images, scripts and advertising in the pages you visit.
If a third-party server appears to be tracking you without permission, by using uniquely identifying cookies to collect a record of the pages you visit across multiple sites, Privacy Badger will automatically disallow content from that third-party tracker. In some cases a third-party domain provides some important aspect of a page's functionality, such as embedded maps, images, or fonts. In those cases, Privacy Badger will allow connections to the third party but will screen out its tracking cookies.
Privacy Badger in action, blocking trackers in the White House privacy policy Privacy Badger in action, blocking trackers in the White House privacy policy
Advertisers and other third-party domains can unblock themselves in Privacy Badger by making a strong commitment to respect Do Not Track requests. By including this mechanism, Privacy Badger not only protects users who install it, but actually provides incentives for better privacy practices across the entire Web.
So users who install Privacy Badger not only get more privacy and a better browsing experience for themselves, but actually contribute to making the Web as a whole better for everyone.I Am Local 6: Brenda Mathes, Blind Disc Golf Player
A student at the University of Tennessee at Martin focuses on her ability and not her disability through the game of disc golf, also known as Frisbee golf. It’s an added challenge to the sport, but it’s an eye opener.
Brenda Mathes is blind because of underdeveloped retinas. With guidance from her husband the outdoor activity that relies heavily on sight becomes another accomplishment for her.
Brenda enjoys the sound of being outdoors on the disc golf course, but can barely make out the sights.
“Some days I know I’m going to have good vision, and some days are not as good as others,” Brenda said.
Her vision fluctuates because of retinopathy prematurity. Her retinas did not fully develop because of a premature birth. That’s why disc golf seemed like an unlikely sport for Mathes, but she is able to send the Frisbee down the fairway and into the basket with the help of her husband, Martin Mathes.
“I just tell her kind of where things are or how far it is to the basket and what direction,” Martin said.
Then, she relies on her hearing to make the final putt.
“He’s really what allows me to be able to see through him,” Brenda said.
Brenda can see bright colors and movement, but she cannot see details at long distances. When Martin rattles the chain, it all comes into focus.
“I’ve been know to hit some crazy hits before, just from hearing the sound from where the basket is located,” Brenda said.
Those crazy hits can lead to bragging rights, especially when playing with the guys.
“Not only am I a woman, but I’m blind too. It’s kind of a double whammy,” Brenda said.
Her drives inspire, both mentally and athletically.
“It never stops me from conquering my dreams. I focus on the positive instead of focusing on the negative, because the negative is not going to get me anywhere,” Brenda said.
Brenda also downhill skies, and she took gymnastics.
If you know of someone who isn’t letting their disability define them, you can contact Tori Shaw via email at tshaw@wpsdlocal6.com, Twitter @TShawWPSD or Facebook.This article is about the 2009 American reality TV series. For other uses, see Colony (disambiguation)
The Colony is a reality television series that is produced by the Discovery Channel. The program follows a group of people who must survive in a simulated post-apocalyptic environment.
Casting was done by Metal Flowers Media. The first season had 10 main cast members as well as almost 100 actors who did additional scripted and improvisational work for the show.[1]
Seasons
Season 1
The first season was filmed at and around 516 S Anderson St, Los Angeles, CA 90033, and follows ten cast members in an environment that simulates life after the collapse of civilization due to a catastrophic epidemic.[2] The volunteers tend to many aspects of sustainable living including the essentials: water, electricity, security and food. Insights into psychology, security, and technology are also given by experts.[3] The season first aired on the Discovery Channel on July 21, 2009.[4] Filming began on February 28, and ran until April 28, 2009.
Season 2
Season 2 was filmed at and around 300-498 Southern Place, Chalmette, Louisiana 70043, and follows ten cast members in an environment that simulates life after a global viral outbreak. The season first aired on July 27, 2010.
Season 3
Casting for season 3 has finished through Metal Flowers casting agency,[5][6] however, it is on semi-permanent hold.[7]
See alsoMedia playback is not supported on this device Mourinho on Suarez dive and TV pundits
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho says Liverpool striker Luis Suarez should have been booked for diving in a 2-1 win for the Blues over the Reds.
Suarez was chasing Cesar Azpilicueta when he went to ground in the Chelsea penalty area after appearing to be caught by a Samuel Eto'o challenge.
"It is not a tackle. Suarez lost the duel with Azpilicueta, who has the ball and is leaving the box," said Mourinho.
"Now he is doing an acrobatic swimming pool jump to try to get a penalty."
"On another day you could give that [Eto'o challenge] as a penalty, because it's obstruction in the area." Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers
He added: "He is so clever because he also knows he is in the area with the Liverpool supporters behind him.
"But [referee Howard] Webb is 10 metres away and I think the only mistake he did was not to give him a yellow card."
The incident occurred in the closing stages with Liverpool 2-1 down - Chelsea had taken the lead through goals from Eden Hazard and Eto'o following Martin Skrtel's opener for the Reds.
"I am always happy when I see him [Suarez] play because I love his quality, his commitment, his ambition to win. He is absolutely a fantastic player," continued Mourinho.
"But this country is a special country. I'm not English or British but I feel I have also responsibility in defending some values in this football.
"One of the things that we have good is that we don't like people with simulations.
"This situation in the box with Azpilicueta and Eto'o, stop with this or give him a yellow card because it is not good for our game."
Uruguay international Suarez has scored 19 goals in 14 games since his return from a 10-game ban for biting Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic during a game last season.
Media playback is not supported on this device Liverpool still challengers - Rodgers
He was also banned for seven games when he was at Ajax for biting PSV Eindhoven midfielder Otman Bakkal's shoulder during a match in November 2010.
During his time at Liverpool, he has also received an eight-match ban for racially abusing Manchester United left-back Patrice Evra in December 2011.
He has stayed clear of any misdemeanours since his return this season and Mourinho added: "The player is amazing. He is a very nice boy, I know him from his time at Ajax.
"He does everything to win. [Liverpool manager] Brendan Rodgers is doing fantastic job with him because he has changed. There is no doubt he has changed.
"But when the situation is like this and you are losing comes the nature of the player. The wild nature of the player or the cultural nature of the player.
"And culturally people from that area, they like it. But it is not only that area. There is also a corner in Europe that I belong to where they also like (gesticulates diving)."
Rodgers had a different take on the incident and also believes Eto'o should have been sent-off for an earlier tackle on Jordan Henderson, which resulted in the free-kick which led to Skrtel's goal.
Media playback is not supported on this device Eto'o foul not a penalty - Mourinho
"He [Eto'o] should've been sent off," said Rodgers.
"I know we scored from it, but that was a wild challenge, where he's raked down his knee and down his shin and didn't even get a yellow card.
"Luis will always provoke a challenge from defenders, that's why he's world class.
"What he probably doesn't expect is to provoke a challenge from someone who's not involved in the contact.
"He's running to challenge Azpilicueta and Eto'o is street wise, he's cute, he blocks him. On another day you could give that as a penalty, because it's obstruction in the area.
"Of course, he [Mourinho] will defend his player and I will defend mine."Canada's government on Friday introduced its new anti-terror legislation, a sweeping range of measures that would allow suspects to be detained based on less evidence and let CSIS actively interfere with suspects' travel plans and finances.
The new bill, C-51, is only 62 pages long but contains a variety of increased powers for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
Here's a look at key elements of the bill:
1. Lower the threshold for arrest
The new measures would let law enforcement agencies arrest somebody if they think a terrorist act "may be carried out," instead of the current standard of "will be carried out." It would also increase the period of preventive detention from three days to seven.
Another measure would provide for a terrorism peace bond that would detain someone if the police believe that person "may commit" a terrorism offence. The current provision allows for a peace bond on someone the police think "will commit" a terrorism offence.
A peace bond under the new measures would require the person to surrender his or her passport and would apply for five years if that person had been previously convicted of a terrorism offence.
The bill also includes a requirement for judges to consider imposing conditions on the person, including passport surrender, electronic monitoring or a ban on leaving the jurisdiction.
2. Criminalize promoting terrorism
Right now, it's illegal to counsel or actively encourage someone to commit a specific terrorism offence. Bill C-51 would broaden that to ban the promotion of terrorism or intentional advocacy of it. The bill threatens a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Officials were careful to note that the bill doesn't criminalize the glorification of terrorism, noting the difficulty in balancing freedom of speech with the desire to keep people from encouraging terrorist activity.
3. Allow CSIS to 'counter-message' or 'disrupt' activities
The bill would also give CSIS the ability to disrupt suspected terror activity, including radical websites and Twitter accounts, as well as "counter-message." The power applies inside and outside of Canada.
That means security officials could go online to challenge the online communications sent to those suspected of becoming radicalized. It also includes interfering with travel plans and financial transactions or intercepting goods, according to background documents.
Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney is responsible for CSIS and the RCMP. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press) If there were a threat to the subject’s legal rights, a court order would be needed, if it involves a Canadian or permanent resident. For non-Canadians outside the country, officials said it would depend on a legal analysis of the situation.
One example of disruption would be to interrupt a phone call between subjects. It could also mean CSIS could involve a subject's family and friends in deterring that person from participating in terrorism and inform the RCMP of its suspicions. However, there is no definition of "to disrupt" in the legislation, leaving it open to interpretation.
The bill also carries a requirement for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, or SIRC, which has oversight of CSIS, to report every year on disruption activities.
4. Remove terrorist material from the internet
The "seizure of terrorist propaganda" measure would let officials apply to a court to order the seizure, or force a website to remove, "any materials that promote or encourage acts of terrorism against Canadians in general, or the commission of a specific attack against Canadians," according to background material provided to journalists.
This would expand a measure that currently allows a court to order the removal of child pornography and hate propaganda. However, the information provided at the background briefing did not say specifically which officials would be able to apply for the order — whether it would be CSIS, police or other officials.
The consent of the attorney general would be necessary for the court to consider the request.
5. Allow for court proceedings to be sealed
Currently, Division 9 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act allows the government to ask the court to protect classified information in immigration proceedings to protect investigation techniques and witnesses. But that application comes at the end of a proceeding. The measure would allow the government to ask for proceedings to be sealed at any point in the process.
6. Expand the no-fly list
The bill would allow the government to add to the no-fly list anyone it believes might be travelling to engage in terrorism, and it would define the appeal process.SCP-893
SCP-893-256
Item #: SCP-893
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-893 may freely roam the facility under the supervision of site personnel. Pre-existing instances of SCP-893-X are housed in nurseries at Site-17. Any new instances of SCP-893-X are to be placed into Foundation custody immediately terminated.
Tissue samples taken from SCP-893 should be contained within five minutes of extraction.
Description: SCP-893 is a 39-year-old Hispanic male who calls himself ████. Subject is a balding, overweight male with green eyes.
SCP-893-X was initially discovered by ████ shortly after having severed from SCP-893's fourth and fifth fingers on his right hand during a work related incident at a construction site. The subject claims to have brought the fingers back to his home and put them on ice, neglecting to visit a hospital due to "personal reasons". ████ observed his severed ring finger developing a clear fluid around its mass before taking on the form of what appeared to be a diminutive human fetus. Repeated testing and research have revealed that SCP-893's account is factual.
SCP-893 exhibits very crude regenerative capabilities; Experiment Log: 893-452 is to be referenced for detailed information about the stumps.
Any appendages or substantial amounts of living tissue liberated from SCP-893 undergo an accelerated process similar to clonal fragmentation. Smaller amounts of tissue produce less intelligent, shorter lived clones, while opposite results are achieved from larger amounts of tissue. These instances, henceforth referred to as SCP-893-X, on average, age and grow 20 times faster than a human being, and are usually all but completely consumed in cancerous tissue and deformed by the end of their extremely short life cycles. 893-X exhibit limited intelligence although many instances identify by SCP-893's name.
Addendum 893-███: 2805/1967
Research: Intelligence assessment.
Dr. ███████: Hello. How are you?
SCP-893-245 appears to stare at the interviewer vacantly.
Dr. ███████: How are you?
SCP-893-245: Tonee.
Dr. ███████: Repeat that please?
SCP-893-245 begins to produce guttural noises similar to laughter. Dr. ███████ motions to security personnel: Non sapient, recover the [DATA EXPUNGED].
SCP-893-245: Páe-
[REDACTED]
Dr. ███████: Bring in 893-352 as scheduled.
Snippets from 893-003 agreement:
Dr. ███████: Describe the incident.
SCP-893: Mmmuhh… I didn’t know what it was at first, you know?! Them little blobby shits always scare the living fuck outta me, what was I supposed to do? I stomped both of them on my carpet, and when I saw the faces and eyes on my shoes I pissed on myself… every fucking time man! I still got my fingers. I don’t know how but my ma says it's because we are all just tough. Not the little ones she means.
Dr. ███████: You don't seem surprised. SCP-893: Fingers grow back, duh, lizard fingers grow back too. It's animals man.
Dr. ███████: [REDACTED]
SCP-893: No. Do your shit ese. My old job was balls. As long as I’m getting paid for this, man. Just make it so I don’t have to feel it when you take the pieces you know?
Dr. ███████: Look this document over.
SCP-893: Nah just give me a pen and I’ll sign.
Addendum 893a:
His eye and one of his limbs aren't growing back anymore. There are depressions in some patches of skin that don't seem to be changing either. I understand the value of this resource, but I request that further sampling of SCP-893 bodily tissue cease, he's it's starting to look like a potato.
Dr. █████
Request denied by Site Director ███████.We monitored regional cerebral blood volume changes using a 52-channel NIRS apparatus over the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and superior temporal sulcus (STS), 2 areas implicated in social cognition and the pathology of ASD, in 28 typically developed participants (14 male and 14 female) during face-to-face conversations. This task was designed to resemble a realistic social situation. We examined the correlations of these changes with autistic traits assessed using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ).
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviours. The severity of these characteristics is posited to lie on a continuum that extends into the general population. Brain substrates underlying ASD have been investigated through functional neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, fMRI has methodological constraints for studying brain mechanisms during social interactions (for example, noise, lying on a gantry during the procedure, etc.). In this study, we investigated whether variations in autism spectrum traits are associated with changes in patterns of brain activation in typically developed adults. We used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), a recently developed functional neuroimaging technique that uses near-infrared light, to monitor brain activation in a natural setting that is suitable for studying brain functions during social interactions.
Funding: Gunma University (Drs. Fukuda and Mikuni) and the Hitachi Group (Advanced Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd, and the Research and Developmental Center, Hitachi Medical Corporation) have had an official contract for a collaborative study of the clinical application of near-infrared spectroscopy in psychiatric disorders since 2002. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Introduction
Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interactions and communication in addition to restricted and repetitive behaviour. In recent years, the concept of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has been proposed; it hypothesizes a wide range of symptoms resembling autism, such as those demonstrated in Asperger syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. According to this concept, disorders across the spectrum are believed to have common biological bases. Postmortem and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have highlighted the prefrontal cortex (PFC), including the medial PFC, the superior temporal sulcus (STS), the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex, the fusiform gyrus, the thalamus, and the cerebellum as pathological substrates for ASD [1].
Many functional neuroimaging studies of ASD focusing on impaired social interactions and communication have been conducted using functional MRI (fMRI). By employing task stimuli related to social cognitive modules, such as face recognition, visual motion processing, the theory of mind, and eye-gaze perception, these studies have implicated several brain regions in the pathogenesis of autism, including the STS and the fusiform gyrus for face processing [2], [3]; the PFC, including the medial prefrontal cortex, for mentalising and person perception [4], [5]; the temporoparietal junction [6]; and the amygdala for threat detection, emotion recognition, and complex social judgments [7], [8]. Moreover, these studies have provided a foundation for understanding neural mechanisms underlying social deficits in ASD. However, fMRI has methodological constraints for studying brain mechanisms underlying social cognition. For example, participants are required to lie on a bed in a small, noisy gantry during examination, a condition that is upsetting to many people, including those with autism. Due to this limitation, most previous studies have necessarily been conducted in an unusual and unrealistic way, such as using pictures or computer graphics images shown on a computer monitor as task stimuli. A functional brain imaging methodology that enables monitoring of brain activation in a more natural setting might well offer more informative data from more realistic social interactive situations, such as having an interview with another person, which is impossible with fMRI because of its methodological constraints.
Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a recently developed functional brain imaging technique that involves emission of near-infrared light that can be detected through the scalp [9]. NIRS allows monitoring of cerebral blood volume (CBV) changes in the neocortex as indicated by increased oxygenated haemoglobin concentrations ([oxy-Hb]) and decreased deoxygenated haemoglobin concentration ([deoxy-Hb]) using a small apparatus, although certain measurement concerns remain, such as the effect of blood flow in the scalp or the difficulty in determining the exact length of the light path for each subject. NIRS has some methodological limitations as well, such as a low spatial resolution (approximately 3 cm, which is nearly equal to 1 gyrus of the brain) and an inability to assess deep brain structures. Nevertheless, when an NIRS probe is placed on the head in one of the 10–20 standard electroencephalography electrode positions, the cerebrocranial correlation is considered to vary within 1 cm; therefore, correspondence at the level of the gyrus is not affected [10].
Despite these methodological limitations, NIRS enables brain activity measurement in a more natural setting compared with other functional brain imaging techniques. Subjects can undergo NIRS examination in a seated position, with their eyes open, while speaking, and without any noise or pain. These characteristics of NIRS are considered to be particularly suitable for social interaction studies. Thus far, NIRS has successfully been demonstrated for monitoring brain function in healthy participants during delicate and/or subjective experiences, such as subjective sleepiness and psychological fatigue [11], [12] and in patients with psychiatric disorders who are sensitive to the experimental environment [13]–[16]. In short, NIRS has certain distinct advantages, such as complete non-invasiveness, lack of restriction of body movement, and the small size of the apparatus, but it is not able to detect signals within the deep brain structure and has a low spatial resolution of approximately 1 gyrus.
In this study, we used NIRS to monitor brain activation in healthy seated participants during conversations to examine social cognition in a natural setting. Such an approach may further our understanding of brain activity during social interactions in everyday life and of associations between multiple social cognitive modules in realistic situations. We further investigated the relationship between brain activation in the PFC and STS regions during face-to-face conversations and, because the severity of characteristics of ASD is posited to lie on a continuum that extends into the general population, we evaluated autistic traits in typically developed adults [17], [18]. To determine the extent to which adults of average intelligence display characteristics associated with ASD, Baron-Cohen et al. developed a self-administered questionnaire, the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) [19]. We hypothesized that face-to-face conversations would activate the PFC as well as the STS (since both areas are involved in social cognition) and that variations in autistic traits in the typically developed participants would be correlated with brain activation during face-to-face conversations.It's poised to be a colossal event: over 100 parade horses, miles of electric cable, at least 50,000 volunteers, hundreds of thousands of free tickets -- and at least one limo bearing the slogan "taxation without representation."
Mike Theiler / Reuters The U.S. Secret Service delivered a new 2001 Cadillac limousine for President Clinton's use with only six days left in his administration, January 15, 2001.
It’s poised to be a colossal event: over 100 parade horses, miles of electric cable, at least 50,000 volunteers, hundreds of thousands of free tickets — and at least one limo bearing the slogan “taxation without representation.”
That limo will carry President Barack Obama from the Capitol along a 1.5-mile route on Pennsylvania Avenue as part of inauguration ceremonies next Monday, Jan. 21. On its license plates: the phrase used by frustrated colonists in the years leading up to the American Revolution.
(WATCH: Do Not Try This at Home: Musician Plays “Rise of the Valkyries” Skiing Downhill)
No, it’s not some seditious prank planned by Obama’s political foes, it’s actually a symbolic decision endorsed by the President himself. In fact the phrase will soon appear on all of the presidential vehicles for the remainder of Obama’s four-year term, says the White House.
“President Obama has lived in the District now for four years, and has seen first-hand how patently unfair it is for working families in D.C. to work hard, raise children and pay taxes, without having a vote in Congress,” said the White House in a statement. “Attaching these plates to the presidential vehicles demonstrates the president’s commitment to the principle of full representation for the people of the District of Columbia and his willingness to fight for voting rights, home rule and budget autonomy for the District.”
The District of Columbia was founded when George Washington signed the Resident Act on July 16, 1790; in 1801, D.C. was placed under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress. Since the capital district isn’t formally beholden to a U.S. state, it lacks a voting member in Congress. And yet D.C. residents still must pay Federal taxes: a sore subject for many of the city’s residents, who number over 630,000 — more than the entire population of Vermont or Wyoming.
Something you might not recall: President Bill Clinton put the phrase on the presidential limo during his last days in office, but President George W. Bush chose to remove it in 2000.
(MORE: The Manti Te’o Hoax: 6 Questions About the ‘Fake’ Girlfriend That Has the Sports World Reeling)
D.C.’s prospects for representation going forward? Not good. As Salon notes, the District’s best chance came during Obama’s first two years in office, when Democrats had control of Congress. The Senate actually passed a bill in 2009 that would have given D.C. a vote in the House, but Republican senators deep-sixed it by tacking on a divisive amendment that would have stripped or eliminated many of the city’s stringent gun control laws.On the last track of their 1991 studio album “Nevermind,” Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain sang: “It’s okay to eat fish, ‘cause they don’t have any feelings.” While lyrics to the song “Something in the Way” are quite far removed from science, the question about whether fish have feelings or not has been up for scientific debate for a long time, with evidence increasingly suggesting that they do, in fact, have feelings.
A new research paper, published online Sunday, looks at a slightly different aspect of fish behavior, examining whether individual fish in a group have different personalities. By putting guppies in stressful situations and seeing the individuals’ reactions, the researchers concluded that fish personalities cannot be thought to exist only along a simple spectrum; instead, they have complex personalities.
For their experiment, researchers from the University of Exeter in Cornwall, United Kingdom, put a group of Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) in different “stress contexts” and observed the behavior of individuals. These stress contexts involved an open field trial (considered “mild”), and two simulated attacks by predators (labeled “moderate”), and the coping styles of individuals were assessed beyond just “risk-prone” and “risk-averse,” according to a summary of the study.
Thomas Houslay from the university’s Centre for Ecology and Conservation (CEC), who led the study, said in a statement Sunday: “The idea of a simple spectrum is often put forward to explain the behavior of individuals in species such as the Trinidadian guppy. But our research shows that the reality is much more complex. For example, when placed into an unfamiliar environment, we found guppies have various strategies for coping with this stressful situation — many attempt to hide, others try to escape, some explore cautiously, and so on.”
The mild stress was caused by moving the fish to an unfamiliar tank, while the higher stress situations were simulated by adding models of a predating fish — a blue acara cichlid — and a heron. Even as the guppies grew more cautious overall when faced with higher stress levels, differences in individual personalities persisted.
“The differences between them were consistent over time and in different situations. So, while the behavior of all the guppies changed depending on the situation — for example, all becoming more cautious in more stressful situations — the relative differences between individuals remained intact,” Houslay said.
“Our results provide behavioral evidence in support of the concept of coping styles, but also highlight that the full range of their underlying variation might not be readily captured analytically by a simple, single-axis paradigm, even when considering behavior alone. … even when behavioral flexibility enables populations (and individuals) to respond to environmental changes, personality structure can be strongly conserved,” the study concludes.
The open-access paper, titled “Testing the stability of behavioural coping style across stress contexts in the Trinidadian guppy,” appeared in the journal Functional Ecology.
The researchers now want to understand the cause behind the different personalities of the guppies, and the underlying genetic links that also impact other traits.
“We want to know how personality relates to other facets of life, and to what extent this is driven by genetic — rather than environmental — influences. The goal is really gaining insight into evolutionary processes, how different behavioral strategies might persist as species evolve,” Alastair Wilson, also from CEC and a co-author of the report, said in the statement.29th July 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
On Sunday, July 28, Israeli settlers severely burned land belonging to Hani Abu Haikel and his family in Hebron. Occupation soldiers, though at first trying to help stop the fire, ended up blocking the road so that Palestinian firefighters were delayed in reaching the scene. Several very old olive trees were destroyed in the fire which swept over immense swathes of land very quickly. In the video below, Hani Abu Haikel speaks about the incident and how Israeli settlers, soldiers and police work together to pressure Palestinian families to leave the Israeli-controlled H2 district of occupied Hebron.
The previous evening, July 27th, Israeli police came to Hani Abu Haikel’s house and questioned him about a variety of subjects including whether he has any plans of leaving the area, to whicb he answered in the negative. Apparently this questioning is a regular occurrence. Israeli soldiers have also arrested Abu Haikel and his children on spurious charges, later releasing them without charge. The soldiers continue to regularly detain and interrogate members of the family.
Yesterday afternoon Abu Haikel saw settlers present in the area of the Israeli military base. As this is a common thing for them to do, he thought nothing of it at first. However, after this Abu Haikel saw the settlers spray water all over the small plot they have illegally cultivated on his land, right beneath the military base. He then saw them spray another, apparently flammable chemical over his land – soon after this, his land was on fire. Observers noted that Israeli soldiers were obstructing people from reaching the scene to help. Palestinian fire engines were prevented from reaching the scene for at least half an hour, allowing the fire to spread rapidly and scorch the land, despite volunteers passing buckets of water between them to try to quell the flames.
The only part of the Abu Haikel land that wasn’t completely scorched was the small plot cultivated by Israeli settlers. Hani Abu Haikel explained that this is the eighth time settlers have burned his property, including an incident ten years ago when they burned all of his trees, meaning that many of the trees that were burnt this time were very young. It has taken him these ten years to effectively replant his land again and now, again it will be years before his land is as it was before this crime.Debt: The Possibilities Ignored
It’s no secret that economists and libertarians have developed a bad habit of assuming things about history and other societies on first principle without actually checking archaeological or anthropological findings. On occasion the divide can be quite stark. David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years gets a lot of momentum by attacking a widely circulated economic fable purporting to explain the origin of currency wherein coinage precedes credit. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the “I need a blanket and all I have to barter with are five chickens but everyone in my village likes cowry shells” dilemma at the start of elementary economics textbooks has no clear historical basis; there’s little evidence small tribes or villages needed to invent physical currency to facilitate market exchange internally because reputation and credit are far more natural and flexible.
To say this is sympathetic territory for me would be an understatement. In my longest essay in Markets Not Capitalism I emphasized the role |
’
The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017
— Sept. 23: ‘No, Russia did not help me’
— Oct. 29: Dems using ‘terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics’
Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
...the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia,.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
..."collusion," which doesn't exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R's... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
...are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2017
Fake News
Trump’s tactic of blaming “fake news” for unflattering coverage has extended to his election win.
Intelligence officials, Democratic leaders and journalists — the president has claimed they’ve all pushed fake news to undermine him and his victory last November.
— Dec. 12: Trump suggests the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election is a ‘conspiracy theory!’
Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
— March 20: ‘Democrats made up and pushed’ Russia story as excuse for ‘terrible campaign’
The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2017
— June 6: I’d have ‘ZERO chance’ of winning if I relied on the ‘Fake News’ mainstream media
Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, washpost or nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
—Sept. 22: ‘Fake News Media’ had ‘greatest influence over our election’
The greatest influence over our election was the Fake News Media "screaming" for Crooked Hillary Clinton. Next, she was a bad candidate! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017Six French youth activists have been fined 500 euros each after they displaying a banner requesting the French government expel Islamists from the country.
The incident, which occurred in August of last year saw the activists belonging to the Identitarians hold a banner over Arras train station that read “expel Islamists” after they had scaled the building. The members held up smoke sticks and their signature Lambda flags until police and firefighters were called in to remove them.
French state-owned SNCF railway company brought about the charges which the Identitarian lawyer Jerome Triomphe tried to have dropped. The judge sided with SNCF and brought about charges which some activists plead guilty to and some did not. The activists who plead not guilty were brought before the court in January with the judges decision having just been made on the 2nd of February.
The state company then said they were looking for 5000 euros in damages for the demonstration which the judge also ruled against. Instead the judge ordered six of the activists to pay 500 euros each for a total of 3000 euros to be paid to SNCF. The judge also returned the banner and flags to the Identitarians which had been confiscated in August.
The initial protest was in reaction to the Thalys Islamist attack in which 25-year-old Moroccan man Ayoub El Khazzani brought an ak-47 rifle on board a train but was subdued by three American men, two of whom were off duty military personnel, after the attacker opened fire injuring passengers on board. The Americans were lauded as heroes in France and given the Legion of Honour by French president Hollande.
The reaction to the verdict by the Identitarians has been dismissive of the entire proceedings as their spokesman Aurelien Verhassel said, “we believe that we are right to think this is a political decision. The illegal occupation charge is just an excuse to stick us in court. The political class as a whole, from (former French president) Sarkozy to Hollande, excluding Marine Le Pen, are now finally claiming what we have been saying all along. It’s funny to be so ahead of them.”
Verhassel also said getting their flags and banner back, “we will be able to use it again soon. We react to current events,” and that they would return to the same style of demonstration soon, implying the courts wouldn’t have any meaningful effect on their desire to go out and demonstrate their ideas.
The Identitarian movement started in France and has the most support there but has also branched out to Austria, Germany, Italy and Spain. Breitbart London has reported on the creative demonstrations of the group in Austria in particular where they staged a mock beheading of leftists while dressed up as Jihadis.A Rainy Day in Russell: The Hell Hole of the Pacific
When you’re in Paihia and you’re faced with 144 beautiful islands to visit, why the hell would you take a boat to a place once dubbed “The Hell Hole of the Pacific”?! Well, believe it or not, this place actually used to be New Zealand’s first capital, more commonly known today as Russell, so it is steeped in history! What’s more, winter in the “Winterless North” of New Zealand has finally caught up with us. Although, we admit, it’s not exactly cold, the rain is coming down like it has had a major fallout with the sky. Luckily enough, you don’t need the sunshine to experience the history in Russell.
Taking the Ferry to Russell
There are two “cheap as” ferries to take over to Russell, the passenger ferry from Paihia, and the vehicle ferry from Opua Bay. Although we had originally planned to take the passenger ferry, we decide we’d take the car to keep Robin’s arm cast as dry as possible. Considering the price of the ferry is about the same, all we have to lose is a bit of petrol.
We arrive in Opua Bay, only a 10-minute drive out of Paihia and drive onto the open ferry operated by Fullers GreatSights, which departs every 10 minutes. From there we watch the passing boats and coast through the raindrops of our windscreen. The trip takes less than 10 minutes, then it’s about a 10-minute drive into Russell itself. We promise, that is the last time we will be saying “10 minutes” on this story.
What to do in Russell under the rain
With not much of plan in mind for how we are going to have a look around New Zealand’s first capital in the rain, we go to inquire at the information centre where we notice a bus parked up saying “Russell Mini Tours”. Well, that’s one way to stay out of the rain AND learn more about this intriguing town.
Learning the history of the Hell Hole
Next thing we know, we are boarding the Russell Mini Tours bus and meeting our driver and guide, Chris. Although he originally comes from Scotland, he has been in Russell long enough to know it like the back of his hand, which he instantly proves by telling us a bit of history about Russell. We learn about it’s “dodgy” past as being a good stop-off for whalers, escaped convicts and any other cretin to drink beyond redemption and lay with one of the brothels’ floozies, hence the name “Hell Hole of the Pacific”. Despite the rain, it doesn’t really look much like a hell hole now as Chris slowly drives along the waterfront with a beach on one side and rows of well-maintained heritage housing on the other. He points out the “first of” many things in New Zealand: the first Swordfish Club, the first licensed pub and hotel, the first church, the first place where a Christian wedding took place, and the list goes on!
Heritage buildings
It seems Chris knows everything about every house in the small town like when each house was built, many of which were built in the 1800s, sourced from local kauri wood – New Zealand’s largest type of tree that is now highly protected – and with foundations made of whale bones(?!).
Even in the rain, Russell has lots of stunning hidden gems like Tapeka Point beach
Beautiful Beaches to stunning views
After having plenty of time to learn about the different buildings of the main town itself, we drive over the hill to a stunning little golden sand beach called Tapeka Point Beach. We get the best view of it by Chris parking the bus on the boat ramp looking down into the ocean, which seems like a good setting to talk more about the area.
Now that we have seen the literal low points of Russell, we are now driving uphill to one of the areas most famous high points.
A trip up Flagstaff Hill
We take a sharp turn up the road to Flagstaff Hill, where Chris tells us the story of Hone Heke, a famous Maori chief, who cut down the British flag from the flagstaff four times to show objection to the British sovereignty in New Zealand after the Treaty was dishonored (something we learned heaps about at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds yesterday). More flags have been erected and taken down since then.
The bus parks up and we have some time to check out the flagstaff for ourselves, which is not only a significant historical site but it provides some sensational views of the Bay of Islands. The rain stops for a moment for us to soak in the views of the complex coastline of inlets and cliffs, as well as all the boats anchored in the bays.
On the opposite side of Flagstaff Hill is a large sundial decorated with a mosaic map of the Bay of Islands. Here, we get the best views of Russell itself. Plus, we are joined by a couple of weka, cheeky flightless birds who will steal any food they can.
Teacup tree and the electric chair
As we hit the road once again, more stunning vistas are revealed as we drive up another steep hill to the Queen’s View then down to another beach that is a local favourite, Long Beach. Here, we see some quite quirky properties, such as one that is fronted by a tree decorated in tea cups, while another house is fronted by an “electric chair”.
A must-have drink at New Zealand’s oldest licensed pub
Back in Russell, we say goodbye to Chris and go for an obligatory drink in New Zealand’s first licensed pub and hotel, The Duke of Marlborough. With great views looking out to the bay, while the interior is decorated in paintings and artifacts of old, The Duke has the best of both worlds.
The conversation might have been a little different over our flagon of ale to what it used to have been back in the day. We did not talk about all the whales we killed and the prostitutes we fondled, but we did talk about some of the upcoming activities we have here in the Bay of Islands, like skydiving, scuba diving, kayaking, an overnight boat cruise, a trip to Cape Reinga, hiking on one of the islands, and more! We are pretty stoked to say the least!
Back to the Pipi Patch
We see a lot more on the short ferry trip back to Opua Bay since the rain has finally stopped for good and we head back to our accommodation at Base a.k.a. the Pipi Patch. Join us tomorrow for exploring Urupukapuka Island in the beautiful Bay of Islands!My name is FlashX. I am the ROAM player for Team SoloMid who are the current reigning World and North American champions. I have been playing Vainglory since September 2014. I am currently Vainglorious Silver in the Spring 2016 Season. You can check out my previous guide on Catherine
This guide will focus on playing Glaive Afterburn Twisted Stroke Bloodsong Glaive
I believe Glaive Afterburn Hunt the Weak Twisted Stroke Bloodsong My name is FlashX. I am the ROAM player for Team SoloMid who are the current reigning World and North American champions. I have been playing Vainglory since September 2014. I am currently Vainglorious Silver in the Spring 2016 Season. You can check out my previous guide on Catherine here. This guide will focus on playingas a ROAM hero. With the second qualifier of the Spring 2016 concluded, playing Glaive as a roam hero is definitely a thing. With the 1.17 update offering no changes to Glaive, understanding why he is viable as a roam hero requires looking back to the 1.16 update. Update 1.16 was the patch where Glaive received buffs to all 3 of his abilities.cooldowns were reduced,energy costs were reduced, andlifesteal was increased. All 3 of these improvements madean incredibly strong pick as a carry, both in lane and in the jungle, but understanding why he is also viable as a roam hero, and when to utilize him as a roam hero, will require a deeper look into his kit.I believeis effective as a ROAM hero because of his ability to both initiate and disengage from teamfights by utilizing. His ability to deal massive amounts of damage from the combination ofandforces enemy heroes to build a lot of defense. He's an incredibly tanky frontline purely from the fact that he has the single highest base health of any hero, and can maintain his footing in the fray of battle by utilizing histo lifesteal the health of multiple enemy heroes.
Difficulty: MEDIUM
Position: ROAM (JUNGLE)
Role: WARRIOR
"Glaive has one of the most feared abilities in the game: a jet-powered Afterburn Bloodsong
Hunt the Weak
Slot: Heroic Perk
Glaive's critical strikes cleave in a cone in front of him.
Cleave deals half damage to minions
Understanding the significance of Glaive's heroic perk can be challenging. In the simplest form, rather than basic attacking a singular enemy hero, Glaive can actually hit all 3 enemy heroes at once. In combination with Stormguard Banner Weapon Infusion Hunt the Weak Twisted Stroke
Afterburn
Slot: A
Glaive rockets in the target direction, damaging all enemies along the way. His next basic attack is replaced by a frightening blast that knocks his target back 5.5 meters and briefly stuns them.
Using Afterburn Afterburn offensively and defensively.
- Offensively : Glaive Afterburn Afterburn Blackfeather Glaive Afterburn
- Defensively : Glaive Afterburn Krul Skaarf Afterburn
What to AVOID: Be patient when using Afterburn Afterburn offensively or defensively. If his allies are not in a good position to engage if Afterburn Afterburn
Twisted Stroke
Slot: B
Instantly executes a critical strike.
This ability deals weapon damage, but it can deal bonus crystal damage if you have any crystal power.
Triggers basic-attack effects.
Passive: Increases critical-strike chance and AOE-cleave damage of basic attacks.
Using Twisted Stroke Twisted Stroke Stormguard Banner
What to AVOID: Because Glaive Afterburn Twisted Stroke
Bloodsong
Slot: C
Swing Glaive's axe in a 5.4-meter circle, dealing massive area damage that increases with the number of Bloodsong stacks used. This removes all stacks.
Passive: Glaive generates Bloodsong stacks from basic attacking or from receiving basic attacks (max 20 stacks).
Each stack grants Glaive bonus lifesteal.
Using Bloodsong Bloodsong "Glaive generates Bloodsong stacks from basic attacking or from receiving basic attacks." Not only will this ability offer a great amount of burst damage that also synergizes well with Twisted Stroke Bloodsong
What to AVOID: Glaive should ensure that Bloodsong Understanding the significance of Glaive's heroic perk can be challenging. In the simplest form, rather than basic attacking a singular enemy hero, Glaive can actually hit all 3 enemy heroes at once. In combination withand a well timedlater on in the game, this can result in massive damage output. Particularly,shines most against enemy team compositions that use 2 melee heroes, and especially 3 melee heroes which makes it very easy for Glaive to position himself in a manner such that all of the enemies are within the cone of his cleave damage. One should note that the cleave damage is based specifically on Glaive'sis the single strongest ability in Glaive's kit and is what makes him viable as a roam hero. This ability can be used bothandcan utilizein order to punish enemy heroes who are caught out of position. Taking advantage of rotations up into the lane in order to knockback the enemy laner into Glaive's allies will be how this ability is used most frequently.can also be used to prevent enemies from trying to flee from a teamfight. A good example would be an enemywho normally has to get very close to the minions in order to last hit thus allowing a good opportunity forto activate hisoffers a large amount of peel for his allies by usingto knockback enemies who are focusing Glaive's allies. A good example would be if an enemyis trying to stick to an allied, Glaive can activateto knock the Krul off of the Skaarf.Be patient when using. Glaive needs to be sure that when he usesthat his allies are prepared to respond accordingly whether it is usedor. If his allies are not in a good position to engage ifis used offensively then Glaive is at risk of being out of position and with afterburn on cooldown, lacks a reliable means of escape. When usingdefensively, it is important for Glaive to make sure that his allies are ready to either immediately reengage or retreat depending on the situation.Using:[/b]is a very simple way for Glaive to apply additional damage to his enemies. By executing a basic attack, this ability synergizes very well withwhich allows Glaive to deal a massive amount of burst damage in a very short time. Glaive will want to prioritize the same target that his allies are focusing which will most often be the squishiest target or the enemy that Glaive had just afterburned.Becauserequires a lot of energy to use, it is important that he manages his use ofeffectively. Most often it will be wasteful to use this ability to clear the jungle and would be better for Glaive to conserve his energy for the possibility of an ensuing teamfight after the jungle has been cleared.Using:[/b]can first be unlocked when Glaive reaches level 6. It is important that Glaive be proactive about quickly building stacks of bloodsong (maximum 20 stacks) in order to have the most impact during a teamfight.Not only will this ability offer a great amount of burst damage that also synergizes well with, butalso allows Glaive to absorb damage for his allies by lifestealing health back from enemies upon activation.Glaive should ensure thatis being used to it's maximum effectiveness. Avoid activating this ability until all 20 stacks have been generated, unless absolutely necessary (Glaive or one of his allies will likely die otherwise).
Playing the EARLY GAME: (t = 0:00 - 8:00)
1. Starting ITEMS : Ironguard Contract Flare Gun - Buying 2 potions is unnecessary because Glaive Ironguard Contract If a minion has attacked you, you heal for 120 health and your ally also earns 30% bonus gold). It is especially important when clearing the jungle that Glaive
2. Clearing the jungle : When the game begins, Glaive Afterburn Glaive
3. The first engagement : In most situations, both jungles will have finished this mirrored rotation at relatively the same time. (Note: On some occasions, the enemy team may revert to a backwards rotation in which they start from the small double camp and rotate back towards their respective base). At this point, an engagement is likely to occur. Use the flare purchased at the begging of the game in a manner such that it reveals both the enemy shop bush as well as their tri bush. Glaive Afterburn
4. To Invade, or not to Invade? If you end up winning a fight in the jungle, simply purchase a potion and head for an invade. The enemy team likely has very weak early game heroes and will not be able to win a second engagement either. Just be careful to not take too much damage from the jungle minions if the enemy team is positioning for an engagement. If you decided to go up to lane for a gank, whether it was successful or not, you should return to your jungle to clear it immediately. Note: If the enemy team has a much stronger jungle, they may have invaded and it is important to utilize flares to see if they have indeed invaded. If so, they simply rotate into the enemy jungle and take their camps instead.
Playing the MID GAME: (t = 8:00 - 15:00)
Glaive Fountain of Renewal Bloodsong Afterburn Afterburn Afterburn
Playing the LATE GAME: (t = 15:00 - End of Game)
While Glaive Afterburn Glaive Twisted Stroke Bloodsong
What to avoid:
1. Avoid taking last hits. Glaive's allies should always be the ones who get the last hit. Glaive will earn 75% of all gold that his allies earn from the passive of Ironguard Contract
2. Avoid overextending. While it is important for Glaive to be the frontline for his team, he needs to make sure his allies are in a position to help Glaive should he be engaged upon. If caught out of position, Glaive can activate her Afterburn Bloodsong
4. Be patient with Afterburn Reflex Block Afterburn 1.- Buying 2 potions is unnecessary becausewill receive health back from the passive ability of the). It is especially important when clearing the jungle thattakes the first hit damage from jungle minions for optimal clear mechanics. This will maximize the amount of gold Catherine and her allies are able to earn.2.: When the game begins,should position himself to stand to the left of where the large double minions will spawn in the jungle. Immediately basic attack the left minion,through both minions, knockback one minion, and then begin to basic attack them while's ally kills the large medic minion. Before Glaive's jungle carry kills any of the jungle minions, Glaive should begin moving towards the inner healer minion. This is so that the jungle carry will reach level 2 after the first rotation through the jungle. Be careful to not leave the jungle carry too soon or else they may take too much damage. However, most damage can be mitigated through the health they receive from killing the healer minions.3.: In most situations, both jungles will have finished this mirrored rotation at relatively the same time. (Note: On some occasions, the enemy team may revert to a backwards rotation in which they start from the small double camp and rotate back towards their respective base). At this point, an engagement is likely to occur. Use the flare purchased at the begging of the game in a manner such that it reveals both the enemy shop bush as well as their tri bush.and his ally will only want to engage the enemy jungle at this point if they feel they can win the fight. If not, it is a VERY good idea to rotate up to the lane and attempt to gank the enemy laner by usingto knock him away from safety.4.If you end up winning a fight in the jungle, simply purchase a potion and head for an invade. The enemy team likely has very weak early game heroes and will not be able to win a second engagement either. Just be careful to not take too much damage from the jungle minions if the enemy team is positioning for an engagement. If you decided to go up to lane for a gank, whether it was successful or not, you should return to your jungle to clear it immediately. Note: If the enemy team has a much stronger jungle, they may have invaded and it is important to utilize flares to see if they have indeed invaded. If so, they simply rotate into the enemy jungle and take their camps instead.begins to ramp up in the mid game. He hits her first major power spike once she completes hisand his Warhorn, a second major power spike when he reaches level 6 to unlock his, and a final power spike when he reaches level 8 in order to overdriveso that it now has a mere 10 second cooldown making it a much larger threat for unsuspecting enemies. All of this will happen during the mid game. Glaive's decisions here should be reflective of his allies versus the enemies. If his allies are strong in the mid game, Glaive will want to be aggressive, using histo capitalize on enemies so that objective such as turrets or the gold miner can be secured. If Glaive and his allies have a weaker midgame, savingas a tool for a disengage in that enemies are knocked away from Glaive's allies should be encouraged.Whileshould have built an immense amount of both defensive and utility items at this point, the enemy team has also scaled significantly in their damage. Choosing fights selectively is very important at this stage in the game. Enemies have should built enough defense, or even reflex blocks, such thatis not as devastating as it has been during the early and mid game.will want to make sure that he is keeping his allies safe as well as just trying to do the most damage possible throughandAvoid taking last hits. Glaive's allies should always be the ones who get the last hit. Glaive will earn 75% of all gold that his allies earn from the passive of(as long as she is within range).Avoid overextending. While it is important for Glaive to be the frontline for his team, he needs to make sure his allies are in a position to help Glaive should he be engaged upon. If caught out of position, Glaive can activate heras a means of running away from the enemy as well asin order to lifesteal health. Glaive's allies will have to make a decision as to whether they should stay and help fight or use the time to retreat.Be patient with. It is hard to predict how the enemy team will respond or where they might be lurking. If used to engage, be sure to know if the enemy's allies will be coming to their assistance by using a flare gun to check surrounding areas. Once enemies have built, Glaive can run the risk of being caught out of position even more so waiting to use the knockback frommay be smart.
1. Skill Skipping - In all of my guides, the suggested path for choosing abilities ALL involves skill skipping. What is skill skipping? A unique opportunity presents itself when all heroes reach level 5. The average player will simply choose an ability which most commonly is level 2 of their less important ability (Petal's Trampoline 'jump' is a good example). This ability does NOT provide a large benefit to the hero. In this guide I utilize skill skipping to achieve a level 4 Afterburn Bloodsong DO NOT SELECT AN ABILITY TO LEVEL UP. This is NEVER a disadvantage. Some players may find it unsettling that they have the option to improve one of their abilities but are choosing not to do so. However, once you reach level 6, you will be able to upgrade an ability to level 4 as well as getting your C Ability ( Blast Tremor Glaive Afterburn Twisted Stroke Bloodsong Afterburn
2. Voice communication. While Vainglory does have userfriendly ping options which can to a degree communicate what to do between allies, voice communication is standard for any team based eSport. Being able to decide what actions to take in the upcoming 5 seconds before a teamfight such as who to focus as previously mentioned, is incredibly important. When using Blast Tremor
3. Be Patient. - Most Glaive Afterburn Afterburn Afterburn
4. Positioning. Positioning in team fights is very important. Similarly to how all ROAM heroes should be played (with the exception of Roam CP Adagio), Glaive will want to be the frontline meat shield for her allies. His goal is to absorb as much enemy damage as possible while Glaive's allies are attacking the enemies. However, unlike typical roam heroes such as Catherine or Ardan, Glaive is not as tanky and needs to be very careful with how much damage he is absorbing. Key items to his kit are Fountain of Renewal Crucible - In all of my guides, the suggested path for choosing abilities ALL involves skill skipping. What is skill skipping? A unique opportunity presents itself when all heroes reach level 5. The average player will simply choose an ability which most commonly is level 2 of their less important ability (Petal's Trampoline 'jump' is a good example). This ability does NOT provide a large benefit to the hero. In this guide I utilize skill skipping to achieve a level 4and a level 1when I reach level 6. How does skill skipping work? When you reach level 5,. This is NEVER a disadvantage. Some players may find it unsettling that they have the option to improve one of their abilities but are choosing not to do so. However, once you reach level 6, you will be able to upgrade an ability to level 4 as well as getting your C Ability () to level 1. This differs from normally having a Level 3, Level 2, and Level 1 ability when you reach level 6. However, if you do engage in an important team fight at level 5, it is okay to upgrade an ability at this point. Obviously it will help slightly. For, this is his. At level 6, Glaive should have a level 1, Level 1, and Level 4. The additional base damage as well as the reduced cooldown are very helpful during teamfights.While Vainglory does have userfriendly ping options which can to a degree communicate what to do between allies, voice communication is standard for any team based eSport. Being able to decide what actions to take in the upcoming 5 seconds before a teamfight such as who to focus as previously mentioned, is incredibly important. When usingto initiate the fight, Catherine should communicate who the priority focus is and how her allies should follow up after the enemies have been silenced. My team prefers to use an iOS/PC app called Discord. Teamspeak or Skype are also good alternatives.- Mostplayers may panic in a teamfight and try and use all of his abilities immediately. However, this may not be ideal. If the abilities are not used correctly, and in unison, this could be detrimental to both Glaive and his allies. Wait for the perfect scenario to use. If enemies are too far, Glaive may need to position closer, keeping in mind that his allies also need to be positioned correctly to follow up the engagement. Landing a successfulcan often have massive positive effects on a teamfight. Glaive should be patient enough and wait for an opening that will almost ensure she will land it successfully. Usingon one of the enemy carries can often ensure they will be silenced as well as enable Glaive's allies to gain a better position to follow up the engagement.Positioning in team fights is very important. Similarly to how all ROAM heroes should be played (with the exception of Roam CP Adagio), Glaive will want to be the frontline meat shield for her allies. His goal is to absorb as much enemy damage as possible while Glaive's allies are attacking the enemies. However, unlike typical roam heroes such as Catherine or Ardan, Glaive is not as tanky and needs to be very careful with how much damage he is absorbing. Key items to his kit are, Warhorn, and. All of these items will greatly increase the effectiveness of his ability to stay in the front and absorb damage while her allies are dishing it out.Chris Terrio, who recently changed agencies from CAA to WME, has a strong relationship with the film's star Ben Affleck.
Warner Bros. is bringing Argo writer Chris Terrio into the Batman-Superman universe.
The Oscar-winning writer, who recently changed agencies from CAA to WME, has been brought in to write a draft of the Man of Steel follow-up, the untitled Batman-Superman movie.
Terrio has a strong relationship with the studio and the film's star Ben Affleck. Affleck directed and starred in Argo, which won last year's best picture Oscar for Warners.
PHOTOS: Two-Timing Superheroes: Ben Affleck and 10 Actors Who've Played Multiple Comic Characters
Affleck will star as Batman in the Zack Snyder-helmed film, while Henry Cavill and Amy Adams also star. Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa is in talks for a role in the movie, and Gal Gadot is on board as Wonder Woman.
The film, which opens July 17, 2015, already shot a few exterior scenes this fall, but principal photography doesn't begin until early next year in Michigan and is expected to wrap in August.
David Goyer wrote the screenplay, which is based on characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (Superman) and Bob Kane (Batman). But sources say Terrio has been brought in to get the script in shape before filming begins. Goyer has been tied up with a number of other DC Comics titles including Sandman.
Warner Bros. declined to comment.
Email: Tatiana.Siegel@THR.com
Twitter: @TatianaSiegel27NEW YORK—Warning that they should no longer be viewed as a meek and harmless franchise, sources confirmed Monday that the New York Giants are likely to acquire powerful offensive weapons within the next five years. “The Giants may seem insignificant now, but if they are allowed to go unchecked, they could become one of the most dangerous teams in the league by 2022,” said NFL scout Todd Sandberg, adding the mounting evidence suggests the Giants have the technical skills and sources to eventually develop an explosive running back and could one day become a multi-dimensional threat. “They’re weak now, but ambitious, and we have every reason to believe they will not stop until taken seriously. Nobody really knows what they’re thinking and that is dangerous.” Sandberg emphasized that the quest to acquire offensive weapons could be accelerated by the team’s impending regime change.
AdvertisementA rendering of a pedestrian tunnel between Alexandria Union Station (on the right) and the King Street Metro station (left). Image used with permission.
King Street station in Alexandria serves Metro, VRE, and Amtrak trains. But its layout is inefficient and hard to use. Virginia is providing money to build a new pedestrian tunnel that solves those problems.
There are two big problems at King Street station: First, Passengers can't walk directly between the Metro station and the Virginia Railway Express (VRE)/Amtrak station, even though they're right next to each other. Second, although there are three tracks for VRE/Amtrak trains, passengers can only reach two of them, which cuts the capacity of the station.
The current track and platform layout at King Street, with the Amtrak/VRE station on the right. The third track, which can't currently carry passenger trains, is on the left. Image by the author.
Building a new pedestrian tunnel that connects both stations and all the tracks will make it easier for passengers to transfer trains, and increase the capacity of the VRE/Amtrak station by making it possible for trains to pick up passengers using all three tracks.
The tunnel will also be a lot safer since passengers reaching the far-side VRE/Amtrak platform will no longer have a need to walk over active tracks.
In addition to the tunnel, VRE wants to extend and widen the platform that sits between the eastern two tracks, as well as remove the fence that currently blocks the third track from the station.
The Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) gave VRE $18 million to build the tunnel in June. That money will allow for design and, eventually, construction work. Design is typically an early part of the project, and comes before the detailed engineering work needed to work out all the small details that go into a construction project like this. So the tunnel’s opening is still a ways away.BOSTON -- Harrison Barnes had another strong game and another career-high for North Carolina. And this time he got some help from fellow freshman Reggie Bullock.
Barnes scored 26 points, reaching a career-high for the second straight game, and Bullock made four 3-pointers in a 2 1/2-minute span to help North Carolina (No. 23 AP) beat Boston College 106-74 on Tuesday night.
"The biggest difference for me in the game was Reggie Bullock off the bench," Tar Heels coach Roy Williams said. "We were down five points and then Reggie hits four 3s. The last game, [he] didn't make a field goal. I talked to him after the game and said, 'You probably won't do that again.'"
Tyler Zeller scored 18 points and Bullock hit four 3s during a 22-4 surge late in the first half when the Tar Heels (16-5, 6-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) turned a five-point deficit into a 13-point lead. Bullock scored 14 points in the first half and finished with 16.
Joe Trapani had a season-high 25 points and a career-high 15 rebounds for Boston College (14-8, 4-4).
Larry Drew II had nine assists for Carolina, which missed its season high in scoring by one point when Williams emptied his bench in the final 2 minutes, up by more than 30. The Tar Heels shot 57 percent from the field.
"They've had trouble against zones; they didn't have trouble with our zones," BC coach Steve Donahue said. "Once they started making shots, it got their confidence up.... I think they really played one of the best games they've played in a while."
BC led 18-13 when Bullock entered the game with 12:15 left in the first half. He hit a 3 on Carolina's next possession, another to give the Tar Heels the lead and one more |
saw Xavier Lloveras taking pole position and race win, the whole field was waiting for Qualifying 2 to fight again. The rain was even harder than yesterday as cars went into the fifteen-minute session
Qualifying 2
Elias Niskanen, AKK Academy “Conditions were very difficult during qualifying. I wanted to get a clean lap and it happened to be also a very good lap. P5 is a great starting position for Race 3”
The rain did not make qualifying any less interesting and it was actually a very thrilling session. SMP Racing Alexander Smolyar drove his car to pole position, his first in a Formula car, with a time of 2:38.864. And it was a very close fight as MP Motorsport Christian Lundgaard and FA Racing Xavier Lloveras missed pole position by less than a tenth.
Bent Viscaal from MP Motorsport set the fourth fastest time. After fighting from P17 to P7 in yesterday’s race, AKK Academy Elias Niskanen managed to put together a lap time that took his car onto P5. And completing top ten were MP Motorsport John Peters, ALM Motorsport Jan-Erik Meikup, SMP Racing Vladimir Tziortzis, AKK Academy Tuomas Haapalainen and MP Motorsport Tristan Charpentier.
Alexander Smolyar, SMP Racing “The conditions were tricky, but we have the same since Day 1 here, so I just tried to adapt as much as I could. I am very happy with my very first pole position in single-seater and I hope it will be the first of many!”
Race 2
Because of the heavy rain and very poor visibility on track, Race 2 started behind safety car. On the moment the Safety Car came in, three laps were to go in the last race of the day. The race was no short of drama as few cars crashed already behind the safety car.
Lundgaard made the most of the short race and immediately overtook Lloveras into turn 2 after the restart. The gap in the end was almost six seconds. Lloveras’ teammate Guillem Pujeu did not have as good race as his fellow countryman due to a technical problem dropping him into the back of the grid.
Smolyar took a final step on the podium after starting from P6. After crashing out of yesterday’s race, Tziortzis drove into a brilliant fourth place just behind his compatriot. Haapalainen drove his AKK Academy’s car #32 into P5 after fighting for the last place in the podium with the two Russians. Peters took P6 with ALM Motorsports Sten Piirimagi and Viscaal grabbing P7 and P8 respectively.
Christian Lundgaard (MP Motorsport) “I knew I had to overtake Lloveras at the restart because there were only a few laps left. I had the pace advantage over him and I’m glad I managed to get by him and win”
Gulhuseyn Abdullayev (SMP Racing) “The restart was very tricky because with so many cars in front I could not see anything when I braked into T2. After yesterdays trouble it was good to get a positive result”
Vladimir Tziortzis (SMP Racing) “The race was really tough and we did only few laps of racing. It was an important result after yesterdays crash in Race 1”
Race 3
Even though the track was still wet during the last race of the weekend, the conditions were much better than earlier during the day. The race was full of drama and the fight for P2 held the spectators breath. Lundgaard got an amazing start and cruised into a dominating victory coming to the finish line over 20 seconds before his teammate Viscaal. The Dutch had to fight for his place though with SMP Racing Nikita Volegov, Lloveras and Haapalainen finishing right on his tail. Niskanen finished his race weekend in P6 and Estonian Meikup took his first points of the season by taking P7. Mike Belov and Charpentier had a contact forcing the Frenchmen to retire from the race. Belov eventually finished P8. Lappalainen Racing Juuso Puhakka finished P9 and the last point finisher was Austrian Lukas Dunner.
It was a race to forget for Smolyar who crashed out only few laps before the end while fighting for P2, after a contact with Spanish Xavier Lloveras.
Bent Viscaal (MP Motorsport) “P2 was maximum today. I didn’t have any confidence with my brakes so that’s why I’m really happy with the result”
Xavier Lloveras (FA Racing) “I had a difficult race and lost a place at the start. I had some issues with the brakes but P4 is good for the championship”
Nikita Volegov (SMP Racing) “The race was really amazing. The first lap was key because I came from P11 to P5 and then I managed to overtake Lloveras and Smolyar to get to the podium”
With those two wins today Lundgaard is now leading the championship with 50 points but Lloveras is only one point shy behind the Dane. Viscaal holds P3 with 37 points, with Haapalainen and Smolyar rounding out the top five.
That’s all from the eventful first round of 2017 SMP F4 NEZ season. The SMP F4 NEZ Championship will be in Smolensk, Russia next weekend already, for a three-days event not to be missed!The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is spending $2.5 million in North Carolina to wrest a seat from GOP Sen. Richard Burr. | AP Photo Bullish Senate Democrats target North Carolina, Missouri
The campaign arm for Senate Democrats is launching television ads in North Carolina and Missouri, a sign of their bullishness about winning seats in conservative territory, according to a source familiar with the ad buy.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is spending $2.5 million in North Carolina to wrest a seat from GOP Sen. Richard Burr and $1.5 million to knock off Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. The cash infusion for television and possibly digital ads comes from the DSCC's independent expenditure unit.
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The move marks a significant expansion of the Democratic campaign to take back the Senate, which Republicans now control with 54 seats to Democrats' 46. Until now, the party had been concentrating on traditional battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire and Nevada. Republicans are defending 24 seats, many in blue and purple states, compared with just 10 for Democrats.
The chess match over the Senate map has shifted significantly in recent days. Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman has appeared increasingly safe to hold his seat against Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, forcing the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC to scale back ad buys there and shift their strategy to more winnable races. Meanwhile, Republicans have become increasingly concerned about North Carolina: Two weeks ago, Senate Leadership Fund announced it would spend $8.1 million to defend Burr with TV ads starting Tuesday.
As part of the shift in advertising, Democrats are also scaling back their advertising in Florida by $700,000 during the last week of September, from about $1 million to $300,000. While GOP Sen. Marco Rubio holds an edge there over Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, Democrats said that Senate Majority PAC will provide more than adequate air cover for Murphy that week and still believe the race is winnable.
Simultaneously, Democrats have been feeling better about North Carolina, where Donald Trump is trailing Hillary Clinton and Burr is running what GOP operatives believe is a lackluster campaign with low visibility in the state. Burr routinely leads in polls over Democratic candidate Deborah Ross, but Democratic Party leaders believe the state is fertile territory to pick up one of the minimum four seats needed to reclaim the majority. Republican groups just announced a massive ad buy in North Carolina to aid Burr.
Missouri is a tougher challenge for Democrats, though party operatives are bullish on their candidate, Jason Kander, and believe his attacks on longtime Washington hand Blunt as a consummate insider could resonate.WASHINGTON -- As the technology for arming drones spreads around the world, terrorists could use the unmanned, missile-firing aircraft to attack and kill the president and other U.S. leaders, the former chief of U.S. intelligence said Tuesday.
Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who served as President Obama's first director of national intelligence, told reporters he was concerned that the proliferation of armed drones -- a potential outgrowth of the U.S. reliance on drones to attack and kill terrorists -- could well backfire.
"I do fear that if al Qaeda can develop a drone, its first thought will be to use it to kill our president, and senior officials and senior officers," Blair said during a conference call with reporters. "It is possible without a great deal of intelligence to do something with a drone you cannot do with a high-powered rifle or driving a car full of explosives and other ways terrorists now use to try killing senior officials," he said.
The U.S. development and growing use of armed drones has not "opened a huge Pandora's box which will make us wish we had never invented the drone," Blair said. But he said if drones are acquired by terrorist groups, it would force the U.S. to take defensive measures. Yet, the U.S. already has extensive surveillance of its airspace and sophisticated weapons designed against a variety of airborne threats.
The Obama administration has accelerated armed drone strikes against individuals and groups in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia as well as Afghanistan, in a campaign which is almost entirely secret. Administration officials have said the strikes are necessary to combat terrorist plotting against the U.S. But while President Obama and other officials have declared the strikes are legal, the White House has refused to divulge its legal justification for the strikes, which have included the killing of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki.
Blair said the Obama administration has only "partly thought through" the repercussions of its expanded drone attack campaign, including the inevitable proliferation of drone technology to other countries and organizations. He spoke Tuesday on a call organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, with senior analyst Micah Zenko.
Already, dozens of countries from Iran to China are using surveillance drones, and experts believe it will not be long before swarms of armed drones take to the air.
The Obama administration is coming under increasing pressure to unveil at least some details of the secretive drone counter-terrorist campaign, which is carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command and by the CIA. The latter agency largely operates the drone strikes against terrorist groups in Pakistan.
Blair -- who was dismissed by President Obama in May 2010 after a falling-out over intelligence matters -- said the administration should make public some details of how and why it decides that some terrorists should be targeted. "The United States is a democracy, we want our people to know how we use military force and that we use it in ways the United States is proud of," Blair said. "There's been far too little debate" about this form of killing.
The drone strikes are reviewed, after they have taken place, by the House and Senate intelligence committees, so there is some oversight of the process by which targets are selected and people killed. But Blair said he doubted the White House would allow the public insight into the drone program. "They've made the cold-blooded calculation that it's better to hunker down and take the criticism than to take the debate public -- which I think in the long run is essential," he said.
But Blair acknowledged that a robust public discussion about the legal basis for the drones campaigns would have little deterrent effect on terrorists. He said extremist groups look at how the U.S. frames its military strikes in legal terms not in order to emulate that behavior but "in order to find weaknesses" they can exploit.
"If a terrorist group gets drone technology," Blair said, "it will use it against us every way they can."The SEC championship game on Saturday saw Alabama beat Florida to win the conference, as well as a spot in the College Football Playoff. Lower down the list of accolades was one we’d been following over the past month or so: The Crimson Tide became the greatest college team of the past 80 years, according to FiveThirtyEight’s Elo power rating.
’Bama needed to beat Florida by 11 or more points to pass the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers for No. 1. And in actuality, they won by a lot more than that, whipping the Gators by 38. That did the trick, pushing the Crimson Tide ahead of any team since the AP poll era began in 1936.
For many of the teams on the list above, their peak Elo moment also coincided with the end of their schedule (and, usually, a national championship celebration). Alabama, however, still has some hurdles left to clear before it can become the best end-of-season Elo team ever. Specifically, the Tide need to beat both Washington and the Clemson-Ohio State winner to finish the year as national champs — and if they don’t, they’ll have peaked too soon. A loss to Washington, for instance, would instantly drop Alabama to No. 4 on the historical end-of-season Elo list if it comes by a field goal, and No. 10 if by a touchdown. It’s really hard to stay at the pinnacle of the game.
For now, though, Nick Saban can toss another honor on his enormous pile of coaching accomplishments. His 2016 Crimson Tide are the strongest team in modern college football history.Soon after news broke that a plane carrying Brazilian football club Chapecoense had crashed in Colombia, the football world took to social media to express its grief and solidarity.
A first division football club in Brazil, the Chapecoense team was travelling to Colombia to take on Atletico Nacional in a two-legged regional final.
English Premier League leaders Chelsea wrote: "Our thoughts are with everyone at @ChapecoenseReal, their families and all those affected by the tragedy in Colombia."
Our thoughts are with everyone at @ChapecoenseReal, their families and all those affected by the tragedy in Colombia. — Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) November 29, 2016
Arsenal, another world-famous Premier League club, said simply: "Thinking of you, @ChapecoenseReal".
Top German Bundesliga team Bayer Leverkusen tweeted in Portuguese: "In football there are no borders. We are with you @ChapecoenseReal".
En el futbol no hay fronteras. Estamos con ustedes, @chapecoensereal. #Chapacoense — Bayer 04 Leverkusen (@bayer04_es) November 29, 2016
Spain's Sevilla said: "The #SevillaFC shows its condolences for the plane crash in which traveled the @ChapecoenseReal. Hard times for football."
El #SevillaFC muestra sus condolencias por el accidente de avión en el que viajaba el @ChapecoenseReal. Duros momentos para el fútbol. pic.twitter.com/c7GNmSNZ8h — Sevilla Fútbol Club (@SevillaFC) November 29, 2016
Turkey's huge Galatasaray club wrote: "Our prayers are with you.. #prayforchapecoense @ChapecoenseReal".
Portuguese giants Benfica tweeted: "Benfica is with everyone involved in the crash @ChapecoenseReal, families and supporters. #ForçaChape!"
O Sport Lisboa e Benfica está com todos os envolvidos no acidente aéreo do @ChapecoenseReal, as famílias e os adeptos. #ForçaChape! — SL Benfica (@SLBenfica) November 29, 2016
Top Brazilian team Corinthians said of their countrymen: "All clubs unite and pray for the people's lives. It all works out! Strength, @ChapecoenseReal #ForçaChape
Todos os clubes se únem e rezam pela vida do ser humano. Que dê tudo certo! Força, @ChapecoenseReal 🙏 #ForçaChape pic.twitter.com/LwkIgEQgBs — Corinthians (@SCCPoTimedoPovo) November 29, 2016
Colombia's Millonarios expressed solidarity and prayers: "Our prayers are with all the passengers and crew. Much strength and solidarity at this difficult time. @ChapecoenseReal"
Nuestras oraciones están con todos los pasajeros y tripulación. Mucha fuerza y solidaridad en este difícil momento. @ChapecoenseReal pic.twitter.com/pX1nmgyjZ2 — Millonarios FC (@MillosFCoficial) November 29, 2016
As did Mexico's Seleccion Nacional : "O ur prayers are with you, @ChapecoenseReal... Much strength! #Chapecoense"
Spain's Barcelona : "All our support and solidarity with the victims and the families affected by the tragedy of the @ChapecoenseReal in Colombia"
Todo nuestro apoyo y solidaridad con las víctimas y los familiares afectados por la tragedia del @ChapecoenseReal en Colombia — FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona_es) November 29, 2016
Invidividual football stars also reached out.
Brazil's Alexandre Pato said: "God please help the people who were on that flight! Too hard!"
Deus ajude por favor essas pessoas que estavam nesse voo!!! Muita força! pic.twitter.com/y1z4307BMi — PATO (@AlexandrePato) November 29, 2016
Spain's Iker Casillas : "My condolences for the plane crash in which traveled the @ChapecoenseReal. Now hard for the soccer! Lots of encouragement and strength!"
Mis condolencias por el accidente de avión en el que viajaba el @ChapecoenseReal. Momento duro para el fútbol! Mucho ánimo y fuerza! pic.twitter.com/8mVTZaETu3 — Iker Casillas (@IkerCasillas) November 29, 2016
Lucas Silva, of Real Madrid: "Very sad news of the accident with the @ChapecoenseReal team. My prayers and positive thoughts with the passengers and their families."
Muito triste a notícia do acidente com a equipe da @ChapecoenseReal. Minhas orações e pensamentos positivos com os passageiros e familiares. — Lucas Silva (@16LucasSilva) November 29, 2016
Michy Batshuayi, a Belgian footballer with Chelsea: "Wow... Prayer for @ChapecoenseReal... God bless you all"
Wow 😢 prayers for @ChapecoenseReal 🙏🙏🙏 God bless you all — Michy Batshuayi (@mbatshuayi) November 29, 2016
Wayne Rooney, Manchester United captain and all-time leading goalscorer for England: "Sad news to wake up to today. Thoughts are with @ChapecoenseReal and their family and friends."The Regional Planning Association is out with a new report that makes recommendations to improve mobility and sustainability in the New Jersey, New York, Connecticut area over the next 25 years.
According to Kate Slevin, vice president of state programs and advocacy for the Association, one major proposal is the creation of a Trans-Regional Express, or T-REX mass transit agency that would link the three states.
“We are calling for greater integration of New Jersey Transit with the New York City and Long Island and Hudson Valley area,” she said.
“You could greatly improve commutes for riders. You could allow more places in New Jersey to be served, and you could also better integrate and provide more affordable fares for people to get around the region.”
Image: ORG Permanent Modernity
Slevin said “the idea is that if you lived somewhere like Newark you would have faster service to somewhere on Long Island.”
She stressed a crucial element of this idea “is the construction of the Gateway Tunnel under the Hudson River. This has been called the most important transit project in our country.”
She said without this new rail tunnel the regional economy and the environment will really suffer.
“The the hope is the Gateway project could be extended past Manhattan into Queens, so people from New Jersey could have running service through Penn Station over into Queens to get connected to other areas of the region.”
Another proposal calls for a new National Park to be established, in one part of Northern New Jersey.
She explained in the coming decades there will be increased flooding, so they’re recommending “a new National Park model that really looks to address climate change, and we’re recommending that part of the Meadowlands be transformed into a National Park.”
She said the report also focuses on improving governance in New Jersey.
"We need proper funding for NJ Transit, ensuring we have money for both operations and for capital expansions, so new projects, new construction projects, and new capacity for riders.”
The report also calls for overhauling the structure of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and building a second bus terminal under the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.
A new bus terminal under the Javits Convention Center would relieve pressure at the existing bus terminal on Eighth Avenue. It could accommodate intercity buses and some commuter service, as the Far West Side of Manhattan grows into a major office district. This rendering is just one way the new facility could be designed. Source: Perkins Eastman
“People who were coming into Manhattan would have the option of going to two different locations.”
She noted there are a variety of ways this project could be funded but the plan does not specifically recommend any one of them.
“We live in a very complex region and we’re looking at a long-term perspective, trying to provide more options for people,” she said.
“We are really a region with many challenges, and there are things we can do to improve access and mobility and make the entire region work better.”
You can contact reporter David Matthau at David.Matthau@townsquaremedia.com
Also on New Jersey 101.5:ABD TEMASLARI
"ATATÜRK BU MİLLETİN ORTAK DEĞERİDİR"
"RAKKA'YA İLİŞKİN YENİ BİR REZALET ORTAYA ÇIKTI"
Başbakan ve AK Parti Genel Başkanvekili Binali Yıldırım partisinin grup toplantısında gündemi değerlendirdi.Depremzedeler ilk ulaşan ekipleri bizim ekiplerimiz oldu. Gereken desteği sağlamak üzere deprem bölgesine ulaştık. Irak ve İran halkının acılarını paylaşıyor başsağlığı diliyorum.ABD Başkan Yardımcısı Pence ile toplantı gerçekleştirdik. Ülkemizin hassas olduğu konuları konuştuk. Beklentilerimizi açık ve samimi bir şekilde aktarma fırsatı bulduk. FETÖ elebaşının iadesi telebimizi yineledik. 15 Temmuz darbe girişiminin sorumlularının yargılanması konusunun hayati öneme sahip olduğunu bir kez daha altını çizerek ifade ettik. Somut adım atılmasını beklediğimizi kararlılıkla kendisine anlattık. Bize delil diyenlerin 11 Eylül hadisesinden sonra 'Amerika saldırı altındadır, bunun başı da Usama Bin Ladin'dir' dediniz. Biz de delil sormadık. 15 Temmuz'un faili olduğunu sağır sultanın bildiği Feto'nun iadesi için ne delili soruyorsunuz. Ayrıca YPG ile ortaklığın geldiği noktayı da bir kez daha gözler önüne serdik.Suriye ve Irak'taki gelişmeler, Kuzey Irak'ta yapılan gayrimeşru referandum gibi konuları da değerlendirme fırsatı bulduk. Haklarında adli süreç devam eden ABD'de tutuklu bulunan vatandaşlarımızın durumunu da gündeme getirdik. Müttefikimiz olarak gördüğümüz Amerika ile olumlu gündem üzerinden yol almayı arzu ediyoruz. İlişkilerin normal seviyeye dönmesi beklentimizdir. Buradan Musevi toplum temsilcileri, finans kuruluşları, iş adamları ile yatırımcılar ve ekonomi çevreleri ile bir dizi görüşmeler gerçekleştirdik.Birileri hala Atatürk'ü tekellerinde görmeye devam ediyor. Bazı basın yayın organlarına bakarsanız akıl almaz ifadeler var; AK Parti Anıtkabir'de... Bre ahmaklar AK Parti kurulduğu günden beri Anıtkabir'e gidiyor. Ellerinde sanki Atatürkçülük dedektörü varmış gibi milleti fişlemeye çalışıyorlar Hiç bir parti mensubunun Atatürkçülüğünü kanıtlamak gibi bir mecburiyeti yoktur. Atatürkçülük lafla olmaz. Türkiye'nin her ilini üniversite açarsan, bölünmüş yol yaparsan, Yavuz Sulatan Selim, Osmangazi köprüsü gibi büyük eserleri milletin hizmetine sunarsan, tankını topunu uçağını üretirsen, dünyanın en büyük havalimanını yaparsan Atatürkçülük budur. Laf üstüna laf koymak değil taş üstüne taş koymaktır.bu milletin ortak değeridir. Toplumu ayrıştırmak Atatürkçülük değildir. AK Parti laikliğin de en sağlam teminatıdır.BBC bir haber geçti. Rakka’ya ilişkin yeni bir rezalet ortaya çıktı. YPG ve koalisyon güçleri sözde ABD ve koalisyon güçleriyle beraber Rakka’yı DEAŞ’tan temizleyecekler ve insanlar oraya yerleşecekler. Ancak gel gör ki neler olmuş neler. Rakka’da DEAŞ’lıları temizlemek yerine onları silahlarıyla beraber Rakka’dan çıkmaları için destek olmuşlar. 50 tır, 13 otobüs, 100 tane araçtan oluşan, her türlü ağır silahlarla yüklü vaziyette eskort yaparak konvoy oluşturarak terör örgütlerini sağ salim çıkartmışlar.The 2015 Geekie Awards Live Show—via http://www.ustream.tv/TheGeekieAwards—held on October 15th, 2015 at Club Nokia in DTLA.
Winners
ART
Jaroslav / AurumLight
COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS
Kill Me
FASHION
Zolnar
TOYS & CRAFT
Susie Lee / GinnyPenny Messy Little Robots
VIDEO GAMES
Invisible, Inc
TABLETOP GAMES
Machi Koro
PODCASTS
Hadron Gospel Hour
SHORT FILMS
Prelude to Axanar
WEBSITES & BLOGS
Melificent
TRAILERS & VIDEOS
Frozen is the New Black
MUSIC VIDEOS
Savant: Kali 47
WEB SERIES – SCRIPTED
The New Adventures of Peter & Wendy
WEB SERIES – UNSCRIPTED
Super Power Beat Down
NOMINEES
Honorable Mentions
Our judges gave these entries rave reviews!
Art of Dave (Art)
Alex Solis (Art)
Tohru Patrick Awa (Art)
Patty McPancakes (Art)
Aura (Comic Book)
Moriarty (Comic Book)
The Sunless Circus and Other Acts (Comic Book)
Firebird Leather (Fashion)
Opal Moon (Fashion)
Eclectic Goods: Fan Art for your feet (Fashion)
Corsea (Fashion)
Star Wars Musical (Music Videos)
Rainbow Demons (Podcast)
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In… (Podcast)
Break the Rock (Trailers & Videos)
Prelude to Axanar (Trailers & Videos)
“Power” Green Lantern (Trailers & Videos)
Cosmonautica (Video Games)
TRI: Of Friendship and Madness (Video Games)
Nightwing: The Series (Web Series – Scripted)
The First Musketeer (Web Series – Scripted)
Phoenix Run (Web Series – Scripted)
Most Craved (Web Series – Unscripted)
Saving Throw (Web Series – Unscripted)
SomeGadgetGuy: Let’s Talk Tech! (Web Series – Unscripted)
Nashville Geek Life (Websites & Blogs)
StarTrekAxanar.com (Websites & Blogs)As a law professor, if a judge issues a ruling that you don’t entirely embrace, there’s a couple ways to deal with it. You could limit yourself to carefully explaining your well-thought-out objections to the judge’s reasoning. Or you could spice up your arguments by baselessly asserting that state judges who went to “non-elite” schools are just biased against smart people like you.
This guy opted for the latter.
Last week I got denounced for disrespecting state judges and I didn’t even say they weren’t competent. So to all the bar associations out there, if you want to flex your outrage, let me offer this law professor as the real target….
Congratulations, local Chicago judges! You’ve joined the ranks of people Professor Brian Leiter doesn’t like. I can’t say it’s an intimate group, but welcome!
Professor Leiter’s fellow academic, Professor Peter Ludlow of Northwestern, filed a defamation suit alleging that Sun-Times Media and the owners of WLS-AM defamed him by running stories with headlines like “Student allegedly raped by professor suing Northwestern University.” According to another lawsuit, Ludlow made unwelcome advances toward a female student and then took her to his place, where she blacked out and woke up in his bed with his arms around her and her blouse unbuttoned. Ludlow argued, inter alia, that since no one was alleging penetration, it wasn’t rape but a — for lack of a better term — “mere” sexual assault.
Judge Kathy Flanagan disagreed, in part because “rape” is synonymous with “sexual assault” in common parlance and because there’s no reputational difference between being an alleged sexual assailant and an alleged rapist. You still don’t get invited to parties. Professor Leiter took issue with that and raised some substantive arguments. He’s wrong, of course, but there’s no need to go into that debate here.
Instead, let’s focus on Professor Leiter’s entirely non-substantive tangent about the courts:
[T]his is really crucial, the local judges in the Chicago state courts are, I have been told, mostly graduates of non-elite law schools and have contempt for elite academics. Judge Flanagan, who handed down this decision, graduated from John Marshall here in Chicago, a regional school that ranks well behind other very good regional schools in Chicago like Loyola/Chicago, Chicago-Kent and DePaul. I do not know Judge Flanagan, but I am familiar with the general problem. A couple of years ago, I was considering bringing a defamation action that would have to be filed in the local state courts in Chicago (rather than the federal courts), but I was advised by a Chicago lawyer with considerable experience in these matters that the local Chicago judges would view with skepticism and contempt any such lawsuit by a University of Chicago professor. I am, like any experienced lawyer, a legal realist, that is, I know that non-legal factors have a significant influence on outcomes in the court. This is yet another case in point.
The hell?
Is he really saying that the entire Chicago justice system is made up of jurists willfully misinterpreting the law just to stick it to people they think are smarter than them? That’s tinfoil-hat territory. It all smacks of an effort to bridge the cognitive dissonance caused by an experienced lawyer talking him out of a meritless defamation claim by saying, “Yeah, well, I’m sure you’re right about the law, but the judges just won’t side with someone of your preeminent brilliance.” It’s possible — just possible — that despite having a law degree, Professor Leiter is not the world’s greatest expert on how the rubber of defamation law hits the road, seeing as he teaches “Law and Killing Time 3L Year Talking About Nietzsche.”
Who are these vaguely defined “experts” who told Leiter that state judges look down on all those smart alleged sexual assailants? They seem like they’re just there to give the veneer of credibility to baseless ad hominem. Reminds me of the “rumors” he’d heard that Above the Law was going out of business with sagging traffic instead of experiencing its most successful year ever. And absolutely dwarfing his traffic.
As for Judge Flanagan specifically, I’m not running to the defense of John Marshall as an institution, but she’s got 35 years of experience between private practice and serving as a judge — so maybe the fact that U.S. News didn’t rank John Marshall in 2014 doesn’t really speak to her qualifications. And when it comes to the merits of her decision, keep it substantive.
We wouldn’t want her to feel defamed by an unsupported allegation of bias.
Is “Sexual Assault” As Bad As “Rape”? [ATL Redline]
Defamation lawsuit thrown out [Chicago Daily Law Bulletin]
Title Nein [Slate]
Ludlow’s defamation lawsuit against newspapers that falsely accused him of “rape” dismissed [Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog]
Is the “National Enquirer” blog for law about to fold? [Leiter Law School Reports]
Earlier: That Time The Boston Bar Association Denounced Me
We Were Just Having Fun On The Internet And A Law Professor Decided To Attack Us. Us, Of All People!
Teaching Brian Leiter About The Internet
Bigmouth Law Professor Flubs Research, Defends RacistsMany of us live by high ideals. The challenge of living with such high ideals is that we often find we don’t live up to them.
We want to be openly generous and yet we accidentally shortchange a waiter.
We want to support our friends and yet another week slides away with no contact.
We believe in the medicine we share with others but don’t always take it ourselves.
We look at what didn’t work out well rather than celebrate what did.
We plan to be productive but wake up unable to focus.
And so on.
Being over-critical about the moments when our actions didn’t match our intentions doesn’t get those moments back. Noticing the gap between our intentions and our actions is important, but dwelling only heightens the missteps and prevents us from practicing in the current moment.
What we often forget is that we learn more from mistakes, failures, and missteps than we do from making the right steps. Even when you “fail” to live up to your intentions, if you’re truly staying present with the practice, you’re still learning how to become the person you want to be. It’s only when you presume that your failure is about capability rather than specific conditions that you undermine your development.
If you’re not occasionally losing your balance, you’re not stretching yourself. The more powerful you become, the more each movement can take you off balance.
Every moment is a moment to practice and cultivate your virtues. Continual cultivation is doable; continual perfect performance isn’t.
What are you cultivating? What prior performance do you need to move past?Father charged after disturbing footage revealed him beating his teenage daughters for posting sexually suggestive 'twerking' video on Facebook
Greg Horn, 35, whipped daughters, aged 12 and 14, with cable wire at home in Dayton, Ohio
A father who was caught on camera whipping his teenage daughters with cable wire has been charged with child endangerment and corporal punishment, authorities said on Thursday.
Greg Horn, 35, allegedly beat his two daughters, aged 12 and 14, after he caught them filming a 'twerk' video and posting it on Facebook at their home in Dayton, Ohio.
'Twerking' is a sexually provocative dance move that involves gyrating the lower body.
Scroll down for video
Vicious: Greg Horn, 35, has been charged with child endangerment and corporal punishment after he beat his two daughters for posting a 'twerking' video on Facebook
The 30-second clip shows the man ordering the girls into a corner before he systematically beats them while they scream'stop daddy'.
One of the girls was left with welts and open wounds to her thighs, police told ABC.
The sisters said that their father had hit them as punishment for sneaking out of the house.
The video has been posted on countless websites, including WorldStarHipHop, where it generated more than two million views and caused outcry from parents.
Police were alerted to the attack by the girls' mother. Horn is due to be arraigned on April 16.
Whipped: The disturbing footage allegedly shows a father beating his two teenage daughters for filming themselves doing a dance craze known as 'twerking'
Terror: Both girls let out ear-piercing screams as they are whipped with cable wire on the 30-second clip
Outcry: Horn, 35, has been charged after he was identified as the man carrying out the violent assaultThis is the Blue Sun deck you know and love, but this time, it's got tons of barriers!
I seem to have a bad habit of picking agenda layouts that make it hard to score exactly 7. Corporate War's in here because I've always wanted to put it in a deck, and it's very easy to pick up a big piece of ice to get the 7 credit bonus.
The Adonis Campaign / Blue Sun interaction is well-known. With The Root, you can actually make it a 6 credit surge every turn the runner doesn't force you to rez ice. Super exciting.
Elizabeth Mills is only in here because the first two decks I played against with this were both Valencia and I wasn't getting to rez my amazing barriers :)
Will-o'-the-Wisp is here to trash their barrier breaker. A lot of Blue Sun decks play Power Shutdown for a similar application, but that doesn't work with the breaker suites people play here.
Lag Time is just to stack onto Superior Cyberwalls and make your barriers even more obnoxious to get through. I don't know if it's particularly good, but it's exciting to have a 12-strength Curtain Wall.
I kept the Scorched Earth / SEA Source package because sometimes you just randomly win with it, and as soon as the runner sees a piece they have to play around it. Plus, sometimes you get to SEA Source to kill a loaded Kati Jones, and it's the best. I considered cutting an Adonis Campaign for a Midseasons but I really like my Adonis Campaigns here.
Enigma is the only code gate; it's Yoggable but if that's a problem just don't install it.
Taurus is the only |
Perhaps it is best put this way: Be impatient enough with life that you run more than sleep, that you climb more than fall, that you learn more than cram, that you laugh more than cry, that you live more than die.
Be patient with yourself as you allow yourself the room to learn … and allow yourself to trip and fall … and allow yourself back up on your feet to brush yourself off … and develop … and improve … and evolve … and grow. And be patient enough with others that you confirm and validate and love them even when they are not living up to who you know they can be.
Being expectantly patient is the patience that allows for mistakes, but doesn’t settle for where you fall. It smiles when you stumble, then runs a little faster after recovering balance for the sheer joy of the run. It’s accepting life’s ups and down while still living with passion, expecting challenge and opportunity, sometimes at the same time, and sometimes one through the other.
It is the art of simultaneously accepting the common lot of imperfect humanity and recognizing the potential for something amazing in each one of us at the same time.
Afterthoughts
Each of the character traits treated here is meant not as mere techniques to be conveniently applied then discarded as expedience demands.
To truly be considered a character trait, we can’t treat them as periodic expressions of the trait, like a hammer in a toolbox to be used when needed and put away when there are no more nails to hit. Here’s what I mean: To one, we may say, “That was a compassionate thing to do.” But to another we might say, “She is compassionate.” That’s the difference.
Each trait, then, is meant as a life-long goal to work toward, patiently but steadily and persistently, as you learn and grow and become the man or woman who is already there inside you, even now, but who is sometimes buried under the emotional and moral rubble of our own creation.
You are, after all, engaged in the sacred work of sculpting a man or woman of integrity and character … and picking up a deeper, more abiding brand of happiness along the way.
Sharing is Caring!
What character trait do you feel has been most important to your happiness?
happiness? Have you struggled with any of these?
I would LOVE to read your thoughts and experiences in the comments.
And please return to read my reply to what you say – I would enjoy the conversation!
One Last Favor to Ask
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To Read and Comment on the other Articles in the Series, Click on the Links Below
1. 10 Ways to Think Yourself Happy (the power of thought)
2. 10 Ways to Believe Yourself Happy (the power of belief)
3. 10 Ways to Act Yourself Happy (the power of doing)
4. 10 Ways to Live Yourself Happy (the power of character)
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.Conservative plans to scrap the Human Rights Act could breach the terms of the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement, according to a leading human right’s organisation
Conservative plans to scrap the Human Rights Act could breach the terms of the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement, according to a leading human right’s organisation.
The Belfast based Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) has written to the re-appointed Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers to warn that repealing the Act, as outlined in the Conservative manifesto, would breach the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, approved by a referendum and incorporated into an international treaty with the Irish government, deposited at the United Nations.
The CAJ argues that the agreement guarantees that the British government will ensure “incorporation into Northern Ireland law” of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Part two of the agreement notes:
“The British government will complete incorporation into Northern Ireland law of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), with direct access to the courts, and remedies for breach of the Convention, including power for the courts to overrule Assembly legislation on grounds of inconsistency.”
This commitment was made through the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998.
The Good Friday Agreement also notes that “there will be safeguards to ensure that all sections of the community can participate and work together successfully in the operation of these institutions and that all sections of the community are protected”.
The development comes amid reports that Michael Gove’s efforts to unpick the Human Rights Act could cause a constitutional mess in respect of the Devolution settlement more general. As the Telegraph today notes:
“Even more significantly, withdrawal would have potential consequences on the devolution settlements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Acts of Parliament giving power to the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly presuppose Britain’s membership of the Convention, as does the 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement. If Britain left the Convention, these would have to be amended.”
Pressed on the issue during First Minister’s Questions in Cardiff earlier this afternoon by Kirsty Williams, the leader of the Welsh Lib Dems, Carwyn Jones, the First Minister of Wales argued that scrapping the Human Rights Act “makes us look like a Banana republic”.
Ed Jacobs is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
URGENT APPEAL: We need to raise £10,000 in the next few weeks to keep holding the right to account. Help us build a better media and back the crowdfunder to keep Left Foot Forward's progressive journalism alive.MEMBERS of Congress do not agree on much, but on July 25th, after a bipartisan deal, the House of Representatives voted by 419 votes to three for a bill that toughens sanctions on Russia. This is punishment both for Russia’s meddling in the election that brought President Donald Trump to power, and for its continuing aggression in Ukraine. (The bill also includes new sanctions against Iran and North Korea.) As The Economist went to press, the Senate was expected to follow suit: senators endorsed a similar bill 98-2 in June. The aim is to get the legislation passed before the summer recess and sent to the president for his signature.
The implications are momentous. Mr Trump had hoped to lift the existing package of sanctions on Russia at some point. Now he has been stripped of his presidential authority to do so. Since the vote was almost unanimous, he may have no option but to accept it with as much good grace as he can muster. He could veto it, but presidential vetoes can be overridden by a two-thirds majority in both chambers, which in this instance could be achieved.
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The bill both locks in and extends previous sanctions aimed at Russia’s energy firms and banks. It also now targets any entity that does business with Russia’s defence or intelligence sectors—a measure that could threaten buyers of Russian weapons with secondary sanctions. This is a blow to Mr Trump, who made it clear during his campaign that he wanted improved ties with Moscow. It now appears that many of the undeclared meetings that have subsequently come to light between Mr Trump’s inner circle of advisers—Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump junior—and an assortment of Russians with links of various directness to the Kremlin, most notably Sergey Kislyak, the ubiquitous and gregarious former Washington ambassador, were aimed at thawing relations.
Vladimir Putin—who, beyond the reasonable doubt of America’s intelligence agencies (if not its president), authorised the election-hacking operation—may have had reason to believe that Mr Trump, once in the White House, would find a way to relax sanctions. American and European Union sanctions have dragged down Russia’s economy, which, already reeling from low energy prices, contracted sharply in 2015 and has stagnated since.
By overreaching, Mr Trump and Mr Putin have made the relaxation of sanctions politically toxic. That is bad enough for Mr Trump, but his humiliation does not end there. The Republican majority in Congress has, in essence, declared that it does not trust a president from its own party to serve the national interest when it comes to dealing with Russia. There is no other way to interpret the provision in the legislation to prevent the president from suspending sanctions by executive order, in the absence of congressional approval, as Barack Obama did in order to secure the nuclear deal with Iran.
To lift Ukraine-related sanctions, Mr Trump would have to certify by letter that the conditions which had led to them no longer applied—in other words, that Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in the east had ceased. Similarly, the new sanctions brought in to punish Russia for its cyber-attacks could be eased only if Mr Trump could show solid proof that Russia was actively and successfully clamping down on such activities. After receiving such a letter, Congress would then have 30 days to decide whether the president had made his case convincingly. Tellingly, the same conditions do not apply to the sanctions on North Korea and Iran.
Foreign-policy practitioners, including Mr Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, have warned that this creates a potentially damaging precedent. By deliberately tying this president’s hands over Russia, albeit with good reason, Congress risks undermining the ability of future administrations to conduct diplomacy, which often requires flexibility in light of changing circumstances. The bar for eventually removing sanctions will be so high that, in effect, they become permanent.
America’s European allies are worried too, both about the longer-term effects of this bill and the immediate impact of some of the new measures contained in it. The penalties that could be levied on European firms taking part in the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which on present plans will start pumping gas from Russia to Germany in 2019, have already raised concerns in Berlin and Brussels. Those qualms are not shared by all EU countries, especially former members of the Soviet bloc, such as Poland and the Baltic states, who want to reduce their dependence on Russian energy.
How might Mr Trump respond to such a setback to his ability to conduct foreign policy on his own terms? One possibility is that it will increase his determination to find a way out of the Iran nuclear deal, which, like Obamacare, he once pledged to scrap. For America’s nuclear-related sanctions on Iran to remain suspended—a key condition of the 2015 agreement—the State Department must inform Congress whether it believes Iran to be in full compliance every 90 days. So far, Mr Trump has twice reluctantly agreed to certify and thus renew the presidential sanctions waiver. But when he did so on July 17th, it was only after kicking back hard against the recommendation of most of his senior foreign-policy and national-security team.
The White House now seems to be looking for a way to get out of certifying the Iran deal when it comes up for renewal in October. To that end, the president has ordered White House staffers to bypass Mr Tillerson and to come up with the evidence and arguments he needs to undo the deal that the State Department has failed to provide. Mr Tillerson is reported to be fed up with his lot.
It is still not clear whether Mr Trump wants to kill the Iran deal or try and renegotiate it—something that the other parties to it (Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the EU) have already ruled out. But on Iran, unlike Russia, Mr Trump can almost certainly rely on the support of Republicans in Congress for whatever he decides to do. After the ignominy of losing control over sanctions against Russia, the urge to appear decisive and in control may be hard for Mr Trump to resist.As we've reported recently, climate scientists are continuing to develop and refine climate change models in order to predict the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. One aspect of these models that hasn't been explicitly tested is their ability to capture rapid, irreversible changes to the climate system. The author of a commentary in this week's edition of Nature Geoscience argues that current climate models (such as those used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] reports) fail to simulate abrupt changes we've seen in the past, and therefore may be unable to predict similar events in the future.
Abrupt changes are those where the response (such as an increase or decrease in average global temperatures) occurs much more rapidly than do changes in the conditions that triggered it (increased atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, influx of water into the ocean, etc.). Obviously, in order to plan mitigation or adaptation strategies, we need to be able to predict the occurrence and severity of such events.
The author of the piece is Paul Valdes, a climatologist at the University of Bristol, who considered four past cases of abrupt change that current models are unable to simulate. In the first two, the models can't capture the starting conditions—incorrect initial conditions mean inaccurate simulated results (garbage in, garbage out). In the second two cases, simulations require unrealistically large perturbations to cause the changes that actually occurred in the past. All four cases seem to indicate that current models are too stable compared to the relatively sensitive climate system of the real world.
The first event considered, the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which we've reported on recently, was a rapid warming event (5°C in the tropics and up to 20°C in higher latitudes, all within thousands of years) that occurred 55.8 million years ago. The PETM was likely caused by a release of methane from underwater hydrates that led to a massive carbon injection to the atmosphere (similar in magnitude to current events, though at a much slower rate). It's the subject of much study, but current models cannot simulate the warm climate that immediately preceded the climate change.
The second event discussed was the relatively recent (9,000-5,500 years ago) transition of the Sahara from wet and vegetated location into a desert, which occurred over a period of decades to centuries. As with the PETM, the models cannot predict the starting conditions—in this case the greening that occurred prior to desertification—and therefore cannot predict the abrupt transition.
The third case was a series of 25 rapid temperature increases (up to 8°C over a few decades) that occurred over the past 120,000 years during the Dansgaard-Oeschger climate cycles. Each started from a globally cold state and, though not completely understood, was likely caused by an influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic. Simulations in this case are able to predict abrupt change based on realistic starting conditions, but they require an injection of water that lasts thousands of years longer than anyone considers realistic.
The final case considered was the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) between 120,000 and 12,000 years ago. The AMOC is driven by density differences between warm water that flows north above colder water flowing south. The collapse, which took place over the course of six cycles known as Heinrich events, was caused by large amounts of freshwater from glaciers interrupting the normal circulation. The AMOC plays an important role in the global climate system, and its interruption led to rapid cooling in the Northern Hemisphere (10°C over a matter of years).
As with the simulations of the Dansgaard-Oescher warming events, climate models are able to predict an AMOC collapse, but only with an influx of 1 sverdrup (Sv, or 1 million m3/s) to the North Atlantic Ocean—that's 10 times higher than what's estimated to have hit the Atlantic during the last actual Heinrich event. It is particularly important to be able to predict this phenomenon, because a circulation collapse due to glacier meltwater is considered a possible effect of current warming.
Although climate models have been accused of being overly sensitive to changes in greenhouse gasses, it seems that in some cases, the models are too stable, requiring larger perturbations to cause the actual changes seen in the past. Because of this, the author cautions, the models underestimate the possibility of rapid events and therefore may give us a false sense of security.
Nature Geoscience, 2011. DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1200 (About DOIs).Eight thousand cancer patients are likely to have their lives cut short following a decision to withdraw NHS funding for 25 treatments.
Medication which offers a last chance to patients with cancer a year - including those with breast, prostate and bowel disease - will no longer be funded by the NHS, under plans to scale back spending from April.
Experts said that around two thirds of those who seek NHS treatment for advanced bowel cancer are likely to face an earlier death because of the decision.
Charities accused health officials of taking "a dramatic step backwards" and destroying a lifeline which prolongs the survival of thousands of cancer sufferers.
More than 3,000 patients a year with bowel cancer, and 1,700 patients with breast cancer are among those affected by the decision.
Drugs which will no longer receive funding have increased survival in some cases from eight months to two and a half years, charities said.
The Coalition introduced a special Cancer Drugs Fund in 2011, following a Conservative election manifesto pledge that treatments should no longer be denied on grounds of cost.
Although its budget was increased from £200 million to £280million, demand is such that it is now forecasting to have spent £380 million by the end of the financial year.
NHS England said it will increase the annual budget to £340 million but could not afford to continue paying for all the cancer treatments which are now funded.
Cases for whom funding is agreed before April will continue to receive the drugs on the NHS, which is likely to mean a desperate scrabble on behalf of terminally ill patients as the deadline looms.
The chairman of the fund said the review had taken "difficult decisions" to prioritise the drugs which offer the best value.
Of 84 treatments examined in the review, 59 will continue to be funded after March of this year, while 25 will be "delisted" - meaning they cannot normally be funded for NHS patients.
Five treatments for bowel cancer, four for leukaemia, three for breast cancer, three for lymphoma, three for sarcoma and drugs used to treat cancers of the prostate, ovaries, lung, pancreas and kidneys are among those which will no longer be funded.
Andrew Wilson, chief executive of the Rarer Cancers Foundation, said the decisions would be “devastating for patients”.
He said: "If the Prime Minister is serious about his promise to cancer patients, he needs to bring together NHS England and the drugs companies to broker a deal to protect access to these drugs before the March deadline when patients will be denied treatment."
Mark Flannagan, chief executive of the charity Beating Bowel Cancer, said the decision meant around two thirds of patients with advanced bowel cancer were likely to face an earlier death.
He said: “These changes are a backward step in treatment for advanced bowel cancer. Doctors will be forced to tell their patients there are treatments that can prolong their lives but they will no longer be available."
He said some of the bowel cancer drugs had increased survival from 8 months to 30 months in some cases.
Prof Chris Bunce, research director at Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, said decision to remove many effective drugs for blood cancers like leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma from the list was a “dramatic step backwards.”
He said: “Many of these treatments can significantly prolong survival times and provide a good quality of life for diseases that can have devastating symptoms.”
Three drugs currently used to treat advanced breast cancer - Halaven, Tyverb and Afinitor - will no longer be funded.
More than 800 women a year are funded for Halaven, which extends the life of women with an especially aggressive form of the disease by almost five months on average.
Around half of women live longer than a year after receiving the drug, which costs around £10,000 for a six-month course of treatment, and is prescribed as standard care in 55 countries.
Samia al Qadhi, chief executive at Breast Cancer Care, said: “Thousands of breast cancer patients have today been denied the chance of improved quality of life and extra time with their loved-ones. This news is devastating for them."
She said the fund was "falling apart" while health officials and the pharmaceutical industry had failed to find any long-term solution to how to pay for cancer treatment.
Clinicians can still apply for their patient to receive a drug not available through the CDF on an "exceptional basis" – which means they have to demonstrate that their patient will gain more benefit from it than another given the same drug.
Just three new drugs will be funded, following the review: Panitumumab, a treatment for bowel cancer; Ibrutinib, a treatment for Mantle cell lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma; and Ibrutinib for use in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
Professor Peter Clark, chairman of the fund, said: “We have been through a robust, evidence-based process to ensure the drugs available offer the best clinical benefit, getting the most for patients from every pound.”
He said: "These are difficult decisions, but if we don’t prioritise the drugs that offer the best value, many people could miss out on promising, more effective treatments that are in the pipeline.”
The decisions follow a review by a national panel - comprising oncologists, pharmacists and patient representatives, which independently reviewed the drug indications currently available through the fund, plus new applications.
They assessment looked at at clinical benefit, survival and quality of life, the toxicity and safety of the treatment, the level of unmet need and the median cost per patient. In cases where the high cost of a drug would lead to its exclusion from CDF, manufacturers were given an opportunity to reduce prices.
Prof Lesley Fallowfield, Director of the Sussex Health Outcomes Research & Education in Cancer, University of Sussex, said she did not agree with the fund's existence, and said it was not clear why some drugs had stayed on the list, while others were delisted.
She said: “The latest list as far as I can see contains some surprising exclusions and inclusions and I can see why desperate patients, their families and clinicians are outraged."
“This whole issue of who wins when one has infinite demands on a finite budget can only be resolved with sane debate. This is unlikely to happen with a general election in the offing and all parties jostling for position as the most cancer patient friendly.”
Lord Darzi, a former Labour health minister, said on Monday that the NHS should stop needlessly treating dying patients, to help finance the soaring cost of new cancer drugs.
He told The Times that cutting down on unnecessary tests and treatments with little chance of success would free money to spend on the expensive modern medicines that the health service struggles to afford.
The drugs which will no longer normally receive NHS funding:
Bowel cancer
Aflibercept for metatstatic bowel cancers
Bevacizumab as a first line treatment for advanced bowel cancer
Cetuximab as a second or third line treatment for metasatic bowel cancer
Breast cancer
Lapatinib, for advanced breast cancer.
Eribulin for advanced breast cancer
Everolimus for advanced breast cancer
Kidney
Everolimus for metastatic kidney cancers
Leukaemia
Bosutinib when used in the treatment of some Chronic Myelois leukaemia, including where patients have an intolerance for other treatments
Dasatinib, for lymphoid blast crisis chronic myeloid leukaemia
Ofatumumab, for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia
Lung cancer
Pemetrexed when used to treat advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer
Lymphoma
Bendamustine for some cases of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
Bortezomib in treatment of relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma
Bortezomib for relapsed Waldenström macroglobulinaemia, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma
Myeloma:
Bortezomib for some cases of relapsed multiple myeloma
Pancreatic cancer
Everolimus for some pancreatic cancers
Prostate
Cabazitaxel for advanced hormone-resistant advanced prostate cancer, when disease has progressed in spite of chemotherapy.
Reproductive cancers
Bevacizumab as a second-line treatment for advanced ovarian and Fallopian cancers
Sarcoma
Pazopanib for soft-tissue sarcomas
Pegylated Liposomal Doxorubicin for some sarcomas
Regorafenib for gastro-intestinal stromal tumours, a rare type of sarcoma
Number of patients who will be affected by the new restrictions:
Breast cancer 1765
Colorectal cancer 3239
Lung cancer 573
Prostate cancer 465
Sarcoma 262
Kidney cancer 284
Ovarian cancer 403
Myeloma 106
Lymphoma 373
Leukaemia 119
Neuroendocrine 116
Total number of cancer patients affected: 7705
Analysis by The Rarer Cancers Foundation, which calculated the projected impact of the decision to remove 25 treatments from the Cancer Drugs Fund using NHS England's figures of the number of patients who received these treatments through the fund in 2013/14.Levi's Stadium is a little over seven months from opening to the public, and the sponsorship deals continue to develop. Wednesday morning, the 49ers announced that Intel was named a Founding Partner for the new stadium. As part of the agreement, Intel will be the preferred technology provider for what is set to be the most technologically advanced stadium in the world.
According to the press release, the 49ers will use Intel products and services with their various vendors inside the stadium. Intel will also get branding rights for what is currently called the Northwest Plaza. The "Intel Plaza" will "feature a fan experience zone where fans can connect and communicate using the latest products with Intel Inside." Prepare to be overwhelmed by Intel products!
Intel is just down the road from the new stadium. This deal is not remotely surprising as the 49ers have developed strong relationships with numerous companies in the region. And considering the team has been snagging some of the best and brightest minds from technology companies in the area, it makes sense to partner with as many as they can.
Levi's Stadium features a host of Founding Partners, including Intel, PepsiCo, BNY Mellon, Anheuser-Busch, Brocade, SAP, NRG Energy, Violin Memory and Yahoo! I believe there's one more, but I can't locate it at the moment. I'll go through my emails to find the press release.The 11 adults and one calf, less than a year old, died in a fusillade of bullets in a remote corner of the country’s largest wildlife reserve, Tsavo East National Park.
Armed rangers are now hunting the gang on foot patrols, by vehicle and from the air, but there were fears that they could already have escaped with their haul, worth up to £175,000 on the Asian market.
It was the latest in a series of killings of Kenyan elephants that has seen the number of the animals that died for their tusks double in less than two years, to approximately 360 in 2012.
“Every possible resource is being deployed to track down the criminals who carried out this heinous act,” said Paul Udoto, spokesman for the Kenya Wildlife Service.
“We’ve not seen such an incident in living memory, it’s the worst single loss that we have on record. It’s unimaginable.”
The gang were well-armed with automatic rifles and operated with efficiency and professionalism, likely flooring each adult in turn with bullets to their back legs and then moving in for execution shots to the head.
From the position of the carcasses seen on an aerial fly-by on Monday, it is believed that the calf died when its dying mother fell on it and crushed it, Mr Udoto said. Six other adults lie in a pile where they died together.
The killing site, 180 miles south-east of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, is far from significant human settlements, ruling out the possibility that villagers killed the elephants because they trampled crops.
Rising demand for African elephant ivory in China is widely blamed for spurring the sudden surge in the slaughter.
Kenya lost fewer than 50 elephants to poachers in 2007, the year after 60 tons of South African, Namibian and Botswanan ivory were sold to Japan in a “one-off” deal approved by CITES, the international body regulating the trade in endangered wildlife.
Many conservationists argue that this restarted the demand for ivory, and it coincided with the continued growth in China’s middle class, for whom ivory trinkets are a marker of wealth.
In 2010, the number of elephants found dead with their tusks removed in Kenya had jumped to 178. Last year, that number more than doubled, to an estimated 360.
Many more of the animals are believed to have been killed but their carcasses were never found.
“However much ivory is provided to the market, the appetite in Asian countries is insatiable and the criminals know that, and they will go to great lengths to find the tusks,” Mr Udoto said.
“Africa has half-a-million elephants left, all together they would not be enough to satisfy the demand that has arisen.”
The next meeting of CITES is due in Thailand in March, when several African countries will lobby to be allowed to sell stockpiled ivory and use the revenue raised for other conservation projects.A mixed martial arts fighter was one of two Americans gunned down in an execution-style killing near the San Ysidro border crossing Monday morning.
Mexican authorities say Sergio Salcido Luna and Kevin Joel Romero were waiting in their company truck while waiting to cross into the U.S. before dawn.
A gunman walked up to the white Mazda truck with California license plates and opened fire at least five times, killing both men as they sat in traffic.
Investigators are still trying to determine a motive for the killing. Salcido, 25, was a professional fighter who began his career in MMA in Bakersfield.
MMA Fighter Shot Execution-Style at U.S. Border Crossing
Sergio Salcido Luna and Kevin Joel Romero were shot while sitting in traffic near the San Ysidro border crossing. Salcido was a professional fighter who began his career in Bakersfield. Photo by: Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com. Video by: www.warmma.com. (Published Wednesday, April 6, 2011)
He also worked for a San Diego company called West Coast Beverage Maintenance, which is located on Morena Boulevard.
Salcido, and fellow worker Kevin Joel Romero, 28, of San Diego, were carpooling into work in company truck from their homes in Tijuana, when they were shot and killed.
The owner of West Coast Beverage didn't want to be identified by name, but he told NBCSanDiego the men were very close friends.
He says Salcido and Romero worked for West Coast for a little more than a year, and they were hard workers who were "very respectful" and "would walk into a room and give you a handshake and a hug."
The owner says Romero was married and had adopted his wife's 5-year-old son.
He also says the men lived clean lives. Romero didn't drink and they both trained together as Salcido prepared for upcoming fights.
In Memoriam
The owner of West Coast beverage said Romero grew up in San Diego, but he moved to Tijuana because it was cheaper to live there.
He also says both men always wanted to work extra hours to make more money, and they never got into trouble.
Romero and Salcido were shot in the head, arms and body. Investigators told the Associated Press they found 9mm shell casings at the scene. That ammunition is used in weapons favored by drug cartel gunmen in Mexico.
Keep up to date on breaking news: Follow us on Twitter @nbcsandiego, fan us on Facebook, sign up for our breaking news e-mail alerts or text SDBREAKING to 622339 to receive text messages for local breaking news. (Standard rates apply)
Copyright Associated Press / NBC 7 San DiegoHave you still not planned where to go during the vacations? Without a doubt, Goa is the best place for you to visit with friends and family. Do you want to stay at a five-star hotel or rent a holiday home? However, the best decision is to buy a holiday home at Goa which you can rent to other people. Apart from enjoyment, buying a holiday home in Goa is a good investment plan.
Great Investment Scheme
Investing in Goa can be a great decision for you. It is one of the beautiful places to visit in India. A large number of people visit Goa during their vacations to chill out and spend quality time with their families. Purchasing a holiday home in Goa is a good investment deal as it boosts the tourism industry in India. There are many organizations which can provide the best deals and holiday homes in Goa. Holiday home can provide you a good return on the investment. Being a popular destination to visit in India, you can easily plan a trip within a small budget. Therefore a lot of people visit Goa every year. So if you are planning to buy a holiday home in Goa, it can turn the result into a good investment for the people.
Inherit a Property
Inheriting a property in Goa is one of the biggest assets you can have. There are many villas and apartment in North Goa which are available for rent and holiday home packages. Having a property is a wise decision that you can take in your life. Inheriting a property also secures your future as it provides an alternative to your post-retirement plan. You don’t have to think about your survival if you have a well inherited property.
Value Appreciating
The first question that arises in your mind is what is value appreciating? With the time the price of the asset keeps on increasing. The elevation could be due to many reasons like inflation or interest rates. Therefore, value appreciating is the best way of adding returns to your investment plan. The increase in the price of luxury villas in Goa can have a great impact on the buying and selling decision. Due to value appreciation, the property can be expensive to purchase. Owing to which people prefer to take them on rent. You can purchase a property when the prices are low and then there will be a list of tenants waiting to rent your home while you are away to some other place. It is one of the beneficial decisions which you can take from the profit perspective. So look out for such places which can buy on profitable deals.
Fun with Friends
Apart from various investment plans, another advantage of buying a holiday home is having fun with friends and family in the villas. You can arrange pool parties, loud music, and dance to have an amazing time with friends. Hosting such parties is only possible when you have a property in Goa. You can even rent a place for hosting parties. However, it is always good to have it at your place to enjoy without any shackles. Bring your entire clan to the beautiful villas in Goa for a get-together and spend quality time together.
Goa is an amazing holiday destination and a perfect place for you to visit with friends and family. Be careful about the property laws followed in Goa. Contact the right person who would guide you through all the legalities and paperwork to buy the holiday home in Goa. Buy a luxury apartment in Goa as an investment plan for a brighter future ahead.A UFO spying on Muscovites protesting against parliamentary election fraud? Apparently so – at least that was the best explanation some British and US news outlets could give to the latest technical solutions in use among Russian bloggers.
“An 'unidentified flying object'…spotted above Moscow during an anti-government protest.”
“Hundreds of pro-democracy protesters…witnessed the 'UFO' hover above them on Saturday.”
“Confused onlookers among the 25,000-strong crowd filmed the strange object on their phones.”
“Onlookers…climbed trees to grab a closer look at the mysterious craft.”
And so on, and so forth.
Well, being among those tens of thousands of “confused onlookers”, the only kind of debate I can recall in regards to the “object” was whether it was the police monitoring the security situation on the scene of mass protests through a drone camera or journalists taking aerial photos for their reports (or broadcasts).This number was great, but not everything in life can be automated. We had to come up with a way to get feedback from one time purchases and semi-regular expenses as well.
I opened a new LibreOffice spreadsheet that looked like this.
This was where I kept track of my daily expenses. All I needed was the date, a description of what it was (to jog my memory if I was to go over it again), and the amount.
I started the new sheet with the magic daily number I calculated before, which is a positive number. Any purchases I made that day would be entered in as negative amounts. Likewise, if I came upon cash it would be entered as a positive amount.
At the end of the day, it was safe to say that the sum of Column C represented how much money I made that day. If it were negative, that means I spent more money than I make in a day. If it were positive, that means I saved.
What I had here was more instant feedback. Now I was keeping track of how much I was saving every day.
Next morning, I opened a new sheet and started it like the last, opening it with a positive transaction of the magic number. My cellphone bill was due that day, and since the total depends on how much data my wife and I use, that could not be part of our magic number. I paid the bill, which made us very negative for the day.
While some days were negative, I could still add up each day of the week to find out how much I saved over the past few days. If I had a bad week, I could theoretically add up each week to get a number for the month.
I rigged up the spreadsheet to give me these numbers on a summary page.
This sheet told me the running total for that day, the week, the month, and the year. When I first started, all four numbers were identical, but as the weeks turned over, I started to more diverse results. While my daily total would fluctuate from exactly my magic number in the morning to well negative when we would go out to eat, the weekly and monthly average would even things out. As long as our weekly and monthly total was positive, we didn't have to worry too much. If those started to dive, we would change our habits and keep our daily total positive until our other numbers began to improve.Not all stories start at the beginning.
For many dogs, the beginning reads much more like the end. Zippity, a three-year-old “court case” Pitbull has such a story. Zippity ended up with Chicago Animal Care and Control when her original owner was suspected of training her for dog-fighting. For a long time, dogs in her position were treated as evidence in court cases and euthanized afterwards.
But Zippity is evidence of something else entirely. Redemption and second chances. Safe Hum |
members of the team – players excited by the blowing winds of change – aren’t sure how quickly the results will arrive.
“You never know,” said Gardiner. “You don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself. We’ll see what happens. We’ve got some really young talent.”
“Once you get to the regular season, it’s a totally different animal,” said winger James van Riemsdyk.
They must first scale one final exhibition gauntlet, with three games in three days in three cities starting Thursday night in Montreal. A bookkeeper, rather than a hockey executive, must have concocted that itinerary.
The final roster decisions will be clear by the end of the weekend.
We already know that Matthews, Marner and Nylander have a spot locked up. Zach Hyman looks like a strong bet as well. Connor Brown, who had six points in a seven-game audition last March, is on the bubble.
The young players have each had their moments during exhibition play, but Babcock is stressing the importance of developing a will to match their skill. He thinks they’ve spent too much time playing with the puck on the perimeter of the offensive zone.
“They want points, these guys, and as they go and they get no points they’ll figure out where you get points,” said Babcock.
Nothing in his tone suggested that it would likely happen overnight.
So while there is a high level of optimism to be found around the Leafs these days – “I think anything’s possible really,” said centre Nazem Kadri – there are a few caution flags being raised as well.
Defenceman Roman Polak has a unique view on the situation after spending 18 months in Toronto before being traded to San Jose last February. He was part of the Sharks’ run to the Stanley Cup Final and returned to the Leafs as a free agent in the summer.
After experiencing really good and really bad last season, what does he see now?
“A lot of new, young faces – skilled forwards with the speed – we look pretty good,” said Polak. “I think we should be a little better.”
Some around the hockey world believe they’ll be even better than that.On Oct. 19, Canadians voted in a Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau and defeated the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. Here's how America has reacted to the regime change in its northern neighbor.
A Big Win For Liberalism
David Frum of The Atlantic argues that Trudeau's win and the popularity of Bernie Sanders proves that, "liberals aren't what they used to be." He says their liberalism "is veering sharply to the left across the English-speaking world."
Instead of promising balanced budgets and tax cuts like liberal politicians in the 90s, Trudeau won a campaign based on a truly left-wing agenda of reducing military expenditures, legalizing cannabis, increasing the number of refugees being admitted to Canada, and running deficits to stimulate the economy.
Frum predicts that the Liberal win will have widespread ramifications in upcoming elections worldwide: "Leaders of other center-left parties around the world will note the success. Imitation and emulation will follow—across the Atlantic and across the 49th parallel."
A World Leader On Cannabis Reform
German Lopez of Vox sees Trudeau's triumph as a historic moment as Canada could become the first developed nation to legalize cannabis. And that, Lopez argues, could trigger the end of worldwide cannabis criminalization:
"This wouldn't just be an important milestone for Canada and the world; it could also send ripples across the international system of drug policy. That's because drug policy is tied not just to each country's individual laws, but to a network of treaties that effectively make the war on drugs a global effort. Marijuana legalization in Canada would act as the most high-profile rejection of these treaties, sending an important signal of the changing times as the international agreements come under a critical review in a special 2016 session of the United Nations."
Canadians campaigns are shorter, cost less
A lot of Canadians complained that the election campaign was too long, and cost too much. In a special piece for The Huffington Post, comedian Scott Blakeman said it's much worse in the U.S.:
"We should drastically shorten the campaign period, which now begins almost three years before the election. This year's Canadian election was the longest in history. 78 days. About the length of one Ted Cruz filibuster. And in contrast to the virtually unlimited amount of money by unnamed donors that flow into the campaigns of most of the candidates, the money allowed for the candidates in Canada is far more restricted. Each political party used to have a $25-million spending limit, regardless of a campaign's length, although since the Conservatives passed the Fair Elections Act, this 11-week campaign allowed the parties to spend more than $50-million."
Harper punished for being too American
Sean Kennedy of CNN lamented the fall of Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the hands of "fickle Canadian voters" after "nine years of steadily maneuvering the ship of state." He said Harper lost because his politics and policies were too American, so "the wing nuts of Canada's left came out of the woodwork, painting the Prime Minister as a tyrant in the making."
Kennedy concludes by arguing that Canada's loss is a lesson to all world leaders to beware fickle voters.
"Without Harper at the helm, the lessons of Canada's miracle - surviving the financial crisis, balancing budgets, slashing red tape and taxes while maintaining a healthy welfare state - will be lost to history as Trudeau's Liberals in a fit of pique roll back the gains the Great White North has made."An all-new 2016 Mac Mini might just happen in October
According to the little information circulating on the fate of the Mac Mini product line, it’s far easier to accurately speculate on what the next MacBook Pro will look like, as well as its internals, than it would be to guess our way into a 2016 Mac Mini’s specs or design. The Mac Mini is very much a blank slate. Its design hasn’t changed since 2014, and its internals have seen very few superficial upgrades in 2015, with not much to write about.
In its most current configuration, the Apple Mac Mini’s CPU ranges from a 1.4GHz Intel Core i5, to a 3.0GHz Dual Core i7. At its most entry level stage, the Mini ships with a 500GB spinning drive, all the way up to either a 2TB Fusion Drive, or a 1TB SSD. Memory configuration on the current Mini supports up to 16GB, and graphic performance is handled by an Intel Iris Graphics GPU.
Up to 2015, this is a respectable setup, considering that a plastic box measuring 7.7”x7.7”x1.4” is all there is to work with, while not counting four USB 3.0 ports, an SDXC card slot, an HDMI, two Thunderbolt 2 ports, audio I/O jacks, and a Gigabit Ethernet port, and especially not to mention extra chips handling 602.11ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0.
With that said, a fully-decked Apple Mini is still about the only available Mac with a price tag under a thousand dollars (before tax), but is that good enough for 2016?
One thing that is important to consider, is that, while no consumer device is future-proof, it should at the very least provide for a reasonably forward-thinking array of features that ensure a slower path towards obsolescence. This is why all new laptops and devices are expected to offer certain features, such as USB Type-C ports, DisplayPort/HDMI, and, ideally, no more spinning drives.
Granted that the specs of the current Mac Mini are good enough for any consumer whose budget is out of range of an iMac Retina, or a MacBook, it’s very possible that Apple may just decide to go back to the drawing board, with rumors pointing to October as an ideal time for a new Mac reveal, since that is what some reports are indicating, in respect to the upcoming MacBook Pro.
A thinner Mac Mini? It’s a possibility, but this is not a MacBook, so this type of trend may not apply, as much as it would in regard to internals, which are expected to feature improved graphic performance through a veering off from Intel Iris Graphics to an AMD Polaris architecture, considering that the latest Polaris benchmarks are quite impressive within relatively small form factors, including mobile.
Unless Apple finds a way to reduce the thermal footprint of the Mac Mini, any more RAM than 16GB could make the internals way too hot, especially with a 3.0GHz Intel Core Skylake or Kaby Lake CPU. In addition, a fanless design could be in the cards, which is why it’s crucial for Apple to work on optimizing the notoriously poor airflow within the Mac Mini, by either making the rear air vent bigger, or introducing a better way to dissipate heat, perhaps through the use of an aluminum body to use as a heatsink, much like Apple has done with the 12 inch MacBook Retina.
Word has it that the next MacBook will ditch the headphone jack, in favor of a Thunderbolt connector. If that happens, there is also a chance that the change will spread across most future Macs, including the Mac Mini.
Ready to shop?
If you are looking for the perfect Mac computer, PortableOne has you covered with a full range of Apple Macs, including the latest MacBook laptops, iMac Retina, and Mac Mini dektops.Tarun27sh Member
Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: India Posts: 1
ActiveX registration in FactoryTalk View Studio Hi
i have developed an application using FactoryTalk view studio. I want to make a.mer (runtime) file from it which i`ll be downloading to panelview plus 1250, for which I require a.apa file + a.ocx (ActiveX component).
i.e..mer=.apa+.ocx
Now the problem I am facing is, the.ocx file i`ve on my development PC is based on Windows32 and the.ocx file required by the PanelView plus 1250 is WindowCE based.
now, on my PC if I try to register the.ocx (WinCE ActiveX), it doesn`t get registered, perhaps my development PC is on windows32 and just won`t accept a winCE file, but.mer file accepted by Panelview has to be built out of.ocx built for WinCE.
I am stuck..Any suggestions??
Can i somehow register my.ocx (WinCE ActiveX) separately on panelView 1250 and then transfer the.mer file (made using Windows32.ocx ActiveX) from the development PC to the Panel??Will it work?? I tried but I am not able to register the WinCE built ActiveX on the panel.Share this article
Rom Levy
Rom Levy
1
Our third monthly Top 10 viewed pieces (based on unique page views) leads with no surprises, with Banksy’s first piece since 2012 in the number one spot. This cheeky stencil, which precedes Banksy’s October exhibition, was revealed it just over a week ago and has since become our second most viewed street art piece of all time.
Second place this month goes to Natalia Rak, one of the few well-known female street artists, who achieved the runners up position despite being published only a few days ago. Polling third and fourth are Phlegm and Martin Whatson, thanks to Twitter mentions by Hollywood’s Jared Leto who seems to be a big fan.
Discover the rest of the ranking after the click and we’ll see you for the 4th edition of our monthly top 10 at the end of October!Tax Incentives for Retirement Saving are not Working. Can we Find a Better Way? (Part 2)
In a previous post in this series, I criticized proposals to raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare. It is already getting harder to save enough for a comfortable retirement; raising the eligibility age would just make it still more difficult. In this installment, I turn to policies to encourage retirement saving, explaining why our current system is not working well and suggesting some alternatives.
Why should we make it easier to retire? Grasshoppers vs. Ants
We can start by asking why making it easy to retire should be an objective of public policy in the first place. The fable of the grasshopper and the ant is the lens through which many people view the issue. The ant works hard and saves carefully all summer, while the grasshopper sings and dances. When winter comes, the grasshopper begs for a handout. The fable portrays the ant as justified in shutting her door to him. Why should the government, as agent of the ant-like taxpayers that pay its bills, behave any differently toward grasshoppers who don’t have the self-discipline to save during their working years?
The most common response is to justify government support for retirement as a form of social insurance. Life is full of risks. For retirement saving, the relevant risks include spells of unemployment, health problems, the risk of losses or low returns on retirement savings, the risk of inflation, and last but not least, the risk of outliving one’s savings. When we take those risks into account, we understand that some people will reach retirement age without adequate savings not because they are grasshoppers, but because they are unlucky ants. Many of the risks that can thwart the best-laid plans for retirement savings are neither under the control of individuals nor privately insurable. Only the government is in a position to pool the risks broadly enough to guarantee a minimum level of retirement income for everyone.
At the same time, skeptics have a valid point when they warn against incentivizing grasshopper-like behavior. It is reasonable to want public policy to encourage people to save for their own retirement even while providing a safety net for those whose efforts fall short.
In the United States, the tension between providing a reasonable degree of social insurance and encouraging thrift has given us a two-part retirement policy that combines Social Security with tax-sheltered private retirement savings. Unfortunately, neither part is working well.
The future of social security
Social Security is one of the most popular government programs ever created, but it faces an uncertain future. As it stands now, Social Security is neither a real retirement savings program nor a pure social safety net. It is not a savings program in the sense that participants’ payroll taxes are not invested to fund their own retirement. Its trust fund, which consists entirely of special government bonds, is only an accounting device. What we really have is a system under which those currently working pay for those who have already retired. That worked reasonably well as long as the elderly dependency ratio was low, but it has come under strain now that the ratio is rising, as shown in the following chart.
At the same time, Social Security is not a pure social safety net. People with fewer than 10 years of work usually receive no benefits. For those who have worked long enough, benefits increase with contributions. There is some progressivity built into the system since the relationship of benefits to contributions is not linear, but even so, the highest benefits tend to go to the least needy. Furthermore, the progressivity of the benefit schedule is offset to a substantial degree by the regressivity of the payroll tax that pays for the benefits. As the next chart shows, the payroll tax has been taking a steadily increasing share of the income of households in the lowest quintile of the income distribution, in contrast to the income tax, which has been taking a decreasing share.
Raising payroll taxes to meet increasing Social Security outlays no longer seems feasible. Most recent reform proposals have, instead, concentrated on reducing benefits. Raising the age of eligibility for full benefits, for reasons explained in the preceding post, would make the system more regressive. Changing the formula for calculating cost-of-living increases would gradually reduce benefits for all participants. Means testing of benefits for high-income participants would make the system more progressive. If the minimum benefit were raised by enough to bring recipients up to the poverty level at the same time that payments to higher-income beneficiaries were reduced, Social Security would start to look more like a real social safety net.
Whatever reforms are adopted, one thing is virtually certain. The trend toward increasing dependence on individual retirement savings will continue for most middle-class families.
Why tax incentives for retirement saving have failed
Today, the principal policy for encouraging retirement savings is to shelter them from taxes. Employer contributions to pension plans are subject neither to corporate nor individual income taxes. Individual contributions to 401(k) plans, Individual Retirement Accounts, and similar plans are tax deductible as they are made, and earnings on invested funds accumulate free of taxes. Pension benefits are subject to income tax when they are eventually paid out, but recipients are often in lower tax brackets by that time.
Taken together, preferences for retirement savings are one of the largest tax expenditures in the Federal Budget. The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center estimates that the immediate, direct revenue loss associated with contributions to IRAs and 401(k) plans will exceed $1 trillion over the decade beginning in 2011. That figure is the product of contributions multiplied by the applicable marginal tax rate. A more sophisticated estimate of the cost by the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries suggests that the direct revenue loss, as calculated by the Tax Policy Center and others, overstates the true costs by as much as a third to a half, but even half a trillion dollars still makes a very large dent in the budget.
Unfortunately, tax preferences do little to increase retirement saving. Three factors undermine their effectiveness.
As noted by William G. Gale of the Tax Policy Center, about three-quarters of taxpayers are subject to income tax rates of 15 percent or less. As a result, the very households who are most likely to have inadequate savings at the time of retirement gain little or nothing from the deductibility of retirement saving.
Taxpayers in higher brackets have a larger incentive to contribute to 401(k) and similar plans. However, studies cited by Gale have found that the contributions of those higher-income households are much more likely to represent a reallocation into tax-preferred plans of funds they would have saved in any event.
As inflation has slowed, the benefit of tax-deferral of earnings on retirement plan contributions has decreased. For example, suppose the nominal interest rate is 8 percent and the inflation rate is 6 percent. For a household subject to a 25 percent income tax rate, the after-tax nominal interest rate would be 6 percent, just equal to inflation. That would make the after-tax real interest rate zero, compared with a tax-free nominal rate of 8 percent and a tax-free real rate of 2 percent. If the inflation rate falls to 2 percent and the nominal interest rate to 4 percent, the after- tax nominal rate is 3 percent, for an after-tax real rate of 1 percent. Meanwhile the tax-free real interest rate would remain at 2 percent. These are only illustrative numbers, but whatever the specifics, if we assume the before-tax real interest rate remains unchanged, slowing inflation reduces the relative attractiveness of tax-sheltered retirement plans.
In short, the present policy of encouraging private retirement savings by sheltering them from taxes is expensive but ineffective.
Two better ways to encourage retirement savings
There should be better ways to encourage retirement savings, and there are.
One idea, discussed by Thomas Gale in the paper cited above, would be to replace the current tax deductibility of contributions with a flat-rate credit. He describes the proposal as follows:
First, unlike the current system, workers’ and firms’ contributions to employer-based 401(k) accounts would no longer be excluded from income subject to taxation, contributions to IRAs would no longer be tax-deductible, and any employer contributions to a 401(k) plan would be treated as taxable income to the employee (just as current wages are). Second, all qualified employer and employee contributions would be eligible for a flat-rate refundable tax credit, given to the employee. Third, the credit would be deposited directly into the retirement saving account, as opposed to the current deduction, which simply results in a lower tax payment than otherwise.... Contribution limits would not change. Earnings in 401(k) plans and IRAs would continue to accrue tax-free, and withdrawals from the accounts would continue to be taxed as income.
Gale proposes a 30 percent rate for the tax credit. A 30 percent credit would give the same incentive as a tax deduction for someone in a 23 percent tax bracket. For such a person, the after-tax cost of adding $100 to a retirement account would, under either the credit or the deduction plan, be $77. The tax credit would give a greater incentive than a deduction to people in tax brackets below 23 percent. That is just what we want, since those are the people now most likely to have inadequate savings when they reach retirement. For people in tax brackets above 23 percent, the incentive from the tax credit would be less than from a deduction. That is fine, because their contributions to tax-favored retirement accounts are more likely to be reallocations of existing saving than new saving.
According to Gale’s calculations, a 30 percent tax credit would be revenue-neutral compared to the current system of deductions. A credit at a lower rate would still provide some incentive to increased saving by lower-bracket households while increasing budget revenues compared to existing policy.
Alternatively, a second way to make it easier to save for retirement would be to reduce the risk and raise the return on funds invested in 401(k) and similar plans. A brief from the Center for Retirement Research cited in the preceding post lists falling real interest rates as one of the important barriers to successful retirement saving. The brief uses the chart reproduced below to illustrate the problem. The nominal interest rate on which it is based is that on bonds held in Social Security trust funds. Inflation is measured by the rate of change of the CPI for years up to 1991 and by 10-year inflation forecasts for later years. The real interest rate shown is the nominal interest rate minus the inflation rate.
How could the government reduce the risk and increase the return on retirement savings? One way would be for the Treasury to issue a special series of retirement securities—call them R-bonds, for short. The R-bonds would have the following properties:
They would be nonmarketable.
Like all Treasury bonds, they would be free of default risk.
Like Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS), their principal value would be adjusted to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index.
Unlike TIPS, R-bonds would pay a guaranteed real interest rate (that is, an interest rate in excess of inflation) of, say, 2 or 3 percent.
R-bonds could be held only in retirement accounts, with a limit on the maximum amount per individual.
Either a tax credit or R-bonds could increase the number of people who succeed in accumulating adequate retirement savings, but they would do so in different ways. A tax credit would work by increasing contributions to retirement accounts, but the accounts would remain risky. Depending on the market risks, default risks, and inflation risks to which a person’s retirement portfolio is exposed, the accumulated value at retirement age can turn out to be inadequate despite a lifetime of diligent saving. By reducing those risks, R-bonds, could increase the number of retirees who achieved minimally adequate savings even if they did not increase total saving.
Of course, if R-bonds ended up paying a higher rate of interest than ordinary Treasury bonds (as would likely be the case), they would increase the government’s interest expense. The increase could be offset by eliminating tax deductions for retirement contributions and taxing interest on retirement accounts. By adjusting the guaranteed real interest rate and the maximum amount of bonds per person, R-bonds, like tax credits, could be introduced in a way that was either revenue neutral or revenue enhancing.
Like tax credits, an R-bond program could be designed to increase retirement saving incentives for lower-income households while reducing the incentive of higher-income households to divert existing saving into tax-privileged accounts. The incentives and budget impacts could be fine-tuned further by using tax credits and R-bonds in combination.
Toward a secure, equitable, and affordable retirement policy
The bottom line is that the U.S. retirement system, as it exists, is neither secure nor equitable even as the stress it places on the federal budget increases. We can do better, and we should.
We should do better because there is an important public purpose in protecting citizens against unavoidable and privately uninsurable risks that can thwart the best-laid plans for retirement savings—the risk of losses or low returns, the risk of inflation, and the risk of longevity.
We can do better than the current combination of Social Security and private tax-sheltered savings plans. Social Security can be allowed to evolve toward a pure social safety net that provides poverty-level retirement protection for the neediest. Mechanisms such as tax credits directly deposited to retirement accounts or R-bonds with a guaranteed real return could substantially improve saving incentives, compared with the present system of tax deductions, without increasing the burden on the budget, or even decreasing it.
With a little imagination and the political will to act on it, we could end up with a retirement policy that is genuinely secure, equitable, and affordable.With so much casting “news” floating around about Christopher Nolan’s third installment of the Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises, it is hard to know what to believe. However, today’s rumor sounds a lot like earlier rumors we heard about the film and may have a little more insight into the film’s production. Casting listings seem to be circulating listing a group of actresses that could potentially fill two roles for the film. A few months ago, a similar list was “released” stating that one of the roles would be a potential love interest for Bruce Wayne and the other a villain. Names on the casting list this time around include familiar faces such as Keira Knightly, Anne Hathaway, and Naomi Watts but also include new names such as: Jessica Biel, Kate Mara, and Charlotte Riley.
hat makes this story news-worthy is not that new names are being thrown around for these roles (some more familiar than others) but that the reported villain that is to be cast will be Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul played by Liam Neeson in Batman Begins. It makes sense that Talia would be cast in this film, bringing Nolan’s trilogy full circle and adding continuity to the story he’s established. I was hoping that TDKR picked up where TDK left off and introduced both Hugo Strange and Harley Quinn as the villains, but I trust Nolan’s and Goyer decision to move on with Talia Al Ghul.
The Dark Knight Rises is currently slated for release on July 20, 2012 and based on the previous 2 films we probably won’t know too much until then. Still, TDKR will certainly be one of the most talked about projects until then as the anticipation builds. How do you feel about Talia Al Ghul being portrayed in the next Batman film? Which one of these actresses would you most like to see fill the role?
AdvertisementsWritten by Android Developer Alex Wang, we take a look at our revamped Android app for Rue La La, built entirely from the ground up.
On Wednesday, version 2.0 of the Rue La La Android app was released as part of Google I/O. This update was a complete rewrite of the app from the ground up by the Android team at Raizlabs over the course of two months. Design and navigation for the app are the result of close collaboration between Rue La La and Raizlabs. And while Google Wallet Instant Buy integration is getting most of the attention from the announcement made at Google I/O…
…We’re extremely happy about how we transformed the look of the app to fit in seamlessly with the Android ecosystem. Before the Android team got their hands on it, the app had been untouched for two years. In the beginning the app was made under greater time constraints, and although a lot of the 1.0 design had Android theming, it had gradually incorporated more design elements from other platforms. We threw it all out and started fresh with Holo theming.
The old registration view was clunky and square:
Now we have Sign Up with Google, which automatically takes care of every field except for password with just two taps:
After first logging in on the old app (which required users to sign-in each time), you’d be met by a boutique screen that sometimes wouldn’t load images correctly. The images looked blurry on new high-resolution Android devices and didn’t fill the screen – an inadequate view for tablets. Navigation looked a bit disorganized – do users tap the invite text in the top bar, the tab bar at the bottom, or the menu button? So we replaced the navigation flow with the Action Bar, improved the image quality, and added categories to help sort through the dozens of boutiques Rue offers every day.
Whenever possible, we pushed options into the Action Bar:
Additionally, we replaced patterns that looked out of place on Android.
We replaced blocks of text with images wherever possible:
Product pages now include larger photos and easier ways to tell which sizes are in stock. This difference is most noticeable on tablets:
New touch-friendly features include pinch-to-zoom in products and swiping through the catalog:
The Android team further took advantage of a lot of features on the Android platform. In addition to Rue’s daily push notifications (which have vibration/sound controls), we allowed users to opt-in to notifications or calendar events for upcoming boutiques:
Sharing is also significantly better on Android. Instead of implementing just four sharing options (email, SMS, Facebook, and Twitter), we leave it up to the Android device to tell us which apps are willing to share the best-looking outfits. The old version also had intrusive permissions such as the ability to send SMS or dial numbers directly – we took those out in favor of more friendly ways of doing the same work.
And of course, checkout is easier than ever for Google Wallet customers. Wallet users coming to Rue for the first time can get through checkout in just three taps.
To see what a modern, innovative shopping experience looks like on Android, download Rue La La 2.0 on the Google Play Store today. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest updates in mobile.
Do you have a project in mind? We’d love to work with you. If you’d like an opportunity to work on projects with us, check out our Careers page. We’re hiring!Hampton Court Palace is often considered to be one of the most haunted buildings in the country. For hundreds of years people have told stories of unexplained sounds, strange smells and ghostly sightings throughout the palace. Below we list our four favorite Hampton Court Palace ghost stories, including the mysterious sound of a spinning wheel and ghostly figure caught on CCTV.
Skeletor
On three consecutive nights in the winter of 2003, Hampton Court Palace security staff were alerted to the opening of a fire door, the same door near Clock Court.
On all three nights the CCTV footage clearly showed the fire doors opening with great force. However, on the second night a ghostly looking figure in period dress appeared in the doorway, reached out and closed the doors.
It wasn’t just the security staff that had witnessed this ghostly figure. On the second day, the same day as the recording, a visitor had left a comment in the visitor book detailing her sighting of a spectral figure in the same area.
The Grey Lady, Sybil Penn
Reported sighting of the Grey Lady at Hampton Court Palace started in 1829 when the tomb of Sybil Penn, the nurse of Prince Edward, was desecrated and her remains scattered. The first of these stories comes from the Ponsonby family who were living at Hampton Court at the time. They complained about being disturbed by the whirr of a spinning wheel from behind the wall of their apartment. Legend has it that a small sealed chamber was later discovered close to their apartment, containing none other than an old, much-used spinning wheel…
Catherine Howard
Anecdotal stories about the ghost of Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, proliferated throughout the 450 years after her execution. These stories were so well known that by 1918, when the palace opened to the public, the space associated with Catherine’s story was already known as ‘The Haunted Gallery’.
To this day visitors report unexpected sights, sounds, smells and feelings as they cross the Haunted Gallery. In 1999, during separate tours of the palace, two female visitors fainted on exactly the same spot in the Haunted Gallery approximately half an hour apart.
Jane Seymour
The stories of Jane Seymour’s ghostly apparition, wandering through the palace and its cobbled courtyards carrying a lighted taper, reflect the tragedy which befell her at the palace. Jane died at Hampton Court in 1537, following complications after the birth of Edward, Henry VIII’s only son.
Explore these stories and more on a Ghost Tour at Hampton Court Palace.PROS CONS
The Event Center will draw speakers and/or educational sessions such as political debates and TED Talks. Many speakers want to present on university campuses. However, the current venues are far too small to accommodate highly acclaimed and/or popular speakers. The University has had discussions about bringing Michelle Obama to TED Talks on campus. Additionally, presidential debates are most frequently hosted on university campuses. If the Event Center Fee passes, Sac State will have the 6th highest campus mandatory fees of all the CSUs (based on 2014-15 figures) Currently, Sac State has the 10th highest campus mandatory fees in the CSU. With the addition of the Event Center fee, we will be the 6th highest of all the CSU campuses. This was calculated from 2014-15 figures and does not account for other CSU campus fees or increases currently being proposed. Link to Tuition Fee and Campus Mandatory Fee-All Campuses
The Event Center will create more student jobs on campus. An event center will need to employ students for a variety of jobs with a wide range of hours; including evenings and weekends. This will be desirable for all students; including students who need "after-hours" on-campus jobs. The Event Center will increase the cost per term by 6% for most students. Registration fees will increase by 6% for most students. (Undergraduates with more than 6 units). That percentage will go up or down based on class level and "part-time" or "Full-time" enrollment. While financial aid will increase its cost of attendance to help accommodate that fee increase, it is not a dollar for dollar supplement.
The Event Center would strengthen community ties by hosting community events. Sacramento State strives to be THE regional campus. Hosting communtiy events at the Event Center will bring regional leaders onto campus; leveraging the campus experience to forge strong relationships that may benefit the campus. The Event Center fee will increase annually. The Event Center fee proposal includes an annual inflationary Bay Area Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase to be calculated annually. While you may agree to pay $219/semester now, you will have an average of 1.5% to 2% increase annually.
The Event Center will be a modern, visually appealing building. The artist's renderings related to the proposed campus master plan shows a vibrant, modern building that will add an additional attractive landmark to campus. Students will pay for an Event Center now; but, may not be here to enjoy it. With an expected open date of 2018, many students will have paid to build the building but may not be here to enjoy all of the programming the Event Center would offer.
The Event Center will better serve the needs of Hornet Athletic teams who utilize the main gym (The Nest at Colbert Court). The Nest at Colbert Court (main gym in Yosemite Hall) is one of the smallest in all of NCAA's Division I sports, holding just about 1,200. Women's Gymnastics, Women's Volleyball and Men's & Women's Basketball have a hard time recruiting when the facility is "smaller than my high school gym." Sacramento State is also unable to host conference playoffs or other large tournaments with such a small venue. Why build an Event Center? There is a bigger need for academic buildings. Sacramento State is looking to the students to fund new buildings. Academic buildings can only be funded by State revenue bonds and CSU campuses are at the mercy of the State to allocate those bonds. Conversely, State funds cannot currently be used to build non-academic buildings. Sacramento State should not build any buildings until it secures State funding and builds academic buildings.
The Event Center will better serve our athletic clubs and organizations. Hornet Sports Clubs are very competitive and would benefit from a larger venue. Teams such as Men's Volleyball and the Sac State Wrestling Club may be able to utilize the Event Center for tournaments. Additionally, recreational sports could benefit from a larger venue than The WELL can currently provide. With the addition of the Event Center, traffic in the south of campus will increase when events are scheduled. Even with traffic controls, the south end of campus is impacted by traffic; and, this is especially true on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 9:00a.m. and 3:00p.m.. If events are scheduled during those, or other peak times, traffic will be highly impacted.
The Event Center’s location will enhance the social, recreational and athletic hub of the south end of campus. With the University Union to the north and The WELL and stadium to the west, the Event Center would enhance the energetic south end of campus. It will become another, much needed, fun and educational place to gather. Parking around the Event Center will be impacted when events are scheduled. Like the traffic, proximity parking around the Event Center will be impacted. This would cause students to park farther out in the lots or at another end of campus from their destination.
The Event Center will be able to attract more popular entertainers. Sac State does not have the capacity to attract a more popular caliber of entertainment. In recent years, FUN and Fall Out Boy were scheduled to perform BEFORE they had their first hit. When they arrived, the Ballroom met capacity within a few days of ticket sales and many students were not able to enjoy the concerts. A larger venue would allow the University to book acts that are currently popular. The Event Center will take away parking spaces. The Event Center is proposed to "sit on" parking lot 6 (between parking structure III and the University Union.) Even though there is a parking structure slated for parking lot 1 on the north of campus to accommodate where new buildings are built, it would not be completed before construction began on the Event Center. During and after constructions, proximity parking will be impacted.
The Event Center will be the only mid-sized venue in the Sacramento area. Drawing speakers and entertainers will bring positive attention to the campus. For some events, Sleep Train Arena (and the future downtown arena) is far too large and Memorial Auditorium is too small. With an expected capacity of about 5,000 seats, the Event Center would meet a market need for speakers, performances and concerts. With the addition of the Event Center, lines at food service in the University Union will be longer at high volume times. Because the south side of campus is the social hub of campus, the University Union food services are already being impacted at peak times. Increased activities in the area will likely increase lines at food service.
The Event Center will enhance Sac State’s image in the |
him an allotment, Derrick developed a passion for gardening and became the laid back man he is now. China (Natalie Gumede): along with her friend Asia, is one of Moz's regular clients. Young, beautiful and playing innocent, Moz feels benevolently towards her and lets her get away without paying. China feels warmly toward Moz, much to the eye-rolling disapproval of her friend Asia. To Moz's disappointment, she once describes him as like a father. After she starts visiting with different boyfriends in tow (including Psycho Paul for a period), Moz stops giving her free drugs. In order to solve this problem, China starts acquiring rich boyfriends to fund her habit and by series four she is employed as a prostitute by Carmel's ex-boyfriend/pimp.
(Natalie Gumede): along with her friend Asia, is one of Moz's regular clients. Young, beautiful and playing innocent, Moz feels benevolently towards her and lets her get away without paying. China feels warmly toward Moz, much to the eye-rolling disapproval of her friend Asia. To Moz's disappointment, she once describes him as like a father. After she starts visiting with different boyfriends in tow (including Psycho Paul for a period), Moz stops giving her free drugs. In order to solve this problem, China starts acquiring rich boyfriends to fund her habit and by series four she is employed as a prostitute by Carmel's ex-boyfriend/pimp. Asia (Rebecca Atkinson): friend of China's, who finds Moz to be repulsive. Acting nicely to him only when trying to manipulate him, at other times she maintains an air of hostile superiority around him.
(Rebecca Atkinson): friend of China's, who finds Moz to be repulsive. Acting nicely to him only when trying to manipulate him, at other times she maintains an air of hostile superiority around him. Silicon Valets (pronounced "Silicon Valleys"): Lee and Jason together are Silicon Valets, a pop group of indeterminate quality and style, who drop by to buy drugs and brag about their success. They fail to pick up on Moz's insults about their musical quality. They do achieve some success, with their single "Living in a Metal Thing" reaching number 12 in the charts. They used the severed hand which Moz found for the front cover of their first album. The band split up in series 7 after musical indifference's.
Lee (Andrew Lee Potts): in the third series when he is caught snorting cocaine in Moz's bathroom by the born-again Christian builder Alan, who attempts to forcefully baptise him and nearly drowns him in the process. Alan seals him inside Moz's hot water tank, and when he awakes, he doesn't know where he is. He remains there until series four, finally being released when the flat's boiler is changed. Following his release, he has a tendency to hallucinate. He starts to believe he is the Messiah and this delusion is compounded by the fact that Alan and Marco, thinking he has come back from the dead, start following him as his disciples. When the band split up he ends up with just the naming rights for Silicon Valets and Jason gets everything else.
Jason (Tim Fallows): a member of the same boy band as Lee. When Lee goes missing, Jason is left to try to do everything in the band himself. He is relieved to have Lee back but is clearly a bit uncomfortable about his friend's new persona. He starts a new band in series 7 and retains all the rights for merchandise and money from Silicon Valets, leaving Lee with just the name.
Kim and Miko (Jessica Peh and Haruka Abe): Yasuko friends who are members of a Japanese girl band. They do not seem to speak much English but giggle a lot. They are kidnapped by 'Fist' in series four. He lets them go in series five. When asked where they were, they reply that they were "just next door", in Japanese.
(Jessica Peh and Haruka Abe): Yasuko friends who are members of a Japanese girl band. They do not seem to speak much English but giggle a lot. They are kidnapped by 'Fist' in series four. He lets them go in series five. When asked where they were, they reply that they were "just next door", in Japanese. Tanya (Emma Fryer): Colin's sister and also baby Sanjeev's health visitor. This does not please Nicki as Tanya is Moz's flirtatious ex-girlfriend. It isn't long before Tanya is trying to seduce Moz. Her voice sounds as though she is perpetually stoned. Tanya is a kleptomaniac and as a result a lot of Moz's flat's contents ends up on eBay after each of her visits. She is caught stealing by Moz's mum in a series three. In series four, she appears to have a relationship with Psycho Paul. She makes occasional appearances throughout each series. In series 7 she becomes Jason's manager after Silicon valets split up.
(Emma Fryer): Colin's sister and also baby Sanjeev's health visitor. This does not please Nicki as Tanya is Moz's flirtatious ex-girlfriend. It isn't long before Tanya is trying to seduce Moz. Her voice sounds as though she is perpetually stoned. Tanya is a kleptomaniac and as a result a lot of Moz's flat's contents ends up on eBay after each of her visits. She is caught stealing by Moz's mum in a series three. In series four, she appears to have a relationship with Psycho Paul. She makes occasional appearances throughout each series. In series 7 she becomes Jason's manager after Silicon valets split up. Alan (Peter Slater): the foreman of the builders who renovate Moz's flat after the fire. He's a very hard-line born again Christian: this causes Moz to try to keep up a pretence of being a devout Christian in an attempt to conceal what he really does for a living. Alan started out as a permanently cheerful man: however, after being horrifically stung by a swarm of wasps (Moz's fault) and discovering Moz's job, he turns into a completely different man. After nearly murdering Lee by sealing him in the flat's water tank, he goes on a rampage, attempting to kill both Moz and Brian in the process. In the fourth series Alan isn't seen much, except for when he is shown following Lee, believing him to be 'the saviour'. In the final episode of series four, he ends up hung up on Fist's wall: in series five he attempts to escape from the evil priest: eventually he does so, only to be killed by a stab-wound to the neck inflicted in self-defence by Carol, Keith's blind girlfriend.
(Peter Slater): the foreman of the builders who renovate Moz's flat after the fire. He's a very hard-line born again Christian: this causes Moz to try to keep up a pretence of being a devout Christian in an attempt to conceal what he really does for a living. Alan started out as a permanently cheerful man: however, after being horrifically stung by a swarm of wasps (Moz's fault) and discovering Moz's job, he turns into a completely different man. After nearly murdering Lee by sealing him in the flat's water tank, he goes on a rampage, attempting to kill both Moz and Brian in the process. In the fourth series Alan isn't seen much, except for when he is shown following Lee, believing him to be 'the saviour'. In the final episode of series four, he ends up hung up on Fist's wall: in series five he attempts to escape from the evil priest: eventually he does so, only to be killed by a stab-wound to the neck inflicted in self-defence by Carol, Keith's blind girlfriend. Marco (Andrew Lawrence): Alan's assistant builder. He speaks in a very high voice and is quite nervous around other people and he is known for the line "Ignore Me". When Alan disappears, Marco becomes head builder and his brother Jake becomes the deputy. The inept duo often break things and the things they do manage to fit soon fall off the wall or break. In the first episode of series five, Marco loses his virginity to Judith.
(Andrew Lawrence): Alan's assistant builder. He speaks in a very high voice and is quite nervous around other people and he is known for the line "Ignore Me". When Alan disappears, Marco becomes head builder and his brother Jake becomes the deputy. The inept duo often break things and the things they do manage to fit soon fall off the wall or break. In the first episode of series five, Marco loses his virginity to Judith. Reverend Jeff "Fist" Fistwick (Graham Duff; uncredited and in a mask): a man simply known as "Fist" moves in next door to Moz in series four. His flat is usually dark and unlit and Fist seems to spend a lot of time watching people come and go, seemingly with sinister intent. Psycho Paul and the Low Triad in series four attempt to get him onto their side although it remains unknown which gang he has joined or if he has even joined one at all. Fist dresses in black, wears a black ski mask all the time and has buck teeth: he has the word "Fist" tattooed on the knuckles of one hand. In spite of his malevolence, Kim and Miko who are kidnapped by him, find him amusing. The show credits him 'As Himself'. It is revealed in the final episode of series four that he is a reverend and he subsequently crucifies Alan. The part is played by Graham Duff and is later revealed by the builder Alan, who seems to know him, to be one 'Vicar Fistwick'. It was noted by Moz's step-dad that they shared a cell in Strangeways and there's nothing that would scare him, though he ends up terrified of a scuttling noise, which is a 'Hand' with a tail. In the final episode of series 5 Fist is revealed to be Jenny's "uncle Jeff". He is described by Jenny as a "nutter".It is revealed in series 6 that Fist has a lover which is a pug named Frank. When Yasuko and Derrick wanted a baby by series 6, Fist apparently donated his sperm and it was used by Yasuko to have a baby, by the end of series 7, Yasuko leaves Derrick to be with Fist.
(Graham Duff; uncredited and in a mask): a man simply known as "Fist" moves in next door to Moz in series four. His flat is usually dark and unlit and Fist seems to spend a lot of time watching people come and go, seemingly with sinister intent. Psycho Paul and the Low Triad in series four attempt to get him onto their side although it remains unknown which gang he has joined or if he has even joined one at all. Fist dresses in black, wears a black ski mask all the time and has buck teeth: he has the word "Fist" tattooed on the knuckles of one hand. In spite of his malevolence, Kim and Miko who are kidnapped by him, find him amusing. The show credits him 'As Himself'. It is revealed in the final episode of series four that he is a reverend and he subsequently crucifies Alan. The part is played by Graham Duff and is later revealed by the builder Alan, who seems to know him, to be one 'Vicar Fistwick'. It was noted by Moz's step-dad that they shared a cell in Strangeways and there's nothing that would scare him, though he ends up terrified of a scuttling noise, which is a 'Hand' with a tail. In the final episode of series 5 Fist is revealed to be Jenny's "uncle Jeff". He is described by Jenny as a "nutter".It is revealed in series 6 that Fist has a lover which is a pug named Frank. When Yasuko and Derrick wanted a baby by series 6, Fist apparently donated his sperm and it was used by Yasuko to have a baby, by the end of series 7, Yasuko leaves Derrick to be with Fist. Chen (Hon Ping Tan): a member of the Low Triad, initially working for Min Yin Low. Chen often uses to violence to get what he wants and ensure they don't forget his message. While Chen and his gang-partner Tony spend most of the series winning the gang war, they end the series tied up as hostages in Moz's bathroom. In the fifth episode of series four they return to reveal that the Triad has been taken over by Cartoon Head and Chen is reduced to being Cartoon Head's henchman. Chen is killed by Troy with a bazooka at the end of series 6.
(Hon Ping Tan): a member of the Low Triad, initially working for Min Yin Low. Chen often uses to violence to get what he wants and ensure they don't forget his message. While Chen and his gang-partner Tony spend most of the series winning the gang war, they end the series tied up as hostages in Moz's bathroom. In the fifth episode of series four they return to reveal that the Triad has been taken over by Cartoon Head and Chen is reduced to being Cartoon Head's henchman. Chen is killed by Troy with a bazooka at the end of series 6. Tony (Dan Li): also a member of the Low Triad, initially working for Min Yin Low. Tony and his fellow gang-member Chen visit Moz at the start of series four to try to persuade him to spy on Stemroach through Psycho Paul's gang. War between the Triad and Paul's gang breaks out and Moz is in the middle of it. At first the Triad easily have the upper-hand and continually intimidate those in the flat. When Yasuko reveals some hidden self-defence skills the tables turn.
(Dan Li): also a member of the Low Triad, initially working for Min Yin Low. Tony and his fellow gang-member Chen visit Moz at the start of series four to try to persuade him to spy on Stemroach through Psycho Paul's gang. War between the Triad and Paul's gang breaks out and Moz is in the middle of it. At first the Triad easily have the upper-hand and continually intimidate those in the flat. When Yasuko reveals some hidden self-defence skills the tables turn. Keith (Mick Miller): absent for 12 years, Moz's long lost stepfather Keith returns in series four, hoping to offload some stolen widescreen televisions. Keith is a compulsive liar, although he does eventually keep his promise of delivering the widescreen TV his son paid for. In series five, Keith moves into Judith's old flat (next door to Moz) with his new girlfriend, a blind woman called Carol, whom he's told he's in his thirties. In episode four of series five he reveals he shared a prison cell with Fist in Strangeways.
(Mick Miller): absent for 12 years, Moz's long lost stepfather Keith returns in series four, hoping to offload some stolen widescreen televisions. Keith is a compulsive liar, although he does eventually keep his promise of delivering the widescreen TV his son paid for. In series five, Keith moves into Judith's old flat (next door to Moz) with his new girlfriend, a blind woman called Carol, whom he's told he's in his thirties. In episode four of series five he reveals he shared a prison cell with Fist in Strangeways. Xavier (Michael Kofi): a member of Psycho Paul's gang. He is infatuated by how comfortable one of Moz's chairs is.
(Michael Kofi): a member of Psycho Paul's gang. He is infatuated by how comfortable one of Moz's chairs is. Dawn (Julia Davis): Jenny's mum who has cataracts. She feels peoples faces to see what type of life they live and can "reads" people's tea leaves. In series five she has a relationship with Moz's stepfather Keith.
(Julia Davis): Jenny's mum who has cataracts. She feels peoples faces to see what type of life they live and can "reads" people's tea leaves. In series five she has a relationship with Moz's stepfather Keith. Jake/Dinos (Dylan Edwards) & (Sam Fletcher): Conjoined Twins who appear in series 5 as one of Brian's new boyfriends. Their names are a nod towards Graham Duff's personal heroes, the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman.
(Dylan Edwards) & (Sam Fletcher): Conjoined Twins who appear in series 5 as one of Brian's new boyfriends. Their names are a nod towards Graham Duff's personal heroes, the artists Jake and Dinos Chapman. Carol (Jo Enright): Keith's blind girlfriend who moves into Judith's old flat with Keith in series five. She kills Alan by stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors on his escape from Fist's flat.
(Jo Enright): Keith's blind girlfriend who moves into Judith's old flat with Keith in series five. She kills Alan by stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors on his escape from Fist's flat. Tilly (Janeane Garofalo): Moz's new neighbour in flat 6. Tilly is a beautiful, witty, artistic American girl, who runs a small designer clothes shop called ‘Just Perfect’. Her confrontational couture makes Vivienne Westwood look like a special needs Laura Ashley. She is constantly introducing him to new things and he slowly falls for her. She also wants his sperm for her new top design. In series 7, it seems that Brian has developed an obsession with her and her clothes.
(Janeane Garofalo): Moz's new neighbour in flat 6. Tilly is a beautiful, witty, artistic American girl, who runs a small designer clothes shop called ‘Just Perfect’. Her confrontational couture makes Vivienne Westwood look like a special needs Laura Ashley. She is constantly introducing him to new things and he slowly falls for her. She also wants his sperm for her new top design. In series 7, it seems that Brian has developed an obsession with her and her clothes. Mr. Rupani (Vincent Ebrahim): Moz's landlord, as well as the landlord of the other flats in the block. Mr. Rupani is a successful Asian businessman who is very strict with his tenants and is constantly reminding Moz that pets and children amongst other things are "Not allowed". In series 2, Mr. Rupani is kidnapped by Psycho Paul, Cartoon Head and Steve. He is brought to Moz's flat for a few hours but is blindfolded so never realises his kidnappers. In later series his wife appears instead, usually to complain Moz hasn't paid the rent.
(Vincent Ebrahim): Moz's landlord, as well as the landlord of the other flats in the block. Mr. Rupani is a successful Asian businessman who is very strict with his tenants and is constantly reminding Moz that pets and children amongst other things are "Not allowed". In series 2, Mr. Rupani is kidnapped by Psycho Paul, Cartoon Head and Steve. He is brought to Moz's flat for a few hours but is blindfolded so never realises his kidnappers. In later series his wife appears instead, usually to complain Moz hasn't paid the rent. Jess (Elinor Crawley): Nicki's sister/daughter. [1]
(Elinor Crawley): Nicki's sister/daughter. Amanda with the weird eyes: An unseen character (save for one scene in the final episode of series one, in which she is only seen from the back). Amanda, frequently referred to by other characters, is a good friend of Nicki's, and also recommends Moz to China and Asia.
Guest stars [ edit ]
Guest stars have included Graham Fellows (as Dr Persil), Sean Lock (as Natalie/Nathaniel, Brian's transgender partner), Mark Radcliffe, Jason Manford (as Jack), Mark E Smith (as Jesus Christ), Paul Weller, Kara Tointon, Barry Adamson (as Brian's hitman boyfriend), Alan Yentob (as himself) and Rula Lenska (as the Red King).
Series overview [ edit ]
Series Episodes Originally aired Series premiere Series finale 1 9 11 January 2005 ( ) 27 December 2005 ( ) 2 8 14 March 2006 ( ) 2 May 2006 ( ) 3 8 20 March 2007 ( ) 8 May 2007 ( ) 4 8 28 April 2008 ( ) 16 June 2008 ( ) 5 6 11 May 2009 ( ) 15 June 2009 ( ) 6 8 17 August 2010 ( ) 5 October 2010 ( ) 7 6 26 May 2011 ( ) 30 June 2011 ( )
Episodes [ edit ]
Each series of Ideal has a different coloured title sequence. Series 1 was sepia; the Christmas special was red; Series 2 was blue; Series 3 was green; Series 4 was purple; Series 5 was red; Series 6 was yellow and Series 7 is bondi blue.
Series 1 (2005) [ edit ]
# Title Writers Original air date 1 "The Rat" Graham Duff 11 January 2005 ( ) Nicki is getting fed up with Moz not paying her enough attention, PC turns up with a delivery, and a strange man wearing a cartoon mask lets himself into the flat. Moz also has to contend with a couple of unwelcome visitors in the shape of a rat and rival dealer Psycho Paul. 2 "The Seduction" Graham Duff 18 January 2005 ( ) While Nicki is away, Moz tries to play by attempting to seduce one of his new customers after seeing her at a nightclub where his best mate Kuldip is a DJ. However, the rat from the previous episode has other ideas. 3 "The Boyfriend" Graham Duff 25 January 2005 ( ) Colin (who's still on probation) tells Moz about the body found across the road with its hand cut off, China's got a new boyfriend, and Nicki returns. Moz find the severed hand and believes the cat brought it inside. 4 "The Affair" Graham Duff 1 February 2005 ( ) Moz remembers the severed hand in the pocket of his jacket and isn't sure what to do with it. But it's another busy day so he doesn't have time to give it much thought. Craig throws a tin of crabmeat through Moz's window to try to get his attention and Colin steals Nicki's secret polaroids. 5 "The Backpacker" Graham Duff 8 February 2005 ( ) A face from Nicki's past arrives unexpectedly wanting to stay, the polaroids from behind the bathroom cabinet go missing and re-appear, and Moz is selling red weed. 6 "The Party" Graham Duff 15 February 2005 ( ) It's Moz's birthday, and all Nicki has bought him is a sandwich, Bombay mix and party umbrellas, so she decides to throw him a party in the flat. 7 "The Pregnancy" Graham Duff 22 February 2005 ( ) Nicki takes a pregnancy test. The severed hand makes a return. Moz's stalker (Craig) is back, and spends some quality time with Cartoon Head. When Moz says they should go out clubbing, Cartoon Head shoots Craig. 8 "The Body" Graham Duff 1 March 2005 ( ) It's a very bad day for Moz who just about manages to keep it together, but then Craig's brother turns up looking for him and recognises his favourite carrier bag. Special 9 "An Ideal Xmas" Graham Duff 27 December 2005 ( ) While Moz tries to enjoy a seasonal spliff his pregnant girlfriend snogs a woman in the bathroom, dead Craig's twin brother sucks a hitman's nipple, and Moz's mum makes a surprise entrance with a karaoke machine. And there's an emotional queen's speech, as freshly dumped Brian pours his heart, and more, out all over Moz's shoulder.
Series 2 (2006) [ edit ]
# Title Writers Original air date 1 "The Stag Do" Graham Duff 14 March 2006 ( ) Nicki's moved in with Sangita while Moz has a nervous new neighbour, Judith. Derrick and Yasuko are due to get married and Moz is asked to be best man. Cartoon Head has a special surprise for the stag do. 2 "The Landlord" Graham Duff 21 March 2006 ( ) Moz wakes up next to someone shocking, discovers two hundred pairs of trainers in his living room, fills his kitchen with foam and finds out his landlord's on the way round. 3 "The Hydroponics" Graham Duff 28 March 2006 ( ) Cartoon Head and Psycho Paul come to collect the stolen trainers they stored in the flat. Cartoon Head's appearance frightens Judith and when Moz comforts her, Nicki appears to collect her stuff and gets the wrong idea. 4 "The Séance" Graham Duff 4 April 2006 ( ) Moz makes a startling discovery about his new love. Scary OAP Mrs Coneybear arrives to perform a séance and a plain clothes cop becomes trapped in the loft. 5 "The Boss" Graham Duff 11 April 2006 ( ) The undercover cop makes his escape having left a hidden camera in the attic. Psycho Paul,Cartoon Head and Steve appear,wanting to use Moz's flat in which to hide their prospective kidnap victim. Moz is not happy but Mr. Stemroach, the gang's boss - who speaks through an electronic voice-box - turns up and offers Moz two hundred and fifty pounds if he will oblige. 6 "The Guest" Graham Duff 18 April 2006 ( ) With a kidnap victim stashed in the flat, Moz tries to deflect a succession of unwanted guests. But his world is bent even further out of shape when the magic mushrooms kick in. 7 "The Delivery" Graham Duff 25 April 2006 ( ) When the PC tips him off about an imminent drugs bust, Moz has to get rid of every last scrap of evidence. Meanwhile Colin falls in love and Nicki goes into labour. 8 "The Money" Graham Duff 2 May 2006 ( ) Nicki wants to leave Moz, Judith wants to go out with him, the PC wants to fight him, and the gang want to pay him. But all Moz really wants is for the fire brigade to hurry up.
Series 3 (2007) [ edit ]
# Title Writers Original air date 1 "The Night" Graham Duff 20 March 2007 ( ) Moz attempts to hide his drugs when born-again Christian builders come to work in his flat, while Nicki begins to wonder if a lack of sleep is causing her to hallucinate. Meanwhile, Judith is spotted carrying a suspiciously large sack into her flat. 2 "The Christians" Graham Duff 27 March 2007 ( ) Moz is forced into performing an exorcism on childminder Jenny, while Nicki becomes even more convinced that she is losing her mind. Meanwhile, Brian decides to become a goth and PC falls in love with China. 3 "The Pyramid" Graham Duff 3 April 2007 ( ) Moz certainly has his hands full as his mother Sheila reappears and tries to interest him in a decidedly dodgy pyramid selling scheme in which she has been caught up,in addition to which Cartoon Head and Psycho Paul arrive at the flat with the glamorous Helena intent on shooting a blue movie and, to cap it all, Nicki gets involved in a road accident. 4 "The Nest" Graham Duff 10 April 2007 ( ) Moz gets an unwelcome visit from notorious gang leader Stemroach, while the discovery of a wasp nest in the loft turns out to have terrible consequences for the born-again Christian builders. 5 "The Bath" Graham Duff 17 April 2007 ( ) Moz's attempts to have a relaxing bath are constantly thwarted by a series of interruptions, including people wanting advice, a shoulder to cry on and drugs - as well as a bizarre murder. 6 "The Set-Up" Graham Duff 24 April 2007 ( ) With Nicki out celebrating on her hen night, Moz reluctantly agrees to help the Police Constable to set up Stemroach. Meanwhile, Cartoon Head and Psycho Paul have a dastardly plan of their own to get him and once more Moz's flat becomes the scene of a show-down. 7 "The Crabs" Graham Duff 1 May 2007 ( ) Moz is trying his best to enjoy his stag night, but Judith has had a party mask glued to her face, three crabs have got loose in the flat and Jesus has just appeared in the loft. 8 "The Wedding" Graham Duff 8 May 2007 ( ) It's the morning of Moz's wedding and he's just woken up next to another woman. Now all he has to do is get rid of her, overcome his nerves, deflect the advances of a very demanding Judith and save Brian from a psychopathic Christian.
Series 4 (2008) [ edit ]
# Title Writers Original air date 1 "The Pains" Graham Duff 28 April 2008 ( ) When Moz is rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack, his girlfriend Nicki reignites her affair with PC. Meanwhile, Moz's long lost dad Keith tries to offload some stolen widescreen TVs. 2 "The Past" Graham Duff 5 May 2008 ( ) Moz reminisces about 1993, the year he first moved into the flat. He looks back on the times where he first met Nicki and Cartoon Head, was almost killed by Stemroach and started dealing. 3 "The Vodka" Graham Duff 12 May 2008 ( ) When Moz gets a visit from a drunken Jenny, things soon get out of hand. The builders remove Moz's broken boiler, but what will happen to Lee who is still trapped inside? 4 "The Secret" Graham Duff 19 May 2008 ( ) Despite Moz and Jenny's best efforts to keep their affair secret, it seems like everybody knows what is going on. Everybody except Nicki, who is too busy having her own illicit affair with PC 5 "The War" Graham Duff 26 May 2008 ( ) Released from the boiler Lee comes up with inspiring song lyrics inspired by his ordeal whilst a cash-strapped Colin and a violent guy called Xavier join Psycho Paul's gang, turning Moz's flat into a training camp under the instruction of Stripes, another mask-wearer. Meanwhile, all is not well between Judith and Cartoon Head. 6 "The Birthday" Graham Duff 2 June 2008 ( ) Nicki's birthday party does not go entirely according to plan. Moz splits up with Jenny, Nicki splits up with PC and mysterious neighbour Fist kidnaps Kim and Miko. 7 "The Television" Graham Duff 9 June 2008 ( ) It is all change for Moz as Nicki moves out and new love Jenny moves in. When Keith finally delivers a new widescreen TV, it is almost too big to fit in the flat. 8 "The Future" Graham Duff 16 June 2008 ( ) Moz and Jenny's cosy love situation is thrown into chaos when Psycho Paul's gang hole up in the flat with two members of the Triad as hostages. Fist has some unusual plans for Alan. In the end, Cartoon Head, Psycho Paul, and Steve finally go their separate ways.
Series 5 (2009) [ edit ]
# Title Writers Original air date 1 "The Healer" Graham Duff 11 May 2009 ( ) Moz decides to turn over a new leaf and stop dealing. His girlfriend Jenny is in a coma and seems to see the world as one big song-and-dance routine in a series of dream sequences, and Moz receives a string of visitors - all of whom believe they can snap her out of it. 2 "The Temptation" Graham Duff 18 May 2009 ( ) With his girlfriend in a coma, Moz finds it increasingly difficult to resist the charms of a series of attractive female callers. Meanwhile, Brian falls in love with a conjoined twin and Alan attempts to escape the clutches of the evil Fist. 3 "The Red Bag" Graham Duff 25 May 2009 ( ) Moz promises Jenny that he will get a 'proper' job and attempts to use the Salford Gazette to find one. Carol realises she has murdered Alan, and Troy has a new uniform. 4 "The Documentary" Graham Duff 1 June 2009 ( ) Cartoon Head tries to bully Moz into dealing heroin and leaves a brick for him to sell. Silicon Valets turn up with a documentary crew in tow and when PC turns up he is forced to arrest Moz in light of the situation at hand. Psycho Paul decides to get into the lucrative business of human trafficking. 5 "The Chance" Graham Duff 8 June 2009 ( ) It's Colin and Carmels wedding day and Moz makes plans to skip the country with Jenny in light of his possible incarceration. Meanwhile, Brian makes a shocking discovery about his new boyfriend. 6 "The Passports" Graham Duff 15 June 2009 ( ) Moz and Jenny plan to leave the country with stolen passports. Judith decides to throw in her lot with her lover Marco. Steve, Psycho Paul and Xavier have a plan to set up a new business in human trafficking. However, something goes wrong...
Series 6 (2010) [ edit ]
# Title Writers Original air date 1 "The Business" Graham Duff 17 August 2010 ( ) After nine months away, Moz and Jenny return home to find several surprising changes. Not least of which being his ex-girlfriend, Nicki, taking over his hash dealing business. 2 "The American" Graham Duff 24 August 2010 ( ) Moz and Jenny's plans to move to Italy are thrown into disarray when Moz learns he has been removed from the most wanted list. Brian is dumped by Nathaniel. 3 "The Kill" Graham Duff 31 August 2010 ( ) Judith and Jake embark on an ill-advised plan to kill Cartoon Head. Meanwhile, Moz discovers that Cartoon Head's gang are involved in black market organ trading. 4 "The Poster" Graham Duff 7 September 2010 ( ) Moz agrees to help Tilly with her new range of stained T-shirts. Jenny mistakenly believes that Moz has dumped her and gets into all kinds of trouble. 5 "The Lapse" Graham Duff 14 September 2010 ( ) Moz finds himself falling for the charms of both his ex-girlfriend Nicki and his sophisticated American neighbour Tilly. 6 "The Accident" Graham Duff 21 September 2010 ( ) When Moz discovers that Keith and Carol have been kidnapped by the Low triad, he asks Cartoon Head's gang for assistance - something he will soon have good reason to regret. 7 "The Ear" Graham Duff 28 September 2010 ( ) Finding themselves with a body to dispose of, Moz and Psycho Paul call on the services of the sinister Doctor Persil (played by Graham Fellows). Meanwhile, Moz's dad Keith learns that his kidnappers are deadly serious. 8 "The Housewarming" Graham Duff 5 October 2010 ( ) Whilst Nicki throws a monster fancy dress party, Tilly hosts a pretentious soiree upstairs. Moz is desperately trying to scrape together the ransom money to release his kidnapped dad.
Series 7 (2011) [ edit ]
# Title Writers Original air date 1 "The Police" Graham Duff 26 May 2011 ( ) Moz plots to win back the heart of his true love, Jenny. However, when he discovers she has joined the police force, his plans are thrown into disarray. 2 "The Debtors" Graham Duff 2 June 2011 ( ) A penniless Moz calls in his debts. However, his mates seem very reluctant to pay him back. Jess falls under the spell of masked hit man Cartoon Head. 3 "The Brothel" Graham Duff 9 June 2011 ( ) Moz and Nicki start running rival hash dealing businesses, but a price war soon kicks off with each attempting to undercut the other. Across the landing, Brian and Carmel have opened a brothel. 4 "The Paintings" Graham Duff 16 June 2011 ( ) Mistakenly believing Moz to be an avant garde artist, Tilly arranges for him have an exhibition. Jess and Cartoon Head experiment with ketamine and find themselves way out of their depth. 5 "The Love" Graham Duff 23 June 2011 ( ) Moz tries to turn his friendship with Tilly into a full-blown relationship. Colin hires his estranged wife Carmel as an escort girl. 6 "The Red King" Graham Duff 30 June 2011 ( ) Moz comes face to face with a gang of deadly gingers known as the Red Mist. Carmel has to choose between Colin and Jake, whilst Yasuko leaves Derrick for Fist.
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
In November 2006, Ideal received the award for Best Comedy Programme at the Royal Television Society North West Comedy Awards.[2]
DVD release [ edit ]
A box set of series one (excluding the Christmas special episode) was released in the UK on 7 November 2005. It includes the following extras:
Making of Ideal
Out-takes
Deleted scenes
Commentaries from Johnny Vegas (Moz), Graham Duff (creator, writer, Brian and Reverend Fistwick) and Henry Normal (executive producer).
The second series (including the Christmas special) was released on DVD on 19 February 2007,[3] the third series on 9 June 2008,[4] the fourth series on 13 April 2009, and the fifth series on 19 July 2010. The sixth series was released on 11 October 2010. The seventh and final series was released on 25 July 2011.
Film [ edit ]
A film based on the TV series was planned. The last update was this in June 2012. Baby Cow executive Henry Normal told Chortle: It's going to be set in the same place, with many of the same characters. We even bought the physical set from the BBC, our co-producers on the TV series. We are aiming for it to be quite a dark psychological comedy-thriller. As of 2018, there has been no word of the film being in production.[5]
See also [ edit ]From early on in Skyforge, players are introduced to Equipment Boosters which increase the stats provided by your Main, Additional, and Ring slots. While beneficial, the means required to upgrade these are very demanding for a player both in time and resource commitment. This |
ial plaque from the opening of 25 Bank Street in 2004. Later, in 2010, this would be auctioned by the Lehman administrators for £28,750
Level 31 at 25 Bank Street was used by Lehman Brothers as a client reception area; it contained meeting rooms and hospitality suites featuring fine art and furnishings.
25 Bank Street served as the headquarters of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) and associated Lehman Brothers entities in Europe. The building was officially opened as Lehman Brothers' European headquarters on 5 April 2004. Gordon Brown, then the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, officiated at the opening ceremony.
The building's fit out was undertaken by Hilson Moran, who were responsible for both the shell & core services design for Canary Wharf Limited and the fit-out services design for Lehman Brothers. Facilities included a TV broadcast studio, meeting rooms and 400 seat auditorium at level 1; a 3000 sq metre Data Centre at level 2; four trading floors at levels 3 to 6; a Gym & Fitness Centre and staff restaurant at level 7; executive floors at levels 30 and 31; and twenty office floors. Plant floors were located at levels 8, 32 and 33. The shell & core architect was Adamsons Associates, with Swanke Hayden Connell as the fit-out architect.[13]
Although levels 3-6 were all capable of being used as trading floors, only levels 4 and 5 were fully configured as such during the Lehman occupation.
The staff restaurant, at level 7, was operated by Restaurant Associates, who also provided catering services for corporate events hosted in the building.
The full floor configuration during the Lehman Brothers occupation was:
Floor Net usable floorspace Occupants 33 - Plant floor 32 - Plant floor 31 26,100 sq ft (2,420 m2) Client hospitality rooms; executive dining room 30 26,100 sq ft (2,420 m2) Executive management 29 26,100 sq ft (2,420 m2) Investment Management Division 28 26,100 sq ft (2,420 m2) Investment Management Division 27 26,100 sq ft (2,420 m2) Investment Banking Division 26 26,100 sq ft (2,420 m2) Investment Banking Division; Corporate Real Estate 25 26,100 sq ft (2,420 m2) Investment Banking Division 24 25,000 sq ft (2,300 m2) Information Technology 23 25,000 sq ft (2,300 m2) Mortgage Capital Division; Fixed Income Real Estate 22 25,000 sq ft (2,300 m2) Legal; Internal Audit; Compliance 18-21 25,400 sq ft (2,360 m2) Sublet to tenants 17 25,400 sq ft (2,360 m2) Unused office space 14-16 25,400 sq ft (2,360 m2) Sublet to tenants 12 24,800 sq ft (2,300 m2) Finance; Operations; Corporate Services 11 24,400 sq ft (2,270 m2) Finance; Operations 10 24,800 sq ft (2,300 m2) Finance; Operations 9 24,800 sq ft (2,300 m2) Fixed Income Division; Mortgage Capital Division 8 - Plant floor 7 70,300 sq ft (6,530 m2) Staff restaurant; gymnasium; travel; security; print services 6 69,800 sq ft (6,480 m2) Fixed Income, Investment Banking, Corporate Dealing Services and Equities Middle Office 5 69,700 sq ft (6,480 m2) Equities trading floor 4 69,500 sq ft (6,460 m2) Fixed income trading floor 3 47,100 sq ft (4,380 m2) Information Technology 2 48,700 sq ft (4,520 m2) Technical Operations; Data Centre 1 45,600 sq ft (4,240 m2) Human Resources; meeting rooms; services; TV studio and editing suite Ground 32,600 sq ft (3,030 m2) Reception and entrance lobby; auditorium; meeting rooms
Lehman Brothers (in administration) [ edit ]
Insolvency [ edit ]
The cash resources of the Lehman Group were managed centrally in New York by the parent company, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LBHI). Following a deterioration in LBHI's financial position, on the afternoon of Sunday 14 September 2008, the directors of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) Ltd (LBIE) sought assurances from LBHI that payments due to be made on its behalf on the following business day would be made. At approximately 12.30 am on 15 September, LBHI informed LBIE that it was preparing to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection under US law and that it was therefore no longer in a position to make payments to or on behalf of LBIE. Accordingly, overnight preparations were made for a number of UK based Lehman companies to protect their interests by seeking an Administration Order under UK law. This order was granted by a UK judge at 7.56 am on Monday 15 September 2008.[14]
Ongoing occupation of 25 Bank Street [ edit ]
PricewaterhouseCoopers were appointed as administrators of the UK business and as part of this task took over the management of 25 Bank Street. Having arranged the sale of parts of the Lehman business to Nomura International plc, the administrators reached agreement to sub-lease approximately 358,000 sq ft (33,300 m2) in 25 Bank Street to Nomura International. An additional 63,000 sq ft (5,900 m2) of space was sub-let to Nomura in March 2010. These subleases were due to expire in March 2011; in the event, Nomura would exercise a break option in September 2010 and exit the building at that time.[15] A further 126,000 sq ft (11,700 m2) was sub-let to other tenants, including the Financial Services Authority, land agents Jones Lang Wootton and NYSE Euronext.
From 1 January 2010, Lehman Brothers (in administration) reduced its occupation of 25 Bank Street to 290,146 sq ft (26,955.4 m2); and from 31 March of that year exited the building entirely,[15] moving to new premises at 25 Canada Square. The total property, IT and occupancy costs to the Lehman Brothers administration totalled $170 million for the 18-month period from the time of insolvency to the time of the 25 Bank Street exit. The office move resulted in annual cost savings of over $73 million.[16]
J.P. Morgan Investment Bank [ edit ]
On 20 December 2010 J.P. Morgan announced the acquisition of 25 Bank Street to become the new European headquarters of its Investment Bank in 2012. The purchase price would be £495 million. This was one of several real estate commitments announced by the bank that also included the purchase of 60 Victoria Embankment, a London building that the bank had been leasing since 1991 and which accommodates the firm's Treasury and Securities Services division. J.P. Morgan also announced that it had reached agreement with Canary Wharf Group to fund a further tranche of development to its Riverside South scheme.[17]
The building's postcode was changed to E14 5JP. During the Lehman Brothers occupation it was E14 5LE.
See also [ edit ]All us of remember learning about the Solar System in school. It is, for most schoolchildren, our first introduction to astronomy and the universe. Most of us started by learning the names of each planet, typically through a mnemonic device such as the extremely popular, “ My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.” (I personally remember learning “ My Very Eccentric Mother Just Swallowed Up Nine Pickle s”). Of course, Pluto was downgraded to a “dwarf planet” in 2006, largely to address the discovery of numerous other similarly sized objects, specifically a Pluto-sized object billions of miles beyond Neptune, which would later be named Eris. After this, the most popular mnemonic seems to have become “ My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos.” Once we learn the names of the planets, we typically move onto a model of the Solar System, which typically looks something like this:
Or it may be a physical model like the one below.
Scale Problems
But models like these have two significant problems when it comes to scale. First, the sizes of the planets are way off. These models lead us to believe that Jupiter is almost the same size as the Sun, but it’s not even close—the sun’s diameter is almost 10 times that of Jupiter. If we were to create a model with the planets’ sizes to scale, it would look more like the following visualization
In this model, you can see that Jupiter is significantly smaller than the Sun. But more noticeably, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are so small that they are barely visible. This is, of course, the primary reason why models resize the planets—without doing so, it would be very difficult to study the planets and their different surface characteristics.
But, the bigger scale issue is one of distance. Models typically show the planets relatively close to each other, but this is far from the case. In fact, if you were to take a picture of the solar system with the Sun on the left and Neptune on the right, then resize that photo down to 800 pixels wide, it would look something like this:
size of the objects in the Solar System, not the light produced by the Sun and the reflection of that light off the planets). If you were to assume the Solar System started at the Sun and ended at Neptune (it does not—there are numerous objects outside of Neptune including the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, which extend many billions of kilometers past Neptune) and ignored smaller objects—moons, asteroids, dwarf planets, comets, dust, etc.—the Solar System would be 99.98% empty space. There is nothing wrong with your screen. The Solar System is so huge that, when scaled down to an image of this width, the planets and even the Sun, are so small you cannot even see them (Note: I’m only accounting for theof the objects in the Solar System, not the light produced by the Sun and the reflection of that light off the planets). If you were to assume the Solar System started at the Sun and ended at Neptune (it does not—there are numerous objects outside of Neptune including the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, which extend many billions of kilometers past Neptune) and ignored smaller objects—moons, asteroids, dwarf planets, comets, dust, etc.—the Solar System would be 99.98% empty space.
A Truly Scale Model
Clearly, this problem of distance is the reason why so few of our Solar System models are truly to scale. It’s a nearly impossible task to create scale models that are useful in any practical way. But I wanted to see if I could create a truly scale model of the Solar System using Tableau. First, of course, I collected data on the sizes and distances of the planets.
Object Distance from the Sun (km) Diameter (km) Sun NA 1,391,400 Mercury 57,910,000 4,800 Venus 108,200,000 12,100 Earth 149,600,000 12,750 Mars 227,940,000 6,800 Jupiter 778,330,000 142,800 Saturn 1,424,600,000 120,660 Uranus 2,873,550,000 51,800 Neptune 4,501,000,000 49,500
I then created my visualization:
You’ll notice the scroll bar at the bottom. The screen itself shows about 6.5 million kilometers. Considering that Neptune is over 4.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, that means you’d need to page to the right almost 700 times to get to Neptune. If we could stretch this visualization out to its full width, it would be almost as long as 2 ½ football fields!
Of course, the only way to truly get a feel for the scale is to interact with the visualization. But be careful—if you scroll to the right too quickly, you are very likely to miss the planets because many of them are very small (remember that Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are almost invisible on our first visualization) and because there is simply so much empty space. So, use the key at the top to scroll to the correct distances and locate each planet.
Note: As usual, I had to scale down the size of this viz (no pun intended) in order for it to fit nicely on the blog, but feel free to go directly to my full-size version of the visualization
To Scale: The Solar System
Before closing out this post, I wanted to be sure to direct you to a short video which documents an attempt by filmmakers, Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh, to build a scale model of the Solar System in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. It is definitely worth the five minutes it takes to watch it, so check it out here.CLEVELAND, Ohio — Another piece in the effort to create a dedicated brewery district on West 25th Street has fallen into place.
Sam McNulty, operator of Market Garden Brewery, Bier Markt and Bar Cento in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood has signed a lease on the former Garage Bar, 1859 West 25th St. The entrepreneurial restaurateur intends to build on the success he and his partners, including brewmaster Andy Tveekrem, have achieved in Market Garden's full-scale brewing facilities.
"I want us to get into more brewing and help build the Ohio City area into a real, fully recognized brewing district," McNulty says.
Another new restaurant will be spawned in the process. Mike Nowak, formerly chef at Market Garden Brewing and Bar Cento, will take over the former Dragonfly Lounge next door to McNulty's new venture.
To further the area's recognition as a unique beer-making district, McNulty and Tveekrem will transform the former Garage Bar -- renamed Ohio City Nano Brew -- into a small-batch production facility. The team will implement a single-barrel brew house, taking up less than 100 square feet and open to public view, to produce what McNulty describes as "dynamic and sometimes extreme brews."
"We're aiming for some very creative beers, some with huge spices, others with unusual flavors -- say, a beer with cardamom," he says.
Unlike Market Garden Brewery, which is equipped to produce upward of 300 barrels of beer -- and has a dedicated distillery, which will produce white whiskey and gin -- Ohio City Nano Brew will serve as "kind of a pilot system -- we can have some fun and try our hand at more extreme brewing techniques," McNulty says.
Successful creations may go onto Market Garden Brewery's permanent menu. Meanwhile, Ohio City Nano will offer roughly a dozen taps -- most produced in-house, coupled with brews crafted by other small area breweries. The approximately 4,000-square-feet restaurant will also serve food, and McNulty will operate an outdoor beer garden representing an additional 4,000-square-feet of seasonal seating.
McNulty says he plans to open in late June.
McNulty and Nowak are taking over a pair of businesses that closed earlier this month, in a contentious upheaval between restaurateur Marlin Kaplan and the properties' landlord, Adam Waldbaum.
Local monoliths such as the West Side Market, Great Lakes Brewing Company and a burgeoning restaurant and nightlife scene provide cornerstones for McNulty's expansion plans. While the 37-year-old restaurateur and his business partners are focusing on retail operations in Ohio City, they're also hunting for space nearby to create a large brewing facility -- ranging from 50,000 to 70,000 square feet -- to grow production and distribution of their brews.
Such expansion will take place within an area no more than 15 minutes, by bicycle, from the West 25th Street operations.
"We live in the city, and we're committed to the city," says McNulty. "I've already doubled-down on West 25th Street. Now I'm going to triple-down."Resistance 3 - First Interior Drawing of the TerraformerSo while we where still figuring out what the outside was going to look like, I started working on the inside. At this point we had some very rough geometry to work with, but nothing had been thought out.If you've played the game this is the first large room in the Terraformer. The color and lighting have changed since this image, but the over all forms are the same, + massive pistons moving up and down and generator structure at the end of the room.The scale human in there is actually the concept Carlo Arellano did for Joseph Capelli, the games protagonist.Go check out the game if you haven't Already! Winner of IGN's Best PS3 Shooter 2011!!My Blog: [link]About Shows & Pricing Artists Media Reviews & Press Audience Buzz Discover!
by Ruth P. Watson & Thomas W. Jones II
Ruth P. Watson & Thomas W. Jones II
Directed by Thomas W. Jones II It is the end of The Great War, and a small Virginia town is rocked by secrets and seduction as Herman Camm, a provocative gambler, weaves his magic on the lives of three unsuspecting women, Mae Lou and her daughter Carrie, and Pearl, a blues singer at the local juke joint. Award-winning writer/director Thomas W. Jones II is back with his musical adaptation of the novel Blackberry Days of Summer. Don’t miss this musical mystery-romance in the key of blues. Show Sponsor
Length & Content Blackberry Daze runs about 90 minutes with a 15 minute intermission. Contains adult content. Handicap seating limited for this production. Please call to reserve if needed. Buy the Book on which the play is based!
Performance Dates July 14-August 27, 2017 Showtimes Wednesday, Thursday & Friday at 8:00 PM
Saturday at 3:00 PM and 8:30 PM
Sunday at 5:00 PM Pricing General Admission Tickets start at $25 (plus 8.9% sales fees)
Prices are subject to change and will rise as performances fill up. GET YOUR TICKETS EARLY FOR THE BEST PRICES. Bring your neighbors!
Group pricing is available for parties of 10+. Groups of 10-24 receive $3 off the general admission ticket price. Groups of 25+ receive $5 off the general admission ticket price. Call 404.523.1477 x111 or e-mail marketing@horizontheatre.com for more information. Ticket prices are subject to change. Buy early for best pricing. 8.9% sales fees will be added to all ticket orders. Internet convenience fee added to all online orders. No refunds, exchanges, or late seating.
Media
Reviews & Press Click here to view the Blackberry Daze Press Release “Blackberry Daze is selling out because it’s a slick, tight, superbly produced and performed show that’s ready for New York right now…. Every single person in the six-member cast is an accomplished vocalist, and when they sing together, they rock the house. Blackberry Daze… will take your breath away. It swings, it rocks, it dances, and you had best get tickets now!” —Atlanta Intown
“I loved every minute of it!” —Atlanta Theatre Buzz
“Blackberry Daze is a hot, sweet, summer treat…. it soars! Jones really nails it!” —ArtsATL
“Its energy is unflappable, its performers charismatic, its sound quality top-notch!” —AJC
“Overflowing with talent… one of the finest plays of the summer!” —wanderlust ATLANTA
“Blackberry Daze has to be one of the most phenomenal musicals on the circuit right now and is sure to whet your appetite for good, down home theater. The cast delivers a mesmerizing and soulful mix of gospel and blues that is sure to excite the imagination and stir the heart and mind.” —On Common Ground News
“Horizon Theatre’s Blackberry Daze is more than a romantic journey into the heart of the South: it is a blues and jazz musical play propelled by powerful energy rarely seen on any stage south of Broadway…. If you like your musicals served up with spirit and high energy, Blackberry Daze will satisfy you. It shakes and rattles for almost two magnificent hours.” —Down South Today
“This is not a show to miss! It’s amazing and should be shared with as many people as possible!” —MWMIV Speaks
“Blackberry Daze will put you in a daze…. You are drawn in from the beginning!” —God 4B and Me “THRILLING! UPLIFTING!” —MD Theatre Scene
“Soulful, beautiful, emotional!” —DCMetroTheaterArts
“A bluesy new musical… Knowles smoothly melds gospel, blues and jazz with a sense of tradition and a contemporary ear!” —Washington Post
“A very impressive and energetic piece of theater!” —BroadwayWorld
“Excellent artistry at work!” —DC Theatre Scene
“An engaging and poignant play about love and loss… a dreamy, ethereal quality… a sensory-filled and emotionally charged experience!” —Alexandria NewsAs mentioned in previous posts, I am working on a project on mercury in eighteenth-century chemistry and medicine. Over the past few weeks, I have been researching the use of mercury as a drug in eighteenth-century Britain and the Netherlands, and I found some fascinating yet disturbing stories.
In the early eighteenth century, England was the scene of what would go down in history as the ‘Quicksilver Controversy.’ For centuries, mercury and mercury preparations had been used to cure all kinds of intestinal blockages and venereal disease. However, most physicians were well aware of the potential dangers of mercury, and prescribed it only if all else failed. Not Thomas Dover (1662-1742), alias the Quicksilver Doctor. Unlike his contemporaries, he believed crude mercury to be a cure-all for all kinds of blockages. Although he was vehemently opposed by many of his colleagues, there were enough people desperate enough to try his ‘cure.’
To which this could lead was shown in the case of Barton Booth (1681-1733), one of the most famous tragedy actors of his time.
From 1727, Booth was afflicted by ill health: it began with a fever lasting forty-six days, followed by returning bouts of jaundice. Desperate for a cure, Booth eventually called for Thomas Dover, who prescribed him quicksilver. Within a week, Booth ingested almost two pounds of mercury, and died. When a post-mortem examination was carried out, it was found that Booth’s intestines had turned black and were lined with crude mercury, spreading ‘a most offensive cadaverous stench.’[1]
There are no accounts of other quicksilver doctors as extreme in their views as Thomas Dover, but popular eighteenth-century literature suggests that the Netherlands too saw quicksilver doctors. In a comedy from 1727 which has been ascribed to the Amsterdam hack writer Gysbert Tyssens (1693-1732), a ‘graduate cobbler,’ Doctor Hans, is ridiculed because he prescribes his patients mercury:
They are very good, ensuring that the sick never have to fear disease again.
Because he will cure them fast with a lethal quicksilver;
And the deceased cannot tell what was the cause of their death;
And in this way Mercury cures all illnesses.[2]
Although most physicians were extremely careful when prescribing mercury, there were clearly also men who were more interested in their own finances than in their patients’ health. Some even used their care for their patients as a pretext; a flimsy cover-up for highly profitable schemes. In the late 1750s, a small pamphlet on a new drug against venereal disease, ‘Helvetische essentie of mercuriale droppels’ (Swiss essence or mercurial drops) was printed in Dutch.
The Dutch translator Ponty, a medical doctor from Rotterdam, states in his introduction that the exact contents of the Helvetian Essence is not revealed in the pamphlet to protect patients from quacks who try to reproduce it. However, the last page suggests an entirely different reason for this secrecy: a two-ounce bottle of this miracle cure sold for 12 Dutch guilders – an amount that would equal over 100 Euros today.[3] The only selling point in the United Provinces? Ponty, the translator.[4]
[1] Kevin Dewhurst, The Quicksilver Doctor. The life and times of Thomas Dover, physician and adventurer. Bristol: John Wright & Sons Ltd, 1957, pp. 153-6, Richard M. Swiderski, Quicksilver. A History of the Use, Lore and Effects of Mercury. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2007, pp.11-24. [2] “Zy zyn heel goed om te maken dat een zieke nooit geen ziekte meer hoeft te vrezen. Want op een rys zal hy ze door een dood’lyk kwik altoos genezen; En de overledenen kunnen niet zeggen wat de oorzaak van hun dood is geweest; En ‘t is op die wyze dat de Mercurius alle ziektens geneest.” from: Thijsens, Gijsbert. Doctor Hans gepromoveert tot de narrekap van Esculapius, op het uilebord van Mercurius. Blyspel., 1727, p. 3. (Translation mine.) [3] http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/calculate.php [4] Langhans, Daniel. Gebruik van de Helvetische essentie of mercuriale droppels : tegens de venus kwalen en andere ziektens door de verdikking der ziltagtige vogten veroorzaakt. Vertaald door A. Ponty. Dordrecht: A. Blusse, 175X.We hear a lot about what we CAN hold within our individual IRA accounts, but never anything about what we CAN’T hold within them. A Roth IRA or Traditional IRA is an appealing financial vehicle since you have a wide range of choices versus something like a 401(k) plan where you are limited to a number of mutual funds to pick from. We all know that investments such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, index funds, ETF’s, and annuities can be held within an IRA. The list goes on and on but you should be aware of the types of investments that are barred from these accounts. Watch out for the following investments, since they’re not allowed in a tax deferred retirement account!
What you can’t hold in an IRA:
Coins and fine jewels
With the recent credit downgrade and the skyrocketing of gold, I’ve been getting asked quite a few times about holding physical gold, coin, or fine jewels in an IRA account. Typically, if you want to place coins of bullion within an IRA account, the IRS requires that the coin be pure in its content. Also, they cannot be seen as a collector’s coin. This can be hard to prove, so most IRA providers just disallow this type of investment. Like anything there are always exceptions. You can check out American Eagle coins and Canadian Maple Leaf coins, as they are allowed in some IRA accounts.
Real estate – somewhat
Real estate is a tricky one. It’s disallowed and then it isn’t. What do I mean by this? Well, you can actually hold real estate within your IRA account, however, you can’t benefit from it. In other words, sure you can invest in real estate, but you can’t profit off the rental income or from the sale of it. So, if you’re trying to buy your house with your IRA money, think again.
Antiques and collectibles
Have you seen that PBS show about antiques? Sometimes you’ll catch someone’s surprise that they own an antique worth thousands of dollars. After the excitement dies down, many ask themselves, “How am I going to shield against taxes?” Well, don’t bother trying to do that with an IRA account. Everything from classic chairs to aged wine to WWII helmets are not allowed within an IRA account. You’re actually better off keeping the item for the long haul and cashing out later down the road.
Life insurance and policies
Yup, you guessed it. Life insurance plans and policies are completely off limits! This includes everything from life insurance plans to variable policies. There is a single exception, and it’s called the incidental policy rule. If it’s a qualified plan, then one can purchase small amounts of life insurance within their IRA account. If the IRS deems your plan a qualified plan, then the next step is to determine the amount allowed within the IRA account. I call it the 50% test. Your qualified plan is only allowed if the amount in premium purchased is less than 50% of your total contributions. Yes, this is fine print and kind of hard to understand. If you do this, you need to make sure you follow the IRS rules to avoid penalties. Don’t test the IRS because they will find out.
Big picture…
What’s the big picture here? You have a wide range of options to invest in your IRA account versus investments that aren’t allowed. This is getting down to the minor details. You should focus your energy on a diversified equity to bond portfolio balance depending on your age and avoid these types of investments that are questionable. They are either completely disallowed outright or there are strict limitations. Save yourself some headaches and stick to the vast number of investments that ARE allowed in an IRA.Welcome
This website is where I will be documenting my research project:
Just a Phase? Goth Subculture as an identity constant beyond youth.
This PhD project is being conducted via Curtin University of Technology Western Australia: Project Number 5251 Approval Number RDHU-17-15
My name is Emma, I have been involved in the Australian Goth scene since I was about thirteen. Now in my early 40s, I continue to be connected to Goth and consider it an integral component of my identity.
What does this mean?
Essentially – Goth is more than hairspray, crimpers and eyeliner…
My connection to the Goth culture has taken me all over the world following bands, visiting Goth events and places.
As Goths we can visit clubs, go to gigs or events (such as the Whitby Goth Weekend or Wave Gotik Treffen) and feel like we belong – sometimes without even talking to other attendees. We even have our own day! It is my belief this connectedness – this sense of place – benefits us in a variety of ways and is a key factor which supports the overall longevity of the subculture.
I am particularly interested what being a Goth means for those of us over forty – did people think it was Just a Phase (like your parents insisted) – how did Goth come to be part of your life and why is it important….
The Goth subculture is fascinating, it has endured for more than three decades after its first emergence in the late 1970s, and it continues to morph and transform. Over this time, Goth subculture has developed a mature sense of itself: it is aware of its own irony – of its very conformity as a group who proclaim individuality.
Goth has a sense of humour about itself – it is quite normal for Goths to insist I am not a Goth ( ….but we are).
I will use this site to write about various aspects of the Goth subculture and seek input from others. I will also publish links to surveys for those who wish to participate. By doing this, I hope to improve understanding of the subculture, to share thoughts and experiences with other Goths (and researchers) especially those, like me, who have continued to be involved with Goth well beyond youth!Former Mizzou Tigers Evan Boehm, Kentrell Brothers, and Connor McGovern are going to Indianapolis.
Mizzou Tigers standouts Evan Boehm, Kentrell Brothers, and Connor McGovern have received invites to NFL Combine. The Combine will run from February 23 to February 29. Boehm started 52 straight games for the Tigers, even after sustaining an ankle injury early in the season. Boehm is fast, and can block multiple players at once. In addition, he can slot in with any type of quarterback. He showed this ability this season, when he performed very well under center for both Maty Mauk, who is more of a gunslinger-type QB, and Drew Lock, who (at least at this point) is far more comfortable in the pocket. An area scout interviewed by NFL.com also called Boehm “a great leader” on Mizzou’s offensive line.
Connor McGovern’s big upside is his strength. McGovern can bench press 515 pounds (a Mizzou record), and can squat 690. While he’s listed as a right tackle, analysis suggests that teams see him as a guard instead. McGovern certainly has the frame for that position: At 6’4″ and 305 pounds, McGovern is a bit small for a tackle, and multiple scouts say that he also doesn’t have really big enough hands. Still, there are teams out there that are willing to look at McGovern as a tackle.
As for Brothers, not much else needs to be said. Brothers was one of the best linebackers in the nation last season, and racked up the most tackles in FBS at 152. There are some concerns about his size; his 6’0″ frame gives him a “stubby lower half” according to NFL analysis, and is often considered too slow to be a quality rusher. Praise has come for his mental game. Brothers is able to recognize play effectively, and can adjust on the fly. He came away with 44 more tackles than the next best linebacker in the SEC, but could be overlooked in both the combine and the draft.
Do you think that any of these three have a shot in the NFL?vSphere PSOD on UCS with e5-2600v4
This is one I’ve encountered a couple of times already and just opened a support ticket with Cisco the same day VMware released their KB to see if there was a fix coming and when. This appears to be a Cisco UCS firmware fix for the Intel Xeon e5-2600v4 microcode bug that has been causing purple screen of death (PSOD) issues with vSphere per their KB.
Specifically I see this called out in the resolved caveats in UCS release 2.2(8b) which just came out under Cisco bug ID CSCva72096. Note that it appears that there isn’t yet a fix in the 3.1 code but it there was a simultaneous release of the 2.2(7) train with release 2.2(7e) that also was just released.
AdvertisementsEven if he loses, Donald Trump isn’t going away. But the man and the political phenomenon he has unleashed over the past 16 months are already posing a difficult chicken-or-egg question: Has Trump transformed America, or simply revealed it?
Trump’s slash-and-burn march to the Republican nomination and on into this fall is perhaps the ultimate blending of entertainment and politics, a coarse yet mesmerizing new show that appears to have changed political language and deepened divisions in an already polarized nation. But is this a singular moment, tied exclusively to Trump’s larger-than-life personality and searing rhetoric, or has he loosed into the culture a new virus of confrontation and anger?
“Win or lose, the Trump effect will be felt long after the election,” said David Nevins, chief executive of Showtime, who has spent decades reflecting the nation’s mood on TV shows such as “24,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Homeland.” “Trump and his followers are in many ways a rebuke to the elites who are perceived as controlling popular culture. The people who feel left out, passed over, now have a champion, even though he’s actually one of the New York media power establishment.”
[Trump is bitter, hoarse and pondering defeat as Election Day nears]
Admire him or loathe him, many Americans are fascinated by Trump, and that fascination is feeding a wave of new work that will aim to entertain and challenge the public in the coming years. Trump’s ability to embrace — or manipulate — average Americans’ anxieties is inspiring more raw and rough rhetoric in politics, darker and more somber popular music, and in TV, movies and other arts, an edgier, more nervous set of characters and themes.
During a discussion about entitlement reform, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton a "nasty woman." (The Washington Post)
Social media exposes rifts
Has Trump granted Americans license to express overt racism or new levels of acrimony? “It seems like a plausible narrative, but I seem to recall all kinds of sketchy things said about races and genders and groups aired publicly on a weekly basis before, say, the summer of 2015,” said John McWhorter, a Columbia University professor who studies public rhetoric. “He is distinct only in being someone of such prominence saying such things. I think the real change was Facebook and Twitter in 2009. Trump is just a symptom.”
Even as offensive language and ethnic insults became routine at Trump rallies, McWhorter saw the real culprit as social media. Twitter and Facebook became the foundations of daily communication for many Americans between 2007 and 2009, “revolutionizing conversation about, well, everything,” and pushing political chatter in a far meaner direction, McWhorter said.
In this view, the Trump effect is not unique to the man, but is a natural, almost inevitable result of economic and social forces unleashed by swift, powerful technological change that had, even before Trump’s candidacy, made the country meaner, more confrontational and more divided.
The populism Trump represents and the social strains that made millions of Americans eager for someone like him appear regularly throughout American history. Previous bursts of populism have usually burned through in less than a generation, fading away as economic expansion, war or political reform eased people’s sense of insecurity.
The frustration and resentments evident among Trump’s supporters have roots, some historians say, as far back as Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot’s third-party insurgencies in the 1990s. Others say Trump’s success is the result of disorienting, displacing changes in the world beyond politics, in the technological revolution that has altered the way Americans relate to one another and in the arc of millions of work lives.
On college campuses, battles over clashing world views, identity politics and the |
just four states are felons permanently barred from voting absent action by the governor. And in one of them, Virginia, lawmakers are considering an even more restrictive regime that would forever foreclose the possibility of redemption for tens of thousands of citizens.
For this essentially racist project, Virginians can credit the ethically challenged majority leader of Virginia’s state Senate, Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City). He filed legislation last week that would bar people convicted of violent felonies, in Virginia disproportionately African Americans, from ever having their voting rights restored.
It’s impossible to say precisely which offenses would trigger permanent disenfranchisement under Mr. Norment’s proposed constitutional amendment, which would leave it to the GOP-dominated legislature to define violent felonies. However, they might easily include categories of assault or drug crimes that might earn a young convict a few years in prison, followed by a lifetime banned from the voting booth.
Mr. Norment’s amendment would leave Virginia as an extreme outlier in terms of restoration of rights. It would strip the governor of any role in the process by automatically restoring voting rights for nonviolent felons — a category that would also be defined by lawmakers — after they had completed their sentences and paid court costs and restitution, which often amount to thousands of dollars.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) will make all ex-felons in Virginia eligible to vote in the upcoming presidential election, part of a years-long effort to restore full voting rights to former convicts. (Governor Virginia / YouTube)
For Mr. Norment, the bill is retribution against Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who has infuriated Republicans by attempting to restore voting rights to some 200,000 ex-convicts, nearly half of them African Americans and many of them disenfranchised decades after the completion of their sentences. While Mr. Norment’s constitutional amendment could not take effect for several years — it would require legislative enactment and approval at referendum by voters — it would strip future governors of any role in restoring voting rights, a power enshrined in Virginia’s constitution for more than a century.
Before Virginia tightened its laws in response to a scandal involving former governor Robert F. McDonnell (R), Mr. Norment was notorious as the recipient of lavish hunting trips paid for by corporate bigwigs seeking favorable legislative treatment. Last year, it was reported that he was interviewed by the FBI for conduct arising from his personal relationship with a female lobbyist whose firm regularly pushed for legislation that he voted for and, in two cases, personally sponsored; he neither recused himself nor disclosed the relationship in a timely way.
Mr. Norment, who was charged with no crime, admitted to “exceedingly poor judgment” in the affair. Maybe his voting rights should be rescinded.Sup ChipWINners and welcome back for another round of Quickshots! This time around, I’ve got 3 incredible albums that blur the line between traditional chiptune and EDM a la Sabrepulse or Aivi and Surasshu! So if you’re looking for something that can satisfy multiple musical cravings, stick around, as I take the time to review albums by Starship Amazing, Emforay and Lonemoon!
20XX by Starship Amazing
20XX by Starship Amazing
Kicking things off in high style is the latest offering by Starship Amazing. This duo based out of Anchorage has been making electronic music together for about six years, and it seems that in the midst of all the Fest hype that’s still going strong that they dropped a two track EP under the radar! Fortunately, I managed to get myself some extra time off after MAGFest so I was able to stumble across this gem and let me tell you, this definitely justifies lounging around at home online! Guiding us through a demon-infested hellscape of a future (their words, not mine) the two track EP starts off with “20XX UNLOCK NEW FORMS”. The track opens with intense sine waves, sick hi hats, and claps that let you know these guys aren’t fooling around. As soon as the kicks and snares join in the fray and the beat drops, what gets blasted into your ears is a sound that comes across as a love child between George and Jonathan and Aivi and Surasshu!
That sound carries through not only throughout “NEW FORMS” but also carries into the second track “20XX MORE HEXES MORE SPELLS”. However, what should be noted is that while the first track sounds more George and Jonathan, this second track is def more Aivi and Surasshu. It’s got a flow that’s much more mellow and drums that are much more syncopated, creating a sound that def sounds like it would be at home in an episode of Steven Universe.
Both tracks are thoroughly enjoyable but the EP ends much too quickly for my liking. A damn shame, because I would love to have more music like this on my player. That said, going based off this EP alone, I have a request for Starship Amazing: please, I implore you to put in an application so you can play MAGFest 14! You definitely have what it takes to rock that main stage and I would love to see and hear you guys do your thing live next year!
Fave Track: 20XX NEW HEXES NEW SPELLS
Price: Free (pay what you will)
Bang for Buck: 5/5
Replay Value: 4.9/5
Overall Grade: 4.9/5
Facebook | Bandcamp | Soundcloud | Twitter
Lifeup by Emforay
Lifeup by Emforay
Up next is one of two albums that I was very uncertain if I should include in this article because while they certainly are awesome, they don’t sound as traditionally chiptune as stuff I would normally cover. But then I remembered that letting myself fall into a purest attitude is as stupid as anyone who uses the term fakebit, so I went ahead and included them! Hailing from Pataskala, Ohio, Emforay has released an album that’s one of the more varied I’ve heard from the scene in a while. Producing a sound that’s equal parts Toni Leys, DJ Cutman and Petriform, Emforay is capable of shifting from atmospheric and introspective to straight up big hall banger in a snap! Whether its the surprisingly Owl City sounding opening track “Body Language”, the party starting “New Territory” or the kick ass pop rock sound of “Reality”, Emforay consistently pumps out jams that keep the party going while splicing in moments of quiet reflection, as well.
This gets shown off best between two of the last three tracks on the album, “Wander” and “Hang in There”. “Wander” is a slightly more upbeat track than “Hang in There”, sporting a compositional style that’s reminiscent of some of Aivi and Surasshu’s Steven Universe work. It creates a dreamy experience one can actually feel comfortable ending the album on if Emforay didn’t have other plans. This sensation of somnambulism gets followed up by a more somber, introspective tone with a series of haunting piano chords and extended notes from a string section in “Hang in There” before building up to a more hopeful, steady beat and groove in the song. The whole experience is very reminiscent of some of Moby’s work off of “Play” and is something I applaud Emforay for doing, as it’s been a while since I’ve heard someone compose in this fashion.
However, I think it should be noted that what may be the best listening experience on the album is the last track: “Victory”. The song starts off with a series of haunting, vocodized vocals, heavy drums and imposing orchestration that feels like the song is the embodiment of anything but a victory, reminding me very much of a final boss battle in an RPG. Then, out of nowhere, the song does an almost abrupt transition with the help of some hard hitting guitar riffs which leads to a beat drop that feels like Daigo pulling out a come from behind victory in Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike! The song hits the gut hard like a corkscrew punch followed up by a Dempsey Roll and it’s exhilarating as hell! To say I love the song is an understatement, as it is a testament to Emforay’s talent!
“Lifeup” is an album that’s a bit on the steeper end when compared to what I usually review for the column, but if you have the money to spare, I cannot recommend buying the album enough! Emforay is young (only 19), gifted, brimming with energy, and deserves to have a bigger following! The kid can make my eardrums bleed any day with what he produces!
Fave Track: Victory
Price: $9
Bang for Buck: 4.5/5
Replay Value: 4.9/5
Overall Grade: 4.9/5
Facebook | Bandcamp | Soundcloud | Twitter
Amaranth by LoneMoon
Amaranth by LoneMoon
Hailing from Oklahoma City, Lonemoon is a producer whose work is also quite diverse but feels more subdued than Emforay’s. While he’s certainly also capable of a fair amount of wubs and super sines, Emforay also seems to have a stronger affinity for neo soul, r&b and chiptune than Emforay does. The effect is an album that, even at it’s most party, reminds me a great deal of artists known more for their remixes than their original work. Artists such as RAC, Dntel, or Kessian come to mind immediately. In particular, Dntel’s remix of “Japanese Gum” by Her Space Holiday is a song that keeps scraping at the front door of my conscious as I listen to the early tracks on Amaranth. This feeling is most prominent while listening to “Broken Cartridge” as both share a very similar, spacey, brooding, yet groovy vibe.
The somewhat sullen tone is broken up by the next three tracks, as they start to show off LoneMoon’s ability to craft music that feels most at home on the dance floor of a small, intimate club. While wubs are are well and good, I’m more about groove and subtle funk, and “From Me To You” has both in spades. I absolutely love this, because it becomes abundantly clear that “From Me To You” is the kind of song you grind to slowly, which chiptune desperately needs more of.
After “From Me To You” the second half of the album kicks off in high fashion, as it features both incredible solo work from LoneMoon, but it as showcases the talent of several guests artists who deserve mentioning, as well. QUEST! helps bring the wubs in the banger that is “Chronicle”. Azuria Sky brings her gentle, aqueous vocal style to “Pastime”, singing of lost love while LoneMoon brings an mix of chillstep and neosoul to a song that’s vaguely reminiscent of Bondax’s remix of “You Know You Like It” by AlunaGeorge that is absolutely luscious. SeizeTheBeat helps LoneMoon make a gorgeous homage to trance with “Petal”, taking me back to my highschool days when I would rock out to remixes of songs like Kiss and Airwave by Airscape and Rank 1/Dutch Force in art class. Visceral helps make a song that easily belongs in a back alley with competing dance crews going at it in “Collision” while Dasta helps conclude the album with the spirit churning, heart thumping “Still Waiting”: a song that invokes imagery of sitting by a windowsill while watching the world pass by during a summer shower.
Overall, the album is solid, and while I’d like to hear LoneMoon open up some more and possibly hear an album that consists of more bangers, I have to admit, I’m very happy to have come across this gem. Not only did I get exposed to work that featured artists I’m familiar with (namely Azuria Sky) but it was refreshing to have an album that was as subdued and chill as this one. I definitely am looking forward to hearing more from him and hope he continues to craft chill music I can groove to any time, any where.
Fave Track: From Me To You
Price: $7
Bang for Buck: 4.7/5
Replay Value: 4.9/5
Overall Grade: 4.9/5
Facebook | Bandcamp | Soundcloud
Well folks, that’s it for this month’s round of Quick Shots. Don’t forget to follow the artists featured in this article for more of their latest happenings on your preferred social media platform. Also, keep checking back in with us on the blog as we cover more amazing albums, events, and general chiptune hype. Last but not least, if you or someone you know is chiptune artist looking to get more recognition, don’t be shy! Share your work with us on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook and if we like it, it may just be featured in one of our articles! You never know when senpai will notice you, so keep doing what you do, and know that even if your album doesn’t get covered in an article, that Kuma loves you!
Love, Peace and Happiness to you all til next time!
\m| (=^(T)^=) |m/
Dig this article? Then consider supporting us on Patreon!Oct 12, 2017 - Cozmo
This week at Bungie, we’re controlling some new zones.
Lord Saladin made his return to the Tower this week and players have been rallying to his flaming shield. We also launched an additional map with Iron Banner to give you more zones to control. Distant Shore is a Crucible map set on Nessus, but it will be very familiar to Destiny 1 veterans. After the weekly reset, Saladin will leave the Tower, signaling the end of this Iron Banner. Distant Shore will then go into the rotation for all playlists.
Launch Prep
In only 12 days, Destiny 2 will go live on personal computers all over the world. Every player on the PC will be able to start their adventure at the same time, but the clock may display a different time depending on where you ’ re located. If you want to know the exact time when you can start playing, this nice map will show the ”Go Live” time in your region. If you are not close to one of the cities listed, you can also use this handy link
Now that you know when the games will begin, you probably want to make sure your PC is ready to go. We gave you some minimum and recommended specs for the Beta in a previous update. Now we have an updated chart for you to check out before the full release on October 24 at retail stores and digitally via the Blizzard Battle.net app.
MINIMUM RECOMMENDED CPU: Intel Intel Core i3-3250 3.5 GHz or
Intel Pentium G4560 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5-2400 3.4 GHz or
i5 7400 3.5 GHz CPU: AMD AMD FX-4350 4.2 GHz AMD Ryzen R5 1600X 3.6 GHz GPU: NVidia Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB or
GTX 1050 2GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB or
GTX 1060 6GB GPU: AMD AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB AMD R9 390 8GB RAM: 6GB 8GB
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 8.1 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit (Recommended) Hard Drive Space: 68GB available hard drive space
The Prestige
Earlier this week, we postponed the launch of the Prestige Raid. An exploit was discovered that could cast doubt on the legitimacy of the fireteam who captures the coveted title of World First. We have been working on a fix, but the short-term solution contains too much risk. The last thing we want to do is fix an exploit some players are using, only to break other parts of the game for everyone. Because of this, we are pushing the fix off to a later date.
“Does that mean you are delaying Prestige Raid again?”
No, the Prestige Raid will still begin on October 18 at 10AM Pacific. We don’t want to make you wait any longer to experience what the raid team has cooked up for those of you who enjoy a challenge worthy of your talents.
One thing we did accomplish as part of our investigation was the creation of a way to verify a clean finish. We can now detect if any teams use this exploit to gain an advantage. This will take some extra time to verify, but we will be able to crown the winners with the confidence they deserve.
A safe fix is still being investigated for this issue. Our current plan is to deploy it as part of a future update. We’ll give you more details before it’s ready to go.
This isn’t the only upcoming raid news. We will be back next week to tell you about Raid Challenges that have been designed to make you rethink familiar encounters.
Feedback Frenzy
Ever since launch, there has been feedback posted anywhere and everywhere that discussions about Destiny 2 happen on the internet. I’m always dialed into our own feedback forum, as well all other avenues you travel to share your ideas with us. Some topics are as broad as “ways to make the Crucible more fun.” Some are much more specific, like “Add a method to mass delete shaders.”
We’re reading as much of your chatter as we possibly can. There are millions of you, after all. One thing we have noticed is a lot of discussions about the Endgame and how it can be improved. Right now, these discussions are also happening in our studio. We are listening, but need time to digest everything and draw up the best plans for the future. We will have more to say on this soon. Please stay tuned, and keep the conversation rolling.
Reporting for Duty
Dest i ny Player Support is on the case. No matter what the issue is, they will seek out player reports and make sure the right people are working the problem.
Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.0.3.2: Resolving Tower Crashes Earlier this week, Hotfix 1.0.3.2 was deployed to resolve issues where players would experience console crashes when attempting to load into the Tower. Initial monitoring has shown positive results, and players should not experience this issue moving forward.
We are continuing to investigate an alternate issue where players may encounter a black screen when loading into the Tower. This may occur on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Many user reports detail that Tower audio can be heard, but players are blocked from fully loading into the instance. If a player encounters this issue, there are two known workarounds: Launch an alternate activity or location through the Director and attempt to relaunch the Tower
Close and relaunch the Destiny 2 application.
We will provide updates on our investigation once additional information is available.
Destiny 2: How to report Clans or Players When playing Destiny 2, players have multiple avenues to report players or clans that are suspected of cheating, using abusive language, or engaging in poor behavior during gameplay. The Bungie Security Team and Bungie.net Community Ninjas receive reports and execute moderation as necessary. If a clan name or description breaks the Code of Conduct, players may use the in-game Report Clan tool located on the clan inspection page.
If a player encounters teammates or opponents exhibiting poor behavior during gameplay, such as griefing, engaging in exploits, or inactivity, they may use the in-game Report Player tool on the Player inspection page.
When encountering players suspected of cheating, we ask that players visit the “Report suspected cheating” page on Help.bungie.net and submit a contact form.
If a player encounters others who are sending malicious messaging or engaging in verbal abuse through voice chat, we advise using platform report tools provided by PlayStation Xbox, and Blizzard
There’s No Business…
We are back with another edition of the most popular game show currently airing on This Week at Bungie. I’ll be your host as we take a look at some of our favorite video media created by the Destiny 2 community this week. All our winners today will be receiving a special emblem in game. There was an issue with how we grant the emblem, so if you are a past winner waiting patiently for yours, we will have it to you as soon as we can in a future update.
Move of the Week: Hardhat Area
Honorable Mention: Double Double Fusion
It’s good to be back. Lots of excitement in the air. Iron Banner this week. Prestige Raid next week. Then we get to welcome PC players to the community.
<3 CozmoMicrosoft unveiled its first Lumia phones running Windows 10 back in October, and today it offered up a third and much cheaper variant.
If last year’s Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL looked impressive — impressive for phones running on a ‘dead’ platform — then the Lumia 650, which was outed today, is the budget version, coming in as it does at $199 — far cheaper than the $549 and $649 of the 950 and 950 XL.
That $199 gets you five-inch OLED screen, eight- and five-megapixel cameras and the front and back, and a Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 212 which doesn’t support Microsoft’s ‘Continuum ‘ phone-to-PC feature.
The Redmond-based company is billing the device as a business phone that represents an affordable way to get Windows 10 into your workforce’s pocket — “the smart choice for your business.”
But, but, but, but… you really have to ask if that’s the best use of corporate money, at this point.
TechCrunch’s Natasha Lomas explained last month that Windows Phone is officially an “ex-platform.” Microsoft’s phone-based revenue plummeted by 49 percent, with quarterly sales dropping from 10.5 million units to 4.5 million over one year. Even CEO Satya Nadella conceded that numbers have gone south since “our strategy change announced in July 2015.”
Yet, here we are, weeks later, with what seems like a nice looking, capable and wallet-friendly release. Another Windows Phone that you won’t and (since app developers care about whether the eyeballs — and companies have long shifted to bring-your-own-device) shouldn’t buy.
There have been rumors that Microsoft is preparing a service phone and that this is the last Lumia device we’ll see. That’s based on the company relocating the once-independent Lumia team into the Surface team. As Thurrott.com, a Microsoft authority, explained though, at this point nobody knows what devices that new working relationship will produce so all the speculation is moot.
Judging Microsoft on the here and now: the Lumia 650 looks fine, but the Windows Phone game is all but over.John Maynard Keynes wrote that gut feelings — or “animal spirits,” as he called them — were often more important to investment decisions than a “mathematical expectation.”
President-elect Donald Trump, too, understands animal spirits. It’s just that the animal he has in mind is a sheep.
Or so it seems from the way he is forcefully herding American automakers back across the U.S.-Mexico border, like so many wayward ovines — with Twitter as his digital crook.
And if the companies’ response to this blatant political strong-arming of their supposedly free enterprises is any indication, Trump has read Detroit right.
Ford announced Tuesday that it will not be building a planned $1.6 billion small-car plant in Mexico, which Trump had condemned as a betrayal of U.S. workers. Explaining the capitulation on CNBC, Ford chief executive Mark Fields acknowledged his duty to shareholders, but added, “We have to make sure, at the same time, that we have good relations with the various governments that are in power.”
(Reuters)
Now there’s a profile in courage. To be sure, Detroit’s suits were never likely leaders of the Resistance, if there is to be one. As Fields’s remark suggests, they long ago ceased being swashbuckling capitalists. Auto companies are more like bureaucratic Gullivers, tied down by union contracts and fuel-efficiency mandates. And that’s not counting the mother of all political entanglements, the 2009 federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, begun under President George W. Bush and completed under President Obama.
Managing one of the Big Three is a constant exercise in the art of the possible, which is no doubt why Fields decided Mexico was not the hill to die on.
He’s eyeing a really, really shiny object — deregulation and tax cuts from Trump and the Republican Congress, which could indeed boost Ford, if and when they materialize.
He better hope they do, because otherwise his cave-in to Trump could be a costly move as well as a craven one. Fields, of course, was right about the economics of moving to Mexico: Only pickups, crossovers and SUVs are profitable to assemble in most U.S. factories, because only those better-selling, larger vehicles offset higher U.S. labor costs.
Mexico’s other advantage is free trade with markets around the world, not just with the United States (where small-car demand is weak due to low gas prices). Global openness makes our southern neighbor a good export platform, to which Japanese, Korean, German and American carmakers are flocking.
Trump’s next target is General Motors, which has annoyed him by importing some Chevrolet Cruze hatchbacks from Mexico. GM produces the rest of the relatively few Cruzes it manages to sell in the United States at Lordstown, Ohio, which also happens to be in a county Trump carried in November.
“Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!” Trump tweeted — threatening to punish General Motors for the good deed it did by designing and promoting the Cruze, in compliance with federal fuel-economy standards, and building it in Lordstown, to be a good, grateful, corporate citizen after the bailout.
The Cruze has been such a flop that GM recently had to announce cutbacks at Lordstown — though at least it kept that car plant open, unlike bailed-out Fiat Chrysler, which is ceasing U.S. passenger-car production to focus on pickups and the like.
What a role reversal for the two parties: During the bailout, when the Obama Treasury Department actually owned the automakers, these Democratic officials scrupulously kept out of the companies’ business decisions, lest they be politicized, in perception or reality.
What a reversal for the United States and Mexico: The latter once epitomized protectionism and crony capitalism, before free-market reforms recommended by a bipartisan succession of American presidents.
It’s hard to say where the new Republican president’s attitude toward private property and free enterprise might lead. Perhaps Trump is just putting showy pressure on corporate America to offset, in advance, the criticism he’ll get from Democrats for showering the private sector with tax cuts and regulatory relief after Inauguration Day. At least that’s what all the investors who are bidding up stock prices must be thinking.
Or perhaps Trump really does intend to pour money on companies with one hand while tugging on a short leash with the other.
If so, Wall Street bulls may come to regret betting on him; Fields and other chief executives may regret appeasing him. American workers could lose out, too — autoworkers included. When a president can punish you for “killing” jobs, the smart business plan is not hiring anyone in the first place — except robots.
America’s business climate is strong. The way to weaken it is to give a politician say-so over investment, even, or maybe especially, if that politician calls himself a businessman.
Read more from Charles Lane’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.Sometimes you find history where you least expect it. Or in the case of Edgar Allan Poe and Fort Moultrie, you find a history different than what you expected.
This summer my family spent a week on Isle of Palms, one of South Carolina’s barrier islands. On one of the many rain filled days, we visited Fort Moultrie, located just a few miles away on Sullivan’s Island, hoping for an afternoon of Civil War history. Headed southwest down Middle Street we passed Poe’s Tavern, it’s sign adorned with a Raven. I thought about stopping for lunch there, but the line was out the door.
Another sign directing visitors to Edgar Allan Poe Library left me wondering why the fascination with the American literary great on such a quaint, out of the way spot at the northern entrance to Charleston Harbor. Having never read Poe’s short story The Gold-Bug, which I was to learn is set in Sullivan’s Island, I was unaware the island had a legitimate claim to Mr. Poe.
The National Park Service now runs Fort Moultrie, its cannons long silenced. As it turns out, for 13 months Mr. Poe was a resident of Fort Moultrie and, by his association with the Army, Sullivan’s Island.
According to the National Park Service Brochure I picked up at the visitors center, Poe enrolled in the University of Virginia in 1826, but dropped out that same year having accumulated some $2,500 in gambling debts. He enlisted in the Army the following year, using the assumed name of Edgar A. Perry. In October 1827 he was assigned to Fort Moultrie.
Fort Moultrie is one of several forts that line the South Carolina shoreline. Fort Sumter sits at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, less than a mile southwest of Fort Moultrie.
During his time in the Army, Poe was assigned to Battery H and attained the rank of Regimental Sergeant-Major.
While at Fort Moultrie, Poe lived in barracks constructed in 1809. All that remains now of the barracks is their long rectangular foundation. The barracks were razed by Confederate soldiers in 1863 out of fear that they might be hit by shells, thus presenting the danger of flying debris.
One building that remains from Poe’s time at Fort Moultrie is the powder magazine.
Also remaining is a traverse built in 1820. The traverse is made of solid brick and protects the powder magazine from enemy projectiles.
A wine cellar, built within the lower inner parade ground in 1809, also remains. During the Civil War, the cellar took a direct hit from Union artillery.
Having learned of Poe’s connection to Sullivan’s Island, I purchased in the visitors center a copy of the Gold-Bug & Other Tales, which I can now say I have read. According to island legend, a tulip tree mentioned by Poe in The Gold-Bug sits only two miles east of Fort Moultrie, at the intersection of Goldbug Avenue and Station 27 Street. On my next visit to Sullivan’s Island I will be sure to take a picture of that tree and hopefully stop for a drink at Poe’s Tavern, assuming I get there early enough.Former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton says Canada has an important role to play in NATO as the alliance braces for more developments linked to the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.
Speaking in Montreal, Clinton says Canada and the U.S. should work together to find a smart solution to deter further aggression or even a conflict that gets out of control.
She says the neighbours must remain closely unified as they prepare for what she describes as “probing and testing” by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Clinton warns that Putin’s rationale for annexing the Crimean Peninsula because it’s home to ethnic Russians and Russian speakers could be extended not only to other parts of Ukraine, but to other countries like Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
The potential 2016 U.S. presidential contender calls the crisis a clash of values and an effort by Putin to rewrite the boundaries of post-Second World War Europe.
Earlier Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced new sanctions against Russia as he slammed Putin over the “illegal annexation” of Crimea.BetKing ICO Starts Today After Generating Huge Pre-Sale Interest
Pete - Monday, August 7, 2017, Written by- Monday, August 7, 2017, Promotions
News of the relaunch of BetKing.io and the associated Initial coin offering (ICO) which starts today (7th August), sent a ripple of excitement among those familiar with the integrity and success of the brand's previous incarnation.
Prior to closing for business back in December 2016, BetKing had been the biggest crowdfunded Bitcoin gambling site in the world for the previous two years. The online dice site opened for business in 2014 with a crowdfunded bankroll, and during its three year tenure saw over 400,000 BTC wagered as well as making a tidy 7,391 BTC profit along the way - or in leyman's terms, BetKing made $287,000 profit for every month it was in operation.
Why did BetKing Close, and What has changed?
When BetKing closed there was some confusion as to exactly why? The site had always played fair, always turned a profit for itself and investors, and had a loyal customer base. There was no question of liquidity issues, and the remaining, initially crowdfunded bankroll which had grown through reinvested profits to 6,000 BTC at the time of closure were immediately returned to investors- so why stop?
According to a recent interview with Bitcoin Millionaire, the man behind BetKing, Dean Nolan said:
"I had worked on BetKing for 4 years with no other staff. I was doing development, marketing, support, promotion and security myself with only the odd contractor here and there to help. I wanted a break and time to explore some other ideas I had that I couldn’t while running BetKing full time."
It would seem that Dean's free time has not been wasted, and the new offering from BetKing has been met with a clamour for crowdfunded participation, with the ICO pre-sale which ran for a week last month generating some $1.45m in BTC and Ethereum contributions.
One change Dean made straight away was to put a team together for the first time ever to work on the new software, and he is currently in the process of hiring more full-time staff. The new BetKing will also be offering more games with new, improved software, with casino favourites Blackjack and Roulette on the roster and sports betting, more casino games, poker games and tournaments to be added soon after the launch on September 4th.
Above: The brand new BetKing Blackjack offering
The new software will also allow other casino websites and app owners to integrate with Betking's new platform. Considering the huge success BetKing achieved last time out, the potential this time around seems immense.
The Offer
The ICO sale which starts today and runs through to the launch on September 4th offers participants the opportunity to buy up to 70% of the 100m BetKing Bankroll tokens on offer using BTC, Ethereum, and Litecoin, payments. When the crowdsale is complete half of the funds will be used for the house bankroll that players bet against and winnings are paid from, with the remaining funds being used for marketing, promos, seo, design, development, server costs and legal.
Above: People will be able to buy BetKing Bankroll Tokens with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin
BetKing will use a percentage of the profit made from bankrolled games to buy back BetKing Bankroll tokens from holders, and alll profit made on bankrolled games will be audited and made available to token holders.
Those who decide to invest in BetKing during the first week of the ICO (ie: from today through to next Sunday) will be eligible for a 15% discount, with a 10% discount for the following week, and a 5% discount in the third week of the sale. Any purchases during the 4th week will not receive a discount. The price of a token will be determined by the amount of funds raised divided by the 70m tokens and distributed accordingly to participants.
Poker Players Set to Profit
No doubt this offering will be of interest to the growing number of poker players who have turned to dealing in the cryptocurrency markets as a result of their experiences with the likes of BTC as a means with which to fund certain online poker sites. Many former (and current) poker players have become crypto-millionaires in the past year as the value of BTC and Ethereum in particular have skyrocketed.
When asked why, after earning millions of dollars and quitting at the top, he decided to jump back into business with BetKing, Dean replied,
"BetKing was the number one crowdfunded Bitcoin dice site. I want BetKing to be the number one gambling site."
Check out the site, the offering, and the software over at http://betking.io/Man 'who killed Adrian Peterson's son' beat his ex-girlfriend's three-year-old little boy so hard he was left with welts last year - but judge spared him jail and sent him to counseling instead
Joseph Robert Patterson, 27, is charged with aggravated assault on an infant - he has a history of domestic violence. Additional charges are possible, according police said on Friday
Two-year-old boy, named locally at Ty, died at a South Dakota hospital on Friday
Victim is believed to be the secret son of Minnesota Vikings star player Adrian Peterson
The football player has another two-year-old son Adrian Jr
Adrian Peterson has a $40m contract with Minnesota Vikings
The man who allegedly beat to death the'secret' son of Minnesota Vikings' star Adrian Peterson has a history of domestic violence, it was revealed today.
Joseph Robert Patterson, 27, the mother's boyfriend, was charged on Friday with aggravated assault and aggravated assault on an infant.
The two-year-old boy, named locally as Ty, passed away on Friday at a South Dakota hospital after being admitted on Wednesday. The football star's father Nelson confirmed that the boy who died was his grandson.
Patterson appeared in court on Friday to be arraigned on the felony charges. Additional charges may be added now that the child has died, South Dakota State’s Attorney's office said.
Charged: Joseph Robert Patterson, pictured in court today, left, is charged with aggravated battery of an infant and aggravated assault. It emerged in court that he had previously been charged over domestic violence
Requests for privacy: NFL star Adrian Peterson, pictured at a press conference today, acknowledged that he was dealing with a 'private matter' but said little else. It is believed that his'secret' son died today after being beaten by the boyfriend of the child's mother
The little boy was brutally beaten on Wednesday while in Patterson’s home at Platinum Valley Apartments, Sioux Falls where he had recently moved with his mother. Patterson was the sole caregiver at the time.
Initially, police were told that the child had choked on candy. Only later did it emerge that his brain injuries were the result of being violently shaken.
The arrest was made after police found the little boy with injuries 'consistent with abuse'.
Patterson is being held in Minnehaha County Jail, South Dakota on $750,000 cash bond. He is scheduled to appear in court on October 23 but a grand jury indictment is expected before then.
South Dakota State’s Attorney Thomas Wollman filed motions |
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6, seeking an explanation in seven days why disciplinary action should not be taken against her for the behaviour.
Speaking to Express, Vasanthi (47) acknowledged that the memo was indeed issued to her. The judge’s wife even came to the court to pick up a quarrel with her, Vasanthi said. “The next day, I went to meet the district judge at his residence in Erode. As he was not available, I showed the memo to his PA, who sought to calm me down,” she said.
Despite the assurance by the district judge's PA, she submitted a letter on February 4 expressing regret for her actions to the sub judge. “I humbly submit to the lordship that I will ensure that such complaints will not arise against me in the future. Hence, I humbly request you to spare me from any action,” read the reply. Following this, the judge himself told her to let it be and work as usual without worrying about his wife.
“Since then, I have been going to their house and work as usual without engaging in any conversation with his wife,” added Vasanthi. A Class 10 pass out, who was appointed nearly nine years ago, she has two married daughters and has to look after her ailing husband.
While Vasanthi maintained that this incident was in the past for her and sought to downplay the issue as something that was long gone, this understandably triggered a controversy after the memo and the response came to the public sphere.
The Tamil Nadu Judicial Employees Association leaders said they were planning an agitation to protest such exploitation and harassment of court staff. “There is a government order against using staff for personal work. When we sought details through several RTI petitions, the reply we received claimed there was no orderly system in the judiciary. But in reality, many workers all over the State have been asked to attend to the domestic works at the judges’ residence,” alleged association president P Karunakaran.
Shocking as it is, this episode is, however, not unusual in judiciary and police, noted former judge of the Madras High Court, Justice K Chandru, who said he also recently came to know about the memo issued to the woman staff by the sub judge.
The system of engaging staff for personal work existed during the British rule, but orders issued in 1937 and also after Independence barred this practice. However, it remains even now, he added, “Two years ago, a judge issued a memo for not cooking fish curry. In another case, when a staff went out to buy medicine for himself, a judge in Kanyakumari asked why he failed to inform his wife. The judge even issued a memo which the High Court later cancelled,” recalled Justice Chandru.
The lower level staff, he noted, had little options but to fall in line. When some decided not to do domestic work, they were suspended till they apologised. There were even cases of dismissals. There is latent casteism as well, he added. There were two cases of staff being removed from domestic work after learning that they were from scheduled castes. Another instance of this was appointing staff belonging to the same castes as the judges for domestic work, he said.
In 1980, the judicial employees union adopted a resolution against such harassment and he filed a suit in the HC against the practice. But, many did not endorse his views. The court held that ‘the staff would do such work as may be entrusted by the respective judicial officers’. “In some cases, the staff are treated as bonded labour,” Justice Chandru added.
Pointing out that the woman staff being issued the memo is a violation of basic right, PUCL State secretary advocate S Balamurugan said the higher judiciary should take note of this suo motu and should take steps to put an end to it completely.
Reacting to the issue, a member of the court staff union in Chennai said, " Role of office assistants are restricted to office work. But, when they are posted for duty at the residences of Judges and magistrates, they are used for buying groceries, washing clothes and similar menial jobs."
"There is no duty mentioned in particular. They do whatever the Judges say," the member said adding, " This has been happening for ages and there have been cases where such assistants have been pushed to the point of attempting suicide due to the humiliation."FREEHOLD - The findings of a yearlong investigation into the June 2015 public slaying of Tamara Wilson-Seidle by her ex-husband, Neptune Township police Sgt. Philip Seidle, were released by acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni on Thursday.
The report of the investigation involved hundreds of witnesses, thousands of pages of documents, photos and video footage from witnesses and police cruiser dashboard cameras.
Because the gruesome incident played out in front of dozens of witnesses on an Asbury Park street, there was a lot that the public already knew about how the fatal shooting transpired.
But here are seven things we learned more about from the report:
The history of domestic incidents and suspensions
Philip Seidle was reportedly angered about Tamara Wilson-Seidle's interference with his visitation with their nine children when he chased her through the streets of Asbury Park on June 16, 2015.
Divorce filings and records previously obtained by NJ Advance Media revealed the rocky history of the couple's tumultuous 23-year marriage, as police responded to the Seidle's home 21 times over a 21-year period.
Philip Seidle, now 52, received a two-day suspension following an incident on Feb. 2, 2012, that led to an internal-affairs investigation by the Neptune Police Department. Tamara Wilson-Seidle had called police to report her then-husband was verbally harassing her on the phone and that when she got home, Philip Seidle was at the house and approached her in a "menacing manner," Gramiccioni said.
Tamara Wilson-Seidle declined to file charges. However, Neptune police admitted Philip Seidle for a "fitness of duty" examination, not because of his behavior toward Tamara Wilson-Seidle, but rather because he was shouting at the responding officers, Gramiccioni said.
On Feb. 12, 2012, Seidle was found not fit for duty and his service weapon was taken from him. Gramiccioni said Seidle attended therapy regularly until he was re-examined on April 16, 2012.
The prosecutor's officers contacted Tamara Seidle and asked her if she had any concerns with Philip Seidle's service weapon being returned. Gramiccioni said she "expressed no such reservations or fears."
After having only conditional use of his service weapon upon returning to duty, Seidle was eventually fully rearmed by the prosecutor's office.
A second internal affairs investigation was launched "in an abundance of caution" after an incident on March 28, 2014, in which Seidle cursed at responding officers, Gramiccioni said. This time, Tamara Wilson-Seidle had indicated she wanted to file a criminal complaint against him, but she never did. Seidle was placed on administrative leave pending another fitness for duty evaluation, after which he received a 30-day suspension and had to undergo therapy for lashing out at the officers.
The only report of physical confrontation involving Philip Seidle came on Jan. 27, 2012, but it did not involve Tamara Wilson-Seidle. On that day, Philip Seidle's then-girlfriend called Tinton Falls police to report that he had had put his hands around her neck and pushed her following an argument.
Again, no charges were filed and Tinton Falls police never notified the Neptune Township Police Department of this incident, as there was no policy requiring such notification.
The first shots killed Tamara
Philip Seidle first pumped eight rounds into his ex-wife through the driver's side window of her Volkswagen Jetta, then headed to the front of the car where he fired off another four rounds through the windshield, striking her, authorities said prior to the prosecutor's office report being released.
After firing the shots into the car, Seidle then immediately held his service weapon to his head immediately and kept it there for the duration of the approximately 45-minute standoff that ensued.
For more than a year, people following the Seidle case wondered if police at the scene could have saved Tamara Wilson-Seidle's life if they had shot her ex-husband before he fired the second round of gunshots at her.
However, Gramiccioni said that a medical examiner's report concluded Tamara Wilson-Seidle died from one of the shots fired in the first round.
The 911 calls
The report also focused on two 911 calls made during the incident and how they were handled by dispatch.
The first one was made by one of the couple's daughters, who had received a call from Tamara Wilson-Seidle saying their father had threatened to kill her. But the location provided by the daughter was not accurate and indicated Tamara Seidle was in the "area of Mt. Carmel Church," Gramiccioni said. The church is located about a quarter-mile away from where the incident occurred.
However, even an accurate location for Tamara Wilson-Seidle wouldn't have helped: The dispatcher was still on the phone with the daughter as the first round of shots were fired, Gramiccioni said.
The second 911 call came after the first round of shots, and was from Tamara Wilson-Seidle's boyfriend. He reported to a police dispatcher that she was being held against her will on Asbury Avenue, a street that runs through Neptune and all of Asbury Park.
After the shots, Tamara's boyfriend called and said she was being held against her will, but he could not pinpoint her location other than Asbury Avenue.
"We concluded there were not mishandlings or delays on the part of the 911 dispatcher system," Gramiccioni said.
"Ineffective communication and a lack of information did contribute to the confusion at the crime scene as these events quickly unfolded," he continued. "But, tragically, none of them would have changed the result that Tami was killed."
The failure to communicate
The first officer to respond to the fatal shooting scene was already at the corner where the incident occurred, tending to an unrelated car crash when it happened.
The prosecutor's office's investigation determined that this officer did not have a reasonable opportunity to stop Seidle from firing either of the two rounds of gunshots into his ex-wife.
However, Gramiccioni said he would recommend discipline against that first officer at the scene for "failing to communicate critical information."
The officer failed to indicate that there was a car chase, a collision and that the driver jumped out and fired eight shots into the other vehicle, Gramiccioni explained.
"That material information would have been helpful to arriving officers," he said, adding the other officers were only responding to a report of shots fired.
The highest ranking officer left the scene - twice
The third officer at the scene was a neighbor to Philip and Tamara Seidle, so he was familiar with both of their cars, Gramiccioni said.
But, Gramiccioni said, that officer did not relay that information to dispatch.
He was also the highest ranking police officer at the scene at the time and left twice: once to take the Seidle's daughter to police headquarters two minutes after the second round of shots were fired and then again to take the first officer at the scene back to headquarters.
Gramiccioni said he would refer discipline for that officer to the Asbury Park Police Department for demonstrating "poor" leadership, failure to take command and control. He cannot impose discipline, though.
Tamara's frantic attempt to escape
Dashboard camera footage from the first officer to arrive at the scene's patrol car captured Tamara Wilson-Seidle's car trying to elude her ex-husband's Honda Pilot.
The officer and two people he was talking to were nearly hit by Tamara Wilson-Seidle's car as it whipped around the corner onto Sewell Avenue, police dash camera shows.
There is the sound of a car crash, followed by the sound of Seidle firing the first round of shots at his ex-wife.
The officer calls in a report of "shots fired," and then appears to take cover behind his vehicle. He then called in that Seidle has a gun pointed to his head, Gramiccioni said.
The officer can be heard calling Seidle by his first name and pleading with him: "Don't do it Phil!"
Additional officers can be seen arriving at the scene seconds before Seidle fired the second round of gunshots into the car.
Due to their distance from Seidle and how quickly the events unfolded and the fact that he was at risk of harming himself, the prosecutor's office's investigation concluded that the use of force was not the correct course of action for the officers to take at that time.
The safety of civilians was also at risk
Gramiccioni said that the number of civilians in the area added to the determination that shooting Seidle would not have been the correct course of action for the responding officers to take as the shooting and subsequent standoff transpired.
The prosecutor's office released a diagram as a part of the investigation report that illustrates the trajectory that the bullets would have traveled if the five officers fired their weapons.
The diagram indicates that at least four residents were potentially in harm's way at the time.
"At the end of the day, none of these five officers were ever in a position to use reasonable lethal force against (Philip) Seidle," Gramiccioni said.
Rob Spahr may be reached at rspahr@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheRobSpahr. Find NJ.com on FacebookThree Denver-based environmental groups are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services branch, challenging two plans approved by Colorado Parks and Wildlife that together would kill up to 120 mountain lions and bears to protect declining mule deer populations.
The Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians and the Western Environmental Law Center allege that two Predator Management plans did not receive the proper environmental-impact assessments and relied upon “unsound” science in blaming predators — not oil and gas development — for Colorado’s loss of mule deer.
“We aren’t seeing a lot of scientific support for it in the literature,” says Matthew Bishop, an attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center representing the conservation groups. “What we do have, which we consider to be the best available science, suggests that it’s loss of habitat that’s really the driving factor.”PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will invite allies to a Feb. 18 security summit in Washington to try and prevent violent extremism, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Sunday after meeting his European counterparts in Paris.
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about community college education during a visit to Pellissippi State College in Knoxville, Tennessee, January 9, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The gathering of justice and interior chiefs came as France mourned 17 victims of Islamist gunmen this week in the worst assault on its homeland security in decades.
“We will bring together all of our allies to discuss ways in which we can counteract this violent extremism that exists around the world,” Holder told reporters.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after the meeting that European interior ministers had agreed to boost cooperation in an effort to thwart further jihadist attacks.
“We all agree that we need to put in place better control on certain passengers, on the basis of objective criteria and with respect for fundamental liberties and without disrupting cross-border travel,” he said.
He said Europe needed urgent progress in establishing a European Passenger Name Record database, which would facilitate the exchange of data about passengers between member states.
“We are convinced of the need for such a tool, to follow those who travel to terrorist operating theaters or who return from there,” he said, adding that this database would also be useful in the fight against other serious crimes.
Related Coverage Attorney General Holder concerned about lone wolf attacks in U.S.
Cazeneuve said the Internet needs to remain a space for free expression, but that Europe should fight against abusive use of the web to spread hate speech, anti-Semitic messages and the recruiting vulnerable young people for violence.
“We need to work more closely with Internet companies to guarantee the reporting and if possible removal of all content that amounts to an apology of terrorism or calls for violence and hatred,” he said.
Cazeneuve said EU interior and justice ministers planned to meet soon to discuss further action. A European source said the meeting could take place next week in Brussels.A system of records and reports showing, for each material balance area, the inventory of nuclear material and the changes in that inventory including receipts into and transfers out of the material balance area; (g) Provisions to ensure that the accounting procedures and arrangements are being operated correctly; and (h) Procedures for the provision of reports to the Agency in accordance with Articles 59 to 65 and 67 to 69.
Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.
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Page 21 Arrangements, for the establishment of such measures as: (a) A measurement system for the determination of the quantities of nuclear material received, produced, shipped, lost or otherwise removed from inventory, and the quantities on inventory. (b) The evaluation of precision and accuracy of measurements and the estimation of measurement uncertainty... Appears in 52 books from 1946-2005
Page 319 - Iran shall establish and maintain a system of accounting for and control of all nuclear material subject to safeguards under this Agreement. Appears in 73 books from 1947-2007
Page 323 -... used to establish changes in the quantities and composition of nuclear material; (b) The data obtained from the calibration of tanks and instruments and from sampling and analyses, the procedures to control the quality of measurements and the derived estimates of random and systematic error; (c) A description of the sequence of the actions taken in preparing for, and in taking, a physical inventory, in order to ensure that it is correct and complete; and (d) A description of the actions taken... Appears in 44 books from 1947-2005
Page 319 - Article 77, the Agency may make special inspections: (a) In order to verify the information contained in special reports; or (b) If the Agency considers that information made available by the... Appears in 38 books from 1947-2007
Page 323 - The accounting records shall set forth the following in respect of each material balance area: (a) All inventory changes, so as to permit a determination of the book inventory at any time; (b) All measurement results that are used for determination of the physical inventory; and (c) All adjustments and corrections that have been made in respect of inventory changes, book inventories and physical inventories. Appears in 36 books from 1947-2005
Page 319 - Agreement, and that such safeguards shall be applied in such a manner as to enable the Agency to verify, in ascertaining that there has been no diversion of nuclear material from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, findings of the State's system. The Agency's verification shall include, inter alia, independent measurements and observations conducted by the Agency in accordance with the procedures specified in Part II below. Appears in 42 books from 1947-2005
Page 318 - Agency's safeguards system for the exclusive purpose of verification of the fulfillment of its obligations assumed under this Treaty with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. Appears in 121 books from 1922-2008
LessInvestment Concepts Fundamental to Portfolio Management
We are going to examine 7 investment concepts that are fundamental to successful value portfolio management. Notice none of these concepts require us to be a genius or have some special skill. However, it does involve putting a little effort and time into changing the way we think and approach investing.
1. The Importance of Time
The question of when to start investing for retirement seems easy, but few people understand the importance of the answer. Exponential growth is the powerful investment concept that makes time the most important factor in determining the value of your portfolio.
The earlier you begin to invest, the greater the probability of having choices and a quality retirement. Because of the power of compounding, the investments made in your early years should be worth many times over the value of your investments made closer to retirement.
If you need $40,000 per year in retirement income at age 65 (in addition to Social Security benefits) you will need to save approximately 1 million for retirement. Here is the amount you will need to invest each month to save 1 million, assuming you earn an 8% return on your investments:
Age 25: $285/ month
Age 35: $667/ month
Age 45: $1687/month
This illustrates the importance of time. You need to let the “magic” of compounding work over time. By living a little more frugally in your early years you can save enough money to have a comfortable retirement. By waiting until middle age the task becomes much harder.
2. Keeping Expenses Low
High expenses do tremendous damage to portfolio values. Choosing the best investment vehicles is the first step in keeping expenses low. The mutual fund expense ratio is notorious for sapping an investor’s returns.
One percent can make an unbelievable difference. A $100,000 investment for 30 years earning 6.5% grows to $699,179. A $100,000 investment for 30 years earning 5.5% grows to $518,738. In other words, if your expenses lower your return by just 1% annually, you make $180,000 less over 30 years on a $100,000 investment.
3. Asset Allocation
Asset Allocation is what will determine the vast majority of your returns. It is the most important decision you can make in investing. Studies have shown that the average investor’s actual investment returns are considerably lower than market averages. This is because people tend to buy when prices are high and tend to sell when prices are low.
Historical analysis has proven that the valuation of investments when they are purchased will determine long term returns (time periods of 10 years or more). Buying at high valuations produces low returns. Buying at low valuations produces better than average returns.
When you buy is something you can control. Be conservative when valuations are high. Hold cash and be mentally prepared to buy more stocks when prices are bargains.
Ignore market comparisons in the short run. Most investors are too short sighted and impatient, looking for instant gratification. You can beat the market over long term cycles with valuation based asset allocation; it is the long run that matters.
4. Proper Diversification
There are large benefits to diversification in small numbers. In other words, three stocks is much better than two, and six stocks is much better than three. But with each additional investment added the marginal benefits decrease.
For instance, adding an 11th stock to a 10 stock portfolio would provide a significant benefit. But adding 1 stock, or even 10 stocks, to a 100 stock portfolio would not give you the same benefit. The benefits would be small but the costs might be great.
There are disadvantages of diversification in investing. The costs incurred by too much investment diversification are transaction fees and over diversification. Over diversification reduces quality, leads to average performance, and increases your costs. So while under diversification can be devastating; over diversification should be avoided too.
Most studies show that diversification is optimized at between 15 and 30 individual investments. Further diversification yields a smaller and smaller benefit. At some point the costs become greater than the marginal benefits of further diversification.
The goal is to combine assets that have a low asset correlation. You want to own many assets (i.e. 15 – 30) that will act differently and provide the benefits of diversification. For example, let’s say you owned 15 airline stocks in your portfolio. you would have diversification within the airline industry, but would incur a large risk to your portfolio. Those 15 airline stocks would have a high correlation.
In order to get the maximum benefit of diversification you might want to own the best 1 or 2 stocks in several different industries. Stocks in different industries will most likely have a lower correlation than stocks in similar industries.
For example, if consumer discretionary stocks were being hurt by a slowing economy, consumer staples might fare much better. If industrials were being hurt by inflation, gold stocks might be offsetting the decline in the industrial stocks. If airline stocks are suffering from rising fuel costs, oil stocks might be rising.
5. Don’t Follow the Crowd
In portfolio management, following the crowd can lead to poor investment returns. John Templeton said “If you want to have better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd”.
I remember when I was a kid, my grandfather worked at a slaughter house. he would take us there and show us that if you got a some of the cattle to run towards the slaughter house, with the exception of a few, all would happily follow the crowd to their demise.
Following the crowd is “group thinking”. There is an emotional comfort in doing what everyone else is doing. We feel good when others agree with us. We are comfortable when we follow the majority.
The value investor must learn to be comfortable as an individual, an individual who thinks differently than the majority. If everyone is bullish on a stock, industry, or the market, beware; that means there are few investors left to buy but instead many are invested with the ability to sell. If everyone is bearish, look for opportunity; there are few investors left to sell and the price may be a bargain.
6. Buy Businesses – Not Stocks
When you buy a stock you are purchasing a business. Just because it is a fractional share doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat it the same as if you were buying the entire business. Your perspective matters because it determines how you think and make decisions about your investment.
Buying businesses, not stocks, is one of Warren Buffett’s more important investment concepts. Your investment is not a piece of paper that you worry about the price every hour, day, or week. Think and behave like a business owner. Analyze the company like you are buying the entire company.
Personally, I de-emphasize the price of the stock and concentrate on enterprise value and enterprise value ratios. Enterprise value is the total value of a company. It takes into account cash and debt just as if you were purchasing the entire company instead of the fraction you’re purchasing with a share of stock.
7. Margin of Safety
In my book review of The Intelligent Investor, Revised Edition, Updated with New Commentary by Jason Zweig (affiliate link) I noted that Benjamin Graham made the investment concept of margin of safety the last chapter of the book because I believe he thought it to be the most important for investment analysis.
The margin of safety in investing is the difference between the market price and the fundamental or intrinsic value of the investment. The core financial concept of margin of safety is: price matters.
A value investor will estimate the intrinsic value of an asset and determine how much of a margin of safety they require before purchasing the asset. The difference between the intrinsic value and the price the investor is willing to pay is the margin of safety required.
Having a margin of safety doesn’t guarantee a profitable investment, but it does leave room for mistakes, unforeseen events, bad luck, or errors in judgement.
Investment risk and the probability of a large loss are reduced by purchasing an asset for less than its true value. A value investor will require a margin of safety to decrease risk and raise the odds of a profitable investment. The larger the margin of safety the higher the odds that investment returns will compensate you for the risk taken.
An investor can buy a great company with growing earnings but lose money because the price paid was too high. The goal is to buy companies at substantial discounts to real value and patiently wait for the mispriced security to gravitate towards its real worth.
Warren Buffett describes it this way, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get”. The two, price and value, may be significantly different. Graham wrote “The margin of safety is always dependent on the price paid. It will be large at one price, small at some higher price, nonexistent at some still higher price”.
Sometimes the price is much greater than the value, in which case you should avoid or sell the security. Other times the price is significantly below the real value, in which case the value investor would determine whether it is enough to meet their margin of safety.
Two investors can buy the exact same stock and have two very different outcomes. For example, lets assume two investors have the same conviction: XYZ stock has an intrinsic value of $50. Investor A accepts a 10% margin of safety and buys the stock on a dip at $45. Investor B is more conservative and requires a 40% margin of safety and waits until the price falls to $30. Later the stock rebounds to fair value ($50). Investor A has an 11% profit ($50 / $45), but Investor B has 67% profit ($50 / $30)! The only difference is the price paid.
Investment Concepts
I hope our discussion of these 7 investment concepts has provided you with a different thought process or approach to investing. Successful value portfolio management requires a different way of thinking. Make the effort to be above average. If there is anyway I can help you, please feel free to contact me.Special report: After the wells were poisoned, many of the 400 refugees living in Australia’s former detention centre face life-threatening illnesses
The piercing pain in Joinul Islam’s right arm keeps him from sleeping. He can’t bend it to eat properly (to eat with one’s left is considered unclean), and there are precious few painkillers to allow him to rest.
Four months ago, he was attacked by a gang in Lorengau, his elbow was sliced open with a machete and the surgery to repair it did not work. He was promised follow-up surgery, but it never happened. Now, he waits for more medical treatment that might never come.
In the meantime, he bears the pain – his right arm fused at an awkward angle – without assistance. He has been told by Papaua New Guinea authorities he can get more painkillers, but only in Lorengau, the place where he was attacked.
Manus Island: AMA calls on Australia to let doctors help refugees Read more
“I cannot go back there, I cannot go back. How can I go to Lorengau? I need a safe place,” he says.
Seated in a quiet corner of the darkened Manus Island detention centre, he speaks barely above a whisper. The pain, at one point, kept him awake for two weeks, he says. “I am so tired,” he tells the Guardian, as tears well in his eyes.
Islam has been formally recognised as a refugee, having fled persecution in his homeland Bangladesh. “My country, political is problem, is not safe. For safe place, I come to Australia.”
Islam says he feels under intense pressure to quit the Manus Island detention centre, even to abandon his claim for protection altogether, and risk returning to Bangladesh. “All the time is pressure. My life is very difficult. I have been running five years. Too long,” he says.
Islam’s case is barely remarkable inside the condemned the Manus Island detention centre – officially shuttered on 31 October, with all essential services withdrawn.
Hygiene conditions are worsening day by day. We are thirsty and have been waiting for rain Behrouz Boochani
There are few uninjured or healthy people among the 400 who remain in the camp, surviving on rainwater and makeshift wells, smuggled food, and solar panels powering phones that give them a link to the outside world.
Inside the camp, the Guardian saw men who, while walking through the wreckage of the site, had stepped on nails that had pierced their feet. Their infected wounds wept pus as they walked. Others revealed open and infected sores on their legs – cognisant that Iranian asylum seeker Hamid Kehazaei died after a small infection that, even with medical intervention, spiralled rapidly out of control in the detention centre and ultimately killed him.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Refugees at the condemned Manus Island detention centre. Authorities have destroyed shelters and makeshift water-collecting bins. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Nearly three weeks after the camp was formally closed, the medical situation in the condemned Manus Island detention centre has reached a new, even more dangerous stage. Even men who appear healthy are battling diarrhoea and vomiting brought on by drinking salty, contaminated water pulled from makeshift wells.
On Saturday Australian Medical Association members voted unanimously to call on the Australian government to grant access for doctors to be allowed into the detention centre to intervene in what the association describes as “a worsening and dangerous situation emerging on Manus”.
“It is our responsibility as a nation with a strong human rights record to ensure that we look after the health and wellbeing of these men, and provide them with safe and hygienic living conditions,” the AMA president, Michael Gannon, said.
Decay, despair, defiance: inside the Manus Island refugee camp | Ben Doherty Read more
Periodically, Papua New Guinean police and immigration officials – on Australian orders, the Guardian was told – enter and poison the wells, befouling them with dirt and rubbish and making the water undrinkable.
The men have some purification tablets and boil what they can, but their situation is unsustainable. “We have a new hard problem these days,” Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani says. “The toilets are full and there’s a bad smell spreading in the prison camp. Hygiene conditions are worsening day by day. Hope we have some rain today to wash away the bad smell.
“The situation in Manus is critical. We are thirsty and have been waiting for rain in the past few days. We have some water we’re rationing but it’s not enough in tropical heat. Immigration destroyed the water we’d collected from tropical rain.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A refugee pulls water from a makeshift well inside the Manus Island detention centre. Photograph: Ben Doherty for the Guardian
David Yapu, the police commander on Manus, has said fear of a widespread outbreak of potentially fatal illness was very real. “The centre is unhygienic, it is subject to illness such as typhoid, cholera and dysentery,” he says.
Cholera, most often spread by unsafe water, is easily treatable with the correct medication, but without it, the infection can kill in hours.
There is a meagre and dwindling cache of medical supplies inside the camp – and a fraught supply chain bringing more in – but refugees fear what will happen when these run out. Several refugees have become the unofficial medical officers of the camp, dispensing what medications they have.
“Even when IHMS [International Health and Medical Services] were here,” one refugee says, “this all we got. Panadol and water. Whatever was wrong with you: panadol and water.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Refugees boil water in the detention centre
Many of the men, after four years in indefinite detention, have been on antidepressant medication or reliant on an ever-increasing regimen of sleeping pills. These are almost extinguished now.
The Australian immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said in a television interview last week the refugees still inside the Manus Island detention centre should leave it immediately, spruiking the alternative healthcare available.
“People are squatting illegally on this maritime base and we want them to move peacefully. There are buses available; people can move to a new $10m facility where they have accommodation, they’ve got kitchens, they have running water, all of the services that you could imagine, including health services, security, etc; but people are trying to make a political statement by staying at the regional processing centre.”
While there is greater access to healthcare for the refugees and asylum seekers who have moved to the alternative accommodation elsewhere in Lorengau province, this remains limited. The proposed accommodation centres are still being built, with limited running water and unreliable electricity. Refugees confirmed on Monday there is still no running water in the new West Lorengau centre. Seriously ill refugees are moved to Lorengau hospital, but that is in a state of disrepair and decay. The hospital is already far beyond its capacity, it has few working diagnostic machines, and regularly runs out of medicine itself.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alternative accommodation in Lorengau is still being built, despite assurances from the Australian government that the camp is habitable. Photograph: Refugee Action Coalition/EPA
When a refugee was transported to Lorengau hospital from the detention centre two weeks ago suffering from what was believed to be a heart attack, the hospital’s only ECG machine was broken.
Nurses were able only to take the man’s blood pressure before discharging him and sending him to alternative accommodation in Lorengau. The Guardian met the man in Lorengau; he has not had any follow-up treatment.
Those refugees and asylum seekers who are sicker still are sent to Pacific International hospital in Port Moresby for treatment, but even here, there is often little treatment offered.
US once locked up white Australian immigrants in 'horror' camps akin to Manus and Nauru Read more
There are more than 120 refugees and asylum seekers housed – at Australian expense – in hotels around Port Moresby. One hotel has been booked in its entirety for several months with refugees and asylum seekers from Manus. Australian Border Force officials are housed nearby.
In the capital, the Guardian met more than a dozen refugees and asylum seekers awaiting treatment.
Some have been in Moresby two months and have had a single appointment, with no follow-up scheduled. There are also several women who have been sent from Nauru with serious illnesses and injuries, but they have not yet been treated.
“Everybody here is sick, they say we are sent here for treatment but nothing happens, we just get worse,” one refugee from Myanmar tells the Guardian. “We just wait, for what, we don’t know. Who knows what our future will be.”A Canadian company called AdHawk Microsystems is announcing that it has created small motion-tracking sensors that could be a boon for augmented reality glasses and virtual reality headsets.
Current AR and VR products are oversized for consumers, and bulky camera-based sensors are a big part of that problem. But AdHawk has created eye-tracking sensors that are small chips made from microelectrical mechanical systems (MEMS), which are commonly used in gyro chips.
Image Credit: AdHawk
The Kitchener, Canada-based company has raised $4.6 million in a funding round led by Intel. AdHawk Microsystems said that its smaller, faster, more power-efficient motion-tracking solutions will render camera-based eye tracking obsolete. And they will pave the way for a new generation of highly immersive AR/VR experiences.
So far, most eye-tracking systems, like Tobii’s products, have relied on cameras. Unlike camera-based eye-tracking that needs to be tethered to a computer, the AdHawk system can be embedded in AR/VR headsets or glasses and worn comfortably all day.
AdHawk can capture thousands of data points per second, enabling a system based on the chips to be able to predict where |
refer to extra-terrestrial life in terms of micro-organisms.
Although they present the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, they equate the view that sentient ETs do exist to heresy and categorize it with non-Christian views.
Despite the mumblings of the powerful religious lobby, proof of ET existence would have profound effects on them and may very well pose a threat to civil order.
It is therefore safe to assume that the Christian lobby would be well-served if certain knowledge of ETs is withheld from them and hence the entire population of the Planet.
The reasonable among you may now ask: well now fine; but do these things actually exist?
When one or two persons claim to have seen an Unidentified Flying Object then it is easy to disqualify. But what if the same phenomenon is seen, photographed and filmed by thousands?
KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS ……….. WWW.UFOCASEBOOK.COM
WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG
WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDEWS.ORGA British Columbia company and its owner are being fined $70,000 after failing to clean up to two Hamilton properties.
The Ontario Ministry of the Environment issued a release about the fines late Thursday.
It notes that a numbered company owned by Baldev Kumar Madan, also known as Dave Maden, purchased 249 Hess Street North and 245 Catharine Street North from the City of Hamilton in 2005.
"The initial order had several parts, but it was primarily a cleanup order against the company and the owner," explained Lindsay Davidson, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.
"The convictions were for failing to hire a qualified waste management company to assess and classify the waste."
In July 2010, the ministry inspected the properties and discovered environmental concerns on both.
The Hess Street property consisted of several derelict buildings, two shipping containers and 100-200 barrels filled with unknown/possibly hazardous materials.
The Catharine Street property, a former electroplating facility, showed evidence of three historic electroplating lines and baths with some material still in the electroplating baths, as well as numerous drums containing unknown materials.
On July 27, 2010 two Provincial Officer's Orders were issued to both the company and Maden, yet several items were not complied with.
On February 26, 2016, Madan was convicted on of three offences under the Environmental Protection Act and fined $25,000, plus a victim fine surcharge (VFS) of $6,250 and two suspended sentences. His company, 0558154 B.C. Ltd., was also convicted of two EPA offences and fined $45,000, plus a VFS of $11,250 and one suspended sentence.
Maden and the numbered company have been given two years to pay the fines.A wire recorder, a nifty analog recording technology predating tape recorders.
If you have a question, comment, or other noises you would like to make regarding our podcast, you are in the right place. If your comment or question stands out as exceptional we may air it and respond to it in a future episode. Questions are especially likely to be used.
There are several ways to transmit your sounds, as outlined below. For best results, go to the least echoey place possible and speak close to the microphone. A quiet spot outdoors works well if you have the option.
Record With Our Embedded Recorder
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Other Options
If the embedded recorder doesn’t work for you, or if you find it unsatisfactory, there are other ways to be heard. If you use one of these alternatives, please be sure to introduce yourself at the beginning of the recording and state (roughly) where you are from.
Smartphone/Tablet: Most newfangled smartphones and tablets come with a voice recorder or voice memos app (and if yours does not, there are free apps available to accomplish this). You can record your question/comment using such an app, and then use the Share option to email the resulting audio to podcast@damninteresting.com.
Desktop Computer: Alternatively you can use free desktop audio recording software such as Audacity to record your question/comment and email it to podcast@damninteresting.com.
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Law-talk
If you send us an audio recording, you consent to its use in the podcast and on the website. We may edit your recording for length or sound quality, but we will not modify the meaning of your message. Sending a recording does not guarantee its use in the podcast. That phone number is not toll-free or anything fancy like that. Don’t drink unfiltered river water, there are amoebas and stuff in there.The new developers behind Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians, the tactical role-playing game that was funded on Kickstarter in 2014 and has had a tumultuous time coming to fruition, is heading to three new platforms. Little Orbit announced this weekend that Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Unsung Story are in the works.
When Unsung Story was first unveiled, the plan was to bring it to mobile devices, but original developer Playdek later targeted PC platforms. The game’s Kickstarter campaign had stretch goals for Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4 versions of the game, though pledges fell short of those goals.
Unsung Story’s new developer Little Orbit, which officially took over the project in August, said the current-generation console versions of the game are being developed for a reason close to their hearts.
“For me, I remember playing Final Fantasy Tactics from the couch on my PS1, and that format was quintessential to my experience enjoying that game,” Little Orbit CEO Matthew Scott said. He added that backers of the project will be able to update their platform preferences via a survey.
Scott said that Little Orbit was also canceling or changing some of Unsung Story’s backer rewards. Some, the developer said, would be “financially wasteful to produce” because so few backers wanted them, while others weren’t properly priced to account for shipping costs. Here’s an explanation for the former:
The biggest example of the first case is the Game Package sold as a $5 add-on. This package promises 3 exclusive stages only for the backers that ordered it, and only 329 backers purchased it. That means we would be producing 3 extra stages of the game for a small group of players, and we can never release those stages anywhere else. That's not a commitment we can make. For now, we are going to cancel this item. However we are evaluating the possibility of offering a new add-on closer to launch that will give backers a discount on purchasing some form of DLC that isn't exclusive. Similarly only 52 backers selected the Kindle version of the main game and 61 backers selected the Kindle version of the Card Game. Windows Tablet had equally low orders. It's possible that back in 2014, both of these platforms were more viable, but today we need to focus on systems that the majority of backers chose. The late addition 2nd T-Shirt is another example. Only 5 backers selected this add-on, so it makes no sense to go through the work and effort of making it.
Scott asked backers not to panic, saying, “While we are changing or canceling some rewards, we are also going to give some limited refunds to make up for it.”
Little Orbit dropped this weekend’s good and bad news as part of what it hopes will be regular communication about Unsung Story’s development. The studio picked up the game from original developer Playdek, the two companies announced in August, saying they were starting from scratch on the tactical RPG.Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians remains an open sore in the Middle East even as Israel and Team Trump try to turn everyone’s attention to the red herring of Iran, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
By Paul R. Pillar
The United Nations always has had, and rightfully so, a strong role in handling the conflict between Arabs and Jews over land in Palestine. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, Britain assumed administration of Palestine under a mandate from the League of Nations.
In the aftermath of World War II, when an overburdened Britain declared that it was ridding itself of the burden of Palestine, and with the League of Nations having died, it was appropriate that the successor international organization, the United Nations, would address the issue. A special committee of the United Nations drew up a partition plan under which Palestine would be divided into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The U.N. General Assembly approved a modified version of the plan in November 1948.
The plan was generous to the Jewish side, as reflected in heavy Zionist lobbying (especially lobbying in the United States) in favor of it, and Arab states voting against the plan in the General Assembly. Although Jews constituted only one-fourth, and Arabs three-fourths, of the population of Palestine at the time, the proposed Jewish state would get over half the land. Subsequent armed combat made the disconnect between population and land even greater. The land controlled by the Jewish state went from 55 percent of Palestine in the original plan of the UN committee, to 61 percent in the modified version that the General Assembly voted on, to 78 percent after the armistice of 1949, to 100 percent after the war that Israel initiated in 1967.
The U.N. partition plan remains Israel’s founding document: an international charter for the creation of the State of Israel. This is too easily forgotten among more recent rhetoric about the United Nations being allegedly an anti-Israeli forum. The same partition plan also was a charter for creation of a Palestinian Arab state. With the subsequent events determined by Israel’s superior armed might, that part of the charter has gone unrealized. It represents unfinished business. So members of the United Nations appropriately have remained, as is said in diplomatic parlance, seized of the matter.
Haley’s Off-Point Comments
One continuing manifestation of remaining seized of that unfinished business is a quarterly Security Council meeting in which any U.N. member state is allowed to speak and in which the agenda item is “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.” Palestine has, in fact, been the prime focus of these gatherings.
But in the most recent such meeting, held last week — and with the United States chairing the Security Council this month — U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley declared that she was going to talk not about Palestine but instead about Iran. Israeli ambassador Danny Danon, even though his country is one of the direct parties to the conflict over Palestine, eagerly devoted most of his speech to attacks on Iran.
The other participants in the debate focused more on the Palestinian problem, in accordance with the unfinished business, with traditional regional concerns, and with the published agenda item. There were, to be sure, some other criticisms of Iran, including from Iran’s local rivals in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but even with them the problem of Palestine was not far from the surface. The Emirati representative, for example, stated that finding a resolution to the Palestinian question was a “fundamental priority” of his government, and that the UAE was deeply concerned about how the absence of a resolution was denying people in the occupied Palestinian territories their inalienable rights.
The current Israeli government repeatedly plays up the idea that with so much other turmoil in the Middle East, it is somehow not appropriate to focus international attention on the unfinished business in Palestine. The Israeli position involves not just a casting of doubt on the ability of diplomats to walk and chew gum at the same time, but also an assertion that most people in the Middle East don’t care much any more about the plight of the Palestinians. Many American sympathizers of the Israeli government speak in much the same terms and talk about insufficient ripeness in being able to do anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Finding Excuses
This is one of what has been a series of excuses for inaction. At other times the principal excuse may have been that there has been too much disunity on the Palestinian side for that side to produce an effective interlocutor — conveniently ignoring how Israel has done all it can to foment that disunity, even withholding tax receipts due to the Palestinian Authority when the Fatah-run P.A. has made any moves toward healing the breach with Hamas. Now the regional turmoil excuse, with that turmoil so obvious in Syria and elsewhere, has become the favored excuse du jour.
In a note distributed before the Security Council meeting, the United States asked countries to consider, “Who are the regional players that most benefit from chaos in the region?” One honest and accurate answer to that question would be: the Netanyahu government, because of the excuse that chaos provides in deflecting international attention and pressure away from the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory.
The assertions about Middle Easterners no longer caring much about the Palestinian problem are simply not true, as evidenced by government statements, temperature-taking among Arab publics, and exploitation of the issue by extremist groups. Although undoubtedly there has been some diversion of attention toward other troubles, the reasons for widespread resonance of the Palestinian issue are still present. These reasons include sympathy with co-ethnics and co-religionists, a more broadly felt sense of injustice, and awareness of the destabilizing potential of letting the problem fester, including especially the extremist exploitation of the issue.
A Dormant Peace Plan
Leaders of the Arab states, in an Arab League summit meeting last month, found time to reaffirm their call for a two-state solution and their commitment to the 15-year-old Saudi-initiated peace plan that offers full and normal relations with Israel in exchange for ending the occupation of lands Israel conquered in the 1967 war. Modifications to the plan have made clear that mutually agreeable land swaps would be acceptable to the Arab governments.
The summit meeting’s host, King Abdullah of Jordan, stated, “There can be no peace nor stability in the region without a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian cause, the core issue of the Middle East, based on the two-state solution.”
In addition to whatever this reaffirmation says about the Arab regimes’ walking-and-gum-chewing ability, it also puts the lie both to the notion that the region doesn’t care about the Palestinian issue any more and to the notion that the Arabs are unwilling to live in peace and in a normal relationship with Israel. This fresh statement by the Arab League received far too little attention in Washington and by the Trump administration.
Last week’s session at the Security Council demonstrated that, despite the efforts of Haley and Danon, people outside of their two governments really do still care a lot about the untenable and destabilizing plight of the Palestinians. The Council session, and the attempt to turn a discussion about Palestine into a discussion about Iran, also demonstrates how much the Trump administration’s tortured effort to attribute all malignity in the Middle East to Iran is motivated by the Israeli-originated use of Iran as a grand diversion.
The Israeli government’s principal response whenever it begins to feel uncomfortable attention to its occupation is to declare that Iran is the “real problem” in the region and that’s what people should be giving their attention to instead. The Trump administration has been following the same script. That script is not an effective way to address either actual issues with Iran or the problem of an occupation that in a few weeks will reach the half-century mark.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is author most recently of Why America Misunderstands the World. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)By, 2
TORONTO — Panasonic (Osaka, Japan) and Imec (Leuven, Belgium) recently announced they fabricated a 40nm TaOx-based technology with precise filament positioning and high thermal stability for resistive RAM (ReRAM or RRAM).
The results of the collaboration were presented at last months VLSI technology symposium in Kyoto, and open the door to realizing 28nm embedded applications where conventional NOR flash shows scaling limitations. Imec and Panasonic developed a method that overcomes filament instability in ReRAM, one of the critical parameters that impacts the memory state during read operation in resistive memory.
In the paper [ref 1] presented at VLSI, Imec and Panasonic propose TaOx-based ReRAM with precise filament positioning and high thermal stability for 28nm embedded applications. The cell was realized using several newly-developed process technologies and cell structures, including low-damage etching, cell side oxidation and encapsulated cell structure.
In the Imec/Panasonic process, ReRAM is placed between two metal layers that consists of PVD 4nm Ta2O5 / 20nm TaOx stacked layers with 20nm TaN bottom electrode (BE) and 40nm Iridium top electrode (TE). A filament is located near the cell edge that is damaged by the cell etching process and contains a high quantity of free oxygen atoms, so if a filament is located near a damaged area, the free oxygen in the damaged area readily diffuses into the filament during data retention.
Management of the cell edge is a key part of filament control. In large cells, the filament is still far away from the damaged area, but in 40nm or 28nm ReRAM cells, the filament is located nearer the damaged area that supplies extra free oxygen.
By taking this approach, it was possible to form a filament at the cell center while at the same time, it confirmed the feasibility of 20nm cell size. According to the authors, excellent reliability was achieved in 2Mbit 40nm ReRAM, as they were able to demonstrate 100,000 cycles and 10 years retention at 85 degrees Celsius.
Cross-sectional TEM of 40-nm Ir(TE)/Ta2O5/TaOx/TaN (BE) RRAM
ReRAM, along with other emerging types memory such as ferro-electric RAM (FRAM), magneto-resistive RAM (MRAM), are getting attention due to the anticipated scaling limits for DRAM and NAND. While none have all of attributes to completely replace either of the predominant memories, they do show potential for certain applications. ReRAMs low power consumption and small cell area make it an appealing non-volatile memory.
Panasonic already offers an 8bit MCU with embedded ReRAM that may be used for portable health care applications, security equipment and sensor equipment.
Another company bringing a version of ReRAM to market is Adesto. It offers stand-alone memory chips ranging from 32kb to 128kb of conductive bridge RAM (CBRAM) for use in low power applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT). Adestos CBRAM has also been tested and proven to endure the sterilization required for medical applications. It uses typical memory cells to store digital ones and zeroes; Adesto adds a dielectric layer in its manufacturing process. A small electrical voltage is used to change the resistance of the memory cell between high and low resistance to distinguish between ones and a zeroes.
Rambus has been working on ReRAM since acquiring the technology after buying Unity Semiconductor in early 2012. Unity was working on a metal oxide-based cross-point two-terminal non-volatile memory cell under the name CMOx, which Rambus renamed ReRAM. Earlier this year, Rambus announced its first commercial customer for ReRAM: Tezzaron Semiconductor is incorporating Rambus ReRAM technology in forthcoming devices through an architecture license that provides Tezzaron access to system IP, specifications and validation suites to design differentiated chips.
Crossbar, meanwhile, has developed 3D RRAM with a built-in select feature that the company said allows thousands of RRAM cells to be inter-connected in true cross-point memory arrays, providing the capability to scale below 10nm.
While ReRAM does offer the appeal of non-volatility as well as being fast and low power, its still somewhat a niche memory and more expensive, and its not going to widely supplant DRAM or NAND anytime soon.
—Gary Hilson covers memory and flash technologies for EE Times and is the editor of Memory Designline.
[1] Highly reliable TaO ReRAM with centralized filament for 28-nm embedded application, Y. Hayakawa et al, Imec/Panasonic, Proc VLSI2015
Related Articles:More than a dozen chief House lawmakers are invited to the meeting with Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. | Getty DHS chief huddles with lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday
Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly will meet with Senate and House lawmakers Tuesday afternoon after members on both sides of the aisle expressed concerns and outrage about President Trump’s refugee ban, which unleashed chaos at airports and mass confusion on Capitol Hill over the weekend.
Several key senators and House lawmakers are invited to the meeting, according to multiple sources. Invitees include House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and several other lawmakers who lead committees with ties to the refugee ban.
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Ryan has chatted with Kelly privately and will not attend today's meeting, his spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an email Tuesday morning.
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Intel ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas), Homeland ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss), Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Judiciary ranking member John Conyers (D-Mich.), Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), and Appropriations ranking member Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) are also invited.
Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), John Carter (R-Texas), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), Filemon Vela (D-Texas), Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) are all also on the list, according to a Democratic aide.
The confab comes after House Democrats fired off a letter to Kelly late Sunday night, demanding an “emergency” meeting with the new DHS chief following a weekend of protests and pushback to Trump’s executive order. Republicans haven't been as harsh in their criticism Trump's controversial order, although several GOP members have said it needs to be retooled and that they were kept in the dark about the president's plan until it was signed Friday afternoon.
Lofgren introduced legislation Monday to rescind Trump’s executive order, which temporarily bans all refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The Lofgren bill is unlikely to go anywhere given Ryan’s support of Trump’s order. But the meeting with Kelly could help put to rest some of confusion surrounding the ban, which has been roundly criticized by Democrats and tepidly embraced by most Republicans.
In the Sunday letter to Kelly, Democrats expressed significant concerns about “widespread chaos and confusion” over which travelers were being detained as the landed in the U.S. and whether customs agents were blocking detainees from legal aid, even after a federal judge ordered them not to do so.
House and Senate Democrats rallied at the foot of the Supreme Court Monday night, braving freezing temperatures to huddle with more than a thousand demonstrators denouncing Trump’s plan.
Earlier in the evening, Senate Republicans rejected Democratic attempts to force a vote on a bill to rescind Trump’s order.
Burgess Everett contributed to this reportReady to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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Congressional Republicans have frequently attacked Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) she’s setting up, which officially launches on July 21. The House GOP escalated its anti-Warren, anti-CFPB campaign at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee today, chaired by Representative Patrick McHenry (R-NC). Ad Policy
McHenry was once known as Tom DeLay’s “attack-dog-in-training,” a title he more than earned today. Before the hearing had even begun, McHenry went on CNBC and brazenly accused Warren of lying to Congress. He claimed that Warren had misrepresented her role in advising state attorneys general who are seeking a multibillion-dollar settlement with the country’s largest mortgage service providers, who stand accused of massive and widespread foreclosure fraud. As evidence, McHenry pointed to a leaked internal document prepared by the CFPB that laid out different settlement options for the state AGs. McHenry claimed this went beyond the scope of the “advice,” that Warren had already admitted to providing, at the behest of the Treasury Department, in earlier testimony to Congress in March. “We’ve given advice when asked for advice,” she reiterated this afternoon.
The subcommittee hearing devolved into a linguistic discussion of the true meaning of the word “advise,” as the Merriam-Webster definition (“to give [someone] a recommendation about what should be done”) flashed on large TV screens in the hearing room. But given that Warren had already copped to giving such advice, it was difficult to find any meaningful contradiction in her remarks. Nor has she or the CFPB played a leading role in the settlement talks. “It’s simply not accurate to say the CFPB has masterminded this,” Geoff Greenwood, spokesman for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who’s leading settlement talks for the AGs, told me recently.
Despite his thin paper trail, McHenry was intent on making Warren look bad. The Western North Carolina Congressman frequently interrupted her answers and accused the CFPB of possessing “virtually unchecked” power. Near the end of the hearing, Representative John Yarmouth (D-KY) apologized to Warren for the “rude and disrespectful behavior of the chair.” Incidentally, McHenry has accepted generous campaign donations this year from big banks and industry trade associations opposed to bureau, including $1,000-plus checks from the American Bankers Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, American Express, American Financial Services Organization, Cash America International, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.
Ed Mierzwinski, the consumer program director at US PIRG, said the hearing was just another attempt by the GOP “to try to weaken Warren’s credibility.” He invoked an old saying from law school: “If the law is on your side, argue the law. If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If you don’t have either, just argue.”
The hearing was titled “Who’s Watching the Watchmen? Oversight of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” but Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) argued that it should be dubbed “Let’s Pretend the Financial Crisis Never Happened.” Indeed, Congressional Republicans spent no time on the lax oversight and corporate deception that led to the financial crisis—and how a consumer agency dedicated to policing the murky financial services sector might have prevented or mitigated a prolonged recession. “Too often consumer protection was the second thought, third thought, or not even thought of at all,” Maloney said. That’s why Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration created the CFPB as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act.
“I’m begging you to keep the fire,” Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) told Warren. “I’ve had constituents who’ve lost so much they don’t even know why…. We need your passion and concern. Thank you for syncing your conduct and conscience.”
At the end of the testy hearing, McHenry told Warren: “I admire your service to our government. I do.” He and the House GOP certainly have a funny way of showing it.Chelsea Clinton on Friday vowed to stay friends with Ivanka Trump regardless of which of their parents wins the White House this fall.
“We were friends long before this election. We will be friends long after this election," Clinton said on ABC's "The View."
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"Our friendship didn't start in politics, it certainly is not going to end because of politics,” Clinton continued. “I have tremendous respect for Ivanka. I love her family."
"You mean her children, her husband?" co-host Joy Behar clarified as Clinton nodded in the affirmative.
Trump, 34, said last month that Clinton, 34, remained "a very close friend," pushing back on reports they had ended their friendship as the presidential campaign heated up.
“We have a great relationship," Trump said.
"I wish they didn’t like each other, but they do," he said.2.1 Requirements
2.2 Downloading the Game
3. BASIC TERMS & SETTINGS
3.1. Glossary
3.2 Game Settings
3.3 Game Controls
Next >>> Part 4. Getting Started
Beginner's Guide Navigation
Parts 1 -3: Requirements & Key Terms
Part 4: Getting Started
Parts 6 -7: Evolution & Trainer Progress
Pokémon Go requires an Android or iOS Device with GPS and Internet access (WiFi or Mobile Data) to play. Android devices must have version 4.3 or higher and iOS users must have an iPhone 5 or better. Not sure if you meet the requirements? Learn which OS your phone is currently running The game can be downloaded in either the Google Play App Store (Android users) or the iTunes App Store (iOS users). Depending on your device, simply head over to either Virtual Store and search Apps for “ Pokémon Go”. Click on “Install” and you should be good to go.Be sure to have at least 200MB of free storage space to download the App. The initial download is around 50MB, but there may be new updates to download as well.If the storage space on your device is insufficient you will be prompted with a message upon the attempted download. Simply delete unused files (Apps, Pictures, Videos, etc.) or clear your Cache to free up the necessary space.This section goes over the basic Terms, Settings and Controls every new Pokémon Go player should know.There are a variety of different Terms used in Pokémon Go, which some players may not be familiar with. Be sure to check out the Glossary to learn more about the commonly used Terms and Phrases in Pokemon Go. You have the ability to zoom in and out of the map while traveling. In addition, you can choose to turn on the Battery Saver mode, which is very useful for conserving power (especially if you don’t have a backup battery).You are the controller. Simply start walking and your virtual Trainer will travel along with you. Use your touchscreen to interact with the Menu.Pokémon and Locations on your Map. The controls are simple to use and you will get accustomed to them in a short period of time.If you have intend to use the Pokémon Go Plus, make sure to keep your phone's Bluetooth setting on.When connected wirelessly, you will be able to capture Pokemon without needing to look at your smartphone.Homicides continue to drop in Chicago, to the lowest levels since the 1960s, but shootings remain stubbornly higher, with the numbers of incidents and victims both on the rise at the nine-month mark of 2014, according to statistics released Wednesday by Chicago police.
For the first nine months, 1,927 people were shot, a 6 percent increase that translates into 114 more victims than the year-earlier period, the statistics show.
But homicides fell 7 percent to 298, 22 fewer killings than a year earlier and the lowest numbers since 1965, according to the department. It also marks the eighth consecutive quarter in which homicides have dropped.
Despite the drop in homicides, though, Chicago continues to far outpace more populous New York and Los Angeles on that front. According to the most recent numbers available, New York City posted 225 homicides through Sept. 21, down 8.5 percent, while homicides dropped 4 percent to 187 in Los Angeles through Sept. 13. Both also had far fewer shooting victims — 1,014 in New York, a 5.5 percent increase, and 654 in LA, a 12 percent decline, those cities' statistics show.
Even as Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy lauds the reductions — including a 14 percent drop in overall crime through the first nine months — his message is often obscured by the drumbeat of the 24/7 news cycle with daily stories about the seemingly runaway violence mostly on the South and West sides. This year has seen the high-profile deaths of 11-year-old Shamiya Adams, who was killed by a stray bullet while on a sleepover inside a West Side home, and 9-year-old Antonio Smith, who was fatally shot on the South Side, allegedly by gang members looking to gun down rivals.
The department continues to flood the city's most dangerous streets with hundreds of extra cops. Up to 200 veteran officers work overtime every day of the week in 20 "impact zones" in the most crime-plagued neighborhoods.
Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy discusses Chicago's homicide and shooting statistics for the first nine months of 2014, and overall trends in violent crime. Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy discusses Chicago's homicide and shooting statistics for the first nine months of 2014, and overall trends in violent crime. SEE MORE VIDEOS
During the summer, the department also canceled days off for certain tactical units on the weekends and allowed officers to work on their days off to patrol parks, CTA train lines and public housing complexes.
In addition, 40 Illinois state troopers as well as Cook County sheriff's deputies joined Chicago police in the hunt for fugitives, while the FBI and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assigned agents to assist in some of the city's worst neighborhoods.
jgorner@tribune.com
Twitter @JeremyGornerHello everyone! Just wanted to say, thank you for your support on the thank-you cards so far. We’ve already got over 60 collected, which is a great start. Now we just need a few hundred more, so if you can spread the word about it on social media and other places, we would be very grateful.
Now that that’s taken care of, on to today’s batch of Story updates!
Updated Stories:
Kitsunegari by R.D.L. Fowler
Zotoopia Drabbles by DemonWriterX
The Fallen Chronicles by Jacato
Zootopia: In the Days that Followed by Ayziks
Take a Stand by Garouge Faux
The Masked Fox by Cimar of Turalis WildeHopps
New chapters after the break!
Kitsunegari by R.D.L. Fowler
Zotoopia Drabbles by DemonWriterX
The Fallen Chronicles by Jacato
Zootopia: In the Days that Followed by Ayziks
Take a Stand by Garouge FauxRoughly a year ago, Obama indicated that he would "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."
They are asking all concerned Americans to call the Obama campaign at (866) 675-2008 and indicate that we are expecting him to keep his word by blocking any deals which include immunity for the telecom companies. These companies helped the Bush Administration illegally spy on the emails and phone calls of innocent Americans. By giving "immunity" to these companies, all lawsuits brought against them by civil liberties groups would be thrown out of court. That means we may never find out how far Bush went in breaking the law. And once it's done, it can't be undone. That's why we need Obama to promise to block any bill that has immunity. Unacceptable. I am not sure I'll be able to continue supporting Obama if he ends up joining the Democratic capitulation. The Fourth Amendment is simply too important.
For those who still don't understand why this is such a big deal, read Glenn Greenwald's excellent article at
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Roughly a year ago, Obama indicated that he would "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." MoveOn.org is calling on him to do what he said he would do.They are asking all concerned Americans to call the Obama campaign at (866) 675-2008 and indicate that we are expecting him to keep his word by blocking any deals which include immunity for the telecom companies.Unacceptable. I am not sure I'll be able to continue supporting Obama if he ends up joining the Democratic capitulation. The Fourth Amendment is simply too important.For those who still don't understand why this is such a big deal, read Glenn Greenwald's excellent article at Salon.com Tags:
The embarrassing capitulation on the Bush/Hoyer FISA deal (H.R. 6304) by House Democrats is expected to head to the Senate for a vote as early as Monday. The deal, which our elected officials are hoping to pass quietly without our notice, grants immunity to the telecom companies that helped Bush illegally spy on Americans. Now MoveOn.org is calling on Sen. Obama to honor his previous promise to filibuster the legislation. Believe it or not, it appears that he's thinking of flip-flopping and has already expressed some support for the dealThere are audio reels can be found around Gorod Krovi. Each audio log is narrated by Sophia and has a Directive number attached to it.[1] The wisps of light, on the other hand can only be found after Round 15. These are narrated by Dr. Monty.
Contents show]
Audio Reel 1 (Operations Bunker) Edit
Sophia: Directive log 203.1. Now that the 115 contamination of the Red Army is complete, |
:
Ben Bradshaw 39,080 (9.6%)
Stella Creasy 78,100 (19.1%)
Angela Eagle 66,013 (16.2%)
Caroline Flint 64,425 (15.8%)
Tom Watson 160,852 (39.4%)
SECOND ROUND
Ben Bradshaw – Out
Stella Creasy 86,555 (21.4%)
Angela Eagle 72,517 (17.9%)
Caroline Flint 74,581 (18.4%)
Tom Watson 170,589 (42.2%)
THIRD ROUND
Stella Creasy 103,746 (26.4%)
Angela Eagle – Out
Caroline Flint 89,538 (22.8%)
Tom Watson 198,962 (50.7%)There has been a spat of racial issues involving Chinese lately that received some widespread attention. The Zhang Yimou film The Great Wall was hit with controversy regarding Matt Damon playing the typical and tired "white man savior" role. Constance Wu spearheaded the criticism and helped bring attention to the issue. When news of a Mulan remake came to light, people took to a petition to protest against "whitewashing" the film and including white characters for no good reason. YG, an American rapper, made a song a couple years ago with lyrics explaining how to steal and to target Chinese neighborhoods. Chinese responded by launching a petition and rating the song negatively on YouTube. Fox News had a segment that contained a plethora of Asian stereotypes that many found offensive. Ronny Chieng from The Daily Show made an excellent response. There were also protests outside Fox News headquarters in Manhattan.
Some lesser known examples include the Bruce Lee biopic Birth of the Dragon, which inexplicably focused on some white guy and his romantic relationship with a Chinese girl. Bruce Lee's own daughter Shannon has distanced herself from the film. Hollywood's obsession with injecting white male characters into films is borderline pathological at this point. According to The Wall Street Journal, Peter Linneman (emeritus professor of real estate at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and principal of real-estate advisory firm Linneman Associates) made disparaging remarks against Chinese men at a real estate conference. There has also been the targeting of Chinese for crime in the US, France, New Zealand and Australia, to name a few.
Reactions included protests, Chinese consulate involvement and patrol groups like the one in Sacramento organized by a 1,000-member WeChat group. Just last week, the Chinese Consulate in New York issued a statement about Syracuse student Yuan Xiaopeng, who was found dead after reports of gunshots.
Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
There is no reason why the media shouldn't be spotlighting these issues and helping to foster solutions. The world is becoming more connected than ever before and these issues were never exclusive to citizens of foreign countries. It was netizens in China that helped push the YG song into the news. It is Chinese citizens studying overseas who are being targeted for crime. It's Chinese social media like WeChat that is being used to organize and mobilize everything from the Peter Liang protests to the Sacramento patrol groups. These issues don't recognize citizenship. All Chinese are affected by crimes targeting Chinese and films made or funded by Chinese that support white worship.
Chinese media, both in China and overseas, should coordinate to report it, keep conversation going and dedicate sections for stories involving Chinese overseas. There are many Chinese victims whose stories are ignored by corporate Western media. Chinese media should not ignore them.
Call out Chinese actors, actresses and companies that help make or fund these appalling films. Demand they stop pushing blind foreign worship onto Chinese society. Their careers and business in China should pay the price for doing it.
Facilitate communication and awareness. Work with WeChat groups, Chinese discussion forums and organizations that are dedicated to tackling these issues: spread awareness to other Chinese that they exist; help form new groups, new watchdogs and organize them; create a database of information with relevant links and pool resources on these topics; bring these issues to the attention of the Chinese government; include the appropriate topics in the annual report on human rights in the US.
If there's a story or comment exposing anti-Chinese racism, retweet it.
The issues confronting and affecting Chinese cannot be disassociated from Chinese media. There is a real need for a coordinated effort to spread awareness and foster solutions that Chinese media can specifically meet. It's long past due for responsibility to be taken up in earnest to help mold a healthier Chinese society.
According to the Xinhua News Agency, President Xi Jinping said at a recent meeting that government departments should "use the web for better policymaking, more precise social governance and more effective public service." There are laws and guidelines for media being implemented right now because the status quo is deemed unsatisfactory. Help tackle these issues and achieve results that make an impression.
The author is a writer from KultureMedia, a media watchdog on behalf of Asian Americans. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn Follow us on Twitter @GTopinionPolice hold 36-year-old after video footage of Muslim women being sworn at and threatened with violence goes viral
A woman has been arrested in connection with the racist abuse of two Muslim women on a London bus, after video footage of the incident went viral on social media.
The 36-year-old woman, who has not been named, was arrested on Friday at her home in Willesden Green, north-west London, on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence on the No 206 bus.
The Metropolitan police said she remained in custody at a north London police station as inquiries continued.
The incident came days after the government ordered police forces to increase data-gathering on Islamophobic attacks.
Video footage taken by a fellow passenger shows a woman, accompanied by a child in a pushchair, shouting abuse at two Muslim women, and continuing after the bus driver comes out of his cab twice to try to defuse the situation.
At one point the woman in the video can be heard swearing and telling the women to “go back to your own country”, and she appears to threaten to kick one of the Muslim women – who is pregnant – in the stomach.
“I will kick you in the stomach. I will pull that down and kick you, so you never have a kid again,” she says. “I will donkey kick you. It will be the first time I’ve ever resorted to violence in public.”
Anyone who has information that may help the investigation, or who was on the bus at the time, has been asked to contact the Met police or Crimestoppers.Trying to be objective — and that's sometimes difficult for me when it comes to politics — I don't agree that former FBI Director James Comey's congressional testimony was equally good news and bad news for President Trump. Trump came away a decisive winner.
Most agree that Trump benefited from Comey's admission that Trump was not in fact under FBI investigation for colluding with the Russians or for anything else. But many Trump critics, left and right, see Comey's negative portrait of Trump as so damaging as to cancel out the positive news, which, on reflection, is incorrect.
It's true that Comey painted Trump as dishonest, petty and vindictive and as one who operates in office as a business executive rather than someone who respects the parameters of his authority. Even if true, is this caricature news to anyone? Trump's critics already believe it, and most of his supporters believe it is overstated.
This is not to say that Trump's defenders would approve of any abuses of authority, but they aren't predisposed to assume that every unorthodox action on Trump's part is malicious or indicative of a tyrannical or criminal mindset.
So the only "news" that emerged from Comey's testimony — the only facts that might change the status quo ante — was that Trump has not been under investigation this whole time. Not only that but he did not pressure or even attempt to persuade Comey to go softly on any of his associates on the Russia investigation if it were discovered they had some illicit interaction with the Russians.
For some, Comey landed a blow against Trump in alleging he told Comey he "hoped" the investigation against Flynn would end and in requesting from Comey "honest loyalty." Here again, Trump's attackers are predisposed to assume Trump was using code to direct Comey to stop investigating Flynn and to pledge his loyalty to Trump above his professional duties. Trump's defenders reject that, so on this issue, the needle didn't move a centimeter in either direction.
Some might say: "Hold on. This isn't just a matter of Trump supporters believing one way and his defenders another. Comey was the only one in the room, and he took Trump's words as directives."
Well, even if you assume that's what Trump meant, which I don't, legal experts agree that no one has been charged with obstruction of justice on such vague language as "hope." The thought of it is preposterous. Moreover, some experts argue that as chief executive, he has the power to end investigations conducted by the executive branch. Let's remember that the Flynn investigation and Russia investigation are two different matters and that Trump is not the target of either one of them. If it occurred, it would have been inappropriate behavior but hardly criminal or impeachable conduct.
But I don't believe that Comey's inferences are accurate. Trump is an advocate by nature and is loyal to his friends. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that he was just expressing his vote of confidence in Flynn's character and was by no means suggesting that Comey ignore hard evidence against him, much less directing him to.
I have a hard time believing that Comey really thought at the time that Trump was giving him orders. If he really believed so, then it is indisputable that he acted improperly at the time and thereafter. If he really believed Trump was trying to obstruct justice, he had a duty to do something about it, but instead, he decided to hold it close to the vest and only use it if he needed it later. Is that the way a man in his position should have behaved?
As to Trump's firing of Comey, if you were Trump, wouldn't you be outraged if Comey refused to disclose that you were not under investigation when everything else was leaked — as Sen. Marco Rubio noted? Didn't Trump have a right to be indignant over the lies being disseminated every day on this and a right to want to quell these lies that were impeding his agenda? Was it unreasonable for Trump to think Comey was biased against him, seeing as Comey refused to set the record straight on this matter when he'd certainly tried to set the record straight publicly on other issues before?
What about Comey's revelations concerning his own bizarre behavior? I was originally willing to believe that Comey was scrupulously aboveboard and would strive for objectivity — that he would try not to allow his personal biases to color his objectivity or influence the course of the investigation or his assessment of the evidence. Based on his own testimony, I am now quite skeptical.
Comey bent over backward to conclude that Hillary Clinton had no criminal intent in the handling of her private emails — yet his conclusion was in direct conflict with the evidence he meticulously detailed against her. It is hard to believe he would have given any other target such an enormous benefit of the doubt.
Yet despite his professed reluctance to infer criminal intent there, he leaped to such conclusions against Trump with the eagerness of a never-Trumper. "Hope" equals "You are hereby ordered"? Give me a break. "Loyalty" equals "I order you not to follow the evidence wherever it may lead you"? Come on now. These inferences wouldn't be reasonable for any investigator, but for Comey, who expressed reluctance to making inferences on intent, they are outrageous.
Comey damningly admitted he leaked information to a Columbia law professor in the hope that it would lead to the appointment of a special investigator. Some say Comey was within his rights as a private citizen. But as certain legal experts have noted, he acquired that information when he was working for the government, and it wasn't his private property. Comey holds himself out as the pinnacle of decorum but became a perpetrator of the very type of conduct he was self-righteously investigating.
Some applauded Comey's willingness to speak truth to power, but he admitted that he didn't object to Trump's allegedly improper overtures to him. In this hearing, Comey showed himself to be far too concerned with the public's perception about him and allowed his personal feelings and biases to interfere with his objectivity. In the end, he didn't lay a glove on Trump but significantly damaged himself — and, as a bonus, exposed Barack Obama's second attorney general, Loretta Lynch, as a perpetrator of the very behavior others have improperly attributed to Trump.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is "The True Jesus: Uncovering the Divinity of Christ in the Gospels." Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2017 CREATORS.COMBachmann didn't detail how she would cut the price of gasoline. | AP Photos Bachmann: I'll get gas under $2
Americans will save at the pump if Michele Bachmann is elected president, the Minnesota Republican said Tuesday.
“The day that the president became president gasoline was $1.79 a gallon. Look at what it is today,” she said at an event in Greenville, S.C.. “Under President Bachmann, you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again. That will happen.”
Story Continued Below
The average price for a gallon of gasoline is currently $3.58 per gallon, according to AAA.
Bachmann didn’t detail how she would cut the price of gasoline, which is tied to the global price of oil. She briefly mentioned the prospect of oil shale development in Western states and has been an active proponent of increased domestic oil drilling, including in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 11:55 a.m. on August 17, 2011.Sorry, this video has expired
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US Navy officials have been left red-faced after one of their jet pilots drew a large penis in the sky over Washington state.
Images posted on social media showed the image stretching high over Okanogan County.
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"The actions of this aircrew are wholly unacceptable and antithetical to Navy core values," said a statement issued by the NAS Whidbey Island airbase.
"We have grounded the aircrew and are conducting a thorough investigation, and we will hold those responsible accountable for their actions.
"The Navy apologises for this irresponsible and immature act, and anyone who was offended by this unacceptable action."
The aircraft involved was an E/A-18 Growler, the Navy said.
The carrier-based plane carries a two-person crew.
The plane flew over the small town in a pattern "that left a condensed air trail resembling an obscene image to observers on the ground", the Navy said.
"Sophomoric and immature antics of a sexual nature have no place in Naval aviation today," Vice Admiral Mike Shoemaker, the commander of Naval Air Forces, added in a statement.
"We will investigate this incident to get all the facts and act accordingly."
The names of the air crew were not released.
A local television station said one mother in Okanogan County was concerned she might have to explain the image to her young children.
But local resident Ramone Duran told the Seattle Times newspaper that "after it made the circles at the bottom, I knew what it was and started laughing".
This is not the first time an air crew has pulled such a stunt, the BBC reported.
In August an RAF fighter pilot drew a 56-kilometre penis on radar monitoring the skies over Lincolnshire, England.
Reuters/APAna Marie Cox, political columnist and culture critic, sits down with liberals and conservatives, pastors, writers, activists, and other people you should know for an open, funny, in-depth conversation about what divides us - a show about listening instead of arguing.
Segment 1: Bob Inglis (of RepublicEN.org) is a conservative climate change denier turned conservative climate change activist. We talk about what he’s learned about how to approach those who disagree with him — there are some concrete tips! Lots of Greek and Roman references!
Segment 2: We dive into the power and powerlessness of prayer with Washington Post writer and editor Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig. (TRIGGER WARNING: CONTAINS JESUS.)
Bob on Twitter: @bobinglis
Liz on Twitter: @ebruenig
The show: @crooked_friends
Here’s a profile of Bob that gets into his conversion experience: http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2016-6-november-december/feature/bob-inglis-takes-stand-climate-change
(And here’s an interview we did for my day job: http://www.mtv.com/news/3007121/a-republican-evangelizes-for-action-on-climate-change/)
Liz’s essay on prayer during a period of personal troubles: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/12/24/my-husband-lost-his-job-his-sister-was-murdered-heres-what-it-did-to-my-faith/?utm_term=.7f18875fbedd
We’re still collecting listener questions for an upcoming call-in show! Send you comments and heartfelt queries to withfriendslikepod@gmail.com
Our delightful sponsors this week:
Betterment: Investing made better. WFLT listeners can get one month managed free by going to Betterment.com/Friends
Upside.com: The best way to travel for business. Get a $100 Amazon gift card if you use the offer code FRIENDS.
Ziprecruiter: The best way to find candidates. Listeners can post for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/friends.Christopher Koch, who was widely regarded as one of Australia’s finest novelists and whose best-known book, “The Year of Living Dangerously,” became even better known as a film, died on Monday in Hobart, Australia. He was 81.
The cause was cancer, said his agent, Margaret Connolly.
Guy Hamilton, the lead character of “The Year of Living Dangerously,” was loosely based on Mr. Koch’s younger brother, Philip, a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Commission who covered the violent decline of the regime of President Sukarno of Indonesia in the 1960s.
In Mr. Koch’s narrative, Hamilton’s personal life and his work as a journalist become entangled with people whose identities and loyalties are slowly revealed to be more complicated than he expected — echoing the mystery with which many Australians regarded Asia and its political turbulence at the time.
The book was published in 1978. The film, whose screenplay Mr. Koch (pronounced kosh) co-wrote, was released in 1982, with Mel Gibson in the starring role. (Mr. Gibson’s tense signoffs to his radio dispatches — “This is Guy Hamilton in Jakarta” — are remarkably similar to those of Philip Koch, some of which are available online.)In Matthew 26, Jesus challenged religious leaders of his day to address the greed and self-indulgence in their own life instead of focusing on outward religious actions. He told them to, “first wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too.” In this current season of Lent I am acutely aware that far too often I myself need to take this advice. My life can be covered by such a lacquer of pride, hypocrisy and deceit.
The trouble is I that there isn’t anything I can give up for Lent that will make me clean. There is no prayer that has the power to make me holy. Only God can do that, and in Lent I see how desperately I am in need of his help.
This great image by Steve Robinson I think demonstrates what Lent is really like for so many of us.
Lord have mercy!
(via Steve Robinson)Is your city naughty or nice? Here are the Top 10 Naughtiest Cities for Renters, where the tight rental market gets a lump of coal in its stocking:
10. Portland, OR
Portland’s population growth is increasingly becoming a problem for residents in this sprawling metropolitan. Known for being the “City of Roses” due to its multitude of rose gardens, Portland has become a hot market for landlords and renters alike. Residents have come to expect harsh applicant policies and even harsher landlords who increase rents at a whim.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 5.0%
Median Rent 1BR: $1,338
Median Household Income: $51,238
9. Seattle, WA
According to the U.S. Census, Seattle saw the biggest spike in median rental prices among the top metropolitan areas in the nation from 2010 to 2013. In addition to rental increases, Seattle has also seen an increase in the number of renters year over year. Perhaps it’s the influx of tech jobs or the great coffee—either way, renters are paying hefty price tags for this seaport city.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 5.7%
Median Rent 1BR: $1,756
Median Household Income: $63,470
8. Boston, MA
Boston’s rising rental rates are deterring renters from landing leases in the city proper. Instead, they are heading to the suburbs so they can have easy access to all the entertainment, food and culture that Boston provides without the lofty price tag.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 5.9%
Median Rent 1BR: $2,894
Median Household Income: $53,136
7. Honolulu, HI
There’s a price to pay when you live in one of the most popular honeymoon destinations in this country and it’s extremely high monthly rents. While Honolulu can be considered paradise with the beach as your backyard, there are a lot of factors that make it a rough place for renters to live. In addition to the cost of housing, everyday items like groceries and gas are more expensive in Hawaii because of its location. At the end of the day, that’s the price of the beautiful weather and the Aloha spirit.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 6.3%
Median Rent 1BR: $3,984
Median Household Income: $72,292
6. Denver, CO
With the constant influx of new renters and lack of apartment vacancies in Denver, the Mile High City comes in at number 6 on our naughty list. As Denver’s rental market isn’t being replenished by new construction for apartments, residents are beginning to load up their cars and head to the suburbs for more space and cheaper prices.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 4.7%
Median Rent 1BR: $1,499
Median Household Income: $49,091
5. Los Angeles, CA
With the constant stream of new luxury apartment buildings in the works, it’s becoming increasingly more expensive for renters in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has even been dubbed the least affordable city in the U.S., according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Study. The limited public transportation and increasing gas prices do nothing to help cushion the blow to the renters’ paycheck.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 4.9%
Median Rent 1BR: $2,485
Median Household Income: $49,745
4. San Jose, CA
While the Bay Area may be known for its lovely weather (minus some fog), great food and wonderful location, it also gets the reputation of being an expensive rental market. With many young families moving out of San Francisco into surrounding counties, rent has started to increase as San Jose has become more desirable. Everyone wants to send their kids to the area’s strong school system, but the amount of your monthly income going to pay the bills means you end up feeling like the Grinch.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 3.8%
Median Rent 1BR: $2,360
Median Household Income: $81,349
3. New York, NY
With demand for rental units as high as it is in New York City, actually finding an apartment can feel like a Hanukkah miracle. In a city where it feels like just walking outside your home means opening up your wallet, it’s tough to make it in New York without feeling like you’re constantly broke. With so much to do (and so much of it costing a lot of money!), being a renter in New York is a never-ending struggle between eating ramen for dinner to save a few bucks versus having to try whatever is this week’s Cronut.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 6.4%
Median Rent 1BR: $4,010
Median Household Income: $51,865
2. Ventura, CA
Ventura’s beautiful southern California location can make for a picturesque city to live in, but its pricey rental prices often leave renters feeling more like the Grinch than Santa Claus. With rents as high as $1,578 for a one-bedroom apartment, it’s no wonder renters in Ventura often find themselves sticking it out in their current apartment instead of taking the risk of leaving and being left out in the cold.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 2.3%
Median Rent 1BR: $1,578
Median Household Income: $76,483
1. San Francisco, CA
Across the Bay Area, average rental prices are approaching record highs as the demand for housing remains strong and high-income tech workers continue to Silicon Valley with ideas of the next Uber or Facebook. The rental situation is complicated by the city’s geography, strict building codes and its residents desire to live in a place with great view and endless local attractions. San Francisco residents know that you end up having to choose between affordable rent, a good location and living with roommates because getting all three is next to impossible.
Rental Vacancy Rate: 3.2%
Median Rent 1BR: $3,125
Median Household Income: $73,802
Which cities made Santa’s nice list? See the Top 10 Nicest Cities for Renters!
Methodology: Rent.com has assembled the Top 10 Naughty/Nice Cities for Renters based on the top 75 metropolitan areas as deemed by the U.S. Census. Cities with exceptionally low rental vacancy rates (lower than the national average of 7.4%) and high median rental rates were considered “naughty.” Median household income was also taken into consideration. The Top 10 Nice Cities were ranked based on high rental inventory (greater than the national average) and low median rental rates. Rental vacancy was given a weight of 5 points and median rental rates were given a weight of 3 during the ranking process. Household income (2012) and rental vacancy rates (2013 estimate) were provided by the U.S. Census (2012). Median rental rates were provided by Rent.com (2014).When Entertainment Weekly first spoke to actor Greg Sestero back in 2008 the cult which surrounded his film The Room was still a small, mostly Los Angeles-based affair. Six years on, director-writer-star Tommy Wiseau’s fantastically awful film has become famous around the world and Sestero’s recent memoir The Disaster Artist — which concerns both the film’s production and his friendship with Wiseau — has been optioned by James Franco.
Don’t want to read a book about the making of a terrible film? Then maybe you’d like to hear about it instead. The audiobook version of The Disaster Artist, which is read by Sestero himself, is released May 19. But you can exclusively hear Greg relate the tale behind the film’s infamous “Flower Shop” scene below.
Thanks a lot. Bye!Idiomatic Django Deployment - The Definitely Definitive Guide
Wow, this guide is long. Why not skip it? George and Adam are both available to freelance.
Or, if you’re kind of excited by how long this guide is, consider following George on Twitter or subscribing to his newsletter.
Overview
By the end of this guide, you should be have a simple but stable actually deployed Django website accessible at a public URL. So anyone in the world will be able to visit “www.yourapp.com” and see a page that says “Hello World!”
You’ll go through the following steps:
Updated August 9th, 2015 to use Django 1.8.
Why This Guide Is Needed
A few years ago, George taught himself to program in order to build his first startup, LinerNotes. He started out expecting that the hardest part would be getting his head around the sophisticated algorithmic logic of programming. To his surprise, he’s actually had to do very little difficult algorithmic work.[1] Instead, the hardest part was getting proficient at using the many different tools in the programmer’s utility belt. From emacs to gunicorn, building a real project requires dozens of different tools. Theoretically, one can a priori reason through a red-black tree but there’s just no way to learn emacs without the reading the manual. LinerNotes is actually a lot more complicated under the hood than it looks on the surface and so he had to read quite a lot of manuals.
The point of this guide is to save you some of that trouble. Sometimes trouble is good – struggling to design and implement an API builds programming acumen. But struggling to configure nginx is just a waste of time. We’ve found many partial guides to Django deployment but haven’t found any single, recently updated resource that lays out the simple, Pythonic way of deploying a Django site in production. This post will walk you through creating such a set up. But it won’t introduce you to basic DevOps 101 concepts. See the bottom for a glossary of acronyms and explanatory footnotes (because Github breaks my intra-page links).[2]
Disclaimer: We’re definitely not the most qualified people to write this post. We’re just the only one dumb enough to try. If you object to anything in this post or get confused or find something broken, help make it better. Leave a helpful comment (or even better submit a pull request to the Github repo.) The full text of this post is available in the repo and we’ll update this guide as appropriate.
Second disclaimerIf you’re working on a small project, aren’t doing anything unusual or custom with Django, and don’t anticipate needing to handle a large volume of traffic or expanding the scope of your project then you should seriously consider using a PaaS (platform as a service) provider like Heroku or Gondor.io. For a monthly fee, they handle all of the messy configuration (i.e. this guide) for you (as long as your app is structured according to their specifications.) They’re not necessarily easier to get started with than this guide, but they do save you from a lot of down-the-road hassle of administering your own servers (e.g. doing security patches.)
Overview of the Final Architecture
Our example site is just a “hello world” app, but this is going to be the most well-implemented, stable, and scalable “hello world” application on the whole world wide web. Here’s a diagram of how your final architecture will look:
Basically, users send HTTP requests to your server, which are intercepted and routed by the nginx load balancer. Requests for dynamic content will be routed to your WSGI[3] server (Gunicorn) and requests for static content will be served directly off the server’s file system. Gunicorn has a few helpers, memcached and celery, which respectively offer a cache for repetitive tasks and an asynchronous queue for long-running tasks.
We’ve also got our Postgres database (for all your lovely models) which we run on a separate EC2 server.[4]
See below for a more detailed description of what each component actually does.
Set Up Your Host Servers
Set up AWS/EC2
Since this guide is trying to get you to an actual publicly accessible site, we’re going to go ahead and build our site on the smallest, freest Amazon EC2 instance available, the trusty “micro”. If you don’t want to use EC2, you can set up a local virtual machine on your laptop using Vagrant or use your own existing server (you’ll have to tweak my scripts a little). The Docker project has been picking up steam lately but at this point we believe that running Django inside of Docker on EC2 (i.e. running a virtual machine inside a virtual machine) is an unnecessary complication. But don’t be Docker-sad! We will be using Docker to run our deployment tools in an isolated, virtual container on our laptops.
Anyway, we’re going to use EC2 to set up the smallest possible host for our webserver and another one for our database.
For this tutorial, you’ll need an existing EC2 account. There are many tutorials on setting up an account so I’m not going to walk you through the account setup.
Python has a very nice library called boto for administering AWS from within code. And another nice tool called Fabric for creating command-line directives that execute Python code that can itself execute shell commands on local or remote servers. We’re going to use Fabric to definite all of our administrative operations, from creating/bootstrapping servers up to pushing code. I’ve read that Chef (which we’ll use below) also has a plugin to launch EC2 servers but I’m going to prefer boto/Fabric because they give us the option of embedding all our “command” logic into Python and editing it directly as needed.
Start off by cloning the Github repo for this project onto your local machine.
git clone git@github.com:rogueleaderr/definitive_guide_to_django_deployment.git cd definitive_guide_to_django_deployment
The github repo includes a fabfile.py[7] which provides all the commandline directives we’ll need. But fabfiles are pretty intuitive to read so try to follow along with what each command is doing.
First, we need to define AWS settings. In keeping with the principles of the Twelve Factor App we store configuration either in environment variables or in config files which are not tracked by VCS. You can find your AWS access and secret keys on your AWS security page.
echo'AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<your key here> AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<your secret key here> AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=<your region here e.g. us-east-1> AWS_SECURITY_GROUP_NAME=<your security group name> AWS_INSTANCE_TYPE=t1.micro AWS_AMI_ID=<see http:></see> AWS_SSH_KEY_NAME=<your ec2 key name> AWS_SSH_PORT=22' > deploy/environment chmod 600 deploy/environment
Make sure you fill out the values between angle brackets with \.
These settings will be exported as enviornment variables in the docker container where both fabric and the AWS CLI will read them. We recommend using an AMI for a “free-tier” eligible Ubuntu 14.04 LTS image.
If you already have an EC2 SSH key pair that you want to use, make sure you copy it to the deploy folder (otherwise skip this step and we’ll create one for you automatically):
cp -p <path to your ec2 key> deploy/ssh
We’re also going to create a settings file that contains all the configuration for our actual app.
echo '{}' > deploy/settings.json chmod 600 deploy/settings.json
Now it’s time for Docker. Follow one of the guides for installing Docker and its pre-requisites on your development machine.
Docker runs a “container”, i.e. a lightweight virtual machine running (in this case) Ubuntu in an isolated environment on your development machine. So we can safely install all the tools we need for this guide inside the container without needing to worry about gumming up your development machine (or other things on your machine causing incompatibilities with these tools.)
If you’re on OSX then as of this writing the two ways to start a Docker container are using Boot2Docker or Kitematic. For either of those, you’ll need to open the app inside your Applications folder. This will start (or give you the opportunity to start) the VM that Docker uses to create its container VM’s. It may also push you into a new terminal, so be sure to
cd <your guide directory>
…if you’re not already there.
Now we can build and run the container for our deploy tools:
docker build -t django_deployment. docker run --env-file=deploy/environment -tiv $(pwd):/project/django_deployment django_deployment /bin/bash
This step may take a while to download everything, so why not watch a PyCon video while you wait?
Once the process finishes, you’ll be at a bash shell in a container with all the tools installed. The project’s root directory has been mounted inside the container so un-tracked files like settings will be stored on your workstation but will still be available to fab and other tools.
If Docker is giving you errors about being unable to connect and you’re on OSX, make sure that you’re running these commands in a terminal tab that was opened by Boot2Docker or Kitematic.
Warning: If you are running boot2docker on OS X you may need to restart the boot2docker daemon on your host when you move to new networks (e.g. from home to a coffee shop).
Now we’re going to use a Fabric directive to setup our AWS account [6] by:
Configuring a keypair ssh key that will let us log in to our servers Setting up a security group that defines access rules to our servers
To use our first fabric directive and setup our AWS account, go to the directory where our fabfile lives and do
fab setup_aws_account
Launch Some EC2 Servers
We’re going to launch two Ubuntu 14.04 LTS servers, one for our web host and one for our database. We’re using Ubuntu because it it seems to be the most popular linux distro right now, and 14.04 because it’s a (L)ong (T)erm (S)upport version, meaning we have the longest period before it’s officially deprecated and we’re forced to deal with an OS upgrade. Depending on what AMI you choose in your settings, you may end up with a different version. (If in doubt, choose a i386 ebs-ssd LTS version.)
With boto and Fabric, launching a new instance is very easy:
fab create_instance:webserver fab create_instance:database
These commands tell Fabric to use boto to create a new “micro” (i.e. free for the first year) instance on EC2, with the name you provide. You can also provide a lot more configuration options to this directive at the command line but the defaults are sensible for now.
It may be a few minutes before new instances are fully started. EC2 reports them online when the virtual hardware is up but Linux takes some time to boot after that.
Now you can ssh into a server:
fab ssh:webserver
If you create an instance by mistake, you can terminate it with
fab terminate_instance:webserver
Install and Configure Your Services
We need a project to deploy. Your easiest option is to use the sample project I’ve created. The deployment will clone it onto webservers automatically, but you might want your own local clone so you can follow along:
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the market opened in 2003, reflecting low natural gas prices and "mostly mild weather."
"However, last year's low prices and mild weather mask fundamental challenges that could derail the region's progress toward a cleaner, greener power system that can provide competitively prices and reliable electricity," van Welie said. "The most pressing of these challenges is fuel security."
Inadequate fuel infrastructure "is a current, and growing, reliability risk," he said.
ISO New England has about 17 GW of natural gas-fired generation as of the end of 2016, and another 23.4 GW of capacity in the generation interconnection queue, van Welie said, but too little of that generation capacity has firm delivery contracts to make up for the rapidly retiring and at-risk nuclear, coal and oil generation.
"There's a point at which we will not be able to ensure reliability if we continue retiring... resources," van Welie said.
Since 2013, 4.2 GW of New England non-gas resources have been retired or had retirement announcements, and another 6 GW is at risk, van Welie said.
"Despite the growing need, the outlook for additional energy infrastructure has dimmed," he said. "Siting energy infrastructure projects has proven to be difficult. State efforts to develop a regional funding mechanism to expand natural gas infrastructure have stalled, and several natural gas pipeline projects have been suspended. These and other factors are likely to require greater reliance on higher-emitting, less efficient resources."
Asked how last week's announcement that Norman Bay would resign as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as of this Friday, which would leave FERC without a quorum, might affect the FERC approval process, van Welie said, "I think it will create a temporary delay."
However, van Welie said he expects new commissioners will soon be appointed to fill out the FERC leadership, and, "We are not aware of anything [pending] that would affect us."
ISO New England currently only has federal tariff authority to contract for generation that is planning to suspend operations to remain online to ensure the reliability of the transmission system, but ISO New England may face a more serious capacity issue as more conventional generation retires.
Asked whether ISO New England might consider seeking FERC authority to enter into reliability-must-run contracts for capacity, van Welie said, "That is something we would have to consider if the need were to arise. We do not have that need today."
Such a change would have to go through ISO New England's stakeholder process, which would take time.
ISO New England's next Forward Capacity Auction, for the planning year 2020-21, starts Friday with more than 40 GW of capacity qualified to compete to meet the projected need of about 34 GW, van Welie noted, but some states are considering entering into long-term contracts or other out-of-market incentives to attract more clean energy resources.
"However, these contracts and incentives could have unintended consequences," van Welie said. "Resources with guaranteed revenue streams could artificially suppress prices in the marketplace. That could deter new resource investments and hinder retention of existing resources, ultimately undermining resource adequacy."
The restructuring of New England's electricity sector has created substantial benefits, including "one of the most efficient generation fleets in the country," low wholesale power prices and increased industry innovation, he said.
"The region's challenge is to find a way to maintain competitive markets that appropriately reward both clean-energy resources and the conventional generators that will be needed for the foreseeable future," van Welie said. "It's a very difficult market design problem."
Without market rule adjustments, state incentives for clean energy would tilt the market in such a way as to send inappropriately low price signals, thus prompting resources to seek to return to a cost-of-service regulated electricity system.
"Such a system will undermine the benefits of competition and deter the investments needed to maintain resource adequacy," van Welie said.
Therefore ISO New England and the New England Power Pool and the six states in the ISO New England footprint "initiated extensive discussions over the past year to explore solutions that could achieve state clean-energy goals through the wholesale marketplace," van Welie said.
--Mark Watson, Markham.watson@spglobal.com
--Edited by Richard Rubin, richard.rubin@spglobal.comSUMMARY
New ECFR research into how Europeans have adapted to the new US administration reveals three ‘Trump effects’: the Regency Effect, the Messiah Effect, and the Antichrist Effect.
The Regency Effect dominates. European leaders have largely decided to hope the ‘regents’ around Donald Trump will ensure the familiar transatlantic relationship continues more or less in its current form.
Other politicians see in Trump a ‘Messiah’ or ‘Antichrist’ figure. For one camp he is a leader set on restoring Western conservative, Christian values; for the other he is a figure to oppose and rally against.
But Trump is a symptom of the rot in the transatlantic relationship, not the cause. Even before Trump, America was growing more self-interested and distant. Europeans could defend themselves, but they continue to look to America for security because they cannot resolve their own internal disputes.
A ‘post-American politics’ in Europe is possible and even necessary, but will only come about if EU member states recognise the need. Germany is central to this but its ‘regency’ instincts run deep and it lacks support from other member states.
INTRODUCTION
Donald Trump is not shy about self-promotion. So it shocked no one when he shoved aside Duško Marković, the prime minister of tiny Montenegro, to get to the front of the official photograph at the May 2017 NATO summit. It was perhaps more surprising that Marković used the attention generated to “thank President Trump personally for his support” of Montenegro’s entry into NATO, noting “it is natural for the president of the United States to be in the first row.”[1] Power has not been on more conspicuous display since Harry Whittington, the 78-year-old man whom Vice-President Dick Cheney shot in the face in 2006, apologised “for all that [Cheney] and his family have had to go through.”[2]
While Marković’s manhandling and his response is an unusually naked example, it nonetheless neatly encapsulates the nature of the transatlantic relationship. One side pushes and the other asserts that it wanted to be pushed all along.
On the surface, there is no reason for this to be the case. Clearly, in both Europe and America, the election of Trump as president of the United States came as a shock. When we at the European Council on Foreign Relations surveyed viewpoints in the 28 member states of the European Union before the American election, only a couple of opposition parties expected Trump to win. Around Europe, governments saw a win for Hillary Clinton as nearly certain.[3]
But the reaction has been completely different on the two sides of the Atlantic. The US is strongly divided on Trump and his administration, along familiar and roughly partisan lines. He has ignited fierce policy battles in Congress, within his own administration, and even on the streets of the normally placid Charlottesville, Virginia.
In Europe, there is a much greater consensus on Trump – with some important exceptions, he is very broadly unpopular, among both governments and the European population. In countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and France, the percentage of the population that has confidence in the US president to do the right thing has plummeted more than 50 points since Trump took office. Recent polls demonstrate that he is less popular in Europe than the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, a man who sporadically invades European countries.[4]
Trump’s unpopularity in Europe reflects the fact that he is a very different American president to those that preceded him. He brings to the post not only a harsher tone, but a radically different ideology and a promise to upend decades of US foreign policy practice. His promise to put “America First” represents a fundamental challenge to the idea of the transatlantic relationship and the security of Europe. His appeal to racial intolerance and his stance on climate change represents an affront to European values. His antipathy towards European integration and his intention of rewriting the rules of international trade represent a threat to European prosperity.
Yet, despite this relative consensus on Trump, Europe’s reaction overall has been more measured than America’s. Despite widespread horror at the result, European leaders have shown less policy opposition to Trump than the famously supine Republican-controlled Congress. There have been plenty of tough words, but Europeans have not appreciably altered their approach towards the US. Most have not even used the tough words.
This paradox, for even casual observers of the transatlantic relationship, is not difficult to explain, even if it is considered rather rude to talk about. The nations of Europe rely on America for its security and America does not rely on Europe. As George Orwell almost said, “Europeans who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because Americans are committing violence on their behalf.”[5]
So, even as Europeans complain or protest, they cannot call into question their relationship with America. This asymmetric dependence is the fundamental and seemingly permanent feature of the transatlantic relationship, the inconvenient fact at the base of decades of rhetoric about shared values and common history. And it means that European leaders must find a way to live with President Donald Trump regardless of the threat he presents to European values or whom he shoves out of the way.
But, regardless of how used to this situation we all are, it is not clear that it can or should continue. Trump is the first postwar American president to believe that preservation of European unity should not be a strategic objective for the US. But Obama’s policies already pointed in the direction of a progressively reduced American commitment. Even beyond their problems with Trump’s policy, demographic and political trends in both the US and Europe make relying on the US for security an increasingly untenable proposition.
This Power Audit of US-EU relations asks why this asymmetric dependence persists even into the unreliable Trump presidency, what price Europe is paying for it, and what, if anything, can be done about it. It examines the European reactions to the Trump presidency in more detail across the member states of the EU. It seeks to understand those reactions through an examination of the meaning of ‘America’, both the country and the concept in European politics. Beyond the reactions, it asks what Trump’s election means for both sides’ ability and willingness to sustain the existing bargain of transatlantic relations. For all his radicalism, Trump, it turns out, is more a symptom of the rot in the relationship than a cause.
Madman, Messiah, or Antichrist? European responses to Donald Trump
The EU is a diverse place and has displayed a wide variety of reactions to the Trump presidency. To understand this diversity, we approached political elites in both government and opposition across all 28 member states, surveying their reactions to Trump’s election and to the early months of his presidency. A number of common themes emerged, and we have divided the responses into three ‘Trump effects’ on the EU: the Regency Effect, the Messiah Effect, and the Antichrist Effect. We explain each below, and the table shows the rough distributions of the effects across European governments and parties.
The Regency Effect
In the late eighteenth century, the British aristocracy began to suspect that their king, George III, was mad. Exacerbated by his distress at losing the American colonies, the king’s behaviour became increasingly erratic – sometimes he would speak for hours without pause, often foaming at the mouth. Various calumnies spread about his illness, including the story that the “King had walked up to an oak tree in Windsor Great Park, took a branch in his hand, and entered into a conversation in the belief that he was talking to the King of Prussia.”[6]
Even though many of these stories turned out to be ‘fake news’, they reflected a general sense that the affairs of state were not in competent or even sane hands. The British elite responded to the problem of a monarch not in his right mind by turning to the idea of a regency. Parliament empowered the Prince of Wales to act as regent with the full powers of the king, even as George III continued, technically, to reign.
Trump has not spoken to any trees lately. But he does, at times, stare at the sun and his fitness and even mental stability have repeatedly been questioned.[7] Many, in both Europe and America, have hoped and expected that a type of regency concept would assert itself in American governance. As with George III, they hope that, rather than governing, Trump will be governed by his advisers, the Congress, the courts, and American civil society generally. Most European reactions to the Trump administrations are examples of this Regency Effect.
On a certain level they have little choice. Before the election, some European leaders felt able to declare Trump’s candidacy dangerous in the most undiplomatic of terms. The British prime minister, David Cameron, for example, called candidate Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from the US, “stupid, divisive, and wrong.”[8] Even for those who kept quiet, a large majority viewed a Trump presidency with a combination of incredulity and horror. ECFR research from that period showed that in nine countries, political elites expected that, if Trump won the presidency, the US would become the most destabilising element in the international system.[9]
But almost immediately after the election, these apocalyptic images evaporated, and were replaced by a mildly optimistic wait-and-see approach. The concept of most governments was (and remains) that Trump himself was not the key element for understanding US foreign policy under his administration. What mattered were the people he appointed to key positions and the power balances between them – the politics of regency.
In our travels across Europe after the election, variants of the Regency Effect were so common that we took the opportunity of asking a slightly tipsy Italian official why, after so much ink was spilt over the importance of the US election, everyone so suddenly and fervently believed that Trump did not matter. His response was telling: “We have to believe it. We don’t know what to do if it is not true.”[10] Another European official took a more sanguine view: “We made the decision that until we felt more comfortable with Putin than with Trump we would have to stick with the Americans. This admittedly was a low bar.”[11]
Accordingly, European governments scrambled to establish contacts with the personnel of a new administration with which they had had very little prior contact or understanding.[12] The most dangerous place on earth quickly became standing between a European embassy and the presidential transition team.
The first several months of the Trump administration have subjected this view to a rollercoaster ride. On the one hand, Trump appointed strongly nationalist officials such as Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and Peter Navarro to key White House positions. But at the same time he picked members of the Republican establishment as well as sober-sounding generals for many key positions, including General James Mattis as defence secretary and ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.
Despite these appointments, Trump withdrew from the Paris climate change agreement and threatens the Iran nuclear deal, both of which many Europeans hold dear. He has intermittently continued to trash Europe and especially Germany, while maintaining a studious silence on all manner of Russian sins, including Russia’s interference in the US election.
But many of his advisers have more consistently sought to reassure European allies. Even if Trump has a soft spot for Russia’s president, they whisper to their European counterparts, America will stand up for the interests and values of allies. This effort began one month into the Trump presidency when a trio of high-level US officials – Mattis, Tillerson, and the vice-president, Mike Pence – arrived in Europe for various high-level meetings at NATO, the EU, and the G20. This has continued, with frequent trips to Europe, particularly by Pence and Mattis. Throughout, they have brought a clear ‘regency’ message: pay no attention to the president of the US.
Overall, the president remains unpredictable. His “America First” philosophy and his protectionist impulses make him, at base, antagonistic towards a strong transatlantic relationship. Nearly every week brings new Twitter evidence that Trump remains who he has always been and cannot be contained by his advisers.
European leaders issue principled statements objecting to his outbursts, but they avoid any sort of policy response. So, for example, when Trump controversially contended that there were some “very fine people” among the Charlottesville neo-Nazi protesters in August 2017, British prime minister Theresa May retorted, “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them. I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them.”[13] But rhetoric was the extent of the response.
European officials also privately note that Trump’s rants have had very little impact on US policy. Thus far, policy on Russia has perhaps been the starkest example of the disjuncture between presidential rhetoric and policy reality. Trump has maintained an unusual consistency in his unwillingness to criticise Russia or Putin. But on the ground, the US has continued, and even increased, its support to the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI), which was Barack Obama’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Trump’s 2018 budget request included a 41 percent increase in the funds for the ERI and an increased US troop presence in eastern Europe.[14] The US has not only maintained Obama-era sanctions on Russia, but, against the objections of Trump, the US Congress overwhelmingly passed new sanctions on Russia for interfering in the US election. It also limited the president’s ability to waive them. The political scandal over the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia during the election has particularly reduced the president’s manoeuvring room on this issue. He appears isolated on Russia even within his own administration.
Similarly, on Afghanistan, Trump spent years railing against the “enormous waste of blood and treasure in Afghanistan” and advocating a policy of withdrawal.[15] In July 2017, he continued to assert that the US was losing the war in Afghanistan and that he was considering firing the general in charge of the war. Yet the following month, in a speech read between gritted teeth from a teleprompter, he announced he would continue the current strategy and send additional US troops to Afghanistan.[16]
For many in both Europe and America, this lack of implementation as well as other developments in Trump’s first months – the replacement of the ideologue Michael Flynn with the more pragmatic HR McMaster as national security adviser, the ousting of Steve Bannon, and the appointment of General James Kelly as chief of staff – demonstrate that the regency is slowly consolidating itself. To reinforce this view, many European leaders make sure to differentiate between the longstanding relationship between their country and the US, and the temporary relationship with its current president.[17]
The image emerges of a mad king who likes to get attention, while behind the throne his sober regents are dealing with their counterparts in Europe. His tantrums are mostly ignored while he wins praise for his occasional willingness to mouth the words of speeches written by his regents.
The Messiah Effect
In 132CE, Rabbi Akiba, the greatest of the Talmudic sages, declared a rebel Jewish leader named Simon bar Kokhba to be the Messiah – the anointed one who would herald a new age. Bar Kokhba had achieved some stunning early victories against the occupying Romans and Akiba hoped to profit from his revolt to score some advantage over competing religious authorities within Judea. In the end, bar Kokhba proved to be a false messiah, the revolt failed, and, far from a new age, the Jews were nearly wiped out and their descendants exiled from Jerusalem for nearly 2,000 years.[18] But, despite such pitfalls, the idea of a messiah persists, specifically because the idea of a ‘new age’ is often helpful in internal struggles.
Trump is probably not the messiah. But in his elevation to the most powerful position in the world some in Europe do see a new age that some Europeans welcome. Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, put it in vaguely religious terms soon after Trump’s election: “We have received permission from the highest worldly place that we can put ourselves in the first place, too.”[19] Orbán’s relationship with the previous administration had been fraught, especially after criticism by the Obama administration of the state of the rule of law and corruption in Hungary. Now, with the sanction of the American president, he seems to believe that the old age of political correctness is over and that he can openly say what he thinks about the failures of immigration, liberalism, and democracy promotion.
And he is not alone. All over Europe, nationalist, anti-immigrant, and anti-mainstream movements have felt emboldened. Lega Nord in Italy portrays itself as the only Italian party in accord with Trump’s sovereign, nationalistic, and anti-immigration political programme. Leaders of far-right parties in Belgium and the Netherlands have spoken about a new patriotic movement that would spread around Europe because of Trump’s election.[20] The far-right German party Alternative für Deutschland sent Trump a congratulatory message outlining the overlap between their policies, ending with a distinctly un-German “God bless you and your family, God bless America and Germany.”[21] Formerly marginal extreme-right groups, such as Volya in Bulgaria and Imperium Europa in Malta, are more vocal about their views and have seen a small boost in the polls.[22]
Some of these parties have also had an easier time in their diplomatic relations with the Trump government. In contrast to the mad scramble of many governments, the Hungarian ambassador to the US, Réka Szemerkényi, had met Trump three times by March, and had also spoken with Mike Pence and several cabinet members. Fellow Trump enthusiast Miloš Zeman, the Czech president, was invited to the White House; his predecessor Václav Klaus did not have this pleasure in his ten years in office.
For Hungary and others, Trump is at least a slightly problematic messiah. He has thus far not really supported Orbán in his struggles with the EU or over his attempts to close the Central European University in Budapest. But they retain hope that over time Trump will gain enough control over his own government to support an agenda they believe he supports at heart.
Similarly, in Poland, the governing Law and Justice Party believes that Trump represents true Americans who rebelled in the name of the Christian and conservative West against the dictatorship of political correctness, gay rights, and liberal immigration. Trump’s affinity with Russia and Putin tempered the Polish government’s enthusiasm for him during the campaign and during the early months of his presidency. But the lack of change in America’s Russia policy, and particularly Trump’s visit to Poland in July, have reinforced the notion that Trump is an ally in the struggle against liberalism in Europe. The Polish government seems to have decided that even a partial ally in the White House represents a new and valuable asset in its domestic struggles.
Even in the UK government, which overall has taken a regency approach to Trump, one sees elements of the Messiah Effect. Trump and his “America First” philosophy, and its echoes of “taking back control”, came at a good time for British prime minister Theresa May in the Brexit negotiations. She rushed over to Washington immediately after his election, revelled in his promises of a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal, and invited him on a state visit to London. At least temporarily, her government gained more confidence in its strategy of hard Brexit or bust.
The Regency Effect implies that mainstream politicians will tolerate a lot of rhetoric from Trump, hoping to keep their bilateral relations alive and doing business with Trump’s minders until the storm passes. But in the meantime, the Messiah effect may have an impact in their backyard. Trump’s immigration policies, for example, even if they have been limited by the courts and the Congress, provide a precedent for debates on refugees and Muslim integration in Europe. Perhaps worse, Trump is providing cover for a host of outrageous ideas that were once anathema but which have acquired legitimacy through their expression in the White House. These include a ‘Muslim ban’, as promoted by several extreme right parties, or a reluctance to work on climate change, as supported by the Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party. In this sense, Trump’s very existence is helping to move once radical parties into the European mainstream.
But, of course, there is a risk for the anti-establishment parties too. Bar Kokhba, after all, led his followers into ruin. As Maimonides noted a thousand years later, “Rabbi Akiva was a great sage, one of the authors of the Mishnah, yet he was the right-hand man of Bar Kokhba, the ruler, whom he thought to be King Messiah. He and all the sages of his generation imagined Bar Kokhba to be King Messiah until he was slain unfortunately. Once he was slain, it dawned on them that he was not the Messiah.”[23] Some of Trump’s apostles have already started to abandon him, mostly because of the change he did not bring to the Washington ‘swamp’.
The Antichrist Effect
One man’s messiah is always another’s Antichrist. Both are inspiring in their own ways: the idea of a messiah gives an example to exalt and emulate; the Antichrist establishes a clear challenge and gives opponents political space to adopt new, radical solutions. As Martin Luther put it, “I feel much freer now that I am certain that the Pope is the Antichrist.”[24]
For a minority of European politicians, the election of Trump points towards a new European reformation. Trump’s election is, in this view, only the latest in a series of moral and strategic failings by the US – the responses to ECFR’s survey cited the invasion of Iraq, the torture and rendition programmes of the ‘war on terror’, the NSA wiretapping scandal, and the lack of leadership on climate change. The sense of moral example from the US, especially strong in some of the former eastern bloc countries, is diminishing. All this predates Trump, but he has certainly not reversed the trend as Obama did early in his presidency. The survey demonstrated that, in most countries, elites expect the image of the US in Europe to worsen dramatically under Trump. So far, polls bear that out.[25]
The first to capitalise on this effect politically was Emmanuel Macron in his successful campaign for the French presidency in May 2017. His opponent was Marine Le Pen, a Trump ‘apostle’, who declared on the day of Trump’s inauguration that “the EU is dead, but does not know it yet.”[26]
By contrast, Macron ran on the idea that, far from a constraint on French independence, France’s membership of the EU was the key to maintaining French sovereignty and retaining influence in global affairs. While Macron did not reject cooperation with Trump’s America, he outlined a vision in which France and Europe do not rely on the US or NATO as the main determinant of their status on the global stage. His vision rests more on further integration in European defence, which he sees as key for Europe to “hold its destiny in its own hands.”[27] His victory has emboldened others in Europe to think that opposition to Trumpian policies of disintegration and isolation might be a winning formula. Macron’s policy of standing up to Trump carried over into his first meeting with him as president. It ultimately gave him the credibility to invite Trump to France in July 2017 while avoiding the label of apostle.
France has long stood out in its willingness to act independently of the US; most others have generally felt more dependent. But in some other countries, such as Italy, Latvia, and Sweden the EU has begun to take over the role of the moral example to follow, or is seen to be making a last stand in a formerly joint project of spreading liberal values. The Trump shock has also led to movement in a longstanding issue in EU cooperation: defence. In 85 percent of countries, respondents thought their country should spend more on defence, either to become independent from NATO or to invest in EU defence.
The remaining countries are already spending enough, or are on a path of expansion to spend enough next year. This indicates that security is a new focus area for the remaining 27 EU member states; one that they could work on together more effectively in the future, even under the idea of flexible cooperation. An increase in spending has been on the agenda for a long time. But the discomfort that comes with a more uncertain transatlantic relationship has proven an important stick with which to cajole countries into action.
Unfortunately, reformations are never easy. In the EU’s case, it is not clear that the new impetus for reform coming from Trump’s election (and from Brexit) is strong enough to overcome the traditional resistance to increasing European defence cooperation. The newer centrifugal forces come from the dual refugee and euro crises that have split Europe along north-south and east-west lines and made European cohesion yet more difficult to achieve.
ECFR’s survey revealed that opinions between countries were perfectly split on whether Trump would have a positive or negative effect. The positive expected outcomes centred on necessity: namely, that the possible loss of the American umbrella will make Europeans work together better. On the other hand, internal splits were the main negative outcome likely to emerge from Trump’s election. This could emerge as populist parties grow in confidence, but also because many political elites hold firm to the belief that if the American president stops supporting European integration, Europe will not move forward.
The remaining question is: why do Europeans believe in such a central role for America in European security?
The power of disinterest
All three effects – Regency, Messiah, and Antichrist – are in operation in Europe and have had important political consequences. But our survey shows that the main one has been the Regency Effect and the semi-conscious decision to assume that Donald Trump’s presidency will not fundamentally change America or the international system.
For many, this result presents no puzzle at all. Even tipsy Italians, like the official we met earlier, understand deep in their marrow that the nations of Europe depend on the US for their security. They need to maintain an effective relationship with America and whomever the American voters, in their infinite wisdom, see fit to put in the White House. Our survey shows that that this effect remains as strong as ever. The member states in the east look to America for security against Russia; the member states in the west look to America for security against Islamist terrorism. And, in a new twist, Greece – traditionally the country in the EU with the most anti-American attitudes – now looks to America for protection against Germany.[28]
The dominance of the Regency Effect is not surprising, but it begs the question of why this is the main reaction. Over recent decades we have become so used to the nature of the transatlantic bargain that we have forgotten how historically and geopolitically anomalous it is. Why does a rich continent of 500 million people depend on a distant nation of 300 million to defend it against much poorer and weaker threats on its borders? Why do the nations of Europe outsource this most sacred of national responsibilities?
To grasp why, one needs to understand the meaning of America and the American president in Europe. As in any longstanding relationship, the European idea of America is complex. Europeans alternately and variously love America, hate America, envy America, and look down on it. The constant in all these emotions is that America is important to Europe, a part of domestic politics on which everyone has an opinion.
The cultural impact of technology has made America even more present in Europe. First television made Europeans aware not only of who the American president was, but also what it was like to be a single person trying to date in New York. More recently, a recurrent theme in our survey was the impact of companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Netflix. Europeans can now follow the life of the Manhattan single twenty-something minute by minute, and order their clothes with next-day delivery.
This now also extends to former communist countries which were excluded from the postwar US influence. Our surveys reveal that, in Hungary, a growing start-up culture references the US, and new companies there set the US as their ultimate destination. Over the past ten years in Lithuania, English has overtaken Russian as the most important second language. In Slovakia, American-style restaurants are now prestigious places to eat for the younger generations, and English expressions have started to enter the language.
In part for these reasons, the US president attracts a lot of attention in Europe. Indeed, the European obsession with the American presidency has become so routine that it is basically just accepted as part of the furniture. But it is extraordinary – even by January 2016 one survey showed that between 85-90 percent of Europeans could identify the two leading US presidential candidates.[29] But after similar elections in France and Germany, only 38 percent of Americans were able to identify the winner of the
French presidency and only 4 percent could identify the German chancellor.[30] One presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, could not identify even a single foreign leader.[31] As if seeking approval from an aloof father whom they both deplore and rely on, Europeans have for decades obsessed over his every action. They seek his support in disputes with their siblings, crave his occasional visits, and rejoice in a casual mention of their role.
My (Shapiro’s) understanding of the role of the US president for Europeans began in a fish restaurant. In fact, it was my favourite fish restaurant in Washington, which was why I accepted the lunch invitation from the Spanish embassy. But I knew the price in advance. It was 2010 and Spain held the rotating presidency of the EU. They desperately wanted Obama to attend the US-EU summit in Spain and they were pulling out all the stops. If they were willing to cough up for the seared tuna to talk to a low-level official like me, they had clearly reached a desperate state in that effort. Between bites, I explained again what they had already intuited: Obama would likely not go. As I ordered dessert, the Spanish officials did not bother to hide their deep disappointment. The US government offered a substitute. But without the American president the summit had no meaning at all. Despite the important outstanding issues in US-EU relations, the Spanish soon cancelled the summit altogether.
As commentators often note, Americans do not reciprocate this obsessive attention. No European official has ever eaten a fancy lunch on the slim hope that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will visit Washington. The US foreign policy community recognises the importance of Europe but this falls well short of the obsessive attention paid by Europe to America. An August 2017 research trip to Washington showed that national security leaders, both inside and outside the government, are preoccupied with Trump’s latest antics and are focused on the domestic impact of US policy toward Russia and the Middle East.[32] They could not even sustain a conversation on the future of the EU. For them, Europe is mostly a nice place to visit and to hold conferences on Middle East peace.
But Americans’ lack of interest in Europe is not a bug – it is an important feature of the transatlantic relationship. Europeans want a protector whose own interests are remote from the internal struggles of Europe. They want a partner who will provide stability and security without posing a threat or taking a stand on the issues that divide Europe, such as immigration or fiscal policy. The Greek attitude towards Germany demonstrates the problem. Greece needs help. But because of the EU, and especially the euro, Germany is too involved in Greek domestic politics to trust as a security provider.
Even on foreign policy issues, as political scientist Ivan Krastev notes, “the external threats that the EU faces divide rather than unify the continent.”[33] Of course, many European states have differences with the US on a variety of foreign policy issues, particularly in the Middle East. But because America’s main foreign policy interests are in other theatres, they either matter little to European domestic politics or European leaders can hope that they will change.
On the foreign policy issues that really matter to European security, principally Russia, terrorism, and stability in the southern and eastern European neighbourhoods, the US as a distant power has less fixed positions than the powerful European states do. On Russia, for example, US policy has fluctuated dramatically in the last three decades, from hostility to reset and back again. Trump’s view offers the chance for another reset, but the opposition to it in Congress implies that deepening hostility is just as likely. European national positions on Russia, though they vary greatly across the continent, have stayed much more constant. They are largely fixed by geography and history.
America’s disinterest and consequent flexibility mean that America is the wild card in European foreign policy debates. European leaders hope not so much for a neutral arbiter as for an ally in their internal struggles with other European states. For this reason, individual European member states have always been keen to maintain their individual bilateral relations with the US, even as they took measures to create a supposedly unified European foreign policy apparatus.
In the period after the creation of the office of EU high representative for foreign affairs in 2009, meetings with national European officials in the US State Department would typically begin with a plea for the US to accept that the EU was a unified actor.[34] But they would generally end with a plea for US support in some internal European struggle, such as keeping Germany off the UN Security Council. The message was clear: respect our unity except when our country needs your support.
Our survey revealed that 11 EU member states believe that they have a special relationship with the US. A direct relationship with the American president is extremely valuable in asserting this special relationship, which is why it meant everything to the Spanish to try to bring Obama to their summit.
For Europeans, America means security and stability. But, more than that, it means disinterested security. Europeans certainly want protection from Russia and terrorism, but, working together, they could provide that themselves. The problem is that they also want political protection from each other. And only America can provide that.
Trump and Obama: What’s the difference?
Such is the transatlantic bargain that the madness of President Trump threatens to disrupt. For all its weirdness, that bargain has served both sides of the Atlantic well over the years. As the dominance of the Regency Effect implies, foreign policy leaders on both sides of the Atlantic are keen to protect it. But regency will only succeed if Trump is really the problem. And, even though Trump’s ideology does represent a new threat to the alliance, there is ample reason to suppose the problems run deeper than one mercurial president.
Trump has been clear that he views the transatlantic relationship in instrumentalist terms. Unless it is radically reshaped, Trump claimed during the campaign, America will simply walk away from Europe, leaving it to deal with its problems on its own.
American foreign policy has long included a desire for more equitable burden-sharing.[35] But previous US efforts to bring this about accepted that America’s best partners are democracies, that America’s own prosperity rests on a broad global system of trade and investment that Europeans contribute to, and that Europe’s security must be protected – by Europe if possible, and by the US if necessary.
Previous postwar American presidents have explicitly looked for a more equitable partnership with Europe, but they believed that Europe’s security and prosperity were a core interest of the US. They have therefore been wary of abandoning |
ickens- und Citizen-Kane-Motiven. Dagobert verkleidet sich heimlich, weil er Donald und den Neffen nur Geschenke überlassen will, falls sie Mut gegen Bären beweisen. Dann bricht ein echter Bär in die Villa ein, und erschreckt auch Dagobert im Bären-Kostüm. Für Carl Barks bleibt Donald Duck noch 20 Jahre lang meist die Hauptfigur. Doch Barks harscher, exzentrischer und oft tragisch geiziger Dagobert wird (besonders auch durch europäische Comics aus Italien und Skandinavien) weltbekannt.
„Jäger des verlorenen Schatzes“, Teil eins der „Indiana Jones“-Reihe, übernimmt 1981 eine Barks-Szene, in der die Panzerknacker eine indianische Statue auf einem Podest verschieben – und damit eine Steinkugel ins Rollen bringen, als Todesfalle für Grabräuber. Sechs Jahre später schaut der Disney-Konzern auf „Indiana Jones“, für seine bis dahin teuerste und langlebigste Trickserie: Bei „DuckTales“ (1987) heuert Donald Duck bei der Marine an. Tick, Trick und Track leben in der Villa Onkel Dagoberts, zusammen mit Nicky, der Tochter der Haushälterin und Bruchpilot Quack. Viele Figuren, die Barks erfand, hatten damals große Rollen: Hexe Gundel Gaukeley, Erfinder Daniel Düsentrieb. Bis 1990 erzählten etwa 15 von 100 „DuckTales“-Folgen alte Barks-Comics neu.
1967 ging Carl Barks in den Ruhestand. Er starb erst 2000, mit 99 Jahren. Vor allem in den 70er Jahren zeichnete er große Dagobert-Ölgemälde, und seit den 80er Jahren versucht Zeichner und Barks-Fan Don Rosa, aus den Details, die Barks in Comics oft eher humorvoll hinwirft, eine große Lebensgeschichte von Dagobert Duck zu rekonstruieren: „Onkel Dagobert: Sein Leben, seine Milliarden“. Für Don Rosa wurde Duck 1867 in Schottland geboren und starb 1967 in Entenhausen. Historische Abenteuer, oft in einem sehr konkreten geschichtlichen Rahmen: der Goldrausch am Yukon River in Alaska, Cowboy-Abenteuer in Indonesien, doch wie bei Barks auch Reisen zu Fantasie-Zivilisationen wie dem Land der viereckigen Eier, versteckt in den Anden.
Die Comics von Barks sind schwungvoll, albern, oft kapitalismuskritisch und mitreißend. Don Rosa wirkt pedantischer, nervöser, überfachtet: Abenteuer- und Männercomics fast ohne interessante Frauen, teuer gesammelt oft von Männern jener Generation, die mir als Kind, 1990, auch „Asterix“ und „Tim und Struppi“ gaben und raunten „Lies! Da kannst du noch was lernen!“. Deutschlehrer-Comics, Bildungsbürger-Comics, Pedanten-Comics, in Deutschland atemlos erfolgreich älteren Herren, die „Duck“ mit „u“ aussprechen: Donaldisten.
„DuckTales“ (1987) blieb eine Kinderserie: oft etwas schleppend erzählt, zu simple Lösungen, kaum Psychologie. Tick, Trick und Track bleiben schlimm gutmütig und passiv. Nicky ist so jung, rosa, naiv und unwichtig wie keine andere Disney-Serienfigur nach ihr. Als 2017 erste Trailer für den „DuckTales“-Neustart veröffentlicht wurden, waren Fans nervös: Nicky ist hier ein hyperkompetentes Nerd-Mädchen mit Geheimagenten-Tick. Sie bewegt sich durch Dagoberts Villa wie in „Mission: Impossible“. Tick, Trick und Track haben klare Persönlichkeiten, aber wirken übertrieben aggressiv: Tick (rot) trumpft durch Wissen auf, Trick (blau) ist nassforsch und liebt Abenteuer, und Track (grün) wird von Fans mit Slytherin-Figuren aus „Harry Potter“ verglichen: ambitioniert, aber verschlagen.
Die große Angst der Fans: Klingt, witzelt, frotzelt und erzählt „DuckTales“ 2017 wie jede andere US-Trickserie? Stülpt Disney das Strickmuster gesucht hipper Konzepte wie „Gravity Falls“ über die Barks-Figuren? Nein. Die flächigen, an alte Comics erinnernden Hintergründe und Farben der neuen Serie sind schroffer als die warmen, liebevollen Details im Original. Die Neuauflage erzählt dreimal so schnell. Doch bisher auf höchstem Niveau: warmherzig, mitreißend, überraschend – eine Kinderserie fürs größte denkbare Publikum. Und überall in Dagoberts Villa hängen die alten Barks-Ölgemälde! Ein Problem bleibt nur Donald Duck. Toll, dass er dieses Mal selbst bei Dagobert einziehen darf. Schlimm aber, dass man seine typische Enten-Schnatterstimme kaum versteht. Donald liefert zwanzig handlungstragende Sätze oder Pointen pro Episode. Bei zwei Dritteln verstehe ich nur „Quack!“ Sobald die Serie erzählen wird, wo Donalds Eltern sind oder warum die Neffen von Donalds Schwester in seiner Obhut aufwuchsen, wird das anstrengend und holprig.
„DuckTales“ läuft erst ab 2018 in deutscher Synchronisation auf dem Bezahl-Sender Disney XD.A healthy house or office can be energy efficient in areas including electricity, gas and water consumption, use of wind direction and solar efficiency. This research utilises existing smart and augmented reality technology as well as the concepts of sustainable living to save consumers around 30% of the lifecycle cost of the building.
Sensor devices placed in and around the home or office will interact with hand held and wearable devices to analyse the health of a space. An app alert will then indicate inefficiencies and provide recommendations (such as opening certain windows to allow better airflow) as well as calculate how much those changes could save you over time. The software then feeds back into a network system making the consumer part of a bigger community of knowledge.
By incorporating augmented reality the team cleverly combine a software driven environment with the physical environment of a building allowing the owner to better understand their home as a living thing.
The team are also working on alternate environments such as their Cambodia project where the system is being adapted to suit tropical environments.
The team at Felix Labs who are known as many minds, single author have achieved amazing heights in their 10 years of research including as Australia’s representative at the 2014 Venice Biennale with their Augmented Australia app and being shortlisted for an international design competition which lowered the carbon footprint of a building by 30%.WASHINGTON, DC — An illegal immigrant male residing in the United States is more likely to be gainfully employed than a male who is a legal immigrant or U.S.-born citizen, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center think tank told lawmakers.
In 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, an estimated 91 percent of illegal immigrant males were in the workforce. This compares to 84 percent of legal immigrant men and 79 percent of U.S.-born males, Pew Research Center demographer Jeffrey Passel wrote in testimony prepared for a March 26 hearing held by the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee.
Put in a different way, legal and illegal immigrant males had a better chance to be in the workforce than U.S.-born men in 2012.
For women, the opposite is true. U.S.-born women are more likely to be in the labor force than immigrant females.
“Unauthorized immigrant men of working age [16 years of age and older] are considerably more likely to be in the workforce than U.S.-born men (91% versus 79%),” Passel declared in his written testimony.
“For women, the opposite is true; only 61% of unauthorized immigrant women are in the labor force, compared with 72% of U.S.-born women,” Mr. Passel continued.
The data provided by the Pew demographer shows that U.S.-born females are more likely to be in the workforce than illegal immigrant women (61%) and legal immigrant women (68%), respectively.
In 2012, there were an estimated 10 million more males (82. 3 million) participating in the workforce than women (72.7 million), according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Overall, there were an estimated 8.1 million workers who are not legally authorized to work, both men and women, participating in the labor force in 2012 by either working or looking for work. Illegal workers made up about 5.1 percent of the labor force, which translates to nearly one-in-twenty U.S. workers, explained Passel.
The labor participation rate covers individuals working or looking for work.
“Unauthorized immigrants are more likely than the overall U.S. population to be of working age and less likely to be young or older,” explained Mr. Passel. “That is one reason that the unauthorized immigrant share of the labor force is higher than its share of the population overall.”
“While there have been some modest changes in labor force participation rates over the past 20 years, the participation of unauthorized immigrant men and women, relative to the U.S.-born population and legal immigrants, has remained essentially unchanged since 2005,” he added.
The top three states with the highest share of illegal immigrants participating in the labor force are Nevada (10.2% of the workforce), California (9.4%), and Texas (8.9%), revealed the Pew Research Center.
Most work in either the service, hospitality, or construction industry.
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A bride-to-be that weighs nearly sixty stone has decided that she would prefer her wedding dress to be ‘off-white’, in case she spills any food down her on her big, big day.
Susanne Eman – who hopes to one day reach her dream weight of a ton – has been measured up for her special gown… and has been told that her nine-foot waist means that 45 feet of fabric will be needed to accommodate her.
(Image: Inside Edition)
(Image: Inside Edition)
(Image: Inside Edition)
The mum of two from Arizona is set to marry her partner Parker Clack, a chef, this summer. And unlike most brides she is not looking to shed any weight before her nuptials.
Rather, the 33-year-old reportedly continues to consume the 30,000 calories-worth of food that her fiancé cooks for her every day. His signature dishes include spaghetti bolognese and scrambled eggs and bacon with fried potatoes.
And on the day of an appointment with dressmaker Judy Goff, Susanne was sticking to her eating regime, clearly unconcerned that she may not fit into her marriage gear.
With cameras filming her for US TV show Inside Edition, Susanne and her sister stopped for a bite on the way, picking up three guacamole bacon cheeseburgers, two orders of chilli cheese fries, nine tacos, a chocolate shake and a large Coke.
(Image: Inside Edition)
(Image: Inside Edition)
(Image: Laurentiu Garofeanu / Barcroft)
During the news item, the seamstress illustrated just how much material was required to dress Susanne’s enormous frame.
“Okay, we have about 15 feet here and we need 45 feet. So about three times this amount to complete her dress,” she said.
Having tried on veils and other accessories, Susanne spoke about how excited she was about her wedding day.
“I'm feeling like a bride. I can't wait,” she enthused.
“I like an off-whitish [colour scheme], not completely white. Because if I wear completely white, I guarantee I'm going to spill something on it.”
(Image: Laurentiu Garofeanu / Barcroft)
(Image: Laurentiu Garofeanu / Barcroft)
(Image: Laurentiu Garofeanu / Barcroft)
The unemployed resident of the desert city has previously told of how her confidence increases as her mass balloons.
“The bigger I get, the better I feel. I feel more confident and sexy. I’d love to find out if it’s possible to reach a ton,” she said.
“A previous record holder was 115 stone, so I have to be at least that. At my current rate of growth, I should be 115 stone by 41 or 42.”
Susanne’s doctor, who says she has no health or psychiatric problems, has warned her diet could kill her.
Dr Patrick Flite said: “She’s really playing Russian roulette with her life.”Written by Timothy Hammons | Monday, January 21, 2013
Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged.” This passage is abused among the haters of Christianity. It’s not used to teach us to guard against being hypocritical, as Jesus intended it to be used, but used to silence anyone who would espouse any godly standard above that of being a dog. Jesus isn’t giving a blanket statement for not judging, but given a lesson on how to judge rightly.
In working on my sermon this week, I’ve come across one of the most abused verses in Scripture. It’s not as abused today as it was some 70 years ago, but it is still one of the most abused passages of Scripture. The passage is John 8:31-32 “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Only in it’s abuse, those using it only quote verse 32, without the first part of the conditional clause.
A conditional clause means that there is a condition to knowing the truth. Knowing the truth means that we are His disciples. Being His disciples mean that we follow Him and His word. Yet countless people use the old King James Version, Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free, in a manner to indicate that the truth is just floating about for anyone to find it. It is not, for truth to be know, we must know it in the light of Christ.
I’m reminded of my childhood growing up in the cult of Christian Science and see that portion of the passage on the inside cover to Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (Please note: she has no keys to Scripture. Her book is filled with senseless drivel. She doesn’t know Christ, God or the truth). The passage is used in such a way that it suggests that objective truth is just floating about and all we need to do is look for it. It’s not. The only true way to know real Truth is to know Christ and be known by Him (Matthew 7:21ff). Truth is not disconnected from Christ.
We also see this passage on the building of countless universities across the land. There too, it’s put forth as if truth is out there for anyone looking for it apart from Christ. I know the arch-rival of my own university, texas university, has the scripture emblazoned on one of the buildings. However I don’t think that school, or any other state-run school that has the passage emblazoned on campus is advocating their students become disciples and followers of Christ.
The point is that when Christ uttered those words, He was in a heated debate with the Jews about His identity and their need to be freed from sin. He wasn’t throwing up the idea that truth was to be known apart from Him. Knowing the truth means we must be “in Christ,” and by being “in Christ” we will know truth about who He is and who we are. We are sinners in need of a Savior, and the Truth is that He is that Savior. Being in Him means we are freed from one of our greatest foes: sin. We cannot be truly free unless sin is dealt with, and only through Christ is that sin dealt with. Otherwise we will die in our sins, as Jesus warned the Jews (John 8:21).
This is why this verse makes my Top 5 list of the most abused passages in history. People have abused it in an attempt to make themselves seem erudite in the pursuit of truth. Yet, truth pursued apart from Christ does us no good at all.
4. Number 4 on the list is Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. The reason this one makes the list is that far too many people use it as a quick fix to someone else’s problems. Your cousin just died in a car wreck? Romans 8:28. You have cancer? Romans 8:28. You just lost your home to foreclosure? Romans 8:28. Your cat had puppies? Romans 8:28.
It is abused because of the way that it is used in Christian circles. People use it in an attempt to belittle the struggles of others and this is unconscionable. It is thoughtless, and mean. Paul writes that we are to weep with those who weep in Romans 12:15, not throw Romans 8:28 in their faces.
To abuse this passage is to ignore the fact that Christians have been called to suffer just as Christ suffered. I know, suffering is one of those things that polite Christians do not talk about. But it is a reality of the Christian life. To deny it, is to deny the calling every Christian has in life. So when someone suffers, don’t throw up a quick passage so you can sooth your conscience and be on your way. Sit down with them, and be with them and weep with them.
3. Number 3 on the list is Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. This verse is abused because it is ripped out of context. The context is that Paul is saying he has learned to be content whether he has plenty or he is abased, both to abound and suffer need. He does not say that he can conquer the world because he has Philippians 4:13.
This verse should not be the foundation of every motivational speaker to come down the pike. That is not what Paul is saying. In fact, he would probably be aghast at the idea that so many are using this passage in such a manner, given that Jesus Christ conquers the world and our worlds, we do not. We are mere servants, not tiny gods out to conquer all that is before us.
2. Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged.” This passage is abused among the haters of Christianity. It’s not used to teach us to guard against being hypocritical, as Jesus intended it to be used, but used to silence anyone who would espouse any godly standard above that of being a dog. Jesus isn’t giving a blanket statement for not judging, but given a lesson on how to judge rightly.
I like what Paul Washer is reported to have said concerning this verse: “People always tell me, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’ I reply, ‘Twist not Scripture, lest ye be like Satan.’”
1. John 3:16 For God so loved the world… You know my hatred of the abuse of this passage. Far too many use it to justify their ungodly behavior and lack of holiness because of God’s love. In other words, “For God so love the world, I can live and believe as I please, and Jesus is there to take care of everything for me.”
This passage is also the foundation of so much bad theology that I think we should stop quoting it, and quote all of John 3 to bring it back into light. Anything less than this is to abuse the fulness of what Christ was saying in John 3.
There you have it, my Top-5 abused passages of Scripture. What are yours?
Timothy Hammons is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and currently serves as Pastor of Redeemer Christian Fellowship in Roswell, New Mexico. This article appeared on his personal blog and is used with permission.GCI Usage App is a simple Windows application that displays your current internet usage in your task-bar.
Download:
GCI Data Usage V1.2.2 1.43 MB Download
Now compatible with the new :RED 1Tb bandwidth cap. No longer shows 1Gb limit.
Known bugs:
If you do not have GCI shared wireless plan it shows “0GB/0GB”
Installation:
Download using the link above. Run ‘GCI Data Usage.msi’ Click ‘Next’ through the installer until completed. The application will automatically run after installation is completed. When the application runs for the first time it will ask for your user name and password. This is the same username and password from here: https://login.gci.com/ Choose the desired update interval, then click ‘Save and Update’ The application will restart and will run automatically from now on.
FAQ:
Q: Will this also check purchased buckets?
A: Yes, this hasn’t been thoroughly tested thoroughly but it works. If you have 300GB cap and a 20GB bucket the app will see that you have 320GB cap.
Once you enter your login information it never has to be updated unless you change your GCI password.
To view your current usage in ‘GB used / GB limit’ hover your cursor over the usage icon in the task-bar.
Themes are changed easily by clicking on the usage icon to open the configuration menu, then choose the theme you want.
Todo list:
Windows 10 notifications for excessive usage
Multiple accounts
Other ISPs
More icon choices. More
Older Versions:
GCI Data Usage V1.2.1 1.43 MB Download
More info, specifically in the settings pane
Now shows last time polled and usage in the settings pane
Shows days remaining in ‘Usage cycle’
Small browser window now embedded in settings page so you can see the action or conveniently navigate through your usage statistics.
Changed some wordings
GCI Data Usage V1.2 1.43 MB Download
No Longer Requires Restart!!
Checks to see if you’re connected to the internet before trying to retrieve data. This will display in the ‘Hover’ function and will say, “waiting for internet.”
Fixed bug that makes the app stop checking for updates if you’re connected to the internet, then disconnect for a long period, then reconnect.
No longer requires restarted to apply themes
No longer requires restarted to change interval
“Check for updates” link now directs you to the appropriate page
GCI Data Usage V1.1.1 1.43 MB Download
Added an extra icon set and the ability to change icon themes.
Added wireless (sharred wireless) to the icon hover menu
GCI Data Usage 1.0.7 673.00 KB Download
‘Hours between checks’ now shows correct value
GCI Data Usage 1.0.6 673.00 KB Download
Application now automatically starts when your computer starts.
Fixed some more bugs, better stability
GCI Data Usage 1.0.4 662.00 KB Download.
. *Freedom to do what you ought, not what you want - Please direct comments to: stlouisix@msn.com
DIES Irae, Dies Illa, Solvet Saeculum In Favilla, Teste David Cum Sibylla
Student Art Exhibit Stirs Controversy Across The Country
Artwork Creates Controversy
Untitled Art Fails On All Accounts
Is Academic Freedom A License To Lie?
Values And Faith Of Christians Under Attack At Penn State
Discrimination Against Christians
Hypocrisy Rules The Day
Special Rights vs. Civil Rights
The Sorry Legacy of "Always Our Children"
The Homosexual Indoctrination Of Our Youth
Colleges Have No Common Sense
Behavior Not Race, Skin Color, or Ethnicity
Just Who Is Suspending Reason?
The Holocaust Of Our Time
The Lie That Sexual Orientation Is A Civil Right
Truth Is A Somebody, Not a Something
Euthanasia Replacing Medicine
Partial Birth Abortion Is Infanticide
The Angelic Doctor Responds
Catholic Moral Theology And Gravity Of Sin
Dr Kevorkian And Assisted Suicide
Flawed and Defective
All Life is Equal in the Eyes of God
Clinton Propagated Lie on Partial Birth Abortion
Teaching of Roman Catholic Church on Homosexuality
Confusing Diversity With Perversity
Behavior Is Not A Civil Right
The Real Absence
Reinventing Religion
The Real Tragedy of Matthew Shepard
Another Attack on Catholicism at Penn State
It's Time to Call the Liars LIARS!
Freedom Cannot Be Divorced From Truth
No Right Exists to Objectively Disordered Behavior
Kant Is Alive and Well Inside and Outside of the Church
What's Wrong With "Always Our Children"
Little Support From Diocese In Fighting Moral Rot
The Dangers of Syncretism and Indifferentism
Thinking of Humanae Vitae
What Kind of Message Do We Send to Our Children?
Superiors Are Not to Be Obeyed in All things - Aquinas
Metaphysics is a Divine Science
Every Human Act is Done for the Sake of the Ultimate End
Aquinas's View of Soul and Body
A Thomistic Approach to the Sciences and Moral Virtues
The Misery of Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Sartre Loves Company
Student Safety Used to Promote Radical Social Agenda in Our Schools
The Mass Wasn't Broke; It Didn't Need Fixing!
Why the Coolness Toward Mary?
Aquinas on the Names of God
The Unity of Metaphysics Stems Atheistic Flashfloods
Why I Home School
How a Diocese Subtly Steals the Faith
Morality Has Been Hijacked by the Amoral Politically Correct
There Is Nothing 'Gay' About Homosexuality
We Don't Need to Respect Self-Destructive Behavior
Scottish Cardinal Fights Homosexuality in the Schools
Crisis of Our Time
The Influence of Machiavelli and Bacon on Modern Philosophy
Who Has The Better Message, The Catholic Church Or The Liberal Media?
Passion And The Structure of Society
Pascal's Way Back To God - An Answer To The Errors Of Modern Philosophers
Locke's Vagueness About "Common Good" Has Consequences
Hume's Free Floating Impressions Illuminating Nothing For Nobody
Kant's No To Metaphysics Is No To God
Kant's False Basis For Ethics - The Preeminence Of The Autonomous Self
Boy Scout Oath Makes Inclusion Of Homosexuals Oxymoronic
Fides et Ratio In Meeting The Crisis Of Modernity
Descartes Had No Further Need Of God Other Than To Set The World In Motion
Natural Law Answers to Modernist Confusion
The Natural Law In The Role Of The Christian Family In The Modern World
Penn State President Needs To Explain Why University Promotes Homosexuality
The Dignity Of A Human Being As A Creation Of God Leads To Obedience Of The Natural Law
Penn State Priest Blatantly Promotes Homosexuality
A History Of The Heresy Coming From The Penn State Catholic Center
Homosexuality Is Biologically And Metaphysically Against The Natural Law
Homosexuality Is An Impediment To Holy Orders
The Fruits Of Contraception
Natural Family Planning Properly Understood
The Dignity Of The Human Person Is Violated By Some Reproductive Technologies
Humanae Vitae, A Teaching Of Natural Law For Mankind
HOMOSEXUALITY AND HOPE: Statement Of The Catholic Medical Association
Free Speech For Liberals Means That They Can Say Anything They Want While Their Critics Must Be Silenced
Why the Case for Intelligent Design is Important
"Please Ask, Please Tell" not "Don't ask, Don't tell" Should Be The Watchwords For The Boy Scouts
The Dignity Of A Human Being As A Creation Of God Is Missing In The Debate Regarding Stem Cells And Cloning
You Cannot Benefit By The Wrongdoing Of Others A Basic Moral Principle That Was Violated By Allowing Federal Funding For So-Called Limited Stem Cell Research
Our Rights As Catholic Christians Are Being Subtly Stolen From Us Because We Have Become "Sheople", Afraid To Speak Out
Freshmen Orientation At Penn State Is A Cause For Concern For Christian Parents
Why Is It That People Like Alan Dershowitz, Who Don't Know The Meaning Of "Right" Know Exactly What's "Right" For You And Me, Demanding The Full Force Of Law To Enforce It?
Be Not Afraid Of Them Who Kill The Body, Rather Fear Him Who Kills The Soul
Purveyor Of Smut, Larry Flynt, Is No Hero, Contrary To What Penn State University Would Have You Believe
Antonio Gramsci Is Alive And Well In The Academy And The Fourth Estate In America
The Worth Of Aristotle's Arguments Concerning Man's Social/Political Nature
An Evaluation Of Yves Simon's Argument That Authority Is An Essential Function Of Government
The Primary Function Of A Political Regime Is To Seek The Common Good
An Examination Of The Claims Of The Few And The Many Concerning Who Should Rule
The Concept Of A Mixed Regime Devoted To The Common Good
The Importance Of A Higher Law Or Natural Law In Seeking The Common Good When Considering The Issues Of Abortion And Homosexuality
What Has Atheism Done For Us lately? The Answer Is Misery And Death On An Unimaginable Scale
The Obsession With Rights Talk Forgets That Rights Without Duties Are No Rights At All
The Folly Of Modern Attempts To Base The Life Of Civilization On Mere Reason Totally Separated From The Gospel
The Necessity Of The Church's Influence In Temporal Affairs For The Metaphysical Perfection Of Man For The Sake Of His Eternity
The End Of Machiavellianism Is Conditioned On An Authentic Witness To The Gospel
The Just War Is The Teaching Of The Catholic Church, Not The Extremes Of Pacifism Or Realism
The Sophist Legacy Of Protagoras Has A Mean Streak Thanks To Political Correctness At All Costs - Especially The Truth
Welcome To Philosophy 101 Where The Students Leave Defending The Filth Of The Vagina Monologues
Three Treatises On Virtues, A Good Topic For Lenten Discussions
The Warnings In St. Augustine's City Of God Are Relevant To America Today
The Wanton Destruction Of The Catholic Seminary System Since Vatican II Planted The Seeds For Clerical Pedophilia To Flourish
If You Do Not Assent To Church Teaching, You Are Not Catholic - Saint Anselm
Aristotle's Solution To The Problem Of Parmenides
A Comparison Of Natural Philosophy, Mathematics, And Metaphysics
Plato's Theory Of Forms Or Ideas
How Does One Go About Establishing Man's Ultimate End?
The Neoplatonism Of Plotinus
An Examination Of Boethius' De hebdomadibus With Commentary By Aquinas
The Major Differences And Similarities Of Anselm, Abelard, And Bernard Of Clairvaux
A Look At Bonaventure And Aquinas On Aristotle - The Relationship Between Faith And Reason
Plato And Aristotle On The Role Of Sensible Things In Human Knowledge
Unchecked Dissent From Church Teaching Allowed Children To Be Abused By Homosexual Priests
Director Of PSU Catholic Center Contributes To A Problem That Must Be Recognized Before It Can Be Solved
Scandal In Altoona-Johnstown Diocese Seminary Screening Process Is Exposed
It Is A Heinous Lie That The Present Crisis In The Church Has Nothing To Do With Homosexuality
Altoona-Johnstown Bishop Says No Crisis In His Diocese Despite Militant Pro-Homosexual Advocate Screening His Seminarians
Review of Goodbye! Good Men: How Catholic Seminaries Turned Away Two Generations of Vocations From the Priesthood
The Unnecessary Tension Between Faith And Reason Has Its Roots In The Extremes Of Fideism And Rationalism
The Church Must Undergo A Necessary Purgation For The Sake Of The Souls Of All Concerned
A Critique Of An Infamous Instrument of Dissent From Church Teaching - A. Wilhelm's Christ Among Us
If Something Doesn't Sound Right, It Usually Isn't; It Doesn't Sound Right To Talk About Our "Homosexually Oriented" But Celibate Priests
We Need To Make Sure That The Church That We Are Contributing To Is Catholic
Official Church Teaching Bars Those Inclined To Homosexual Acts From The Priesthood
Those Unable To Overcome Their Homosexual Tendencies Must Be Dismissed From The Religious Life
The Dallas Sex Abuse Meeting Proved That We Have A Bishops' Problem Causing A Schism In The Church
Statement In The Catechism Does NOT Accurately Reflect What Is Known About The Disorder That Is Homosexuality - Catholic Medical Association
Local Bishop Not Totally Truthful In Public Statements On Church Scandal
The Great Facade - Vatican II And The Regime Of Novelty In The Roman Catholic Church
Whatever Happened to the Need for Conversions?
A Commentary On Bishop Adamec's Defense Of Dissenter Jose Hobday's Appearance In His Diocese
Voices Of Deceit Masquerading as Catholicism
Can Science Survive in a Post-Christian Society
The USCCB Refuses To Address THE Problem Causing Church Scandals
The Connection Between the Incarnation and the Birth of Science
True Peace Will Not Be Achieved Until the End of Time Because the Devil Exists
Something Forgotten by the Peace Movement - the War on Our Own Children with Supernatural Consequences
Why Does Bishop Adamec Ignore the Catechism's Teaching on Obeying Just Laws?
What is Happening in the Catholic Church is not a Solitary Sin Affecting Only the Sinner
A Response to Bishop Adamec's Statement in Latest Issue of Diocesan Paper Denying That He Has Done Anything Wrong
See The Epic Movie Gods and Generals Before The Radical Left Censors It From Your Theatres
The Ottaviani Intervention: A Critical Study of the New Mass
An Open Letter to Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) Whose Comments On The Iraq War Are Traitorous
A Commentary In Support Of Rod Dreher's WSJ Editorial On Why Didn't Sex-Abuse Scandals Stir Vatican Action The Way War Has?
The Vatican Is Becoming Increasingly Indistinguishable From Pacifists With Latest Statement From President Of Pontifical Council For Justice And Peace
Santorum Furor Shows Irrationality of Homosexuality Debate
"Gay" Log Cabin Minnesota Leader Linked to Violence-Prone "UsQueers" Website in Attempt to Intimidate Catholic Faculty Member at Penn State
It is Un-American to Censor the Traditional Family Opposition to the Secular Religion of an Amoral Belief System Which is Antithetical to Any Concept of Societal Common Good
The Catholic Church is Inexorably Ceasing to be Catholic as a Direct Function of the Sacred Liturgy Ceasing to be Catholic
Canadian Society Not Obliged to Embrace Aberrant Behavior as a Civil Right Due to Militant Homosexual MP's Temper Tantrums
Portrait of an Apostate Bishop - Mahony of Los Angeles
Response to Sodomy v. Texas Where Logic, Common Sense, and Reason Were Absent in the Majority of the Supreme Farce
There is a Much More Important Point to be Made in Regard to the Supreme Farce's De Facto Promotion of Sodomy
Vatican Document Clearly Condemns Same-Sex "Marriage" With A Powerful Warning To Catholic Politicians That Supporting Homosexual Unions Would Be "Gravely Immoral"
The Medical Evidence Alone Should Be Enough To Convince The Fair-Minded Who Are Morally Blind That Homosexuality Is Incompatible With Good Public Health
The Recent Vatican Document Condemning Homosexual Unions Reinforces Vatican Teaching Against Homosexuals In The Priesthood
Sodomy Decision Based On Fraudulent 'Science'
Medical Downside of Homosexual Behavior - A Political Agenda Is Trumping Science
THE Schism in the Church Which No One is Addressing
The Inevitable Consequence of Allowing Man to Become the Sole Arbiter of When Life Begins is the Court Ordered Murder of Terri Schiavo
Exposing the Media Lie That Homosexual Relationships Are Healthy, Stable and Loving
The Only "Rights" Never Talked About Are Those of the Innocents Who Have No One to Speak for Them
The Legacy of Cardinal Bernardin's Common Ground Seamless Garment, Which is a Rag
The Direct Link Between Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse
Vatican Official Finds New Pretext to Attack America - The Continued Embarrassment to the Church That is Renato Martino
The Meaning of "Salvation" Appears to be Evolving in the Catholic Church Where Natural Considerations are Supplanting the Supernatural
When are Catholics going to start connecting the dots as to the disaster that has befallen the Sacred Liturgy?
Mel Gibson is Putting Out An Olive Branch To Those Who Will Take It And Stab Him In The Back With It
If The Society of St. Pius X is in Schism, What About The Society of Roger Cardinal Mahony & Company Destroying the Church from Within?
The Religious Masterpiece The Passion of the Christ is an Epic Cinema Achievement of the Highest Order
Pro-Sodomite Verbal Engineering as Practiced by the Lunatic Left Media Led by Walter Cronkite
Scandal at Penn State Catholic Center's Affirmation of the Normality of Being Inclined to Homosexual Lifestyles Contrary to Church Teaching
Letter to Local Bishop - If the Church Is Serious About Stopping Abuse, Why Does It Not Stop Admitting Men Inclined to Homosexual Acts to the Priesthood?
The Sham of Protecting Marriage While Hypocritically Winking at Domestic Partner Benefits and Civil Unions
The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage
The Faulty Theology of the Catholic Mass as a Meal is Condemned by the Council of Trent
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irse en – to become
irse / marcharse – to leave, to go away
imaginarse – to imagine, to suppose
lavarse – to wash oneself
levantarse – to get up
llamarse – to be name, to called
maquillarse / pintarse – to put on makeup
molestarse – to mad
negarse a – to refuse to
ocuparse de – to attend to, to be concerned with, to busy oneself with
peinarse – to comb one’s hair
preocuparse por – to worry
ponerse – to put on (clothing), to wear
ponerse (triste, feliz…..) – to become
ponerse a + infinitive – to begin to
ponerse en marcha (en camino) – to start out, to set out
quejarse – to moan (pain), to complain
quedarse – to stay, to remain
quitarse – to take off (clothing)
reunirse – to join in / to meet up
reirse de – to laugh at
rendirse – to surrender
recostarse – to recline, to lie down, to lie back, to rest
sentirse – to feel (something inside of you, emotional feelings)
photo credit: TonyFelgueiras via photopin
AdvertisementsARLINGTON, Texas -- The Texas Rangers have designated veteran pitcher Derek Lowe for assignment to make room for Josh Lindblom, who started Monday's loss against the Oakland Athletics.
Lowe, who has won 176 games and was a member of Boston's World Series championship teams in 2004 and 2007, has struggled this season pitching in relief for the Rangers.
The Rangers have 10 days to trade, release, or outright Lowe to the minor leagues. Lowe, who joined the Rangers on March 6 and made the Opening Day roster, went 1-0 with a 9.00 ERA this season.
Lindblom, 25, made his first career start Monday against Oakland, allowing four runs in 4 2/3 innings to record the loss in Texas' 9-2 defeat. The right-hander was optioned to Triple-A Round Rock after the game to create a roster spot for catcher A.J. Pierzynski, who was activated from the disabled list.
Lindblom remains a candidate to start one of the two games in Monday's doubleheader at Arizona. The 10-day rule that requires players to stay in the minor leagues once they are optioned is suspended for doubleheaders.
Todd Wills is a contributor to ESPNDallas.com.Team Foundation Server (TFS) from Microsoft is an application lifecycle management (ALM) solution that is deployed across many development teams and organizations. After working with TFS for 3+ years, I have come to the conclusion that organizations are better off without it and should look to adopting best of breed tools (of which, I claim, TFS is not part).
This post addresses three topics: the technical flaws of TFS and its subsystems, the culture TFS encourages and strategies on how to get out.
TFS Sucks
For developers, tooling can inspire almost religious dogmatism and fanaticism. This is understandable. We work with these tools for a significant portion of our lives. Choosing the right tool for the job can decrease stress, increase productivity and make legitimate impacts on us.
Dogmatism can cut both ways and TFS is one of those topics that seems to inspire factionization. There are many people that dislike TFS[1][2][3][4]. There are many people that like TFS[5][6][7]. We'll get to the why it is so divisive in the second section, but I'm going to try to explain why TFS is not a best of breed tool. I'll start by breaking down the subsystems of TFS. However, any review of TFS would be a disservice if it did not talk about the vertical integration that TFS provides and I'll end there.
TFS Version Control
In a nutshell, this could be the worst part of TFS 2010. It is certainly the most impactful subsystem to the developer. Combine a below-par version control system with the amount of time that a developer is working with it and you have a very frustrated developer (that posts their frustations on amplicate.com!).
Frustrations with the version control system are well documented[8]. In order to be comprehensive, though, I'll give you the digest.
TFVC is a centralized-server model that requires constant and active communication between a client (read: developer) machine and the server. If, for example, the network goes down for 1 hour, development grinds to a halt. The reason here is that TFS will mark all files as read-only on the filesystem until you have asked the server to check them out for you. If you cannot communicate to the server, you cannot checkout the files and you cannot edit them [9].
TFVC wants you to do everything inside of Visual Studio [10]. When you add a file, it is best to add the file through Visual Studio's contextual menus in your solution explorer. TFS will recognize that you are adding a file and track that file for you. This is great until you need to start adding some files outside of Visual Studio. In my experience, this is usually peripheral code like batch automation scripts, build tools, XML configuration files, etc. Sometimes you use Notepad++ because its more convenient--but then you get yourself into trouble because you try to check in but TFS does not recognize the new file or that the file is edited. In that case, you need to navigate to the Source Control Explorer, add or check out the file using its contextual menus.
TFVC uses a merging solution that is heavy handed and ineffective. It can, sometimes, do automerging for a file that was edited twice. However, it prompts the developer for each file and makes them click an "Automerge" button. The default merge tool doesn't support a rather standard 4 window, 3 way merge view [11].
There are many other documented problems and errors with TFS. Some of those are very scary (e.g. losing check ins) but I have not personally run into them. Many of those are small but annoying things that should be fixed but does not seem likely to change in the near future. There can be, and has been, whole posts dedicated to just the issues surrounding the version control system.
TFS as Bug Tracking
TFS, as an ALM, has to handle bugs on software that has been released. Using a bug work item, someone will log a bug into the system. She will be required to fill in some details like Title, Description, "Classification", Assignee, etc.
In order to create this bug work item, you need to use either Team Explorer (through Visual Studio, most likely) or the TFS 2010 Web Interface. The obvious problem for the first scenario is that developers are the only ones likely to have Visual Studio and are only one of several groups of people that could log a bug.
The second option, TFS Web Access, is really a second class citizen. It is slow, painful and cluttered. Unless you work with it every day, you could easily become overwhelmed by the options when you just need to log a bug!
Who logs bugs? For the most part, bugs are discovered by customers and then distilled into actionable items by customer service representatives. Instead of creating bugs through an email, or through a simple web interface, the CSRs are asked to either open up Visual Studio (if they have it; a development tool!) or to use Web Access. On top of that, they are asked to fill in information that they do not know or care about. Both of these processes discourage bugs from being logged due to the pain that the CSRs experience.
TFS as Agile Project Management
Unfortunately, I cannot speak to TFS from the perspective of a waterfall or clean-room type of project management. I just do not have any experience in those areas (though, some of my "Agile" projects have definitely had some Waterfall-ish aspects to them!). I can speak, though, to its use in Agile.
From my experience, TFS is ignored by Agile teams. Instead, I have used a combination of Story Wall, Pivotal Tracker, Jira and Excel. Yes, Excel. In fact, my current project manager uses Excel instead of TFS. I do not know how she deals with the pain of Excel on a day to day basis but she finds it a better experience than to use TFS! She would much rather use a tool like Jira or Mingle [12] to manage the project.
This largely stems from the inflexibility of TFS as a project management tool. Agile TFS work items, by default, have only five states [13]. Agile is about self-organizing, constantly improving teams that will change in order to make themselves better. This includes process changes as a project goes on. Even if the team went to the trouble of creating custom templates, those templates are going to have to change. TFS makes changing painful and, thus, discourages instead of enables Agile teams.
Project reporting in TFS is rather primitive. It operates on high level, structured data like Work Items. One of the more sophisticated views is the "Build Quality Indicators Report". This report is a decent start to a build quality metrics report but to get additional information you're going to have to branch out and create a custom build template.
TFS as Build System
Probably one of the under-utilized features of TFS is the build system. TFS will build every checkin akin to other build systems like Jenkins or TeamCity.
You can switch this on and TFS will run your software through a default template associated with your build type. In order to do anything different that the default template (and, believe me, you will), you'll have to go through a 15 step process to create a custom build type [14].
Once you have your custom build, it will now be time to create new tasks. This means that in your new build type (which is actually a C# project) you'll need to do some PrivateAssembly referencing, some obscure subclassing and some drag and drop workflow editing (in a very slow and cumbersome drap and drop interface, I might add). All of this will need to be done against a rather odd API [15].
I once had to write a custom build pipeline for a product I was developing. The functional tests were using a Java-based test runner (proprietary) that needed to be executed on every build. We wanted a HTML dashboard of the metrics we were running and the build times. I spent a few days getting this to work. It was extremely brittle and development was a pain. In order to test the system, I would have to write code and check it in for the build to attempt to run it. There really was no local development process for build development.
On top of that, continuous deployment (which is all the rage) requires a strong pipeline that TFS just cannot provide. While TFS has agents that can execute many builds or parts of a build in parallel, I see no worthwhile way of developing a pipeline on top of TF Build.
TFS Integration
The elephant in the room is the vertical integration that TFS provides. It is, by far, the biggest thing that proponents will use as defense. It has been, in my experience, a big selling point for developers and organizations to use TFS.
TFS has the promise of being a drop in, all in one box solution to ALM within an organization. On top of that, it provides additional features such as a source control system and a build system that have some additional integration points into the ALM, as well.
The problem is that the TFS ALM is only compatible with one source control system and one build system. And that the TFS Build System is only compatible with one source control system. TFS is actually a package of highly incompatible software that happens to work together but with nothing else.
This is a problem because it prevents organizations from adopting best of breed tools. For sake of argument, let us assume that the TFS ALM and TF Build subsystems are first class. The TFS source control, however, needed to be replaced. With most tools, you're given the flexibility to make that decision and switch to a better tool. With TFS, you're locked in because the ALM and the TF Build subsystems require that you use TFS and only TFS.
The Microsoft Way
As an organization, you're probably going to use some bad tools at one point or another. There will always be a new hotness that makes one of the tools you use look like dinosaurs. That's okay. The main point is to Get Things Done. As long as you can do that, you'll be sitting pretty.
Some day, you plan to move on to better tools than TFS and are even in the process of doing so now. You're evaluating other ALMs and have installed TeamCity and have a few builds going. Great stuff.
TFS may be hurting you more than just technically. TFS may be a symptom of a more endemic problem. TFS, as a tool, wholehearted embraces the culture of cradle-to-grave hand holding and dispassionate development. Good developers and organizations all have one thing in common: they are hungry. They thirst for knowledge and delight in trying new things. While at work, they are never satisfied with "okay" but always strive for "better".
TFS promises several things for your organization. It will handle source control for you, it will handle project management (even giving you strict templates that you have to follow!) and strictly enforces development policies (you must associate a work item with your check in). TFS will be an install once, forget about it forever solution. It is easy and you do not have to think about it.
The problem with that promise is that these are the sorts of things that an organization should be questioning. Project Management is more of an art than a science and good project management evolves along with the project. Your source control set up should enable multiple teams to work simultaneously and less painfully (try working on TFS from India via VPN). Your bug tracking system should be so dead simple that CSRs are creating bugs for every tiny UI hiccup that customers experience. Your deployment pipeline should take under an hour from developer check in to production-like environment.
Instead, the teams that work with TFS will use the default templates, default build pipeline and ignore the pain of a centralized source control model. I have also seen the lack of good configuration management in an organization because someone was able to one-click install TFS on a server and then the organization can trick itself into thinking that configuration management is a solved problem. The teams gladly ignore the "not programming" part of delivering software and put their heads in the sand.
This is not only TFS's fault, though. There is a whole approach to software development that embraces the set-it-and-forget-it or cradle-to-grave software development setup. The approach discourages the use of products that are not given to development teams. Organizations with symptoms of this can be found using tools and frameworks like Entity Framework and DevExpress. Your code is likely very weakly tested. You may not have a clear path to production. Deployment can consist of manually copying DLLs or hand crafting an MSI. This is a bad state to be in and the only way to get yourself out of this hole is to start thinking wholistically about software development.
Moving Forward
In order to get yourself out of the TFS hole, you're going to have to endure a bit of pain. However, instead of doing one big switchover, there may be better ways of incrementally moving away from TFS.
The first thing that is helpful is to establish a team that can make decisions on configuration management across the organization. In ThoughtWorks, we call these kinds of roles "DevOps" because it often involves both the development part of the IT organization as well as the operations side. Appoint someone to be the leader for these kinds of decisions and as someone that can enforce a decision for the organization as a whole.
Then, set up a Jenkins [16] server and start piloting a new continuous integration approach. Jenkins has a TFS plugin that seems to work fairly well. It is likely that, if using TFS only, you are not using the build system anyway and that a switch to Jenkins will be a painless exercise.
Use Jenkins to start thinking critically about how to deliver software. You'll find that it is a non-trivial task. You'll need performance, UAT and staging environments. You'll need to be able to deploy your software automatically. You will need to understand how to get your software from the source code checked in to TFS to a deployed, usable application for your users.
After you've got the ball rolling on Jenkins, it is time to move away from TFS version control. I would highly recommend to switch to a distributed version control system like Mercurial or Git [17][18]. This is a non-trivial task and will be painful. However, you can mitigate that pain.
You will save yourself a ton of pain by using a Linux server for either Git or Mercurial. While both work on Windows, they both perform better on Linux. VMWare has appliances that you can drop in which are already set up. There is also a turn key linux distribution for these systems [19]. If you can swing it, though, the best DVCS hosting solutions are actually in the cloud [20][21].
Start by creating a pilot program that uses your new version control system and creating a small group of your developers that can be the evangelists within your organization. If you have people that are particularly passionate about the new source control system (they aren't hard to find!), use them as your experts. Train them on the new pilot program and allow them to discover the positives and negatives about the system.
After version control, TFS is now left as a bug tracker and project management tool. It isn't particularly good at either but chances are that your organization is pretty entrenched with these tools. Everyone knows how to use it and will resist any large scale changes.
I've little experience in this area and I imagine that this will be painful, as well. The best way to get your data out of TFS seems to be to export it to Excel. From there, you may have to re-enter all data into a new system. This is a slow and painful process, I imagine.
As far as alternatives to TFS, there are many. I've used Jira, Redmine and Mingle successfully [22][23][24][25]. I think this will depend largely on your organization's needs and that the transition here will need larger buy in from other departments. For example, it is likely that your CSRs are using TFS to enter in bugs.
Conclusion
Do not use TFS. It harms your organization and is extremely painful to leave. Vertical integration is another word for "lock in". Only through the hard work of some open source developers is there any lateral integration with TFS (e.g. Jenkins) and that is very likely to stay true.
One thing to note is that TFS plans to fix everything in their next release. Do not be tempted. TFS has historically been a bad system to work with and the Microsoft solution should not garner loyalty until it has proven itself to be a viable alternate system.
[1] http://www.nearinfinity.com/blogs/joe_ferner/why_i_dislike_tfs-team_found.html
[2] http://amplicate.com/hate/tfs
[3] http://goingagile.blogspot.com/2008/04/evaluating-source-control-systems.html
[4] http://blog.stevemoyer.net/2010/07/microsofts-total-failure-system-ms-tfs.html
[5] http://www.itwriting.com/blog/4744-real-world-microsoft-team-foundation-server-not-very-good-says-thoughtworks.html/comment-page-1#comment-728861
[6] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/62126/what-are-the-real-benefits-of-tfs-for-the-individual-developer/62275#62275
[7] http://teamsystemrocks.com/
[8] http://www.google.com/search?q=tfs+version+control+sucks
[9] There is a solution to temporarily remove TFS bindings, but it is an unintuitive and clunky process. It can also lose changes when re-establishing a connection to the server in some rather unpredictable ways.
[10] Some other IDEs are supported through Visual Studio Everywhere. This gets around some of the tool support problems. However, this still leaves things like copying files into the source tree very clunky.
[11] A 4-window, 3-way merge will show you 4 different files (or, rather, the same file in 4 different states). It will show you the "base" which is the common, shared file state. It will show you "mine" and "other". And, it will show you "output". There are tools that can be configured with TFS that will do this correctly.
[12] Full Disclosure: I work at ThoughtWorks. Mingle is a ThoughtWorks Studios product.
[13] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff731576.aspx#ChangeState
[14] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd380683(VS.100).aspx
[15] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/aa337655(v=VS.80).aspx
[16] http://www.jenkins-ci.org
[17] http://mercurial.selenic.com/
[18] http://git-scm.com/
[19] http://www.turnkeylinux.org/revision-control
[20] http://www.github.com/
[21] https://www.bitbucket.org/
[22] http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
[23] http://www.redmine.org/
[24] http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/mingle-agile-project-management
[25] Full Disclosure: Again, I work at ThoughtWorks. Mingle is a ThoughtWorks Studios product.Iceland's strip clubs are getting the boot. With the world's first openly gay head of state as well as the usual raft of envy-inducing Scandinavian policies, it's being called the most feminist country in the world. Could it happen here?
Well, probably not. We're talking about a country where almost half the parliamentarians are female, where the banning of commercialized sexual activity (including brothels and stripping) was, in a 2007 poll, supported by 82 percent of women and 57 percent of men.
That said, there's reason to believe that Iceland's crippling economic crisis — a sort of hyper-speed version of what the U.S. went through — laid the groundwork for empowering the women's movement there to push ahead such policies. After all, the post-crisis consensus, explored most prominently in the U.S. in Michael Lewis's "Wall Street On The Tundra" piece in Vanity Fair (sadly, not online in full anymore), was that male domination of the economy had played a big role in toppling it.
One of the distinctive traits about Iceland's disaster, and Wall Street's, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs.... A few days before [Lewis met a rare female banker] for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. "I'm so fed up with this whole system," he said. "I just want some women to take care of my money."
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But after its turbulent 2008, last year Iceland banged on women's doors in more ways than just money management. According to an Assocation For Women in Development report,
Led by Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, the world's first openly lesbian head of state, banks were nationalized and several women were promoted up the ranks or brought in to head them. Additionally, several prominent women-led financial firms emerged, espousing a new ‘feminine' way of working that shunned ‘business as usual.' Critics had attributed the economic downfall to a brash ‘masculine' culture that involved buccaneering, financial engineering and reckless, shortsighted decision-making by the male elite, jeopardizing the country's immediate and long-term economic stability[.]
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It is in this climate that politician Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir pushed for the stripping ban, which will "will make it illegal for any business to profit from the nudity of its employees." Her reasoning: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold."
Whatever you think of stripping, it is fascinating to see how Iceland's crisis has become opportunity. Given the relative lack of profound soul-searching that followed the crisis in the United States, it's hard to imagine something similar happening here.
Iceland: The World's Most Feminist Country [Guardian]
Related: Iceland, Nordics Top World Gender Equality List [Reuters]
Can Feminine Leadership Mend The Economic Crisis In Iceland? [AWID]
Iceland's Collapse Narrows Its Gender Gap [WSJ]
Wall Street On The Tundra [VF]
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Earlier: How Wall Street's Men Act Like Menstruating Women
[Image via Side Salad.]Share. Only sold 4286 copies were sold in its first week on sale. Only sold 4286 copies were sold in its first week on sale.
To say that Metroid Prime: Federation Force has not done well in Japan would be an understatement.
According to Famitsu's latest sales data (as translated by Kotaku), the 3DS FPS game only sold 4286 copies in the country in its first week on sale, coming in at number 20 in the weekly sales ranking. Other new games debuted much higher, including No Man's Sky (15997 units sold) and King of Fighters XIV (23242 units sold).
We reviewed Metroid Prime: Federation Force last month, and said its neat ideas were "soured by an impotent and boring primary weapon".
Exit Theatre Mode
Lucy O'Brien is an editor at IGN’s Sydney office. Follow her ramblings on Twitter.I’m in a vegetative mood today and the old energy levels aren’t high enough to post anything demanding, so I thought I’d put up a piece of music for your entertainment and edification. This was recorded in Paris, on April 28th 1937 and it revolves around a lengthy tenor saxophone solo by the great Coleman Hawkins. Inspired by his sojourn in Europe, Hawkins returned to New York to record probably the most famous tenor solo ever, on the classic ballad Body and Soul, but this shows a side to his playing that was more familiar to swing era jazz fans. Listen to the drive that he injects into this performance combined with that “heavy” tenor tone, and you’ll understand why he was regarded as the pre-eminent tenor soloist of the 30s.
Other members of the band include Benny Carter who plays the alto solo near the end and who obviously did the arrangement for the four saxophones – nobody else in jazz history has ever managed to get such a biting sound out of small saxophone section as Benny Carter. And if that weren’t enough there’s a bonus in the unmistakeable form of Django Reinhardt‘s guitar. Enjoy!
AdvertisementsThe BART Board of Directors will meet Thursday, Jan. 22 at 5 pm to consider a range of topics including a newly proposed ordinance to restrict smoking of e-cigarettes / vaping devices as well as a presentation on the role of public art in existing and future BART facilities.
The meeting will be held in the BART Board Room at the Kaiser Center, located at 300 20th Street in Oakland and will be streamed live at www.bart.gov/board. Additionally, the full agenda is available to download as a PDF for those interested in a detailed summation.
E-CIGARETTE AND VAPING DEVICE BAN
The Board will take the first steps toward banning these devices as a courtesy to passengers as well as to update the no smoking policy to be more in line with similar county and city-level bans. Currently, e-cigarette use at BART is not regulated. Without state and federal guidelines, BART’s only immediate option is to enact an ordinance to enforce the restriction.
“A number of complaints have reached the Board of Directors about people using electronic cigarettes and vaping devices on BART property,” said Director Robert Raburn. “Other transit providers have enacted prohibitions that we now propose to enact.”
If the proposed ordinance passes, signage in stations and trains will be updated to ensure riders know about the new restrictions. The Board’s action will be considered the first of two readings of the proposed ordinance. The Board will consider the adoption of the ordinance at a Board meeting in February.
ROLE OF ART AT BART
Also up for discussion is the current and future role of art in BART towards making transit work, creating a place, and connecting to communities. This will be the first of three Board of Directors meetings on the development of an art policy at BART.
“An art policy and program could provide BART the potential to integrate art into our station modernization efforts, prevent graffiti, establish community partnerships, and celebrate culture and diversity,” said Board President Tom Blalock.Like so many other abused elephants during the late 18 and early1900s, the five ton Asian elephant Mary was also abused by her handlers of the Sparks World Famous Shows circus. But one day she had had enough. That day would haunt the small Tennessee town of Erwin forever.
Only a few days after being hired, September 12, 1916, Red Eldridge, a hotel worker hired as assistant elephant handler, lead Mary to a pond to for a drink and to splash around. On the way to the pond Mary bent down to eat part of a watermelon. Eldridge, being impatient, prodded Mary behind the ear with a hook. Mary went into a rage. With her trunk she grabbed Eldridge, tossed him against a drink stand, and stepped on his head.
According to reports at that time, after crushing Eldridge's head Mary, calmed down and didn't threaten anyone. But with all the commotion everyone began to chat "Kill the elephant"! A blacksmith tried to kill her by shooting over a dozen rounds into Mary which had no effect.
Word quickly grew of the incident, nearby towns wouldn't allow the circus in to perform if Mary was part of the show. Some reports indicate that Mary had killed trainers in the past and that made communities even more hesitant.
After much pressure, circus owner Charlie Sparks reluctantly decided to squelch public fear and save the reputation of the circus by publicly executing Mary.
On a foggy and rainy September day in the nearby town of Erwin, Tennessee, a crowd of over 2,500 people gathered at the Clinchfield Railroad yard to watch the execution of Mary. The elephant was strung up by her neck with the use of a chain connected to a railcar-mounted industrial crane. As she was hoisted up the chain snapped and Mary fell, breaking her hip. Many children watching the spectacle ran in terror. Finally with a heaver chain the second attempt was successful in killing Mary. She hung for half an hour until she was declared dead. After the execution Mary was buried next to the tracks and she was known as "Murderous Mary".
95 years later the residents of Erwin, Tennessee would like to move past the strange event that has haunted their town. But many are still intrigued and keep this historic event alive. An antique shop named "Hanging Elephant Antique Shop" opened in Erwin memorializing the event. There you can purchase tee-shirts with the image of Murderous Mary hanging from the railcar crane.Black Rock Desert, NV — Two global brands facing separate multi-billion dollar faulty product crises are teaming up to address their problems with a unique sponsorship plan. Under the agreement, Samsung and Volkswagen will be platinum co-sponsors of the 2017 Burning Man festival, where each recalled Volkswagen car will be equipped with a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phone and added to a giant pyre near the festival gates.
The resulting megafire will help each company dispose of their millions of recalled products and is expected to consume more than 1.5 million hectares, surpassing the Great Fire of 1910 as the largest in U.S. history.
“We have a need to repurpose several million unsellable cars” said Volkswagen AG Chairman Hans Müller. “Our Korean counterparts also have considerable surplus product at this time. By combining forces we will use our business synergies and ingenuity to give back to the community and make amends for the past. It was wrong to cheat the emissions control tests for our cars. By taking these actions, we show that we have learned from our mistakes.”
Samsung North America spokeswoman Hyun Jeong Kim added “With the Galaxy Note 7 recently being banned from commercial aircraft, it was important for us to find a local disposal solution for the North American market, and a final resting place for these wonderful devices. While it is unfortunate they proved unsuitable for their original purpose, we are very pleased that our phones will be put to good use at Burning Man.” This year’s festival will be held in Black Rock, Nevada and the “performance sculpture” contributed by the two companies is expected to reach 42,000 degrees fahrenheit and be visible from space.
The response of environmental groups to the proposed plan was a mix of horror and disbelief. Sierra Club spokesperson Dr. Lucy Davidoff began her press conference by stammering “I can’t even” before choking up and being helped off the stage.
Tickets for the 2017 Burning Man Festival go on sale next Thursday.Matt Kinman's Back Porch of America (BPoA) introduces viewers to people, places, and ways of life in America that are dying, or nearly gone. Kinman is personal friends with many traditional crafts people, musicians, story tellers, cooks, moonshiners, and more. The goal of BPoA is to document these friends of his, American craftspeople, and share their stories, their crafts, and culture with others, so that these ways of life are not lost.
Matt Kinman, himself a full blooded troubadour, travels the country singing songs and playing tunes for his supper. How many of us have had the pleasure of putting him up for a while? How many of us "wow" with his stories and tales? This is the experience we are going to capture - traveling with The Little Hobo around the United States, meeting and spending time with fellow Americans.
In the Spring of 2012 a small film crew (two cameras, one sound recorder and a producer) travelled to Nashville, Tennessee to gather some preliminary information and interviews by visiting with two friends of Matt Kinman's: Roy Harper and Houston Harrison. Roy Harper of Manchester, Tenn. is a Traditional Country Music Hall of Famer. Having spent his career as a railroad brakeman, he travelled the country working the rails. When he was not working on the rails he was busy singing and picking old country songs from the likes of Jimmy Rodgers, Rex Griffin and Wilbur Watts. When he retired from railroading he took up oil painting train scenes. At the age of 88 he has now painted over 400 pictures.
Houston Harrison of Hendersonville, Tenn., is a skilled rifle maker and weapons restorer. Houston has been building and restoring antique pistols and rifles since he was a young man. At 74 years old he has built over 50 weapons from scratch. Since our interview with Houston, he has been diagnosed with advanced stage alzheimer's, so we are very lucky to have gotten his stories when we did.
In this Spring of 2013, we are returning (with our small crew) to the south east United States to document more stories before they too begin to fade into history. Our trip will be 14 days long, and we are slated to interview a fifth generation chair maker, a farmer/blacksmith/musician, an african american buck dancer, an award winning quilter, a story teller/historian/musician, and a historic country store (and its proprietor) that has hosted live music for over 40 years. From the footage we shoot, we are going to edit 4 separate interviews. We aim to have multiple versions of these interviews, some being 30 minutes in length, other versions being as short as 5 minutes. Our hope is to be able to tailor each version of the edit to multiple media formats (TV show, Blog, DVD, Short Film).
Supporting Matt Kinman's Back Porch of America will ensure that we can get these stories down, begin editorial, and preserve our history as Americans.Ben Patton
Staff Writer
Today, in an exclusive interview with PopWrapped, Chinga Chang Record’s CEO, Dan “DMAK” Herman, spoke to me candidly regarding Amanda Bynes, her “upcoming” album, collaboration with Wyclef Jean, her tweets, and our mutual affection and concern for the 27 year old actress.
“I just want to clear the air,” Herman said as he began telling me about how he grew up watching the Amanda Show and originally the idea to offer her a record deal as an opportunity for the actress to try something new and get back on top of her career. On June 6th, he decided to approach Amanda’s attorneys and pitch them the idea. “They were receptive,” he said, and asked for additional information to be sent over so they could look it further.
Their interest continued and led to a top-secret meeting (that we all ended up hearing about) with Bynes, Herman and former Fugees rapper, Wyclef Jean. The meeting was set to take place on Monday the 17th, but just hours before they were to meet, Amanda allegedly contacted them, saying she was sick and may not be able to make it. “I was basically begging her to come,” Herman exclaimed, expressing that he really wanted Amanda to have this opportunity. “I had gone on CNN, E! and Mario Lopez doing interviews promoting this deal with Amanda, and I didn’t want to see her blow this chance.” Amanda didn’t end up making it, but promised she’d take care of it the next day; which of course, she didn’t.
After 10 days of constant negotiations, Amanda ended up not showing for either meeting, but instead tweeted her support of agro-rap star Waka Flocka Flame. All things considered, Chinga Chang decided they had done enough and retracted their offer. That’s when, according to Herman, Amanda took to her Twitter account to discount any connection she allegedly had with the record company, “I never spoke to anyone at Chinga Chang Records. I got an offer for a bigger record deal that I’m taking as soon I get my surgeries!”
…and speaking of surgery, “People [doctors] need to start running background checks on people who want plastic surgery; whatever doctor is operating on Amanda is taking her money and destroying her face. |
ud Abouhalima, Mohammad Salameh, Nidal A. Ayyad and Ahmed Ajaj (the 1993 World Trade Center Bombers), or Timothy McVeigh (the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber) or Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev (the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers), let alone Abu Maha al-Iraqi.
Also left unmentioned will be the heavy regulation of guns in both the US and France, or that those regulations didn’t stop Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik (who killed 14 in San Bernardino in December 2015), or the Charlie Hebdo attackers (who killed 12 in Paris in January 2015), or the Bataclan theater attackers (who killed 130 in Paris in November 2015), or Omar Mateen, or Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
Laws and regulations won’t stop terrorists from using trucks, either.
“Our rifle is only a tool,” Private Joker notes in Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers (adapted to film as Full Metal Jacket). “It is a hard heart that kills.”
Focusing on tools misses the point entirely: When they choose to attack, terrorists will buy, beg, borrow, steal or make the tools to do so (the Tsarnaevs used pressure cookers, nails, gunpowder from fireworks and remote detonators made from toy car controllers).
Terrorists don’t obey laws or conform to regulations. If they did, they wouldn’t be terrorists. Making those laws and regulations more restrictive fails as a counter to — in fact it actively incentivizes — terrorism. The goal of terrorists is to terrorize. Mass acceptance of repressive legal responses says they’re succeeding.
If oppressive police state tactics don’t work, what might?
Refusing to be terrorized would help, at least some. Just as being terrorized encourages more terrorism, not being terrorized discourages it. When one tactic doesn’t work, smart actors choose other tactics.
But opposing mass killings by “our guys” is even more important.
Western (including American and French) troops have killed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, in the Middle East and Central Asia just since 1991. Many (maybe most) have been innocent civilians. Their families, friends, countrymen and co-religionists have, unsurprisingly, responded in kind. We should stop supporting military adventurism not just because it inevitably results in “blowback” and dead bodies back home, but because it’s as wrong when “we” do it as it is when “they” do it.
It is indeed a hard heart that kills. Tools are mere distraction. Hearts — and minds — are where change begins.
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY
Also published on Medium.I bought this mat for my kitchen and I just loved the way it arrived. It was nicely packaged in a large box with good set of instructions to air it out first in order to get rid of that rubber odor. I was surprised when I first stepped on it, I was like WOW, it was a lot better than my expectations as I was used to the usual kitchen mats, I could tell the difference right away. It is soft and thick and provides a good amount of cushion and comfort to rest my soles but at the same time it is not too soft like a memory foam that my feet start to sink.
I am a stay home mother of two girls and looking after them all by myself and I spend a good amount of my time in kitchen and this mat came as a great solution for me, I have used this only for a week and I can feel the difference, my overall fatigue has reduced and the severity of my back pain has somehow improved too. The add on fact is its generous size which enables me to easily hop left and right while cooking and I am soon ordering another one for my dish washing area too. It is easy to clean, I would just use a wet cloth or kitchen wipes and it would look just like new, shiny and black. I would highly recommend this product to everyone who's job demands prolonged standing.ThreeZero has posted pre-order details and new photos for their next Fallout 4 figure. Back in January, they opened up orders for their T-45 Power Armor 1/6 Scale Figure. Now they have posted details and photos for the Fallout 4 T-60 Power Armor 1/6 Scale Figure. Pre-orders will open starting October 12. There will be a standard version as well as a ThreeZero and Bethesda Exclusive version available. Here are the details:
1/6th scale Fallout 4 T-60 Power Armor Collectible Figure, will be available for pre-order at www.threezerostore.com starting from October 12th 9:00AM Hong Kong time and available in two variants:
Exclusive Atom Cats Version, which comes with blond female head and with Fat Man (comes with Mini Nuke) as an additional weapon. This Exclusive Atom Cats Version will be available at www.threezerostore.com for 398USD/3096HKD with Worldwide Shipping included in the price. This version will be also available at Bethesda Store – store.bethsoft.com, Bethesda Store price doesn’t include shipping.
Retail Version, which will be offered at our store for 380USD/2956HKD with Worldwide Shipping included in the price.
Collectible figure stands 14.5” (36.8 cm) tall and features over 35 points of articulation (including articulated fingers). Figure comes with highly detailed and exchangeable female head, helmet (which features a light-up LED function) and Assault Rifle with two exchangeable magazines and removable scope. All outer-armor pieces are detachable and interchangeable with upcoming FO4 Power Armor figures. Under the detachable outer-armor, you will find endoskeleton with amazing attention to every detail.
1/6th scale Fallout 4 T-60 Power Armor Collectible Details:
Figure stands 14.5 inches (36.8 cm) tall;
Fully-posable figure with over 35 points of articulation;
Incredibly detailed mechanical parts;
Articulated fingers;
Exchangeable female head and helmet;
Helmet features a light-up LED function;
All outer-armor pieces are detachable and interchangeable with upcoming FO4 Power Armor figures;
Detailed endoskeleton underneath the outer-armor pieces;
Incredible paint application to highlight all the details with weathering effect based on the appearance in video game;
Includes highly detailed weapon Assault Rifle with two exchangeable magazine and removable scope.
Exclusive Atom Cats Version priced at Threezero Store 398USD/3096HKD with Worldwide Shipping included in the price comes with:
Fat Man with Mini Nuke
Requires: 3 X AG1 Button Cell Batteries for light-up LED function (Batteries Not Included).
* Final product may vary from prototype images.The Senate is scheduled to vote today on the “Blunt amendment,” part of a multi-year transportation funding bill. Sponsored by Roy Blunt (R-MO), the amendment would allow employers to opt out of providing employee health insurance coverage that violates their religious or moral convictions.
Democrats are vigorously opposing the measure as an attack on women’s rights, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius encouraging the Senate “to reject this cynical attempt to roll back decades of progress in women’s health.” Most Republicans support the amendment in the name of the religious liberty protected under the First Amendment, though some worry about the implications for the upcoming elections.
Both sides seem to be missing the deeper point: This battle is exactly what you get when—in the words the president uses so often, which have come to capture his fundamental agenda—“We’re all in this together.”
Dismissing the amendment as “politics masquerading as morality,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) declaimed:
It allows any insurance company or any employer to deny coverage for any service they choose, based on a religious belief or a moral conviction. What is a moral conviction? I have moral convictions. You have moral convictions. We have different moral convictions.
Precisely. That’s why, in a free society, we don’t throw everybody and everything into the common pot. We allow individuals to pursue their individual goals according to their “different moral convictions.” We don’t force them into relationships, whether with employers or insurance companies or whomever, that offend those convictions. Yet the more we socialize ever more of life—as we’ve gone far in doing with everything from health care to retirement to education and so much more—the more we deny individuals the choices that would otherwise be available to them in a truly free society.
We haven’t yet reached the point, as in some societies, where we regulate, through force of law, where people may live, or travel, or go to college, or what medical procedures they may or may not have. But with Obamacare, especially, we’re headed down that road. That’s why an AP poll last August showed that 82 percent of Americans opposed Obamacare’s individual mandate.
Republicans would be smart, therefore, if they stopped talking about contraceptives and started talking about liberty—about where this country is headed. The Tea Party people understood that, for the most part, and look what they accomplished in the last election. The country is ready for bold but credible ideas about getting government out of our lives. We need people willing to say that the only thing we’re all in together is making this again a free country.I celebrate Christmas, but the cards I send out every year say “Happy Holidays”. I never considered this a political statement, just a statement of fact – the people I’v mailed well-wishes to celebrate all sorts of different things, and so my greetings reflect that.
Any controversy over Christmas always felt like a Fox News conspiracy theory; but this year the president of the United States is claiming some sort of victory in an imaginary war against the most popular and well-represented holiday in the country. And it left me feeling a bit bah-humbug-ish.
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again. I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
Pre-Trump, when someone wished me a Merry Christmas I was pleased – now I wonder if they’re one of those people who are making some sort of passive-aggressive statement. Even worse, when I’ve said Merry Christmas without thinking, I’m panicked that someone thinks the same thing about me.
So thanks, President Scrooge – for making this a thing.
At least they can’t take New Year’s from us. (Fingers crossed.)
Make 'feminism' the word of the year until women feel safe Read more
Glass half full
Somehow the fact that Trump voters are having a hard time finding people to date them makes me feel much, much better.
What I’m RTing
Sabrina Hersi Issa (@beingbrina) A check-in questionnaire, from Audre Lorde. Good for your end of year and everyday after. 🗓✅✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/K1CmbeNTKd
hi, i'm chasity (@chat_twizzle) merry cHELPUShristmas to y’all too https://t.co/NBiQwcmrHj
Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) NYT story cites interviews “with more than 100 current and former Vice employees.” As word spread that the story was in the works, “more than a dozen women and men contacted The Times with accounts that they said were humiliating and emotionally traumatic” https://t.co/rmbgzpqSwX
Emily Peck (@EmilyRPeck) Female staffers at the NYT lament that the paper takes more care with Glenn Thrush’s career than theirs. https://t.co/gezCDwtCnN
Who I’m reading
Emily Steel with the long-awaited story about sexual harassment at Vice; and Joanna Walters here at the Guardian with an amazing story about medical students learning how to perform abortions in case the procedure becomes illegal.
What I’m obsessed with
This Vox interactive of all the men accused of sexual wrongdoing from Anna North is incredible. Depressing, but incredible.
How outraged I am
Of all the things traditional notions of masculinity impacts, the environment was not one that came to mind for me. But apparently, men tend to litter more and embrace eco-friendly behaviors less because they somehow find it “unmanly”. On a scale of one to the destruction of the Earth, I’m just tired.
How I’m making it through this week
Our new puppy is slowing working towards getting our senior dog to love him. That means trying to sleep as close as possible to him without actually touching. He’s making some progress.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jessica Valenti’s dogs. Photograph: Jessica Valenti
Sign up below for a weekly email to hear my thoughts about the week in patriarchy.US Ambassador to Russia John F. Tefft said during his familiarization tour of VSMPO-AVISMA facilities in Verkhnyaya Salda that he intended to facilitate development of cooperation with the titanium giant.
A US Embassy delegation has toured the key production divisions of VSMPO and Russian-American Joint Venture Ural Boeing Manufacturing (UBM). Talks with VSMPO-AVISMA CEO Mikhail Voevodin were the core of the visit. When John Tefft spoke about his impressions after the talks, he noted that he had not expected to see such impressive results of the joint business and found them delightful.
“VSMPO-AVISMA and UBM, its joint venture with Boeing, which I have visited today, are one of the best, shining examples of effective cooperation between Russia and the US. The companies have now been developing technology solutions for aircraft manufacturing together for decades, with thousands of Russian and US experts involved in the process,” the Ambassador said. “VSMPO-AVISMA produces several components which no other facility in the world manufactures. Russia’s VSMPO-AVISMA and Boeing are global leaders in their fields, and it is very important that their strategic partnership is based on mutual business interest and mutual trust.”
VSMPO-AVISMA CEO Mihail Voevodis spoke about the company’s development strategy, pointing out the key areas and directions of cooperation with US companies, which dates back to 1993.
VSMPO-AVISMA and its JV with Boeing UBM is one of the most prominent examples of effective cooperation between Russia and the US John F. Tefft, US Ambassador to Russia
“We have been cooperating successfully with Boeing for more than two decades. Our partnership [that includes] [titanium] deliveries and our joint research and development center, UBM, is a good, convincing example of international cooperation which brings synergies that benefit the economies of both our countries,” VSMPO-AVISMA CEO said.
Mikhail Voevodin also said that work is underway to establish a joint venture with another US industrial giant, Alcoa. It should become the next step in developing cooperation between Russian and US companies to meet the growing needs of aircraft manufacturers worldwide.
Ural Boeing Manufacturing started operations in 2009. VSMPO-AVISMA currently provides up to 40% of the titanium Boeing requires, and all the civil aircraft by this US manufacturer are made with some Russian titanium in them.
In July 2014, Boeing and VSMPO-AVISMA renewed their contract for titanium supplies until the year 2022.Robert doesn’t feel like making friends with you, mister former pizza delivery guy.
And sorry! I said that we will start new year with Ada homecoming (comicoming?) but there is still one week before she appears again, sorry about that! You will see her next Monday on the page and in the meantime you can enjoy new illustration I’m drawing. I will be uploading progress shots as vote incentives so vote often not to miss anything! Vote now to see the sketch!
You probably noticed that I am playing around with the style, please forgive me, I am still trying to figure out how I want those characters to look like. I hope I will stop making drastic changes once we are out of the prologue (yeah, we are still in the prologue). But no worries, I am mostly experimenting on Robert, Ada is already perfect ♥
I hope you lot will stay with me in 2015 too! Have a great year and try to enjoy the comic!From tank-like controls and fixed-angle camera to over-the-shoulder action, Capcom hasn’t been afraid to change up the Resident Evil formula, but for the sheer fright factor, I think they’ve nailed it with the first person perspective.
A tight field of view, plodding movement speed and a game world packed full of incidental (and gross) detail leave you constantly on edge, wondering if the next enemy is going to appear in front, above, below or behind you.
You’re plunged into darkness pretty much from the off, and the violence quickly gets turned up to eleven before you’ve had a chance to draw breath. You’ll never look at a shovel in the same way again.
There's plenty of scrabbling around on hands-and-knees, searching for hidden exits, and the whole house is suitably maze-like, so you never feel comfortable. Opening the map and inventory screens don't pause the action, either - so you never feel comfortable until you're safely back in a save room.
Capcom has resisted the urge to head completely into FPS territory, keeping combat to a minimum in the opening hours and concentrating on ramping up the tension instead.
It might not be long before you pick up a gun, but ammunition is still a precious commodity, and now that you’ve got to do all the aiming yourself, missing a shot just makes your situation even more desperate.
Instead, you’ll spend most of your time sneaking, searching corners and cupboards for precious healing herbs, and staying out of sight of the terrifying Baker family.
That doesn’t mean familiar Resident Evil tropes don’t make a reappearance, though. You’ve got a limited inventory to manage, item boxes to store your extra gear in, and save points (now cassette recorders instead of typewriters) are few and far between.E Ink Tattoos that Change with your Mood
Uses Safe Sub-dermal Implants!
How many people do you know who regret their tattoo? You grow up, you dump (or get dumped), or maybe you picked a tattoo "artist" that learned their craft in prison using ballpoint pens and a sharpened paper clip. At that point, your choices are: deal with it, get it covered up, or get shot with lasers to take it off. And nobody wants to go for a job interview only to be given the evil eye because you're a little more inked than the current employees! Body modification discrimination is a sad fact of life.
What do you do when you want a tattoo but don't want the commitment of permanent ink? The moodInq system is a breakthrough in tattoo technology, using a skin-safe proprietary E ink encapsulated pigment system that lasts a lifetime but can be configured to display any design (or none!) to suit your mood. So how does it work? We have partnered with leading physicians and technicians in the cosmetic surgery industry to implant the E ink grid, called a canvas. The canvas can go anywhere on your body and be configured to the size and shape of the body party you'd like to ink. After a short healing period (usually 2-3 days), you can begin using the moodInq software included with your kit to change your canvas to display the tattoo you desire!
(Important Note: What you are buying here is the moodInq Wand, software, and a 2-year membership to moodInq's tattoo art database. Your kit will come with a list of participating cosmetic surgery clinics. Tattoo canvas implantation prices vary by provider and canvas surface area desired.)
Once the implantation process is complete, changing your tattoo is easy and quick with the moodInq Wand. Just fire up the tattoo design software and choose your design from our database of over 100,000 tattoo designs. Resize, flip and crop your images, add text, or even upload your own designs. Plug in the wand to your computer via USB and simply run the wand over the canvas to configure the E Ink capsules in the canvas to display your chosen design. The design will remain exactly the same until the next time you use the wand or in the rare case of a large electric shock or massive EMF disruption.
The uses of a moodInq tattoo are endless. Going home to visit Mom & Dad? Run the wand over your lower back and remove that "tramp stamp" your parents forbid you to get. Need to impress a hot date? Prove you're a man with family values when you show up with your MOM tattoo. Need a green way to keep a grocery list or note to self? Tattoo it on your arm! Are you good enough, smart enough, and gosh-darn-it-people-like-you? Tattoo your favorite affirmations and get through those rough days with ease. The moodInq lets you change your tattoo to suit your mood!
Product Specificationsakira slime's guide to: +----------------------------+ |Names, Stats, and Levels for| | DRAGON WARRIOR | +----------------------------+ version 1.0 - With hope, the first and final. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents 1.) Introduction. 2.) How names affect your stats. 3.) Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.) Introduction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The relationship between the hero's name and stats has been something that has bugged me for a while - it was one of those things I knew about, but couldn't be bothered taking any further. In any case, it eventually got to the point where I decided to get off my rear-end and figure out what was going on. The following is the results of some unexpectedly extensive research that followed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.) How names affect your stats. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the game of Dragon Warrior, the initial stats, and stats gained with subsequent level gains, are all predetermined by the name you enter at the start of the game. Unfair as it is, this means that some names are destined to be stronger than others. Below is a list of steps that can calculate all of your stats from any name of choosing. I hope that this could help some of you create a more preferable character, rather than be potentially ripped-off by the system :) STEP 1.------------------------------------------------------------------------ Take only up to the first four letters of your name, find the corresponding number for each letter in the chart bellow, then find the total of these numbers. note: _ is a blank _ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z '., -?! ) ( ------------------------------------------------------------- 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 STEP 2.------------------------------------------------------------------------ Divide the total by 16. Find the remainder of the result in the chart below to find the corresponding initial stats and growth structure. note: The "initial" MP stat is not applied until the hero reaches level 3 remainder 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- strength 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 5 4 5 4 6 4 6 4 agility 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 4 4 6 6 4 4 max HP 15 15 13 13 15 15 14 14 15 15 15 15 15 15 16 16 max MP 5 4 5 4 5 5 5 5 5 6 5 6 5 7 5 7 growth A B C D A B C D A B C D A B C D (Remember that a "remainder" is the number left over after dividing a number. For example, 17/5 = 3 "remainder" 2.) Notice that the larger remainders seem to be relatively better off. STEP 3.------------------------------------------------------------------------ View the table below to find which individual growth rates are associated with the growth type given above. growth Str Agi HP MP ---------------------- A 1 2 1 2 B 2 1 2 1 C 1 1 2 2 D 2 2 1 1 STEP 4.------------------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, view the table below to see your growth rates. The stat rates are represented as the total additional points given after the initial status endowments. Lv Exp Str1 Str2 Agi1 Agi2 HP1 HP1 MP1 MP2 Spells -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 0 - - - - - - - - 2 7 1 1 0 0 7 6 - - 3 23 3 3 2 2 9 8 - - HEAL 4 47 3 3 4 4 16 14 11 10 HURT 5 110 8 7 6 6 20 18 15 14 6 220 12 11 6 6 23 21 19 17 7 450 14 13 13 12 25 23 21 19 SLEEP 8 800 18 16 16 15 31 28 24 22 9 1300 26 24 18 16 35 32 31 28 RADIANT 10 2000 31 28 27 24 39 35 35 32 STOPSPELL 11 2900 36 33 31 28 47 42 45 41 12 4000 44 40 36 33 48 43 53 48 OUTSIDE 13 5500 48 43 44 40 55 50 59 53 RETURN 14 7500 56 51 51 46 63 57 65 59 15 10000 64 58 60 54 71 64 67 60 REPEL 16 13000 68 61 66 60 77 69 90 81 17 17000 68 61 74 67 85 77 95 86 HEALMORE 18 21000 81 73 80 72 100 90 103 93 19 25000 83 75 82 74 115 104 110 99 HURTMORE 20 29000 88 79 84 76 123 111 123 111 21 33000 91 82 86 78 134 121 130 117 22 37000 93 84 86 78 143 129 141 127 23 41000 95 86 90 81 150 135 148 133 24 45000 99 89 94 85 155 140 156 140 25 49000 109 98 96 87 159 143 156 140 26 53000 113 102 101 91 165 149 163 148 27 57000 121 109 103 93 174 157 170 153 28 61000 126 114 111 100 180 162 175 158 29 65000 131 118 116 105 185 167 185 167 30 65535 136 123 126 114 195 176 195 176 Notice that the "1" growth rates are significantly better than the "2" growth rates. The best combination will depend on your preferences over strength, agility, HP, and MP. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.) Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, what is there to get out of this jumble? Well, matters of preference aside, the only conclusive recommendation I can give is that names with remainders greater than 11 are marginally better off, whereas names with a remainder less than 4 are marginally worse off. The only hope I'm left with is that some of you would be marginally better off from reading this FAQ :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any information, questions, comments, criticisms, and the like, are all very welcome. Just send them to akiraslime@hotmail.com. Alternatively, you could find me and many other Dragon Warrior players on the Dragon Warrior message board at GameFAQs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, I'd like to thank Warlock and TharkasDB who helped verify some of the calculations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All rights reserved to Akira Speirs. Copyright 2002.Password security – not the most exciting part of your app. Because its complicated to build well, time-consuming to maintain securely, and because attacks are escalating through cloud technologies, even big companies like Sony and LinkedIn take shortcuts that lead to major security breaches. However, this is incredibly foolhardy: the average cost of a data breach is more than $5.5 Million. We want to lay out some best practices (also on video) to show how password security should be done (from level 0 to 5, with 5 being the most secure), and maybe convince you that you don’t want to take on that kind of risk yourself.
Level 0: No Plaintext Anywhere
A big, red flag should go up whenever you see a password in plaintext. While many will claim “no idiot would do this,” Sony Playstation last year lost 1,000,000 of their passwords to a simple SQL injection attack, and Yahoo lost over 400,000 plaintext passwords this summer. Bad times. Emails that “confirm account details” – with both username and password in plaintext – are actually less helpful to users than a simple, secure password reset workflow, and if you only need a simple user directory, you can set one up with Stormpath quickly. No plaintext in your database or your notifications! (We mean YOU, French National Bank!)
Level 1: Don’t Just Hash It…
Password security is all about what happens in the Black Box of encryption – passwords go in as plaintext, mathematical processes are inflicted upon them, and they come out indecipherable. Hashing is a one-way encryption method that passes your password string through a hashing algorithm and spits out a jumbled value (called a ‘digest’). Many people take this value and store it directly in a database, thinking it is much safer than Level 0.
While it’s true that it is hard to discover the hash’s original value directly, attackers use various techniques, like Rainbow Tables, brute force and dictionary attacks, to more easily find a password’s original value. Additionally, simple hashing can also expose duplicate passwords across users (if two users have the same hash, they have the same password). This was the level of protection in use at LinkedIn when they were attacked this summer. Finally, while you could use the MD5 or SHA-1 algorithms for hashing, it has been discovered that these are vulnerable to collision attacks. You should to use SHA-256 or higher. You also need to go beyond simple hashing alone…
Level 2: Salt It!
The best way to strengthen a hash and avoid these evils is through the addition of a securely randomly-generated salt to the hash algorithm. A secure random salt adds additional random bits of data which, when combined with the plaintext input, make the hash output unique. To quote Les, our CTO, “This means you can hash the same password 20 different times, and use 20 different (securely randomly generated) salts, and the hash output will be different every time.” Every password should have its own salt and they should be long and complex.
Good password hashing approaches include secure random salts. We like SHA-512, but SHA-256 which has plenty of examples on GitHub has also never had a reported successful attack. Also, interestingly, if you are building anything for the US government, you are required to use the SHA-2 family, which includes both of these badboys.
Level 3: Computational Cost
One of the big reasons salts work is that the increased entropy makes it almost impossible to brute-force a password when you have only the hash output. But what if someone does in fact get access to the hash output and they have dedicated computers to attempt a brute-force attack?
You can increase the time it takes to brute-force a password, making brute-force attempts more infeasible. If you increase the time even only a little – to where the hash computation time is practically unnoticeable to users, say, half or 3/4ths of a second – this becomes a BIG deal for brute-force attackers. It exponentially increases the amount of time it takes to crack multiple passwords.
You can increase the computational time by performing the hash multiple times (e.g. 500,000 iterations), or you can use a hash algorithm like Bcrypt or SCrypt that has a computational time complexity built-in to its approach. Either way, slowing down things for attackers is the way to go with modern computers that can easily have 4 or 8 CPU cores (or more) in a single PC.
This is the level where most advanced developers stop, and sure, we get it, bcrypt (or scrypt) is great. At Stormpath, we provide military-grade security, so we go even beyond this. We’ll share some of our advanced methods:
Level 4: Encryption
Stormpath loves to add computation complexity to the hashing process, additional hashing with private securely derived keys, and other secret sauce to make it computationally infeasible for an attacker to crack even a single password. We also encrypt the hash output using a private key – stored in a separate location from the password data – to encrypt the output before storing.
This ensures that not only must the encrypted password must be compromised, but also the encryption key – much harder to do given the separate storage locations. We also rotate the encryption keys on a time-based trigger to ensure that keys are not reused. The encrypted output would effectively take thousands of years of current computing power before one could even begin to brute-force a single Stormpath-secured password. Suck it, hackers.
Level 5: Distributed Data Storage
Finally, we have the big 5. After salting, iterating and encrypting the data, we break up the encrypted hash and store the chunks across separate physical data stores. Our production data stores are protected by multi-factor authentication and other security best practices. An attacker would have to breach all of our related datastores before they could even begin to attempt a brute-force attack on Level-4 encrypted data.
One more no-brainer: process and policy
As the French National Bank demonstrated with their default password “123456”, some developers are still allowing super-crackable 8-char passwords. Don’t be that guy! I know users don’t love passwords like a;#$Soe59Ef9jwq#$, but if you are being smart about where you need authentication and use email as a login (which is easy to remember and trigger a password reset from), its better than being on the front page of Le Monde.
Remember that users re-use passwords across sites and applications, so even if you’re not storing critical information, there is a high-probability that password protects something important. You get hacked, and their online banking gets hacked: you’re still the bad guy. Enforce password strength by requiring a blend of numbers, letters, cases and symbols. Shameless self-promotion: Stormpath has built-in password strength enforcement so you don’t have to build this crap yourself.
Also, secure your backups. Many, many attacks focus on MYSQL dumps, so go do all the stuff mentioned here. See you next Wednesday when you’re done with all that.
This leads me to the final point: securing passwords right is time consuming, risky and expensive – and its not core to your product. Whether you have a simple application or need to manage security and access across multiple applications, Stormpath can save you a ton of time, numerous headaches and possibly even global embarrassment. Try it now!
Next time, in part 2… backend password security infrastructure.Story highlights Iran's nuclear program actually began with cooperation from the U.S. in the 1950s
Sanctions since 2007 hit ordinary Iranians hard but failed to halt country's nuclear program
Most countries involved in talks believe Iran is between 1 and 3 years away from bomb
Israel and Saudi Arabia will reject any deal that allows Iran to keep enriching uranium
Iran and world powers are resuming talks in Geneva amid high hopes that a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program will finally be reached.
But while the P5+1 -- the U.S., UK, France, Russia, China and Germany -- and Iran appear to be closer than ever to striking a deal, there are still a lot of details to iron out.
Read our explainer to get up to speed on 60 years' worth of nuclear history in Iran.
When did Iran's nuclear program begin?
The U.S. launched a nuclear cooperation program with Iran in 1957 -- back when the Shah ruled Iran and the two countries were still friends -- and by the mid-70s Iran began developing its nuclear power program. But the U.S. pulled its support when the Shah was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Why is the West worried about Iran's nuclear program?
Since the 1979 revolution the West has worried that Iran could use its nuclear program to produce atomic weapons by producing highly-enriched uranium -- the material needed to make a bomb. Iran has always insisted it only wants to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes.
In 2003 nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency announced they had found traces of highly-enriched uranium at a plant in Natanz. Iran temporarily halted enrichment but resumed enriching again in 2006, insisting enrichment was allowed under its agreement with the IAEA.
JUST WATCHED Fareed's Take: Hurdles to Iran nuke deal Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Fareed's Take: Hurdles to Iran nuke deal 04:00
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What did the international community do?
In late 2006 the U.N. Security Council passed sanctions against Iran for failing to suspend its nuclear program. Sanctions that initially targeted Iran's nuclear capability were greatly expanded over the next seven years to include bans on arms sales to Iran, travel bans on certain Iranians, Western bans on buying Iranian oil, and |
olar and served as its president. Thirteen years later in 2001, he created the non-profit World Council for Renewable Energy and served as its general chairman.
Scheer was also a driving force behind the creation of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental organization for promoting the adoption of renewable energy worldwide.
Domestically, Scheer was a chief architect of the German National Renewable Energy Act, perhaps one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation passed by the then red-green coalition of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
Through a system of feed in tariffs, the bill has managed to lift German renewable energy production from around 6.4 percent of electricity generation to over 16.3 percent in less than a decade.
"He was one of the first who understood the potential of renewable energies and developed practical and political strategies for their implementation," said Stefan Gsaenger, secretary general of the World Wind Energy Association.
"The great success of renewables around the world would have been impossible without him."
Author: Matt Zuvela (dapd, dap)
Editor: Rob TurnerProud Olympic sponsor Coca-Cola, recently implicated in the detention and arrest of a gay rights advocate in Russia, has a new problem with the worldwide gay community. It seems that Coke’s social media campaign, “Share a Coke,” is only designed for heterosexuals.
(UPDATE: Another Coke Web site, this time in the US, can’t handle the word “gay.”)
The site, which permits Coke fans to enter their name (or a message) on a virtual can of Coke, bans the word “gay.” It does not, however, ban the word straight.
When you type in the word “gay,” here’s the messsage that Coke gives you:
“Oops. Let’s pretend you didn’t just type that.”
Yes, wouldn’t Coke like to pretend that the gay didn’t exist at all, considering the backlash Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and other Olympics sponsors have been facing over their refusal to speak out against increasing Russian human rights violations. McDonald’s, for example, just saw gay rights advocates, led by Queer Nation NY, steal and neutralize its new “Cheers to Sochi” Twitter hashtag.
In the case of Coke, the soft drink giant was already in hot water with the gay community for permitting Olympic security personnel to wear the Coke logo while they arrested a gay Russian dissident.
Coke even had the temerity to publicly defend the arrest of the gay rights advocate for waving a rainbow flag during the Olympic flame relay.
Here are some screen shots showing the Coke social media campaign tool in action. First, you type in the word “straight,” and Coke makes you a nifty little Coke can that you can send around the Web to all your straight friends:
Next, you type in the word “gay.”
Rather than get a niftly little gay can to go along with your straight can, you instead see a rather insulting message from Coke telling you that we should pretend you didn’t just attempt to type the word “gay.”
Here’s a video that walks you through what happens when you try to type in the words “gay” and “straight.”
Follow @aravosis
(I’m told that in order to better see my Facebook posts in your feed, you need to “follow” me.)Justina Pelletier celebrated with a hot fudge sundae and said she plans to play with her dogs and visit friends.
Connecticut teenager Justina Pelletier spent 16 months and two birthdays in state custody as the central but largely off-stage player in an explosive drama involving parents’ rights and the controversial new field of medical child abuse. Now she is going home.
On Wednesday, the 16-year-old girl is expected to return to her parents’ custody and the family’s home in West Hartford, Conn., following a ruling by the same Massachusetts juvenile court judge who originally removed her from her parents’ care.
PHOTOS: Scenes from Justina’s journey home
“I’m so happy. I’m so excited, oh, my gosh,” Justina said in an interview. “It’s such big news.”
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In a two-page order issued Tuesday, Judge Joseph Johnston dismissed the child-protection case against Justina’s parents, Linda and Lou Pelletier, arguing that they and others had shown “credible evidence that circumstances have changed” since his decision to place Justina in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. He also wrote that in the month since Justina was moved to a residential facility in Thompson, Conn., her parents “have been cooperative and engaged in services,” including individual therapy for Justina and family therapy.
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It was a remarkable change in tone from the judge’s ruling just three months earlier, when he determined the parents were unfit and awarded permanent custody to the state. At that time, he blasted the Pelletiers for behavior he contended was erratic and had doomed numerous attempts at compromise.
But that March ruling also seemed to spark intensified actions by Governor Deval Patrick’s top health official, John Polanowicz, to intervene in the highly contentious case that pivoted on dueling diagnoses from doctors at two of Boston’s top hospitals and attracted extensive national and even international attention.
Although her expected return will not be official until Wednesday, Justina, who has been using a wheelchair to get around since her admission to Boston Children’s Hospital in February 2013, was allowed to leave the residential facility Tuesday for what turned into a spontaneous celebration at the Outback Steakhouse in Auburn, Mass. By phone, in between bites of her hot fudge sundae, she said she could not believe she would finally be returning home for good. Asked how she plans to spend her first full day back home, she said she wants to play with her dogs, go in the family’s pool, and visit friends. She said she also wants to do something she has rarely been allowed to do during the last year spent in institutionalized care. “I want to sleep in,” she said.
Justina was out shopping with her mother Tuesday afternoon, without state supervision, as part of the increasingly expanded freedom her parents have been receiving over the past month, during her stay at the JRI Susan Wayne Center for Excellence.
THE REV. PATRICK MAHONEY Justina Pelletier was all smiles after she heard the news.
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Linda Pelletier said she screamed with joy when she heard the judge had decided to send her daughter home. “Unbelievable,” she said. “It’s been such a long journey.”
At least for now, Justina’s parents will be free of government oversight in the care of their daughter. The child protection agency in Connecticut, which last summer opened a medical child abuse case related to the family and later substantiated the claim, has indicated it will not be stepping into the case.
Gary Kleeblatt, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, said that investigation “will be closed” Wednesday when Justina returns home and is officially out of Massachusetts custody. He has said his agency did little on the case because Massachusetts was already providing services and addressing Justina’s various issues.
“We wish the family and Justina the very best,” he said, “and we stand ready to be of assistance if called upon.”
In 2011, Connecticut DCF had investigated an allegation of medical neglect made by members of Justina’s medical team but dismissed it a few weeks later. In his March ruling, Johnston had rebuked Connecticut child protection officials for failing to get more involved in overseeing the case, which involved a child in their state.
TIMELINE: Justina Pelletier’s lengthy cutody case
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Justina’s story, documented in a two-part Globe series in December, has been unusual from the start. She exhibited a perplexing set of symptoms that divided specialists at two top Boston hospitals, and she was the focus of a child custody dispute straddling two states.
By the start of this year, the controversy saw a surprising collection of organizations taking up her cause. They included groups representing conservative Christians, online hacking activists, critics of psychotropic drug use, and advocates of greater awareness of hard-to-
diagnose disorders.
As detailed in the Globe series, Justina’s mother rushed her to Boston Children’s Hospital in February 2013, complaining that her daughter was suffering from severe symptoms of mitochondrial disease. That is a group of rare genetic disorders affecting how cells produce energy, often causing problems with the gut, brain, muscles, and heart.
Dr. Mark Korson, chief of metabolism at Tufts, had been treating Justina for that disease for more than a year and had sent her to Children’s only because her Tufts gastroenterologist had recently moved there. The teen, who six weeks earlier had performed in an ice show, was barely able to walk and had virtually stopped eating by the time she showed up by ambulance at the Children’s emergency department on that snowy morning in February.
But within three days, the team at Children’s disputed that mitochondrial disease was the primary cause of her symptoms and began to suspect that her parents were blocking psychiatric care the doctors believed Justina badly needed. The clinicians at Children’s concluded that the girl suffered primarily from somatoform disorder, in which symptoms are real but there is no underlying physical cause. The parents complained that the Children’s team was dramatically changing Justina’s course of treatment without Korson’s involvement or even an examination by the gastroenterologist they had come to see.
When the parents said they wanted to discharge Justina from Children’s and take her to see Korson at Tufts, the hospital reported its suspicions of medical child abuse to the state. That relatively new term describes parents or other caregivers seeking unnecessary or potentially harmful medical interventions for children.
That prompted the state’s child protection agency to take emergency custody on Valentine’s Day 2013, a decision validated the next day by Johnston, the juvenile court judge.
2013 VIDEO: A girl in limbo
The battle over Justina’s future was one of a handful of recent cases documented by the Globe that involved Children’s and a disputed diagnosis that led to parents losing custody or being threatened with that extreme step. These conflicts, which typically involved controversial diagnoses on the medical frontier, have exposed the consequences of the ongoing failure of the Massachusetts DCF to upgrade its medical expertise. The agency, many observers have argued, is simply not equipped to properly referee such cases.
More than seven years after recommendations from the Legislature and outside specialists that the child welfare agency hire a physician medical director to provide expertise in complex medical cases, DCF has yet to do that.
A spokeswoman for DCF said the agency does plan to enhance its medical team, which has traditionally consisted of a handful of nurses, by adding a new position called a director of integrated health services. But spokeswoman Cayenne Isaksen acknowledged that position would not have to be filled by a physician. In addition, she said, “the department is in the process of establishing an expert panel of doctors from a variety of disciplines who can provide additional support and consultation in difficult cases.”
Other children’s hospitals have found that the best approach for wading through the difficult waters of suspected medical child abuse is to convene a wide-ranging summit involving all the child’s key providers, including teachers and counselors, before making allegations to the state. That did not happen at Children’s Hospital in this case. Korson, Justina’s key specialist at Tufts, was not invited to participate in a meeting on the case at Children’s until well after that hospital had made its abuse allegations and after Children’s had moved Justina into its locked psychiatric ward.
Hospital spokesman Rob Graham said the parents’ actions prevented that from happening. “Boston Children’s standard of care in complex cases is to hold a summit that includes all the involved disciplines at Boston Children’s and external providers if available in person and by phone,” Graham said. “In this case, that work was underway, but the family escalated the situation making the initial summit impossible. Subsequently, Boston Children’s conducted extensive and ongoing communication and coordination with physicians across the Hospital and with external providers.”
Given its high-profile intensity, the Justina case has caused ripples beyond the hospitals involved.
GRAPHIC: The many faces of the ‘Free Justina’ movement
Alice Newton, a pediatrician who serves as medical director of the Child Protection Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, previously served in that same position at Boston Children’s Hospital when the Justina case originally exploded there. She said MGH, which is continually refining its processes, has recently decided to add an extra step in its process before reporting suspicions of medical child abuse to the state.
After Mass. General’s child protection team has gathered information but before it reports its concerns to the state child welfare agency, that hospital will convene a “medical child abuse team.”
That team will consist of hospital representatives from various specialties and disciplines knowledgeable about the terrain, but who have not been involved in the case in question. She said this new formal step in the process, which MGH has not yet had occasion to employ, will provide a mechanism for additional review and vetting before escalation with the state occurs. “We understand the potential impact of reporting suspected medical child abuse to the state,” she said.
The judge and Boston Children’s were hardly the only parties to criticize Linda and Lou Pelletier for their behavior during the ordeal. But even their critics had a hard time showing any marked improvement in Justina’s physical condition during her long time out of her parents’ custody.
“It’s a wonderful feeling to see that this little girl will be able to go home,” said Philip Moran, the lawyer for Justina’s parents. “Hopefully, we’ll see major progress because this is what she really needs.”
Previous coverage:
Neil Swidey can be reached at neil.swidey@globe.com ; Patricia Wen can be reached at patricia.wen@globe.comRevised to include comments from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.Revised to include new details from police about shootingA man suspected of fatally shooting a 25-year-old and critically injuring a Middle Eastern man at a Pleasant Grove tire shop on Christmas Eve yelled "Muslim" as he shot, Dallas police said Friday.Police said around 3:45 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Anthony Paz Torres, 30, had driven to Omar's Wheels and Tires in the 3700 block of South Buckner Boulevard to pump air in his black Chevrolet Cruz and ask about an employee, according to an arrest affidavit.When employees told Torres the employee was not there, he allegedly walked back to his car, took out a gun and started shooting at the customers as they stood in the front of the tire shop, police said.According to police, Torres made comments and "specifically used the word 'Muslim' as he was shooting."Enrique Garcia-Mendoza, who was sitting in a Mitsubishi parked in front of the shop, was struck and died immediately. The other man, who has not been identified, was shot in the chest.Several others had minor injuries.The owner of the shop fired back at Torres as he tried to flee, police said. Police later found Torres, who had apparently been shot several times, at Baylor University Medical Center.He reportedly told the hospital’s medical staff he had gotten in an argument while filling air at the tire shop and got involved in a gun fight when the person he was arguing with pulled out a gun, the arrest affidavit states.According to police, the employees recognized Torres as having been involved in a disturbance with another employee a week earlier and warned the owner of the shop that Torres might be dangerous.Police looked into that disturbance and found body-cam video from patrol officers where Torres said he was both Jewish and Christian and said he had a bias against Muslims.Torres has been charged with murder and aggravated assault. He is being held in the Dallas County Jail. Bail was set at $500,000.Police said they expect to file more charges against Torres.The Council on American-Islamic Relations' Dallas office issued a statement on Jan. 9, calling on federal authorities to join the investigation into the shooting.“Whenever any Americans are attacked based on their actual or perceived race or religion, that attack should be treated as domestic terrorism and investigated accordingly,” Alia Salem, the executive director of CAIR-DFW, was quoted saying in the statement.Maj. Max Geron, a Dallas police spokesman, said on social media that police had been in touch with their federal partners.It appears Garcia-Mendoza, who died in the shooting, was a bystander who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.Garcia-Mendoza had a flat tire Christmas Eve and had gone to Omar's Wheels and Tires to get it repaired, according to his friends, who asked not to be named in fear of retaliation.Garcia-Mendoza, known as "Kike," worked at a tattoo parlor in North Oak Cliff and often practiced his designs on his friends -- and on paper -- outside of work. He wanted to own his own tattoo parlor someday, his friends said.
Probable Cause AffidavitTeam Date Transaction
December 10, 2018 Detroit Tigers signed free agent RHP Tyson Ross.
October 29, 2018 RHP Tyson Ross elected free agency.
August 7, 2018 St. Louis Cardinals activated RHP Tyson Ross.
August 5, 2018 St. Louis Cardinals claimed RHP Tyson Ross off waivers from San Diego Padres.
January 18, 2018 RHP Tyson Ross assigned to El Paso Chihuahuas.
December 27, 2017 San Diego Padres signed free agent RHP Tyson Ross to a minor league contract and invited him to spring training.
September 12, 2017 Texas Rangers released RHP Tyson Ross.
August 12, 2017 Texas Rangers activated RHP Tyson Ross from the 10-day disabled list.
July 31, 2017 Texas Rangers sent RHP Tyson Ross on a rehab assignment to Frisco RoughRiders.
July 24, 2017 Texas Rangers placed RHP Tyson Ross on the 10-day disabled list. Blister on right index finger.
June 16, 2017 Texas Rangers activated RHP Tyson Ross from the 60-day disabled list.
May 27, 2017 Texas Rangers transferred RHP Tyson Ross from the 10-day disabled list to the 60-day disabled list. Thoracic Outlet Syndrome surgery.
May 23, 2017 Texas Rangers sent RHP Tyson Ross on a rehab assignment to Round Rock Express.
April 2, 2017 Texas Rangers placed RHP Tyson Ross on the 10-day disabled list retroactive to March 30, 2017. Thoracic Outlet Syndrome surgery.
January 19, 2017 Texas Rangers signed free agent RHP Tyson Ross.
December 2, 2016 RHP Tyson Ross elected free agency.
November 7, 2016 San Diego Padres activated RHP Tyson Ross from the 60-day disabled list.
August 31, 2016 San Diego Padres transferred RHP Tyson Ross from the 15-day disabled list to the 60-day disabled list. Right shoulder inflammation.
August 25, 2016 San Diego Padres sent RHP Tyson Ross on a rehab assignment to Lake Elsinore Storm.
April 9, 2016 San Diego Padres placed RHP Tyson Ross on the 15-day disabled list retroactive to April 5, 2016. right shoulder inflammation
July 23, 2013 San Diego Padres recalled RHP Tyson Ross from Tucson Padres.
July 9, 2013 San Diego Padres optioned Tyson Ross to Tucson Padres.
May 5, 2013 Tyson Ross roster status changed by San Diego Padres.
April 29, 2013 San Diego Padres sent RHP Tyson Ross on a rehab assignment to Tucson Padres.
April 20, 2013 San Diego Padres placed RHP Tyson Ross on the 15-day disabled list retroactive to April 18, 2013. Left shoulder subluxation.
November 16, 2012 Oakland Athletics traded Tyson Ross and A.J. Kirby-Jones to San Diego Padres for Andy Parrino and Andrew Werner.
November 16, 2012 RHP Tyson Ross assigned to San Diego Padres.
October 12, 2012 Tyson Ross roster status changed by Oakland Athletics.
September 3, 2012 Oakland Athletics recalled Tyson Ross from Sacramento River Cats.
August 24, 2012 Oakland Athletics optioned Tyson Ross to Sacramento River Cats.
August 23, 2012 Oakland Athletics recalled Tyson Ross from Sacramento River Cats.
June 29, 2012 Oakland Athletics optioned Tyson Ross to Sacramento River Cats.
June 23, 2012 Oakland Athletics recalled Tyson Ross from Sacramento River Cats.
June 17, 2012 Oakland Athletics optioned Tyson Ross to Sacramento River Cats.
June 16, 2012 Oakland Athletics recalled RHP Tyson Ross from Sacramento River Cats.
May 31, 2012 Oakland Athletics optioned Tyson Ross to Sacramento River Cats.
April 17, 2012 Oakland Athletics recalled Tyson Ross from Sacramento River Cats.
April 4, 2012 Oakland Athletics optioned Tyson Ross to Sacramento River Cats.
March 27, 2012 Oakland Athletics placed Tyson Ross on the reserve list.
October 1, 2011 Tyson Ross roster status changed by Oakland Athletics.
August 4, 2011 Sacramento River Cats activated RHP Tyson Ross from the temporarily inactive list.
July 30, 2011 Sacramento River Cats placed RHP Tyson Ross on the temporarily inactive list.
July 25, 2011 Oakland Athletics optioned Tyson Ross to Sacramento River Cats.
July 25, 2011 Sacramento River Cats activated RHP Tyson Ross.
July 24, 2011 Stockton Ports sent RHP Tyson Ross on a rehab assignment to Sacramento River Cats.
July 10, 2011 Tyson Ross assigned to Stockton Ports from Sacramento River Cats.
June 30, 2011 Tyson Ross assigned to Sacramento River Cats.
May 20, 2011 Tyson Ross roster status changed by Oakland Athletics.
April 6, 2011 Oakland Athletics recalled Tyson Ross from Sacramento River Cats.
March 30, 2011 Oakland Athletics optioned Tyson Ross to Sacramento River Cats.
October 13, 2010 Tyson Ross roster status changed by Oakland Athletics.
August 9, 2010 Tyson Ross roster status changed by Sacramento River Cats.
July 7, 2010 Oakland Athletics optioned RHP Tyson Ross to Sacramento River Cats.
April 4, 2010 Oakland Athletics selected the contract of Tyson Ross from Midland RockHounds.
December 14, 2009 Oakland Athletics invited non-roster RHP Tyson Ross to spring training.
July 21, 2009 Tyson Ross assigned to Midland RockHounds from Stockton Ports.
May 5, 2009 Tyson Ross roster status changed by Stockton Ports.DUBAI — The robust menu of virtual reality installations offered at this month's Dubai International Film Festival — the first time the format was featured here — would’ve made it the world's largest, most celebrated VR-palooza of record just a couple of short years ago.
That distinction now lies somewhere between the expansive springtime VRLA Expo in Los Angeles and next month's Sundance Film Festival, where a dozen installations seemed like a huge deal in 2015 (this year well over 30 are coming to Park City, Utah).
But the healthy offering of virtual reality experiences and stories at the 13th annual Dubai festival — including 10 VR "movies," five being world premieres from a global roster of filmmakers — proves that the format has become an essential component of the global film festival circuit.
If you want to be a player, you gotta have VR, and you gotta go big.
A scene from "When All Land Is Lost?" from Indian VR director Faiza Ahmad Khan. Image: The Dubai international Film festival
The festival's showcase section, dubbed "A DIFFerent Reality," featured a sprawling open-air Samsung VR "cinema" with a dozen or more headset-equipped seats at the Madinat Jumeriah resort festival headquarters.
Titles included new non-fiction VR works like When All Land Is Lost?, Indian director Faiza Ahmad Khan's opening documentary (image above) about injustice in India’s polluted coal-mining district; or Canadian director Adam Cosco's surreal drama Knives, about a spiraling housewife's encounter with a door-to-door knife salesman.
Inside the adjacent film market showroom floor, another dozen or so VR-related installations attracted curious festivalgoers. And the most popular were clearly of the experiential variety, like riding Six Flags’ Tatsu rollercoaster (below), an installation that required sophisticated moving chairs to achieve the full effect.
You can't try this at home: Dubai Film Festival fans take the roller coaster ride. Image: mashable/josh dickey
People were getting a kick out of it, as the constant yelps and screams that filled the space over the past two weeks would attest. But it's not exactly the kind of entertainment tech that’s going to wind up in the home anytime soon.
And that's... kind of the problem that VR is still grappling with: How to tell stories with it?
The reality of virtual narratives: They're still learning
While gaming has gained a foothold and sophisticated amusement park ride-like installations are good fun, narrative storytelling in VR is still struggling to figure out its language and its place in the entertainment landscape.
"We’re still looking for creative narrative virtual reality," Shaoyu Su, an arts laboratory specialist from USC's Jaunt Cinematic VR lab told Mashable at the DIFF booth he was manning. "I went to VRLA twice and everyone is talking about camera solutions and new tech.... But I don’t really see a rise in content creation [ideas]. That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out in the lab."
A Sennheiser multi-directional VR microphone at the Dubai Film Festival Image: mashable/josh L. dickey
The USC lab’s demos at DIFF were nifty in execution, but nothing yet feels like a compelling blend of story and medium. The three that Mashable strapped in for included a moment among a dancer and musicians twirling around the Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, a somewhat crudely CG-rendered ride-along on the Wright Bros. plane (cool!) and a simulation of a first date, in which you’re the potential suitor’s wingman, guiding him by turns.
So far, it seems like everyone’s still learning the language of the platform and cranking out neato demonstrations that don’t go much beyond proof-of-concept.
"Really, all the tools are already spreading around for VR," Su said. "We’ve been doing really well in traditional film narrative storytelling for about 100 years. The questions is, how [do] you translate that?"
No one’s completely cracked the storytelling part yet, though many have tried. Some admirably.
Mashable has demo’ed some promising outliers over the past year, like the well-directed bunnies-vs.-aliens short film Invasion (above), the Pixar-like Sundance VR debutante Alumette and Jon Favreau’s Trolls and Goblins with Wevr Studios, an enchanted-forest experience that's the most compelling case for VR's narrative future we've yet seen.
Each uses different visual language and ways of directing the viewers' eyes to points of distinction. These are the threads of a virtual cinematic language that may someday be woven into a whole-cloth approach.
"We’re in this stage now where no one really knows what it’s doing"
"When radio came along, and television, and the internet, no one really knew or could predict how they were going to affect every aspect of society," Ben Outram, creator of Sound World, an interactive psychedelic world of geodesic shapes and music (see image, top of post), told Mashable. "I think VR is one of those — we’re in this stage now where no one really knows what it’s doing. But it represents a whole new level of an ability to communicate, an ability to empathize, there’s more information being sent, there’s more levels and channels of sensory perception and we can expect a whole multitude of ways that I think is going to change society just as much as the internet has."
Over time, that may be true. Come mid-January, we'll get a first look at a whole new batch of VR "movies," when the highly curated New Frontier section at the Sundance Film Festival — now entering its second decade — brings 20 VR experiences and 11 installations to three venues in Park City. It's become the VR film festival of record over the past few years, the place where all the latest 360-degree creations come to show off.
This year they'll include Particle, the story of a two-dimensional light being who exists in the pages of a giant, hand-drawn comic book; a kinetic dance performance inside an extravagant silent movie palace; an "elaboration" upon Vincent Van Gogh’s Provence landscapes; and Asteroids!, Baobab Studios' (Invasion!) cosmic journey aboard the spaceship of aliens Mac and Cheez.
"In an era that has recalibrated economies, redefined social realms and rewired the connection between the individual and the world, we must also reimagine what it is to be human," Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer and Chief Curator of New Frontier said. "Through virtual reality, augmented reality and various crafted immersive experiences, New Frontier this year challenges the very nature of perception and what we consider to be'reality.'"
Even if that reality is that the storytelling just isn't there yet.'Drama, betrayal, religion and sex, it's all here... Fascinating' GUARDIAN
'Beautifully paced, impeccably written... Don't miss it' INDEPENDENT
'Fraser is at her best here, lucid, authoritative and compassionate' SUNDAY TIMES
'Superbly researched... the definitive work on the ill-fated queen' CATHOLIC HERALD
Marie Antoinette's dramatic life-story continues to arouse mixed emotions. To many people, she is still 'la reine méchante', whose extravagance and frivolity helped to bring down the French monarchy; her indifference to popular suffering epitomised by the (apocryphal) words: 'let them eat cake'. Others are equally passionate in her defence: to them, she is a victim of misogyny.
Antonia Fraser examines her influence over the king, Louis XVI, the accusations and sexual slurs made against her, her patronage of the arts which enhanced French cultural life, her imprisonment, the death threats made against her, rumours of lesbian affairs, her trial (during which her young son was forced to testify to sexual abuse by his mother) and her eventual execution by guillotine in 1793.Ever since I founded Spiderweb Software and released my first game in January of 1995, I have been a proud indie game bottom feeder. I have fed and grown fat upon the scraps left behind by the mighty predators above. I have learned well the secret power that writers of indie games can use to actually make a living: We can find a small niche long-abandoned by the big companies, settle into it, and thrive.
I write low-budget, hardcore, turn-based role-playing games. The sort of game that was really big in the previous century, largely abandoned in this one, and that has still enough fans to enable me to buy a house. I've been writing my games for 16 years. I have no intention of stopping, and they'll have to drag me out of indie gaming feet first.
For 15 years (before my games appeared on iTunes and Steam and my life completely changed), I had a simple plan. Every year, I wrote a game, extensively reusing the code and assets from the previous one. Then I put it on sale for $25, with hint books and character editors available alongside for a little extra revenue.
My goal was 5,000 sales. Five thousand! Imagine what a negligible amount that is in this industry. Usually, I sold a couple thousand more than that, thanks to the small, loyal audience I spent many years building. And, if you do the math, you will see that there's a pretty decent living in there.
It's great being a bottom feeder. I get to lurk in my basement and watch the titans of the game industry punch each other silly far above me. I don't work 80 hour weeks. I design my games to be writable in the period of time allotted, and I release them when they are actually ready.
I also spend a lot of time answering questions from the young and ambitious about how to get to do what I do for a living. I tell them to find a niche that is underserved. To work hard and to remember how difficult it is to get someone to spend actual money on something. I also urge them to get a chair with decent back support.
And I push a certain set of principles until I'm blue in the face. They are the principles I feel any group of ambitious game developers should take to heart, if you want to make a living selling your little games.
If It Was Fun Once, It's Fun Now
I'm old enough to remember the Atari 2600. Man, but we played that thing. Hours and hours and hours. You know why we did it? Because it was fun.
And the Atari 2600 is still fun. It's just not fun enough. The art of game design has progressed far beyond it, and Pitfall doesn't have what it takes to compete anymore. But you know something? All of those old games can be updated. All of those old genres have tons of fans out there. They just don't know they're fans yet.
Twin-stick shooters. Adventure games. 2D platformers. (2D platformers are like Viagra for indie game developers.) Bullet hell games. Tactical wargames of Aspergian complexity. Flight sims. Puzzle games of nearly infinite variety. Yes, turn-based RPGs. These were once hugely viable genres, and there's a good reason for it. They were awesome.
But now the mainstream game industry mainly writes first-person shooters with RPG elements sticky-taped on. All of the old genres have been left to you, waiting to be recreated for a new audience that will be thrilled to discover them as if they were new.
There was a long period in there when nobody wrote RPGs. Just me. I got so many emails complimenting me for inventing the role-playing game. What do you say to that? "Thanks," I guess.
People love indie games. They really do. But I don't think it's for the reason people say. I've long felt that indie developers aren't that much more innovative than mainstream developers. What's awesome about us is that we keep the gaming ecosystem vibrant and lush. We're the ones who maintain variety and keep the old ideas alive.
So you want to be a bottom feeder like me? Think back to the sort of game you really loved once, the sort that nobody makes anymore. Then write one of those.Pre-course
Complete the registration survey to provide information about yourself, your school or district, and your goals for participating in the Learning Differences MOOC-Ed.
Thinking Differently about Student Learning
Participants will further their thinking about Learning Differences and the "myth of average" among their students. Educators will begin to develop and apply learning differences teaching competencies which will support student learning. The essential questions for this unit are:
What are learning differences?
How does thinking about students' learning differences affect my teaching practice?
What are the benefits of focusing on students' strengths rather than weaknesses? What are the challenges of this approach?
Working Memory
This unit focuses on the impact of working memory on student learning and behavior in classrooms. Participants will learn and apply strategies to better support students' working memories. The essential questions are:
What is Working Memory and how does it affect student learning?
How can teachers support students who struggle with working memory or leverage students with strong working memory?
Which strategies or solutions related to working memory best meet your students' needs?
Executive Function
This unit establishes a basic understanding of executive functioning skills by explaining what they are and how they impact student learning. The essential questions are:
What are executive functioning skills and how do they affect student learning?
How can teachers develop students' executive functioning skills in classrooms?
Which strategies or solutions related to executive functions best meet your students' needs?
Student Motivation
This unit focuses on the impact of students' motivation on learning and behavior in classrooms. Participants will learn and apply strategies to better foster student motivation. The essential questions are:
What are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and how do they affect student learning?
How can teachers build intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in classrooms?
Which strategies or solutions related to motivation best meet your students' needs?
Strategies for Supporting the Whole Student
The purpose of this unit is to get you thinking about the complexities and relatedness of learning differences. Then, we hope to begin honing your skills to approach a student and identify how to leverage that student's learning profile to best support him or her. We have referenced this as being a "learning scientist" throughout the course. The essential questions for this unit are:
How do the constructs of learning work together to build a complex, individual learner profile in each of my students?
How can I collect student data to select and implement strategies to support individual student needs?
Internalizing a Growth Mindset
In prior units, we built knowledge of and strategies for addressing various constructs of learning differences. In this unit, we bring these elements together to apply in your classroom and outline opportunities for future learning. The essential questions are:
What progress have you made in your classroom with regard to learning differences?
What strategies or next steps would you take to continue down this path?
Interested in the Learning Differences Coaching Component?
During the course, instructional coaches, media coordinators, and teacher leaders will have the opportunity to participate in three additional modules that are focused on strategies for coaching and supporting other teachers in their work with learning differences. The outline for the coaching portion of the course is in the next tab.Astroboffins reckon they have discovered the pH value - the acidity or alkalinity - of water plumes spurting forth from Saturn's moon Enceladus. The findings are considered another step forward in the hunt for alien life, as the possible warm sub-icecap oceans of Enceladus are thought to be one of the most promising habitats off Earth in our solar system.
It is the pH of such an ocean which researchers believe they have discovered, following the analysis of the plumes of water which the Cassini spacecraft has observed venting from the moon's south polar region.
The astroboffin dreamteam have developed a new chemical model based on mass spectrometry data of ice grains and gases in Enceladus' plume gathered by Cassini.
The pH, which is a fundamental parameter to understanding geochemical processes occurring inside the moon, will allow scientists to determine Enceladus' potential for acquiring and hosting life. Their work was published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
The ocean of Enceladus, which is comparable in size to the UK, is now considered to be salty with an alkaline pH of about 11 or 12. It contains the same sodium chloride (NaCl) salt as our oceans here on Earth do, but additional sodium carbonate (Na |
and well-connected. We’ve seen this story before in Louisiana, and we don’t deserve a sequel. In 2005, a fly-over by a vacationing President George W. Bush became a symbol of official neglect for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The current president was among those making political hay out of Bush’s aloofness.
The mainstream media, which was so critical of President George W. Bush’s handling of the Katrina flooding of New Orleans in 2005, has no such criticism of President Obama’s hands off approach to this year’s Louisiana flooding.
Listen to Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow discuss this on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM Friday morning:Violent crime so far this year in the District has spiked sharply — a 40 percent increase that includes twice as many robberies at gunpoint than at this time last year.
Across the city, all police districts are reporting increases in violent crime, and all but one have had double-digit percentage increases, according to internal Metropolitan Police Department documents. The documents contained preliminary crime data for the city as of Thursday.
The crime rate is increasing this year after a downward trend — the number of reported homicides last year dropped to the lowest level in a half-century.
Homicides were the only category of violent crime to decline in the first six weeks this year. As of Thursday, the city had recorded 10 homicides compared with 11 at a similar point last year.
Overall, though, incidents of violent crime — homicides, sexual assaults, robberies and assaults with deadly weapons — are rising at an alarming pace.
The biggest increase was in the 1st District, which includes Capitol Hill, where violent crime jumped by 69 percent, with 110 incidents reported compared with 65 at this point last year. The highest increase was in the 7th District, east of the Anacostia River, where 181 were reported, up 43 percent from the 127 incidents recorded at this point in 2011.
The 2nd District, which includes upper Northwest, reported the smallest increase in violent crime, at 4 percent. But of the 53 violent crimes reported there, 37 were robberies. A series of potentially related robberies in several of the affluent neighborhoods there has raised concern among residents, prompting a community meeting scheduled by D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh for Thursday.
“People are beginning to not feel safe,” Ms. Cheh, Ward 3 Democrat, said last week after a news conference at 2nd District headquarters to discuss the increase in robberies.
Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier warned of a citywide spike in robberies at a Feb. 10 news conference. She said the increase was attributable to criminals targeting smartphones and similar electronics.
During the news conference, Chief Lanier presented statistics on robberies for 2011, which compared somewhat favorably to data from 2010. According to those statistics, robberies with guns were down 11 percent from 2010 to last year, while robberies without guns were up 12 percent over the same period.
Statistics obtained by The Washington Times show that the 578 robberies recorded this year represent an increase of 55 percent compared with figures from the opening weeks of 2011. In addition, the number of robberies in which a gun was used has more than doubled, with 252 such robberies this year compared with 124 last year. The 396 robberies citywide in January topped January robbery totals in any year from 2008 to 2011.
Despite the recent news conferences on robberies, the crime numbers come as something of a surprise. An online crime-mapping tool on the police website that residents can use to track crime statistics in real time has been offline since the year began. Police originally said the site would be up by the end of last week. Now they say it will return early this week.
In Vincent C. Gray’s State of the District address Feb. 7, the mayor minimized the spike.
“In the first few weeks of 2012, thefts were up over the same period last year — and in a few neighborhoods robberies were also up,” Mr. Gray said. “Crime, whether it’s petty theft or armed robbery, will not be tolerated in our city, period — no excuses.”
But the statistics show that robberies jumped in every police district — far from increases “in a few neighborhoods.” The hikes ranged from a low of 29 percent in the 3rd District, a large part of which includes the city’s downtown core, to a 100 percent jump in the 1st District.
Overall crime — violent crimes and property crimes such as burglary, theft and arson — has increased 25 percent from last year to this year.
The statistics also show that the increase in crime rates has been building steadily, making it more difficult to dismiss it as an aberration based on a small data sample.
Going back to October, overall crime is up 15 percent in the District, and violent crime is up 24 percent.
The increases trouble Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police, because of their dramatic rise and because police and government officials have underplayed them.
“It is indefensible that Mayor Gray has failed to inform the public about this crime wave,” Mr. Baumann said. “Mr. Gray was very quick to take credit for any perceived drops in crime, so now it’s time for him to take responsibility as crime is on the rise.”
In a statement issued Sunday, Gray spokeswoman Doxie McCoy said the mayor and Chief Lanier have raised public concern about the increase in robberies.
“The chief also has announced measures to address crime involving smartphones and other electronics that are driving the uptick,” Ms. McCoy said. “Mayor Gray supports and has confidence in the chief and officers as they focus in on these kinds of crimes.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.In the past decade or so, scientists and researchers have also begun looking at other elements of agriculture besides just plants to find out the possible effects of climate change. A new study takes a look specifically at pesticides – well, specifically permethrin, one of the world’s most important pesticides because it kills mosquitoes responsible for carrying viruses – to find out how a rise in temperature could impact it. And the results are pretty scary.
The study, which was conducted by researchers from Montana State University, is fairly simple. The researchers exposed adult yellowfever mosquitoes – the nasty fellows responsible for transmitting everything from yellow fever to dengue, to permethrin – and kept them at varying temperatures.
In general, the study found that the higher the temperature, the less effective the pesticide. (There was a slight exception to that rule between 30 and 32 degrees Celsius, which is written off to some quirk in the mosquito nervous system that isn’t understood yet.) Pretty simply: As it gets hotter, more mosquitoes survive, even when they’ve been exposed to the same amount and same type of pesticide.
The researchers aren’t quite sure why this happens; they suggest that perhaps permethrin is more stable at lower temperatures; or that mosquito neurons are more sensitive to the neuro-attacks from permethrin at lower temperatures; or maybe lower temperatures simply allow the permethrin to bind to the mosquitoes with more ease.
Regardless of the reason, this is a frightening result. It means that as temperatures rise, we’ll either have more mosquitoes – not a pretty future, that one – or farmers will have to figure out some new way to fight them. One method could be by just using a much higher quantity of pesticides, which is a lousy option; it encourages the rise of “superbugs,” bacteria and viruses that have evolved to survive pesticides. Or perhaps farmers will have to use new pesticides, which may not be as effective as permethrin is now, or may have untold nasty side effects.
This is just one study, but its conclusions are affirmed by various other studies and surveys. One survey of existing literature from this past February notes that there are lots of other ways climate change can screw with pesticide effectiveness: It might reduce precipitation, which makes it harder for pesticides to sink into soil, or it could simply accelerate their degeneration. (That last bit means, basically, that direct sunlight might burn the pesticides until they don’t work well anymore.)
As if we needed another reason why climate change could be the worst crisis facing our planet.CSS Visual Cryptography
Daniel Erenrich Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 26, 2015
Visual cryptography is an exciting and largely pointless field. People still publish papers in the space but outside of actual spies I have no idea if anyone is still using it.
If you don’t know, visual cryptography is the process of splitting an image into two such that when the two new images are overlaid the original image returns. This animation from Wikipedia demonstrates the principle.
A binary black and white example of visual cryptography
It occurred to me recently that the new CSS compositing and blending rules could allow someone to implement visual cryptography decryption in a browser with no code. The trick is picking the right blending mode.
There are a lot of blending modes and not all of them will work for us.
Most of the blending rules are not suitable for visual cryptography but the “difference blend mode” let’s you XOR colors and thus you can approximate a real encryption algorithm. I’m not positive the difference blend mode is the only one suitable for cryptography and I’d love to see someone do something better.
I wanted to do something more interesting than just decrypting a random image. I decided to upload an encrypted video to youtube and have a browser decrypt it live. This is especially difficult because of the aggressive compression youtube applies to its videos.
The video I encrypted is available here:
The key that decrypt this video is just pure noise:
Together the decrypted video looks like:
You can see the video decrypted live at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23621/yt-crypt/bayer/diff_yt.html though it doesn’t work in all browsers.
Why does it look so bad? Well part of it is due to compression but mostly it’s actually due to dithering. Non-binary colors are very hard to get working in visual cryptography so you end up making all the colors binary and then dithering to get intermediates.
Some of you might note that the encrypted video doesn’t look very random. That’s because for simplicity I chose to use a single key frame instead of an entire video of keys. It’s rather like re-using a key in an XOR cipher. Patterns become clear even to the naked eye.
Does this have a potential use? Maybe? Actually I doubt it. I really just did it for fun.Gweek 061: Trust Me, I'm Lying
Click here to play the podcast. In this episode of the Gweek podcast I interviewed Ryan Holiday. Ryan’s the author of Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. He's a media strategist who started his career as an assistant to Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power and is currently the director of marketing at American Apparel.
Bonus! Here's an excerpt from Trust Me, I'm Lying [UPDATE] Irin Carmon responds on this essay she wrote for Salon, "Did I ruin journalism?".
Irin Carmon, the Daily Show and Me: The Perfect Storm of How Toxic Blogging Can Be, by Ryan Holiday
"Most crucially, that machine, whether it churns through social media or television appearances, doesn’t reward bipartisanship or deal making; it rewards the easily retweetable or sound bite–ready statement, the more outrageous the better."
-- Irin Carmon, Jezebel
In the first half of my book, I give reader the inside on how to manipulate blogs. There are fatal flaws in the blogging medium that create opportunities for influence over the media—and, ultimately, culture itself. And if I were writing this book two or three years ago, it would have ended there.
I did not fully understand the dangers of that world. The costs of the cheap power I had as a media manipulator were hidden, but once revealed, I could not shake them. I had used my tactics to sell T-shirts and books, but others, I found, used them more expertly and to more ominous ends. They sold everything from presidential candidates to distractions they hoped would placate the public—and made (or destroyed) millions in the process.
Realizing all this changed me. It made it impossible for me to continue down the path that I was on. The second half of this book explains why. It is an investigation not in how the dark arts of media manipulation work but of their consequences.
HOW BLOGS CREATE THEIR OWN NARRATIVES FOR FUN AND PROFIT
In 2010, I oversaw the launch of a new line of a Made in USA, environmentally friendly nail polish for American Apparel. Although American Apparel typically manufactures all of its products at its vertically integrated factory in L.A., for this product we’d collaborated with an old-fashioned family-owned factory in Long Island, where even their ninety-year-old grandmother still worked on the factory floor. Shortly after shipping the polish to rave reviews, we noticed that several bottles had cracked or burst underneath the bright halogen lights in our stores.
It didn’t pose a risk to our customers, but to be safe rather than sorry, we informed the factory that we’d be pulling the polish from store shelves and expected immediate replacements. We’d discussed the plan in-depth on a weekly conference call with our relevant employees. A confidential e-mail was sent to store managers informing them of the changes and asking them to place the bottles in a cool, dry place in the store until instructions for proper disposal were given. The last thing we wanted, even with environmentally friendly nail polish, was to throw fifty thousand bottles of it in trashcans in twenty countries.
A Jezebel blogger named Irin Carmon somehow received this innocent internal communication and e-mailed me at 6:25 a.m. West Coast time (Gawker is in Manhattan) to ask about it. Well, she pretended to ask me about it, since she signed her e-mail with the following:
Our post with the initial information is going up shortly, but I would be more than happy to update or post a follow-up. Thanks so much. Irin
By the time I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, the post was already live. When I saw it, all I could feel was a pit in my stomach—and, frankly, that surprised me. I knew how blogs worked, was plenty cynical, but even then I sensed that this would be awful.
The headline of Jezebel’s piece: “Does American Apparel’s New Nail Polish Contain Hazardous Material?”
To settle Jezebel’s reckless conjecture: The answer is no, it doesn’t. Unequivocally no. For starters, the leaked e-mail specifically says the problem was with the glassware and mentions nothing about the polish. But Carmon wasn’t actually interested in any of that and she definitely wasn’t interested in writing an article that addressed the issue fairly. Why would she want an actual answer to her incredibly disingenuous question? The post was already written. Hell, it was already published.
As I had not intended to discuss the nail polish bottles publicly yet, it took about an hour for me to get a statement approved by the company lawyers. During that time dozens of other blogs were already parroting her claims. Major blogs, many of which had posted positive reviews of the nail polish on their sites, followed her bogus lead. The story was so compelling (American Apparel! Toxic polish! Exploding glass!) they had to run with it, true or not.
Within about an hour I e-mailed the following statement to Carmon, thinking I was taking her up on the offer for a follow-up to her first post:
After receiving a few reports of bottles breaking, we made the internal decision to do a voluntary recall of the bottles on both a retail and public level.
We chose this small US manufacturer to produce our nail polish because we support their business model and have a fondness for [the] family who runs it. However, one of the realities of all manufacturing is first-run glitches. We worked all last week with the manufacturer to make the improvements necessary for the second run. Another reason we sought out a US-based company is so we would be able make changes, and now we can investigate what went wrong as quickly as possible. We still believe in the factory we’re working with and the new polish will be in stores within the next two weeks.
We will offer an exchange of two new bottles or a $(removed) gift card for anyone who brings in a unit from the original run or a receipt.
On another note, one thing we’re taking very seriously is the disposal of the bottles we had in the stores. Even though our polish was DBP-, toluene-, and formaldehyde-free, we don’t want our stores just tossing it in the trash. We’re using our internal shipping and distribution line to arrange a pickup and removal of the polish to make sure it gets done right.
I felt this was a great—and ethical—response. But it was too late. Carmon copied and pasted my statement to the bottom of the article and left the headline exactly as it was, adding only “Updated” to the end of it. Even though the statement disproved the premise of her article, Carmon’s implication was that she was mostly right and was just adding a few new details. She wasn’t—she’d been totally wrong, but it didn’t matter, because the opportunity to change the readers’ minds had passed. The facts had been established.
To make matters worse, Carmon replied to my last e-mail with a question about another trumped-up story she planned to write about the company. She ended again with:
By the way, just FYI—I’d love to be able to include your responses in my initial post, but unfortunately I won’t be able to wait for them, so if this is something you can immediately react to, that would be great.
The controversy eventually meant the undoing of the nail polish company we’d worked so hard to support. Had these blogs not rushed to print a bogus story, the problem could have been handled privately. The massive outcry that followed Carmon’s post necessitated an immediate and large-scale response that the cosmetic company could not handle. No question, they’d made mistakes, but nothing remotely close to what was reported. Overwhelmed by the controversy and the pressure from the misplaced anger of the blogger horde, the small manufacturer fell behind on their orders. Their operations fell into disarray, and the company was later sued by American Apparel for $(removed) million in damages to recover various losses. As the lawyers would say, while the nail polish company is responsible for their manufacturing errors, if not for Carmon’s needless attack and rush to judgment—the proximate cause—it all could have been worked out.
Carmon is a media manipulator—she just doesn’t know it. She may think she is a writer, but everything about her job makes her a media manipulator. She and I are in the same racket. From the twisting of the facts, the creation of a nonexistent story, the merciless use of attention for profit—she does what I do. The system I abused was now abusing me and the people I cared about. And nobody had any idea.
A PATTERN OF MANIPULATION
Did you know that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart hates women? And that they have a long history of discriminating against and firing women?
Sure, one of its cocreators is female, and one of its best-known and longest- running correspondents is a woman, and there really isn’t any evidence to prove what I just claimed, but I assure you, I’d never lie.
This was the manufactured scandal that Jezebel slammed into The Daily Show in June 2010. Irin Carmon’s piece blindsided them just as her Jezebel nail polish story had blindsided us. It began when Carmon posted an article titled, “The Daily Show’s Woman Problem.”
Relying on some juicy quotes from people no longer with the show, Carmon claimed that the show had a poor record of finding and developing female comedic talent. She was also determined to make a name for herself. In order to accomplish this, she didn’t actually speak to anyone who still worked for The Daily Show. It was much easier to use a collection of anonymous and off-the-record sources—like an ex-employee who hadn’t worked there for eight years. As you should expect by now, the article was a sensation.
The cluster of stories that followed were read more than 500,000 times.
The story was picked up by ABC News, the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, E!, Salon, and others. In a memo to his staff, Carmon’s boss and the publisher of Gawker, Nick Denton, commended the story for getting the kind of publicity that can’t be bought. Denton wrote, “It was widely circulated within the media, spawned several more discussions, and affirmed our status as both an influencer and a muckraker.” Jon Stewart was even forced to respond to the story on air. The New York Times rewarded Carmon and the website with a glowing profile: “A Web Site That’s Not Afraid to Pick a Fight.”
For a writer like Carmon, whose pay is determined by the number of pageviews her posts receive, this was a home run. And for a publisher like Denton, the buzz the story generated made his company more attractive to advertisers and increased the valuation of his brand.
That her story was a lie didn’t matter. That it was part of a pattern of manipulation didn’t matter.
The women of The Daily Show published an open letter on the show’s website a few days after the story hit.3 Women accounted for some 40 percent of the staff, the letter read, from writers and producers to correspondents and interns, and had over a hundred years’ experience on the show among them. The letter was remarkable in its clarity and under- standing of what the blogger was doing. They addressed it, “Dear People Who Don’t Work Here” and called Carmon’s piece an “inadequately re- searched blog post” that clung “to a predetermined narrative about sexism at The Daily Show.”
If I hadn’t experienced the exact situation myself, the letter would have made me hopeful that the truth would win out. But that’s not how it works online. The next day the New York Times ran an article about their response. “ ‘The Daily Show’ Women Say the Staff Isn’t Sexist” the headline blared.
Think about how bullshit that is: Because the Jezebel piece came first, the letter from The Daily Show women is shown merely as a response instead of the refutation that it actually was. No matter how convincing, it only reasserts, in America’s biggest newspaper, Carmon’s flimsy claim of sexism on the show. They could never undo what they’d be accused of— no matter how spurious the accusation—they could only deny it. And denials don’t mean anything online.
Kahane Cooperman, a female co–executive producer at the show, told the New York Times: “No one called us, no one talked to us. We felt like, we work here, we should take control of the narrative.” She didn’t know how it works. Jezebel controls the narrative. Carmon made it up; no one else had a right to it.
The day after the story ran, but before the women of The Daily Show could respond, Carmon got another post out of the subject: “5 Unconvincing Excuses for Daily Show Sexism,” as she titled it—dismissing in advance the criticism leveled by some concerned and skeptical commenters. It was a preemptive strike to marginalize anyone who doubted her shaky accusations and to solidify her pageview-hungry version of reality.
In the titles of her first and second articles, you can see what she is doing. The Daily Show’s “Woman Problem” from her first post became their “Sexism” in her second. One headline bootstraps the next; the what-ifs of the first piece became the basis for the second. Her story proves itself.
When the New York Times asked Carmon to respond to the women of The Daily Show’s claim that they were not interviewed or contacted for the story (which restated the allegations), she “refused to comment further.” Yet when The Daily Show supposedly invoked this right by not speaking to Carmon it was evidence that they were hiding something. A double standard? I wouldn’t expect anything different.
Did Carmon update her piece to reflect the dozens of comments released by Daily Show women? Or at least give their response a fair shake? No, of course not. In a forty-word post (forty words!) she linked their statement with the tag “open letter” and whined that she just wished they spoken up when she was writing the story. She didn’t acknowledge the letter’s claim that they actually had tried to speak with her and neglected to mention that it’s her job to get their side of the story before publishing, even if that’s difficult or time-consuming.
How many Jezebel readers do you think threw out their original impression for a new one? Or even saw the update? The post making the accusation did 333,000 views. Her post showing the Daily Show women’s response did 10,000 views—3 percent of the impressions of the first shot.
Did Carmon really send repeated requests for comment to The Daily Show? A major television show like that would get hundreds of requests a week. Who did she contact? Did she provide time for them to respond? Or is it much more likely that she gave the show a cursory heads-up minutes before publication? In my direct personal experience, the answers to these questions are appalling. No wonder she wouldn’t explain her methods to the Times. All I have to go on is my personal history with Carmon, and it tells me that at every juncture she does whatever will benefit her most. I’ve seen the value she places on the truth—particularly if it gets in the way of a big story.
There is something deeply twisted about an arrangement like this one. Carmon’s accusation received five times as many views as the post about The Daily Show women’s response, even though the latter undermines much of the former. There is something wrong with the way the writer is compensated for both pieces—as well as the third, fourth, or fifth she managed to squeeze out of the topic (again, more than five hundred thou- sand pageviews combined). Finally, there is something wrong with the fact that Denton’s sites benefit merely by going toe-to-toe with a cultural icon like Jon Stewart—even if their reports are later discredited. They know this; it’s why they do it.
This is how it works online. A writer finds a narrative to advance that is profitable to them, or perhaps that they are personally or ideologically motivated to advance, and are able to thrust it into the national consciousness before anyone has a chance to bother checking if it’s true or not.
Emily Gould, one of the original editors of Gawker, later wrote a piece for Slate.com entitled “How Feminist Blogs Like Jezebel Gin Up Page Views by Exploiting Women’s Worst Tendencies” in which she explained the motivations behind such a story:
It’s a prime example of the feminist blogosphere’s tendency to tap into the market force of what I’ve come to think of as “outrage world”—the regularly occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate’s own XX Factor and Salon’s Broadsheet. They’re ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly mar- keted as feminism. These firestorms are great for page-view-pimping bloggy business.
Let me take this to its natural conclusion. Writers like Irin Carmon are driven more by shrewd self-interest and disdain for the consequences than they are by jealousy. It’s a pattern for Carmon, as we’ve seen. She’s not stopping, either.
Just a few months later, needing to reproduce her previous success, she saw an opportunity for a similar story, about producer and director Judd Apatow. After spotting him at a party, she tried to recapture the same outrage that had propelled her Daily Show piece into the public consciousness by again accusing a well-liked public figure of something impossible to deny.
The actual events of the evening: Director Judd Apatow attended a party hosted by a friend. Carmon attempted to corner and embarrass him for story she wanted to write but failed. Yet in the world of blogging, this becomes the headline: “Judd Apatow Defends His Record on Female Characters.” It did about thirty-five thousand views and a hundred comments.
Carmon tried to “get” him, and did. I guess I have to give her credit, because this time she actually talked to the person she hoped to make her scapegoat. But still, you can actually see, as it happens, her effort to trap
Apatow with the same insinuations and controversy that she did with Stewart. In the interview, Carmon repeatedly presented criticism of Apatow’s movies as generally accepted fact that she was merely the conduit for, referring to his “critics” as though she wasn’t speaking for herself.
From the interview:
Q: So you think that’s unfair that you’ve gotten that criticism?
A: Oh, I definitely think that it’s unfair.... But that’s okay.
Q: I wonder if you could elaborate on your defense a little bit. A: I’m not defensive about it.
Q: Do the conversation and the criticism change the way you work?
A: I don’t hear any of the criticism when I test the movies and talk to thousands of people. I think the people who talk about these things on the Internet are looking to stir things up to make for interesting reading, but when you make movies, thousands of people fill out cards telling you their intimate feelings about the movies, and those criticisms never came up, ever, on any of the movies.
In other words, there is nothing to any of her claims. But the post went up anyway. And she got paid just the same. Notoriety from events of 2010 and 2011 worked very nicely for Carmon—in the form of a staff position at Salon.com and a spot on the Forbes “30 Under 30” list.
Honestly, her tactics may have once impressed me. I have no problem when people get their piece of the profits—particularly when the whole scene is such a farce. The problem is when they get too greedy. The problem is when they stop being able to see anything but the need for their own gain.
Today, I’m not impressed anymore. I am depressed. Because the corrupt system I helped build is no longer in anyone’s control. The manipulators are indistinguishable from the publishers and bloggers—the people we were supposed to be manipulating. Everyone is now a victim, including me and the companies I work for. And the costs are incredibly high.
Buy Trust Me, I'm Lying on Amazon
See also: Man punks journalistCan you tear an 8-foot hole in the side of a 747 jet and have it fly not only safely but in a stable way? This isn’t a terrorism-related quiz–it’s a real problem that NASA tackled with its flying telescope project. The answer is a big “yes.”
The telescope is a 17-ton monster called the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) designed to make high-resolution infrared imagery of space objects, and its installation in a modified 30-year-old 747 is the culmination of a project that began over 14 years ago. The telescope was specifically engineered to fit into a jumbo, which was the largest aircraft flying at the project’s inception, and it’s used to make observations when the plane is flying at 40,000 feet, lower than space-based telescopes but above some of the lower-atmospheric effects of the impact ground-based telescope installations.
This is why SOFIA is a neat solution, it turns out. At ground level, IR telescopes suffer from absorption of IR wavelengths by atmospheric water, and while this problem isn’t suffered if you shoot a satellite into space–you can’t adjust a space-based telescope easily (or at all, possibly for decades when the Shuttle is grounded) and flying a giant telescope into orbit is both tricky and expensive.
But how do you mount a 17-ton piece of kit in the rear of a 747, and cut an 8-foot hole in the side for it to see through without the hole bringing the aircraft crashing out of the sky, or cause airflow buffeting which would disrupt or damage the telescope? With clever modeling, and the construction of a bulge with a huge garage door to contain the telescope in an unpressurized environment, it turns out. The results are so successful that when the door is opened there seems to be little effect on the aircraft’s performance from a pilot’s point of view, and the telescope is delivering excellent results.
In an era where NASA’s missions are under a political and financial microscope, and many grand projects are dissolving into controversy, SOFIA’s a fabulous example of scientific ingenuity in action.Gobble Gobble? Wait a minute…those aren’t deformed Karak’s pecking your structures! They are pesky turkeys, and they are standing in-between you and your supply line. “Harvest” those feathery menaces and stop that train! But beware, word in the Koprulu Sector is that there lives a bigger, much meaner poultry pest on this planet.
Co-op Mutation
“Fowl Play”
Your supply lines have been cut off, and you must work together with your ally in order to sustain your armies. Luckily, there is plenty of local wildlife to harvest. But proceed with caution. Who knows what a turkey is capable of when under threat?
Mutators
Sharing is Caring: Supply is shared between you and your partner, and units from both armies contribute to your combined supply cap.
Supply is shared between you and your partner, and units from both armies contribute to your combined supply cap. Turkey Shoot: Supply can only be generated by killing turkeys that wander throughout the map. Doing so may anger the turkeys that remain.
Adversaries
Turkey
Health: 10 hp
10 hp Damage: 8 damage (+8 vs Structures)
8 damage (+8 vs Structures) Attack Period: 1.5 sec
1.5 sec Note: This unit provides 2 to max supply when killed
Infested Turkey
HP: 75 hp (Casual, +25 per difficulty)
75 hp (Casual, +25 per difficulty) Damage: 0 damage (+70 vs Structures)
0 damage (+70 vs Structures) Attack Period: 2 sec
The Turking
HP: 2000hp (Casual, +500-2000 per difficulty)
2000hp (Casual, +500-2000 per difficulty) Damage: 250 damage (+250 vs Structures)
250 damage (+250 vs Structures) Attack Period: 2 sec
2 sec Ability: “Terrifying Gobble” Causes all nearby enemy units to run in fear, temporarily preventing them from accepting commands
Can you best these foes along with the forces of Amon despite the terrifying odds against you? Find out by jumping into StarCraft II and getting your hands dirty today! We wanted to express a huge thank you to ‘CtG’ for continually putting together Co-op Mutation on the US forums and /r/StarCraft which inspire many to come and try the mutation out each week! “Fowl Play” Co-op mutator mode will be available to play from November 21 – November 28 so join the fun, bring a buddy, and for the love of Khala... make sure they aren’t vegetarian.I recently met a transgender person who works as a roofer for a construction company. She came out as transgender on the job recently, and the next day a coworker on her worksite came out and told her that she is also transgender. Both of them -- and everyone they work with, for that matter -- had worked with a transgender person and didn't even know it.
Sure, people in more and more workplaces are finding that they have transgender coworkers. And it probably seems like there are stories of transgender people in the news much more than there used to be. But as the United States becomes increasingly aware that transgender people exist in most workplaces -- in factories, in offices, and on construction sites -- it's increasingly clear that there is little awareness that these same people can lose their jobs for being transgender or gender-nonconforming.
That's why we are excited to work with the Movement Advancement Project and several other partners to publish a new report called "A Broken Bargain for Transgender Workers," which was a companion to an LGBT report we issued together earlier this year called "A Broken Bargain: Discrimination, Fewer Benefits and More Taxes for LGBT Workers."
The report clearly lays out the barriers to equal treatment of transgender people in the workplace:
Hiring bias and on-the-job discrimination that keep qualified transgender workers from entering the workforce
Wage inequities that prevent transgender people from providing for themselves and their families
Lack of clear federal nondiscrimination laws that can help end the rampant discrimination against transgender people
Inability to update legal documents and records that can be intrusive or burdensome for transgender workers
Unequal access to basic health care, including transition-related care
The totality of these barriers has contributed to catastrophic health disparities, suicide rates, and unemployment among transgender people. In a side-by-side comparison of a transgender and a non-transgender worker over a period of five years, the report estimates a $132,577 cost in extra financial burdens for a transgender person as a result of lost income, out-of-pocket medical expenses, denied promotions and unfair firings.
Analysis from existing research and this report has already convinced business leaders to address job inequalities. More than half of Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" include gender identity in their nondiscrimination policies. Polling has found that a majority of Fortune 500 companies and small businesses agree that it is time to address transgender job discrimination. Consensus among business leaders is in line with public opinion: Seventy-three percent of voters support protecting transgender people from discrimination in employment.
It's fairly surprising that an issue as basic as workplace opportunity has needed to gain such widespread support. But even now, proposed federal legislation that would unequivocally address this basic unfairness waits in Congress while countless trans and gender-nonconforming people lose their jobs and have trouble getting new work.
Despite these challenges, we have made important progress at the federal level and at the state and local levels. A growing number of jurisdictions, including 17 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have passed state and local nondiscrimination laws, effectively protecting 45 percent of the U.S. population. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has ruled that discrimination against people because they are transgender is illegal sex discrimination. The EEOC now takes job discrimination complaints in all 50 states. And soon the U.S. Senate will take up the Employment Non-Discrimination Act |
prefer work to welfare. They believe themselves to be entrepreneurs and will battle against the economic headwind to the point of self-abasement to avoid admitting otherwise.
Yet America's middle class is disappearing. A lifestyle sustained for 30 years by rising debt is dissolving as the credit dries up. And the question beyond the crisis is: can it ever come back?
Figures released last month by the US Census Bureau show it will be hard. Middle incomes are lower, in real terms, than in 1999. The median income, stagnate for a decade, fell by 4.2% once the crisis hit. Since December 2007 more than six million Americans have been pushed below the official poverty line.
It is dawning on millions that the term middle class might be a misnomer. But the label "working class" does not fit either: in the US it denotes a lifestyle choice involving trade union activism or support for the grittier baseball teams, not a sociological category.
This sudden collapse in lifestyle will have economic and psychological impacts long after the crisis is over. Since the 1980s US growth has been driven by the spending power of the salaried workforce. In turn the consumer has been the dynamo of global growth.
To get things back to the way they were the US has to find a way to create nine million jobs, plug the gap in disposable incomes and reopen the personal credit system to the millions excluded from it. Judged against that, the Obama fiscal stimulus has failed.
The credit system, having created the crisis, compounds the agony: the "payday loan" stores – shameless and neon amid the closed-down high streets – do brisk business. So do the credit reference agencies: Juan Pullen told me he'd actually been refused a job because the employer had checked his credit score: "They think credit indicates character; bad credit equals bad character," he shrugs. Unable to borrow or earn, a whole generation is being shut out of the American lifestyle.
Meanwhile, some states have begun a race to the bottom: slashing welfare, labour regulations and local taxes to attract investment. High-wage companies close and relocate to low-wage states, and foreign investment flows to the towns where labour costs are lowest. These states are being transformed by the arrival of low-waged Hispanic migrants even as the rightwing politicians who support the economics rail against the demographics.
As a result the so-called Sun Belt, identified by Republican strategist Kevin Phillips in the 1970s as the new political bedrock of conservatism, now feels like the unhappiest place in America. Median incomes in the south are, on average, $8,000 lower than in the northeast; poverty rates are higher than anywhere else in America – and so are the racial and religious tensions.
In the midterm elections politicians have promised to "do something" for the middle class. The kindest thing they could do is tell the truth: Americans have been living a middle-class lifestyle on working-class wages – and bridging the gap with credit. And it's over.
In a free-market society the real middle class is always a minority: if your street has a gate and a security camera at the end of it then you are middle class. A real middle-class kid can afford a college education, not a web-based degree. The real middle-class family does not skip meals or find its automobiles trapped in the repair shop because of unpaid bills.
And even in America, if you are standing in 90F heat, jostling with 30 other guys for a few hours' work, it is the man in the station wagon curling his finger at you that is middle class – not you.As the market for 3D printers has moved from sophisticated, experienced designers into the mass consumer market, individuals are saving substantial money with pre-designed, DIY products made on 3D printers. These opportunities are poised to increase due to the Free Open Source 3D Customizer, a libre, 3D model customizer that anyone can use to create their own 3D printed designs.
To demonstrate how the software works and the possibilities that it creates, I'll show how breast cancer survivors and others can use the Free Open Source 3D Customizer to design and produce 3D-printable external breast prosthetics.
But first, a recent history lesson.
The early days of OpenSCAD customization
Early 3D printer users were generally sophisticated designers. They were experienced with traditional computer aided design (CAD) packages as well as a script-based CAD package called OpenSCAD, which dominated the early designs for the RepRap 3D printer, as it was the first mature coding environment and language for modeling 3D objects.
The mass consumer market for desktop 3D printers has grown recently, as individuals have become interested in designing and prototyping their own products, as well as saving money through the economics of distributed manufacturing.
These users have relied on the millions of free and open source 3D printable designs available in dozens of free online repositories, most notably Thingiverse, which has over 2 million free designs due in large part to its customizer app. This proprietary customizer enables designers to upload OpenSCAD code so average consumers, who generally lack the technical sophistication to create their own designs from scratch, can use it to easily create custom designs and manufacture products themselves.
Unfortunately, Makerbot, which was an early open hardware hero, later became closed source. The early, technically savvy "maker" customers (who helped develop the RepRap hardware that Makerbot was based on) largely viewed Makerbot's abandonment of the open hardware ethos as a betrayal. Many of the best designers boycotted Thingiverse, refusing to share new designs and even stripping down popular designs on the repository. This led to fracturing of the open source 3D design community.
In addition, Thingiverse's customizer app was locked away by a proprietary company that changed the license agreement to force users to "irrevocably waive (and cause to be waived) any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to your user content." This forfeiture of design rights is unacceptable to many open source designers, because it means the company is ignoring the license they choose for their work.
An open source solution
Clearly, there's been a widespread need for a free and open source 3D model customizer that can be used in any 3D printing repository for customizing OpenSCAD code. The Free Open Source 3D Customizer fits that criteria. Making the software available to all repositories prevents user lock-in (in the event a repository changes its license agreement) and truly democratizes design.
In a study on the design, function, and validation of this free and open source software, we used the example of customizing a breast prosthesis as one way it could benefit many people.
The Free Open Source 3D Customizer in practice: External breast prostheses
In both the developed and less developed world, breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women, with over 1.6 million new cases per year worldwide. Cancer treatments have improved, and patients with breast cancer can expect to significantly extend their lifespans with surgery and chemotherapy.
Unfortunately, losing all or part of the breast through either breast-conserving surgery or mastectomy frequently leads to problems during the recovery period, such as anxiety, depression, body/self-image issues, distress, sexuality challenges, and low self-esteem. In addition, breast cancer patients often choose to avoid reconstructive surgery because of the cost, their physical condition, or the additional recovery time and complications.
External breast prostheses have been proven an effective solution for women who haven't had (or won't have) reconstructive surgery, and it is used by up to 90% of women after surgery in Western countries. Even so, problems including comfort, unnatural appearance, and cost prevent many women from using them.
These problems can be addressed through customized, 3D-printed breast prostheses. Materials selections have improved substantially, with several thermoplastic elastomers and polyurethanes on the market, and many other flexible materials are under development. Patient comfort, appearance, and breast shape issues can be satisfied with custom sizing and the correct selection of 3D printing material (possibly including post-treatment with silicone or another coating). Finally, a distributed manufactured prosthesis can cost significantly less than a custom commercial solution.
Using the Free Open Source 3D Customizer to custom-design breast prosthetics is easy and straightforward. The breast size can be measured in two ways: the width of the breast (B), for the desired width of the prosthetic, or the length over the top (L) of the breast, as shown below.
sizing.png The breast measurement can be taken by length or width.
The user can choose one of two customizable methods (by drop-down menu), and insert any value, in millimeters, into the text box. The user also has the option to choose either a flat or rounded back (using a second drop-down menu). The flat back makes it easier to print without support on a 3D printer, while the rounded back would be more comfortable for the wearer.
pica.png Customizing the breast prosthetic's size using the flat width measurement setting.
picb.png Customizing the breast prosthetic's size using the rounded length measurement setting.
breast_prosth_cc-by-sa.jpg Users can design the perfect breast prosthetic by easily prototyping different designs and fills.
The Free Open Source 3D Customizer could also be used to help women with partially intact or uneven breasts, and even those who simply want a custom bra insert to change their breast appearance without surgery.
In addition, 3D printing's partial infill options enable a degree of customization not possible with mass-produced products. This can be done with the use of an open source slicer, such as Slic3r, which can ensure variable step wall thickness to eliminate z step lines. With these methods, users can vary the density of the breast prosthetic for optimal comfort and a natural look and feel.
This demonstration is a first step in an open source design for a breast prosthetic. For more information about the Free Open Source 3D Customizer or to add it to your own repository, please visit the project's GitHub page to access the source code.For questions, suggestions, or bug reports please use the forum linked above.
More Floors
This mod currently adds a lot of new floors and the vanilla grass/sand tile that can be placed.
New in 1.2.3
Added Toxic Sludge
Added "Titanium" and "Nitanol" arrow grates
All arrow grates have a 1x1 and a 2x2 style
Changed layer priority of arrow grates
New edge tiles for arrow grates
Alien metal Edges
Fixed icon tab
New in 1.2.2
Fixed base game files referenced name changes
Fixed new colored concrete tile sides
Removed edges on arrow grates
New in 1.2.1
Updated to.15
If you decide to update there is a bug stating there are missing game files you can copy/rename them yourself and it will load just fine but until then I submitted a bug report
Check out the Replace folders in the zip. The readme file will explain how to fix the issue with missing game files.
New in 1.2.0
Fixed conflict with Alien Biomes mod (more floor tiles overiding alien biomes when removed)
New in 1.1.0
Shiny bob mod conflict (moving tile recpies around) fixed in next Shiny bob version.
Added 4 concrete decals toggle through with R (2x2 version and 1x1 version)
Radioactive hazard
Death hazard
Fire hazard
Bio hazard
Added Herringbone Wood floor
Added Darkwood Floor
Heavily inspired by the Alien biomes mod (check it out!)
Gargantuan lava changes
Fixed the edges of dry cobblestone appearing to have green grass edges.
Added Magenta concrete
Enhanced pink concrete
Added colored edges for colored concrete tiles
Fixed dry grass cobblestone looking weird
Fixed biome tiles having weird holes from missing U-tiles and O-tiles
Added dry grass biome tiles
Sorted colored concrete by spectrum
Reworked Redbricks
Added Yellow bricks
Recombobulated biome tiles so they wont be picked up by blue prints
Separate (identical) biome tiles speficically for blueprinting
Experimental tile not part of blueprints to make for blue printing area.
1.0.7
- Hotfix for typo in the migration file
New in 1.0.6
Added Cobblestone Paths press R to change styles Dry grass Grass Sand Dirt
Added Redbrick tiles (W.I.P. texture)
Added Asphalt line tiles Vertical/Horizontal Diagonal
Added dark grey colored concrete
Tweaked black concrete to be actually black.
Bleached white concrete
New in 1.0.5
Added Tar pits - 15% movespeed (slightly buggy/some graphic errors)
Added Fast bi directional arrows
Added Express bi directional arrows
Added a tab for all tiles.
Added dark dirt
Added regular dirt
Added Dark Sand
Added Checkboard tile
Added Experimenting tile
Added 12 colored concretes: Black Blue Gold Green Lime Green Orange Pink Purple Red Skyblue White Yellow
Tweaked Alien floors recipe: 1 blue circuit + 10 circuit floors = 20 tiles
Wood tiles now drop wood
Gravel tiles now drop stone
Fixed lava/asphalt not showing
Thank you PetetheLich for the update.
New in 1.0.3
Lava
Snow
Alien Metal
Metal scraps
Hexagon tiles
Asphalt
============
Wood
Smooth Concrete
Reinforced Concrete
Rusty Metal
Rusty Grate
Gravel to match train tracks.
Bi-Directional Arrow grate that is rotatable with the "r" key.
A slighty rusted Diamond plate
Some type of ripped up circuit floor
Grass/Sand tile to cover up any ugly biome transitions
More to come
Speed Modifiers
Vanilla Concrete- 140%
Grass & Sand Default walking speed
Lava 100%
Snow 100%
Wood/Gravel 120%
Metal scraps 120%
Smooth Concrete- 140%
Reinforced Concrete- 140%
Rusty Grate- 160%
Bi-directional Arrow Grate- 160%
Asphalt 160%
Hexagon tiles 160%
Diamond Plate- 160%
Rusty Metal- 160%
Circuit Floor- 170%
Alien Metal 200% (expensive)
Wood, grass, sand and gravel can be crafted without research so you can pretty up your base in the early game. The rest will come after Concrete research mostly because they require concrete to be crafted with. All tiles this mod adds, stacks to 1000.
Version
1.0.4- Updated to Factorio version 0.14
1.0.3- Added Lava tile, Snow, Alien Metal, Metal-Scraps, Hexagon tile, Asphalt, and changed the recipe of reinforced-concrete.
1.0.2- Changed Circuit floor texture,New Tech icon, Added gravel, sand, rusty grate, diamond plate, and bi-directional arrow grate (rotatable with "r" key)
1.0.1-Intial Release
Credit to /u/PeteTheLich for helping with/creating some of the textures.
Heavily inspired by Floors Mod a mod that was around before concrete and stone path were added into the vanilla game.
Some textures are based off Spiral GraphicsToday is a historic moment for VR. The new Samsung Gear VR, powered by Oculus, is now shipping in the US, with international pre-orders rolling out now. You can learn more about the new Gear VR on oculus.com/gear-vr.
If you want to check out Gear VR, you can demo and purchase it at select Best Buy and AT&T stores starting today, with T-Mobile coming soon.
Gear VR offers an immersive mobile VR experience that can transport you to another world through hundreds of VR games, thousands of hours of streaming movies and videos, and over 200,000 360 photos.
Grab a high quality Bluetooth gamepad such as the SteelSeries Stratus XL to go with the Gear VR headset for the best gaming experience!
Action-packed arcade shooter, EVE: Gunjack, by CCP Games
More than 25 brand new made-for-VR games and experiences are coming to Gear VR by early December. You can now play the highly anticipated EVE: Gunjack and fight mutants with Mortal Blitz VR. In the next week, you’ll be able to explore VR’s first aquatic safari park in Ocean Rift and interact with cute and mischievous monsters in Finding Monsters.
And if you haven’t already, check out Oculus Social Alpha where you can meet up with your friends in VR.
Share your experiments with the world through Oculus Concepts
We’re excited to announce that Oculus Concepts is now available on Gear VR! Concepts is a new part of the Oculus Store where developers can distribute experimental apps and games, and give people early access to their content.
Concepts is also a great way to discover content that’s on the bleeding edge of VR development. You can download and purchase apps in the new Concepts section of the Oculus Store.
Developers can submit apps to Concepts starting today — all the details are in the Gear VR Submission Guidelines.
Many of the best VR games on the Oculus platform were heavily influenced by getting out to the community early. We hope Concepts helps developers continue to take risks, share ideas early, and define the future of VR gaming and entertainment. We look forward to your feedback as we continue to add new features to Concepts in the coming months.
Oculus Community Game Night: VR Karts
Join us tonight, from 5-7pm PT, for the first Community Game Night with VR Karts on Gear VR! Play alongside Oculus team members and a few special guests, including Oculus founder, Palmer Luckey.
View details for the Community Game Night on the Facebook event page. We look forward to seeing you on the virtual racetrack.
— The Oculus teamDAMASCUS, Syria — After a year and a half of preparation, Jaish al-Islam finally started a new battle Sept. 9 to take back Tel Kurdi and rid it of the regime's artillery battalion responsible for attacks on rebel-held eastern Ghouta. The operation, named Allah Ghaleb (God Prevails), took the fight through two military fronts separated by the Damascus-Homs International Highway.
The first front is from Douma, Jaish al-Islam’s main stronghold, toward the Tel Kurdi area in the northeast, overlooking the central prison of Adra and the city of Douma. The second is to the west, toward Harasta, all the way to the Dahyet al-Assad (al-Assad suburb) at Damascus' northern entrance. This is seen as a critical area, given the number of security branches surrounding it, not to mention that it is where many Syrian army officers and members of the security forces live.
A day after the start of the battle, Jaish al-Islam managed to fully control the Tel Kurdi area, surrounding hills and some buildings around the central prison of Adra. This Sept. 10 achievement was announced on the group’s official Facebook page and Twitter account. Later on, the group posted photos and video footage explaining the battle operations in the region.
For its part, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) made no reference to the fall of Tel Kurdi, saying only in a brief statement Sept. 12, “Army units and armed forces have deterred infiltration attempts on the part of some terrorists into the military points in Adra and the Tel Kurdi area in eastern Ghouta, killing a number of them and confiscating their weapons and ammunition.”
The Tel Kurdi area is a significant location for the regime as it directly overlooks the city of Douma, Jaish al-Islam’s stronghold. From this hill, the Syrian regime would fire its artillery toward eastern Ghouta. The opposition forces lost this strategic location in October 2014.
In light of these developments in the countryside of the capital, Damascus, Al-Monitor met with Col. Islam Alloush, the official spokesman for Jaish al-Islam. “The main goal of the battle is to eliminate the artillery brigade that destroyed eastern Ghouta and was responsible for the killing of many innocent civilians inside areas that are not under the regime’s control. The consequent goals lie in taking control of the Damascus-Homs highway and in approaching the central prison in Adra as well as other regime-controlled areas,” Alloush said. “We have managed to control the areas adjacent to the central prison to the southern side in the Tel Kurdi area. We are now stationed in the Casino area, where the fighting is ongoing.”
Alloush stressed that the military operation has achieved its goals, as Jaish al-Islam has succeeded in controlling the entire area of Tel Kurdi, adding that the group’s fighters took advantage of the sandstorm that hit Damascus from Sept. 7 to Sept. 11 in their battle. Alloush also said that Jaish al-Islam remained alone in the battle until Sept. 13, when the Rahman Brigade joined the fray.
The Casino area is close to the central prison in Adra, located about 500 meters (a third of a mile) away. Should Jaish al-Islam gain control of this area, it will have reached the walls of the prison.
Some media outlets have been circulating reports about Jaish al-Islam controlling the women’s prison building in the central prison, but Alloush denied these reports to Al-Monitor.
At the other battlefront, toward Harasta on the Damascus-Homs highway, the group took control of many auto showrooms, which the regime forces had turned into military and security centers, all the way to Dahiyat al-Assad (al-Assad suburb), which was the target of more than 30 shells, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Jaish al-Islam has also seized control of the Damascus-Homs highway, among other areas, according to an official statement by the group Sept. 13.
Following the attack on Dahiyat al-Assad, tension and mobilization among the ranks of the regime mounted. Al-Monitor witnessed military mobilization on the Berzeh road, and people were not allowed into the suburb, except for its residents, as well as regime-affiliated journalists, amid intense security checks.
In an interview with Al-Monitor, a SANA-affiliated journalist who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “Jaish al-Islam took control of the areas mentioned in its statements, including the military and security points near the al-Assad suburb, such as Tel al-Haras, and the military security hill on the mountain chain to the northeast overlooking Douma the suburb. It also took control of the reserve Joint Chiefs of Staff [building].”
“The regime only managed to restore the Abu Zeid Tel in this front, as it is of great significance as it overlooks the entire suburb and it was a matter of life or death to regain it,” he added.
The journalist also said on Sept. 15 that Jaish al-Islam reached Zone B-4 in the suburb from the northeast and could have entered the suburb if it had wished because the regime forces were preoccupied with the battles in Tel Kurdi and the central prison of Adra and did not anticipate these infiltrations. The fighting is currently ongoing at only 500 meters from the suburb and is “very fierce,” according to the journalist. The regime-controlled media refused to report on these developments for fear of causing panic to spread among the people.
Given the group’s heavy shelling of al-Assad suburb, many civilians living in Zone B-4 were forced to abandon their homes, according to Bilal Ali, one of the residents of the area.
“People started leaving their homes in the B-4 area, while many were wounded and a young man was killed by shrapnel,” he said. “Some homes were looted by the pro-regime Civil Defense forces, which arrived from the Ush al-Warur area in support of the regime, taking advantage of the area being evacuated of its people,” he added.
Ali also said that the school closed its doors during this week in the al-Assad suburb for fear of shells that were incessant for four days starting Sept. 11.
The pro-regime Dahyet al-Assad News Network Facebook Page (D.A.N.N) shared a post Sept. 16 confirming that houses were looted at the hands of the militia of the pro-regime People’s Committees. Moreover, the anti-regime Orient Television broadcast video footage, showing the committees storming into empty houses, taking their contents and putting them into trucks to be sold.In the latest salvo from the Trump administration to crack down on “sanctuary cities,” the country’s top cop on Monday said he will withhold billions of dollars in law enforcement grants as leaders across the state and nation remained steadfast in their refusal to turn over illegal immigrants to federal agents.
“This is the same old extortion attempt that they’ve been pushing, and it’s the worst kind of pressure,” said Santa Clara County Board President Dave Cortese, who is in New York City discussing defense strategies against the immigration crackdown with other top officials. “Everyone here is in complete solidarity — Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, everyone is on board — and the Trump administration’s got a real fight on their hands.”
Santa Clara County was a leader in that fight when it filed a lawsuit last month challenging the constitutionality of withholding federal funds in response to an earlier threat from the Trump administration, which Attorney General Jeff Sessions ratcheted up on Monday. The lawsuit has since been joined by dozens of cities and counties.
At the state level, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Trump’s administration should “rethink its plan to force state and local governments to do the federal government’s bidding on immigration.”
“It’s a low blow to our brave men and women in uniform,” Becerra said, “to threaten to withhold public safety funding that they have earned unless Donald Trump gets his way on immigration.”
But Sessions said in a press conference that “this disregard for the law must end,” referring to the failure of previous demands for compliance. “I am urging states and and local jurisdictions to comply with the federal laws” to be eligible for grants from the Justice Department.
He warned the nation’s states and cities “to carefully consider the harm they are doing to their citizens by refusing to enforce our immigration laws.” He offered no specifics on what such compliance would entail, but said they would take “all lawful steps to claw-back” money already awarded to non-compliant cities.
Sessions’ threat seems to have more teeth than earlier administration threats to withhold federal funds from sanctuary providers but it involves less money — Justice Department grants make up a small part of the total federal funds doled out. Still, it could hurt various programs, especially in Bay Area counties such as Alameda that rely on federal grants to fund programs for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. At the state level, however, out of $105 billion coming from the feds, about 80 percent is related to health care, mostly in Medi-Cal payments.
In Santa Clara County, where federal funds add up to about $1.7 billion annually, Cortese said there’s “not a lot of exposure” from this particular threat.
“These are things that we can self-fill if we need to,” said Cortese, who added that it was boggling that the first target would be Justice Department grants. “Taking away money for public safety, of all things. That’s what the administration is supposed to be all about.”
Alameda County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly said that such cuts — which he estimated would total about $15 million in his jurisdiction — would hurt some of the department’s most productive, well-intended programs.
“We’re talking prevention programs for youth — boxing, soccer, fitness, after-school tutoring,” he said. “All that stuff makes a huge difference in the lives of kids — they’ll be less likely to go out and do drugs or join a gang. It’s very frustrating.”
The Bay Area has a number of sanctuary counties including San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Alameda, as well as cities such as Oakland and San Jose. While Santa Clara County has never officially designated itself as a sanctuary, supervisors have said since 2011 they would not cooperate with so-called ICE holds, which stipulate that a county that has an illegal immigrant in custody must turn that person over to federal authorities.
The Trump administration isn’t the first to threaten local agencies over sanctuary rules — the Obama administration told cities they risked losing grant money in 2017 if they didn’t comply with federal law. But now it comes from an administration that has been much more aggressive in moving forward with a crackdown.
Sessions said that grants totaling about $4.1 billion are at stake. The message came a week after the Department of Homeland Security released the first in a weekly “Declined Detainer Outcome Report,” a list of jurisdictions that have not complied with ICE requests. Santa Clara and Alameda counties both made the list with a single case each.
State Sen. Joel Anderson, a Republican from San Diego County, said Sessions’ announcement shows the real repercussions of noncompliance with immigration authorities, and highlights his concerns about a statewide “sanctuary state” bill that’s in the works in Sacramento, which would forbid local police from certain communication with immigration agents.
“This is very serious,” he said. “We’ve been talking in the abstract. This removes doubt. This is real pain. This is fewer officers on the street, no doubt about it.”
But State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, blasted Sessions’ Monday announcement, saying it was “nothing short of blackmail.”
“Instead of making us safer, the Trump administration is spreading fear and promoting race-based scapegoating,” the Senate leader said in a statement Monday. ”Their gun-to-the-head method to force resistant cities and counties to participate in Trump’s inhumane and counterproductive mass-deportation is unconstitutional and will fail.”Here are my Fedora 18 Tips and Tricks.
I have installed the new version of Fedora, Fedora 18. Here is how I installed everything to make it usable.
I was having problems finding our old friends at dnmouse who made Autoten/Autoplus. So one of my friends told me about Fedorautils.
To install Fedorautils:
su -c "curl http://master.dl.sourceforge.net/project/fedorautils/fedorautils.repo -o /etc/yum.repos.d/fedorautils.repo"
Then,
su -c "yum install fedorautils"
After installation, launch Fedora Utils from Applications > System Tools or type fedorautils in the terminal and start installing.
Everything worked great for me. I did need to restart to have the Nvidia drivers work properly, but that is normal.
Now to install the codecs for Fedora 18.
Download http://rpmfusion.org/keys?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-free-fedora-18
and http://rpmfusion.org/keys?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-nonfree-fedora-18
Then you must copy them to your keys directory. Make sure you change the name on the copied file.
su -c 'cp RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-free-fedora-18 /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-free-fedora-18-x86_64'
su -c 'cp RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-nonfree-fedora-18 /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-nonfree-fedora-18-x86_64'
Now you can install your players and codecs.
su -c 'yum install gstreamer1 gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld gstreamer1-plugins-ugly gstreamer1-libav vlc smplayer'
Another thing you will need is Gnome Teak Tool.
yum install gnome-tweak-tool
Gimp (I use it all the time).
yum install gimp
Libre Office
yum install libreoffice
Here is how to install dropbox on Fedora 18.
Found this how to over on TechnoZeal
http://www.zealfortechnology.com/2013/01/install-dropbox-on-fedora-18.html#comment-form
More to come.
Sorry it took me so long to get around to this.BAGHDAD — After months of losing ground in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State group is showing signs of wear and tear, and its opponents say they have seen an increase in desertions among the extremists. But the jihadis appear to be lashing back with more terrorist and chemical attacks.
Under a stepped-up campaign of U.S.-led and Russian airstrikes, as well as ground assaults by multiple forces in each country, the jihadis are estimated to have lost about 40 percent of their territory in Iraq and more than 20 percent in Syria. At their highest point in the summer of 2014, the group had overrun nearly a third of each country, declaring a "caliphate" spanning from northwestern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad.
At that time, the extremists were riding high, known for their courage, experience, readiness to die and brutality. Now, those battling them on the ground say they appear to be flagging.
"What we are witnessing is that Daesh are not as determined as they used to be," Lt. Col. Fares al-Bayoush, commander of a Syrian rebel faction, said, using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS. His 1,300-strong Fursan al-Haq Brigade has been fighting against IS and Syrian government forces for more than a year.
"Now there are members who surrender, there are some who defect. In the past they used to come blow themselves up," he said.
A Palestinian-American member of ISIS recently gave himself up to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, but so far, the reports of desertions are mostly anecdotal. Brett McGurk, President Obama's envoy to the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS, said this week at a conference in northern Iraq that IS desertions have increased recently and more are expected, but he did not provide figures.
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Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said ISIS is experiencing a phenomenon he's witnessed in other extremist groups that begin to lose territory.
"You've seen more and more reports of defectors just broadly, and you've also seen more reports of internal killings of so-called spies," Watts said. "As they lose ground and retract you start to see these fractures emerge in the organization."
The IS setbacks began over a year ago, when the fighters were forced out of the northern Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani by local Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes.
In December, the predominantly Kurdish U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, under cover of intense coalition airstrikes seized the Tishrin Dam, which supplies much of northern Syria with electricity. In the weeks that followed the forces gained control of more areas.
In all of 2015, the jihadis lost 14 percent of their territory in Syria, according to IHS, an analysis group that monitors the conflict. In the past three months, they lost another eight percent, a sign that the erosion is accelerating. The IHS figure roughly matches an estimate of a 20 percent loss given this week by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
In February alone, the SDF said it captured 2,400 square kilometers (927 square miles) consisting of 315 villages including the ISIS stronghold of Shaddadeh, on the main road linking the Iraqi city of Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the "caliphate." SDF spokesman Col. Talal Sillo said the command will meet soon to plan for another offensive in northern Syria.
In Iraq, ISIS territorial losses have been more gradual. Coalition airstrikes have cleared the way for ground forces to reclaim towns and cities from Sinjar in the country's north to Ramadi in the west. The coalition estimates that between the launch of the air campaign in August 2014 and January 2016, IS has lost between 21,000-24,000 square kilometers (8,100-9,200 square miles), about 40 percent of the Iraqi territory it once held.
Calls for a stepped-up campaign intensified after IS claimed responsibility for the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that left 130 dead and the Oct. 31 downing of a Russian jetliner from the Egyptian beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, which killed all 224 on board.
Deadly attacks in Turkey by ISIS that killed scores of people also spurred Ankara to tighten its closure of the border, making it difficult for the extremists to cross into Syria.
In an effort to squeeze the group's finances, coalition and Russian warplanes in Syria began increasingly targeting ISIS oil assets in November. ISIS has since had to cut salaries and benefits for fighters.
Last week, Iraqi, Syrian and U.S. officials confirmed that prominent ISIS military leader Omar al-Shishani died of his wounds from a U.S. airstrike in northeastern Syria earlier this month. U.S. special operations forces also recently captured the head of the ISIS unit researching chemical weapons in Iraq, and airstrikes have targeted the group's chemical weapons infrastructure.
"As bad things start to happen, the less motivated, less disciplined, less radical elements of the force break and run," U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren said. "We're going to keep seeing this."
The United States estimates that as of last month, ISIS fields 19,000 to 25,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria — down from an estimated 20,000 to 31,500 — a number that was based on intelligence reports from May to August 2014. A U.S. official said the decrease reflects the combined effects of battlefield deaths, desertions, internal disciplinary actions, recruiting shortfalls and difficulties that foreign fighters face traveling to Syria.
Still, these developments do not necessarily make IS less of a threat.
In both Syria and Iraq, ISIS has launched some of its deadliest suicide attacks in recent weeks as well as a number of chemical weapons attacks. On Feb. 22, a triple suicide bombing in a Shiite suburb of the Syrian capital killed at least 83 people and wounded more than a hundred. In neighboring Iraq, a suicide truck bombing south of Baghdad killed 61 and wounded 95. In the northern Iraqi town of Taza, an IS chemical weapons attack last week killed one person and wounded more than 600.
ISIS also launched a coordinated assault on the northern Syrian border town of Tal Abyad and nearby villages. In days of fighting, 47 SDF fighters and 140 militants were killed, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition activist group that tracks all sides of the conflict.
Watts said that if ISIS can't use battlefield victories to rally its supporters |
jumps from it, I think. It’s a bit like what Felix Baumgartner used when he did his record setting jump recently – he used a balloon, but it’s the same principle. Jumping from an airship is certainly far more comfortable than jumping from a plane that’s travelling at 200 kilometers an hour.” For personal transportation it’s less suited, he says. “It’s too big and too slow for that.”
And it’s also not a good alternative for ground level cell phone towers, he says. “Hypersphere would be perfect to add some mobile capacity over very crowded tourist regions in the high season. But to completely replace the ground installations, you should be able to guarantee 99,99% uptime, and we can’t do that. Once in a while, some very strong winds blog at high altitude, at hurricane speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour, and we can’t fight those with the airship.”
“So for the time being we market it to governments for border patrol. And we hope we’ll generate enough profits to eventually roll out the larger vision.” Bojan is currently looking for a strategic partner who has the means to distribute the Hypersphere regionally or globally. “Remote sensing is already a 7 billion dollar industry. By 2020, we expect the market to double.”
Convincing people of his vision is not easy, Bojan says, because it is rather sweeping. “It’s a disruptive innovation, that requires you to embrace a different world. If it’s implemented, it will actually change the world, and that’s never easy to sell. To be honest, I was surprised that we found seed stage funding for this in 2008 – based on a Powerpoint presentation. But since then it’s been incredibly tough, even though we made so much progress.
Today we have a flying prototype, a patent, 120 000 hours of engineering work, a lot of tech developed. But we’re talking to an investor now, and I’m quite confident that the product will be brought to an operational level relatively soon. Once an investment is made, I think we can be operational in about 18 to 24 months.” Bojan thinks he’ll need about 5 million € to finish his project.
See the Hypersphere prototype fly indoors and outdoors:
Here’s to the crazy ones
What is it with Croatian engineers and their crazy projects, I ask. We recently interviewed Mate Rimac, who is building an EV supercar. And Marin Bek, another engineer is trying to sell the world on autonomous underwater vehicles (‘submarines’). He laughs. “No idea. Mate is doing great things with very little money. I mean, obviously you can buy a lot of potatoes with that money, but compared to other companies, he’s working with percenteges or even promille of their budgets.”
“I think it might have to do with the fact that we have top engineers available – as good as in the US and Europe, but at much cheaper salaries. With very little money, you can go above and beyond what is possible in most industries. Also, I noticed that people were very motivated to work with me on the Hypersphere. Because they can see their innovations making it into the system. That’s a great thing to see, as an engineer.”
Hypersphere 5k Overview from Bojan Pecnik on Vimeo.
Update: earth observation satellites do not operate at 36 000 km like geostationary satellites but much lower, at 800 km.
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Powered by Facebook CommentsBorussia Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel has said he can find Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's statements to the media "a bit annoying."
Aubameyang, who has been linked with Real Madrid, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, said on RMC this week that he is considering leaving Dortmund in the summer.
The 27-year-old has been a key player for Dortmund this season, scoring 16 goals in as many Bundesliga games, but has made several comments about a potential departure in recent months.
"Such statements don't really help, but it's also not something we attach too much importance to," Tuchel told reporters at a news conference in Dortmund. "But if you look at the interview [with RMC] in detail, you can see that he's asking himself a fundamental question: To end his career here, or dare to make another step."
Dortmund have entered a crucial phase in their current season as they seek to finish third in the Bundesliga and make a deep run in both the DFB Pokal and Champions League.
Aubameyang's statements and the subsequent debate over the attacker's future have only added to a constant stream of media noise overshadowing BVB's campaign so far.
"Whether you have to do it in public during a phase like the one we're currently in is open to debate," he said. "There are moments when it's a bit annoying."
Earlier this week, BVB sporting director Michael Zorc told Reviersport he had advised Aubemyang "to give less interviews about the summer and rather focus on our chase of a Champions League spot on the pitch."
Stephan Uersfeld is the Germany correspondent for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @uersfeld.No show has utilized Let's as much as Community, which has used it again and again as part of its barrage of inside jokes about television and pop culture. For Community, Let's isn't a trademark-safe replacement; it actually plays into story lines and extra tidbits, like the one below:
There are a lot of things you can't get into prison, but no one will stop a delicious bag of Let's... which means that prison toilet booze can get through, too. Sweet.
GOB hit some new lows in this fourth season, but Let's provided a delightful respite.
Awkward bonding times with Jess's one-time boyfriend were made bearable for Nick and Winston thanks to the greasy classic.
What the Heck, let's have some BBQ chips (see what we did there?)
The chips look cheap and generic, but Kat Dennings should know that costs $40 right there.
Being in fashion means not letting anyone see when you stuff your face with chips, right Becki Newton?
"Why didn't my mother come clean about the switch sooner? I'm not entirely sure. I just know that I really want that bag of Let's potato chips over there." - Daphne
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has had a lot of great co-stars over the years. This bag may be her greatest.
The New Adventures of Old Christine
In between riding motorcycles and killing people, the SAMCRO gets its snack on.
Here Are Other Shows to Which ISS Has Sold Let's Potato Chips
10 Things I Hate About You
The Ringer
Parenthood
Let's Stay Together
CSI: NY
The Mentalist
Melissa and Joey
Dads
The Bill Engvall Show
Brothers and Sisters
Inside the Box
Better Off Ted
Make or Break It
There are others out there, too; props tend to get passed around from set to set. If you know any, or have any photos/screen grabs, mention them in the comments!
Oh, and buy your own right here.An Etowah County jury tonight found Joyce Hardin Garrard guilty of capital murder in the 2012 death of her 9-year-old granddaughter Savannah Hardin.
Penalty phase will begin at 9 a.m. Monday.
Garrard, 49, held her head down and cried after the verdict was read, with attorneys comforting her on both sides as deputies stood behind. Sobs rang out in the courtroom from her family, who have filled three pews in the courtroom nearly every day of the trial.
Garrard faces life in prison or the death penalty for the crime. Prosecutors said Garrard forced Savannah to run for more than three hours in the yard of her Etowah County home on the afternoon of Feb. 17, 2012 as a punishment for lying about eating candy bars on a school bus.
Savannah collapsed that evening and died days later in a Birmingham hospital.
The verdict comes three years and a month, less a day, after Savannah's death.
The jury deliberated for three-and-a-half hours, and spent about 12 hours at the courthouse today, first listening to closing arguments. Earlier in the afternoon, District Attorney Jimmie Harp told jurors, "Discipline that ends in death is never right."DALLAS (KRLD) – The decision by Dallas Police Chief David Brown to fire an officer involved in a shooting last month is dividing factions in the department. Brown fired Senior Corporal Amy Wilburn after a disciplinary hearing Dec. 30. Wilburn shot Kelvion Walker, 19, after a car was pulled over in a carjacking investigation. Walker was not armed at the time.
The shooting has led more than 150 members of the Dallas Police Association to write letters complaining of confusion.
“We have been receiving letters from officers questioning when they can use force or questioning the many different policies the chief has enacted that make us less effective and less efficient.” said Ron Pinkston, president Dallas Police Association.
But while the DPA has questioned Brown’s actions, the president of the Black Police Association of Greater Dallas has come out in support of the chief’s decision. Sgt. Cletus Judge viewed the dashboard camera video that captured the shooting and does not believe Wilburn followed procedure.
“My letter was not necessarily a backing of the chief,” said Judge. “It was a backing of the techniques and the tactics that the Dallas Police utilize.”
Judge, a former police academy training officer, says he only wrote the letter after reviewing the video.
“We make mistakes but once we do we need to own up to our mistakes and say, ‘Hey I did it wrong,'” said Judge.
But his ability to review the video brought another criticism from Pinkston.
“It’s very unprofessional of the Chief to allow someone outside of the investigation to review the dashcam video. It’s still an ongoing investigation of a police shooting.” Pinkston said.
Pinkston had viewed the dashboard camera video at Wilburn’s disciplinary hearing.
Brown declined to be interviewed, but in an e-mail the chief wrote, “Sgt. Judge is assigned to the Crimes Against Persons division as an investigative supervisor. I allowed detective Pinkston to view the video as well, so I’m not sure I understand the criticism.”
Pinkston plans to take his concerns to Dallas City Hall.
“They hear from us, but they need to hear from the officers.” Pinkston said. “The officers will let them know exactly how they feel.”
Brown has no second thoughts about his decision to fire Wilburn, explaining in an e-mail, “We can’t shoot people who have surrendered to us with their hands up.”
(©2014 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Top Trending:Bleached corals Healthy corals
Coral bleaching occurs when coral polyps expel algae that live inside their tissues. Normally, coral polyps live in an endosymbiotic relationship with this algae crucial for the health of the coral and the reef.[1] The algae provides up to 90% of the coral's energy. Bleached corals continue to live but begin to starve after bleaching.[2] Some corals recover.
Above-average sea water temperatures caused by global warming is the leading cause of coral bleaching.[2] According to the United Nations Environment Programme, between 2014 and 2016 the longest recorded global bleaching events killed coral on an unprecedented scale. In 2016, bleaching of coral on the Great Barrier Reef killed between 29 and 50 percent of the reef's coral.[3][4][5] In 2017, the bleaching extended into the central region of the reef.[6][7] The average interval between bleaching events has halved between 1980 and 2016.[8]
Causes [ edit ]
Coral and microscopic algae have a symbiotic relationship. When water temperatures get too high, the algae leave the coral tissue and the coral begins to starve.
The corals that form the great reef ecosystems of tropical seas depend upon a symbiotic relationship with algae-like single-celled flagellate protozoa called zooxanthellae that live within their tissues and give the coral its coloration. The zooxanthellae provide the coral with nutrients through photosynthesis, a crucial factor in the clear and nutrient-poor tropical waters. In exchange, the coral provide the zooxanthellae with the carbon dioxide and ammonium needed for photosynthesis. Negative environmental conditions thwart the coral's ability to provide for the zooxanthellae's needs. To ensure short-term survival, the coral-polyp then expels the zooxanthellae. This leads to a lighter or completely white appearance, hence the term "bleached".[9] As the zooxanthellae provide up to 90% of the coral's energy needs through products of photosynthesis, after expelling, the coral may begin to starve.
Healthy coral at left and bleached, but still living, coral to right
Coral can survive short-term disturbances, but if the conditions that lead to the expulsion of the zooxanthellae persist, the coral's chances of survival diminish. In order to recover from bleaching, the zooxanthellae have to re-enter the tissues of the coral polyps and restart photosynthesis to sustain the coral as a whole and the ecosystem that depends on it.[10] If the coral polyps die of starvation after bleaching, they will decay. The hard coral species will then leave behind their calcium carbonate skeletons, which will be taken over by algae, effectively blocking coral re-growth. Eventually, the coral skeletons will erode, causing the reef structure to collapse.
Triggers [ edit ]
Coral bleaching may be caused by a number of factors. While localized triggers lead to localized bleaching, the large scale coral bleaching events of the recent years have been triggered by global warming. Under increased carbon dioxide concentration expected in the 21st century, corals are expected to becoming increasingly rare on reef systems.[11] Coral reefs located in warm, shallow water with low water flow have been more affected than reefs located in areas with higher water flow.[12]
List of triggers [ edit ]
Bleached coral - partially overgrown with algae
Mass bleaching events [ edit ]
Acropora coral (foreground) and normal colony (background), Keppel Islands, Great Barrier Reef Bleachedcoral (foreground) and normal colony (background), Keppel Islands, Great Barrier Reef
Elevated sea water temperatures are the main cause of mass bleaching events.[32] Sixty major episodes of coral bleaching have occurred between 1979 and 1990,[33][34] with the associated coral mortality affecting reefs in every part of the world. In 2016, the longest coral bleaching event was recorded.[35] The longest and most destructive coral bleaching event was because of the El Niño that occurred from 2014–2017.[36] During this time, over 70% of the coral reefs around the world have become damaged.[36]
Factors that influence the outcome of a bleaching event include stress-resistance which reduces bleaching, tolerance to the absence of zooxanthellae, and how quickly new coral grows to replace the dead. Due to the patchy nature of bleaching, local climatic conditions such as shade or a stream of cooler water can reduce bleaching incidence.[37] Coral and zooxanthellae health and genetics also influence bleaching.[37]
Large coral colonies such as Porites are able to withstand extreme temperature shocks, while fragile branching corals such Acropora are far more susceptible to stress following a temperature change.[38] Corals consistently exposed to low stress levels may be more resistant to bleaching.[39][40]
Scientists believe that the oldest known bleaching was that of the Late Devonian (Frasnian/Famennian), also triggered by the rise of sea surface temperatures. It resulted in the demise of the largest coral reefs in the Earth's history.[41]
According to Clive Wilkinson of Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network of Townsville Australia,in 1998 the mass bleaching event occurred the indian ocean region worst affected by it due to rising of temperature of sea by 2℃ to normal temperature level coupled by strong El nino event in 1997-1998.
Impact [ edit ]
Two images of the Great Barrier Reef showing that the warmest water (top picture) coincides with the coral reefs (lower picture), setting up conditions that can cause coral bleaching
In the 2012–2040 period, coral reefs are expected to experience more frequent bleaching events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sees this as the greatest threat to the world's reef systems.[42][43][44][45] Coral reefs worldwide were lost by 19%, and 60% of the remaining reefs are at immediate risk of being lost. There are a few ways to tell the impacts of coral bleaching on reefs. First by the coral cover, the more coral that is covering the ground the less of an impact bleaching had. Second, coral abundance, which is the number of different living species on the coral reef.
Pacific Ocean [ edit ]
Great Barrier Reef [ edit ]
The Great Barrier Reef along the coast of Australia experienced bleaching events in 1980, 1982, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2016 and 2017.[45][46] Some locations suffered severe damage, with up to 90% mortality.[47] The most widespread and intense events occurred in the summers of 1998 and 2002, with 42% and 54% respectively of reefs bleached to some extent, and 18% strongly bleached.[48][49] However coral losses on the reef between 1995 and 2009 were largely offset by growth of new corals.[50] An overall analysis of coral loss found that coral populations on the Great Barrier Reef had declined by 50.7% from 1985 to 2012, but with only about 10% of that decline attributable to bleaching, and the remaining 90% caused about equally by tropical cyclones and by predation by crown-of-thorns starfishes.[51] A global mass coral bleaching has been occurring since 2014 because of the highest recorded temperatures plaguing oceans. These temperatures have caused the most severe and widespread coral bleaching ever recorded in the Great Barrier reef. The most severe bleaching in 2016 occurred near Port Douglas. In late November 2016 surveys of 62 reefs showed that long term heat stress from climate change caused a 29% loss of shallow water coral. The highest coral death and reef habitat loss was inshore and mid-shelf reefs around Cape Grenville and Princess Charlotte Bay.[52] The IPCC's moderate warming scenarios (B1 to A1T, 2 °C by 2100, IPCC, 2007, Table SPM.3, p. 13[53]) forecast that corals on the Great Barrier Reef are very likely to regularly experience summer temperatures high enough to induce bleaching.[48]
Hawaii [ edit ]
Major bleaching occurred in Hawaiian coral reefs in 1996 and in 2002.[54] In 2014, biologists from the University of Queensland observed the first mass bleaching event, and attributed it to The Blob.[55] In 2014 and 2015, a survey in Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve on Oahu found 47% of the corals suffering from coral bleaching and close to 10% of the corals dying.[56] In 2014 and 2015, 56% of the coral reefs of the big island were affected by coral bleaching events. During the same period, 44% of the corals on west Maui were effected. [57] On January 24, 2019, scientists with The Nature Conservancy found that the reefs had begun to stabilize nearly 4 years after the last bleaching event.[58]
Jarvis Island [ edit ]
Eight severe and two moderate bleaching events occurred between 1960 and 2016 in the coral community in Jarvis Island, with the 2015-16 bleaching displaying the unprecedented severity in the record.[59]
Japan [ edit ]
According to a 2017 Japanese government report, almost 75% of Japan's largest coral reef in Okinawa has died from bleaching.[60]
Indian Ocean [ edit ]
Coral reef provinces have been permanently damaged by warm sea temperatures, most severely in the Indian Ocean. Up to 90% of coral cover has been lost in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Tanzania and in the Seychelles during the massive 1997–98 bleaching event.
Maldives [ edit ]
More than 60% of the coral in the Maldives has suffered from bleaching in 2016.[61]
Thailand [ edit ]
Thailand experienced a severe mass bleaching in 2010 which affected 70% of the coral in the Andaman Sea. Between 30% and 95% of the bleached coral died.[62]
Indonesia [ edit ]
In 2017 there was a study done on two islands in Indonesia to see how their coral cover was. One of the places was Melinjo Islands and the other was Saktu Islands. In Saktu Island the lifeform conditions were categorized as bad, with an average coral cover of 22.3%. In Melinjo Islands the lifeform conditions were categorized as bad, with an average coral cover of 22.2%.
Atlantic Ocean [ edit ]
United States [ edit ]
In South Florida, a 2016 survey of large corals from Key Biscayne to Fort Lauderdale found that about 66% of the corals were dead or reduced to less than half of their live tissue.[63]
Belize [ edit ]
The first recorded mass bleaching event that took place in the Belize Barrier Reef was in 1998, where sea level temperatures reached up to 31.5 °C (88.7 °F) from 10 August to 14 October. For a few days, Hurricane Mitch brought in stormy weather on 27 October but only reduced temperatures by 1 degree or less. During this time period, mass bleaching in the fore-reef and lagoon occurred. While some fore reef colonies suffered some damage, coral mortality in the lagoon was catastrophic.
The most prevalent coral in the reefs of Belize in 1998 was the lettuce coral, Agaricia tenuifolia. On 22 and 23 October, surveys were conducted at two sites and the findings were devastating. Virtually all the living coral was bleached white and their skeletons indicated that they had died recently. At the lagoon floor, complete bleaching was evident among A. tenuifolia. Furthermore, surveys done in 1999 and 2000 showed a near total mortality of A. tenuifolia at all depths. Similar patterns occurred in other coral species as well. Measurements on water turbidity suggest that these mortalities were attributed to rising water temperatures rather than solar radiation.
Caribbean [ edit ]
Hard coral cover on reefs in the Caribbean have declined by an estimated 80%, from an average of 50% cover in the 1970s to only about 10% cover in the early 2000s.[64] A 2013 study to follow up on a mass bleaching event in Tobago from 2010 showed that after only 1 year, the majority of the dominant species declined by about 62% while coral abundance declined by about 50%. However, between 2011 and 2013, coral cover increased for 10 of the 26 dominant species but declined for 5 other populations.[65]
Other areas [ edit ]
Coral in the south Red Sea does not bleach despite summer water temperatures up to 34 °C (93 °F).[39][66] Coral bleaching in the Red Sea is more common in the northern section of the reefs, the southern part of the reef has been plagued by coral eating starfish, dynamite fishing and human impacts on the environment. In 1988 there was a massive bleaching event that affected the reefs in Saudi Arabia and in Sudan, the southern reefs were more resilient and affected them very little. Previously it was thought that the North suffers more from coral bleaching but they show a fast turnover of coral and the southern reef was thought to not suffer from bleaching as harshly, they show more consistency. However, new research shows where the south reef should be bigger and healthier than the north it was not. This is believed to be because of major disturbances in recent history from bleaching events, and coral eating starfish.[67] In 2010, coral bleaching occurred in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, where the temperature rose 10 to 11 degrees. Certain taxa experienced 80% to 100% of their colonies bleaching, while some showed on average 20% of that taxa bleaching.[68]
Economic and political impact [ edit ]
According to Brian Skoloff of The Christian Science Monitor, "If the reefs vanished, experts say, hunger, poverty and political instability could ensue."[69] Since countless sea life depend on the reefs for shelter and protection from predators, the extinction of the reefs would ultimately create a domino effect that would trickle down to the many human societies that depend on those fish for food and livelihood. There has been a 44% decline over the last 20 years in the Florida Keys, and up to 80% in the Caribbean alone.[70]
Coral reefs provide various ecosystem services, one of which is being a natural fishery, as many frequently consumed commercial fish spawn or live out their juvenile lives in coral reefs around the tropics.[71][72][73] Thus, reefs are a popular fishing site and are an important source of income for fishers, especially small, local fisheries.[73] As coral reef habitat decreases due to bleaching, reef associated fish populations also decrease, which affects fishing opportunities.[71] A model from one study by Speers et al. calculated direct losses to fisheries from decreased coral cover to be around $49 – $69 billion, if human societies continue to emit high levels of greenhouse gases.[71] But, these losses could be reduced for a consumer surplus benefit of about $14 – $20 billion, if societies chose to emit a lower level of greenhouse gases instead.[71] These economic losses also have important political implications, as they fall disproportionately on developing countries where the reefs are located, namely in Southeast Asia and around the Indian Ocean.[71][73][74] It would cost more for countries in these areas to respond to coral reef loss as they would need to turn to different sources of income and food, in addition to losing other ecosystem services such as ecotourism.[72][74] A study completed by Chen et al. suggested that the commercial value of reefs decreases by almost 4% every time coral cover decreases by 1% because of losses in ecotourism and other potential outdoor recreational activities.[72]
Coral reefs also act as a protective barrier for coastlines by reducing wave impact, which lowers the damage from storms, erosions, and flooding. Countries that lose this natural protection will lose more money because of the increased susceptibility of storms. This indirect cost, combined with the lost revenue in tourism, will result in enormous economic effects.[9]
Monitoring reef sea surface temperature [ edit ]
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitors for bleaching "hot spots", areas where sea surface temperature rises 1 °C or more above the long-term monthly average. The "hot spots" are the location in which thermal stress is measured and with the development of Degree Heating Week (DHW), the coral reef's thermal stress is monitored.[75][76] Global coral bleaching is being detected earlier due to the satellite remote sensing the rise of sea temperatures.[75][77] It is necessary to monitor the high temperatures because coral bleaching events are affecting coral reef reproduction and normal growth capacity, as well as it weakening corals, eventually leading to their mortality.[77] This system detected the worldwide 1998 bleaching event,[78][79] that corresponded to the 1997–98 El Niño event.[80] Currently, 190 reef sites around the globe are monitored by the NOAA, and send alerts to research scientists and reef managers via NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) website.[81] By monitoring the warming of sea temperatures, the early warnings of coral bleaching, alerts reef managers to prepare and draw awareness to future bleaching events.[81] The first mass global bleaching events were recorded in 1998 and 2010, which was when the El Niño caused the oceans temperatures to rise and worsened the corals living conditions.[36] The 2014–2017 El Niño was recorded to be the longest and most damaging to the corals, which harmed over 70% of our coral reefs.[36] Over two thirds of the Great Barrier Reef have been reported to be bleached or dead.[36]
Changes in ocean chemistry [ edit ]
Increasing ocean acidification due to rises in carbon dioxide levels exacerbates the bleaching effects of thermal stress. Acidification affects the corals' ability to create calcareous skeletons, essential to their survival.[82] This is because ocean acidification decreases the amount of carbonate ion in the water, making it more difficult for corals to absorb the calcium carbonate they need for the skeleton. As a result, the resilience of reefs goes down, while it becomes easier for them to erode and dissolve.[83] In addition, the increase in CO 2 allows herbivore overfishing and nutrification to change coral-dominated ecosystems to algal-dominated ecosystems.[84] A recent study from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future found that with the combination of acidification and temperature rises, the levels of CO 2 could become too high for coral to survive in as little as 50 years.[82]
Infectious disease [ edit ]
Infectious bacteria of the species Vibrio shiloi are the bleaching agent of Oculina patagonica in the Mediterranean Sea, causing this effect by attacking the zooxanthellae.[85][86][87] V. shiloi is infectious only during warm periods. Elevated temperature increases the virulence of V. shiloi, which then become able to adhere to a beta-galactoside-containing receptor in the surface mucus of the host coral.[86][88] V. shiloi then penetrates the coral's epidermis, multiplies, and produces both heat-stable and heat-sensitive toxins, which affect zooxanthellae by inhibiting photosynthesis and causing lysis.
During the summer of 2003, coral reefs in the Mediterranean Sea appeared to gain resistance to the pathogen, and further infection was not observed.[89] The main hypothesis for the emerged resistance is the presence of symbiotic communities of protective bacteria living in the corals. The bacterial species capable of lysing V. shiloi had not been identified as of 2011.
Coral adaptation [ edit ]
In 2010, researchers at Penn State discovered corals that were thriving while using an unusual species of symbiotic algae in the warm waters of the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean. Normal zooxanthellae cannot withstand temperatures as high as was there, so this finding was unexpected. This gives researchers hope that with rising temperatures due to global warming, coral reefs will develop tolerance for different species of symbiotic algae that are resistant to high temperature, and can live within the reefs.[90][91] In 2010, researchers from Stanford University also found corals around the Samoan Islands that experience a drastic temperature increase for about four hours a day during low tide. The corals do not bleach or die regardless of the high heat increase. Studies showed that the corals off the coast of Ofu Island near America Samoa have become trained to withstand the high temperatures. Researchers are now asking a new question: can we condition corals, that are not from this area, in this manner and slowly introduce them to higher temperatures for short periods of time and make them more resilient against rising ocean temperatures.[92]
Recovery and macroalgal regime shifts [ edit ]
After corals experience a bleaching event to increased temperature stress some reefs are able to return to their original, pre-bleaching state.[93][94] Reefs either recover from bleaching, where they are recolonized by zooxanthellae, or they experience a regime shift, where previously flourishing coral reefs are taken over by thick layers of macroalgae.[95] This inhibits further coral growth because the algae produces antifouling compounds to deter settlement and competes with corals for space and light. As a result, macroalgae forms stable communities that make it difficult for corals to grow again. Reefs will then be more susceptible to other issues, such as declining water quality and removal of herbivore fish, because coral growth is weaker.[11] Discovering what causes reefs to be resilient or recover from bleaching events is of primary importance because it helps inform conservation efforts and protect coral more effectively.
Corals have shown to be resilient to short-term disturbances. Recovery has been shown in after storm disturbance and crown of thorns starfish invasions.[93] Fish species tend to fare better following reef disturbance than coral species as corals show limited recovery and reef fish assemblages have shown little change as a result of short-term disturbances.[93] In contrast, fish assemblages in reefs that experience bleaching exhibit potentially damaging changes. One study by Bellwood et al. notes that while species richness, diversity, and abundance did not change, fish assemblages contained more generalist species and less coral dependent species.[93] Responses to coral bleaching are diverse between reef fish species, based on what resources are affected.[96] Rising sea temperature and coral bleaching do not directly impact adult fish mortality, but there are many indirect consequences of both.[96] Coral-associated fish populations tend to be in decline due to habitat loss; however, some herbivorous fish populations have seen a drastic increase due to the increase of algae colonization on dead coral.[96] Studies note that better methods are needed to measure the effects of disturbance on the resilience of corals.[93][97]
Pomacentrus moluccensis) is a coral associated species that has been shown to decline dramatically following coral bleaching.[98] The lemon damselfish () is a coral associated species that has been shown to decline dramatically following coral bleaching.
Until recently, the factors mediating the recovery of coral reefs from bleaching were not well studied. Research by Graham et al. (2005) studied 21 reefs around Seychelles in the Indo-Pacific in order to document the long-term effects of coral bleaching.[94] After the loss of more than 90% of corals due to bleaching in 1998 around 50% of the reefs recovered and roughly 40% of the reefs experienced regime shifts to macroalgae dominated compositions.[94] After an assessment of factors influencing the probability of recovery, the study identified five major factors: density of juvenile corals, initial structural complexity, water depth, biomass of herbivorous fishes, and nutrient conditions on the reef.[94] Overall, resilience was seen most in coral reef systems that were structurally complex and in deeper water.[94]
The ecological roles and functional groups of species also play a role in the recovery of regime shifting potential in reef systems. Coral reefs are affected by bioeroding, scraping, and grazing fish species. Bioeroding species remove dead corals, scraping species remove algae and sediment to further future growth, grazing species remove algae.[99] The presence of each type of species can influence the ability for normal levels of coral recruitment which is an important part of coral recovery.[99] Lowered numbers of grazing species after coral bleaching in the Caribbean has been likened to sea-urchin-dominated systems which do not undergo regime shifts to fleshy macroalgae dominated conditions.[95]
There is always the possibility of unobservable changes, or cryptic losses or resilience, in a coral community's ability to perform ecological processes.[93][99] These cryptic losses can result in unforeseen regime changes or ecological flips.[93] More detailed methods for determining the health of coral reefs that take into account long-term changes to the coral ecosystems and better-informed conservation policies are necessary to protect coral reefs in the years to come.[93][94][97][99]
Rebuilding coral reefs [ edit ]
Research is being done to help slow down the mortality rate of corals. Worldwide Projects are being completed to help replenish and restore our coral reefs. The population of corals is rapidly declining, so scientists are doing experiments in coral growth and research tanks to help replenish the population of corals.[36] These research tanks mimic the coral reefs natural environment in the ocean.[36] They are growing corals in these tanks to use for their experiments, so no more corals are being harmed or taken from the ocean.[36] They are also transplanting the successfully grown corals from the research tanks and putting them into the areas of the ocean where the reefs are dying out.[36] An experiment is being done in some coral growth and research tanks by Ruth Gates and Madelaine Van Oppen.[36] They are trying to make "super corals" that can withstand some of the environmental factors that the corals are currently dying from.[36] Van Oppen is also working on developing a type of algae that will have a symbiotic relationship with corals and can withstand water temperature fluctuations for long periods of time.[36] This project may be helping to replenish our reefs, but the growing process of corals in research tanks is very time consuming.[36] It can take at least 10 years for the corals to fully grow and mature enough to where they will be able to breed.[36]
Economic value of coral reefs [ edit ]
Coral reefs provide shelter to an estimated quarter of all ocean species. [100] Experts estimate that coral reef services are worth up to $1.2 million per hectare which translates to an average of $172 billion per year.[101] The benefits of coral reefs include providing physical structures such as coastal shoreline protection, biotic services within and between ecosystems, biogeochemical services such as maintaining nitrogen levels in the ocean, climate records, and recreational and commercial (tourism) services.[102] Coral reefs are one of the best marine ecosystems to use to as a food source.[31] The coral reefs are also the perfect habitat for rare and economically important species of tropical fish, as they provide the perfect area for fish to breed and create nurseries in.[31] If the populations of the fish and corals in the reef are high, then we can use the area as a place to gather food and things with medicinal properties, which also helps create jobs for people who can collect these specimens.[31] The reefs also have some cultural importance in specific regions around the world.[31]
Cost benefit analysis of reducing loss of coral reefs [ edit ]
In |
) and Singaporean students (uniforms with cyan skirts and shorts) in front of the Grand Palace
As uniforms have become more normalised, there have also been an increasing number of lawsuits brought against school districts. According to David Brunsma, one in four public elementary schools and one in eight public middle and high schools in the USA have policies dictating what a student wears to school.[14] The school code within states’ constitutions typically asserts that it allows the board of school directors to make reasonable rules and regulations as they see fit in managing the school's affairs. As of 2008, there are currently 23 states that allow school districts to mandate school uniforms.[15] The constitutional objections usually brought upon school districts tend to fall into one of the following two categories: (1) a violation of the students’ First Amendment right to free expression (2) a violation of parents' right to raise their children without government interference. Although up until this point, The Supreme Court has not ruled on a case involving school uniforms directly, in the 1968 decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Court ruled that upon entering school, students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech.[16]
Internationally, there are differing views of school uniforms. In the Australian state of Queensland, Ombudsman Fred Albietz ruled in 1998 that state schools may not require uniforms.[17] In the Philippines, the Department of Education abolished the requirement of school uniforms in public schools[when defined as?].[18] In England and Wales, technically a state school may not permanently exclude students for "breaching school uniform policy", under a policy promulgated by the Department for Children, Schools and Families but students not wearing the correct uniform are asked to go home and change. In Scotland, some local councils (that have responsibility for delivering state education) do not insist on students wearing a uniform as a precondition to attending and taking part in curricular activities.[19] Turkey abolished mandatory uniforms in 2010.[20]
Examples of lawsuits in the United States [ edit ]
Canady v. Bossier Parish School Board [ edit ]
In the Canady v. Bossier Parish School Board lawsuit in 2000, a Louisiana district court ruled in favour of the school board because it did not see how the free speech rights of the students were being violated due to the school board's uniform policy. Even though the plaintiff appealed the decision, the Fifth Circuit Court also ruled in favour of the school board after implementing a four-step system that is still used today. Firstly, a school board has to have the right to set up a policy. Secondly, the policy must be determined to support a fundamental interest of the board as a whole. Thirdly, the guidelines cannot have been set for the purpose of censorship. Finally, the limits on student expression cannot be greater than the interest of the board. As long as these four policies are in place, then no constitutional violation can be claimed.[21]
Littlefield v. Forney Independent School District [ edit ]
In the Forney Independent School District of Forney, Texas in 2001, the school board decided to implement a school uniform policy allowing the students to wear a polo shirt, oxford shirt or blouse in four possible colours, and blue or khaki pants or shirts, a skirt or jumper. While there was some flexibility with shoes, certain types were prohibited along with any sort of baggy clothes. The parents of the Littlefield family requested that their son be exempt from the policy, but were denied. In response, the Littlefields filed a lawsuit against the school district, under the pretenses that this uniform mandate infringed on their rights as parents to control how they brought up their children and their education. They even went as far as to cite an infringement on religious freedom, claiming that opting out of the uniforms on the grounds of religion allowed the school to rank the validity of certain religions. Before trial, the District Court dismissed the case, so the family appealed. Ultimately, the Fifth Circuit Court ruled that the students' rights were not being violated even though the claims presented were valid. They ruled that school rules derived from the education would override the parents' right to control their children's upbringing in this specific situation. As far as the religious freedom violation accusations, the court ruled that the policy did not have a religious goal, and thus did not infringe on religious freedom rights.[22]
Jacobs v. Clark County School District [ edit ]
In 2003, Liberty High School, a school of the Clark County School District in Henderson, Nevada, implemented a uniform policy of khakis and red, white or blue polo shirts. A junior by the name of Kimberly Jacobs was suspended a total of five times because she wore a religious shirt to school and got cited for uniform violations. Her family sued the Clark County School District under the claims that her First Amendment rights were being infringed upon and that the uniform policy was causing students to be deprived of due process. The plaintiff's requests were for injunctive relief, the expunging of suspensions from Jacob's school record and awarding of damages. The injunction was granted to the family meaning that the school could no longer discipline her for breaking the uniform policy. At this ruling, the school district appealed. The next court ruled on the side of the school district as it determined that the uniform policy was in fact neutral and constitutional, and it dismissed the claims of the plaintiff.[23]
Frudden v. Washoe County School District [ edit ]
In 2011, a Nevada public elementary school of the Washoe County School District decided to add the school's motto, Tomorrow's Leaders embroidered in small letters on the shirt. In response, Mary and John Frudden, parents of a student sued the school district on the basis of it violating the 1st Amendment. The court ultimately dismissed the case filed by the Fruddens over the uniforms. However, the family appealed, and two years later, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case. The court ruled to reverse the previous decision of dismissing the case, and also questioned the apparent policy for students that were part of a nationally recognised group such as Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts who were able to wear the uniforms in place of the school ones on regular meeting days. The 9th circuit panel ruled that the school had not provided enough evidence for why it instituted this policy, and that the family was never given a chance to argue.[24]
Social implications of school uniforms on gender [ edit ]
shalwar kameez. Schoolgirls in Delhi, India. Indian schoolgirls can have uniform of both shirt and skirt, as well as
School girls in Nepal. Some school uniform policies include trousers for girls.
There are several positive and negative social implications of uniforms on both the students wearing them and society as a whole.
Perceptions of masculinity and femininity [ edit ]
One of the criticisms of uniforms is that it imposes standards of masculinity and femininity from a young age. Uniforms are considered a form of discipline that schools use to control student behavior and often promote conventional gendered dress.[25][26] Boys often are required to wear trousers, belts, and closed-toe shoes and have their shirts tucked in at all times. They are also often required to have their hair cut short. Some critics allege that this uniform is associated with the dress of a professional business man, which, they claim, gives boys at a young age the impression that masculinity is gained through business success.[27] For girls, some uniforms promote femininity by requiring girls to wear skirts. Skirts are seen by some critics as a symbol of femininity because they restrict movement and force certain ways of sitting and playing.[26] Uniforms that include an apron for girls may suggest that the appropriate feminine societal role is a primarily domestic one. Some girls' school uniforms have been criticized as having an uncomfortable design, which prevents girls from free movement and exposes girls to cold during winter.[28]
School uniforms are embedded with gender symbolism. Schools that require students to wear a formal uniform almost universally provide trousers for boys and skirts or dresses for girls. Skirts differentiate the male from the female therefore confirming traditional gender identities for students whom must wear the correct attire corresponding to their sex. Skirts and dresses demand a particular type of feminine gender performance, whereas, trouser demand a particular masculine gender performance. By enforcing that students to wear attire that corresponds with their sex inherently assigns the ways a student must perform their gender. This causes controversy when a student does not want to perform a gender that does not align with their sex. There are rarely guidelines that allow for students to dress according to their performed gender, but almost always according to their sex assigned at birth. [29]
Sexualization of girls [ edit ]
Uniforms often start to increase in popularity around middle school in the United States, when students begin going through puberty. Uniforms can be seen as a way to restrict the sexualization of girls (rules on hems of skirts, no shoulders). Uniforms take the focus away from sexuality and focus it on academics in a school setting for girls.[30]
Sometimes the desire to prevent overtly sexualized clothing through uniforms can fail, as uniforms, especially those that include skirts, can have the opposite effects, as in Japan or South Korea. Miniskirts have been very popular in Japan, where they became part of school uniforms, and they came to be worn within the Kogal culture.[31][32]
"The pleasure our culture derives from gazing at girls who look feminine conflicts with girls’ freedom to run around unselfconsciously and to develop their gross motor talents as boys are encouraged to do" (Collins et al. 1996, p.170). School girl uniforms are used in costumes in the context of "Sexy School Girl" and are sold on costume sites year round. The idea of the female school uniform has become sexual and in Britain a new survey from Plan International UK found that a third of girls have been sexually harassed while wearing their school uniform. School uniforms can encourage harassment as children, as our culture defines the "school girl look" to be sexual. Children as young as 8 years old report being being victims of, or witnesses to, harassment. Two-thirds of the children questioned in the survey said they have experienced “unwanted sexual attention” in public. And 35 percent said they have been touched, groped or grabbed without their consent. These experiences teach girls that being harassed by men is just a part of growing up. The perception of school girl uniforms allows for men to harass girls at a young age, causing girls to self-objectify their bodies from the beginning of their schooling experience. [29] [33] [34]
Controversies [ edit ]
General [ edit ]
Cuban high school girls, 2009
In some cultures, the topic of school uniforms has sparked a multitude of controversies and debates over the years.[35] Debates concerning the constitutionality and economic feasibility of uniforms also contribute to the controversy.
In the United States, the implementation of school uniforms began following ten years of research indicating the effectiveness of private schools. Some state-school reformers cited this research to support policies linked to private and Catholic school success. However, within the Catholic school literature, school uniforms have never been acknowledged as a primary factor in producing a Catholic school effect.[36][11] Some public-school administrators began implementing uniform policies to improve the overall school environment and academic achievement of the students. This is based on the assumption that uniforms are the direct cause of behavioral and academic outcome changes.[11]
Another area of controversy regarding school uniform and dress code policies revolve around the issue of gender. Nowadays, more teenagers are more frequently "dressing to articulate, or confound gender identity and sexual orientation", which brings about "responses from school officials that ranged from indifferences to applause to bans".[37] In 2009, there were multiple conflicts across the United States arising from disparities between the students' perception of their own gender, and the school administrators' perception of the students' gender identity. Instances include the following:[38]
Spring 2009: Marion County, FL – Students must dress "in keeping with their gender" Boy came to school wearing high-heeled boots, a stuffed bra, and a V-neck T-shirt, he was sent home to change because he was "cross-dressing"
Aug 2009: Mississippi senior female barred from yearbook because she had posed in a tuxedo
Oct 2009: Cobb County, GA sent home a boy who favored wigs, makeup, and skinny jeans
Nov 2009: Cross-dressing Houston senior was sent home because his wig violated the school's dress code rule that a boy's hair may not be "longer than the bottom of a regular shirt collar"
Although not all schools in the United States are required to wear school uniforms, the United States is slowly adapting the use of school uniforms. "Almost one in five US public schools required students to wear uniforms during the 2011-2012 school year, up from one in eight in 2003-2004."[39] The ideology of school uniform is that it will create a safer environment for students and help with equality. In some areas uniforms have become essential due to the poverty level that the schools reside in. "Mandatory uniform policies in public schools are found more commonly in high-poverty areas."[40]
Stephanie Northen of The Guardian wrote that school uniforms are less controversial in the United Kingdom compared to the United States and are usually not opposed on free speech grounds.[13]
Positives [ edit ]
English girls in school uniform.
Advocates of uniforms have proposed multiple reasons supporting their implementation and claiming their success in schools. A variety of these claims have no research supporting them. Some of these pros include the following: Advocates believe that uniforms affect student safety by:[12]
Lowering student victimization
Decrease gang activity and fights
Kathleen Wade conducted an experiment to see if bullying and gang presence was higher in uniform or non-uniform schools. The research was done with multiple schools where she gave a questionnaire to both students, and faculty to see if there was a significant difference. Her results showed that bullying and gang presence significantly decreases with students wearing school uniforms. [41]
Differentiating strangers from students in school buildings
For example, in the first year of the mandatory uniform policy in Long Beach, California, officials reported that fighting in schools decreased by more than 50%, assault and battery by 34%, sex offenses by 74%, and robbery by 66%.[41] Advocates also believe that uniforms increase student learning and positive attitudes toward school through:
Enhanced learning environments
Heightened school pride
Increased student achievement
High levels of preparedness
Conformity to organizational goals
Increased chance of staying in school [42]
Increased commitment to learning [42]
Increased use of school setting to the student's advantage[42]
Wearing uniforms leads to decreased behavior problems by increasing attendance rates, lowering suspension rates, and decreasing substance use among the student body. Proponents also attribute positive psychological outcomes like increased self-esteem, increased spirit, and reinforced feelings of oneness among students to wearing uniforms. Additional proponent arguments include that school uniforms:[43]
Encourage discipline
Help students resist peer pressure to buy trendy clothes
Diminish economic and social barriers between students
Currently pros of school uniforms center around how uniforms affect schools' environments. Proponents have found a significant positive impact on school climate, safety, and students’ self-perception from the implementation of uniforms.
Negatives [ edit ]
The opposing side of uniforms have claimed their ineffectiveness using a variety of justifications, a variety of which have research supporting them. Some of the cons to school uniforms include the following legal, financial, and questionable effectiveness concerns:[12] The primary concern with school uniforms or strict dress codes is that it limits the ability of students to express themselves. Clothing is viewed as a mean of expression – making all students wear the same clothes or limit them to what they can wear can disrupt their sense of identity. One of the main controversies can lie within Dress Code Policies vs. Freedom of Speech.[44] This establishes that students cannot wear the latest trends, mid-drift, or clothes that the school finds that interrupts the learning environment. However, students can wear clothing artifacts that express their religion. "Both the Constitution and most state laws protect students' rights to wear religious attire inool [sic] school, such as the wearing of a turban, yarmulke, or head scarf."[44]
Another negative aspect of school uniforms is that it can be sexist. Boys and girls are not disciplined the same when it comes to dress codes. "Transgender students have been sent home for wearing clothing different from what's expected of their legal sex, while others have been excluded from yearbooks."[45] Some schools are not advocates of females and females dressing of the opposite sex. Research on how school uniforms and school dress codes influence the student can be inconclusive, but many people oppose to school uniforms and strict dress code policies. "In the U.S., over half of public schools have a dress code, which frequently outline gender-specific policies."[45]
Legal concerns Focus on the supposition that requiring a uniform violates children's individual rights (Thomas, 1994; Virginia State Dep’t of Edu, 1992) Mandatory uniform policies are being considered largely for urban school districts, and, hence are being forced on a predominantly minority and poor student population (Thomas, 1994)
No effect on social status Many students felt the school uniform policy had little impact on the social dynamic of the school and students found ways to express individuality by making minor alterations to the school uniform (Da Costa, 2006 [46] ). Some parents and students interviewed in a research about the social aspect of school uniforms said that uniforms were a violation of their rights and freedom. "Like adults, children's freedom to choose or to act is also circumscribed by the community – massively so by schools, with their high density, constant supervision and evaluation, lack of privacy, and the obligatory nature of their activities." (Bodine, 2003 [47] )
Financial concerns Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have voiced concerns about the cost of uniforms, specifically that some disadvantaged parents are unable to afford them (Gursky, 1996)
Questionable effectiveness of those policies Strongest opponents of uniform policies charge that no empirical evidence exists to support the numerous and varied claims of uniform proponents (LaPorte, Holoman, & Alleyne, 1992) School uniforms suppress students’ individuality by mandating standardization of appearance and removing student expression (Joseph, 1986 [48] ) While uniform policies have been linked to school climate, safety, and student self-perception, there is no evidence to indicate that a uniform policy increases academic achievement (Wade & Stafford, 2003 [49] )
According to Marian Wilde,[50] additional opponent arguments include that school uniforms:
Are simply a Band-Aid on the issue of school violence
Make students a target for bullies from other schools
Are an unfair additional expense for parents who pay taxes for a free public education
Are difficult to enforce in state/public (government) schools
See also [ edit ]The Marine Corps has punished 18 people for posting ads on Internet websites seeking sex while they were deployed in Afghanistan.
The ads were placed by military personnel, both officer and enlisted, as well as civilian employees of the Department of Defense.
The ads were discovered during a nearly year-long investigation in 2012 conducted by a 10-member criminal investigative team from the Camp Pendleton-based 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. All involved in placing the ads were deployed to Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, which at the time was under the command of the Camp Pendleton expeditionary force.
Punishment for the military personnel was determined by their respective commanders and included such administrative actions as loss of rank, extra duty, fines and restrictions of privileges. Sanctions for the civilian employees included debarment as well as possible criminal prosecution.The Ajax Paradox
November 25, 2013
Paradox: noun – a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true.
Tuesday night is a crucial night for Celtic in the Champions League. They host a stuttering AC Milan side, while Ajax take on Barcelona in Amsterdam. If Celtic win and Ajax don’t, Neil Lennon’s side will move into 2nd place in the group.
So far so simple. But what if I was to tell you that, if Celtic win, they would actually want Ajax to draw rather than lose against Barcelona? It sounds daft, but it’s actually true.
Let’s examine the possibilities. A Celtic win on Tuesday is eminently possible, but it seems unlikely they’ll manage the 3 goal win they’d need to lead AC Milan on head-to head. In 46 previous Champions League group stage matches, Celtic have only once won by such a margin (v Benfica in 2006). So let’s assume that Celtic record a nice simple one goal win.
And now let’s consider those two possible outcomes of the Ajax game. Scenario A is based on Ajax LOSING to Barcelona. Scenario B is based on Ajax DRAWING with Barcelona.
In the final game, Celtic are away to Barcelona, while AC Milan host Ajax. Even the most confident of Celtic fans would struggle to predict anything other than a defeat in the Nou Camp, so let’s examine the outcomes based on a Celtic defeat.
In Scenario A, it is impossible for Celtic to qualify if they lose to Barcelona. If either AC Milan or Ajax win, they will leapfrog Celtic in the group. If the match finishes as a draw, AC Milan would pip Celtic on the head-to-head.
However, in Scenario B, Celtic do still have a chance if they lose. An Ajax or AC Milan win would see Neil Lennon’s side eliminated, but a draw in Milan would see all 3 sides finish level on 6 points. In that case, it would come down to the three-way head-to-head record – ie results against Barcelona would be excluded. And Celtic would top that particular table with 6 points compared to Ajax and AC Milan’s 5.
I’m aware that I’ve made a couple of assumptions there, but actually they don’t really matter. If Celtic beat AC Milan (by any scoreline at all) there is no scenario where an Ajax defeat is any better than an Ajax draw. But as I’ve shown, there are scenarios where the draw is preferable to Celtic.
If Barcelona score on Tuesday, I’m looking forward to hearing a confused murmur make its way around Celtic Park.
AdvertisementsWASHINGTON – Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) urged President Trump to support a revived DREAM Act and said at the “snap of his fingers” Trump could convince the Republican Party to unite behind providing a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants.
Graham, who won re-election in 2014, also told South Carolina residents who oppose the DREAM Act not to vote for him.
“I have come to believe that comprehensive immigration reform, whether done in piecemeal fashion or done comprehensively, is absolutely essential for our national security. It's absolutely essential for our economic viability and I want to stop the third wave [of illegal immigration] and never do this again. We have got to have a practical solution to the 11 million,” Graham said at a press conference today alongside Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). Both were members of the bipartisan Gang of Eight who drafted the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill.
“I am hoping we can find a pathway forward with President Trump. Wouldn't it be ironic if the man who started his campaign talking about illegal immigration in a very tough way would be the man who started the country on the path of solving the problem?” Graham added. “This problem will not fix itself.”
The South Carolina senator said he agrees with the Trump administration’s emphasis on securing the border and focus on deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes in the U.S., but he wants to see Trump work to fix the nation’s “broken” immigration system. Graham said that Trump is the only leader who could persuade the GOP to support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
“Here's what changed. You have a president who, if he said tomorrow the border was secured, most people would believe him on my side. I could put alligators on the border and I'm not getting there,” Graham said, adding that the Gang of Eight “literally militarized the border, but I don't have the power he does to tell the Republican base that we have achieved border security.”
“What has changed? You have a president who could in a snap of his fingers get the Republican Party united more than Bush could – persuade people who feel threatened by illegal immigrants that they're going to take their jobs and commit crimes against their family and persuade them that this is a fair thing to do unlike President Obama was able to do. What has changed? A man in the White House who could take the people who object the most and with a coherent, from-the-heart speech change everything,” he said.
Graham and Durbin have reintroduced the DREAM Act for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children and said the “moment of reckoning” has arrived for the GOP as the Trump administration decides if it should defend Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive action in court.AUSTIN, Texas -- Lance Armstrong plans to admit to doping throughout his career during an upcoming interview with Oprah Winfrey, USA Today reported late Friday.
The interview, scheduled to be taped Monday and broadcast Thursday night on the Oprah Winfrey Network, will be conducted at Armstrong's home in Austin.
Citing an anonymous source, USA Today reported that the disgraced cyclist plans to admit to using performance-enhancing drugs but likely will not get into details of the allegations outlined in a 2012 report by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that led to Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life from the sport.
His representatives declined comment late Friday, including attorney Tim Herman, but Armstrong sent a text to The Associated Press early Saturday morning saying: "I told her (Winfrey) to go wherever she wants and I'll answer the questions directly, honestly, candidly. That's all I can say."
The New York Times first reported last week that Armstrong was considering making a confession. On Saturday morning, The Associated Press reported Armstrong would make a limited confession and offer an apology during the interview, citing a person with knowledge of the situation.
Armstrong, 41, who vehemently denied doping for years, has not spoken publicly about the USADA report that cast him as the leader of a sophisticated and brazen doping program on his U.S. Postal Service teams that included use of steroids, blood boosters and illegal blood transfusions.
Winfrey's network announced Tuesday that Armstrong agreed to a "no holds barred" interview with her.
A confession to Winfrey would come at a time when some of Armstrong's legal troubles appear to be clearing up.
Any potential perjury charges stemming from his sworn testimony denying doping in a 2005 arbitration fight with a Dallas promotions company over a contract bonus worth $7.5 million have passed the statute of limitations.
Armstrong faces a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by former teammate Floyd Landis accusing him of defrauding the U.S. Postal Service, but the U.S. Department of Justice has yet to announce whether it will join the case. The British newspaper The Sunday Times is suing Armstrong to recover about $500,000 it paid him to settle a libel lawsuit.
Armstrong lost most of his personal sponsorship -- worth tens of millions of dollars -- after USADA issued its report, and he left the board of the Livestrong cancer-fighting charity he founded in 1997. He is said to still be worth an estimated $100 million.
Livestrong might be one reason to issue an apology or make a confession. The charity supports cancer patients and still faces an image problem because of its association with its famous founder.
The New York Times reported Armstrong might make a confession in an attempt to return to competition in elite triathlon or running events, but World Anti-Doping Code rules state his lifetime ban cannot be reduced to fewer than eight years. WADA and U.S. Anti-Doping officials could agree to reduce the ban further depending on what new information Armstrong provides and his level of cooperation.
Armstrong met with USADA officials recently to explore a "pathway to redemption," according to a report by "60 Minutes Sports" aired Wednesday on Showtime.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.Tales of the welfare queen are as old as time. Or, at least as old as inefficient, unmonitored government assistance programs. So… old as time. She’s the lady in the checkout line who buys a cartload of groceries with food stamps. Before pulling a giant roll of 20s out of her Coach purse. Which she uses buy beer and cigarettes. Before loading them into her Lexus. Your Nissan Altima is so last year, taxpayer.
Leftists and skeptics claim the welfare queen is little more than hyperbole. A scary boogyman the right uses to lower taxes.
I give you the real thing. Live and in the trashy flesh:
She’s dressed to the nines, with all the latest in accessories, like hoop earrings and used cigarettes. She’s White Trash Barbie! Flashing her EBT card for hot pink lobster. She’s feeding Fido lobster tails while honest taxpayers are microwaving Ramen and clipping coupons. All thanks to leftists’ bright ideas.
Remember Obama’s talk about “spreading the wealth?” Bureaucratic dunces taxing the bejeezus out of you and me, so they can dole out our hard-earned greenbacks to people like this trailer park princess. She protects her castle not with a moat, but a parking lot of wheel-less cars.
There are people out there who legitimately need a hand from the government, sure. Others are able-bodied deadbeats looking to game the system. Like Ms. Sassypants. Fanning herself with your dolla dolla bills.
Not only are leftists unconcerned about abusers like this welfare queen, they want to gift her with more of your money. The next time a far-left wingnut like Bernie Sanders demands to give people more “free stuff,” remember this broad. Someone needs to pay for her filet mignon.
NOT SUBSCRIBED TO THE PODCAST? FIX THAT! IT’S COMPLETELY FREE ON BOTH ITUNES HERE AND SOUNDCLOUD HERE.ASP.NET Core – Best practices (tips and tricks) – an opinionated approach – Part 2
Introduction
In the last post, we talked about tips and tricks, different strategies and approaches to make your code and project easier to maintain.
This post is the second part in the series.
Avoid HTML Helpers – Use Tag Helpers
We should avoid using HTML Helpers in favour of Tag Helpers.
Tag Helpers are also processed and rendered on the server. However, they are more HTML friendly, and they remind of Angular’s directives.
They can be either attributes or elements. We can extend existing HTML elements with our own custom Tag Helpers as well.
We talked about Tag Helpers on several occasions, so if you are interested in it, you can check out the series on TagHelpers.
Use View Components
View Components are another new feature of ASP.NET Core MVC.
In old ASP.NET MVC, if we wanted to extract a part of the view to another reusable view, we could use partial views. However, that was only possible if it was using the same model as its parent view. However, if you want to extract and render a chunk of HTML that uses another model you would have to use @Html.Action And that would callback into controller action as a child request. And it worked most of the time. However, in some situations, child actions would get very weird.
Child actions are not present in ASP.NET Core MVC. However, we can use View Components instead.
Use Webpack
If you ever worked with client-side, you had to bundle and minify your files. One of the great solutions for this was Grunt, then came Gulp and that was even better. Both are a built on top of Node and used as Node packages (npm). Then Webpack came. The rise in usage of ES2015 and ES modules increased the need for module loaders and bundlers. There is Browserfiy, which lets you write modules like you would do in old Node-style (require, export) or ES6 modules and make them browser ready for all browsers. Then there was Webpack
Then there was Webpack, which is in core module bundler and it will bundle all your JS, CSS. Anything you throw at it, Webpack will treat as a module. You can use all kind of plugins with it and work with React, Angular, TypeScript and almost anything that you could need.
The recommendation is to use multiple configuration files with Webpack. We could use one configuration for vendor code and one configuration for our application’s code that is changing all the time.
Use Karma as a Test Runner
Originally written for AngularJS by Angular Team. However, it is probably the best Test Runner for JavaScript out there which requires minimal configuration.
Use ConEmu or cmder for Windows
When you are working with command-line tools, and you try it on Linux or Mac, you never really get to feel like at home when you are inside of Windows built-in command line. My unhappiness was even bigger once I tried Mac’s iTerm in combination with Oh My Zsh. After that, whenever I used cmd or PowerShell for dotnet and JS I was heartbroken.
Yes, there is Git Bash, but that’s just basic. I also tried HyperJS, but it never worked as I wanted it.
Then I tried cmder and ConEmu, and that’s when I finally found something good enough. If you are on Windows 10, there are also ways to use built-in Linux Bash with Cmder or ConEmu.
If you are using Windows and have not tried ConEmu yet, I would advise you to do so.
NuGet and npm Only
The recommendation is to use npm only for your client-side and for server-side there is NuGet. Microsoft developers have been encouraged to use bower over last few years, especially since the bower support first came with VS 2015. However, bower has been deprecated and almost any package that you used and had bower support, it probably.” npm as well. With webpack and npm you won’t be needing bower.
Another reason for this is that TypeScript team decided to use npm packages as a source for TypeScript type definitions. TypeScript compiler will now look inside of npm installed modules to see if there are matching types for the library that you are using.
TypeScript
If you are doing client-side development and you have not tried TypeScript for projects, I would recommend you to go for it!
For smaller projects that are not going to grow and will not be too consuming, quite often the effort to set up the TypeScript on the project is not worth it. But on larger projects, it pays off!
I have been using TypeScript on and off on my projects, for few times in periods of few months, and I can definitely say it makes a lot of things easier and more enjoyable. At least for me.
Benefits are huge. Some of the main advantages that come to the mind are:
Types of course! Static type checking is helpful!
IntelliSense
Interfaces
Building on previous ones there is – Tooling Support
Strict null check – this checks every possible solution where your code and your objects could be null, and you will get a compiler error if you are trying to use a property of something that can be null and you haven’t checked it.
Control flow based type analysis
Generics
Strict null check examples:
Control flow based type analysis example:
function foo(x: string | number | boolean) { if (typeof x === "string") { x; // type of x is string here x = 1; x; // type of x is number here } x; // type of x is number | boolean here } function bar(x: string | number) { if (typeof x === "number") { return; } x; // type of x is string here } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 function foo ( x : string | number | boolean ) { if ( typeof x === "string" ) { x ; // type of x is string here x = 1 ; x ; // type of x is number here } x ; // type of x is number | boolean here } function bar ( x : string | number ) { if ( typeof x === "number" ) { return ; } x ; // type of x is string here }
Regarding types and auto-completion: Yes, WebStorm and other great editors have auto-completion support, and they will help you a lot, but they also show tons of other stuff. And when you have tons of related files it is not so precise and accurate, and you can quite often mismatch a property name.
Client-side code folders
You should have your original code (JavaScript modules, or not TypeScript files in your client-side folder) in Client or some other folder. And the output/compilation/bundle of those files should go to wwwroot.
As Scott says “wwwroot is your bin\ folder”.
Tests
For open source libraries or larger applications that have a lot of unit tests, one test project for every project is probably what you will do. For business applications that do not have such requirements having one Test Project and organizing the tests into folders is not a bad idea.
Recommend framework for unit tests is xUnit. It is extensible, flexible, open source and has a good vocabulary. It is quite easy to get started with it.
If you wanna to test the code inside of your Startup class, something that is forming and processing middleware you should check out ASP.NET Core Test Host.
ASP.NET Core includes a test host that can be added to test projects and used to host ASP.NET Core applications, serving test requests without the need for a real web host.
EF Core In-Memory provider
EF Core In-Memory provider will keep all the data in memory while letting you to do almost anything that you usually do with Entity Framework.
The in-memory provider is especially useful for tests. Another usage would be for smaller applications where you just want to demo something.
It is important to note that every DbContext that you create will use the same instance of the in-memory database. However, you could set up your DbContext constructor to create a new instance of in-memory DB every time.
Entity Framework Core In-Memory provider is not to meant to be used in production!
Don’t use the Async suffix
This one is debatable.
For extending the old (legacy) code, adding Async suffix is sometimes mandatory since in C# you can not overload a method based on its return type. Also, when adding an async method on API that already has the same synchronous method, it makes sense to name the new with Async suffix.
Scott recommends to not use Async suffix for methods of new APIs and libraries that you are building. I agree with this. This mostly goes for libraries that usually go full async and have almost all of the methods on API exposed as async methods.Retired MotoGP champion Casey Stoner will return to Ducati as a 'brand ambassador and test rider'.
The Australian won Ducati's only MotoGP title during |
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