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multiple of 8, producing 0x1230. It would then load the 8-byte value starting at 0x1230 and put into the t1 register.
There are a set of extra computational instructions to assist in taking apart and reassembling integers from their containing quads. They are the extraction, insertion, and masking opcodes.
Here goes extraction:
EXTBL Ra, Rb/#b, Rc ; Rc = (uint8_t)(Ra >> (Rb/#b * 8 % 64)) EXTWL Ra, Rb/#b, Rc ; Rc = (uint16_t)(Ra >> (Rb/#b * 8 % 64)) EXTLL Ra, Rb/#b, Rc ; Rc = (uint32_t)(Ra >> (Rb/#b * 8 % 64)) EXTQL Ra, Rb/#b, Rc ; Rc = (uint64_t)(Ra >> (Rb/#b * 8 % 64)) EXTWH Ra, Rb/#b, Rc ; Rc = (uint16_t)(Ra << ((64 - Rb/#b * 8) % 64)) EXTLH Ra, Rb/#b, Rc ; Rc = (uint32_t)(Ra << ((64 - Rb/#b * 8) % 64)) EXTQH Ra, Rb/#b, Rc ; Rc = (uint64_t)(Ra << ((64 - Rb/#b * 8) % 64))
These are weird to write out in formulas, but they are easy to explain. You want to read these mnemonics as "extract byte/word/long/quad low/high". For example, EXTWL is "extract word low".
To perform the extraction, you shift the first source parameter right (if extracting low) or left (if extracting high) by the number of bytes controlled by the second parameter. (More precisely, specified by the least significant 3 bits of the second parameter.) And then you extract the low-order byte/word/long/quad from the result.
Note that these are fully 64-bit instructions, so there is no sign extension in the EXTLx instructions.
For example, if t1 is 0x7531, then
EXTWH t0, t1, t2
goes like this: The shift amount is 7 bytes because the least significant three bits of t1 are 001, and we are extracting the high part. So take the value in t0, shift it left 56 bits (7 bytes), and then extract the least significant 16 bits, zero-extending the result to 64 bits.
The way to think of these instructions is that the extract a byte, word, long, or quad from a 128-bit value. The "low" version extracts the value from the least-significant 64 bits of the 128-bit value, and the "high" version extracts the value from the most-significant 64 bits of the 128-bit value. Both instructions position the extracted value so the two pieces can be "or"d together.
high part low part --------- --------- ABCD EFGH IJKL MNOP -- 16-byte value ^^^ ^ -- 4 bytes extracted at this position EXTLH EXTLL FGH0 000I
Note that this is not how the instructions actually operate, because there are edge conditions when the shift amount is an exact multiple of 8, but it's a nice way to help remember how the instructions work.
Anyway, with the extraction instruction, we can load a single byte of memory, even if not aligned:
LDQ_U t1, (t0) EXTBL t1, t0, t1
To see how this works, let's number the bytes in a 64-bit value from least significant to most significant, zero through seven.
If t0 were 0x9731, then the LDQ_U loads 8 bytes of memory from 0x9730. The least significant byte (index 0) contains the value of the byte 0x9730, and the next-least-significant byte (index 1) contains the value of the byte 0x9731, which is the one we want. And by an amazing non-coincidence, the EXTBL instruction selects the byte at index 0x9731 & 7 == 1, which is exactly the byte we want.
Loading signed data is a bit more work because you have to sign-extend the result. The simple way of doing this is to add
SLL t1, #56, t1 ; shift byte all the way up to index 7 SRA t1, #56, t1 ; shift it all the way back to index 0 ; but with sign extension
However, DEC recommends this alternative four-instruction sequence:
LDQ_U t1, (t0) ; load the entire enclosing quad LDA t2, 1(t0) ; sneaky trick to extract at index 7 EXTQH t1, t2, t1 ; shift the desired byte into index 7 SRA t1, #56, t1 ; signed shift right to move to index 0
The basic idea here is to extract the desired byte into index 7 and then use a signed shift right to shift it into index 0 with sign extension. If we hadn't added 1 to t0, then the byte we wanted would have shifted off the end of of the register (into imaginary index 8);³ adding 1 means that the EXTQH will shift one fewer index, so that instead of shifting into imaginary index 8, the value we want ends up in index 7.
I'm guessing that DEC recommends the latter sequence because it has a slightly shorter dependency chain, but at the cost of an extra register.
Of course, if you know ahead of time what the alignment of t0 is, then you can avoid having to calculate the shift amount in t2 and could just hard-code ( t0 + 1) % 8 as the second parameter to the EXTQH.
The standard sequence for loading an aligned word is
LDQ_U t1, (t0) ; load the entire enclosing quad EXTWL t1, t0, t1 ; extract the appropriate word, zero-extended
And if you want sign extension, you use the same trick:
LDQ_U t1, (t0) ; load the entire enclosing quad LDA t2, 2(t0) ; sneaky trick to extract at index 6+7 EXTQH t1, t2, r1 ; shift the desired bytes to index 6+7 SRA t1, #48, t1 ; signed right shift to move to index 0+1
These sequences are designed for properly word-aligned addresses. But what if it's not correctly-aligned?
Let's find out. Suppose that t0 is 0x1357. Let's say that the word pointed to by t0 is XXYY, with YY stored at 0x1357 and XX stored at 0x1358. But we erroneously treat it as an aligned address and execute the standard aligned word load sequence:
LDQ_U t1, (t0) ; loads the quad at 0x1350 ; t1 = YY??????`???????? EXTWL t1, t0, t1 ; shifts the value in t1 right by 7 bytes ; 00000000`000000YY ; and then extracts the least-significant word ; t1 = 00000000`000000YY
Oops, we read only the least significant byte of the value; the XX was not loaded at all.
If you sit down and work it out, the aligned word load sequence produces the desired results for most unaligned addresses, but if the word crosses a quad boundary, the code executes without any faults but produces incorrect results. This is worse than crashing!
On the Alpha AXP, it is absolutely essential that you accurately declare the fact that a pointer may point to misaligned data. If you forget, then depending on the size of the data you are accessing and the precise nature of the misalignment, you might get away with it, or you might crash, or (worst case) you will proceed with incorrect data.
So far, we've been looking only at loading aligned bytes and words. Next time, we'll look at unaligned accesses, as well as storing bytes and words, as well as storing unaligned longs and quads.
¹ Note that the base register must be a general-purpose register. This means no PC-relative addressing, because the program counter is not a general-purpose register. This is another strike against storing constants in the code stream.
² Later versions of the Alpha AXP added instructions for aligned byte and word access, but Windows NT didn't require that you had one of those newer processors. Consequently, you were unlikely to encounter them in practice unless you had code that did processor feature detection and had separate code paths for processors with and without support for byte and word access instructions.
However, the proof-of-concept Alpha AXP 64-bit edition of Windows did require a processor that supported the byte and word memory access instructions, so you would see those instructions if you had to debug the Alpha AXP 64-bit verison of Windows. (And by "you" I mean "me," because that version of Windows never shipped.)U.S. President Donald Trump's tough talk on trade — shouting at Canada about dairy farmers Tuesday — has prompted the Canadian government to respond in more, er, subtle ways.
Trump escalated his trade dispute with Canada, announcing Monday an initial duty of up to 24 per cent on Canadian softwood lumber, with more expected later this year.
The Canadian government's tactic? To highlight details of their friendly trade relations with Asian countries, instead.
"Asia is a growing market for Canadian #softwoodlumber," tweeted the @CanadaTrade account Tuesday evening.
Asia is a growing market for Canadian #softwoodlumber: pic.twitter.com/jmpNU2bplR — Canada Trade (@CanadaTrade) April 25, 2017
They didn't stop there, releasing several other graphics outling just how much business is being done with China.
Canada is working hard to boost exports of Canadian #softwoodlumber to #China. pic.twitter.com/ivOoGT000p — Canada Trade (@CanadaTrade) April 25, 2017
Canada is an important supplier of pulp, paper and wood to #China. Check out all of our top exports to China pic.twitter.com/hjpYXkgyUN — Canada Trade (@CanadaTrade) April 25, 2017
People following along on Twitter applauded the government for throwing a bit of shade Trump's way.
But it's not just big talk from the Canadian government.
On Tuesday, International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne was in Beijing with a coterie of Canadian softwood lumber industry players in his entourage. Well aware of the latest escalation in the dispute, he said his visit to China would help find much-needed new markets for Canadian wood.
"This is caused by a protectionist industry in the U.S.," Champagne said in an interview. "My answer to that is we are looking at all sorts of options to obviously support our industry."
Champagne said Canada's pitch is resonating in China because softwood is an environmentally friendly building material that can satisfy a need for more housing without increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
"There's an imperative in China to have more green building material. That's exactly what we're here for," he said, adding Canada and China are teaming up to battle one of the greatest challenges of our time: climate change.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump spoke about the issues by phone, the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
"On the issue of softwood lumber, the prime minister refuted the baseless allegations by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the decision to impose unfair duties," the statement said. "The two leaders agreed on the importance of reaching a negotiated agreement, recognizing the integrated nature of the industry between Canada and the United States."
With files from The Canadian Press
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Also on HuffPostThe Superbowl this year was great. The game had everything. It had controversy, record-setting moments and an amazing comeback. The halftime show by Lady Gaga was good and was free of any fuss. I think the commercials fell flat aside from the Cam Newton Buick commercial.
The most talked about commercial is the one by 84 Lumber. It depicts a Mexican mother and daughter illegally entering America. The 90 second ad cost 84 Lumber 15 million dollars. The original version of the commercial was rejected by FOX. The script depicted President Trump’s border wall and was redone to satisfy the objections made by FOX. The ad was worked on for months by Bruner Advertising.
Concerning the rejection of the ad Micheal Bruner said:
“There’s some elements in it that are… can be considered politically sensitive,” Brunner said. “They are the host. We’re paying the dollars, but they are the host.”
Here is the ad if you missed it.
After the spot aired social media went into a frenzy and people on both sides of the illegal immigration issue weighed in.
I will be closing my commercial account with #84Lumber. Hopefully many other Patriots will do the same. Do NOT support ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION pic.twitter.com/kWEfr9758b — Trump2020#KAG (@16_our_movement) February 6, 2017
yeah, how many illegals are buying lumber from #84lumber @84LumberNews?? i will never spend another dime with them. https://t.co/RMeUX8kTWP — Michael Louis (@MichaelTacgru) February 6, 2017
Shame on 84 Lumber
Women are often brutalized & children sold in to human trafficking by the cartels
84 Lumber you disgust me@84LumberNews pic.twitter.com/uoibTp7KeT — Steve Toth (@Toth_4_Texas) February 6, 2017
@84LumberNews The story is beautiful. I'm not sure why some people see it negative.They are coming to America through the front door. — arilochi (@arilochi) February 6, 2017
84 Lumber’s Twitter account was busy thanking people and defending the commercial to detractors.
@FERRUMIRONWORKS Our message is symbolic & highlights that determination can bring forth opportunity. — 84 Lumber Company (@84LumberNews) February 6, 2017
@taylorbilt We do not condone illegal immigration. Our story is the symbolic celebration of a journey that ends with legal citizenship. — 84 Lumber Company (@84LumberNews) February 6, 2017
I had to say my piece.
Can I walk through those doors & demand u give me a job w/out any background check, cutting the line ahead of folks that applied before me? https://t.co/UaZZ8MdEBy — Ian Erickson (@ianderickson) February 6, 2017
84 Lumber CEO Maggie Hardy Magerko has donated thousands to the Republicans however, the internal strife within the GOP concerning immigration policy makes it feasible that she isn’t automatically an advocate for building a border wall. There are Republicans in leadership positions that still do not support a border wall.
We will have to wait and see if this commercial and subsequent maelstrom will give 84 Lumber a temporary boom in sales, or ultimately become a long-term hindrance since many of the contractors that would shop at 84 Lumber are the white working class voter that abandoned the Democratic Party to vote for Donald Trump. The platform of “America First” and a strong immigration stance is what attracted many to elect Donald Trump as president.
Ian Erickson is New Media Central’s Editor-in-Chief and co-host of The Patriarchy Show. Follow him on Twitter.
Enjoyed this article? Pick up Ian Erickson’s book Broken on Amazon!Students who write notes by hand during lectures perform better on exams than those who use laptops, according to a new study - even when the computers are disconnected from the Internet to avoid distractions.
In fact not only do handwritten notes appear to help students better understand lectures right away, but they may also lead to superior revision in the future.
Students are increasingly using laptops for note-taking because of the speed and legibility they confer. But research into how note-taking affects students’ academic performance has found that laptop users are less able to remember and apply the concepts they have been taught, despite making more notes than students who write by hand.
The study was carried out by Daniel Oppenheimer, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, and Pam Mueller, a psychology graduate student at Princeton University. They performed a series of experiments that aimed to find out whether using a laptop increased the tendency to make notes "mindlessly" by transcribing word for word.
In the first test, students were given either a laptop (disconnected from the Internet) or pen and paper. They all listened to the same lectures and were told to use their usual note-taking strategy. 30 minutes after the end of the talk, they were examined on their ability to recall facts and on how well they understood concepts.
The researchers found that laptop users took nearly twice as many notes as those who wrote by hand, which can be useful. However, the typists performed considerably worse at remembering and applying the concepts they had been taught. Both groups scored similarly when it came to memorising facts.
The researchers’ report said: "While more notes are beneficial, at least to a point, if the notes are taken indiscriminately or by mindlessly transcribing content, as is more likely the case on a laptop, the benefit disappears.
“Verbatim note-taking, as opposed to more selective strategies, signals less encoding of content.”
In another experiment aimed at testing long-term recall, students took notes as before but were tested a week after the lecture, with a chance to revise beforehand. This time, the students who wrote notes by hand performed significantly better at both parts of the exam - even though some of the faster typists had managed to transcribe most of the lecture verbatim.
Taken together these two studies suggest that handwritten notes are not only better for immediate learning and understanding, but that they also help embed information for future reference.
In a final test, the researchers specifically told some of the laptop users not to take verbatim notes. The students were told that "people who take class notes on laptops when they expect to be tested on the material later tend to transcribe what they’re hearing without thinking about it much".
But despite being explicitly aware of the potential pitfalls, members of this group still got lower scores in both parts of the exam, suggesting that taking notes by hand really is a superior technique.
The findings will be published in a paper called "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note-Taking" in the Psychological Science journal.Stanford legal theorist Lawrence Lessig isn't throwing his hat into the ring quite yet, but the renowned cyberlawyer has announced that he is seriously considering a run for Congress in response to a fast-growing netroots campaign pushing him to seek the House seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA). Earlier today, Lessig spoke with Ars Technica about why he might run, what the Lessig platform would look like, and why voters in the Golden State's 12th district should choose him over longtime state senator Jackie Speier.
A two-pronged campaign
A Lessig campaign would have two dimensions: process and policy. The "process" dimension, which Lessig elaborates in a video (in Lessig's signature pithy, PowerPoint style) posted at his newly-launched proto-campaign site, is an outgrowth of his latest academic project: the study of money's corrupting influence on politics. His goal here is to "fundamentally alter the incentives legislators face as they're trying to do their jobs."
Pondering a run
One simple means of reducing the political power of campaign cash, Lessig says, "could be done tomorrow." He wants to ban legislative earmarks, those juicy morsels of targeted federal funding legislators direct toward pet projects and political supporters. Lessig also hopes to encourage more robust public financing of campaigns, noting the salutary effect such policies appear to be having in states like Maine and Arizona. Most immediately—and perhaps most radically—Lessig says he will swear off contributions from lobbyists or political action committees, and he hopes to bring grassroots pressure to bear on other candidates to follow suit. (Prospective opponent Jackie Speier, he notes in passing in his online video, does accept such contributions.)
"This is about building a parallel to Creative Commons in Congress," Lessig explains, referencing the popular legal license he created to help authors and artists make their work available for free distribution and modification. Just as creators under a Creative Commons license cede some control over their works in order to promote a robust open-source culture, Lessig's political vision entails "people in power, legislators, voluntarily waiving that power in order to build a better system." If politicians begin foreswearing PAC money, the theory runs, voters may come to see the failure to refuse lobbyist dollars as a badge of shame rather than simply the way things are done.
Policy prescriptions
On the policy front, Lessig happily allows that there isn't a whole lot of daylight between himself and Speier on issues like healthcare or the war in Iraq. "I'm a liberal Democrat," he says, though he adds that he is "a free-trade, pro-market liberal." (Since California's 12th runs deep, deep blue, the winner of the Democratic primary is all but guaranteed victory in the general election.) Instead, Lessig would set himself apart by making technology the centerpiece of his campaign.
"Silicon Valley needs a representative who can speak for the interests of the Internet, of making it flourish," he says. "As we're leading into this moment when the owners of telecommunications platforms are trying to leverage their ownership into control of the Internet, yammering about the need to turn it into the old Bell System, we need someone in Washington who's going to be able to stare them down."
But while Lessig wryly notes that the RIAA and MPAA "won't be excited to have an opponent of extremist copyright legislation in Congress," he also stresses that a congressional run would not be some kind of crusading extension of his work on "free culture." For Lessig, the central policy question will be, "Who ultimately controls innovation on the Internet? That's the net neutrality fight; that's the open spectrum fight."
One obstacle to such innovation is the Federal Communications Commission, which "was established in order to protect the incumbents," and may now need to be "restructured to facilitate competition." As an example, Lessig points to recent spectrum policy, which he describes as "extremely disappointing." According to Lessig, "circa 2001, the basic lesson we had learned is that we had undervalued unlicensed spectrum, that we didn't understand its innovation potential. Everyone was adopting the view that we needed more unlicensed areas alongside more spectrum auctions."
But in the intervening years, he says that "lobbyists have been very effective at changing the conversation, at making the property model seem like the only model"—a trend Lessig believes has enriched a few spectrum owners at the expense of overall economic growth.
Stepping out of the ivory tower
But why should an already-influential academic celebrity hailed as the father of his field trade his department chair for a seat in Congress, where he would be just one of 435 votes?
Lessig says he began considering the prospect after a member of the audience at one of his recent lectures asked him why he wasn't doing something about the problem of political corruption—a challenge that struck home. But he admits there's also a practical angle. "When I was doing free culture stuff, there were hundreds of fora every year where people wanted to talk about these issues. There are no industry conferences on political corruption, and I quickly realized this was going to be harder to talk about than I had expected."
Finally, there's what sounds like a bit of a perfectionist streak in the equation. "It would be painful to watch other people try to solve the problems I'm talking about and do it wrong," Lessig says.
Of course, all this will be—pardon the phrase—academic unless Lessig can stage an upset against Jackie Speier, a seasoned politician who has already lined up the support of some of California's most prominent Democrats. Speier has the support of both the state's representatives in the US Senate: San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and the late Rep. Lantos himself. Lessig points out, however, that those endorsements were "given when nobody thought anyone else was running," and suggests that the "rush to consolidate" before a field of contenders has emerged is creating frustration among voters who would prefer a few more options.
With only weeks remaining before the special election, Lessig says he'll make a definite decision about whether to run by the beginning of March. If he does, he'll have to push his distributed network of supporters to the limit in order to get his campaign out of beta on time.(Manuscript found on the coast of Yucatan.)
On August 20, 1917, I, Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, Lieutenant-Commander in the Imperial German Navy and in charge of the submarine U-29, deposit this bottle and record in the Atlantic Ocean at a point to me unknown but probably about N. Latitude 20°, W. Longitude 35°, where my ship lies disabled on the ocean floor. I do so because of my desire to set certain unusual facts before the public; a thing I shall not in all probability survive to accomplish in person, since the circumstances surrounding me are as menacing as they are extraordinary, and involve not only the hopeless crippling of the U-29, but the impairment of my iron German will in a manner most disastrous.
On the afternoon of June 18, as reported by wireless to the U-61, bound for Kiel, we torpedoed the British freighter Victory, New York to Liverpool, in N. Latitude 45° 16′, W. Longitude 28° 34′; permitting the crew to leave in boats in order to obtain a good cinema view for the admiralty records. The ship sank quite picturesquely, bow first, the stern rising high out of the water whilst the hull shot down perpendicularly to the bottom of the sea. Our camera missed nothing, and I regret that so fine a reel of film should never reach Berlin. After that we sank the lifeboats with our guns and submerged.
When we rose to the surface about sunset a seaman’s body was found on the deck, hands gripping the railing in curious fashion. The poor fellow was young, rather dark, and very handsome; probably an Italian or Greek, and undoubtedly of the Victory’s crew. He had evidently sought refuge on the very ship which had been forced to destroy his own—one more victim of the unjust war of aggression which the English pig-dogs are waging upon the Fatherland. Our men searched him for souvenirs, and found in his coat pocket a very odd bit of ivory carved to represent a youth’s head crowned with laurel. My fellow-officer, Lieut. Klenze, believed that the thing was of great age and artistic value, so took it from the men for himself. How it had ever come into the possession of a common sailor, neither he nor I could imagine.
As the dead man was thrown overboard there occurred two incidents which created much disturbance amongst the crew. The fellow’s eyes had been closed; but in the dragging of his body to the rail they were jarred open, and many seemed to entertain a queer delusion that they gazed steadily and mockingly at Schmidt and Zimmer, who were bent over the corpse. The Boatswain Müller, an elderly man who would have known better had he not been a superstitious Alsatian swine, became so excited by this impression that he watched the body in the water; and swore that after it sank a little it drew its limbs into a swimming position and sped away to the south under the waves. Klenze and I did not like these displays of peasant ignorance, and severely reprimanded the men, particularly Müller.
The next day a very troublesome situation was created by the indisposition of some of the crew. They were evidently suffering from the nervous strain of our long voyage, and had had bad dreams. Several seemed quite dazed and stupid; and after satisfying myself that they were not feigning their weakness, I excused them from their duties. The sea was rather rough, so we descended to a depth where the waves were less troublesome. Here we were comparatively calm, despite a somewhat puzzling southward current which we could not identify from our oceanographic charts. The moans of the sick men were decidedly annoying; but since they did not appear to demoralise the rest of the crew, we did not resort to extreme measures. It was our plan to remain where we were and intercept the liner Dacia, mentioned in information from agents in New York.
In the early evening we rose to the surface, and found the sea less heavy. The smoke of a battleship was on the northern horizon, but our distance and ability to submerge made us safe. What worried us more was the talk of Boatswain Müller, which grew wilder as night came on. He was in a detestably childish state, and babbled of some illusion of dead bodies drifting past the undersea portholes; bodies which looked at him intensely, and which he recognised in spite of bloating as having seen dying during some of our victorious German exploits. And he said that the young man we had found and tossed overboard was their leader. This was very gruesome and abnormal, so we confined Müller in irons and had him soundly whipped. The men were not pleased at his punishment, but discipline was necessary. We also denied the request of a delegation headed by Seaman Zimmer, that the curious carved ivory head be cast into the sea.
On June 20, Seamen Bohm and Schmidt, who had been ill the day before, became violently insane. I regretted that no physician was included in our complement of officers, since German lives are precious; but the constant ravings of the two concerning a terrible curse were most subversive of discipline, so drastic steps were taken. The crew accepted the event in a sullen fashion, but it seemed to quiet Müller; who thereafter gave us no trouble. In the evening we released him, and he went about his duties silently.
In the week that followed we were all very nervous, watching for the Dacia. The tension was aggravated by the disappearance of Müller and Zimmer, who undoubtedly committed suicide as a result of the fears which had seemed to harass them, though they were not observed in the act of jumping overboard. I was rather glad to be rid of Müller, for even his silence had unfavourably affected the crew. Everyone seemed inclined to be silent now, as though holding a secret fear. Many were ill, but none made a disturbance. Lieut. Klenze chafed under the strain, and was annoyed by the merest trifles—such as the school of dolphins which gathered about the U-29 in increasing numbers, and the growing intensity of that southward current which was not on our chart.
It at length became apparent that we had missed the Dacia altogether. Such failures are not uncommon, and we were more pleased than disappointed; since our return to Wilhelmshaven was now in order. At noon June 28 we turned northeastward, and despite some rather comical entanglements with the unusual masses of dolphins were soon under way.
The explosion in the engine room at 2 P.M. was wholly a surprise. No defect in the machinery or carelessness in the men had been noticed, yet without warning the ship was racked from end to end with a colossal shock. Lieut. Klenze hurried to the engine room, finding the fuel-tank and most of the mechanism shattered, and Engineers Raabe and Schneider instantly killed. Our situation had suddenly become grave indeed; for though the chemical air regenerators were intact, and though we could use the devices for raising and submerging the ship and opening the hatches as long as compressed air and storage batteries might hold out, we were powerless to propel or guide the submarine. To seek rescue in the lifeboats would be to deliver ourselves into the hands of enemies unreasonably embittered against our great German nation, and our wireless had failed ever since the Victory affair to put us in touch with a fellow U-boat of the Imperial Navy.
From the hour of the accident till July 2 we drifted constantly to the south, almost without plans and encountering no vessel. Dolphins still encircled the U-29, a somewhat remarkable circumstance considering the distance we had covered. On the morning of July 2 we sighted a warship flying American colours, and the men became very restless in their desire to surrender. Finally Lieut. Klenze had to shoot a seaman named Traube, who urged this un-German act with especial violence. This quieted the crew for the time, and we submerged unseen.
The next afternoon a dense flock of sea-birds appeared from the south, and the ocean began to heave ominously. Closing our hatches, we awaited developments until we realised that we must either submerge or be swamped in the mounting waves. Our air pressure and electricity were diminishing, and we wished to avoid all unnecessary use of our slender mechanical resources; but in this case there was no choice. We did not descend far, and when after several hours the sea was calmer, we decided to return to the surface. Here, however, a new trouble developed; for the ship failed to respond to our direction in spite of all that the mechanics could do. As the men grew more frightened at this undersea imprisonment, some of them began to mutter again about Lieut. Klenze’s ivory image, but the sight of an automatic pistol calmed them. We kept the poor devils as busy as we could, tinkering at the machinery even when we knew it was useless.
Klenze and I usually slept at different times; and it was during my sleep, about 5 A.M., July 4, that the general mutiny broke loose. The six remaining pigs of seamen, suspecting that we were lost, had suddenly burst into a mad fury at our refusal to surrender to the Yankee battleship two days before; and were in a delirium of cursing and destruction. They roared like the animals they were, and broke instruments and furniture indiscriminately; screaming about such nonsense as the curse of the ivory image and the dark dead youth who looked at them and swam away. Lieut. Klenze seemed paralysed and inefficient, as one might expect of a soft, womanish Rhinelander. I shot all six men, for it was necessary, and made sure that none remained alive.
We expelled the bodies through the double hatches and were alone in the U-29. Klenze seemed very nervous, and drank heavily. It was decided that we remain alive as long as possible, using the large stock of provisions and chemical supply of oxygen, none of which had suffered from the crazy antics of those swine-hound seamen. Our compasses, depth gauges, and other delicate instruments were ruined; so that henceforth our only reckoning would be guesswork, based on our watches, the calendar, and our apparent drift as judged by any objects we might spy through the portholes or from the conning tower. Fortunately we had storage batteries still capable of long use, both for interior lighting and for the searchlight. We often cast a beam around the ship, but saw only dolphins, swimming parallel to our own drifting course. I was scientifically interested in those dolphins; for though the ordinary Delphinus delphis is a cetacean mammal, unable to subsist without air, I watched one of the swimmers closely for two hours, and did not see him alter his submerged condition.
With the passage of time Klenze and I decided that we were still drifting south, meanwhile sinking deeper and deeper. We noted the marine fauna and flora, and read much on the subject in the books I had carried with me for spare moments. I could not help observing, however, the inferior scientific knowledge of my companion. His mind was not Prussian, but given to imaginings and speculations which have no value. The fact of our coming death affected him curiously, and he would frequently pray in remorse over the men, women, and children we had sent to the bottom; forgetting that all things are noble which serve the German state. After a time he became noticeably unbalanced, gazing for hours at his ivory image and weaving fanciful stories of the lost and forgotten things under the sea. Sometimes, as a psychological experiment, I would lead him on in these wanderings, and listen to his endless poetical quotations and tales of sunken ships. I was very sorry for him, for I dislike to see a German suffer; but he was not a good man to die with. For myself I was proud, knowing how the Fatherland would revere my memory and how my sons would be taught to be men like me.
On August 9, we espied the ocean floor, and sent a powerful beam from the searchlight over it. It was a vast undulating plain, mostly covered with seaweed, and strown with the shells of small molluscs. Here and there were slimy objects of puzzling contour, draped with weeds and encrusted with barnacles, which Klenze declared must be ancient ships lying in their graves. He was puzzled by one thing, a peak of solid matter, protruding above the ocean bed nearly four feet at its apex; about two feet thick, with flat sides and smooth upper surfaces which met at a very obtuse angle. I called the peak a bit of outcropping rock, but Klenze thought he saw carvings on it. After a while he began to shudder, and turned away from the scene as if frightened; yet could give no explanation save that he was overcome with the vastness, darkness, remoteness, antiquity, and mystery of the oceanic abysses. His mind was tired, but I am always a German, and was quick to notice two things; that the U-29 was standing the deep-sea pressure splendidly, and that the peculiar dolphins were still about us, even at a depth where the existence of high organisms is considered impossible by most naturalists. That I had previously overestimated our depth, I was sure; but none the less we must still be deep enough to make these phenomena remarkable. Our southward speed, as gauged by the ocean floor, was about as I had estimated from the organisms passed at higher levels.
It was at 3:15 P.M., August 12, that poor Klenze went wholly mad. He had |
, follow this root README.md of the lnd repository as well as the associated installation guides.
Guide: Creating a Lightning Cluster
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/docker/README.md
This guide details how to run a local dockerized cluster of lnd nodes, connecting the major components together, opening/closing channels, and connecting to the Lightning faucet node. Accessing the standard manual via lnd --help at the command line is also helpful.
Guide: lnd gRPC server
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/docs/grpc/javascript.md
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/docs/grpc/python.md
The primary way to connect applications to lnd is through the gRPC server. We have written guides on how to write a simple gRPC client for both Javascript and Python. If you’re not familiar with the concept of RPC, you can also read more about gRPC itself at http://www.grpc.io/
lnd REST API
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/lnrpc/rpc.swagger.json
Lightning features a gRPC proxy that allows you to query a LND node with familiar HTTP requests, which can make development a lot easier for you, for those who are not familiar with gRPC. Here are some example curl requests by @roasbeef: https://gist.github.com/Roasbeef/624c02cd5a90a44ab06ea90e30a6f5f0
Lightning Faucet
https://faucet.lightning.community/ https://ltc.faucet.lightning.community/
A faucet for Lightning Network is currently deployed on the Bitcoin and Litecoin testnets. Instead of sending Bitcoin directly on-chain to the targeted user, the faucet will open a channel with the user. Read the code and more information here: https://github.com/lightninglabs/lightning-faucet
Code Contribution Guidelines
https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/docs/code_contribution_guidelines.mdThe Environmental Protection Agency has shrunk considerably since Scott Pruitt took over as administrator. In fact, the agency is back to President Reagan-era staff levels.
Over 700 EPA personnel have either retired, quit, or taken voluntary buyouts since Pruitt took over, Think Progress found after combing through federal employment statistics. Some are quitting in "disgust."
“There has been a drop of employees of 770 between April and December. While several hundred of those are buyouts, the rest of those are either people that are retiring or quitting in disgust,” Kyla Bennett, director of New England Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), told ThinkProgress. “Is that number higher than it would normally be? I think it is.”
Liberals were outraged over Pruitt's nomination last year, labeling him a "climate skeptic" and criticizing his ties to the fossil fuel industry.
"Having Scott Pruitt in charge of the US Environmental Protection Agency is like putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires," Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said of the nomination.
Famous environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio brought his concerns straight to President-elect Trump at Trump Tower, where he and activist Terry Tamminen reportedly prepared a presentation explaining how preserving the environment has a positive effect on the economy.
Pruitt has been credited with influencing Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement. He has also targeted the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and Clean Water Rule. Rolling Stone Magazine accused Pruitt of "quietly tearing down decades of environmental progress."The WBC has just made their contribution to the upcoming World Boxing Super Series by adding it’s diamond titles to the loot pile. The winners of both the cruiserweight and super middleweight tournaments will get a large share of $50M in prize money along with the Muhammad Ali trophy and whatever titles they’re able to snag from other participating titlists.
This fancy new belt is just another bonus. The WBC shared its thoughts on the upcoming tournament early this morning on Instagram, posting the following message:
“The World Boxing Council (WBC) will honour the [WBSS] by awarding its prestigious WBC Diamond Belt for both the Cruiserweight as well as the Super-Middleweight tournament. As of today, the inaugural season of the revolutionary bracket-style elimination tournament already features five world champions and three former champions as well as three rising contenders, which has led to an outcry of media and fan approval.
“The WBC Diamond Championship has been created as an honorary championship for the winner of a historic fight between two elite boxers, such as the blockbuster between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. ‘This tournament is all about the best fighting the best,’ said WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman. ‘There will be no easy fight and whoever wins will clearly be recognised as one of the most extraordinary and elite boxer in the sport. Hence, we are proud to put the WBC Diamond Championship on the line, which marks the biggest honour the WBC can grant. The WBC is proud to support and fully embrace the tournament and we look forward to a terrific start at the Gala in Monte Carlo on July 8, joining the greatest icon in boxing Muhammad Ali as the inspiration to all participants.’”
The tournament is expected to begin early this Fall.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Oct. 31, 2017, 1:19 PM GMT / Updated Oct. 31, 2017, 7:45 PM GMT By Adam Edelman
President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos as a "liar" and "low level volunteer" after it was revealed a day earlier that he had secretly pleaded guilty and struck a cooperation agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller.
"The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manafort lawyer said, there was 'no collusion' and events mentioned took place long before he.......came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!" Trump tweeted in a pair of tweets Tuesday morning.
The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was "no collusion" and events mentioned took place long before he... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017
....came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017
Even with the guilty plea and two indictments, the president insisted the "biggest story" on Monday was the resignation of Tony Podesta from his lobbying firm. NBC News has reported Podesta and the Podesta Group, which received payments from Manafort, are among the subjects of Mueller's investigation.
Asked about the indictments during a meeting with business leaders about his tax cut plan at the White House on Tuesday, Trump ignored the questions.
Earlier, the president followed up his tweets about the investigation with one more post about tax cuts.
"I hope people will start to focus on our Massive Tax Cuts for Business (jobs) and the Middle Class (in addition to Democrat corruption)!" he wrote.
The posts were Trump's second Twitter screed since Mueller's office announced Monday that Papadopoulos had secretly pleaded guilty three weeks ago to lying to federal agents about his contacts with Kremlin-connected Russians.
Papadopoulos, 30, spent 11 months on the Trump campaign as a volunteer foreign policy adviser after working for Ben Carson's presidential campaign.
George Papadopoulos Uncredited
Last year, Trump named Papadopoulos as a member of his foreign policy team and in a meeting with the editorial board of The Washington Post called him an "excellent guy." The Trump campaign also released a photo in March 2016 of a meeting of the then-candidate's foreign policy team. The photo shows Trump and Papadopoulos sitting at the same table.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that gathering “was the only interaction they ever had.”
"He was somebody who played a minimal role, if one at all," Sanders added of Papadopoulos.
A photo from Donald Trump's Instagram account shows George Papadopoulos, third from left, with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on March 31, 2016 at a meeting called "National Security Meeting" in Washington, D.C. @realdonaldtrump / via Instagram
Meanwhile, Mueller’s office also announced Monday that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his longtime business associate Rick Gates were indicted by a federal grand jury on 12 charges, including conspiracy against the U.S.
"Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????" Trump tweeted Monday after the news broke, adding, "Also, there is NO COLLUSION!"This GIF shows how a tsunami-like event washes over the United States and recedes again – leaving behind a very different landscape. Compiled from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, this is a graphic representation of unemployment levels in each U.S. state over the last 15 years. That tsunami? The Great Recession, from 2008 onwards. Here's how it changed the face of the nation.
The lighter the pink on this map, the nearer the relevant states are to full employment. The deeper the purple, the closer they are to the highest level of unemployment, 15%.
A recent poll shows most Americans think the year 2000 was the greatest in the nation's history. Judging from the employment figures, the U.S. was indeed in great shape at the turn of the millennium. In 2000, most states were colored in the lightest-but-one shade of pink, denoting unemployment levels between 2.5% and 4.99%. Only Virginia did better, with unemployment under 2.5%. Seven states and DC did worse, but not by that much. Alaska's 6.4% unemployment was the highest in the nation, followed by the District of Columbia (5.6%), West Virginia (5.5%), Mississippi (5.4%), Louisiana (5.3%), Washington state (5.2%), Oregon (5.1%) and Montana (5%).
Some international context: in the same year, unemployment in the UK stood at 5.6%, in Spain at 14.2%, in France at 10.2% and in Germany at 7.7%.
And it's all downhill from there. Even before the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. economy experienced significant turbulence, with negative consequences for the job market. If 2000 was a high point in retrospect, it's also because it's the year in which the dot-com bubble burst.
By 2001, third-degree pink has taken over California, Nevada and Idaho on the West Coast; Texas, Arkansas and both Carolinas in the South; and Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky in the Midwest.
A year later, only a minority of states, most in the northern Plains and northern New England, are still resisting third-degree pink. Oregon, meanwhile, is turning positively purple, with unemployment in the 7.5% to 9.99% bracket.
In 2004, the fever seems to have broken. For the next few years, the dark pink tide recedes. By 2007, only 12 states and DC fall in the 5% to 7.49% bracket, all other states are a level down, between 2.5% and 4.99%.
This is, of course, the quiet before the storm. In 2008, only the big empty states in the middle escape a return to third-degree pinkishness. Michigan, home of the hard-hit auto industry, leads the nation in unemployment (8%), followed closely by Rhode Island (7.8%) and California (barely clinging to third-degree pink with 7.3% unemployment).
Things get worse quickly. In 2008, no state had double-digit unemployment. In 2009, no less than 14 states were coloring purple – none in a deeper hue than Michigan, with a whopping 13.7% of its labor force out of a job. With unemployment hovering between 11% and 11.3%, Oregon, Nevada, South Carolina, California, Rhode Island and Alabama were the other worst-hit states. There were seven more double-digit states: North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Illinois (all between 10.2% and 10.6% unemployment).
By 2010, government support for the auto industry turns the tide in Michigan (where unemployment drops to 12.6%), but with a 13.5% jobless rate, Nevada now heads the deep purple club. Things have also gotten worse in California (12.2%).
Is it judicious government policy or the self-healing power of the free market? Probably a bit of both: eventually, the tide turns. By 2012, Nevada has killed off the deep purple league, with its unemployment now at 11.2%.
In the three full years since then, the economy has made a strong recovery. By 2013, fourth-degree pink was loosening its grip on the East Coast and a year later, it only lingered on in California, Nevada and Mississippi.
By 2015, the last fourth-degree pink states have disappeared. But the new normal is not as rosy as the good old days back in 2000, when only a handful of states suffered from third-degree unemployment. Fully 12 states have unemployment rates between 6% and 7%, another 17 hover between 5% and 6%. The darker pinks have colonised the West Coast and most of the eastern U.S. Escaping with unemployment levels between 2.5% and 4.99% are the northeast, Virginia, Indiana and Ohio, and the middle states, from Texas to the Dakotas. Low unemployment is no longer the norm; which is why they call it the 'Jobless Recovery'.
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Sources: Table 1New Zealander Nigel Richards can’t speak much French beyond “bonjour,” but that didn’t stop the Scrabble mastermind from winning the word game’s French-language world championship on Monday.
Richards, 48, defeated a French-speaking competitor from Gabon during the final round of the tournament in Louvain, Belgium, the Guardian reported. He’d memorized the entire French Scrabble dictionary in only nine weeks though the words mean nothing to him.
In a tweet, the French Scrabble federation hailed Richards’ win under such unusual circumstances as unprecedented.
“He won’t know what [the words] mean, wouldn’t be able to carry out a conversation in French I wouldn’t think,” Liz Fagerlund, former president of the New Zealand Scrabble Association and a friend of Richards, told the New Zealand Herald.
The dictionary Richards memorized includes all French words made up of two to 10 letters.
“To him words are just combinations of letters,” Yves Brenez, the competition’s organizer, told FranceTV. “I’m perhaps exaggerating a bit, but he comes up with scrabbled (words of seven or more letters) that others take 10 years to know.”
Richards has dominated the game in his native tongue too, winning world titles for English Scrabble in 2007 and 2011. He’s also captured five U.S. national titles.
He received a standing ovation for his French win and required a translator to express his gratitude to the crowd, CBC News reported.
Le #Scrabble francophone est entré dans une nouvelle dimension ce soir! L'ovation du public pour Nigel Richards. pic.twitter.com/67kmw8eIQ4 — Kévin Meng (@kevinspmeng) July 20, 2015
Among Scrabble aficionados, Richards is famously reclusive and remains a mysterious figure, according to a profile in New Zealand's Sunday Star Times from 2010.
"He's like a computer with a big ginger beard," Howard Warner, a Scrabble representative who's faced off against Richards, told the Star Times. "You go to international tournaments and everyone's sitting around at the end of the day telling Nigel-stories. Of course, he's never there, so the legend grows."
His success is owed to his highly mathematical brain, experts in the game have said. He never showed much interest in language growing up and only picked up the game at 28 when his mother, Adrienne Fischer, introduced him to it.Guitar + Vox + OhMiBod = Vibrator responding to the sounds of the guitar. Ever have those days where it you’re holding two objects and it suddenly *clicks* that they’re meant to be put together? Well a box of toys showed up from OhMiBod and the VOX AmPlug came on the same day, and it suddenly dawned on me that together they could be the perfect combo gift and only ~$100! [There’s a quick video if below if you don’t know what i mean.]
Ok ok, hear me out. The VOX AmPlug is perfect for electric guitarists who want to hear that beautiful full bodied sound through headphones. The OhMiBod and the more attractive and enticing new Gspot vibrate to the music connected through a headphone cable… Connect the two together ~ and its an interesting way to seriously touch someone through the music you PLAY.
We all know girls can’t resist a musician (yes, yes, protest if you must, but we all know its pretty hard?) ~ this would take that love of musician and his music to a whole new level. Also, if he is the worst guitar player ever maybe this would be a nice gift for his poor girlfriend. And for all those groupies you can even plug in more than one… Come to think of it… this *could* work out nicely for those gamer guys too, hook it up to the output of your XBOX/PC/etc and every shot you take (or when you get shot) in a shooter game will have a whole new effect?Looking for news you can trust?
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Remember that night you drank too much Drambuie and then had a dream in which Wesley Clark, Picabo Street, Todd Palin, Superman, a WWE Diva Champion, and Nick Lachey were all shooting bazookas and other loud weaponry at inanimate objects in the desert?
Well, mega-producers Dick Wolf and Mark Burnett read your mind, stole your idea, and made a summer reality show out of it for NBC.
Stars Earn Stripes (premiering Monday at 8 p.m. EDT—with a two hour season opener) pairs each C-list celeb with a military or law enforcement tough guy. Together, they simulate wartime scenarios, all of which look like deleted scenes from Joel Schumacher movies. Every time Dean Cain or Todd Palin make something go boom, they raise money for their partner’s charity.
All of this is conducted under the watchful eyes of hosts Samantha Harris and ex-Army general/ex-presidential candidate/ex-non-reality-show-personality Wesley Clark (just for a frame of reference, the guy used to save the lives of Kosovars).
Yes, the show means well. Nick Lachey and co. gush endlessly about how lionhearted our men and women in uniform are. The episodes are set to music that somehow manages to sound even more glowingly patriotic than the score to Air Force One. Things detonate violently.
It’s also one of the most patronizing things to which you could ever subject yourself. But if watching the one-time 98 Degrees frontman fall out of a helicopter in the name of charity and freedom sounds appealing to you, then I suppose it sounds appealing to you.
Here’s a TV spot, in case you need any more convincing one way or the other:
Click here for more TV and movie features from Mother Jones. To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.FBI Director James Comey is being called on to resign by former U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova.
Comey concluded that Hillary Clinton was in the wrong for handling confidential material with a private server, DiGenova free-passed Clinton out of trouble and granted immunity deals to five Clinton aids, including her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.
Having made a laughing stock of the FBI, Comey is feeling the pressure to answer for DiGenova is calling a “protected investigation.”
BizPac Review is reporting:
Matthew Whittaker, another former federal attorney, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Congress should know why the Clinton aides were “treated differently than any other investigation has ever been done.” Mills got the immunity deal after refusing to let investigators examiner her computer, according to the Associated Press, which first reported on Friday the multiple agreements shielding key figures in the Clinton emails scandal from prosecution. “This now gets to the point of a serious question as to the director’s fitness for office,” DiGenova told The CNF. He said a grand jury should have been convened and they should have issued a subpoena for Mills’ computer. […] DiGenova called for Congress to hold hearings with Comey testifying under oath and to consider sanctions such as censorship or impeachment. Such a hearing is scheduled for Sept. 28, 2016, before the House Judiciary Committee.
Comey ought to answer for the embarrassing number of immunities granted during the investigations. Steps were taken to ensure an outcome which simultaneously allowed that Hillary Clinton was responsible for wrongdoing while also leaving her actions without consequence.
For that Comey failed to do a job he no longer deserves.
H/T: Young Conservatives
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share to your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you.Over the past four decades, Alan Moore has earned a reputation — and a massive, worldwide audience — as a historian and champion of the macabre. In his legendary comics “V for Vendetta,” “Watchmen” and “From Hell,” the natural and the supernatural can be difficult to distinguish. Now, he’s published a new novel, “Jerusalem,” which is epic in scope and phantasmagoric to its briny core. It takes place over 1,000 years in the English town of Northampton, also known here as the Boroughs. It’s a hardscrabble realm teeming with painters and prostitutes, would-be poets and biblical demons. The angels play snooker with the eternal souls of the residents on the line.
“Jerusalem” revels in the idea of eternalism, the theory that past, present and future exist all at once. Everything that has ever happened in Northampton is still happening. Everything that eventually will happen there is already happening now. Amid that chronological and ontological maelstrom, Moore’s characters must reckon with the occasional slippage between their town and a shadowy parallel realm known as Mansoul. From Mansoul, the deceased can watch all of the goings-on in the town.
Moore has divided Jerusalem into three main sections, and each could stand alone as a novel unto itself, yet together they form something extraordinary. The multi-generational story involves dozens of people, but in some regards Moore’s home town of Northampton itself serves as his primary muse and as a character in its own right. “Jerusalem” celebrates its “long tradition as a haven for religious firebrands, insurrectionists and the plain old mad.”
[7 graphic novels and memoirs you should read this summer]
The novel doesn’t have a through-line plot arc any more than do Hieronymus Bosch’s hellscapes. But we learn a great deal about the Vernal and Warren families. The artist Alma Warren and her brother Michael come across as the most realized of the ensemble. After suffering a chemical accident at work and then knocking himself unconscious, Michael begins to lose his grip on reality. Alma creates a series of mixed-media artworks inspired by his visions and prepares what will be an incendiary exhibition. Recurring themes include the sordid marriage of madness and art, the often unseen presence of practical magic in everyday life, and the ways in which history can glue together a family and a community. It takes a village to produce a village idiot.
The local asylum is full of people in similar circumstances as Michael, their fleeting glimpses of Mansoul continuing to haunt them. That nether world is closer than is immediately obvious. “Michael felt like he was floating in a rubber ring, just underneath the smoky yellow ceiling of the living room. He wasn’t certain how he’d got there and he didn’t know if he should be alarmed about the corner-fairy who was waving to him from the shady recesses only a few feet above.”
In Mansoul, language breaks down and then gets more or less put back together again, as Moore illustrates most acutely in a virtuosic chapter that pays homage to — and parodies — the gobbledygook of “Finnegans Wake”-era James Joyce. Moore’s own prose is always lively and rarely orthodox. He can evoke mirth and dread in equal measure. His similes want to leap from their pages. A lackluster intimate encounter ends “like an old tea towel that had been wrung out time after time until the pattern on it disappeared.” An approaching storm looked “like darkened pearls that seethed and boiled and were become a changing and fantastic swim of wrinkles.” One character thinks of a woman’s posterior as “two wrestlers full of muscles in a crush, each one in turn gaining an inch on their opponent who immediately takes it back, deadlocked so that they merely seem to heave from side by side.”
The prose sparkles at every turn, but that’s not to say it’s without flaws. Some entire chapters, particularly in the middle Mansoul section, struck me as wholly soporific. Moore also demonstrates an affinity for overwriting. I was hard-pressed to find many nouns that did not arrive mansplained with an unnecessary adjective. Here’s a typical sentence: “The big square bathroom with its plaster-rounded corners is a blunted cube of grey steam rising from the eight-foot chasm of the filling tub, an ostentatious lifeboat made from the tide-lined fibreglass.” Perhaps because he’s accustomed to communicating visually, Moore sometimes forgets that when it comes to language, less is often more. That said, the humor and wisdom and the sympathies we feel for his characters make it easy to absolve these transgressions.
Author Alan Moore
The period vocabularies contribute to the rare sense of immersion, as does the sheer size of the book — almost 1,300 pages. In preparation for a long train ride, I had to take a razor knife to the spine of my copy to vivisect away the portion I’d already read so I could fit the remainder in my backpack. Fortunately, the story weighs as heavily on the mind as in the hands. “Jerusalem” is a novel of ideas about the conjunction of time and place. It’s a difficult book in all the right ways in that it brilliantly challenges us to confront what we think and know about the very fabric of existence.
That maximalist, kitchen-sink approach accounts for many of its pleasures. There are unexpected twists and frequent hairpin changes in mood. What makes it truly shine, however, is its insistence that our workaday world might not be quite as mundane as we think. Lurking in the corners of the ceiling, we might just find a portal to a different realm. The imagination Moore displays here and the countless joys and surprises he evokes make “Jerusalem” a massive literary achievement for our time — and maybe for all times simultaneously.
Andrew Ervin is the author of the novel “Burning Down George Orwell’s House.” His nonfiction book “Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World” will be published next year.NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Is the Tennessee Titans' defensive "front five" about to make a significant jump?
ESPN.com’s resident scout Matt Williamson thinks so.
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I checked in with him after the Titans agreed to terms with outside linebackers Brian Orakpo and Derrick Morgan Friday morning.
"Dick LeBeau usually keeps his OLBs on a specific side of the field for the most part, but I am not sure that really matters here," Williamson said. "I like both quite a bit. Orakpo is more well-rounded, and at his best is just a better football player, but of course, we don’t know what we will see from him. Morgan is a better pass rusher than against the run.
"But overall, I think this makes their 'front five' [nose tackle, ends and outside backer] potentially lethal, especially if they draft Leonard Williams, which I still think they should."
Expect Morgan to be on the defensive left and Orakpo to be on the defensive right. Those two and defensive end Jurrell Casey should each provide a degree of pass pressure. Williams is hardly a lock as the No. 2 pick, but he is a handful who would draw attention.
Ruston Webster offered comments about all the Titans' signings in a news release.
"Derrick is a true pro, and you could see his growth in a new system," Webster said. "Brian has a proven record and adds a different dimension to our group."
"Potentially lethal" is not something you hear about any area of the Titans right now.
You have my permission to be encouraged.A two-year study from the National Bureau of Economic Research recently found that Uber and Lyft riders with “Black-sounding” names waited longer to have trip requests approved than riders with “White-sounding” names. Now, Lyft has announced a new measure it’s taking to curb racism: a hidden score measuring driver discrimination.
In November, Senator Al Franken wrote an open letter to Lyft’s CEO, Logan Green, and Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, asking them to address racism on their platforms. On Wednesday, Sen. Franken released both letters. In its response, Lyft said it will start tracking driver cancellation and quality of service for drivers in poor, minority communities. From the letter:
Also, moving forward we will enhance our regular thorough review of ride cancellations (as noted above), by including a focus on cancellation rates and quality of service in “minority census tracts” as defined in 12 USCS § 4502 (a census tract that has a minority population of at least 30 percent and a median income of less than 100 percent of the area median income).
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Lyft already had a series of metrics for tracking driver behavior, but now the company will be monitoring and analyzing driver behavior in poor and minority areas specifically as well as looking at drivers’ cancellation rates and their ratings there, using real-time tracking to screen for discrimination. Lyft says that it sends alerts for each trip cancellation, and discriminatory practices will result in “immediate termination.” We reached out to Lyft for more details and will update when we hear back.
The move is very similar to Airbnb’s community overhaul after a Harvard study found, yet again, discrimination against Black users. Airbnb began tracking hosts’ rejections more closely, offered more resources to guests who felt they were discriminated against, and prevented hosts from re-booking to a new guests after cancelling against another.
Will the new monitoring process halt discrimination on the platform? That depends on when it occurs. Don MacKenzie is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington and one of the author’s of the original study. Dr. MacKenzie immediately notes that, unlike Uber, Lyft shows drivers a picture of riders before they accept a ride request. So if a Lyft driver doesn’t want Black riders, he can just reject the initial request. With Uber, drivers would accept request then reject when they inferred they’d have a Black rider.
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“If the driver’s inclined to discriminate, they’ll just not accept that ride in the first place,” he says. “So there would be no reason that someone would basically cancel in a discriminatory manner. It’s kind of measuring the wrong thing here.”
Hypothetically, the entire approach could backfire by letting racist drivers off the hook for their discrimination; they could just never accept initial rides from Black people. If cancellation alone is being tracked, it doesn’t seem like this behavior would be flagged. So would it be better to track all rejections and cancellations, even before the ride request was accepted? Dr. MacKenzie says that just tracking drivers’ upfront rejections would pick up too much noise.
“They don’t want their trigger to be too sensitive,” he says. “You can get some false positives. They don’t want to start booting drivers off the platform based on flimsy evidence. I hope and I trust that they will be fairly prudent in how they do this.”
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At best, the new process would mostly flag drivers that are racist and sloppy about the cover-up. But that doesn’t mean, Dr. MacKenzie notes, that the data isn’t worth tracking or that it’s not worth Lyft’s time to root out discrimination. He stands by the study’s findings that there are racist drivers out there discriminating on Lyft, but he says it’s likely a “small subset” of the driving force.
“Go read the comments section,” he said. “Those people are out there.”Counter-terror police arrested Abderrahim Moutaharrik alongside three others during a key raid to stop the first devastating ISIS terror attack on Italian soil. Officers said the terror sleeper cell had allegedly been given orders by ISIS commandos in Syria to wipe out one of the centres of Christianity.
POLICE He is listed online as Switzerland's welterweight national champion for two years running
Moutaharrik, 28, was taken into custody alongside his burka-clad wife Salma Bencharki Police have released pictures of the Italian national boxer and father-of-two wearing a black shirt adorned with the ISIS flag in the kickboxing ring. He is listed online as Switzerland's welterweight national champion for two years running. Security sources said the terror cell planned the terror attack on the Italian capital using WhatsApp, which has recently created an encrypted service.
POLICE; GETTY The Italian national boxer and father-of-two wearing a black shirt adorned with the ISIS flag
However, investigators said they intercepted communication between the kickboxer, who has won competitions across Europe, and ISIS terror leaders in Syria. Milan prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli said the attacks paid "particular attention to the city of Rome during the Holy Year". He added the terrorists planned to attack the Holy See of Catholicism and the Pope himself. Pope Francis announced a Holy Year, which only happens four times a century, from last December until this November, with special celebrations and pilgrimages planned.
Detectives believe Moutaharrik also wanted to attack the Israeli embassy after he told an ISIS fighter he planned "to hit Israel in Rome". He continued: "I swear I will be the first to attack them in this Italy of crusaders, I swear I'll attack it, in the Vatican God willing." In a separate conversation, the same suspect mentioned contacting an Albanian man to buy up a range of guns. The attack was not thought to be imminent but authorities acted quickly to stop them from travelling to ISIS territory.
POLICE The terrorists planned to attack the Holy See of Catholicism and the Pope himself
Moutaharrik had allegedly planned to smuggle his children, aged just two and four, from Milan to radical strongholds in Syria before returning to carry out the attack. Italian interior minister Angelino Alfano explained: "They had very bad intentions." Prosecutor Romanelli said: "The new aspect is that we are not talking about a generic indication of an attack but a specific person being appointed to act on Italian soil. "Rome attracts attention because it is a destination for Christian pilgrims." Another Moroccan man who was allegedly planning to travel with them, was identified as Abderrahmane Khachia, 23.
POLICE Moutaharri was taken into custody alongside his burka-clad wife Salma Bencharkifoster + partners plans 73-storey residential tower in london
foster + partners plans 73-storey residential tower in london
all images courtesy of foster + partners / berkeley group
foster + partners has submitted plans to local authorities for the redevelopment of south quay plaza in east london. working alongside berkeley property developers, the proposed masterplan reinvigorates the waterfront, making the area publicly accessible, and providing approximately 950 homes and retail outlets across two distinct towers of 73 and 36 storeys respectively. the regeneration involves demolishing an existing retail complex, two office buildings and a leisure facility, which restrict access and leave very little room for accessible civic space.
(left) the 73-storey tower rises above its surroundings
(right) retail outlets and dining locations activate the waterfront
the structures comprise a range of apartment types and sizes to meet the varied housing needs of the area, with a significant proportion of properties deemed affordable. an important part of the scheme is the integration of 1.5 acres of high quality external space and the provision of shops, cafés, restaurants and leisure facilities.
the development includes the provision of shops, cafés, restaurants and leisure facilities
the development will provide the city with around 750 full-time jobs, with the vast majority of existing on-site employment relocated within the area. additionally, 465 workers will be employed as part of the construction process. foster’s skyscraper maximizes distance the between the tower and surrounding structures, offering expansive views across the british capital. the building’s fluted form highlights its slender proportions, while corner windows soften the hard edges of the edifice.
the scheme integrates 1.5 acres of high quality external public space
from an environmental perspective, an on-site energy center – featuring a combined heat and power plant – recycles power, providing hot water and electricity, while photovoltaic panels offer renewable energy throughout the design. solar access and sunlight levels have been maximized by the position, shape and orientation of the buildings, with landscaping designed to minimize wind disturbance.
the residential towers occupy a prominent waterside location in east london
‘we are delighted to submit our plans for south quay plaza to the london borough of tower hamlets,’ explained harry lewis, managing director at berkeley homes (south east london), ‘our plans for south quay plaza will deliver a world class development. we will provide much needed new homes, including new affordable homes, over an acre of new and enhanced public open space, a re-activated waterfront onto south dock and the millwall cutting, as well as space for retail, bars and restaurants. this is a rare opportunity to deliver such significant, high quality public realm in canary wharf.’
aerial view showing the existing site location
site plan indicating the proximity of the towers to the waterLibya has not done much to |
One of the main recipients was senior adviser Valerie Jarrett whose management company left government-subsidized housing complexes in ruins.
The residents at places like Grove Parc Plaza didn't fare so well. While the crony rats on the outside were buying up mansions by the seashore in Martha's Vineyard, the four-legged kind were running around inside the dilapidated, condemned tenements.
No worries though. The urban dwellers will still vote for the One.
They still think Obama hasn't forgotten the little people who bought his community organizer elite-to-street jive and catapulted him into the halls of power.
He remembered them all as he fawned over 'Bey and Jay' in Manahattan this past Tuesday.
...the good thing about so many of us here-and I know, I speak for Jay and Bey-is we remember what it's like not having anything, and we know people who were just as talented as us that didn't get the same break, the same chance. And Jay-Z now knows what my life is like: We both have daughters, and our wives are more popular than we are," Obama said to laughter and applause. "So we've got a little bond there. It's hard, but it's okay."
The President then held Beyonce up as a stellar example of womanhood for Malia and Sasha, his own daughters.
Beyoncé couldn't be a better role model for our daughters because she carries herself with such class and poise and has so much talent.
Can't you just see Malia and Sasha 10 years from now without a high school diploma strutting across a stage half-naked?
Obama's either flying way too close to the sun or his demons are getting the better of him.
From his Gabby Giffords style campaign rally in Las Vegas soon after the murders of American citizens to his passive aggressive snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in favor of an appearance on David Letterman, to his psychopathic identification with hip hop singers at a posh party, Obama's "empathy deficit" which goes unnoticed by his supporters and the mainstream media was startling during these past two weeks.
As usual, the gulf between Mr. Obama's true feelings about the poor suckers who voted for him vs. his public declarations of love was too much. True to form, he projected his elitist distaste for the nobodies onto Mr. Romney.
In an Univision interview on Thursday Obama criticized his opponent's lack of compassion for the 47% of Americans who don't pay taxes.
When you express an attitude that half the country considers itself victims, that somehow they want to be dependent on government, my thinking is maybe you haven't gotten around a lot.
Not like Mr. Obama, who definitely gets around--especially Manhattan parties, basketball courts, golf courses, fundraisers, and campaign rallies filled with the young and the dumb.
Read more M. Catharine Evans at Potter Williams ReportSolarCity will soon have fewer employees to carry out chairman Elon Musk’s clean-energy dreams for the California solar installer.
SolarCity cofounders Lyndon and Peter Rive this week announced a “realignment” that will involve laying off an unspecified number of workers by the end of this year, according to an Aug. 17 regulatory filing.
The Rive brothers, who are also Musk’s cousins, agreed to whittle their annual salaries down from $275,000 each to $1 per year, the legal minimum salary. The company told investors it expected to take charges of $3 million to $5 million for severance costs related to the layoffs.
SolarCity, the biggest U.S. solar installer, is facing slowing demand for its rooftop solar installations.
The company last week posted another unprofitable quarter and said its debt had increased to $3.35 billion. Solar installations may drop over 15 percent in the next quarter to 170 megawatts of panels, down from 201 megawatts in the second quarter.
A Maryland home gleams with solar panels. Image: The Washington Post/Getty Images
News of the layoffs comes after Musk, SolarCity’s top shareholder, unveiled a plan to make “solar roof” modules that serve as roof shingles, instead of separate panels affixed to the roof. The company will also develop a storage system that could help the main electric grid to run more smoothly and reliably.
SolarCity’s realignment also arrives as the company prepares to be sold to Tesla Motors, Musk’s electric car company, for $2.6 billion. Musk proposed the deal earlier this summer, explaining it was part of his broader vision to build a clean energy powerhouse — one that allows customers to produce solar energy on their rooftops, charge batteries in their garage and drive electric vehicles powered only by the sun.
Some analysts, however, have been more skeptical of Musk’s rationale and questioned whether the move isn’t just an attempt to bolster Musk’s business empire. The billionaire entrepreneur holds a 21.3 percent stake in Tesla and a 22.2 percent stake in SolarCity.
Elon Musk delivers a speech during the Climate Summit for Local Leaders in Paris, Dec. 4, 2015. Image: Getty Images
Other experts have previously observed that the timing of the Tesla-SolarCity deal couldn’t be worse, given that both companies are years away from profitability and both are quickly burning through cash.
Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James Financial Inc., told Bloomberg that SolarCity’s potential layoffs “are not at all surprising” given the company’s lower demand outlook.
He said the Rives' $1-a-year salaries were “a symbolic move, an appropriate one in my view, but still mostly symbolism,” Bloomberg reported.Sasha Volokh’s post arguing that his version of libertarianism might not allow government spending to provide for asteroid defense has drawn predictable howls of outrage, including Brad DeLong’s claim that it proves that “libertarians are completely insane.”
One answer to such claims is that most other libertarian thinkers don’t agree with Sasha’s position. David Friedman, for instance, famously argued against it in The Machinery of Freedom, and Sasha himself notes Bryan Caplan’s contrary view. Caplan and Friedman are, of course, two of the most radical important libertarian scholars out there.
That said, I don’t think that Sasha’s view is necessarily ridiculous or “insane.” Any theory based on absolute respect for certain rights necessarily carries the risk that it will lead to catastrophe in some instances. Let’s say you believe that torture is always wrong. Then you would not resort to it even in a case where relatively mild torture of a terrorist is the only way to prevent a nuclear attack that kills millions. What if you think that it’s always wrong to knowingly kill innocent civilians? Then you would oppose strategic bombing even if it were the only way to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II. How about absolute rights to freedom of political speech? If you are committed to them, that means you oppose censorship even if it’s the only way to prevent Nazi or communist totalitarians from coming to power and slaughtering millions.
Many such scenarios are improbable. But over the long sweep of human history, improbable events can and do happen. Had Kerensky suppressed the Bolsheviks in 1917 (as he easily could have that summer) or had the Weimar Republic done the same with the Nazis, the world would be a vastly better place, even though most political censorship (even of evil ideologies) causes far more harm than good. A civilization-destroying asteroid attack during the next few hundred years is also a low-probability event.
Thus, the potential flaw in Sasha’s view is one that it shares with all absolutist rights theories. Scenarios like the above are one of the main reasons why I’m not a rights-absolutist myself. But I don’t believe that all the great moral theorists who endorse such views from Kant to the present are either ridiculous or “insane.”
It’s also worth noting that Sasha’s approach would in fact justify asteroid defense in virtually any plausible real world scenario. As he puts it, “if you could show that, once the impending asteroid impact became known, all hell would break loose and lots of rights be violated by looters et al. during the ensuing anarchy, I could justify the taxation as a way of preventing those rights violations; but this wouldn’t apply if, say, the asteroid impact were unknown to the public.” It’s highly unlikely that news of an impending asteroid impact whose onset was known to the government could be prevented from leaking to the general public. Even if it could, “all hell” would surely break loose after the asteroid impact, resulting in numerous violations of libertarian rights by looters, bandits, people stealing food out of desperation, and so on. Either way, Sasha’s analysis ends up justifying asteroid defense.
If I understand Sasha correctly, he’s only partially a rights absolutist. He doesn’t believe that you can ever sacrifice rights for utilitarian benefits, even truly enormous ones. But he does think that you can justify small rights violations as a way of forestalling bigger ones. Sasha is an absolutist when it comes to trading off libertarian rights for other considerations, but a maximizer when it comes to trading off rights for greater protection of those same rights in the future. Effective defense against a massive asteroid impact easily passes Sasha’s rights-maximizing test.
Obviously, I welcome correction from Sasha if I have misinterpreted his views.
UPDATE: Mark Kleiman responds to this post here:
Ilya Somin is right to point out that any theory that puts an absolute constraint on action runs into problems when inaction has catastrophic consequences. But if he really can’t see the difference between torture and income taxation – can’t understand why absolute opposition to torture is not analogous to absolute opposition to public spending on public goods – then “loopy” is entirely too weak a word.
I of course agree that torture of innocent people is worse than unjustified income taxation. On the other hand, I’m not convinced that’s true of torture of captured terrorists to extract information in order to prevent future attacks. Perhaps the latter should still be forbidden (e.g. for slippery slope reasons, or because torture isn’t actually effective in extracting needed information). But I don’t think it’s either “loopy” or obviously wrong to believe that it’s less bad than government violations of innocent people’s property rights and economic liberties. Even many nonlibertarians agree that stealing from the innocent is a greater wrong than at least some types of physical abuse of captured terrorists. Indeed, the majority of Americans believe that there should be very stringent limits to income taxation, while also believing that torture of terrorists is justified in at least some circumstances. So if that view is “loopy,” the loopiness is certainly not confined to libertarians.Someone’s finally doing something about Twitter’s gendered harassment problem. There’s just one problem: it isn’t Twitter. Yesterday, Women, Action & the Media (WAM!), a nonprofit group that addresses gender issues in the media, announced that they have partnered with Twitter to “cut down on the harassment of women” on the social media platform.
WAM! invites women who use Twitter to report harassment on their own form, which has been tailored to suit the sort of harassment that women most often face online and to address the inadequacies of Twitter’s own reporting system. Twitter’s harassment form, for example, only asks whether the harassing user in question is making violent threats, posting spam, exposing private information, or engaging in the unspecified category of “harassment.” WAM!’s form, by contrast, contains seven specific categories of harassment including: threats of violence, doxxing, posting false information, hate speech, and revenge porn.
Crucially, WAM!’s form also allows women to indicate whether they are being harassed by a single person or by multiple people, a degree of flexibility better suited to the way in which women are often harassed online and one that Twitter’s own reporting system does not allow. For women who are attacked en masse, this new reporting system will save substantial time and energy. When feminist author Jessica Valenti asked Twitter this summer if anyone knew of a country in which tampons were subsidized, for example, hundreds of users sent her abusive messages. Under Twitter’s system, Valenti would have had to individually file a report against each user—a draining, time-consuming process that women in the midst of sustained harassment campaigns often lack the stamina to complete. With WAM!, on the other hand, Valenti could have composed a single report describing the nature of the harassment while simply providing an example of a harassing tweet.
If it sounds like WAM! is doing all the heavy lifting in this partnership, that’s because it is. In a phone interview, Jaclyn Friedman, the Executive Director of WAM!, told me that Women, Action, & the Media will act as an “authorized reporter, an organization that gets vetted and which represents a group that that often gets targeted on Twitter.” Under this system, WAM! escalates the reports they receive to Twitter, collecting detailed data about Twitter’s responses to those reports. Once the program is out of its pilot stage, WAM! promises sit down with Twitter in order to “improve their responses” to gendered harassment.
If there’s any doubt that gendered harassment on Twitter is a problem serious enough to warrant this third-party intervention, a Pew Research Center report from last month indicates that young women are disproportionately subjected to the most severe types of Internet harassment including stalking and sexual harassment. Pew’s data dispels an earlier report from the think tank Demos, that is sometimes cited to indicate that men receive more harassment online than women. Where the Demos report analyzed tweets sent to less than a hundred British celebrities and public figures, Pew surveyed nearly 3,000 adult Internet users in the U.S. Particularly alarming among Pew’s findings are the facts that a quarter of young women have been sexually harassed online and that over a quarter have been stalked.
But if gendered Internet harassment is this urgent of a problem, why is Twitter outsourcing it to WAM! instead of addressing it in-house? With Twitter’s second quarter revenues clocking in at an impressive $312 million, it would seem the social media service could afford to expand their reporting form, and even hire more staff to address the hateful messages that are so often exchanged on their service. Instead, as Valleywag reports, Twitter is currently spending over $10 million to construct new offices across the street from their current building, even investigating the possibility of building a skybridge between the two buildings. Twitter told Bloomberg that the expense of the skybridge would be justified by the “five minutes per employee” that it would take to “go down an elevator, out of one building, into the other, and up the elevator to the right floor.” There’s nothing like an extravagant and unnecessary construction project to communicate to women that their wellbeing is worth less than the inconvenience of a five-minute elevator ride.
In our interview, Jaclyn Friedman openly expressed her opinion that Twitter should be handling this problem themselves instead of turning to WAM!.
“I’ll speak frankly,” she said. “I think it’s really unjust that they need our free labor for this. Twitter is making a lot of money and they should be putting the resources into this. We should not have to do this project and I don’t think it would be a shock for Twitter to hear me say that.”
Even the reporting form that WAM! is implementing was, according to their press release, “created pro-bono by an experienced developer concerned about [the] increasing harassment of women online.” Twitter, it seems, will reap all of the potential benefits of this partnership by relying on free labor instead of diverting their own resources to address the problem to this degree of specificity.
In an ideal world, Twitter should be expected to address its harassment problem head on. As tech culture critic Shanley Kane wrote for Model View Culture, “Twitter is a multi-billion dollar company with a massive engineering team, and Twitter’s response to online abuse should embody its position and resources.” Kane also nods to Twitter’s diversity figures, which show that only 30 percent of Twitter employees are female, in order to ask: “Why isn’t Twitter hiring full-time talent from marginalized and underrepresented communities to address these issues, instead of putting up a Wufoo form someone created for free?”
Twitter’s continued inaction on gendered harassment is especially frustrating because it isn’t exactly an unknown problem for their executives. As Amanda Hess reports for Slate, when Twitter CEO Dick Costolo fielded questions from users for CNBC’s Closing Bell, he completely sidestepped questions about harassment and abuse even though they constituted 28 percent of the questions he received. It took the high-profile exit of Zelda Williams from the service for Twitter vice president of trust and safety Del Harvey to promise an improved response to some forms of harassment. The tangible effects of that promise, however, have yet to be felt by many women on Twitter who continue to rely on independently-created collaborative blocking tools to filter out the most abusive users.
Although WAM! would clearly prefer Twitter to clean up after itself, they seem eager—“glad,” even according to their press release—to fix the problem by whatever means necessary.
“We only have so much control over what Twitter does and we can control what we do,” Friedman said. “We’ve decided that this is urgent enough and important enough that we’re going to overlook the fact that they should be handling it themselves.”
WAM!’s announcement yesterday will be seen as a signal of hope to those beleaguered female Twitter users who regularly find themselves on the receiving end of vitriolic messages. But the nature of WAM!’s partnership with Twitter brings the social media service’s reluctance to correct its own flaws into sharp relief. It’s hard not to see this as the high-tech equivalent of a weary mother cleaning her child’s filthy room after repeatedly asking him to do it himself. Indeed, Twitter’s reliance on WAM! is little more than the virtual continuation of a long tradition of devaluing women’s labor, labor that is so often necessary to maintain the habitability of the spaces in which we live, work, and, yes, even tweet.
WAM!’s project may prove to be a decisive moment in the history of combatting gendered Internet harassment but Twitter should remember it, shamefully, as the moment when they used the labor of those most affected by their service’s shortcomings to fix their own problems.This is a guest post by John Saxon.
Well, that is what one client said to me, when we were going through strategies to take-down his ex-wife by getting a private investigator to investigate her drug activities. He suspected that his wife, whom he was separated from pending divorce, was selling ice/crystal meth for her new Muslim boyfriend. To really piss him off, she was using his car, which she still had, to transport the stuff around. After I suggested it, he paid one of his unemployed friends to stake out “his” house and track her movements. As he owned the car still and had a key, he put a GPS tracker in the car that he and his friend could monitor it from their cell phones. Eventually, we found a pattern in her movements, as she met with the exciting cultural diversity of the world in dark spots all over town to deliver the shit. It was possible after some months to get the police interested, and they managed to catch her with enough drugs to put her in prison, before the divorce and custody hearing. That really fucked up her case. This all took a lot of work, and only a man full of hate and hoping for revenge could have put up with the inconvenience of surveillance, the long painful hours of waiting and holding onto one’s piss.
It is a natural instinct to hate those that threaten you and hate itself has survival value. Even the politically correct hate too: don’t they hate racism, sexism, bigotry—in a word, us? So, what sense can be made of academic feminist claims that the Western philosophical tradition, for example, is based on “misogyny” and that a hatred of women is at the heart of the thoughts of the great philosophers? (See, for example, B. Clark [ed.], Misogyny in the Western Philosophical Tradition, [Macmillan, 1999].) The claim of misogyny is that the greatest philosophers have “denigrated the importance and status of women,” which assumes that women had importance and a status able to be denigrated in the first place, of course.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (B.C. 384-322) is hated by feminists for defining the essence of humanity as the capacity of reason, a capacity which he says makes women inferior to men. Plato (B.C. 428/427- 424/423), although liked by a few feminists for his supposedly egalitarian account of the sexes in The Republic, is hated by most feminists for his work Timaeus, which has a hierarchy of creation which places women closer to the animals than men are.
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), in “On Women” (1851), and Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), in “On Chastity and Modesty” in Treatise of Human Nature (1738-1740), both attacked the ideology of romantic reverence for women, seeing them as sensually insatiable and primarily at the mercy of their biology. We would today use the metaphor of tingling ‘ginas. Even the higher German intellect of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had a division of masculine and feminine based on reason (man) versus nature (women). Kant, being a virgin, probably never even thought about women untangling their tingle, as he wrote before Deep Throat (1972) and internet porn.
Apart from the leading Western philosophers, Christian theologians were seething in their attacks upon women. Thus, Tertullian (C. 160-220 C.E.) identified women with Eve, and blamed her, not unreasonably, for every fuckin’ problem in the universe; that is, for original sin. Women were thus “the devil’s gateway” in a theological sense. St. Augustine (354-430 CE) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) both believed in the natural subordination of women, although women were spiritually equal to men. This view of women as innately inferior is thought by feminists to have fuelled witch hunts, which allegedly arose from a misogynist perspective on female sexuality, as illustrated by books such as Heinrich Kramer and James Springer’s Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) (1486). Kramer and Springer based most of their case upon quotations from classical sources as well as the Old and New Testaments, as did later classic misogynist texts, such as John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), and Joseph Swetnam, The Arraigment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women or the Vanity of Them, Choose You Whether, with a Commendation of Wise, Virtuous, and Honest Women, Pleasant for Married Men, Profitable for Young Men, and Hurtful to None (1615). Thus, if misogyny is a problem, conventional Christianity must go.
Albert Einstein himself got into trouble in July 1921 (as reported in The New York Times, July 8, 1921, p. 9), when he expressed the view—controversial even for that time—that American men had already become the slaves of women:
“ Above all things there are women who, as a literal fact dominate the entire life in America. The men take an interest in absolutely nothing at all. They work and work, the like of which I have never seen anywhere yet. For the rest they are the toy dogs of the women, who spend the money in a most unmeasurable, illimitable way and wrap themselves in a fog of extravagance. They do everything which is the vogue and now quite by chance they have thrown themselves on the Einstein fashion.
What has changed?
Thus, in the West, both secular and Christian authorities have proposed positions contrary to feminism and women’s rights, based upon a philosophical anthropology which sees women as not only innately inferior to men, but having dangerous propensities if left uncontrolled. The same viewpoint is expressed in more modern works such as Esther Vilar’s The Manipulated Man (Abelard-Schuman, 1972), and Rev. Lawrence Shannon, The Predatory Female, (Banner Books, Reno, 1985). If we ignore the medieval witchcraft stuff and put that down as a socio-historical construction, these two works are far more critical than any of the classical philosophers, including Schopenhauer. For example, Vilar, a woman, offers us many choice misogynist quotes from her book: “Men have been trained and conditioned by women, not unlike the way Pavlov conditioned his dogs, into becoming their slaves. As compensation for their labours, men are given periodic use of a woman’s vagina.” As well: “her stupidity makes women divine,” “women have no feelings,” “the average woman may be a whore, but she’s a dishonest whore,” “[a] woman’s vagina holds the whip hand, and a man has no choice but to bow his head in submission if he wants to enjoy even a minimal sex life.” This all paints women negatively, but that does not mean that the portrayal is false. That must be decided—as they say in law—by the tribunal of fact and experience.
These sources all date from before the Internet era, probably before most readers here were born, and long before The Matrix (1999) and the red pill metaphor. As a lawyer, one evaluates claims by taking evidence as a whole. The greatest thinkers from antiquity to the modern day have seen that there is a very dark side to women, that if ignored because of socially constructed bullshit such as romantic love and a misplaced reverence for women, would lead to individual men and society coming undone. Feminists say that this constitutes misogyny and therefore is unjustified and immoral. Reason and experience counts against that. In legal terms, the burden of proof—onus probandi—is upon them. I have yet to see this burden discharged and no doubt such a feminist discharge would be frightening.
Negative assessments of a subject do not in itself logically justify one in concluding that the assessment is immoral, for the obvious reason that the assessment could be true. Truth is not a concept of use to those dwelling in the sociological sewers that feminists inhabit, along with other rodents of the cultural studies species. Yet I believe that the balance of reason should be put on the great philosophers rather than the politically correct critics, if only because if a position is widely supported over vast periods of time, by people in different cultures, then it is more likely to be true than the diarrhea served up by the modern regime.
Therefore, even if a position does constitute misogyny, insofar as it expresses a position of a strong dislike of women, or makes harsh criticisms, the position cannot be merely dismissed for that reason alone. It still could be true, and probably is. Just ask yourself: what would Aristotle think?
John Saxon is a retired lawyer, who has practiced family law and civil litigation since the early 1980’s, primarily defending men in a feminist legal system. He is divorced with seven grown-up children, three grandchildren and an insane ex-wife, described by her own mother as a “drug taking whore.” He became “red-pilled” the hard way, before the Internet and neomasculinity. His articles are based on his own experiences and that of an older generation of men, gleamed from his legal practice, from beatings on the anvil of life. In his final years, he hopes to help young men with grandfatherly red pill advice of the old school.
Read Next: Defining Misogyny Downward
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Like this: Like Loading... Like Be the first to like this.Dallas Health Officials Lower Ebola 'Contact Traces' To 50
Health officials say they have halved the number of people they are actively monitoring for symptoms of Ebola after possible contact with a patient with the disease being treated in Dallas. They lowered the number of so-called "contact traces" from 100 to 50 after deciding that many posed of the people posed no risk of infection.
Dr. Mark Lakey, of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Thomas Eric Duncan is being treated after being diagnosed with Ebola earlier this week, said it is now believed that about 50 individuals "need to be followed on a daily basis."
Lakey said of those, about 10 are considered slightly higher risk because of closer contact with the patient, who apparently contracted the disease in Liberia before traveling to the U.S. He said that so far, all those being monitored are "doing well" and not showing symptoms.
Dr. Beth Bell, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control, says the contact traces will be monitored for 21 days "because that's the longest it takes for symptoms of Ebola to appear.
"We have a very low bar for deciding to follow patients," Bell said, adding that the CDC and other health officials "have a low-level of concern about these people we are tracing."
Meanwhile, a hazardous-materials crew was dispatched Friday to an apartment where Duncan had stayed to collect bed sheets and towels he may have used, The Associated Press says.
According to the AP: "The family living in the apartment has been confined to their home under armed guard while public-health officials monitor them — part of an intense effort to contain the deadly disease before it can get a foothold in the United States."
Update at 5:22 p.m. ET. U.S. Outbreak Unlikely:
During a briefing with reporters on Friday, Obama administration officials sought to assure Americans that the United States has protocols and facilities in place to control an Ebola outbreak.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he was "convinced" that "the system that is in place... would make it extraordinarily unlikely that we would have an outbreak."
Lisa Monaco, a White House Homeland Security adviser, said that Ebola outbreaks had been contained in the past.
"We know how to do this and we will do it again," Monaco said.Grand Hustle rapper and former T.I. sideman Young Dro has been surprisingly good at maintaining relevance in an ever-changing rap landscape. To anyone not paying attention, his return to the mainstream with his viral Vine hit "FDB" in 2013 was probably out of left field, but in truth he's been around the whole time: producing a steady stream of mostly solid mixtapes and using his always slightly-offbeat eccentricity to keep the songs exciting. Da Reality Show, Young Dro's third major-label album, is an acknowledgement of Dro's place in the current rap landscape; it's at once an album that could have easily dropped shortly after 2006's Best Thang Smokin'**, yet still feels refreshingly new without being forced.
Dro has been making music since the early '00s, but we're coming up on 10 years since his first major album, and Da Reality Show is a celebration of and a reflection on a life well-lived, full of goofiness, giddiness and sobering reminiscence. He's feeling himself—"I kilt the streets and made history", he boasts on "Coupe"—and very few are as good at doing that as Dro is, with as many undertones. On the song "Dead", he raps: "Hope yo ass be ready for the fed/Hope yo ass be ready for the lead/Hope you ready for the hospital bed/dopeboy, dopeboy, now the nigga dead" as a way of calling out another dealer as a sucker. It's typical braggadocio, but in it also is a glimmer of awareness about the inevitabilities of trap life.
This introspective honesty carries the back half of the album. "I know how it feel to be numba one/I know how it feel to be numba nothin’”, he raps soberly on “Feeling Myself”. Dro seems comfortable enough with who he is to put his real self on record, and the record carries the gravity that comes with seeing both the highs and lows a long rap career can bring.
He also has a natural sense of how he fits into the sounds of rap radio today without compromising his essence. The album finds Dro perfectly at ease with the sound of current Atlanta and making it work for him instead of the other way around. The Zaytoven-assisted "Ugh" is a melodic and busy hymnal, and amid Zaytoven's menagerie of sounds, Dro's is the best instrument. He glides through it, crooning then rapping like his words are drum kicks to making playful ad-libs and ad-libbing on top of those ad-libs. It's an effortless energy and showmanship that he carries into the next track "Parallel Park". The church organs that surround the song are appropriate; Dro captures your attention and is as theatrical in his style as an Atlanta Megachurch Preacher.
Da Reality Show would have probably been better off holding onto this momentum, because the traditional attempts at inspirational anthems in the back half feel a little forced, and lack the freewheeling excitement of the rest of the album. At the end,however, Dro allows himself to really get sentimental on "Hood Gospel", reflecting on lost love and the murder of his mother. The pain is audible in his voice, but so is the full-hearted joy and wonder at his rise from those traumatic experiences to where he is now. It is a beautiful moment and a reminder that behind all the boasts about exotic-colored cars and women, there is a man who just wants to share his testimony.Sen. Pat Toomey Patrick (Pat) Joseph ToomeyOvernight Defense: Pick for South Korean envoy splits with Trump on nuclear threat | McCain blasts move to suspend Korean military exercises | White House defends Trump salute of North Korean general WH backpedals on Trump's 'due process' remark on guns Top GOP candidate drops out of Ohio Senate race MORE (R-Pa.) on Thursday voiced his opposition to the Trump administration’s agreement with Mexico on the sugar trade, saying the deal increases the costs for consumers.
“I disagree—the new sugar deal hikes prices for consumers even more. Here’s why," Toomey wrote on Twitter, quoting a tweet from President Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE and linking to his own remarks on the agreement.
I disagree—the new sugar deal hikes prices for consumers even more. Here’s why: https://t.co/g2VNiL4Jh8 https://t.co/hWu8ZLA9vI — Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) June 29, 2017
Trump early Thursday touted the deal on Twitter, saying it is “a very good one” for both countries.
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“New Sugar deal negotiated with Mexico is a very good one for both Mexico and the U.S. Had no deal for many years which hurt U.S. badly,” Trump said.
New Sugar deal negotiated with Mexico is a very good one for both Mexico and the U.S. Had no deal for many years which hurt U.S. badly. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017
But Toomey, who hails from the state that is home to The Hershey Company, a chocolate manufacturer, argued the “deal actually makes the problem worse,” referring to current sugar prices.
In a speech earlier this month on the Senate floor, Toomey slammed the agreement, saying it is bad for American consumers and workers.
“The fact is this is a bad deal for the United States. I am completely mystified as to why our Commerce Department would agree to it,” Toomey said at the time.
“It’s a bad deal for U.S. consumers, and we’re all consumers. It’s a bad deal for American workers. It completely fails to address the high price of sugar that we have in America today.”
Toomey, after the deal’s announcement, also said that it threatens nearly 40,000 jobs in the Keystone State.
The agreement, announced earlier this month in principle, would halt taxes on Mexico’s sugar imports coming into the U.S. The deal would increase the price of Mexican raw sugar while reducing the percentage of refined sugar that can be imported to the U.S.
The Coalition for Sugar Reform, alliance of food manufacturers and other groups, also criticized the deal in a statement, saying it benefited corporate interests rather than consumers.
“The fact is, the U.S.-Mexico deal is a bad deal for the hardworking Americans President Trump pledged to help. True to old Washington ways, the only winners in this deal are a select few big corporate sugar farm interests, and the losers are U.S. consumers and American food and beverage companies that buy and use sugar," the coalition said.
This story was updated at 5:08 p.m.Whether we like it or not, other people's opinions matter.
A good letter of recommendation can make your day; a great letter of recommendation can change your life.
Whether it is a dating review on Tinder, a restaurant recommendation on Yelp, a movie review on Rotten Tomatoes or an open request for holiday vacation recommendations on Facebook, we look to our friends, colleagues, and specialists in the field for advice on how to make better choices.
"A good letter of recommendation can make your day; a great letter of recommendation can change your life"
Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying you should let Megan McCrory ditching you at your high school winter formal establish your self-worth (that wasn't nice Meghan!). But the opinions of those we admire and respect, the ones whom we look to for guidance, the ones who will give us the cold hard truth in all instances – that matters!
Studies show that we value the opinions of our close network of like-minded individuals above other sources and with the availability of social proof and endless rating systems there has been a shift away from trusting the experts and more toward trusting the opinions of the many.
Just look at the sales figures for the latest summer blockbuster action pic!
Choice Overload
Whoever can best speak to your abilities are the best references. One has to be a healthcare provider. And they should not be family or family friends. But it's better to have the CNA who worked closely with you for years over the attending physician you only see for five minutes every week - Duke University PA Program Click To Tweet
Recommendations play a very big role when we are faced with choice overload. Required to make a decision among 100's or 1000's of similar products with similar features and similar price points where does one begin?
For example, when faced with the seemingly simple task of replacing my broken iPhone 7 case I jumped on Amazon.com in order to make a "quick and easy" purchase. I love my current case and figured I would |
requiring Crisis-style reset events.
Fortunately the way Trigger's universe has been set-up in Luluco makes it easy to avoid such pitfalls. Kill la Kill and Sex and Violence with Machspeed might exist in the same universe, but they're not from the same planet. Setting the different series on different planets, and preserving the various styles of the different series on these planets, eases any fears of increased stylistic conformity or continuity lock-out. Crossovers and shared storylines between series are made possible, but also unlikely for the purposes of most stories. So the shared universe is open to Trigger as a tool, one they can potentially benefit from but not one they're required to trot out for every story.Some may have missed it, but screen legend Olivia de Havilland celebrated her 101st birthday on July 1st. While we can recall the two-time Oscar winner's roles alongside Errol Flynn, or her turn in "Gone With The Wind," many are unaware of the seminal role she played in helping prevent a communist takeover of Hollywood in the years after World War II. Ron Radosh has an excellent piece recounting her actions. Here's a sample:
Without telling anyone in advance, de Havilland, horrified by the words [screenwriter Dalton] Trumbo wanted her to mouth—went to the podium, and substituted a speech of her own. In it she underlined the significant differences between those she termed genuine liberals and Hollywood Communists. From 1932 to 1945, she told the audience, a “coalition of all liberal and progressive forces” made up a sizable majority of the New Deal. But in the postwar era, “reactionary forces” have driven a wedge into the liberal coalition” and were trying to make it appear “that the great liberal movement is controlled by those who are more interested in taking orders from Moscow and following the so-called Party line than they are interested in making democracy work.” To prove otherwise, she said, it was the duty of liberals to distance themselves openly from both Moscow and the American Communists.
“We believe in democracy,” she told the crowd, “and not in Communism.” She reminded them that the Communist Party had endorsed Roosevelt for re-election in 1944, and that he publicly repudiated that endorsement. Today, she acknowledged, “Communists frequently join liberal organizations. That is their right. But it is also our right to see that they do not control us, or guide us… or represent us.”
She was brave in breaking ranks so publicly. Communists controlled the Screenwriter’s Guild and were influential in the Screen Actors Guild as well, and were known to avoid giving roles to actors or scripts to writers whom they considered “fascist.” Moreover, in breaking so publicly, she risked losing associates and friends who thought the Hollywood Reds were just “liberals in a hurry” and sincere anti-fascists—many of whom would ostracize someone they considered to be a “Red-baiter.”
Trumbo exploded in a fit of rage when he heard what de Havilland had done. He wrote to the HICAASP board listing everything she had taken out from his speech, especially his condemnation of the Truman administration for following an anti-Soviet policy. “One fifth of the speech” she gave, he complained, was a “denunciation of Communism” with no mention of the danger of “fascism” and no trace of “my unfriendly references to it.” By omitting his pro-Soviet words, Trumbo wrote, the speech had degenerated into an exercise in “Red-baiting.”
Following de Havilland’s lead, board member James Roosevelt stood up at a board meeting and said he was concerned that HICAASP was being accused of being a Communist front organization. To counter the allegation, he said that they should write a statement that they were opposed to Communism. Also present was HICAASP member Ronald Reagan, who also spoke up demanding a repudiation of Communism. Pandemonium ensued and Reagan was quickly denounced as a “witch-hunter” and of course, a “Red-baiter.”
Miss de Havilland displayed not just courage, but something else sorely lacking in modern Hollywood: principles. Would that more like her could be found -- publicly -- admist the tinsel, gliter, and mindlessness of today's movie capital.Christian Fuchs is chuckling long before he finishes telling the story behind his surprise 30th birthday party and how one of the guests got the date wrong. The Leicester defender celebrated the landmark at a local restaurant, where team-mates joined family and friends 72 hours before last Sunday’s win over Sunderland, yet it turned out the small print had escaped the attention of a certain Italian. In a moment of comedy gold, Claudio Ranieri walked into an empty room the day before and wondered where everybody was hiding.
“That’s the best question you could ask me,” Fuchs says, breaking into laughter when the subject is brought up. “My wife, who had organised the party, told me the story after we arrived on the evening. Jon Sanders, the player liaison officer, had sent Claudio the invite, saying: ‘Can you come by for an hour, it would be great.’ Claudio probably didn’t look at the invite, only where it is and not the date, and he just went there.
“He contacted Jon and was like: ‘Hell, Sando, where is this party? I’m on the first floor, second floor, nobody is here!’ So the next evening I put Claudio on the spot, because I wanted him to tell his story to everybody there. I did a little speech, then I called him up. He said that Jon Sanders is now only working for the academy.
Claudio Ranieri sheds tears and dedicates win to Leicester’s supporters Read more
“So in the end Claudio came to my birthday twice and that’s an even bigger honour. I couldn’t believe he was there – I don’t think there are too many managers that would show up. And he was smiling, enjoying the party, not worrying that I had one or two glasses of red wine. Claudio’s a great character.”
The same can be said for Fuchs, who has the sort of personality that lights up a room. Gregarious, down to earth and blessed with an utterly bonkers sense of humour, Fuchs is terrific company over breakfast at Leicester’s training ground and it is easy to see why he is such a popular figure at the club. At one point he is up on his feet shouting, putting on an angry face at the end of an answer about how things unravelled for him at Schalke last season. “I’m over it, OK?” Fuchs says, narrowing his eyes and leaning over the table. “No, for real, I’m over it!”
Signed from the Bundesliga club in the summer, Fuchs has become a cult figure among Leicester supporters, owing in no small part to his wacky social media videos that often feature bizarre challenges with team-mates, including taking it in turns with Shinji Okazaki to flick each other’s ears after a game of paper-scissors-stone and playing egg roulette against Jamie Vardy. “No Fuchs Given” is the play on words that has taken on a life of its own and now led to him launching his own fashion range.
Yet the Austria captain is much more than the dressing-room joker; he is also a highly accomplished left-back and Gary Lineker was not allowing personal allegiances to colour his judgment when he recently described Fuchs as “underrated” and said he was nailed on to be in his Premier League team of the season.
“It’s nice of him to mention me,” Fuchs says. “Obviously we have other players that are having all the glory right now, with Jamie, with Riyad [Mahrez], with [Danny] Drinkwater as well. And those guys deserve it, they are performing outstanding – but it’s simply a whole team on the field that’s giving the best, that’s always trying to achieve the maximum, and the same with the players on the substitutes’ bench. And I think this spirit is the key to our success.”
The big question is whether Leicester can see the job through and complete what will go down as one of the most remarkable stories in the history of football. They host West Ham United on Sunday seven points clear with five games remaining, and in some people’s eyes it feels like Leicester’s title to lose. Fuchs bristles at that suggestion and makes an interesting analogy with a French comic book series and the indomitable Gauls fending off Roman occupation to explain Leicester’s mindset.
“We never said at all that this is our goal to win the championship. People can talk whatever they want, we never get affected by it. So many people were talking at the beginning of the season, saying: ‘It’s only a matter of time before they break down’. You know what we did? Like Asterix and Obelix we just stayed safe in our little cottage, we tried to fight all these guys out there, we never listened to all those people talking, only focused on our strengths. Claudio has played a big part in that because he is always drilling us: ‘Next game, next game, next game’ and that’s worked fine so far.
“I want to win a title. Any title – that’s what I’m playing football for. I came to Schalke in 2011 and the first game I played was a derby against Dortmund, it was the Super Cup and we won. I was holding that trophy thinking: ‘Wow.’ So of course I want to win something in my career but it only works step by step. We play until now with that philosophy, to think game by game and we won’t change it.”
Fuchs talks a lot about the camaraderie within the Leicester squad – he describes being in “a wonderland” because he is experiencing the same sense of togetherness with a resurgent Austria team – and his spine still tingles at the memory of the way the team celebrated Vardy’s record-breaking goal against Manchester United in November. With an exquisite “no look” pass, Fuchs delivered the ball Vardy arrowed beyond David de Gea to score for the 11th successive Premier League match.
“The pass was great and the goal was great,” says Fuchs, “but for me, when the guys were standing together at the far corner celebrating, there was such an electrifying atmosphere. It was like: ‘Wow.’ I can still feel it now. Everybody was there, so happy for Vards to break this record. It’s hard for me to describe that, it was a simply outstanding moment in my career.”
Spirit can carry a team a long way but Fuchs acknowledges Leicester are much more than a group of players who run the extra yard for one another. “We have quality as well. We don’t have the money like Manchester City or Arsenal. We don’t have the big stars. Or let’s say we didn’t have the big stars at the beginning of the season.
“I think now a lot of our players have developed into stars and we have very good individuals in each position. When those players are in form and they also work together, then you can achieve something without the use of too much money.”
Fuchs, who joined Leicester on a free transfer, is a case in point. He is another name to add to the long list of success stories belonging to Steve Walsh, Leicester’s joint assistant manager and the club’s head of recruitment, yet not everything went to plan in the beginning. Nigel Pearson was sacked as manager before he had chance to meet him and Fuchs had to wait until 3 October to make his first Premier League start. Once Fuchs got into the team, however, he never looked back.
His wife, Raluca, and their children, 16-month-old Anthony and seven-year-old Ethan, live in New York and fly over to England every two to three weeks. Fuchs will move to the United States permanently when the time is right with his football career, although his reputation already precedes him there – last week his name was up in lights on the news ticker in Times Square after he gave a TV interview that went viral in which he talked about the possibility of becoming an NFL kicker one day. “A fan sent me the picture,” Fuchs says, shaking his head. “At first I thought it had been photoshopped and that it was a joke. Wow.”
As for his antics on social media, Fuchs says it is a case of “being myself”, whether that means doing keepie-uppies with a medicine ball, juggling baby formula in a supermarket or playing a game of “red ass” with Robert Huth. Fuchs offers an interesting insight into his mind when asked why he selected Huth for a game that involved lashing a ball as hard as possible at the other person’s backside. “First of all he is the right character to do it with but also because he has a really hard shot and I just wanted to get hit by him, because I knew it’s going to look great,” he says, grinning. “And as well as looking great, it also hurt. I had to go down on my knees, because it didn’t hit my arse, it hit the back of the thighs and this is even worse.”
Training is about to start and Fuchs need to dash but there is just one final question: what does he make of the man who came to his birthday party … twice?
“To be fair, for an Italian he is very funny,” Fuchs says. “Every day Claudio is asking me: ‘Oh, you are here?’ I don’t know why he is saying that but that’s kind of his joke. At some point I realised it’s funny. The more you hear it, the more it becomes a joke. I’m like: ‘OK, he’s repeating it again.’ He’ll say: ‘Oh, you’re here. Where have you been yesterday?’ I’m like: ‘I’m always here! I’m ready to go! I’m born ready, manager!’”Transplanted embryonic neurons may help people who have have suffered traumatic damage to their brains, as these cells quickly rebuild neural circuits and restore function in animal models, scientists have shown. A large number of patients, including those diagnosed with diseases such as Parkinson's or those who have suffered strokes or brain damage following a head injury, could potentially benefit from this technique.
In mammals, the adult brain has a very limited capacity to compensate for a loss of neurons linked to a traumatic brain injury or an illness. Transplanted embryonic neurons have in the past been shown to survive in the brains of newborn mice, raising the hopes of using neuronal transplantation to treat a range of neurological diseases. In particular, neural transplantation has also emerged in different clinical studies as a possible therapy for Parkinson's disease.
The problem is that even though transplantation aims to replace lost neurons, the extent to which new neurons can integrate into existing circuits is not known.
"Up to now, we didn't know to what extent transplanted neurons could take over the function of degenerated neurons in a given brain region or if they could receive the appropriate brain input", Magdalena Götz, author of the study published in Nature, told IBTimes UK.
Looking and acting like classic neurons
With her team, from the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, she used a sophisticated imaging technique known as chronic in vivo two-photon imaging to examine the fate of embryonic neurons, which has been transplanted into the damaged visual cortex of mice.
The researchers discovered that the transplanted neurons matured quickly, achieving adult like densities of dendritic spines and axonal boutons within four to eight weeks – they looked very much like the neuronal cells normally seen in the upper layers of the visual cortex in the absence of damage.
Even more important, these transplanted neurons were able to receive input from the rest of the brain, as they formed connections with host brain cells. This allowed them to receive electrical signals from other areas of the brain and to respond normally to visual stimuli. These transplanted neurons thus served the same function as the original neurons that had been damaged, essentially acting like them.
Further research has already began to follow the neurons in the damaged brains of mice models for other diseases. "This is just a proof of principle study, we will now study the way the transplanted neurons act in animal models of stroke or traumatic brain injury, which in the future may be more relevant to clinical models," Götz say.Line-up /
Dubfire
Marcel Dettmann
Visionquest
Paradigm Presents
JULY 3rd WAREHOUSE EVENT
featuring
DUBFIRE | MARCEL DETTMANN | VISIONQUEST
Friday, July 3 ✪ 10pm-7am ✪ Location TBA
Paradigm lights the fuse to your holiday weekend featuring a night of heavy ordnance from the house and techno underground, all set in this distinctive urban warehouse setting.
ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE ✪ THIS WILL SELL OUT, GET YOURS NOW!
FEATURING
DUBFIRE (U.S.)
Dubfire is an artist whose drive, talent and intuition have placed him within the top tier of electronic artists. Constantly evolving, Dubfire is in a forward-thinking class of his own...
More info - Dubfire.com
MARCEL DETTMANN (Germany)
Ruff, rugged and raw. Mentioning Marcel Dettmann as well as his feeling for and vision of electronic music, his way of dealing with it, is impossible without these attributes...
More info - Residentadvisor.net/dj/marceldettmann
VISIONQUEST (U.S.)
The Visionquest trio of Ryan Crosson, Lee Curtiss, and Shaun Reeves is bravely embarking upon a wondrous journey. Each member of this celebrated…
More info - Residentadvisor.net/dj/visionquest
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This event is PRESALE ONLY. Must be 21+ to enter, ID required
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JULY 3rd WAREHOUSE PARTY
10pm-7am | Parking available | 21+
STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES & VENUE INFOA fire that broke out at the Ekati diamond mine this morning has been contained.
The incident happened at about 7 a.m. during a planned outage in the mine's process plant, according to a news release from Dominion Diamond Corporation.
The diamond mine is located about 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.
The company says after the fire broke out, the mine's incident management team responded to the situation. Its emergency response team was called to the scene and the fire was contained.
Everyone was evacuated from the plant and has been accounted for. The company says, at this time, no injuries have been reported.
"Our first priority is the safety and well-being of our workforce and of all the people involved in responding to this incident," the news release said.
Dominion Diamond says it will provide more information as it becomes available.
According to its website, the Ekati process plant can process 4.3 million tonnes of ore per year.MoHow Posted By Dr. MO You and I know that money does not buy happiness, yet how often do we act as if money is the answer? We have the habit of thinking that riches lead to happiness (even though we know that wealthy people are often unhappy); marketing and advertising lead us to want the latest gadget or style that is popular; we want to earn more money because then we believe are troubles will end and we will have the good life.
But it really doesn’t happen that way! No matter how much we earn, no matter how much we have in the bank, no matter how nice our clothing or cars or toys, none of it is tied to real happiness. The sad reality is that most people continue to fruitlessly pursue material wealth and material possession their whole lives.
True happiness has nothing to do with wealth and gadgets! It doesn’t cost a cent.
Surveys of millions of people around the world (hundreds of thousands in North America and Europe) about money, what their lives are like, and how happy they are, reveal three common threads among the happiest among them….
Here is what they have in common and to foster these conditions in your life:
Good relationships. We have a human need to be close, to be intimate, with other human beings. Having good, supportive friendships, a strong marriage or close and loving relationships with our family members will make us much more likely to be happy. MoHow: Take time, today, and in more and more days going forward, to spend time with your loved ones, to tell them what they mean to you, to listen to them, and develop your relationship with them.
Momentum Thinking. As you know from my writing I believe that positive and constructive thinking are the keys to achieving your goals….it turns out that they are keys to happiness also. Optimism and resilience are two of the traits of people who lead happy lives. Happy people feel empowered, in control of their lives, and have a positive outlook on life. MoHow: Make momentum thinking a habit. Develop the skill of identifying all negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones. Instead of “I can’t” think “I can”. It may sound overly simple, but it works every time.
Flow. This is the state we enter when we are completely focused on the work or task before us. We are so immersed in our task that we lose track of time. Having work and leisure that gets you in this state of flow will almost undoubtedly lead to happiness. People find greatest enjoyment not when they’re passively mindless, but when they’re absorbed in a mindful challenge. MoHow: Find work and hobbies that you’re passionate about. Turn off mindless, time-wasting TV,this is the opposite of a flow activity, go outside and do something that truly engages you.
These three simple keys are very powerful. Practice them and more happiness will be the result….When actor Karan Singh Grover received a message from Audi Motors from United Kingdom saying he had won Rs 4.31 crore, he did not suspect it to be a fraud. Within days, the 33-year-old lost Rs 7.70 lakh to claim the ‘prize money’.
A man suspected to be a member of a Nigerian group contacted the actor, pretending to be the general manager of the company, the police said.
It took a while for Grover to realise he was being taken for a ride. The actor did not get suspicious even when he was asked to pay more than Rs 4 lakh to get an ‘anti-terrorism certificate by the United Nations’, declaring that the money will not be used for terrorism activates.
In his FIR, a copy of which was accessed by HT, the actor said he had received an SMS claiming he had won a lottery on May 13. To claim the money, he had to send a confirmation email to mrmorgnsmith212@gmail.com.
Grover sent the email and was then told that Morgan Smith, the general manager, was in Delhi with the prize money.
As identity proof, the actor sent them a copy of his licence. The next day, Smith asked him to deposit Rs 24,000 to agent Harjit Singh’s bank account for custom clearance.
Grover then received an email from the New Delhi branch of Royal Bank of Scotland stating that a current account had been opened in his name and Rs 4.31 crore had been deposited by Audi Motors.
The email said Grover could transfer the money to his account and contact one Gracy Joshi in case of any queries. “When Grover tried to transfer the cash, he could not proceed as the system asked him for cost of transaction code. He called up Joshi who asked him to deposit Rs 98,000 for securing the code,” said a police officer, adding, “He had to make more deposits for the tax code and demurrage code.”
On May 20, Smith called Grover and told him that he needed to get a certificate from the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Department and needed to deposit Rs 4.06 lakh.
The actor finally realised he was being cheated when, on May 22, he was told to pay Rs 12 lakh tax on the prize money, the officer said.
Grover did not respond to HT’s calls and text messages. In his complaint, he said he deposited money in the accounts of Mayank Kumar, Vinod Sharma, Sunil Kumar, Mahesh Kumar and Manish Kumar.
Grover first approached the BKC cyber police station and was referred to Khar police station.
The police registered a case under the relevant sections of the IPC and the Information Technology Act.
First Published: Jun 06, 2015 00:52 ISTMexico City authorities have removed a statue of the late leader of Azerbaijan from a park where it had stood for almost half a year at a prominent spot along the city's main boulevard.
The city had struggled for months to find a way to address a wave of criticism about the monument to Geidar Aliyev, a former Communist Party boss who died in 2003.
In the end, the city sent police and workers into the park in the pre-dawn darkness of Saturday to loosen the life-size, seated bronze statue from its marble plinth, swath it in protective wrapping and haul it away.
The city government said in a statement that it had removed the statue and was holding it in safe keeping.
But it said it was still in talks with the Embassy of Azerbaijan about where to put the statue.
The statement didn't say where it had been taken, but local media showed photos of the statue being hauled on a flat-bed truck to a government warehouse in an unfashionable district of the city.
City officials had previously suggested the statue might be moved to an indoor setting, perhaps in some sort of Azerbaijani cultural centre.
But the city apparently cannot just hide the statue away, given the $5 million Azerbaijan has paid to restore the park, erect the monument and perform other public works.
The Azerbaijani Embassy suggested in a statement in October that removing the statue could affect diplomatic relations between the former Soviet satellite and Mexico.
It said the city government had signed an agreement stipulating the monument should be allowed to remain in the spot for 99 years.
Officials of the Azerbaijani Embassy did not immediately answer phone calls seeking comment on Saturday.
The city government said it "reiterates its great respect for the Azerbaijani people, their culture and traditions, and repeats that it is open to dialogue with their embassy.''
Authoritarian record
"Mexico doesn't need to import, in exchange for money, tyrants from other countries, nor make others conflicts our own. " - Homero Aridjis, activist
Some Mexico City residents had complained about the homage to Aliyev, noting his authoritarian record.
The late leader had been criticised for repressing opponents and critics in his oil-rich Caspian Sea nation.
The city's most high-profile street, Reforma boulevard is best known for its monuments to Mexican independence heroes.
Mexican activist and writer Homero Aridjis, who helped lead opposition to the statue, said Aliyev's addition there was inappropriate.
Aridjis said he welcomed the government's move. "Mexico doesn't need to import, in exchange for money, tyrants from other countries, nor make others conflicts our own,'' Aridjis wrote in an email.
"We already have enough of our own problems.''
A second Azerbaijani statue appears in Tlaxcoaque park in downtown Mexico City, which the country also paid to renovate.
It depicts a woman, her arms uplifted in mourning, commemorating Khojaly, a village where hundreds of
Azerbaijanis were reportedly killed during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between ethnic Armenians and the Republic of Azerbaijan, from 1988 to 1994.
Activists objected to that monument because a plaque describes the Khojaly killings as a genocide, a term more commonly applied to the slaying of about 1.5 million Armenians in the region in 1915.
Critics also say a monument to Mexican suffering would have been more appropriate for Tlaxcoaque square, a site once used as a Mexican police interrogation and torture centre.
It's unclear what the city plans to do with the Tlaxcoaque monument.Show further information on definitions and data sources
The number of people unemployed and unemployment rate are derived from the Labour Force Survey rather than from the Jobseeker's Allowance claimant count. To count as unemployed, people have to say they are not working, are available for work and have either looked for work in the past four weeks or are waiting to start a new job they have already obtained. The unemployment rate is calculated as a proportion of the economically active population (those in employment plus those who are unemployed).
The employment rate is the proportion of the total population in a given age range who are in employment. The economic inactivity rate is also calculated as a proportion of the total population in an age range.
This article by Caron Walker of ONS provides a brief explanation of unemployment data. A five-minute explanatory video and detailed guidance are available on the ONS website.A Subaru WRX owner went to sleep at this weekend's 25 Hour of Thunderhill race with a complete car. This is what he found when he woke up a few hours later. Resident racer and gearbox theft-culprit Robb Holland explains why you shouldn't trust a racing team with your car. — Ed.
In our second year of running the USAF NASA 25 Hour of Thunderhill, Team Racing Bacon/ Continental Tire was poised for a really good result. Running in 6th place at the14 hour mark, the team was only 4 laps out of 4th place and running at a faster pace then either the 4th or 5th place car.
My buddy and Racing Bacon team principal, Roland Pritzker, had just handed over the car to me and I was settling in for a long 3 1/2 hour, 2 AM to 5:30 AM, double stint. Coming out of turn 12 on my out lap, the shifter popped out of 3rd gear, I thought no biggie, just a missed-shift. I wasn't even thinking about a blown gearbox because our Subbie boxes are normally indestructible, but when I went to put it back in gear it wouldn't go. So I went for 4th. No go. So I radioed into my crew guys "F@#$%@^&K piece of S#$%@t gearbox F@#$%@^&K 3rd gear D*&@^!$*n 4th gear" "Um, I think we have a problem with the gearbox".
The thing with gearboxes is, they usually don't fix themselves. So I was pretty sure a tranny swap was in the cards, but I also knew that due an untimely shortage of WRX gearboxes in the US, we didn't have one. Enter one Mr. Martin Broenkow.
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We met Martin last year after he let us borrow a control arm off his WRX that allowed us to continue the race. We enticed him back this year with an offer to hang with the team. He foolishly accepted. Around midnight Martin wanted to turn in and we (not wanting to lose our rolling spare parts inventory) offered him a bunk in our team bus.
With Martin tucked away safely in bed, and a potential tranny swap imminent, the crew decided to "liberate" the tranny from his car just in case we need to do a quick swap. Approximately 30 minutes later (and with efficiency that would be the envy of most chop shops) the boys had Martin'ss car completely torn down and his tranny out and ready to go.
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When our boy Martin emerged from the bus in the morning all he could do was laugh. He was like "I figured you guys would be needing my car for spares again, but I didn't think the first thing I'd see in the morning would be my gearbox on your pit cart".
Of course after all that, our tranny remained rock solid the rest of the race and we were able to run lap times only 3 or 4 seconds off our original pace using only 5th gear, which made a tranny swap unnecessary.
The funny thing is, Martin was actually kind of bummed that we ended up not needing his gearbox. He said he thought it would have been really cool to have his gearbox finish in the top ten at the 25 Hour. To that I say: There's alway next year, Martin, there's always next year...
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Robb Holland is a professional racecar driver with K-PAX Racing and 3Zero3 Motorsports. When he is not racing in World Challenge, Holland works as a performance driving instructor and owns a travel company that takes US clients over to Europe to drive the Nurburgring. You can follow him on his Facebook page. He's also awesome for writing this up on no sleep the day after an endurance race.The Skype Blockade
Skype is one of the least appreciated weapons in Microsoft's arsenal
In terms of ecosystem strengths, Skype is one of the least appreciated weapons in Microsoft's arsenal. While it's obvious that products such as Office, Xbox, and of course Windows represent larger hegemonies than Skype, it still represents a beachhead on other platforms. Available on Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, various televisions and set-top boxes, and even legacy systems like Symbian and webOS, Skype has the potential to be a central part not just of Microsoft's ecosystem, but for the internet at large.
Should Microsoft decide that it would be best served by making Skype available exclusively on its own products, it would represent a significant shift in strategy and could send shockwaves throughout the rest of the industry. Although such a move may drive some movement towards Microsoft products in the short term, it's more likely that consumers would still make their purchasing decisions based on other factors and then contend with the lack of Skype afterwards. Microsoft's weak position in the smartphone space would compound the shift away from Skype as a primary communication tool if it were Microsoft-exclusive.
We believe that a Skype blockade would be a counterproductive move that would limit Skype's large and growing popularity as a communication service. In fact, Skype's greatest strength right now as compared to other VOIP services lies not so much in its technical superiority as in its ubiquity. The net result of a Skype blockade would be a lessening of Skype's unique advantage of ubiquity and a mad scramble for a cross-platform replacement. In the event of such a scenario, expect the VOIP and message space to look much more like the fragmented and fractured battle to replace SMS.
It would take some time — perhaps years — for a dominant, cross-platform replacement to emerge and the battle would be incredibly fierce. The number of interested players who would want to try to take up Skype’s banner is shocking: large software players like Google and Apple, small startups, and even wireless carriers would all likely rush in, guns blazing.
Luckily, since completing its purchase of Skype in October of 2011, Microsoft has not given any indication that it intends to remove or reduce access to the service for other platforms. However, it is possible that Microsoft could engage in softer tactics. By offering a premium experience on Windows products and not working to keep other platforms up to date, Microsoft could potentially lead core users to consider switching to Windows products. Skype is tightly integrated into Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 and will soon replace Windows Live Messenger, already offering a vastly superior experience than what’s available on iOS and Mac.About
"What are you trying to sell me?"
Scenes in a Box is a humorous game for those who think they are funny. This card game is the Michael Jordan or the Muhammad Ali of comedy games. This game is the true test of wittiness and quickness. You will receive a deck of 108 professionally produced playing cards each with a odd, funny, or awkward situation on them like this:
The Rules:
First the group votes one player as the least funny, they have to then go to the fridge and grab everyone a beer, that person picks a card from the deck and is the judge first. (because no one wants to hear their answer anyway) They then read and show everyone the card:
"I think I at least deserve C's"
once that player has finished reading the card, it is a race for the rest of the players to come up with the funniest answer. There is no order, once a player has a answer they want to share he/she puts his/her hand flat on the table. This indicates that he/she has the floor and no one else can talk or share an answer until he/she is done sharing his/hers (A speaking stick can be used as well, get creative). This goes on until everyone who wants to share an answer has an opportunity (not everyone has to answer the scene, and no repeated answers are allowed). The judge then has to decide who had the funniest answer. He/she must account for cleverness, humorousness and quickness when picking a winner. Once he/she has picked the winner he/she then awards the scene card to them and the person to the left of the judge is now the judge.
With no pre-written answer cards only true improv skill will help you.
"Being the only white guy in the middle east"
"Why are there no answer cards?"
Answer cards hold players back. Sure, they might help uncreative Larry come up with a funny joke or two, but eventually all the cards are known, and many become irrelevant so the jokes stop producing laughs. Without answer cards hilarious people can shine their true colors. All in all, the absence of answer cards add to a more enjoyable playing experience. Use those inside jokes between you and the judge as an advantage, and feel on top of the world when an answer you created makes everyone around the table fall over laughing.
"MY GRANDMOTHER IS BETTER THAN YOU!"
What comes in the box?
Included in the box is 108 professionally made poker sized scenes cards and a instruction sheet. (maybe even a paperclip or two)
About me:
College student, had an idea.
Stretch goals:
$7,500 - All games will include a professionally made box to store the cards in
?? - Suggest some stretch goalsThis is not really a book about Søren Kierkegaard. Rather Kierkegaard is one figure in the transhistorical arsenal that Alison Assiter assembles to conceive of a philosophical future determined by new imagery and configurations, a future that dares to think about birth.
Philosophy has always been rather sniffy about birth. Aside from Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality and the work of certain feminist scholars (who are all too rarely granted the title “philosopher”), birth has largely been seen as a trivial and unphilosophical matter and banished to other disciplines. Death, however, is different. From Socrates’ cheery hemlock-draining to Heidegger’s being-towards-death and Walter Benjamin’s tragic wartime suicide, philosophy welcomes the thanatophile. It flaunts its familiarity with death – understood as a material reality with a rich theoretical significance – as a sign of its gravitas. Although it is disappoint |
been included as part of a professional NOB? Again, I can’t recall any examples of that on the professional level. Am I missing anyone? If so, please shoot me a note. Thanks.
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What part of “It’s all about me” do you not understand? Here are a few news bulletins about some other stuff I’ve been pursuing lately:
• Sometimes I can tell ahead of time when an ESPN column is going to be popular, and then there are times when a column’s popularity catches me off-guard. Yesterday’s column, about a small Pennsylvania college and an Italian clothing label that are joined at the sweatshirt, falls into the latter category. I mean, it’s a fun story, I enjoyed working on it, and I think it turned out well, but I didn’t really think it’d move the needle that much. Instead, it quickly began racing up ESPN.com’s list of most-emailed stories (as of 8:35am today, it was the site’s #1 most-emailed story of the preceding 24 hours), it racked up decent numbers on the Twitter and the Facebook, and I got lots of very positive feedback on it. A nice surprise.
• Some of you may recall that about a year and a half ago I started hosting an event here in Brooklyn called Open Mic Show-and-Tell, which is exactly what it sounds like: People can bring an object of personal significance and talk about it for up to three minutes. I haven’t mentioned it here on the site lately, but Show-and-Tell is still going strong as a monthly event and has turned out to be a really interesting project. Even better, next month I’m going to be teaching a one-day design criticism course called “Show-and-Tell: Using Objects as the Basis of Narratives” at the School of Visual Arts. Who’da thunk? I’ve never taught a class before, so this should be at least as edumacational for me as it is for the students.
• There’s a new entry on the Permanent Record blog, about some very cool legal documents from the mid-1800s. Also, the next feature-length PermaRec article on Slate will be published either next week or the week after that, and I don’t mind saying it’s a doozy. Also-also, my friend Lianne Smith, who’s a kickass singer-songwriter, has agreed to collaborate with me on a song called “Permanent Record,” which could function as a sort of theme song for the project. I’ve never written a song before, but this one is already writing itself in my head, so I’m cautiously optimistic.
• Remember when I cooked a steak with a blow torch? I cooked another one last night, and I think I’ve now perfected the method. The first time, I only torched one side of the steak before putting it in the slow oven (because the things I had read about this technique all said to do that), and as a result the other side had no char. The next time I torched both sides, but the side sitting in the pan ended up getting mushy even though it was charred, because it was sitting in a small pool of its own slow-cooked juices. So last night I torched both sides and then put the steak on a rack over a pan, instead of directly onto the pan. That did the trick.
• Incidentally, I’ve recently set up a Show-and-Tell mailing list and a Permanent Record mailing list (but no blow torch steak mailing list — yet). If you want to be added to either of those, shoot me a note and I’ll hook you up.
Okay, now you can go pay attention to someone else.
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Uni Watch News Ticker: The state of Oregon has banned Native American mascots for high schools. Slowly but surely, people. ”¦ Yesterday was apparently MLB Wacky Travel Theme Day, as Mets players wore hockey jerseys for their trip to Toronto and Cardinals players wore ’70s prom suits (or at least that’s what I think those are supposed to be). ”¦ There was some buzz in NFL circles yesterday when Browns linebacker Chris Gocong tweeted a photo of himself wearing a white-facemasked helmet. I checked with Browns spokesman Neal Gulkis, who wrote back: “We are not changing to a white facemask this year. He probably just grabbed an older helmet that had been sitting in the equipment room.” … Bryce Harper appears to be wearing a lower-back pad. “Maybe due to the Cole Hamels beanball?” speculates Jim Mellett. ”¦ Market society update: The corporate sponsor of the Nets’ new arena is now defiling my local subway stop. Grrrrrr. … Laurence Holland notes that the Mets have already used three different colored logos on the back of the Shea mound this season. … Awesome set of 1947 ballpark illustrations showcased in this thread (from Chad Todd). … New rugby uniforms for the Northampton Saints (from Lucas Ravenscraft). … Finland took the unusual step of wearing two different white jerseys at the 2012 IIHF Worlds (from Jay Danbom). … “I wanted to share with you a DIY hoodie I made,” writes Jack Nicolaus. “It’s inspired by the novel The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, which takes place in a fictional Division III college in Wisconsin, with a baseball team called the Harpooners (à la Moby Dick). A leitmotif of the book is the Harpooners’ navy-and-ecru uniforms — hence the sweatshirt colors.” … Here’s new Philadelphia Eagle Fletcher Cox, getting his photo taken for Sunday Night Football on NBC (according to the Eagles’ Facebook page) while wearing a Reebok jersey (from Jon Bishop). … Check out the cool Brewers uni-history jacket being worn by the guy standing in the second row (from Jon Solomonson). … “According to this article, Blackburn Rovers, newly relegated to the English Football Championship from the Premier League for 2012-13, will begin selling their 2012-13 Umbro kit totally blank — no sponsor on the front, no player names or numbers on the back, and no league patches on the sleeves,” writes Michael Kramer. “It appears that Rovers haven’t secured/announced a shirt sponsor for next year yet. Fans can opt to have the sponsor and player names and numbers added at a later date.” … Oooh, everyone will like this: an interactive map of every Big Four championship. ”¦ Some good stories behind the uni numbers for two Seahawks rookies (from Rob Schumacher). ”¦ New marching band uniforms for San Jose State (from Scott Winters). ”¦ You can see all 30 of MLB’s G.I. Joe caps here. The funniest/saddest one is Miami’s — great to see that the stylized marlin is “supporting the troops” (which of course is not what Memorial Day is supposed to be about, but why let facts get in the way of pandering?). The whole thing is an embarrassment. ”¦ This photo of a copper Arizona State helmet began circulating last night. No idea if that’s intended for on-field use, but ASU only had four helmets last year, so it’s easy to see why they’d need another. … Big thanks to everyone who wished the blog a happy birthday yesterday. I’ll be off the grid for most of today, starting at about 10am. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you on Monday.Spencer Hawes is a big Dipset fan. We know this because, shortly after he was traded to the Cavaliers back in early 2014, a bunch of photos of Hawes wearing Dipset gear during his college years started popping up all over the Internet. We put together a collection of them here.
It doesn't look like his love for Cam'ron & Co. has faded, either. Earlier this week, Hawes—who plays for the Clippers now—took to Instagram to show off how he has put together a Dipset-themed guest bedroom in his house. It features a Diplomats pillow, a Purple Haze-inspired pillow, and a Dipset comforter.
We haven't been able to confirm that it's 100 percent real yet (FWIW, the @dipsetusa1997 IG account features quite a few photos of some of the items in Hawes' photo, though we haven't been able to find the exact photo he put up anywhere else). But Nick Young saw it, and he was definitely impressed. So impressed that he sent out a tweet about it late yesterday and referred to Hawes as a "G":
Oh, and as if the bedroom wasn't enough, Hawes also claims that he has extended the Dipset theme into his guest bathroom. According to another IG photo that he put up, it includes, well, just look:
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...And Bathroom. Love my new shower curtain. #dipsetallday A photo posted by spenceneedle (@spenceneedle) on Jun 9, 2015 at 3:15pm PDT
If anyone else claimed they had this in their house, we'd call BS. But like we said, Hawes is a big Dipset supporter. And he's also the guy who did this:
Trying out a new look. A photo posted by spenceneedle (@spenceneedle) on May 25, 2015 at 7:47pm PDT
And this:
Spencer Hawes everybody, DIPSET BRUH pic.twitter.com/SLJgYPKjg6 — Memo McConaughey (@MattMemo) February 20, 2014
So who are we to doubt him?
Send all complaints, compliments, and tips to sportstips@complex.com.Yesterday we brought you the story of the Activity Key, a wearable from Jaguar that lets you lock and unlock their new F-Pace, but that was also half of the story.
Joining the Activity Key is the Apple Watch and an app from Jaguar that lets you control many aspects of the car.
From your wrist you’ll be able to check out details such as how much fuel is in the tank, what distance you can drive on it, the current odometer reading and more.
There’s also some quality of life features such as door lock status. If you’ve ever left your car and walked off only to later suffer the crippling doubt that you’ve left it unlocked, you’ll really appreciate this. If you did leave it unlocked, you can just lock it from wherever you are.
Range indicator. Lock status. As you can see, this app is also available on other Jaguars and not just the F-Pace, which is what we tested it on.
You can accomplish this and other remote operations (like having a map guide you back to your car) thanks to the F-Pace being connected to the internet. You can pick up a data sim from any of the South African cellular providers and the car will connect online through that.
If you want to have a play with this app and see what it can do, you can download a version for your phone on Android or iPhone. You won’t need to own one of the cars or sneak into a dealership, because the app comes with a demo mode.
Finally, we just want to add that we can’t think of a more flashy show of money than controlling your brand new Jaguar from your Apple Watch.On his first day in the White House, Donald Trump signed an order 'to ease the burden of Obamacare as we transition from repeal and replace,' his press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.
On Friday night, just after his inauguration, President Donald Trump signed the executive order as the new administration and Congress are working to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Spicer told reporters.
In addition, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus sent a memo to all government agencies calling for a freeze on regulations.
It is still not clear what the executive order entails.
Read more
Hours after taking the oath of office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, titled “Minimizing the economic burden of the patient protection and affordable care act pending repeal.”
The executive order calls for the “prompt repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”
The executive order does not repeal Obamacare itself, and says that before the repeal happens, “it is imperative for the executive branch to ensure that the law is being efficiently implemented, take all actions consistent with law to minimize the unwarranted economic and regulatory burdens of the Act, and prepare to afford the States more flexibility and control to create a more free and open healthcare market.”
Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus also sent a memo to all government agencies calling for a “regulatory freeze until further notified," incoming press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.
Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010 and upheld by the US Supreme Court on June 28, 2012.
Under the law, insurance providers were prevented from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and all Americans were mandated to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.
As of February 2016, the official ACA website says that roughly 20 million Americans were enrolled in Obamacare, including those on the Medicaid expansion, and young adults who were allowed to stay on their parents plan until they turned 26 years old.
Republicans cited problems with Obamacare from vanishing health plans to increased premiums as reasons for repealing and replacing.
Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare over 50 times while Obama was in office. On September 30, 2013, Republicans failed to defund the law through the spending process, causing the government to shut down for 16 days.
Since then, Trump has promised to “immediately repeal and replace” the bill, which he has called “a total disaster.”
We will immediately repeal and replace ObamaCare - and nobody can do that like me. We will save $'s and have much better healthcare! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2016
ObamaCare is a total disaster. Hillary Clinton wants to save it by making it even more expensive. Doesn't work, I will REPEAL AND REPLACE! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2016
Last week, in a 51-48 vote, the US Senate pproved a Republican-backed budget measure that would make it easier for Obamacare to be repealed. With a Republican majority, they passed Concurrent Resolution 3, a reconciliation measure that set budget levels from 2018 to 2026
Democrats have warned that repealing Obamacare without a replacement bill would cause millions of Americans could lose their insurance.
For the tens of millions of Americans who will lose their healthcare if the ACA is repealed, I vote no. #MakeAmericaSickAgain — Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 12, 2017
While there still is no replacement bill, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) said that the Republicans will outline a replacement strategy a week from the inauguration at a congressional retreat in Philadelphia.
“Some of these steps will be taken by Congress; some of these steps will be taken by the incoming Trump administration,” Ryan told reporters on Capitol Hill, according to official transcripts. “This will be a thoughtful, step-by-step process. We’re not going to swap one 2,700-page monstrosity for another.”By Marc Torrence:
Cranky teenagers aren't the only ones who think school should start later in the morning.
Many influential scientists agree with them.
Teenagers who don't get enough sleep are more likely to use drugs and alcohol, be overweight and underperform academically, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. The center recommends at least 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep per night, and that schools should start at 8:30 a.m. at the earliest.
But that's not exactly happening across America.
Later start times are facing battles from school boards over logistical and financial issues. Fewer than one in five middle and high schools in the United States begin classes later than 8:30, according to a study released Thursday by the CDC that has given supporters of later start times additional ammo for their fight.
"Clearly, the decisions are not made based on students' health and safety and academics so much as things like bus schedules and other factors like that," Anne Wheaton, author of the CDC study, told Patch.
The 8:30 start comes from the recommended sleep time for adolescents combined with a pubescent effect as common as pimples, body odor and angst — a change in natural sleep patterns that pushes back what scientists refer to as the circadian rhythm.
"That delay on your internal clock is one of the earliest signs of puberty. It makes it really difficult for the teenager to fall asleep before 11 o'clock," Wheaton said. "If you try to go to bed by 11, and get the adequate amount of sleep, then you push school start times back until 8:30."
In 2014,the American Academy of Pediatrics urged schools to adopt start times of 8:30 a.m. at the earliest.
Some schools changed right away. Most didn't.
One of the most vocal opponents of later start times has been Ted Velkoff, Member At Large of the Fairfax County School District which, at more than 180,000 students, is the largest district in Virginia and the Baltimore-Washington metro area.
Velkoff wrote an op-ed in USA Today last year criticizing the academy's policy recommendation.
"The problem is not really that kids need more sleep — because of course they do; adults need more sleep," Velkoff told Patch on Friday. "The problem is trying to run a large organization that has many competing concerns.
"We at the school board have to factor in many more things than just the science of sleep."
The biggest and seemingly most oft-cited factor? Buses.
Pushing school back for middle or high schools in most cases means more buses on the road for more hours of the day.
Others argue, though, that the complexities of figuring out affordable transportation is worth the gain to student health.
"It's worth it for adults to tackle a bus schedule," Stacy Simera, Outreach Director at Start School Later, a nonprofit advocacy group, told Patch.
"The logistics may be daunting at first, but then you adopt it for the next 20 years. Child health should be worth adults' temporary inconvenience."If the eyes are the window to the soul, being able to manipulate how your eyes appear to others is a rather tricky lifehack. Over at WikiHow they have a tutorial on methods of training yourself to shrink and enlarge your pupils. Why might you want to do this?
Scientists have actually studied how the way we feel about the things we see affects the size of our pupils (welcome to the world of pupilometrics). You can gain some insight as to how someone feels about you (or someone or something else) by observing changes in their pupils, and you can also affect the way someone feels about you by changing the size of your pupils!
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The tutorial goes on to elaborate on several methods all of I, as your dutiful editor and purveyor of fascinating lifehacks, put to the test. In my unscientific testing, the most effective trick on the list was number two:
Look in the mirror. Try tensing your stomach in a variety of ways and see if it increases your pupil size. Some people can dilate their pupils in this way, although the underlying mechanism is unidentified. It could be connected to the feeling of "butterflies in your stomach" that you get when you like someone.
Or perhaps connected to the deep belly laughter of a maniacal genius bent on world domination! If you test out any of the odd (but safe) methods listed in the article, share in the comments below. For other body related lifehacks, check out our Top 10 Body Hacks.
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Dilate or Shrink Your Pupils on Command [WikiHow]The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) announced today the 2017 NWSL Championship will be held on Saturday, Oct. 14 at 4:30 p.m. ET at Orlando City Stadium in Orlando, Fla.
The semifinals will be hosted by Portland Thorns FC on Saturday, Oct. 7 at Providence Park in Portland, Ore. and by the North Carolina Courage on Sunday, Oct. 8 at Sahlen’s Stadium in Cary, N.C. Both matches will kick off at 3:30 p.m. ET.
Lifetime will broadcast live all three games of the 2017 NWSL Playoffs and the matches will also be available for both live and on-demand streaming via the Lifetime iOS and Andriod apps and MyLifetime.com. International fans can watch on the NWSL app and NWSLsoccer.com.
Tickets are on sale now for the 2017 NWSL Championship starting as low as $20. Fans will have the opportunity to purchase seats throughout the 25,500 capacity venue, including in the North end of Orlando City Stadium - North America's first safe-standing supporter's section. Tickets are available online at www.NWSLchampionship.com and by phone at 1-855-ORL-CITY.About
The Café - a collaborative student / professional short animated film
Some love is forever... some more than others.
3D Maya look development - Northeastern Univ. student work
The Café tells the story of a hopelessly romantic artist who tries to win the woman of his dreams. Every day presents another opportunity to court her, or at least get her to notice him, as she passes the Café below his studio.
Young Woman sketches by Dana Masson and Carlos Arancibia
Standing in the way of our protagonist, a viciously protective, annoyingly cunning, adorably fluffy white dog.
Small Dog sketches by Carlos Arancibia
Often thwarted but never deterred, watch as the artist dances through life embodying the dreamer in all of us.
Look development @ NU
THE FILMAKERS : Dana (Boadway) Masson & Terrence Masson
--> See their FULL BIOS at the link over there -->
The film's producers need your support to make possible a dream several years in the making. Both are accomplished individuals within the film industry, and also professors, who have used this animated film as a core teaching tool of their classes. Since introducing it to their students, the film has taken on a life of its own, and now a final funding push is necessary to bring it to completion, by paying our graduates!
Café sketch by Dana Masson and rough 3D model
Gene Kelly inspiration reference
THE CREW - THE COLLABORATION
Our crew is comprised of students at Northeastern University taking the upper-level courses in Capstone or Short Animated Film Production and Development which teaches students core aspects of pre-production and animation. Students have had the chance to contribute to every aspect of the film including modeling, lighting, animation, visual effects, look-development, editing, marketing, sound effects, music composition, and more. It's been 5 years (!) so far focussing on the learning objectives in the classroom but we want to make the final PUSH and get it finished!
Look development @ NU
In partnership with our students are a rotating "special forces team" of professional friends volunteering their time and talents for character design and animation. A unique international, interdisciplinary collaboration of epic proportions!
While the finished product of this film is important, we stress even greater importance on the journey, and we invite you to join us for the ride to the finish!
WHAT'S THE CASH FOR?
*** Go see our VIDEO UPDATE in the UPDATES TAB ABOVE!! ***
Our campaign is looking to raise the $$$ necessary to take the film out of the classroom and into the world of finished, professional independent films. Our aspirations are high, and so are the costs... primarily to pay our students during the summer and after they graduate, to fund rendering hardware, professional musicians and promote the film when finished. We will also be looking for a part-time professional lighting / compositing TD to do some heavy lifting.
During the past year we have been iterating on our look development, the edit (about 5 min long), character animation, set dressing, lighting and compositing... our animatic / story reel is getting tighter with every pass.
THANK YOU THANK YOU!
Like the artist, we're doing all we can to make the dream a reality. Join us for the ride and the learning experience, and here's to our not running into any angry dogs along the way!Edit: Since I've been getting a lot of the same questions, I thought I'd answer them here.
* The fish are not real. They were handmade from polymer clay.
* The water is not real water - it's resin.
* I do not have any of these for sale at the moment, and there is currently a waiting list for any that do come back from the convention. I am trying to figure out a way to make more of these so I can list them on Etsy though!
* My commissions are closed at the moment until May 30 or June 1. I am a bit backed up on people wanting ponds so there may be a wait for them.
Thank you guys for all the watches, comments, and favorites! I wish I could reply back to everyone but dA would flag me for spamming if I did.
The first ponds are finally finished and the resin has cured! I am so excited. They came out so great.
This is my husband's tin pond for his desk at work. He requested a tiny frog for his.
The coral tin is almost done. I just need to pour a final layer of resin.Who are you going to believe, Jane Sanders or your lying eyes?
There are lots of liberals who, whether they support his candidacy or not, love Bernie Sanders, and one of the main reasons for that is his reputation for honesty and integrity. That reputation is taking a beating this week, as Bernie continues to insist that Hillary Clinton started a fight that she clearly did not, and his deranged campaign manager goes around blaming Hillary for ISIS and saying she's in league with Satan.
Now, Bernie has also decided to risk whatever goodwill potential First Lady Jane Sanders has accrued by deploying her to further gaslight Democratic voters. On last night's Rachel Maddow Show, Mrs. Sanders repeated the whirl of lies and spin that the Sanders campaign is using to justify Bernie's attack on Hillary, and even tried to say he didn't actually call her unqualified:
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What Bernie tried to do last night was to shift to unqualified, how? Unqualified in the issues. That if you’re going to talk about somebody not being qualified, then let’s talk about why. What he did was say that if I was going to say that she’s unqualified, it’s because of her support for trade deals that have been terrible for our country. It’s because she supported and didn’t have the judgment for the Iraq war or Libya.
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Yeah, no. Bernie didn't say "if I was going to say she was unqualified," he said she is not qualified. Over and over again. It's on video. As for that CNN report they're talking about, no one from the Clinton campaign is quoted, directly or indirectly, saying anything like that. That was CNN's word.
Maddow meekly tried to point that out, and Mrs. Sanders triumphantly noted that Hillary also didn't step in and make an affirmative case for why a disaster of an interview with the Daily News qualifies him to be president. It's like she's his political opponent or something. Then, Mrs. Sanders threw another lie on the barbie:
Yeah, what's up with Hillary Clinton taking forever to come out with a position on Keystone, only to throw her full-throated support behind it:
Therefore, I oppose it.
Bernie, himself, has been sending mixed messages too. He appeared on Late Night Thursday night and continued to insist that Hillary started this whole thing:
But then, he made a bit of a peace offering at the end of the interview:
On Hillary Clinton's worst day, she'ss a hundred times better than any other Republican.
That's cool, then can you stop having your campaign manager blame her for ISIS and saying she's in league with the Prince of Darkness? That'd be a good start.
Look, I get that a die-hard Bernie-worshipper might try really hard to believe that it was okay for him to say Hillary called him unqualified because CNN kinda said an unnamed aide maybe did, but even if that "disqualify" characterization were a direct quote, which it is not, a "disqualification strategy" is not the same thing as saying someone is "not qualified to be president," it is a strategy that every politician everywhere always uses, including Bernie Sanders. Those reasons he ticked off for Hillary not being qualified aren't new, he's been campaigning on them, and worse, for months. That's a disqualification strategy, even if you don't call it that.
This whole thing will probably die down now, since both candidates have an opening and an interest in letting it, but Bernie has done himself no favors with voters who aren't already in the Kool Aid line.Vladimir Putin is either 100-plus years old and never ages - or a time traveler looking for the army of the 12 monkeys, the internet ‘proved’ this week.
Conspiracy theorists are convinced by the ‘solid’ evidence that the Russian president may have been alive for more than a century.
OMG, you must be Putin me on https://t.co/nxVNcQPGGj — Real Aussie Dave (@Israellycool) December 15, 2015
UFO site Disclose.tv, which uses the slogan "truth revealed", posted: “Social networks are circulating pictures from 1920 and 1941 for which some people claim that they are pictures of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, supporters of the thesis that Putin is almighty and immortal have launched a story that their president is a mythical creature that resides on our planet for hundreds, if not thousands of years.”
That would explain why he doesn’t look 63 years old.
Year 2068: peanut butter shortages lead to the collapse of North America. Immortal Emporer Putin takes over the world. Vodka permeates life. — Nick Armstrong (@10centnickel) November 27, 2015
A new and scary twist: Putin as centuries-old immortal. Don't laugh! It might be true, mofos. pic.twitter.com/FvenWV40Fj — Simon Drax (@SimonDrax) October 4, 2015
This ‘discovery’ might create renewed interest in the recently-cancelled TV series Forever which features a similar plot premise.
The 1995 film 12 Monkeys also features a character who travels through time, but he looks more like Bruce Willis than the Russian leader.
.@ComplexStyle@ComplexPop Missed the greatest one - the Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys Kalakaua 1000 tigers shirt! pic.twitter.com/DWgzK1SpVn — Conor Gillespie (@ConorMJG) August 8, 2015Saracens chairman Nigel Wray has dismissed rugby’s salary caps rules as ‘a farce’ in financial documents seen by The Mail on Sunday that show his club’s wage bill soared by another £1million last season alone — even as they remain the subject of a salary cap investigation.
A fortnight after the shock departure of chief executive Edward Griffiths and three months since the revelation that the north London club are being investigated by Premier Rugby for alleged salary cap breaches, The Mail on Sunday can reveal Saracens’ mounting debt has topped £40m — the most in rugby history. The rising costs facing the club are also a concern, with the wage bill leaping more than 50 per cent in three years.
Saracens now owe £41.6m, according to new filings at Companies House, much of it funded by an unsecured loan from long-standing benefactor Wray and a consortium of South African business associates.
Saracens chairman Nigel Wray has dismissed rugby’s salary caps rules as ‘a farce’
The employee wage bill ballooned to £9.1m last year and, with Wray admitting further losses lie ahead, there are growing concerns about the club’s financial health. A move by Saracens last December to scrap the salary cap — which is currently £5m but was £4.5m in the period covered by the new figures — drew no public support from other Premiership clubs.
With discussions ongoing over the viability of ring-fencing the top flight, or at least restricting promotion and relegation, Wray has restated that the salary cap must be scrapped. ‘We need to change the farce whereby we are all operating under different rules,’ wrote Wray in a chairman’s statement in the club’s annual accounts seen by The Mail on Sunday. ‘We have one wage cap, the Irish provinces have no wage cap, the French clubs a wage cap twice ours, all of which makes no sense whatsoever. It needs to be changed.
‘In financial terms, it was another difficult year [2013-14]. Having been involved in professional rugby now for 20 years, I’m constantly amazed how hard it is to break into people’s culture.
Documents show his club’s wage bill soared by another £1million last season alone despite investigation
‘The big cities have that soccer culture but built over 100 years. Allianz Park [the purchase of] is a vast step forward and gives us a permanent home but we still have much to do. We could, of course, cut costs very considerably — for example a top French club has a medical staff of three, far smaller than ours. But we really don’t see how you can aspire to be one of the best club sides in Europe if you don’t have a fantastic support system for the players.’
The club have lost on average just over £5m per year over the past four years, more than doubling its debt burden in that period.
Annual accounts for 2013-14 show the club’s parent company carry no legal obligation to service the debt, meaning they could technically walk away at any time and leave the club insolvent.
Of most interest to their Premiership rivals will be the dramatic hike in salaries paid to employees, which rose from just over £8.1m to more than £9.1m last year
The Mail on Sunday can reveal Saracens’ mounting debt has topped £40m — the most in rugby history
The club took on 24 new staff in that time, nine of them players and coaches, but with the salary cap set at just £4.5m last season — not allowing for one ‘marquee player’ who theoretically could earn an unlimited salary but in reality will not get more than £500,000 — questions persist over the club’s salary structure. Even allowing for the unlikely scenario of a £1m budget for coaching staff, that would leave more than £3m in staff costs for 54 administrative staff — an average salary of more than £55,000.
A Premier Rugby spokesman said: ‘Saracens have recently moved into a new purpose-built stadium, Allianz Park — which is a huge asset to the local community — with a number of new staff added.CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Carolina Panthers general manager Dave Gettleman obviously is not afraid to make the tough decisions.
In the span of a year he has decided to release the team’s all-time leading receiver (Steve Smith) and rusher (DeAngelo Williams). He has opted to dump two popular players at the expense of his own popularity, not that he cares about being popular.
Gettleman is a football guy.
Panthers GM Dave Gettleman has made some unpopular decisions, but the team also has made the playoffs in consecutive seasons. Brian Spurlock/USA TODAY Sports
He’s also a businessman.
You need both to succeed in the NFL, particularly in an era when managing the salary cap is as important as evaluating talent. Gettleman has done well at both.
In two years Gettleman has taken the Panthers from $16 million over the cap to an expected $15 million under the cap heading into free agency that begins on March 10. He has had two successful drafts, particularly his second in which four of the six players selected were starting at the end of the 2014 season.
Has he rubbed a few people the wrong way? Definitely. Smith said he was “stabbed in the back’’ after being released.
Former left tackle Jordan Gross admittedly he didn’t like Gettleman much initially after being asked to restructure his contract to ultimately make 2013 his last season. But as he got to know Gettleman, he admittedly grew to like him.
Gettleman probably will make a few more enemies if the Panthers don’t re-sign defensive end Greg Hardy, and they aren’t expected to. He might tick off a few in his own locker room who have lobbied to keep Hardy since his domestic violence charges were dropped.
That Gettleman told reporters at the combine he hasn’t spoken to Hardy since the 2013 Pro Bowl selection was placed on the commissioner’s exempt list in September and has little contact with Hardy’s agent is telling.
Hardy shouldn’t be surprised by anything Gettleman does based on what he told me last year during a trip to ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut.
“When I went there as a rookie, that's all everybody told me about, that it's a real family organization because that's how Jerry Richardson runs it,’’ he said at the time. “Gettleman coming in with a money-first attitude ticked everybody off, man.
“So he kind of changed the face of the organization to 'It is a business, and once business is settled we can be a family.’]’
Again, Gettleman doesn’t make decisions to be popular. He doesn’t make decisions based on emotion or loyalty. He makes them for the long-term success of the organization. He makes them to win.
It’s hard to argue with his results.
The Panthers have made the playoffs in consecutive years since Gettleman arrived, and that's a first time in team history.
Not all of the success can be credited to Gettleman. Key players such as quarterback Cam Newton and middle linebacker Luke Kuechly were drafted by former general manager Marty Hurney.
But Gettleman has put the team in position to keep those players without mortgaging the future. He has done so by making tough decisions.
“As I’ve stated many times, all decisions I make will be in the long-term best interest of the Carolina Panthers,’’ Gettleman said last year after releasing Smith. “Decisions, either popular or unpopular, have to be made for the greater good and it is imperative to take an unemotional global view.
"... When Mr. Richardson hired me, I promised him that my goal would be to leave the Panthers in a better position than when I came. All my efforts are in that vein.’’“I used to be really into (fill in the blank).” That’s something I can say about a lot of things in my life—photography, |
has a confusing position on how it will handle the virtual currencies. The government is scheduled to issue official regulations on cryptocurrency mining and initial coin offerings (ICO) in July 2018.
However, in late November 2017, Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov has claimed that the government will “never” legalize the virtual currencies.
Because of this pronouncement, Trotsenko said that he is awaiting further developments before launching his already fully functional platform. He further claimed that he already raised the issue of regulating and legalizing the cryptocurrency market with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September.
In early November, the Russian central bank has launched its digital currency CryptoRuble, which is designed to be the only virtual instrument to be recognized in the Russian market.
The CryptoRuble is also intended to enjoy some degree of regulatory freedom. In 2016, revenues from Russian ICOs have totaled more than $300 mln.Music fans are buzzing about recent links via Twitter that claim to be bits and pieces — including the headliners — of the 2013 Lollapalooza lineup.
In early February, the Twitter handle @TheLollaLeaker started dropping hints, clues and bold-faced names that include Kendrick Lamar, Steve Aoki and Blur for the three-day music blowout in Chicago this coming August.
(Scroll down to see more of the rumored 2013 Lollapalooza performers.)
What adds arguable weight to the 2013 round of "leaks" is a second account, @AgentOfLolla. @TheLollaLeaker has been trying to drum up followers in exchange for lineup revelations, meting out names over the course of several days.
Friday night, @AgentOfLolla skipped the baiting, tweeting:
The @AgentOfLolla uploaded what looks like a screen grab of a Lollapalooza lineup, with several of the names @TheLollaLeaker mentioned appearing on the bill:
The rattled-sounding original leaker asked @AgentOfLolla to send a direct message, calling the situation "extremely serious." The less-than sympathetic response?
Chicago magazine reported Monday they had reached out to Lollapalooza for comment and were waiting on a response while noting that none of the bands mentioned in the leaks "seem to be committed to any other concerts for the first weekend in August."
Skepticism over the credibility of the "leaks" is high after the 2012 Lollapalooza lineup hoax in which a different Twitter account revealed supposedly leaked bands — and royally irking Lolla creator Perry Farrell in the process — before outing himself as fraud via Tumblr.
PHOTO GALLERY Lollapalooza 2013 Lineup ConfirmedHyde said: Hi, I saw your post about this in another thread, this sound really interesting but I've only played Edge of the Empire and homebrews so I'm basically a noob when it comes to anything different. The time is okay for and I'll be able to make it each session. So if you're willing to coach me through the start until I can work it by myself I'd really appreicate you messaging me or replying on here. Thanks Hiya Hyde! Thanks! Chode, the co-creator and I really spent a lot of time on this especially yesterday, so it's great to see people enjoy it. ^.^ Yeah, sure thing man, I'd love to come by and walk ya though everything. ^.^ It's based off 5E, so the system is surprisingly streamlined and pretty easy to pick up once you get started, as well as the use of macros to speed everything up. I'll shoot ya a link in a second. I can help ya create your character in an hour or so, will ya be avaliable then?Are you sure? It’s not a well-paid job. It’s not prestigious, except at the very top end. It’s rarely 100% writing or even narrative design – you’ll have to double up on QA and other duties. It will likely involve hard work, ramen and compromise. You are sure? Here’s the best advice we can give.
tl:dr; Build something. Show it to people. Don’t mail a dev and ask how you can get a job with them – at best they’ll point you to a resource like this one. Don’t leave something half-finished on your hard drive because it’s not ready to show the world. If you land a writing gig, week 1 will require you to get thousands of words on-screen, ready to be shown to thousands of people who don’t care if you live or die.
(1) If you want to write for Failbetter…
Build pieces in a text-centric interactive writing tool. We suggest Twine, ChoiceScript or inklewriter. If you don’t enjoy it or can’t finish it, that’s good evidence that you wouldn’t enjoy working for us. If you do enjoy it, you’ll end up with a portfolio piece you can use when we’re hiring writers – freelance or permanent.
You should review our three-part guide to writing for Fallen London and the list of our blog posts on writing for interactive fiction. Alexis, our former CEO, also presented at GDC in 2016, and you can watch his talk about Choice, Consequence and Complicity in the GDC Vault.
(2) If you want to write for another indie dev…
Other game devs emphasise different things. Some make use of narrative designers who aren’t primarily writers, and don’t mind so much about the detail of the prose. Some use voice actors. Many use linear stories, not the kind of choice-based responsive stuff we do. A portfolio piece in one of the tools above is probably still a good start. Here are some game writing tips from a successful freelancer.
Or you could just make your own game. A lot of indie devs are hybrid writer-designers – many games don’t need much copy or that much story. Here’s a guide to indie game making from someone else successful, also called Tom.
(3) If you want to write for a big glossy AAA dev…
Hell if I know. I never have. Some people make it in through QA. Some people make it in via other indies. I think some folk even make it in with a creative writing qualification. Here’s some advice from David Gaider, in three parts:
Part One: What is a games writer?
Part Two: On developing the skill of writing
Part Three: On putting together a good submission
Here are additional, more recent opinions and advice, also from David Gaider.
Lastly, here’s lots of really specific, practical advice from Liz England. It’s aimed at designers, but that includes narrative design.
Best of luck!Moscow court frees 1 of 3 Pussy Riot members
Members of the all-girl punk band Pussy Riot appear in court Oct. 10 in Moscow to appeal their two-year prison sentences for hooliganism. From left, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. (Photo11: Natalia Kolesnikova AFP/Getty Images)
A Moscow appeals court has freed one member of the Russian band Pussy Riot but upheld the two-year prison sentences for the other two.
The three were convicted in August of "hooliganism" for staging a profanity-laden "punk prayer" at Moscow's main cathedral in February that accused the Orthodox Church and Russian leader Vladimir Putin of corruption.
The court ruled Wednesday that Yekaterina Samutsevich's sentence should be suspended because she was thrown out of the cathedral by guards before she could remove her guitar from its case and take part in the performance, the Associated Press reports.
In a statement, Samutsevich declared that while she did intend to perform a political act when entering the church. she had no intention of offending any religious beliefs, Russia Today reports.
Samutsevich, 30, and co-defendants Maria Alekhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, spoke in court from inside a glass cage known colloquially as the "aquarium."
Lawyers for two other defendants expressed confusion over the verdict.
"We are happy that Samutsevich has been freed, but it would have been fair to set all the girls free," Interfax quotes defense attorney Mark Feigin as saying after the decision. "We will continue to fight this decision in the Supreme Court and using the authority of the European Court of Human Rights."
During the hearing, the judge frequently interrupted statements by the trio when the subject veered toward politics.
"Putin is doing everything for the development of civil war in this country," said Tolokonnikova at one point, raising her voice to try to drown out a judge who tried to interrupt her.
The case has sparked an international outcry, with Western governments and pop star Madonna, among other artists, condemning the sentences as out of proportion to their actions.
In an interview broadcast Sunday on Russian NTV television, Putin defended the original sentences.
"It's right that they were arrested. It's right that the court took that decision, because you can't undermine the foundations of morality, our moral values, destroy the country. What would we be left with then?" Putin said, according to the BBC.
An opinion poll conducted last month by the independent Levada center found 35% of Russians believe the two-year sentences were appropriate, while 34% said they were too lenient and only 14% said they were excessive, Reuters reports.
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October 2007: Playaz dropped a historical 12” – DJ Hazard & D*Minds – Mr Happy
Reloaded by every heavyweight DJ at every rave and festival throughout the summer building up to its release; Mr Happy was the ultimate tune rattling around in your head long after the party was over. The type you’d be humming, singing and whistling all the way home… And the all the following week. ID requests on the forums, singing like a tit to the record store guy. Everything about Mr Happy stood out and cut through the noise in the summer of 2007. Those distinctive laser sounds on the intro. The rolling drums and little reverse bass teases then boom: the now-iconic stabby brass-like bass tones swathe through any mix like a machete (not sorry)… Mr Happy crushed and obliterated more dances than London’s club-hating local authorities.
“I remember telling my vinyl distributor that I felt Mr Happy will be a big tune and that it might be even bigger than [Hazard’s previous single] Busted, but my distributor disagreed because it was only on limited dub and no one knew the title, therefore no one was calling the distributor for it. But I kept telling him to watch this space and that I truly believed that this was the big one… And sure enough, as soon as it was promo’d in 2007, it was an instant dancefloor anthem and has remained there ever since.” – DJ Hype
As it big as it was, though, no one could anticipate the journey Mr Happy has been on since the summer of 2007. Even the biggest tunes get retired or filed under ‘classics’ eventually, but there’s been something about Mr Happy that has led to DJs to continue to draw for it and crowds continuing to go ape-shit for it.
From dubplate anthem to major underground hit to cult status and modern day standard: Mr Happy has transcended the test of time so successfully it seems to get bigger every year. It’s become the punchline to a joke every drum & bass fan is in on. Even if you don’t like the tune (and there are many people who don’t) you can’t deny the statement it makes when timed right and dropped with an appropriate knowingness. In the right DJ’s hands, Mr Happy’s persistent sense of fun, mischief and hooky hurly burly nature can work in the middle of almost any style set and inspire appropriately chaotic reactions. Ask Muzzy… We requested he played it at Liquicity (a festival you’d least expect to hear Mr Happy). He duly obliged and the crowd went bananas.
“I can’t believe it still gets played! I hear it in every club I play. Which is mad because I don’t hang around as I’m always off to the next club. But I still hear it either just as I get in or just as I’m leaving. I’m still waiting for it to get old but it hasn’t!” – DJ Hazard
How Mr Happy came to be….
“There was an early rough version of the track that had probably been tested prior to us getting involved. Hype had an idea that it had good potential but needed work and a good mix. We don’t think any of us imagined we would be doing this interview ten years later.” – D*Minds
It all began with a trip from Hazard’s native Birmingham to D*Minds’ Bristol HQ. Not satisfied with the mixdown of his biggest tune at that point (Busted, a dubplate bomb through the latter end of 2006 and released early 2007) Hazard called up some mates for advice.
“I asked Al and Jon from D*Minds a few pointers on software because I was a hardware guy. They said ‘come down, we’ll show you some stuff and we’ll do a tune together’ We made Super Drunk during that session, which was mainly their work and some of my bass samples. It was amazing how quick they knocked things up. I was like ‘wow!’ I learnt so much from that session. We felt it was a decent tune so we were essentially looking for a B-side. I was always planning on getting back down to Bristol but you know these things are. Time went by and Mr Happy was something I’d been working on so wondered if that could be it. So I sent it to Hype.” – DJ Hazard
“Hazard sends me a few tunes to check out as per usual, and one of them is this little gem called Mr Happy. At the time, the mixdown was not right but I just knew this tune was gonna be big… It was the follow-up to Busted and I just felt it was gonna be an even bigger track than Busted, even though Busted was pretty much a big anthem for Hazard at the time.” – DJ Hype
“I couldn’t tell if it was good or not until Hype called me. It was pretty much straight away and he was saying ‘yeah I really like that one’. He was really enthusiastic so I thought ‘maybe this will work’. That’s when I sent it to Al and Jon.” – DJ Hazard
“It needed that extra ‘something’, we came along with fresh ears and another mindset and kicked it over the edge.” – D*Minds
The b-side became an a-side. The rest became history. If you’ve ever wondered where the title comes from, it’s a combination of three happy people in Hazard’s life at the time….
“The way it came about were three Mr Happies,” explains Hazard. “Mainly my son, because when he was born he was just always happy. It also relates to my older son. We’d got to McDonalds and see this guy doing all the jobs no one else wanted to do; emptying the bins, cleaning the floors etc. No matter what job he was doing, he always had this big smile on this face so we called him Mr Happy. Then there’s the irony of DJ Hype – because he’s a bit grumpy. Most people think it’s a joke about him and I guess I’ve never told people otherwise. He wasn’t grumpy when I sent him this tune, though…”
No More Games
Context and timing is everything: Big riffy basslines had been the gold standard for most of the 2000s and hooky hurters were firing across the spectrum: Dillinja productions were still the end boss bombs they’d been for over a decade, Mampi was the man and the rougher end of Bingo gave us tracks such as Zinc’s Creeper and Chase & Status’s Druids. Meanwhile the darker end of gully bruisers were pouring out of the labs of G Dub’s Original Sin and Sub Zero, Clipz, Twisted Individual, TC, Taxman, Hazard, D*Minds and many more. Powerful intoxicating bass hooks were rife in drum & bass at the time.
Mr Happy landed slap bang in the thick of this movement, capturing the style’s sound and attitude. And it came from two of the most consistent artists in the sound. Prior to Mr Happy both Hazard and D*Minds had flattened us years of anthems tailored for club demolition. Hazard’s zippy Enuff Iz Enuff and bouncy Rubber Chicken, D*Minds’ abrasive stinker We Can’t Stop and the turbine tear-up No Test, the list goes on.
From D*Minds’ perspective, Mr Happy also came from an intense chapter of Bristol drum & bass. As well as artists and, now, score composers, they’re also the promoters behind Bristol’s legendary Run events. Now one of city’s longest running and most respected D&B parties, Run host the city’s biggest events and all day raves. Back then they were weekly Tuesdays at the intimate underground club Native and had the likes of Clipz, Loadstar’s Xample, TC, Hazard, Grooverider, Jakes and many more as residents. Echoing the weeklies that had been happening in London such as Swerve, Blue Note and Movement, Run was a gathering where dubs would be tested and tunes would be broken. Tunes like Mr Happy.
“First time we played it would have been at RUN at Native our weekly Tuesday night in Bristol at the time. Loads of new bits got tested there from a whole heap of DJs. Was a classic RUN moment, people lost their shit, it had that amazing feeling of an instant classic. We even remember the head doorman running in calling for the rewind…. A WTF type moment.” – D*Minds
“It’s got a riff, a really good riff. It’s mean. It sounds like it’s got the attitude of every jump up song ever combined and it’s instantly recognizable. It doesn’t need any introduction, you can throw the fader over to the drop whenever you want and people will always get it within one second. It’s also in F, which means you can double drop it with loads of other D&B tunes. But most importantly: the riff. You could imagine a football stadium singing it. Which probably happened at some point. It’s that clear and upfront. And that’s the mark of a truly big riff. Not many D&B tunes can make that claim, not even some of the biggest classics. Can you imagine 40.000 soccer fans singing ‘The Nine’? (And how amazing would that be?)” – Noisia
“I think it’s just been one of those tunes that you can go to in any situation, playing to any crowd, and get a reaction. It’s such a popular tune that I actually try not to play it when possible but that can be hard to do that sometimes!” – Friction
“When Mr Happy originally dropped it was a ridiculous tune, but that doesn’t mean its going to stand the test of time, most tunes start to sound old in a few years at best (some only months) the producers that can write tunes that transcend time tend to be able to do it again and again. The thing with Mr Happy is you don’t even notice the mixdown, to this day it still comes across as fresh as when it was released, which is a remarkable achievement mixdown and design wise. You can really hear both Hazard & D Minds style in the track.” – The Prototypes
Time Tripping…
“I remember first hearing this in the car on the road to a gig in Bristol and it’s one of those ones where everyone was like ‘wow, this is going to be massive!’ It hit us. At the time it wasn’t my style of tune but over the years it’s crossed into everyone’s paths. There’s just something insanely catchy about it that’s crossed over into every style.” – Andy C
If its catchiness and context galvanised its success in the early days, what is it that’s made Mr Happy become even more popular and played as the years go by? There are two potential reasons. Firstly, D*Minds’ mixdown. The tune stands tall to this day and can be played up against modern muscle mixdowns with little to no drop in weight or clarity.
“When they sent me the mixdown back I was like ‘fucking hell that’s nice.’ It was really loud and clear which is what everyone wanted back then. And still do now let’s be honest. I didn’t realise how loud it was until we cut it to vinyl. The mixdown made Mr Happy; it stood out on vinyl so well. And that’s all down to Distorted Minds. It was the right mixdown for the right era for the right tune. It got as big as it because of their mixdown.” – DJ Hazard
“Believe it or not we mixed and worked on it in a very makeshift temporary studio setup that was absolutely freezing at the time. It was in a disused dental surgery, we had a little computer desk in the middle of the room with only one monitor, the room had no sound treatment either. It was on that organic path. No airs and graces just honest D&B.” – D*Minds
Mixdown masters Noisia also note how the frequencies used in the riff have given Mr Happy the clarity and character that help it cut through in the way that it does. “I think the reason why it still translates so well is that it’s got a riff sound in a more traditional frequency range, almost like a brass sound. This will always come across, it doesn’t depend on bass weight or high end presence,” explains Noisia’s Nik. “And since most other tunes don’t use that range as much, this always cuts through in a mix.”
So that’s one reasons how it’s survived the test of time technically. But there’s another argument why it remains so popular now and has become even more so. Mr Happy was the entry point for many fans who are in their 20s now and many artists who’ve broken through in the last five years.
“For me, it’s one of those classic tunes that brings to mind my first years becoming aware of drum & bass,” explains Shogun Audio’s Ed:It, for example. “Those early days; going-out and raving. Heading to early Detonates in Notts and watching the likes of Andy C, Friction and of course Hazard himself.”
Just as fans a few years older came through on ubiquitous anthems such as The Nine or Super Sharp Shooter, the next generation were anointed by jump-up riffs and Mr Happy was a deal breaker for early ears of a whole generation of acts who are now biting the headline slots. In this sense it’s a classic that can be drawn for with equal measures of nostalgia and roots and dancefloor pleasure, because it’s still technically strong against today’s productions. And it’s this combination of repetition, technical relevance and recent culture of bassline-singing (something we’ve inherited from our Brazilian drum & bass family, as Patife explained to us a few months ago) that’s caused its consistent popularity for a whole new generation of drum and bass fans… To the point Hazard himself has taken it out of retirement.
“I first stopped playing it years ago because I thought everyone was sick of it, and maybe they were for a few years. But now people complain when I don’t play it. I’ve had messages from people saying ‘I was really upset you didn’t play Mr Happy’ I’m thinking ‘what? That tune is done’ But then I realise that person is the new generation, he hasn’t been there and seen that in the club. This isn’t about me, it’s about drum & bass fans really isn’t it? People who support the music and have helped me get to this point. If people want to hear it then I should respect that and play it every now and again.” – DJ Hazard
There will probably, almost certainly, never be a remix…
With all this in mind, you’re not likely to ever see it officially remixed. Why would you if the original still creates the reaction it does? In fact Mr Happy has only ever gone through three versions: a Hazard special, a special for an MMA fighter’s entrance theme and the original… The only actually available version for now and probably ever.
“I think Hazard has a little special of it with his name in it and we also have a never released – and never will release – version that was especially made for an amateur MMA cage fighter who hit me up years ago to have a track he could use when getting into the ring to fight. I had this little idea of using the intro from a track I did with Daddy Earl’s vocals called Look To The Future as an intro where it drops into Mr Happy… It’s a great intro if you were gonna fight. But sadly he lost his fight and I can’t remember his name!” – DJ Hype
Added fighting talk can be found in the host of unauthorised versions. From trap to moombahton to halftime to footwork, Mr Happy’s universal riff has been repurposed in many genres, and Hazard has a message for all budding unofficial bootleggers and remixers: stop it now and invest your talents in your own original material.
“I get sent a ‘remix’ of it almost every week,” says Hazard. “It’s only a remix if we’ve asked you to do it and paid you to do it. It’s not a bootleg, or a VIP, it’s a rip-off basically. I can’t put it any nicer – you’ve stolen it and I’ve never heard a version that appealed to me.”
You can assume D*Minds feel the same way too…
“Yep assume away!” they state. “Not sure what purpose a remix would achieve, to use your words ‘it’s transcended the test of time so successfully it seems to get bigger every year’”
But what if it HAD to be remixed? What if we squeezed Hazard to reveal one act he would feel the happiest (not sorry) about giving the parts to and didn’t let him put the phone down until he told us…
“Let’s say in five year’s time I might think ‘this needs an update’, the remix would have to be beyond brilliant because the legacy of the original has gone the way it has,” considers Hazard. “Even though I don’t think the original is brilliant, god knows why it caught on so much and why it gets played so much, but the new one would have to be so good it adds to this mad situation the original has got itself into.
“And if you pushed me now for a remixer? I’d have to say Noisia, but only because you’re pushing me for a name. And it would have to be the best the tune they’ve ever done in their life. Which is saying something really considering what they’ve achieved and capable of.”
“That’s very flattering! Thanks Scott. To be honest, it’d be extremely difficult. What do you add to a song like that? You definitely don’t mess with the riff! Interesting to fantasize about, but honestly this is one of those tracks that’ll do just fine without being remixed. No need to ‘update’ it, it’s still being drawn and will be for quite a long time I’m sure!” – Noisia
“At the end of the day, Mr Happy has really stood the test of time and tell me – where have you EVER heard it dropped in a party/festival/club and the crowd does not go nuts and start singing the hookline?! Tracks like this are not planned, they just happen organically and that’s why I rate Hazard so much as a producer. He does not bandwagon jump, or rinse out with 20 productions that all sound the same… Who knows, Mr Happy part 2 might be just around the corner… Only time will tell!” – DJ Hype
Whatever’s around the corner, we will all wait patiently… However long it takes. Mr Happy’s success marked the start of a much slower flow of releases from Hazard who, as we covered in our interview with him last month, hasn’t released a single since Bricks Don’t Roll in 2014.
“Mr Happy does mark the start of when I slowed down on releases, yeah. It came hand in hand with more DJ bookings which Mr Happy must have helped with. But it was the expectance I was worried about – that every tune had to be as big or as stand-out as Mr Happy. There was a gap after that tune. I felt I had to do better than what people expected me to. It was the same with Machete EP. Then after Machete I was like ‘how am I going to do better than that?’ I could go in the studio and knock up a tune but it’s not going to be good enough. I’ll never make the same tune out of the same parts. Everything starts fresh. No pre-sets. If you want a bass you make it. If you want a drumkit you make it. I want to push myself and it’s a long process to make everything from scratch on hardware but that’s the way I like to do it.” – DJ Hazard
Finally, you should be pleased to hear that D*Minds are also back on the bangers. Having prioritised their movie trailer scoring work and Run events and taken them both to award-winning places, Al and Jon are now in a position to remind how heavy their D*Style has always been. They’ve been teasing out singular bangers such as Rinse and Blacker over the last few years and promise more in the near future. Here’s to another ten years…
“It may be easy to think we’ve eased off a bit. But it’s the complete opposite – the throttle is fully down. We remember listening reading a Noisia interview that explained how they structured their workflow and how time was set aside for different projects. We got to a point where we had lots of different balls to juggle and didn’t want to become Jacks of all trades so decided to allocate our time a bit differently. We set aside some time to immerse ourselves in the movie trailer thing and fully get into that production. We now have an amazing portfolio and have worked on some of Hollywood’s most recent biggest blockbusters alongside some very cool independent movies. RUN is still a big passion and going strong and there’s a great team behind it. Drum & bass & D*Style is always there and is a principal foundation for us in whatever we’re doing. We’re definitely eager to unleash some new drum & bass soon!” – D*Minds
Follow D*Minds: Facebook / Soundcloud / Twitter
Follow DJ Hazard: Facebook / Soundcloud / Twitter
Follow Playaz: Facebook / Soundcloud / TwitterThe morning I met John Green, in one of an extensive suite of rooms at Claridge’s in London, he was tired, emotional and at times teary. It was 9.30am. He had woken that day to the news of the Charleston shootings, when nine worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were shot dead by a lone gunman, and the news had evidently deeply upset him. ‘We have crazy gun laws,’ he said. ‘And we have a lot of guns. And we also have an incredibly long history of systemic, institutionalised racism.’ He paused, looked up to the ceiling and let out a long ‘Aaaaah’. I actually wondered if he wanted to continue our interview.
But Green, 37, himself an Episcopal Christian, soon rallied. ‘Other than that, I am well,’ he said. ‘I slept great. This is a beautiful city, home to the world’s best football club and many of my favourite things.’
Green was in London to talk about the film of his book Paper Towns, having visited four countries in as many days as part of a European tour. Tall, gangly, bespectacled and boyish with somewhat wayward hair, he is a football fanatic who sponsors the English League Two fan-funded club AFC Wimbledon. Last year he earned $9 million, thanks to the film adaptation of his most recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars, published in 2012. And this year looks as though it won’t disappoint. An additional 1.5 million paperback copies of Paper Towns have been printed to tie in with the release of the film, which will take Green’s total number of book sales above 30 million.
The lead character in Paper Towns, Margo Roth Spiegelman, an 18-year-old who is the most popular girl at school, is played by Cara Delevingne. ‘It’s funny and embarrassing, but I have to say I did not know who Cara was when she auditioned,’ Green told me. ‘There’s a moment in the audition when Q [her next-door neighbour Quentin’s nickname] says, “I love you Margo”, and Margo shoots back, “Love me? You don’t even know me!” And the way Cara said that felt like it was spoken by someone who knows what it’s like to be told that they are loved and feel that they are not known. In that moment I was like, she gets Margo better than I do! So that was it for me.’
• John Green calls Cara Delevingne's interview 'admirable'
The casting was not his decision but, as Green says, Delevingne is Margo Roth Spiegelman. ‘She is like that girl,’ he said. ‘Cara has images of her all over the world that people make broad conclusions about, so she knows what it’s like to be mis-imagined, she knows what it’s like to have people project on to you.’
It is Green’s ability to create believable teenage characters living real, often troubled and complex lives that has been the key to the success of his books. Margo may be the most popular girl at school but she projects a persona that is not who she really is. Quentin (played by Nat Wolff), who has been in love with her and in awe of her since they were at junior school, also projects on to her his own romanticised fantasies. The pair spend a night together during the last week of high school, wreaking revenge on various members of the Margo clique who have for one reason or another slighted her. And then when she disappears, the mystery of who she really is starts to unfold.
When Green started writing in 2000, the ‘Young Adult’ genre of books that focus on the issues that teenagers face in the real world was not the big business it has become today. In 2013 sales of YA and children’s books were up by more than 22 per cent on the previous year (by contrast, adult-fiction sales were down 3.3 per cent, according to the Association of American Publishers). The Fault in Our Stars has sold well over 10 million copies.
Green on location during filming for Paper Towns
Green took years to finish his first book, Looking for Alaska – it wasn’t published until 2006. That was the year after the launch of YouTube, and Green has since been at the forefront of the video-sharing revolution. He is now one of the most innovative and influential figures on YouTube, with his own community of devoted followers (more than 2.6 million subscribers), who call themselves Nerdfighters.
In January 2007 Green and his younger brother, Hank, 35, began communicating with each other by posting a daily video. John had moved from New York to Indianapolis where his wife, Sarah, had taken a job at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and Hank was 25 hours’ drive away in Missoula, Montana. They decided to do this instead of emailing or texting (usually they would see each other only once a year, at Christmas).
The Brotherhood 2.0 Project, as they called it, ended after 12 months but evolved into the VlogBrothers format, with John posting a video every Tuesday and Hank doing it on Fridays. They discuss their lives and the random things that keep them entertained.
'My brother Hank is better at everything than I am, I think, except maybe writing stories' John Green
What makes the geeky, funny and sometimes surprisingly informative videos so compelling to their audience is that they are personal and genuine. Despite the millions of viewers (the majority are female – ‘high- school students mostly but they’ve definitely got older with us’), you sense that the brothers are still primarily interested in each other’s lives.
‘I’ve never missed a Hank video,’ Green said. ‘The whole idea is that he is making them for me, so I’d feel terrible if I missed one.’ Green lists all the other YouTube channels that are built around sibling or close-friend relationships – the Gregory Brothers, Dan and Phil, Jack and Finn. ‘It’s a medium that really values personal engagement.’
Green with his brother, Hank
The VlogBrothers’ slogan is ‘Don’t forget to be awesome’ (abbreviated to DFTBA), and their mission in life is to decrease what they call ‘world suck’. Since December 2007 they have organised their annual charity event, the Project for Awesomeness, which – with the help of their online community – disrupts YouTube so that videos from their favourite charities dominate the channel for 24 hours. They have so far raised more than $1 million for the charities. There is also a Nerdfighter community on the micro-lending site Kiva.org, which has collectively lent more than $5.5 million to small businesses in the developing world.
The Greens were not only early YouTube adopters. In 2010 they started an annual conference called VidCon for YouTube creators like themselves to meet and exchange ideas. The first conference attracted 1,400 YouTubers, and this year it was held at the Anaheim Convention Centre in California, where members of the YouTube video community had to be limited to 18,000. The day before the US release of Paper Towns on July 23, John made the keynote speech. Workshops included ‘How to sign a contract’ and ‘Vlogging: Standing out and finding your style’. As if all of that were not enough, the Greens have also started an online educational channel called CrashCourse, a series of videos aimed at college students, as well as, more recently, CrashCourse Kids, which includes videos about science for primary-school children. Launched in 2011, CrashCourse now has more than three million subscribers.
Collaboration is the key to running so many different projects – the Greens have teams of people who work with them. ‘There are lots of people who are much, much better at a lot of these things than I am,’ John said. ‘I’m a terrible video editor, for instance. Even eight years on I still can’t edit videos.’ It is as though the brothers spur each other on in their endless entrepreneurial achievements. (Hank is a musician and the creator of a crowdfunding platform called Subbable.) ‘We were not that close when we started Brotherhood 2.0,’ John said of his brother. ‘But as much as many things have come out of that, the greatest gift of it is just having Hank in my life on a daily basis.’
'Reading for me has always |
Europe.
Last year, I set up a Working Group on Long-term Fiscal Planning to conduct a fiscal sustainability health check. We did it because we are keenly aware of Hong Kong’s low fertility rate and ageing population, not unlike many advanced economies. And that can pose challenges to public finance in the longer term. A series of expenditure-control measures, including a 2 per cent efficiency enhancement over the next three financial years, has been rolled out.
And, speaking of Europe, he says the statist governments from that continent should clean up their own messes before criticizing Hong Kong for being responsible.
I would hope that some of those governments in Europe, those that have accused Hong Kong of being a tax haven, would look at the way they conduct their own fiscal policies. I believe they could learn a lesson from us about the virtues of small government.
Just in case you think this speech is somehow an anomaly, let’s now look at some slides from a separate presentation by different Hong Kong officials.
Here’s one that warmed my heart. The Hong Kong official is bragging about the low-tax regime, which features a flat tax of 15 percent!
But what’s even more impressive is that Hong Kong has a very small burden of government spending.
And government officials brag about small government.
By the way, you’ll also notice that there’s virtually no red ink in Hong Kong, largely because the government focuses on controlling the disease of excessive spending.
Why is government small?
In large part, as you see from the next slide, because there is almost no redistribution spending.
Indeed, officials actually brag that fewer and fewer people are riding in the wagon of dependency.
Can you imagine American lawmakers with this kind of good sense?
None of this means that Hong Kong doesn’t have any challenges.
There are protests about a lack of democracy. There’s an aging population. And there’s the uncertainty of China.
But at least for now, Hong Kong is a tribute to the success of free markets and small government.John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion who focuses on climate change and social justice. Follow him on Snapchat, Facebook and email. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN) Mauritania, the West African country long thought to be home to the world's highest percentage of enslaved people, no longer holds that lamentable title, according to a report released late Monday.
The Walk Free Foundation's slavery index says the percentage of people living in modern slavery in Mauritania dropped from 4% in 2014 to about 1% this year. The country, which CNN featured in the 2012 documentary "Slavery's last stronghold," now has the world's seventh-highest incidence of slavery.
North Korea ranks worst on the index. Nearly one in 20 people there are thought to be enslaved.
"Slavery is not a thing of the past, and we must stop thinking that it is," the Walk Free Foundation said in a statement issued to CNN. "The very nature of modern slavery means it is clandestine and hidden from view, but that doesn't mean it isn't everywhere. Every country in the world is affected."
Globally 45.8 million people are held in slavery, according to the report, which is based on random surveys in 25 countries, including Mauritania, and statistical modeling. That's a 28% uptick since the group's last slavery index report was released in 2014. But Fiona David, the Walk Free Foundation's executive director of global research, cautioned against reading too much into that increase or the decrease in slavery's prevalence in Mauritania. The group's ability to estimate the prevalence of slavery is improving over time, she said, so the trends may result in part from better stats.
"It's too early for us to say whether or not there's been an absolute increase," she said.
The group uses computer models to estimate the prevalence of slavery in countries where it was unable to do surveys. That process of risk assessment has "gone from horse and cart to having a car on the road" in terms of its sophistication, David said. "What we can categorically say," she added, "is we have a better picture (of the prevalence of slavery worldwide) than we've ever had before."
The Walk Free Foundation defines slavery as "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, abuse of power or deception."
The nonprofit worked with Gallup to conduct in-person surveys in Mauritania for the first time, David said. Of the 1,000 people interviewed in Mauritania, 37 -- or 3.7% -- said they had been subjected to forced labor or were forced into marriage, according to the report. The percentage was adjusted to ensure the random sample represented the demographics of Mauritania, David said, arriving at this year's 1% figure.
When CNN reported on slavery in Mauritania in 2012, experts, including Gulnara Shahinian, then the U.N. special rapporteur on modern forms of slavery, estimated 10% to 20% of the population was living in modern forms of slavery. With echoes of pre-Civil War America, slavery is still hereditary in parts of the vast country, with mostly darker-skinned black Africans being enslaved by lighter-skinned Arabs.
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It's difficult to get information out of the country. Top government officials continue to deny slavery exists in Mauritania. They often couch anti-slavery programs in terms of "vestiges" of the practice.
"While Mauritania has been the focus of extensive interest and reporting in the past, it has not had the benefit of a national survey until now," the report says. "The extent of slavery in Mauritania is still high; however more reliable methods indicate that it is not as high as previously thought."
Researchers cannot rule out the possibility that the prevalence of slavery in Mauritania is in fact decreasing because of growing awareness. The Mauritanian government last year established special anti-slavery courts. Those courts made their first convictions in May -- marking only the second time that a slave owner had been convicted in Mauritania since the practice of owning slaves was criminalized in 2007.
"It's very encouraging to see the government making new legislation," David said. "And it's very encouraging to see (anti-slavery activist) Biram Dah Abeid was released after 18 months' imprisonment."
Sarah Mathewson, Africa program coordinator for Anti-Slavery International, said slavery in Mauritania is "shrouded in secrecy" and therefore hard to measure.
"It is incredibly difficult to ascertain how many people remain in slavery in Mauritania," she said in an email. "To my knowledge there has never been any comprehensive, nationwide study to identify numbers of people in slavery alongside the local organizations best placed to find cases; the Mauritanian government hasn't allowed that to happen, and because the local organizations do not have the funds to carry out such studies... we could confidently say that hundreds of thousands continue to be affected, as we have met entire villages of people that might remain under the control of their masters."
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Among the other key findings of the report:
• "Though information on North Korea is difficult to verify, pervasive evidence exists that citizens are subjected to state-sanctioned forced labor, including through forced labor as political prisoners and as workers on overseas contracts."
• "Uzbekistan has the second highest estimated proportion of prevalence of modern slavery by population. While some steps have been taken to address forced labor in the cotton industry, the Uzbek government continues to subject its citizens to forced labor in the cotton harvest each year."
• "In 2016, we estimate 18.3 million people are in some form of modern slavery in India. This estimate reflects extensive surveying conducted in 2016 in 15 states. While many impressive efforts are being taken by the Indian Government to address vulnerability, survey data suggest that domestic work, construction, farming, fishing, manual labor and the sex industry remain sectors of concern."
David highlighted some positive developments as well, including the UK passing a law that requires large companies to report on what they're doing to root out slave labor in their supply chains.
That's a model for other countries, including the United States and China, to follow, she said.Three inmates have died of suspected overdoses in the Barton Street jail since 2012, CBC Hamilton has learned.
Now, the coroner's office is examining the possibility of a systemic drug problem brewing inside the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre. Regional coroner Dr. Jack Stanborough said he will consider a combined inquest into all three cases should the individual investigations point to the same cause of death. A coroner's inquest is mandatory any time an inmate dies an "unnatural death."
Stanborough confirmed three inmates who were exhibiting "overdose-like symptoms" have died in just over two years — one Tuesday night, another on March 25 and a third on March 16, 2012. None of the deaths were made public by any of the three agencies probing the incidents.
All of the deaths were "pretty similar," Stanborough said. Officials planned to announce a coroner's inquest into the 2012 death Friday, but have decided to delay it and possibly combine it with the other two investigations.
Preliminary toxicity screens from the March 25 incident have come back from the lab, and “there’s a fairly reasonable chance we’re going to see that one go to inquest,” Stanborough said. Officials are still waiting on toxicity reports from the death of 38-year-old Marty Tykoliz, who died Tuesday night at a Hamilton hospital. Sources inside the jail say Tykoliz had taken a powerful opiate called powdered methadone.
Public disclosure not mandatory
Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services spokesperson Brent Ross also confirmed all of the deaths, but would not comment on the circumstances surrounding them, citing the ongoing investigations. The ministry is not bound to release news of these incidents to the public, he says.
"The ministry only notifies the police and coroner, who then notify the individual’s next of kin. There is no duty to notify the public," Ross said. "Given the matter is under both internal and police investigations, it would be inappropriate to provide further detail."
With three deaths, you'd think the ministry would be making this a top priority. —John Hill, lawyer
Stanborough says the coroner's office has no obligation to inform the general public if a death happens inside the jail. Hamilton police spokesperson Const. Claus Wagner told CBC Hamilton that police would only make a death public if there was a public safety issue — which means of the three organizations investigating, it is no one's responsibility to inform the public, and there is reduced chance for public scrutiny of what may be happening inside provincial jails.
"That's unacceptable," said John Hill, a prison lawyer with 25 years of experience in Ontario. "With three deaths, you'd think the ministry would be making this a top priority."
The ministry is clearly trying to avoid bad publicity here, Hill says, "but that doesn't justify not bringing this forward."
Hamilton EMS manager Carmen D'Angelo told CBC Hamilton he has no record of ambulance crews being called to the jail on March 25, which he says is odd. "I find it very surprising we weren't called there," he said. That could mean the inmate was either driven to hospital by someone else or was long past the point that any resuscitation was possible, he added.
Glimpses of these incidents first started appearing Wednesday when word surfaced that Tykoliz had died after being rushed to hospital from the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre twice this week. City ambulance crews had been called to the detention centre a 12 times between Monday and Wednesday morning for inmates all suffering from overdose-like symptoms. Three inmates were first taken to hospital with overdose symptoms Monday, and Tykoliz was one of them.
All three men were brought back to the jail some hours later, sources say. But paramedics were called back to the jail Tuesday after Tykoliz's heart stopped. He died in hospital that night.Researchers have found that a method of natural family planning that uses two indicators to identify the fertile phase in a woman's menstrual cycle is as effective as the contraceptive pill for avoiding unplanned pregnancies if used correctly, according to a report published online in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction today (21 February). [1]
The symptothermal method (STM) is a form of natural family planning (NFP) that enables couples to identify accurately the time of the woman's fertile phase by measuring her temperature and observing cervical secretions. In the largest, prospective study of STM, the researchers found that if the couples then either abstained from sex or used a barrier method during the fertile period, the rate of unplanned pregnancies per year was 0.4% and 0.6% respectively. Out of all the 900 women who took part in the study, including those who had unprotected sex during their fertile period, 1.8 per 100 became unintentionally pregnant.
The lead author of the report, Petra Frank-Herrmann, assistant professor and managing director of the natural fertility section in the Department of Gynaecological Endocrinology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, said: "For a contraceptive method to be rated as highly efficient as the hormonal pill, there should be less than one pregnancy per 100 women per year when the method is used correctly. The pregnancy rate for women who used the STM method correctly in our study was 0.4%, which can be interpreted as one pregnancy occurring per 250 women per year. Therefore, we maintain that the effectiveness of STM is comparable to the effectiveness of modern contraceptive methods such as oral contraceptives, and is an effective and acceptable method of family planning."
A number of fertility awareness based (FAB) methods of family planning have been advocated over the years, but comparisons between different methods and studies of their effectiveness have been limited and hampered by problems such as differences in cultural backgrounds, different ways to measure the effectiveness of a FAB method, different ways of classifying unintended pregnancies and other methodological problems.
"To be able to make an informed choice when selecting a family planning method, couples need to know the efficacy of a method when used both perfectly and imperfectly," said Prof Frank-Herrmann. "We believe that this is a significant prospective cohort study that clearly defines STM and perfect and imperfect use, and which defines intended and unintended pregnancies, classifying them according to the couples' intentions before conception."
The researchers selected data from a cohort of 900 women who were part of a much larger study of 1,599 women using STM, which was conducted by the German Natural Family Planning study centre between 1985 and 2005. The 900 women provided data on 17,638 cycles to Prof Frank-Herrmann and her colleagues.
STM identifies the beginning and end of a woman's fertile period using two measurements (body temperature and cervical secretions) in order to have a double-check system. The first fertile day is when the woman first identifies either: 1) first appearance or change of appearance of cervical secretion, or 2) the sixth day of the cycle. After 12 cycles, this second guideline is replaced by a calculation that subtracts seven days from the earliest day to show a temperature rise in the preceding 12 cycles, in order to identify the first fertile day. The woman is then in her fertile period. The fertile phase ends after the woman has identified: 1) the evening of the third day after the cervical secretion peak day, and 2) the evening when the woman measures the third higher temperature reading, with all three being higher than the previous six readings and the last one being 0.2 degrees C higher than the previous six.
Prof Frank-Herrmann said: "The women or couples who want to learn the method have to buy a book, or attend an NFP course, or get some teaching by a qualified NFP teacher. Learning STM is usually no problem. There are precise rules that work. However, in contrast to the oral contraceptive pill or other family planning methods, STM needs more engagement and time to learn it."
Every month the women in the study sent charts to the researchers that showed their cycles, their observations of temperature and cervical secretions, and that recorded their sexual behaviour and family planning intentions for the next cycle.
Of the 900 women, 322 used only STM and 509 women used STM with occasional barriers during the fertile time. Sixty-nine women did not document their sexual behaviour. Out of the women who documented their sexual behaviour and abstained from sex during their fertile period ("perfect use") the unintended pregnancy rate was 0.4 per 100 women and 13 cycles [2], and 0.6 for women who used STM plus a barrier if they had sex during their fertile period. For cycles in which couples had unprotected sex during the fertile phase, the pregnancy rates rose to 7.5 per 100 women and 13 cycles. The drop-out rate from using STM for reasons such as dissatisfaction or difficulties with the method was 9.2 per 100 women and 13 cycles, and compared well with the drop-out rates from other methods of family planning, which can be as high as 30%, although direct comparisons are difficult due to methodological problems. "This demonstrates a fairly good acceptability for this particular FAB method," said Prof Frank-Herrmann.
The authors were surprised by the relatively low rate of unintended pregnancies (7.5%) among women who had unprotected sex during their fertile period. "If people are trying for pregnancy you expect a pregnancy rate of 28% per cycle," said Prof Frank-Herrmann. "Therefore, we think that some of the couples were practising conscious, intelligent risk-taking, and were having no unprotected sex during the few highly fertile days, but had unprotected intercourse on the days at the margins of the fertile time when the risk of pregnancy was lower."
Some studies have suggested that women's libido is higher during their fertile period, and this could be one of the reasons why NFP methods traditionally have had a reputation for being less effective than other methods of family planning. However, Prof Frank-Herrmann said: "There are studies that suggest that this is only the case for a small proportion of women, and that, in fact, women also identify other parts of their cycle with increased sexual desire. Most women who use FAB do not find this a problem. It's possible that the increased libido may be one of the reasons that some of the couples in our study used a barrier, such as a condom, in the fertile phase.
"This is the first time that a large, prospective STM database has been established with sufficient detailed information on sexual behaviour. It enables the true method effectiveness for STM to be calculated and we found this was 0.4% per year when there was no intercourse during the fertile phase. The user-effectiveness of STM, in other words the total number of unintended pregnancies that were due to both method and user failure, was 1.8% after 13 cycles of use, and this compares very well with results from other European studies of FAB methods of family planning. The markedly good user-effectiveness rate may be explained partly by the motivation of the couples and their teachers who agreed to participate in the study," she concluded.
[1] The effectiveness of a fertility awareness based method to avoid pregnancy in relation to a couple's sexual behaviour during the fertile time: a prospective longitudinal study. Human Reproduction. doi:10.1093/humrep/dem003. [2] This assumes a woman has 13 cycles in a year.Following your great feedback and many weeks of updates to the Legacy Mode beta, and the recent poll in which over 80% of you overwhelmingly voted for the introduction of Legacy Mode; we are now ready to release.
Legacy Mode is a way of playing the modern RuneScape game with a traditional look and feel, without the need to learn the new combat system.
Our aim was to give players the freedom to choose how they play - we want players to use Evolution of Combat because they want to, not because they have to – that’s why Legacy is an optional mode that you can switch on or off, allowing you to choose if and when you use it.
Legacy mode includes:
Traditional RuneScape combat, with no abilities.
Interfaces styled from the pre-RS3 - both resizable and fixed.
Old-style minimap icons.
Life points back to a max of 990.
Old-style combat animations and stances
Global Updates to Combat
Independent of Legacy Mode, we will also be introducing the following global changes to combat to make improvements for everyone, especially in PvP:
Voted for back in February by you; we will be reinstating the '138' combat formula, tweaked to give melee, ranged and magic equal contribution.
Special attacks on weapons that had them previously.
Critical hit chance will be replaced by strength bonuses which give higher max hits.
Future Combat
Our aspiration for Legacy Mode was to allow players the choice of combat system whilst not alienating one system against the other. Watching so many of you enjoying both modes makes us confident that we have cracked it. Both Legacy and EOC will become optional modes that can be switched on or off, so you can choose which mode you want to use and when.
Our commitment to making combat great again doesn’t stop with the launch of Legacy Mode. Later this month we will be launching our most ambitious boss encounter ever with the introduction of Araxxor’s Lair which we know will quickly become a fan favourite.
On top of that we will be looking to make even more improvements to both EOC and Legacy in the future.
For a detailed breakdown of all of the fixes we have made since Beta, and the features we’ll look to add in the future check out the Legacy Mode Beta Forums.
We look forward to seeing you and your friends all on Monday!
The RuneScape TeamMANITOWOC (WLUK) - The Wisconsin a judge schedule a hearing regarding evidence which may tested in the Steven Avery case.
Avery is serving a life sentence for killing photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. Last month, Avery's, seeking testing of evidence, suggesting it could point to someone else being the killer.
The case of Avery and his then-teenage nephew Brendan Dassey, who was convicted in a separate trial of playing a role in the murder, was thrust into the worldwide spotlight late last year with the release of the series "Making A Murderer" on Netflix. Dassey's earlier this summer, but the that decision.
Earlier this month, the state appeals court directed Sheboygan County Judge Angela Sutkiewicz, who is now handling the case at the circuit court level after the retirement of Manitowoc Co. Judge Patrick Willis, to handle a motion from Avery's attorneys seeking scientific testing of some evidence in the case.
In a letter filed this week, Assistant Attorney General and special prosecutor Thomas Fallon asks Judge Sutkiewicz to schedule a hearing sometime during the weeks of Oct. 24, Oct. 31 or Nov. 7.
"This should give the State ample time to locate and inventory all items which are the subject of the Defendant's Motion. Additionally, this should provide the State with time to determine which items are covered by the April 4, 2007, Preservation of Blood Evidence and Independent Defense Testing Order entered by Judge Patrick L. Willis at the conclusion of Defendant's trial," Fallon wrote.
So far, Avery's attorney, Kathleen Zellner, has not formally responded to the letter, and no hearings have been set.Hello and welcome to the 282nd installment of the SWD.
Military events/news are listed below by the governorates:
Aleppo:
Rebel forces shelled Al-Nil street and Al-Mukambou neighborhood in the city of Aleppo. The shelling of Al-Nil street reportedly killed two and wounded four civilians, while the shelling of Al-Mukambou caused only minor material damage in the neighborhood.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham stopped Jaysh al-Ahrar’s convoy at one of its checkpoints, as the latter was transferring eight Syrian Arab Army’s soldiers, which were captured by Jaysh al-Ahrar in clashes yesterday near Rasm al-Siyala village, south of Khanaser. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham then took four out of eight prisoners, on the pretext of questioning them. Several pro- HTS sources said that the group is currently interrogating the prisoners and will eventually return them to Jaysh al-Ahrar. However, reports suggest that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham will not return the prisoners, as they are considered “ghanima” (war spoils) and will be used in the exchange deals with the Syrian Arab Army.
Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army’s Military Council of Al-Bab released a statement prohibiting its elements from entering hospitals with weapons. The prohibition decision applies to the city of Al-Bab and its surroundings. The elements that violate the decision will be held legally responsible.
Hama:
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham regained control of Tell Umm Qabab from the Islamic State, after the latter captured the hill in the morning from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, backed by Free Syrian Army’s Jaysh al-Nasr and Jaysh al-Izza, repelled Syrian Arab Army’s attack towards Al-Mushayrifah from Tell Khanazir’s direction. Joint HTS – FSA forces reportedly killed five SAA ‘s elements, including a commander.
Syrian Arab Army’s artillery shelled Al-Lataminah in the northern Hama. Syrian Civil Defense’s (The White Helmets) spokesman, Ahmad al-Miqdad stated that one civilian was killed and another wounded by the shelling. The wounded civilian was transferred to a hospital in Kafr Zita. Furthermore, Russian Air Force conducted several air raids over Umm Miyal and Al-Shakusiyah villages in the eastern Hama, without any reports about casualties.
Approximate situation in the northern Hama. Source: Emmanuel
Damascus:
Syrian Arab Army’s artillery shelled Douma, while the Syrian Arab Air Force targeted Zamalka in the East Ghouta. According to the Syrian Civil Defense, several civilians were wounded by the shelling of Douma.
It appears that the Syrian Arab Army‘s capture of Tell Marwan reported by pro- SAA sources on the 18th of December was false. Clashes between Syrian Arab Army and rebel Jabal al-Sheikh operations room continue around the hill south of Mugh al-Meer and it should be considered as disputed for now.
Iraq
Diyala:
Islamic State’s improvised explosive device targeted elements of Al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) in Abu Khanazir area of Abu Saida subdistrict. The explosion killed two and wounded four elements of the Al-Hashd al-Shaabi, according to the Amaq Agency.
Afghanistan
Balkh Province:
Afghan National Security Forces arrested 19 individuals accused of belonging to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Chimtal district.
Nangarhar Province:
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s improvised explosive device allegedly targeted United States Army’s military headquarters in the city of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar Province. Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan claimed that two US soldiers were killed and another three wounded by the explosion.
Islamic State assassinated an element of the Afghan government in Ghani Khel directorate.
Ghazni Province:
Afghan National Security Forces killed four and wounded three fighters of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Qarabagh district.
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ambushed elements of the Afghan National Police in Arroz area of Ghazni city, destroying a tank and killing two policemen.
Urozgan Province:
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan attacked Afghan National Army’s infantry in the province, killing four soldiers, including a commander.
Zabul Province:
Afghan National Police foiled a VBIED attack in the city of Qalati Ghilji, the capital of Zabul Province. According to the Zabul governor’s spokesman, Ali Salih, the VBIED is linked to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and was supposed to be used to target government buildings in the area. VBIED was safely removed and detonated in a controlled explosion by the Afghan National Police.
Helmand Province:
Afghan National Security Forces conducted operations against the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in Marjah district, killing three fighters of the group and destroying 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosive materials, two positions, and two motorcycles.
Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid announced withdrawal of Afghan National Security Forces from six checkpoints in Turabi Hotel area, Greshk district, after the fighters of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan captured a checkpoint in the area last night, killing nine and capturing three soldiers.
CJTF-OIR :
CJTF-OIR announced a change in their publishing policy. Now two strikes reports will be published each week, on Mondays and Fridays.
CJTF-OIR released a news release regarding the elimination of three IS leaders in the past three weeks. CJTF-OIR listed eliminations in the chronological order:
Abu Faysal, a senior Daesh leader, and his deputy Abu Qudamah al-Iraqi, were killed in a Coalition strike on Dec. 1 in the middle Euphrates River valley region of Syria. Mustafa Kamal Jasim Muhammad al-Zawi, a Daesh senior leader courier, was killed in an operation on Nov. 28 near al-Sharqat, Iraq. The Coalition will continue to exert pressure on Daesh senior leaders and associates across multiple networks in order to degrade, disrupt, and dismantle Daesh structures and remove the extremist terrorists throughout Iraq and Syria.
Amaq Agency:
Other:
Intellectual credited property used may vary from an edition to edition.
Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments section below, constructive criticism is welcomed.
For those of you interested, you can follow us on an official Twitter account @SyrianWarDaily, or me personally on my biased twitter @joskobaric where I occasionally tweet some things.
Advertisementsdantian of the Daoist cultivator. Development of the immortal embryo in the lowerof the Daoist cultivator.
Neidan, or internal alchemy (simplified Chinese: 內丹术; traditional Chinese: 內丹術; pinyin: nèidān shù), is an array of esoteric doctrines and physical, mental, and spiritual practices that Taoist initiates use to prolong life and create an immortal spiritual body that would survive after death (Skar and Pregadio 2000, 464). Also known as Jindan (金丹 "golden elixir"), inner alchemy combines theories derived from external alchemy (waidan 外丹), correlative cosmology (including the Five Phases), the emblems of the Yijing, and medical theory, with techniques of Daoist meditation, daoyin gymnastics, and sexual hygiene (Baldrian-Hussein 2008, 762).
In Neidan the human body becomes a cauldron (or "ding") in which the Three Treasures of Jing ("Essence"), Qi ("Breath") and Shen ("Spirit") are cultivated for the purpose of improving physical, emotional and mental health, and ultimately returning to the primordial unity of the Tao, i.e., becoming an Immortal. It is believed the Xiuzhen Tu is such a cultivation map. In China, it is an important form of practice for most schools of Taoism.
Terminology [ edit ]
The Chinese compound nèidān combines the common word nèi 內 meaning "inside; inner; internal" with dān 丹 "cinnabar; vermillion; elixir; alchemy". The antonym of nèi is wài 外 "outside; exterior; external", and nèidān "internal elixir / alchemy" was coined from the earlier complementary term wàidān 外丹 "external elixir / alchemy".
Chinese alchemical texts and sources ordinarily call neidan the jīndān dào 金丹道 or Way of the Golden Elixir. In Modern Standard Chinese usage, the term nèidān shù 內丹術 (with 術 "art; skill; technique; method") refers generally to internal alchemical practices.
The date for the earliest use of the term neidan is uncertain. Arthur Waley proposed that it was first recorded in the 559 vow taken by Tiantai Buddhist patriarch Nanyue Huisi praying to successfully make an elixir that would keep him alive till the coming of Maitreya (1930: 14). Many scholars agreed, including Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen who translated Huisi's vow to live as an ascetic in the mountains:
I am seeking for the longevity in order to defend the Faith, not in order to enjoy worldly happiness. I pray that all the saints and sages will come to my help, so that I may get some good magic mushrooms [zhi 芝], and numinous elixirs [shendan 神丹], enabling me to cure all illnesses and to stop both hunger and thirst. In this way I shall be able to practice continually the way of the Sutras and to engage in the several forms of meditations. I shall hope to find a peaceful dwelling in the depths of the mountains, with enough numinous elixirs and medicine to carry out my plans. Thus by the aids of external elixirs [waidan] I shall be able to cultivate the elixir within [neidan]. (1983: 140)
Others believed that neidan first occurred in the biographies of Deng Yuzhi 鄧郁之 (fl. 483–493) and Su Yuanming 蘇元明 (fl. c. 600). However, the authenticity of the relevant passages in these "pseudo-historical sources" is doubtful (Baldrian-Hussein 1989: 164–171).
The term neidan was seldom used throughout the late Tang dynasty (618–907) and Five dynasties (907–960) period, and only became widespread around the beginning of the Song dynasty (960–1279) period, when neidan evolved into a highly complex system in both its theoretical and practical aspects (Baldrian-Hussein 2008: 763). Tang texts described internal alchemical practices with the words fúyào 服藥 "take drug/medicine" and chángshēng 長生 "long life, longevity; (Daoism) eternal life" (Baldrian-Hussein 1989: 170). Liu Xiyue's 劉希岳 988 Taixuan langranzi jindao shi 太玄朗然子進道詩 (Master Taixuan Langran's Poems on Advancing in the Dao) has the earliest datable mention of the terms neidan and waidan (Baldrian-Hussein 1989: 174, 178, 180). The c. 1019 Yunji Qiqian Daoist anthology mentions the term neidan (Baldrian-Hussein 1989: 178).
Early texts that mention neidan define it as synonymous or similar with some qi circulation techniques: Cultivation and Transmutation (xiulian 修煉), Embryonic Breathing (taixi 胎息), the Cyclical Elixir (huandan 還丹), the Golden Elixir (jindan 金丹), the Great Elixir (dadan 大丹), the Interior and Exterior Medicines (nei/waiyao 内外藥), the Inner and Outer Counterparts (nei/waixiang 内外象), and the Yin Elixir and Yang Elixir (yindan 陰丹 and yangdan 陽丹) (Baldrian-Hussein 1989: 179–186).
Based upon the textual evidence, Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein concludes that in early texts, neidan refers to a specific technique, and by Song Emperor Zhenzong's reign (997–1022), the term designates a group of techniques, expressed in specific alchemical language (1989: 187).
History and development [ edit ]
neidan "Putting the miraculous elixir on the ding tripod", 1615 Xingming guizhi 性命圭旨 (Pointers on Spiritual Nature and Bodily Life) Chinese woodblock illustration of"Putting the miraculous elixir on thetripod", 1615性命圭旨 (Pointers on Spiritual Nature and Bodily Life)
neidan "Cleansing the heart-mind and retiring into concealment", 1615 Xingming guizhi 性命圭旨 (Pointers on Spiritual Nature and Bodily Life) Chinese woodblock illustration of"Cleansing the heart-mind and retiring into concealment", 1615性命圭旨 (Pointers on Spiritual Nature and Bodily Life)
Neidan is part of the Chinese alchemical meditative tradition that is said to have been separated into internal and external (Waidan) at some point during the Tang dynasty. The Cantong qi (The Kinship of the Three) is the earliest known book on theoretical alchemy in China; it was written by the alchemist Wei Boyang in 142 AD. This text influenced the formation of Neidan, whose earliest existing texts date from the first half of the 8th century. The authors of several Neidan articles refer to their teachings as the Way of the Golden Elixir (jindan zhi dao). The majority of Chinese alchemical sources is found in the Daozang (Taoist Canon), the largest collection of Taoist texts.
Neidan shares a significant portion of its notions and methods with classical Chinese medicine, fangshi and with other bodies of practices, such as meditation and the methods for "nourishing life" (yangsheng). What distinguishes alchemy from these related traditions is its unique view of the elixir as a material or immaterial entity that represents the original state of being and the attainment of that state. The Neidan tradition of internal alchemy is practiced by working with the energies that were already present in the human body as opposed to using natural substances, medicines or elixirs, from outside of the body. The Shangqing School of Daoism played an important role in the emergence of Neidan alchemy, after using Waidan mainly as a meditative practice, and therefore turning it from an external to an internal art.
The Three Treasures [ edit ]
Internal alchemy focuses upon transforming the bodily sanbao "three treasures", which are the essential energies sustaining human life:
Jing 精 "nutritive essence, essence; refined, perfected; extract; spirit, demon; sperm, seed"
精 "nutritive essence, essence; refined, perfected; extract; spirit, demon; sperm, seed" Qi 氣 "vitality, energy, force; air, vapor; breath; spirit, vigor; attitude"
氣 "vitality, energy, force; air, vapor; breath; spirit, |
and a bank for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but also seeking to strengthen its voice at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
TBP and AgenciesWhy Case Studies?
Have your students ever asked you, why do I need to know this? Case studies bring immediate relevancy to the course material you teach in your classroom. Students will be able to connect the content from your course to problems occurring in the world today. Case studies stimulate curiosity, passion, motivation, and team-work among your students. This module guides you through the process of teaching a case study so you can design one of your own to meet your class's needs.
Here are four case studies developed for a high school classroom.
If you have a student who could benefit from independent learning, here is an open-ended student case study.
What is a case study?
A case study is a tool for teaching in STEM and other disciplines. Throughout the case study, your students will work in teams to address a societal problem using science. They will have the opportunity to ask their own questions and to conduct their own research. At the end of the case, they have the opportunity to communicate their findings to an audience outside the classroom. This approach is modeled from a program called iCons (Integrated Concentration in Science) that is offered at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. You can learn more about the program with the link below.
The case study approach has 5 steps:When we were younger, we were made to believe that it is only Earth where creatures can survive. They made us believe that we are the only living creature in the universe. It seems that the concepts of alien are just science - fiction. However, as the years go by and as the technology improve, a lot of sightings have been reported and it's hard not to believe that aliens do exist.
Read on for more details.
You can take this as an example. On March 17, it was reported that a cigar-shaped UFO was found over Lake Tahoe. The object was caught using a mobile phone. It could be anything, but believers may suggest that this is actually real. What do you think about the image from the link?
Just so you know, even some popular and famous people believe that aliens are visiting our planet. One former NASA astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, shared that aliens exist but the US government is trying to conceal it. That's actually something that millions of people believe. Do you remember Area 51? They say that it's full of real aliens. Well, some of the US Presidents were open to the idea of extraterrestrial. We have Ronald Raegan who personally saw a UFO. We also have Jimmy Carter who said that alien or UFO matters should be taken seriously.
There are also theories that suggest that aliens are not just mere observers. Sometimes, they want to reproduce. Hence, there are abductions and they will try to impregnate women. The offspring are called hybrid-humans. It is believed that the main objective is to create a more advanced race.
If aliens are creating smarter race than humans, is that great news? If that's the case, will the 'full' humans be treated as lower beings? Are they going to make us slaves?
What do you think? Do you believe in aliens? Do you think we are already living with human-hybrids? Is alien abduction a reality? Share us your thoughts on this.The recent mass shootings in the United States have spurred the White House to pursue what many in the nation consider taboo: strict gun controls.
But momentum is growing even among some die-hard advocates of the Second Amendment — the right to bear arms — including those who grew up using firearms to hunt, for sport or to protect their farms and homes. Many of them feel certain types of weapons, particularly military-style ones, are only designed for mass carnage.
In Japan, on the other hand, legal gun ownership is tightly controlled and allowed only for specific types of hunting or target shooting.
How does one get a hunting license in Japan?
The first step is to pass the test for hunting licenses administered by the governor of the prefecture where one resides. Hunting licenses, which are good for three years, basically fall into three categories: nets, traps and firearms.
The firearm licenses cover two categories: “explosive charge guns” (rifles and shotguns) and guns that use air pressure to fire projectiles.
Someone seeking a rifle or shotgun license must be at least 20 years old. Those who want to use air guns must be at least 18.
Applicants in either category must provide medical proof that they are sound of mind and not addicted to stimulants or other drugs. They must also demonstrate good judgment and physical ability.
Those with serious criminal records or a history of treatment for mental illness cannot qualify.
Any hunting law violator who has been penalized by more than a fine must wait three years from the day of their suspension to retake the licensing test.
The test covers hunting laws, the handling of traps, nets and firearms, and knowledge of different kinds of game. A score of 70 percent or above passes.
Applicants are also tested on their seeing and hearing abilities and physical fitness.
So is a hunting license all that is needed to own a gun?
No. A separate gun permit is required and the range of firearms is limited to shotguns or rifles.
While the Environment Ministry issues hunting licenses through prefectural governments, gun permits are issued by the National Police Agency through prefectural public safety commissions.
The vetting process is strict. Applicants must attend a lecture, pass a written test and practice with a police-provided 12-gauge shotgun. Once permission is granted, the gun must be purchased from a licensed dealer. The buyer must then take the weapon to the police to show them it is the one that was applied for.
Rick Sacca, a Shizuoka-based American and experienced hunter in both countries, notes there is a level of background checks the police conduct on gun applicants that would be considered a violation of privacy in the U.S. Employers, homeowners, families, neighbors, and even the head of the local ward association are among those police here would interview.
Anyone seeking to acquire a rifle in principle would have to have owned a shotgun for at least 10 years, and fulfill a separate set of requirements and paperwork.
Some prefectural police forces are quite strict and rarely issue rifle permits — even if the applicant is qualified. Pistols are not legally available to civilians.
For all gun permits, the police carry out thorough background checks on applicants, their families and their employment records. Any links to undesirable or dangerous elements of society results in disqualification.
What rules must gun owners follow?
Firearms must be stored in police-approved gun lockers, and ammunition must be stored separately. Separate police permission is meanwhile needed to buy ammunition.
Owners must inform police about the exact location where they are storing a firearm and ammunition, and they will conduct an annual inspection to ensure compliance.
Owners must retake the police gun permit exam every three years.
What are the costs involved?
Neither the hunting license nor the gun permit come cheap.
The Dai Nihon Hunters Friendship Association (Dainihon Ryoyukai), a public organization with branches nationwide, runs training programs that cost around ¥56,000 for sample tests and lectures. This includes training on how to use a firearm.
There is a further ¥14,000 commission that must be sent in with the gun permit application. Then there’s the firearm itself, which, the association estimates, could cost ¥45,000 minimum. Bullets for a rifle run about ¥80 each.
The police-approved gun locker costs ¥30,000 and the approved ammunition locker ¥10,000. Then there are the accessories needed to carry and clean the firearms, probably costing another ¥10,000.
So the minimum cost for becoming a gun-toting hunter is estimated at ¥115,000.
There is also an additional local government hunt-registration fee and a hunting tax. That costs around ¥19,000 and is only valid in the registered prefecture, though it covers hunting for birds and other animals.
The prefectural registration fee for basic bird hunting runs about ¥7,000.
What can be hunted in Japan?
The Environment Ministry lists 29 species of birds and 20 species of other animals that can be hunted nationwide.
But in reality, what you can hunt depends on the rules of the prefecture. Some species in certain prefectures are not allowed to be hunted or can only be taken in small numbers. Hunters must check with the prefecture upon registering.
In principle, hunting season runs from mid-November until mid-February, while in Hokkaido it runs from October until the end of January.
But once again, different prefectures may have shorter or longer hunting periods, and all hunters need to get confirmation on the dates.
Species often hunted include wild boar, deer and bear, as well as birds ranging from pheasants to turtle doves and quail.
What actual hunting restrictions are there?
The Environment Ministry has a list of basic restrictions and specifies what constitutes illegal hunting.
Hunting either before daybreak or after sunset is not allowed. Nor is hunting close to residential areas. Guns cannot be modified for hunting certain species.
Given the tough ownership rules, how many hunters and how many registered firearms are there throughout Japan?
As of 2010, there were about 190,000 people with hunting licenses (including those for using nets and traps), of which 122,000 were 60 years old or above. This is down from 518,000 in 1975.
As of 2011, according to police, permits were issued for about 220,000 hunting guns, of which 35,000 were rifles. This figure does not include nearly 27,000 air-powered guns like BB guns, which are also used by hunters.
Can hunters sell their game to restaurants or is it merely for personal consumption?
A licensed butcher at a licensed butcher shop can prepare and sell wild game on-site to restaurant customers, but there are numerous online sites that sell venison and wild boar.
Sacca notes that this differs from the U.S., where, due to concerns about health and a desire to ensure stable wildlife populations, the sale of wild game is largely prohibited.
How many gun-related accidents and deaths occur in Japan?
According to the National Policy Agency, licensed guns, including air rifles, were used to kill 11 people, including five suicides, in 2011. There also were 28 gun-related accidents, mostly involving hunters.
Illegal guns, mostly handguns, were used to kill seven people and injure 11 others that year. The vast majority of the incidents were related to yakuza or other gangs.
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It’s an odd feeling to be working for the election of someone you know dislikes you and your colleagues. I’ve spent a good chunk of this month trying to register voters on campuses in Pennsylvania and Ohio—registering them to vote against Donald Trump, which means pushing for the election of Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t how I wanted to spend the fall—I’d much rather have been campaigning for Bernie Sanders. Ad Policy
It didn’t get any easier when Wikileaks released a tape of Clinton talking to backers in the building-trades unions about the environmental work so many of us (including much of the rest of organized labor) have been engaged in for the last few years. “They come to my rallies and they yell at me and, you know, all the rest of it. They say, ‘Will you promise never to take any fossil fuels out of the earth ever again?’ No. I won’t promise that. Get a life, you know.” The good news is that when Clinton wins, none of us will be under the slightest illusion about who she is.
I know the young people Clinton was talking about, and they weren’t demanding she somehow wave a wand and stop the fossil-fuel age overnight. They were asking her about the scientific studies showing that we can’t actually keep mining and drilling new supplies of coal, oil, and gas if we’re going to meet the temperature targets set with such fanfare in Paris last year. They were asking her to support the “Keep It In the Ground” Act introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and endorsed by a passel of other senators, from Barbara Boxer of California to Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. (Oh yeah, and that guy Bernie.) They were also asking her to take a stand against fracking, since new studies demonstrate quite clearly that the release of methane from the use of natural gas makes climate change worse. Publicly, she hemmed and hawed. When Bernie said in a debate that he was against fracking, period, Clinton said, “By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.” That was a pretty weak hedge to begin with, but we now know that privately she reassured the building trades unions: “My view is, I want to defend natural gas…. I want to defend fracking.”
Truth be told, these aren’t revelations. All of us working on climate issues have known this is how Clinton feels; she set up a whole wing of the State Department devoted to spreading fracking around the world. She’d favored the Keystone Pipeline from the start, and it was abundantly clear that only Sanders’s unexpected success in the primaries convinced her she’d have to change. (And it was only his refusal to endorse her until after the platform was agreed upon that made the platform into the fairly progressive document that it is, on climate and other issues). Still, it stings to see in black and white exactly how little regard she has for people fighting pipelines, frack wells, coal ports. Though truth be told, that was no huge surprise either: Politicians are forever saying they want people engaged in the political process, but most of them really just want people to vote and then go home.
So why are many of us out there working to beat Trump and elect her? Because Trump is truly a horror. He’s man who looks at fourth-grade girls and imagines that he’ll be dating them in ten years. He’s a racist. He knows next to nothing and lacks the intellectual curiosity to find out more. He’s a bully. He’s almost a cartoonish villain: If a writer invented a character this evil, no one would believe them. But he’s very nearly president.
Because environmentalists are not just concerned about the climate—we have allies and friends whom we support. And on some of those issues Clinton actually seems sincere: She clearly cares about women’s issues and understands that we are a nation of immigrants. Ready to Fight Back? Sign Up For Take Action Now
Because if Trump wins, we backslide on the small gains we’ve made. We’ve forced Clinton to say through gritted teeth that she opposes Keystone, for instance. She can’t, I think, go back on that. Trump has made it clear he’ll permit that and every other pipeline, just as soon as he’s done tearing up the Paris climate accord.
But none of that makes it easy to go out and support her. We’ve watched all fall as she’s maintained a studied silence about the most dramatic and important fossil-fuel fight of the moment, the Dakota Access Pipeline. Even the sight of attack dogs being used on peaceful Native American protesters didn’t move her to break ranks with her industry allies and that fraction of the labor movement that still wants to build pipelines. That’s craven on her part, pure and simple.
And so the good news is that when she wins, none of us will be under the slightest illusion about who she is. The honeymoon won’t last 10 minutes; on November 9 we’ll be organizing for science and human rights and against the timid incrementalism that marks her approach. It’s clear that we need to beat the creepy perv she’s running against. It’s also clear that we then need to press harder than ever for real progress on the biggest crisis the world has ever faced.
“Get a life”? We’ve got a planet, just one.After original episodes of Futurama were yanked from Netflix, fans of the irreverent animated space comedy were thrilled to learn creator Matt Groening's beloved series would be coming to Hulu. All 140 episodes and four films will be available for streaming on October 16, Variety reports.
Those without the subscription streaming service will be able to enjoy Futurama on SyFy, who made a deal with Twentieth Television earlier this month to air the complete run of episodes on Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays, beginning November 11. The Emmy-nominated series originally aired on Fox from 1999-2003 before a 2007 revival which saw the release of four direct-to-DVD movies spliced into 30-minute episodes for airing on Comedy Central. New episodes began airing in 2010 until the series finale in September 2013.
Futurama isn't the only animated comedy joining Hulu: full runs of Bob's Burgers, The Cleveland Show, and American Dad! are headed to the streaming platform, alongside whole seasons of South Park, Rick & Morty, The Boondocks, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Adventure Time, Squidbillies and Venture Bros. and new, uploaded as they air episodes of Family Guy, Archer, and The Simpsons.
Cast members Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Phil LaMarr, Lauren Tom and Tress MacNeille recently returned for Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow, a 2017 mobile game that featured all-new animation and an original storyline inspired by the show.Dick Cheney bit back at Sen. Rand Paul’s criticism of his foreign policy stance on Sunday, after Paul responded to the former vice president’s recent editorial accusing President Barack Obama of mishandling Iraq.
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Paul criticized Cheney’s support of the Iraq war and accused its supporters of “emboldening Iran.” On CNN’s State of the Union, Paul also said intervention in Iraq is to blame for its current conflict, the Washington Post reports.
During an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Cheney defended himself.
“If we spend our time debating what happened 11 or 12 years ago, we’re going to miss the threat that is growing and that we do face,” Cheney said. “Rand Paul, with all due respect, is basically an isolationist. He doesn’t believe we ought to be involved in that part of the world. I think it’s absolutely essential.”
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Cheney said “there are no good, easy answers in Iraq,” but he argued for an increased military presence in the wake of the expansion of extremist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which Obama has called a “destabilizing” force in the region.
“What I would do now is, among other things, be realistic about the nature of the threat,” Cheney said. “I’m not sure we’ve really addressed the problem. I would definitely be helping the resistance up in Syria, in ISIS’s back yard, with training and weapons and so forth, in order to be able to do a more effective job on that end of the party.”
[Washington Post]
Write to Nolan Feeney at nolan.feeney@time.com.Answering the question of “who is the greatest Raptor of all time?” may not be easy, but realistically comes down to only a few names— Carter, DeRozan, Bosh, or Lowry.
“Who is your favourite Raptor?,” on the other hand… Well, that might not be so simple.
So who takes the title? After more than 20 seasons and an eclectic cast of characters donning a Raptors jersey in that span, there are certainly no shortage of options. In the spirit of March Madness, Sportsnet devised the Raptors Bracket Challenge to find out.
After much deliberation, the field was whittled down to a final group of 24 split into four regions based on position, with the seeding determined with consultation from Raptors play-by-play voice and Sportsnet host Eric Smith. And although it’s for you to decide, we urge you to keep in mind production and vote with both your head and your heart.
Voting tips off on Monday and continues all next week. Here’s how the schedule breaks down:
Monday Mar. 27: Round One (G/F Region 1, Bigs Region)
Tuesday Mar. 28: Round One (G/F Region 2, Guards Region)
Wednesday Mar. 29: ‘Final Four’ for each region
Thursday Mar. 30: Regional finals
Friday Mar. 31: The Final Four
Monday Apr 3: Championships
You don’t have to wait until Monday to start considering where your voting will lie. Take a look at the complete bracket below, and check back to Sportsnet.ca next week!An upcoming game in the Tom Clancy franchise is ruffling some feathers for depicting a domestic terrorist attack staged by individuals who sound sympathetic to the 99 Percent movement.
“Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots,” due out in 2013 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, was teased in a recent trailer released by French publisher Ubisoft, which produced a clip wherein a collection of American mercenaries raid a corporate boardroom and murder the CEO.
“This all started when you became bigger than the governments,” a narrator’s voice explains. “And governments became bigger than the people. That’s how the land of the free became the kingdom of the few — a few like you, Mr. Walsh. It’s time for a new balance of power. You may not answer to the government, but you will answer to us.”
And like a scene from a Wall Street CEO’s worst nightmare, the captive is strapped with explosives and hurled from the skyscraper office down to the street below, where the bombs detonate seconds before he hits the pavement.
Conservative blogs have been rather appreciating how these fictional terrorists mirror the message of the 99 Percent movement, although it’s not yet clear what the characters’ true motivations are. Then again, for a game series that’s taken on everything from evil eco-terrorists and third world anarchists to nuclear hijackers and scheming ex-Soviets, domestic terrorism is probably just as fair a subject.
The game will also have portions that take place outside of the United States from the perspective of characters that are not part of the Rainbow 6 anti-terrorism squad, according to gaming website G4tv.
Developers also said they were working on incorporating moral decisions into the gameplay, where players will have to weigh the lives of the many over the few, making decisions that will influence how the story plays out.
In an example of how the game will challenge players’ ethics, another preview features a woman bound and gagged by terrorists, who accuse her husband, the player, of cashing in on numerous foreclosures. The lead terrorist threatens to “field dress” the player’s wife and child “like a deer” if they don’t cooperate. The character is then strapped with a suicide bomb vest fitted with a dead man’s switch, then transported to the Brooklyn Bridge.
In a tense segment of gameplay that follows, the player is challenged to handle the situation and avoid as many unnecessary deaths as possible, with one of the results including tossing the man into the water and letting the bomb detonate. Developers have said that the game will be chalk full of similar life-or-death decisions set in familiar urban environments.
Previous games in the “Rainbow 6” series have earned critical acclaim for their methodical, tactics-based gameplay and ripped-from-the-headlines plots, but none have dared venture into subjects so controversial as “Patriots.” Whether the gamble will pay off for Ubisoft remains to be seen, but from the looks of it, “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots” appears to be every bit the gripping tactical shooter its predecessors were, just with a shocking, potentially offensive new twist.
The video below is from YouTube.
This video is from G4tv.For some reason, the topic of reviewing and getting papers rejected came up several times in conversations at VIS recently. Getting your work rejected and learning to deal with rejection is part of life as an academic, and it’s worthwhile to think about the process a bit.
I’m basing this on a nice piece by Niklas Elmqvist titled Dealing with Rejection, so read that first. His perspective is that of the nice academic (and recent InfoVis papers chair). My perspective is less academic, and a little less nice.
The First Response
Here’s what I do when I get a accept/reject notice. First, I scan it to figure out if it’s an accept or reject. Unfortunately, many conferences and journals make this much more annoying than necessary, burying the salient piece of information in lots of boilerplate bullshit. You can usually tell from expressions such as “we regret to inform you” or “unfortunately” that it’s not good news.
So it’s a reject. What now? I usually do this:
breathe
read the summary review
stop
At this point, I know I’m not very rational, so I don’t read any of the individual reviews. There’s no point. All my brain wants to do is argue. After a day or two of letting it sink in, I can read the remaining reviews and think about what they tell me.
The initial blind rage is also the wrong time to decide on a response. Don’t email the chairs. Don’t post reviews (never do that, see below). Don’t decide to quit research and become a hermit in a cave.
After a day or two, you’ll be in a much better place to rationally think about what to do. That's when you read the detailed reviews. That’s also when you can decide to take unusual steps, if you really still feel the need.
The Worst Reviews from the Worst Reviewers
The review process is not perfect. Some reviewers don’t read your paper carefully. Some don’t like one little detail and then start picking your work apart because of that. Some take out their personal problems (or their own last rejection) on your paper. We’re all human, this is not a perfect system.
Sometimes, the reviews are just downright stupid or off-topic. When we submitted the connected scatterplot paper to InfoVis last year, we got fairly good reviews overall. The paper was killed by the primary reviewer, who had some other paper in mind and didn’t seem inclined to accept the existing paper because it didn’t match his idea. We resubmitted the paper with only very minor changes to TVCG and got it accepted with no problem.
Getting the right reviewers is unfortunately a lottery. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. The problem is that there is no way for authors to provide feedback on review quality. InfoVis and a few other conferences have started a little bit of tracking where primary reviewers can rate review quality, but that doesn’t help you when the primary is the problem. I also don’t know how many people ever bother with these ratings, or if they have any sort of consequences.
Complaining to the Chairs
Don’t. It won’t help and you’ll just look like a crybaby. Unless there is an egregious problem, the chairs are not going to change their mind. They’ve spent a ton of time reading reviews and making decisions, they’re not going to change those. And with a conference, they usually can’t, since they have a limited number of papers they can accept.
The same is true in the rebuttal: if I’m a reviewer and your rebuttal is angry or whiny, or if you accuse the reviewers of being stupid or not having read your paper, I’m not going to change my mind. You should point out things that the reviewers might have missed, but do it in a respectful way. And if all of them missed something, perhaps you need to do a better job explaining it or pointing it out.
Posting Reviews
One particularly problematic thing Niklas mentions is posting reviews online and commenting/venting. Don’t. This is even worse than complaining to the chairs: now not only they will take you for a crybaby, but anybody who sees this will, too. Don’t think that just because you think those reviews are completely unacceptable, others will too. Especially without the context of having seen the paper, the reviews will look very different to others. This is not something you can win.
There is one exception. While Niklas clearly says to never post reviews, he also links to this rejection letter that Ben Shneiderman has posted about the structured flow-charts/Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams paper.
It’s important to note a few things here, though. This is a particularly dumb and nasty letter, yes. But it was also posted by Ben Shneiderman (i.e., somebody of significant standing in the community, not just a random grad student or young professor), and he did it 30 years after it happened.
So if you’re the next Ben Shneiderman, and you keep your rejection letters around forever, this is a potential thing to consider. In fact, it would be quite fun to see reviews (positive and negative) for seminal papers after 20 or 30 years have passed.
I also like Ben’s open discussion of how people were trying to rip him off back then. This is not something we talk about a lot, and it usually doesn’t happen after publication. It’s also generally very rare in visualization, from what I can tell. But I’ve seen some contentious situations where people were working on similar ideas and fought hard (and not always in the nicest of ways) to get their work out before the others.
Reviewing in Visualization and HCI
All of the above focuses on the negative. Yes, there are poor reviews. Yes, there are careless and sometimes mean reviewers. But in general, reviews in visualization are pretty good. They tend to be a bit on the critical side, but they’re usually fair and reasonable. And we don’t have the problems many other fields have, where there are different schools of thought that are at war with each other, or where big names get you into a journal or conference even if the work is sub-par.
Is it perfect? No. But it’s pretty good. And while any individual rejection sucks, it still happens in the context of a system that largely works.
So when you get your next rejection: read the summary, breathe, and then give it some time. It’s not the end of the world.ZAGREB -- Four-year-old Luka is enthusiastic about his new friend.
"He can write. He can sit down. And he can drink water," he says.
The two also like to dance together.
But it is an unusual friendship. Luka is a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a developmental disability that inhibits social, behavioral, and communications skills. And his friend, Rene, is a robot.
They met thanks to a joint project of the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences and its Faculty of Electronics and Computer Sciences. The initiative aims to use robots to improve the diagnosis and assessment of children with the disorder, a process that until now has been highly complex and subjective.
The robot is intended to assist, not replace the clinician.
"For children with autism, the robot is a stimulus that is very simple and always the same," says researcher Jasmina Stosic. "Its eyes are always in the same place. Its mouth is always in the same place. People are rather complicated for such children because when we talk we make various gestures. And one day we'll wear a red t-shirt and the next day, a blue one. The robot is one constant stimulus, and the children don't need to think about so much different information and instead can concentrate on the essence."
Because of the difficulties of assessment, ASD children are often diagnosed quite late. In Croatia, most ASD children are only diagnosed and begin receiving specialized education and therapy at around 5 or 6 years of age.
WATCH: A Robot Gives A Demonstration Of Tai-Chi Exercises At A Zagreb Lab
Marija Cukelj, whose 4-year-old son Filip is part of the robot project, has experienced the frustration of trying to get specialist assistance for children who are younger than this.
"Filip started to close down when he was 14 or 15 months of age," he says. "He stopped looking people in the eye -- even us, his parents. Within about two months we started looking for help. Unfortunately, it took time because he was 1 1/2 [years old] and we were told: 'The child is too small, anything could happen. We need to wait and see.' It took a year between the time we told doctors something was wrong and when our son got a reliable diagnosis. We lost that time."
According to Cukelj, meeting Rene was a ground-breaking moment for Filip.
"The first time he saw the robot, he simply sat on a chair and watched it," Cukelj says. "For Filip, who is so energetic and who is calmed down by very few things, it was a great success to see him sit down and carefully watch something."
Positive Reactions
Researcher Maja Cepanec says that Rene has elicited positive reactions in trials with children so far.
"Children with attention-deficit issues, who have trouble making eye contact, react relatively well to the robot," she says. "They watch it and they are excited about it. So far, our experiences have been relatively positive."
Rene was made in France and several research institutions around the world have been using similar robots to work with ASD children. The researchers in Croatia, however, are focusing on using the robots to develop a standardized diagnostic protocol.
Cepanec says the goal of the project is to use the robot to collect data on, for instance, recurrences of repetitive behavior, and to conduct uniform testing of particular behaviors such as drinking from a cup or addressing the robot by name.
"We believe that ASD assessment, empowered by advanced behavioral and social-signal processing, might become more objective and reliable," says Cepanec. This improved process would also include using objective quantitative metrics.
"The robot is equipped with a camera, microphones, speakers, and it can record things we might miss," says Cepanec. "It can code a child's vocalizations, his or her closeness to the parent, how many times the child initiates communication, how much eye contact the child makes, and so on."
In order to build on the project's promising start, the researchers are working with the Croatian National Science Fund and European sources in hopes of expanding the number of children they can include in their research.
RFE/RL correspondent Robert Coalson contributed to this report from PragueAnalytical techniques were crucial to the genesis of chemistry as a field, and today they continue to be essential in driving advances not only in the understanding of chemistry, but throughout all scientific disciplines. Despite this continued importance, analytical chemistry is suffering from an identity crisis. Though still the most common field of employment for chemistry graduates in industry (1), analytical chemistry in academia is losing impact and funding, and the field is poorly represented amongst top research institutions.
One of the reasons for this is that modern analytical chemists take many guises. Analytical chemistry departments are well-stocked with those engaged in forensic analysis, or electrochemical studies, but there are many others who would not label themselves as analytical chemists, yet engage in the development and application of analytical chemistry. Though analytical chemistry itself remains best placed to address many contemporary challenges – from environmental changes to the study of disease – it is important that all researchers involved in the field work see that powerful analytical tools are developed and used to greatest effect.Manchester United 14-15 Home Kit
Manchester United 14-15 Away Kit
Manchester United 14-15 Third Kit
Manchester United 14-15 Goalkeeper Kit
Nike today unveiled the new Manchester United 14-15 Third Kit, to be worn for the first time during tonight's match with Inter Milan. The new ManU 14-15 Away Kit was officially released on July 22, after the new ManU Home Shirt was unveiled on July 14. The new Manchester United 14-15 Kits are sponsored for the first time by Chevrolet, while the shirts are again made by the US-giant Nike. Manchester United signed a £53m shirt sponsor deal with Chevrolet this year, which starts from the 2014-15 season. The new Manchester United 14-15 Jerseys are unveiled in July 2014.This is the new Man Utd Chevrolet 2014-2015 Home Kit.The new Manchester United 14-15 Home Kit features a classical kit design. The main color "diablo red" is combined with white applications and black details on the kit collar. The iconic Man Utd 2014-2015 Home Kit collar features one button and the colors red, black and white.While the current Manchester United Kit features no white design elements, the new ManU 2014-2015 Kit comes with a white Nike Swoosh and white sleeve cuffs.Inside the collar features a red / white inner pride label ‘Youth, Courage, Greatness’ which represents the club’s values.The Chevrolet logo on the Manchester United Kit features the usual colors of the enterprise, gold and white. Unlike the previous shirts, the sponsor logo is not monochromatic. The shorts of the new ManU 14-15 Home Shirt will be white, while the socks will be black.This is the new Man Utd 2014-2015 Away Jersey.The new Manchester United 14-15 Away Kit is mainly white with a classical black polo collar, which features a inconspicuous devil detail. The Nike Swoosh of the new Manchester United 2014-2015 Away Kit is red.The Chevrolet sponsor logo is gold / black. The shorts of the new Manchester United 14-15 Away Kit are black /red, the socks are white.This is the new Man Utd 2014 |
ment effort.
Coupon Code
Backers at the £15 level get a coupon they can use to get £10/$13 off the book once it's released, bringing the cost down from its £30 RRP to £20/$26+shipping. This will get you the same book as everyone who backs this campaign at the Elder tier and up, bought from the Modiphius webstore.
I'm James Iles, lead designer on Legacy and head of UFO Press. I've been designing and publishing role-playing games, board games and LARPS for pretty much all my adult life, and really enjoy making storytelling games that people from all backgrounds can enjoy. Lending invaluable support is my wife Liz Iles, my co-designer on What Ho, World! and Wizards Aren't Gentlemen.
I'm joined on this project by Douglas Santana Mota. Douglas' passion for Legacy lead to him emailing me out of the blue with a pitch that eventually turned into Legacy: Mirrors in the Ruins. Since then he's been a constant source of inspiration and sounding board for ideas, and I'm very glad to have him on board for this second edition.
The book will be edited by Rebecca Curran, who comes with glowing reviews from other writers.
Book layout is by Oli Jeffrey. I was very impressed with his work on the Gauntlet Codex and The Veil's Glitch City quickstart; check out his initial layout for family and character playbooks below, plus the book's first chapter.
Character playbook: The Elder
Family Playbook: The Enclave (front)
Family Playbook: The Enclave (reverse)
Art is by Tithi Luadthong and Jeff Brown. Tithi's painterly, impressionistic style perfectly gets across the weird and techno-magical feel I wanted for Legacy, and Jeff's landscapes are awe-inspiring.
I'm getting help with shipping and subsequent distribution to shops from the folks at Modiphius. They have a lot of experience shipping crowdfunding projects all across the world, and I'm confident their help will make this project a success.
We've been recording a playtest campaign - if you'd like to get a sense of how Legacy feels in play, check it out!
Generation Ship from Aaron Griffin has your families waking up half way through a thousand year journey. Now you need to find a way to live on a ship that wasn't intended to support long-term habitation, keep it running, and try to make sure future generations reach the promised land at the end of your journey.
If we hit this level, every book will be upgraded to hardcover, complete with ribbon bookmark!
Free From the Yoke by Fyodor Kasatkin is a fantasy hack of Legacy inspired by the Medieval Rus, with a dash of Game of Thrones. An occupying force has recently withdrawn from the Homeland causing a power vacuum, with one family - the Arbiter - holding the lion's share of authority. This hack brings inter-house intrigue, ancient magic, and new lands waiting to be explored outside your borders.
Book mockup
If we hit £16,000, every backer at the Elder tier and up will have the option of raising their pledge by £10 to get the deluxe edition of Legacy 2nd Edtion. This version is bound in faux leather, gold foil-stamped and presented in a durable, full-colour slipcase.
In Primal Pathways by Laurence Phillips, players are guardian spirits, each pushing a clade of species down a different path. You start with the beginnings of complex multicellular life and gradually evolve your chosen species to the heights of civilisation. As you explore and reshape your ecosystem you'll compete with the other guardian spirits for resources and advantageous traits, claiming them as yours to adapt your species to better exploit niches in the environment.
At £22,000 the folks at Tabletop Audio will make three ambient looping tracks you can play in the background of your sessions to set the scene. There'll be one for each of the modes of play: Ruins will express a feeling of empty cities, howling winds, and crumbling buildings, Echoes will suggest ancient technology and weird hypertech, and Mirrors will give you hints of swarms of mutated and alien creatures lurking just out of sight!
At £24,000 we'll make lists of weird devices to find in the wasteland, settlements your characters can encounter, and strange hazards that can menace them. Roll randomly to get some inspiration, pick and choose whatever takes your fancy, or use them as a jumping-off point to build your own ideas.
If we hit £25,000 we'll unlock the print version of Generation Ship. You'll be able to raise your pledge to get a physical softcover copy of Aaron's sci-fi hack of Legacy, printed at the same time as the main Legacy print run.
This is a big one: at £28,000 I'll commission 10 more pieces of art from Tithi Luadthong. You'll be able to raise your pledge to get an artbook of Tithi's work, printed on high-quality art paper!
If we hit £30,000 we'll unlock the print version of Free From the Yoke. You'll be able to raise your pledge to get a physical softcover copy of Fyodor's fantasy hack of Legacy, printed at the same time as the main Legacy print run.
At £31,000 we're upgrading the core book - both standard and deluxe editions. The book will now have full-colour printed endpapers and a second ribbon bookmark.
At £32,000 we'll print Laurence's bio-punk evolutionary alternate setting in softcover. As we'll have three settings in print at this point, we'll also add a bundle deal - get all softcover settings together as individual books in a printed slipcase, for a discount!
At £34,000 we'll make our forth alternate setting. In Godsend by Khelren each player controls the avatar of a particular god, working to bring about or subvert prophecies of the end times in a world inspired by ancient Greek and Norse mythology. In a major change from the other settings your 'family playbook' analogue - your god - is controlled by another player, adding in an element of bargaining with your god for access to powerful miracles.
This book will be unlocked in print when we hit the stretch goal, letting you pledge to have your own copy printed in softcover.
At £36,000 we'll make our first supplement for the core game of Legacy!
The Engine of Life is a book about hope and solace. New Wonders and Artifacts to ease the suffering of your people and bring prosperity to the land. A new Family, The Architects of Tomorrow, can reshape the Homeland and unite its people in order to avoid Mankind past mistakes. Several new Factions and Locations to lend a helping hand or provide a safe haven for those brave enough to simply trust. On the personal level we unlock The Saint, a noble descendant of first responders, fighting for life itself. Finally, we add the Savior Role, to bring this book's elements to the forefront of your ongoing campaign through your current Characters.
At £38,000 you'll be able to get custom laser-engraved acrylic tokens to track the Treaty you owe to other Families and the favours other families owe to you. A set will contain 50 tokens - 10 each of 5 different colours/patterns, each token an 18mm diameter disk. Here's a production sample:
At £40,000 we'll increase our art budget for the Alternate Settings, making sure each has a distinct look that's perfect for its themes.
At £42,500 I'll be joining the alternate setting authors! Rhapsody of Blood is inspired by Castlevania, Bloodborne and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Once every generation, a castle filled with blood and magic and monsters intrudes on the mortal world. Certain bloodlines are able to sense its arrival and arrive from all over the world to explore the castle's depths. Each bloodline's there for their own reasons: to search for magical artefacts, to protect the world from the monsters swarming out of it, or to defeat its dark regent and seize control of the realm for a generation. If someone defeats the regent they get to say how mortal society changes over the next generation and how their bloodline prospers. If the Regent's able to bring their dark ritual to completion, however, great ruin falls on the bloodlines and the mortal world.
At £45,000 Douglas will write a second supplement for Legacy. End Game is book about doom and entropy. Threats, Dangers and Fronts that might well finish off what the Fall started. Factions that embrace the world as it is, resisting and defying any change and unity. Two new Roles, The Prophet and the Judas, that let you come full circle on your Characters' stories and open the doors to some serious plots twists for your grand finale. Two new Families, The Bleak Lords and The Refugees of Tomorrow, that know what the End of All Things truly means and stand ready to conquer it or avoid it at all costs. Closing the curtains, we give The Mindbender, a dark psionic reflection to the Remnant.
If we hit £47,500 I'll upgrade the quality of the dice set and handout sheets. First up, the dice will now come in a presentation box, looking nice on your shelves (or on store shelves). In addition, I'll upgrade the card stock the handout sheets will be printed on, and ship them to you in their own tuckbox for each of transport and storage - on top of adding all backer-created families, characters, and Quick Character cards for those families into the set.
If we hit £50,000 I'll commit to a traditional print run for The Engine of Life and End Game, ensuring you'll get them in a level of quality that matches that of the core set and we can get the supplements into game stores. Once they're written, you'll have the chance to pre-order the book set for a cheaper backer-exclusive price.
(Otherwise, we're likely to use DriveThruRPG's Print on Demand to print these books.)
That's us done! Any further funding will be used at our discretion to upgrade the books, increase the size of the print run, or give our authors a raise.
Pledging isn't the only way you can help this project grow. Help spread the word and we'll unlock all sorts of extras - wallpapers, an interactive character builder, and postcards and posters included with every book!
Simply do the following to get us closer to unlocking rewards:
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UFOpressRPGs/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ufopressrpgs
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Add ons in detail:
After the Kickstarter, I'll send out a survey where you can let me know exactly what add ons you want.
All Alternate Settings in a box set - £30/$40
Get every alternate setting in a single box set, presented in the same kind of durable slipcase as the Deluxe edition of Legacy comes in.
Generation Ship in Softback - £10/$13
Softcover mockup
Get Aaron Griffin's sci-fi hack of Legacy in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.
Free From the Yoke in Softback - £10/$13
Softcover mockup
Get Fyodor Kasatkin's low-fantasy medieval Rus-themed hack of Legacy in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.
Primal Pathways in softback - £10/$13
Get Laurence Phillip's bio-punk evolutionary fantasy hack of Legacy in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.
Godsend in softback - £10/$13
Get Khelren (aka Tiburce Guyard)'s end-of-days hack of gods and avatars in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.
Rhapsody of Blood in softback - £10/$13
Get James Iles' gothic action horror hack in softcover form, printed and delivered at the same time as the rest of your pledge.
The Art of Legacy - £15/$19.50
A 50-page full-colour coffee table-sized book showcasing Legacy's beautiful art, along with notes on the feeling a particular piece of art was meant to evoke or the process we went through creating it.
Dice Set - £11/$14
These great custom-engraved dice will be manufactured by the awesome people at Q Workshop. They come in a pack of 6 - enough for three players if you're ok with sharing! These will be sent separately to save on customs duties.
Set of 50 Treaty Tokens - £12/$15
As we've passed 38k you've unlocked Treaty Tokens. These acrylic tokens - laser-engraved by the folks at Litko - are perfect for tracking the Treaty points you've handed out and collected from others, though you could also use them to track Tech points, Data points or anything else you'd like!
A set of tokens is 50 tokens, 10 each in 5 different styles. Each token is a circular disk, 18mm across.
Handout Sheets - £15/$19.5
Printed on card by the good folks at DriveThruCards, this pack contains every playbook (family and character), basic move reference sheets, and quick character cards that make rapidly creating an incidental character a breeze. The card finish lets you use dry-erase markers to fill them in, letting you reuse the cards as many times as you like.
Poster - £10/$13
A large (594 x 841 mm) poster featuring Tithi Luadthong’s amazing cover art. Note that this will be folded down to be shipped with the book.
Add £6 to your pledge to have this poster (and all other posters unlocked) shipped seperately rolled up in a poster tube.
Extra Book - £25/$33
An additional hard copy of the second edition of Legacy. This is the same hardcover edition as you get when you pledge at the Elder level.Marlen Esparza shot by Peter Hapak for ESPN.
It’s safe to say it’s fairly rare for a bunch of feminists to be singing hosannahs about a magazine full of naked bodies, but upon the launch of ESPN magazine’s Body Issue last week, that’s precisely what happened.
Writing for Slate’s XX column, Sharan Shetty exclaimed, “This year's edition features a comprehensive gallery of athletes—11 female, 10 male—trading in their uniforms for their birthday suits. These are tactful but bracing portraits of some of the world’s most renowned athletes, participating in sports as diverse as rock climbing and beach volleyball. The key here is that the Body Issue presents athletes in their element, not models in Antarctica.”
The shoot Shetty is referring to is, of course, the 2013 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, the cover and main spread of which featured Kate Upton in the middle of Antarctica. You know, the shoot that saw the model nearly succumb to hypothermia and frostbite, all in the name of a good old fashioned tits ‘n arse blast. How ‘bout that local sports team!
Miesha Tate shot by Ben Watts for ESPN.
The Body Issue, on the other hand, features all sorts of bodies in all sorts of scenarios, from towering Washington Wizards guard John Wall flying through the air, to Motocross rider Tarah Giege cutting sick on her motorcycle, to 77-year-old golfer Gary Player mid-swing.
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So, what separates ESPN’s Body Issue from that other high profile sports “journalism” special issue it was created (in 2009) to offset? Well, it should be obvious: there aren’t a lot of men in the Swimsuit Edition (usually a grand total of none) and not many more sportswomen (four made it into 2013’s ed). The Swimsuit Edition is primarily the domain of gazelle-like models; though once upon a time it featured the relatively robust bodies of Elle MacPherson and her contemporaries, with the exception of the comparatively zaftig Upton, it’s gone the way of the Victoria’s Secret catalogue in recent years.
I’m inclined to agree with Shetty: the Body Issue is great. Often modern feminist commentary ignores the notion of desire when discussing or dismantling objectification, yet as ESPN themselves say, “It’s okay to stare”. Perhaps the addendum to that sentence should be “...if the context isn’t charged by the sexist gaze”.
Kenneth Faried, shot by Carlos Serrao for ESPN.
See, the Body Issue is more or less free of sexualisation, yet I find the Body Issue far more alluring than the Swimsuit Edition’s Benny Hill On Holiday mood.
Of all the Body Issue’s shoots, it’s tennis player Agnieszka Radwanska who seems to have drawn the short straw: perched by a pool full of tennis balls, hers is the most traditionally cheesecake-y portrait. And, curiously enough, it was Radwanska who bore the brunt of the backlash for posing nude: she was dropped as a spokesperson for Polish Catholic group Krucjata Mlodych (Youth Crusade).
Senior Catholic Polish priest Father Marek Dziewiecki got seriously Disappointed Dad about Radwanska’s state of undress: ‘‘It’s a shame that someone who has declared their love for Jesus is now promoting the mentality of men looking at a woman as a thing rather than a child of God worthy of respect and love.”
Gramps is missing the point (and for the record before you accuse me of pooh-poohing someone’s religious beliefs, I’m Catholic, too), because the very mission statement of the Body Issue is that it’s not specifically geared towards men who want to have an ogle.
Perhaps Radwanska could send a volley back at Father Marek courtesy of this quote from God-fearing pinup model Bettie Page, who saw her naked body as just another of God’s creations: "[A]fter all, when God created Adam and Eve, they were stark naked. And in the Garden of Eden, God was probably naked as a jaybird too!”
For all of the images go to espn.go.comTeamLiquid ESPORTS Profile Joined July 2011 1 Post #1 2014 WCS Interview with Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime At Red Bull Battle Grounds, we had a chance to talk to Blizzard CEO
This interview has been edited and condensed.
How do you rate WCS 2013? What did you like about about it, and what didn't you like so much? I liked that it gave the scene some order. In 2012, a lot of things were happening, but it was hard to know the relative importance of everything. WCS '13 gave everything some structure, and it linked in tournaments like IEM and DreamHack in as well. I think there's an opportunity to improve upon all that in 2014 as well.
What didn't it do well? I think some of the criticism around region-locking was valid. The hand-off between OnGameNet and GomTV between WCS Korea seasons was a bit awkward, I don't think that really helped with preserving momentum.
Regarding those problems, obviously you guys wanted some Koreans to be in America and Europe, since it increases the level of competition and makes it more interesting to watch. But did you anticipate that they would move over so quickly, and in such large numbers? We felt that having some number of Koreans in other regions would be good. One of the problems you had in 2012 was that most of the best players in the world were in Korea, but a lot of the viewers were outside of Korea. The time zones of the Korean matches made it so difficult, especially if you were in America, to follow what was going on in StarCraft. We wanted to expand the ability to view high level StarCraft to a global scale. We think 2013 actually did a very good job of doing that.
It's sort of a knob – how many Koreans do you want outside of Korea? We still look at GSL as where the top level of StarCraft play is. I think 2014 will be able to preserve the best of both sides.
How early on in 2013 were you thinking about the need for a partial region-lock? We were talking to various stakeholders pretty much right after we announced WCS 2013. The trick is that you want to minimize the disruption to the players that are currently in the system. You have players who have moved to other regions, players who have made it into Premier League, and you really don't want to disenfranchise those players.
I think we came up with a pretty good compromise. It restricts the number of players that can enter through the qualifier, but it doesn't kick anybody out who has already earned their spot in Premier. And it also opens up the flexibility for players to move around between seasons.
In the interest of improving the level of ladder play on non-Korean servers, you've required the wild card players to have a certain number of wins on their account. A lot of people like that idea, but why didn't you expand that fully to the guys already in Premier, since they are generally the best players who would affect ladder quality the most? I think so as well, but you don't want to get into a situation where you're facing kicking someone out of Premier because they didn't play enough ladder games. That's not good for anybody.
There will be a small number of spots for the qualifiers, but I think there will be enough competition for those spots that there will be more high level play on the regional ladders.
What was the intent of trying to integrate OSL/GSL so deeply into the WCS system? Why didn't it work out? The intent was to get the entire Korean StarCraft ecosystem to be pushing in the same direction. I think it did do that, but it was a very choppy system, because you kept having the hand-off back and forth between seasons and we lost some continuity. I think 2014 will be a lot simpler, a lot easier to watch. Our partners in Korea will be focusing on the things that they do best, and the things that they want to focus on.
What did you guys think of having the WCS finals at BlizzCon? Would you have it at BlizzCon every year it's available? Regarding the future, I don't want to make any WCS related statements related to other things we haven't announced yet – we haven't announced anything about BlizzCon in 2014 either.
But I don't think there's a better spot to have a finals. The crowd is amazing, and having the WCS finals there... it was just the perfect location.
How about the format at BlizzCon? StarCraft is a somewhat high-variance game by nature, and single elim tournaments can have wildly unpredictable results. The result this year came out of left field as well. Are you considering changing the WCS finals format so it better fits the entire unified storyline? We do like the single elimination tournament, especially when we're able to seed it from the points that were earned over the course of an entire season. It's fairly common in other sports to use a single elimination format – we're pretty happy with it.
Do you think the entire unified storyline with a global champion at the end is necessary? Compared to say, a system like tennis or golf where you have several majors, but without a specific final tournament to crown the year end champion. That's definitely another approach. But we definitely want to have a global ranking, and I think it adds to the tension and the storyline of StarCraft for it all to be accumulating, leading up to something that's sitting on top of everything else.
But is the global final system you have now effective at reaching that goal? sOs' story isn't exactly one that represented the entire year. You have to admit, he played extremely well at BlizzCon. People may not have expected him to win it, but you walk away thinking he really earned that.
Bob Colayco (Blizzard PR Manager): You look at something like the NCAA college basketball tournament in America, where you have teams like Duke that are ranked number one all year. But then you have the single elimination championship tournament at the end, where Cinderella can get lucky one time... It's great drama, right?
Mike Morhaime: You have that in WCS also, you have the point system for the entire season, and then you have the bracket at the end. It's still a pretty big deal to end the year as the highest point earner.
What was the reasoning behind removing the individual Season Finals? First of all, there was a scheduling problem that happened with the Season Finals because it put constraints on the entire schedule. Everything had to finish at a particular date before the Season Finals. By nature, everything felt rushed toward the end, since we basically had four major tournaments all back to back. It took a little bit of the prestige away from the regional tournaments, because the players got to celebrate for one week and then they were off to compete in another tournament.
We wanted to highlight the regional tournaments and give them more weight in the system, and we wanted to leave more room and space open for other major, international tournaments like DreamHack, IEM, and hopefully other tournaments that will spring up to fill that gap.
You've announced a proportion of WCS qualifier spots have been set aside for the non-America/Europe regions like China, SEA, etc. Is that all we have for those regions in WCS in 2014, or can we expect something more for them as the year goes along? I think you should look at WCS as a work in progress. We're making changes, our intent is to continue to improve the system. As we make these changes, we're all going to become smarter and learn how the changes affect the system. We're willing to make additional changes if we think there's other ways to improve the system.
Considering that WCS is going to be a regular, annual thing, does that affect the Legacy of the Void release schedule, seeing that it would have a huge impact on the competitive scene? We're not ready to say anything about LotV yet. But we understand the concern, and it's something we consider when releasing new content in StarCraft.
The Arcade will be free in patch 2.1, as well as the starter edition getting more features. It makes a lot of people wonder about the possibility of free-to-play multiplayer – is that something you guys are talking about? A lot of people in the industry will say that to stay competitive as premier esports game in this day and age, you have to go free-to-play, a model where someone can watch a tournament and immediately jump into ladder. Well, StarCraft 2 multiplayer will be effectively free to play in custom games.
I don't think many people are going to go directly from watching the game and into the ladder. I think they may want to practice some games first. I think people can decide whether or not they like the game enough to purchase it by playing the free modes.
What would you say the benefit of doing esports is? Would you say it has a positive effect in terms of marketing? Or are there other things like pride, or just giving the community something for the sake of giving. For us, I think it's about community building. I don't think there's any better way to share your passion and enjoyment with a community. Coming out to events like this or watching awesome matches online, I think that's where the StarCraft 2 community exists. And we can share our passion around that together.
So it's not necessarily a calculable dollars and cents kind of gain, it's a more intangible benefit? It is intangible, but I do think that success in esports will help StarCraft have a very long life. I think it also creates an opportunity for people who are passionate about StarCraft to share their passion with their friends and show them how fun it is to watch the matches and play the game.
Any final comments? Thanks for coming out, I appreciate the support TeamLiquid has given StarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. You guys do a fantastic job; I loved the write-ups leading up to the matches, all the profiles you did for the WCS Finals.
You know, you could do the Korean thing where you say "Please cheer for me, and I hope to show you exciting games," and you could actually mean it in the very literal sense. That's true.
At Red Bull Battle Grounds, we had a chance to talk to Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime about WCS 2013, the plan for 2014, and StarCraft 2 esports in general.I liked that it gave the scene some order. In 2012, a lot of things were happening, but it was hard to know the relative importance of everything. WCS '13 gave everything some structure, and it linked in tournaments like IEM and DreamHack in as well. I think there's an opportunity to improve upon all that in 2014 as well.What didn't it do well? I think some of the criticism around region-locking was valid. The hand-off between OnGameNet and GomTV between WCS Korea seasons was a bit awkward, I don't think that really helped with preserving momentum.We felt that having some number of Koreans in other regions would be good. One of the problems you had in 2012 was that most of the best players in the world were in Korea, but a lot of the viewers were outside of Korea. The time zones of the Korean matches made it so difficult, especially if you were in America, to follow what was going on in StarCraft. We wanted to expand the ability to view high level StarCraft to a global scale. We think 2013 actually did a very good job of doing that.It's sort of a knob – how many Koreans do you want outside of Korea? We still look at GSL as where the top level of StarCraft play is. I think 2014 will be able to preserve the best of both sides.We were talking to various stakeholders pretty much right after we announced WCS 2013. The trick is that you want to minimize the disruption to the players that are currently in the system. You have players who have moved to other regions, players who have made it into Premier League, and you really don't want to disenfranchise those players.I think we came up with a pretty good compromise. It restricts the number of players that can enter through the qualifier, but it doesn't kick anybody out who has already earned their spot in Premier. And it also opens up the flexibility for players to move around between seasons.I think so as well, but you don't want to get into a situation where you're facing kicking someone out of Premier because they didn't play enough ladder games. That's not good for anybody.There will be a small number of spots for the qualifiers, but I think there will be enough competition for those spots that there will be more high level play on the regional ladders.The intent was to get the entire Korean StarCraft ecosystem to be pushing in the same direction. I think it did do that, but it was a very choppy system, because you kept having the hand-off back and forth between seasons and we lost some continuity. I think 2014 will be a lot simpler, a lot easier to watch. Our partners in Korea will be focusing on the things that they do best, and the things that they want to focus on.Regarding the future, I don't want to make any WCS related statements related to other things we haven't announced yet – we haven't announced anything about BlizzCon in 2014 either.But I don't think there's a better spot to have a finals. The crowd is amazing, and having the WCS finals there... it was just the perfect location.We do like the single elimination tournament, especially when we're able to seed it from the points that were earned over the course of an entire season. It's fairly common in other sports to use a single elimination format – we're pretty happy with it.That's definitely another approach. But we definitely want to have a global ranking, and I think it adds to the tension and the storyline of StarCraft for it all to be accumulating, leading up to something that's sitting on top of everything else.You have to admit, he played extremely well at BlizzCon. People may not have expected him to win it, but you walk away thinking he really earned that.Bob Colayco (Blizzard PR Manager): You look at something like the NCAA college basketball tournament in America, where you have teams like Duke that are ranked number one all year. But then you have the single elimination championship tournament at the end, where Cinderella can get lucky one time... It's great drama, right?Mike Morhaime: You have that in WCS also, you have the point system for the entire season, and then you have the bracket at the end. It's still a pretty big deal to end the year as the highest point earner.First of all, there was a scheduling problem that happened with the Season Finals because it put constraints on the entire schedule. Everything had to finish at a particular date before the Season Finals. By nature, everything felt rushed toward the end, since we basically had four major tournaments all back to back. It took a little bit of the prestige away from the regional tournaments, because the players got to celebrate for one week and then they were off to compete in another tournament.We wanted to highlight the regional tournaments and give them more weight in the system, and we wanted to leave more room and space open for other major, international tournaments like DreamHack, IEM, and hopefully other tournaments that will spring up to fill that gap.I think you should look at WCS as a work in progress. We're making changes, our intent is to continue to improve the system. As we make these changes, we're all going to become smarter and learn how the changes affect the system. We're willing to make additional changes if we think there's other ways to improve the system.We're not ready to say anything about LotV yet. But we understand the concern, and it's something we consider when releasing new content in StarCraft.Well, StarCraft 2 multiplayer will be effectively free to play in custom games.I don't think many people are going to go directly from watching the game and into the ladder. I think they may want to practice some games first. I think people can decide whether or not they like the game enough to purchase it by playing the free modes.For us, I think it's about community building. I don't think there's any better way to share your passion and enjoyment with a community. Coming out to events like this or watching awesome matches online, I think that's where the StarCraft 2 community exists. And we can share our passion around that together.It is intangible, but I do think that success in esports will help StarCraft have a very long life. I think it also creates an opportunity for people who are passionate about StarCraft to share their passion with their friends and show them how fun it is to watch the matches and play the game.Thanks for coming out, I appreciate the support TeamLiquid has given StarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. You guys do a fantastic job; I loved the write-ups leading up to the matches, all the profiles you did for the WCS Finals.That's true.Good news for bibliophiles: not only have print books pulled through the digital revolution, traditional books remain the bread and butter of Americans’ reading habits.
That’s the conclusion of a recent survey from the Pew Research Center that found more Americans actually read print books in 2013 than in the previous year.
Some 28 percent of adults read an e-book in the past year, up 23 percent from 2012, according to the Pew report. But that didn’t cut into print books: 69 percent of adults read a print book in the past year, up four percentage points from 2012.
“Though e-books are rising in popularity, print remains the foundation of Americans’ reading habits,” the report concluded. “Most people who read e-books also read print books, and just 4 percent of readers are ‘e-book only.’”
E-readers are continuing to grow in popularity, however, Some 42 percent of adults now own tablet computers, up from 34 percent in September 2013.
That rise may be contributing to an overall growth in reading. Some 76 percent of adults read a book in some format over the previous year, up slightly from the same period in 2012.
How many books does the average American read or listen to? According to the survey, the “typical American adult” read or listened to five books in the past year, and the average for all adults was 12 books.
And when it comes to format, readers have become less discriminating, reading across multiple formats that include print, e-book, and audiobook, with significant overlap.
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Some 87 percent of those who read e-books also read a print book and 29 percent additionally listened to an audiobook. By contrast, some 35 percent of print book readers also read an e-book and 17 percent listened to an audiobook.
The findings echo earlier reports that show that while readers may love their e-reading devices, they are increasingly turning to both print and e-books."You're pushing the Higgs too much."
Such has been Peter Higgs' admonishment to the CERN communications department in recent times. The British theoretical physicist, who has contributed both his work and name to the prediction of an elementary particle called the Higgs boson, is unhappy to have the Large Hadron Collider so closely associated with the search for it. Having now established that particle's existence to a high degree of certainty — there's only a one in 10 million chance that CERN’s observations are not the result of the Higgs boson — the LHC is running the risk of being perceived as an expensive one-trick pony that's already completed its objective.
To allow that misconception to fester would be doing a massive disservice to the breadth and variety of research going on in and around the labs straddling the Franco-Swiss border. Among its many achievements, the European Organization for Nuclear Research can count the development of the World Wide Web — which Tim Berners-Lee and a group of students cobbled together in a corridor due to the lack of available room for their project.
As James Gillies, head of CERN’s Communications Group explains, “we do basic, curiosity-driven research” into the fundamentals of science and the universe. The 27-kilometer Large Hadron Collider — a subterranean circuit of vacuum-sealed steel pipes, surrounded by a network of eight superconducting magnetic arrays, four giant detector stations, and a plethora of cooling and data-collection machinery — is affectionately known as “the fastest racetrack on the planet.” To back that claim, Gillies notes that the cryogenically-cooled magnets can accelerate beams of hydrogen protons to the ludicrous speed of 11,000 laps per second (or 99.999 |
2014 which could back up claims it was downed by a missile. While the preliminary report from Dutch investigators does not point the finger of blame over the July disaster, it could heighten Western pressure against Moscow over its role in the bloody Ukraine conflict. AFP PHOTO/ ALEXANDER KHUDOTEPLY (Photo credit should read Alexander KHUDOTEPLY/AFP/Getty Images) A photo taken on September 9, 2014 shows part of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 at the crash site in the village of Hrabove (Grabovo), some 80km east of Donetsk. The Malaysian passenger jet which blew up over rebel-held east Ukraine with the loss of all 298 people on board was hit by numerous 'high-energy objects', according to a report on September 9, 2014 which could back up claims it was downed by a missile. While the preliminary report from Dutch investigators does not point the finger of blame over the July disaster, it could heighten Western pressure against Moscow over its role in the bloody Ukraine conflict. AFP PHOTO/ ALEXANDER KHUDOTEPLY (Photo credit should read Alexander KHUDOTEPLY/AFP/Getty Images) A photo taken on September 9, 2014 shows part of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 at the crash site in the village of Hrabove (Grabovo), some 80km east of Donetsk. The Malaysian passenger jet which blew up over rebel-held east Ukraine with the loss of all 298 people on board was hit by numerous 'high-energy objects', according to a report on September 9, 2014 which could back up claims it was downed by a missile. While the preliminary report from Dutch investigators does not point the finger of blame over the July disaster, it could heighten Western pressure against Moscow over its role in the bloody Ukraine conflict. AFP PHOTO/ ALEXANDER KHUDOTEPLY (Photo credit should read Alexander KHUDOTEPLY/AFP/Getty Images) Members of the Ukrainian State Emergency Service search for bodies in a field near the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 near the village of Hrabove (Grabove), in Donetsk region on July 26, 2014. Ukraine sought on July 25 to avoid a political crisis after the shock resignation of its prime minister, as fighting between the army and rebels close to the Malaysian airliner crash site claimed over a dozen more lives. The Netherlands and Australia, the two countries that lost the most citizens when the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down, are seeking a mandate to deploy troops on the ground, possibly through a United Nations Security Council resolution. AFP PHOTO/ BULENT KILIC (Photo credit should read BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images) HILVERSUM, NETHERLANDS - JULY 24: Floral tributes are placed at the gates of the Corporal Van Oudheusden Barracks on July 24, 2014 in Hilversum, Netherlands. 70 more bodies will be transferred here today for identification. Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed in eastern Ukraine killing all 298 passengers. The aircraft was allegedly shot down by a missile and investigations continue to find the perpetrators of the attack. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images) (AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND OUT) A pair of childrens shoes sit amongst the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines flight, MH17, on the outskirts of Rassypnoe village, Ukraine, July 26, 2014.(Photo by Kate Geraghty/The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images). (AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND OUT) Wreckage from the front section of Malaysian Airlines flight, MH17, on the outskirts of Rassypnoe village, Ukraine, July 26, 2014. (Photo by Kate Geraghty/The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images). (AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND OUT) Wreckage from the front section of Malaysian Airlines flight, MH17, lies on the outskirts of Rassypnoe village, Ukraine, July 25, 2014. (Photo by Kate Geraghty/The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images). (AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND OUT) A teddy bear lies amongst the wreckage of Malaysian Arirlines flight MH17, outside the village of Grabovka, Ukraine, July 25, 2014.(Photo by Kate Geraghty/The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images). A picture shows a piece of debris of the fuselage at the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo), some 80km east of Donetsk, on July 25, 2014. Ukraine sought on July 25 to avoid a political crisis after the shock resignation of its prime minister, as fighting between the army and rebels close to the Malaysian airliner crash site claimed over a dozen more lives. The Netherlands and Australia, the two countries that lost the most citizens when the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was shot down, are seeking a mandate to deploy troops on the ground, possibly through a United Nations Security Council resolution. AFP PHOTO/ BULENT KILIC (Photo credit should read BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images) GRABOVO, UKRAINE - JULY 22: Two Dutch passports lie in a field amongst luggage, personal belongings and wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on July 22, 2014 in Grabovo, Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed killing all 298 on board including 80 children. The aircraft was allegedly shot down by a missile and investigations continue over the perpetrators of the attack. (Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images) GRABOVO, UKRAINE - JULY 22: A pro-Russia rebel uses binoculars to check the area around the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 during monitoring by investigators from Malaysia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on July 22, 2014 in Grabovo, Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed killing all 298 on board including 80 children. The aircraft was allegedly shot down by a missile and investigations continue over the perpetrators of the attack. (Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images) ROZSYPNE, UKRAINE - JULY 20: (CHINA OUT, SOUTH KOREA OUT) Debris from an Malaysia Airlines plane crash lies in a field on July 20, 2014 in Rozsypne, Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed yesterday on the Ukraine/Russia border near the town of Shaktersk. The Boeing 777 was carrying 298 people including crew members, the majority of the passengers being Dutch nationals, believed to be at least 173, 44 Malaysians, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians and 9 Britons. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images) DONETSK, UKRAINE - JULY 20: People lay flowers and put toys, belong child passengers died in crash, upon the wreckages of plane as search and rescue specialists inspect at the crash area of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, carrying 295 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and downed close to Russia's border with Ukraine on July 17, near the Grabovo town, Ukraine on July 20, 2014. (Photo by Soner Kilinc/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) DONETSK, UKRAINE - JULY 20: Search and rescue specialists inspect at the crash area of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, carrying 295 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and downed close to Russia's border with Ukraine on July 17, near the Grabovo town, Ukraine on July 20, 2014. (Photo by Soner Kilinc/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) GRABOVO, UKRAINE - JULY 20: Michael Bociurkiw from monitoring group Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) speaks to journalists after inspecting part of the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on July 20, 2014 in Grabovo, Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed killing all 298 on board including 80 children. The aircraft was allegedly shot down by a missile and investigations continue over the perpetrators of the attack. (Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images) DONETSK, UKRAINE - JULY 20: Limb of a passenger died in plane crash is seen as search and rescue specialists inspect at the crash area of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, carrying 295 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and downed close to Russia's border with Ukraine on July 17, near the Grabovo town, Ukraine on July 20, 2014. (Photo by Soner Kilinc/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Ukrainian State Emergency Service employees collect bodies of victims at the site of the crash of a Malaysia Airlines plane in Grabove, in rebel-held east Ukraine on July 20, 2014. The missile system used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner was handed to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine by Moscow, the top US diplomat said Sunday. Outraged world leaders have demanded Russia's immediate cooperation in a prompt and independent probe into the shooting down on July 17 of flight MH17 with 298 people on board. AFP PHOTO/ BULENT KILIC (Photo credit should read BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images) A Ukrainian State Emergency Service employee searches for bodies amongst the wreckage at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, near the village of Grabove, in the region of Donetsk on July 20, 2014. The missile system used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner was handed to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine by Moscow, the top US diplomat said Sunday. Outraged world leaders have demanded Russia's immediate cooperation in a prompt and independent probe into the shooting down on July 17 of flight MH17 with 298 people on board. AFP PHOTO/ BULENT KILIC (Photo credit should read BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images) A piece of the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is pictured in a field near the village of Grabove, in the region of Donetsk on July 20, 2014. The missile system used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner was handed to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine by Moscow, the top US diplomat said Sunday. Outraged world leaders have demanded Russia's immediate cooperation in a prompt and independent probe into the shooting down on July 17 of flight MH17 with 298 people on board. AFP PHOTO/ BULENT KILIC (Photo credit should read BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images) Ukrainian State Emergency Service employees search for bodies amongst the wreckage at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, near the village of Grabove, in the region of Donetsk on July 20, 2014. The missile system used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner was handed to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine by Moscow, the top US diplomat said Sunday. Outraged world leaders have demanded Russia's immediate cooperation in a prompt and independent probe into the shooting down on July 17 of flight MH17 with 298 people on board. AFP PHOTO/ BULENT KILIC (Photo credit should read BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images) Ukrainian rescue workers walk past a piece of wreckage as they carry the body of a victim on a stretcher at the site of the crash of a Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 298 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in Grabove, in rebel-held east Ukraine, on July 19, 2014. Ukraine and pro-Russian insurgents agreed on July 19 to set up a security zone around the crash site of a Malaysian jet whose downing in the rebel-held east has drawn global condemnation of the Kremlin. Outraged world leaders have demanded Russia's immediate cooperation in a prompt and independent probe into the shooting down on July 17 of flight MH17 with 298 people on board. AFP PHOTO / DOMINIQUE FAGET (Photo credit should read DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images) A pro-Russia militant holds up a stuffed animal as others look on at the site of the crash of a Malaysian airliner carrying 298 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in Grabove, in rebel-held east Ukraine, on July 18, 2014. Pro-Russian separatists in the region and officials in Kiev blamed each other for the crash, after the plane was apparently hit by a surface-to-air missile. Members of the UN Security Council demanded a full, independent investigation into the apparent shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine. AFP PHOTO / DOMINIQUE FAGET (Photo credit should read DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- The body of one passenger of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was found wearing an oxygen mask, Dutch prosecutors said Thursday, raising questions about how much those on board knew about their fate when the plane plunged out of the sky above Eastern Ukraine in July.
The passenger, an Australian, did not have the mask on his face, but its elastic strap was around his neck, said Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the Dutch National Prosecutor's Office which is carrying out a criminal investigation into the air disaster.
De Bruin said Dutch forensic experts investigated the mask "for fingerprints, saliva and DNA and that did not produce any results. So it is not known how or when that mask got around the neck of the victim."
De Bruin said no other bodies recovered from the wreckage were found wearing masks. He said he did not know where in the plane the Australian victim was sitting.
All 298 passengers and crew died when the jet flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed July 17. Dutch air crash investigators said last month it was likely struck by multiple "high-energy objects from outside the aircraft," which some aviation experts say is consistent with a strike by a missile.
The head of the criminal investigation said the most likely of possible scenarios being investigated is that the Boeing 777 was shot down from the ground.
Relatives of the Australian passenger were told about the mask as soon as it was discovered, but relatives of other victims heard about it for the first time when Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans mentioned it during an interview on a late-night talk show on Wednesday.
Relatives of victims began calling investigators Thursday asking about the comments, De Bruin said.
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying Timmermans regrets his comments.
"I have an enormous amount of sympathy for the next-of-kin," he said. "The last thing I want to do is compound their suffering in this way."
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“Mr S told us with outward calm, ‘I shall come again next Wednesday. I will bring a piece of rope with me. If the tablets are still not here, I am going to hang myself from that tree.’ He pointed to the window. I believed he meant what he said,” the doctor said.
The commission said there were several barriers that stood in the way of effectively treating pain, including “opiophobia” – prejudice and misinformation about the medical value of opioids.
“A prevalent but unwarranted fear of non-medical use and addiction to opioids and opioid-induced side-effects, both among health-care providers and regulators and among patients and their families, has led to insufficient medical use. Unbalanced laws and excessive regulation perpetuate a negative feedback loop of poor access that mainly affects poor people,” the commission said.
“Efforts to prevent non-medical use of internationally controlled substances, such as morphine and other opioid analgesics, have overshadowed and crippled access to opioids for palliative care. These efforts have focused on preventing diversion and non-medical use rather than ensuring access by people with legitimate health needs.”
The commission also blamed the poor state of pain care on a tendency in the medical community to focus on curing and preventing disease, rather than preserving a patient’s quality of life and dignity.
The report recommends that palliative care be included as part of universal health care coverage and that inexpensive morphine should be available “for any patient with medical need.”The founders had a dream to secure the creator-bestowed rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for themselves and their posterity. Conservatives who believe in the founding fathers’ ideals should consider the latter two rights as they relate to the disabled community.
According to the United States Census, one-in-five Americans is disabled. During the 2016 election, identity politics played a major role in the national debate; transgenderism and the transgender bathroom law was debated ad naseum. Even Jackie Evancho, the inauguration singer, got in the action. The Williams Institute estimates LGBT people are approximately 4 percent of the population, yet they are being discussed at every governmental level.
But nobody discusses major problems in the disabled communities, such as:
– Unemployment among those with disabilities hovers around 80 percent. A disabled person cannot effectively compete in the private sector. The ADA requires companies to supply any reasonable accommodation; therefore, companies will often choose a candidate with similar, if not slightly inferior skills to avoid paying for or dealing with the modifications. Because hiring decisions is not public record, it is impossible to claim discrimination. This problem most clearly happens in entry level positions, making it challenging for disabled people to create a competitive resume.
– The cost of living for many disabled people is much higher than average, regardless of where you live. This is when you factor into account the doctor visits, medication, and even some small things that often aren’t even thought of (such as buying pre-made food because cooking is oftentimes out of the question, for one reason or another) — not to mention the cost of hiring a caregiver in order to help disabled people with things they can’t do themselves. In other words, at the same salary a disabled person has a significantly decreased standard of living as the non-disabled person at the same or comparable salary.
– The severe lack of affordable ADA approved housing forces disabled people to either live at home with their parents, or pay far above market average for suitable housing. Section 8 housing does little to alleviate this problem, given the years-long waitlist. Even if one gets in section 8 housing, nine times out of ten, they need extra modification to make it usable.
– “Disabled” bathrooms come with issues. The ADA requires every public place to have at least one stall for disabled people. Oftentimes though, the business in question will complete the minimum amount of work, and the end result is an unusable mess.
While the ADA was a bipartisan bill passed in 1990, the Democrats have been the major benefactors. Democrats’ focus on social welfare make them a natural home for the disabled community. I believe there is a conservative case to make swaying more disabled people to vote conservative.
I attended this past CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). One thing stood out to me more so than anything else: I was, by far, the youngest wheelchair user there. I met this one other guy – he had a spinal cord injury, but he looked older than 30. Everyone else who had a wheelchair/scooter was older (75+ probably), and as such were likely not disabled from birth or had to live a significant portion of their adult life with a disability. Of the 10,000 or so attendees, only a fraction of 1 percent were disabled. Now, CPAC is a highly partisan and specialized conference and probably isn’t a good cross section of the population. However, there was a clear lack of disabled conservatives.
In Arthur C. Brooks’ book, A Conservative Heart, he says people value worth over money. This remains true for the disabled community, many of us would rather earn a living than simply get a check for $1,000 in our mailbox every month. As noted above, however, getting work as someone who is disabled is challenging, to say the least. A possible solution is to offer incentives to hire disabled workers. The federal government already has a similar program for ex-convicts. So, why not implement a program for those who have a disability?
A solution to the increasingly evident cost-of-living disparity between disabled and non-disabled people is have the government give cost-of-living raises to those disabled people who are employed, rather than Social Security. Allowing the company in question to offer competitive salaries while allowing their disabled employees to have a comparable standard of living. If necessary it can be capped at a certain maximum income.
The housing crisis that disabled people face can be solved a variety of ways one is to create a program like section 8, only strictly for disabled people, instead of low income families. It would be fairly easy to police, by just requiring a doctor’s note stating they have an ADA approved disability. Another option would simply be to give disabled Americans priority over those who simply qualify under low-income requirements.
If conservatives were to champion these reforms, much of the disabled community would join the movement. For many of us who have disabilities, our priorities aren’t that of national security, or even the economy, necessarily. It is instead a matter of merely survival versus thriving, and for too long we have been ignored.
Many conservatives would probably blanch at this governmental overreach. The free market is not equipped to handle those with disabilities, so the government can and should have a role. The free market relies on a voluntary exchange of goods of roughly equal value. Those who have a disability require an inordinate amount of resources for comparatively little in return. The government is equipped for exactly that. The founders wanted the government instituted to protect the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for their posterity, and that includes their disabled posterity. To truly live to the founders’ ideals, conservatives must champion the rights of the disabled.
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AIRDRIE, Alta. -- An official in the community of Airdrie, just north of Calgary, says ice on a drainage canal can be deceiving and is urging caution after a little boy's death.
Wilf Richter, with Airdrie's planning and engineering department, said the overland drainage system is meant to capture rain water or snow melt and direct it away from homes in the surrounding neighbourhood.
With temperatures above zero last week, Richter said "obviously the ice got much more fragile and softer."
"You've got water melt and snow melt going on top of the ice, it makes the ice softer, and even if it doesn't go on top of the ice, it certainly flows in from underneath," Richter said in an interview Tuesday.
"And where you might have had six inches or eight inches or a foot of ice, now you might have one or two inches, but you wouldn't know by looking at it visually from above."
The six-year-old boy died in hospital Monday after he and his 10-year-old brother fell through the ice.
A woman who lives in the area called 911 after she saw the children go through the ice. Firefighters pulled the boys from the freezing water and they were rushed to hospital, but the younger boy died.
His 10-year-old brother suffered hypothermia and was in serious condition, though RCMP said his prognosis is good.
Deputy fire chief Garth Rabel called it a "horrific, unfortunate" accident. He said changing weather conditions can make ice surfaces unpredictable.
"There was ice cover, open water, very precarious ice conditions, so that's what our team found when they arrived," he said Tuesday. "There is the potential always for water to be running under in these type of water channels. Running water, of course, doesn't freeze and it can always jeopardize the ice surface as well."
Asked if the drainage canal should have been fenced off, he said no.
"You look in any community... there is open, natural waterways or man-made waterways that manage drainage and such, and to be able to manage those all consistently with fences just isn't practical."
Rabel said, however, that as a general rule man-made ice -- either indoors or outdoors -- has either grass or concrete as its foundation and is safer as a recreational ice surface.
"Just be very, very cautious," he said. "Look out for our children, look out for our pets, look out for any movement around those waterways."New York police fail to clear park after thousands gather to defend Occupy Wall Street
By our reporter
15 October 2011
The administration of New York City’s billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg beat a tactical retreat Friday morning, backing down from earlier threats to clear the site of the anti-Wall Street demonstration on the pretext that its corporate owner needed to clean the area.
Over two thousand people, predominately men and women in their twenties and early thirties, assembled before dawn in the heart of New York City’s financial district to defend the encampment of Occupy Wall Street at Liberty Plaza (renamed Zuccoti park by its corporate owners).
New York police video recording protesters
Authorities had scheduled the “cleaning” of the small, brick-paved park for 7:00 am, a deadline when protesters would have to leave or face arrest. They would not be allowed back in with their gear, if at all.
Under the glare of street lamps and media lighting, tension pervaded the crowded park and adjacent sidewalks as the crowd awaited the anticipated assault by riot police. Many stood silently while others raised the chants Of “We are the 99 percent”.
By 7:30 am, as it became clear that police would not remove protesters from the park, hundreds began to march to Wall Street a few blocks away. At least fourteen people were arrested and one protester was hit and run over by a police motorcycle, though it could not be determined if this was accidental or not. Several others were injured after being attacked by cops.
The reversal of the plan to clear the park was announced by Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway, who said in a statement: “Late last night, we received notice from the owners of Zuccotti Park—Brookfield Properties—that they are postponing their scheduled cleaning of the park, and for the time being withdrawing their request from earlier in the week for police assistance during their cleaning operation.”
The World Socialist Web Site spoke to a number of people who had come to defend the occupation. Ryan, a young man form Long Island who works two jobs to make ends meet, told us. “I’m here to defend Occupy Wall Street, because I have to be here. This is an international movement against the capitalist system. Classism is a long-standing problem. It’s as old as civilization itself, but it’s gotten much worse in the last 10 years. I’m here because we need a society in which it is possible for every human being to realize their potential.”
When asked about the role of liberal groups in supporting the occupation he said, “The Democrats are beholden to the same bankers as the Republicans. That’s pretty obvious. “
Section of the demonstration
Natasha, a young woman who lives in Brooklyn and works for a non-profit said: “I was a arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, and I’ve been coming back since then. Something is very wrong with this country and this is a tangible moment to try to rectify it. I think it’s not surprising that that Democratic Party wants in on this. I don’t believe that people here are buying it, though. I voted for Obama in 2008, but I think it’s the role of the president to do what he has done. It’s hard to believe that he is helping us.”
Vanessa
Vanessa, from Melbourne, Florida, told us that she was a server in a restaurant and had come to the protest to support the Occupy Wall Street movement. “We absolutely need some change. I don’t support consumerism. I’m looking for more justice and more equality. I think that capitalism in its entirety is not helping out the planet. It’s more like self-destruction and evolution. We’re not going to be co-opted by the establishment. This is something new here. The old way has failed.”
We asked her if she was opposed to political parties, and Vanessa said she was, but when we asked if this included socialist parties, she amended this: “I’m more interested in socialist policies, for sure. We need something radical.”OAKLAND, Calif. – As the health care reform debate came down to the wire this week, supporters of community health clinics rallied March 17 in California communities – Bakersfield, Stockton, Merced, Orange County and others – urging passage of legislation now before the U.S. House of Representatives.
In Oakland, demonstrators gathered for a lunch-hour rally in the heart of the Fruitvale, an area with many Mexican American and other Latino residents, many of whom depend on La Clinica de la Raza for their health care.
“By the end of this week we could have health care reform. But it’s on us, because we’re the ones who have to demand it,” Jane Garcia, CEO of Clinica de la Raza, told the crowd. During Congressional “dillydallying” over reform in recent months, she said, 400,000 more California children have lost their health coverage, while the total number of uninsured Californians has risen from 6 million to 8 million.
Of opponents’ claims that Americans don’t want reform, Garcia added, “Last time I checked, Oakland, Alameda County and California were part of America. And guess what? We want health care reform and we want it now!”
Patrick Romano, California state campaign director for Health Care for America Now, pointed out that community clinics “are going to be instrumental in the transition with the health care reform, whether it’s caring for the newly insured, whether it’s taking care of those folks who won’t get insurance right away” as reform proceeds toward full implementation in 2014. “We can’t take anything for granted,” he warned. “We’ve had numerous timelines going back to last August. Call your members of Congress, even if you’re absolutely certain they will vote yes.”
Under the measure before Congress, not only will 31 million uninsured people gain access to health coverage, but 15,000 new primary care providers will become available around the country, Carmela Castellano-Garcia, who heads the California Primary Care Association of community clinics, told the crowd. “It’s time to put people over politics, people over health insurance companies.”
In a conversation after the rally, Castellano-Garcia said billions of dollars are expected to become available under the reform, to expand community clinics throughout the country. Many of the over 1 million uninsured Californians now receiving care at community health centers will become insured, she said, with “wonderful” results both for them and for the clinics which will gain added income.
“In the last six months, the number of uninsured patients we see at La Clinica de la Raza has soared by 32 percent,” said Jane Garcia. “Many people we see are newly uninsured – teachers, construction workers, a woman in her 36th week of pregnancy.” Garcia said the community clinics’ emphasis on wellness and prevention will also bring savings to a reformed health care system.
Also addressing the rally were Martin Waukazoo of the Native American Health Center, former state Assembly Majority Leader Wilma Chan, and Jeff Harry of Organizing for America.
Demonstrators held signs in Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Korean and other languages as well as English. Some signs urged covering new documented immigrants under the reform.
The California rallies were organized by Health Care for America Now, Organizing for America and the California Federation of Labor.
Photo: Marilyn Bechtel— The Inglewood City Council could vote Tuesday night on zoning changes that would pave the way for a proposed 80,000-seat NFL stadium.
Stan Kroenke, who bought a 60-acre lot between The Forum and Hollywood Park Casino in 2013, has teamed up with the owners of the 298-acre Hollywood Park site to build the new arena.
The Hollywood Land Company, a joint venture between Stockbridge Capital Group and The Kroenke Group, announced plans in January to build the arena, a 6,000-seat performance venue, a 300-room hotel, 2,500 residential units, 1.7 million square feet of retail and office space and 25 acres of public parks, playgrounds and open space on the site.
During Tuesday’s 7 p.m. meeting, council members could either approve the plan to build the stadium without a public vote or pass a resolution giving citizens a chance to vote in a special election.
Los Angeles County election officials have verified enough petition signatures to allow the stadium plan to go before voters, but an election has not yet been scheduled.
“A lot of fans out there will be very happy and once again, the community can’t wait to get this thing done here,” Inglewood resident Anthony Wills said.
The plans to fast-track the Inglewood stadium come on the heels of Friday’s announcement of a plan to build a $1.7 billion privately-funded arena in Carson that would house the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders.
The teams, who are working with the business coalition Carson2gether, have the option to purchase the landfill near the 405 Freeway and Del Amo Boulevard and will build the stadium if they are unable to strike new stadium deals in their own cities, which both teams have tried to do for years.
Additionally, there are two other NFL stadium proposals in Los Angeles: Farmers Field in Downtown LA, next to Staples Center, and another in the City of Industry led by LA Kings co-owner, Ed Roski.REVE
Argentina tiene los mejores recursos eólicos del mundo y de ser aprovechados podría ser una potencia eólica internacional.
El último Ranking de Países Atractivos para las Energías Renovables (RECAI) publicado en Septiembre de 2014, destaca importantes inversiones eólicas en Argentina para aprovechar hasta 700 MW de energía.
Como parte de los esfuerzos para promover este amplio recursos se realizará el evento “Viento & Energía – Expo Argentina 2015?, feria internacional dedicada al sector de la energía eólica destinada a desarrollar el mercado de la electricidad generada por el viento. El encuentro tendrá lugar en la ciudad argentina de La Plata, en las instalaciones del Estadio Único de la misma ciudad, los días 8 y 9 de abril de 2015.
Argentina cuenta con un 70 % de su territorio apto para el desarrollo de proyectos eólicos. “Viento & Energía – Expo Argentina 2015? será una oportunidad importante para todos los profesionales del sector interesados en el mercado nacional y de la región, que ofrece las mejores condiciones geo-climáticas y técnicas, para convertirse en uno de los líderes mundiales en el sector de la energía eólica.
Es uno de los objetivos de esta feria dar a conocer todo el potencial eólico del país, brindando así oportunidades de negocios para posibles inversores, tanto públicos como privados, y preparar a nuestra sociedad para el futuro del mercado eólico, tomando conciencia de la importancia que tiene este, nuestro recurso, el viento, para reemplazar gradualmente a los hidrocarburos en nuestro mix de energías primarias para la generación de energía eléctrica, a precios competitivos, tanto más cuanto menos subsidios reciban aquellos.
Por Ley 26.190 hemos tomado el compromiso de llevar la incidencia de la generación por fuentes renovables al 8% de la demanda de energía eléctrica.
La compañía de energía eólica Genneia proyecta concretar inversiones por 1.000 millones de dólares para culminar nueve proyectos que posee en desarrollo en el país y alcanzar los 500 megavatios de capacidad que abastecerán a 700.000 usuarios. ABO WIND ENERGY DE Alemania tiene dos proyectos eólicos de 100MW cada uno.
http://www.evwind.com/2014/12/08/argentina-potencia-eolica/Tony Abbott’s adviser had called for takers for wager that global temperatures would be lower in 20 years
Some of Australia’s top climate scientists, including those from the CSIRO, have said they will be willing to bet Tony Abbott’s business adviser Maurice Newman $10,000 that the world will warm over the next 20 years.
Newman, who is the head of the government’s business advisory council, wrote on Wednesday that “what we now see is the unraveling of years of shoddy science and sloppy journalism” over climate change, praising newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch for being the only ones not “captured” by the IPCC.
Newman’s article, published in the Australian, quoted contrarian US physicist Richard Lindzen who said he would be willing to take bets that the average global temperature would be lower than today in 20 years’ time. Newman added “Any takers?”
The challenge has already been taken up by Nobel prize-winning physicist Brian Schmidt, who said he would be willing to bet $10,000 that average temperatures would be higher in 20 years’ time, consistent with the predictions of mainstream science.
“So Mr Newman – I am prepared to put $10,000 on the line that the average Earth surface air temperature in a three-year average (2013-2015 compared to 2033-2035) will be warmer 20 years from now,” Schmidt wrote in a blog, also published by the Australian.
“Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money to me, but since I am about 99% sure that the Earth is warming due to anthropogenic causes, it seems a deal too good to pass up.”
Schmidt has been joined by eight other scientists, including from the government’s own science agency, the CSIRO, who confirmed to Guardian Australia they would be prepared to bet Newman money that temperatures would be higher in 20 years’ time, based on a three-year average.
The CSIRO’s Dr John Church, who is also an IPCC lead author, said he would take up the $10,000 bet, while Dr Tony Hirst, deputy research program director, said he would bet $500 based on “clear terms” of a three or five-year temperature average.
The other scientists include David Karoly of Melbourne University, Will Steffen of the Climate Council, and Dave Griggs, director of the Monash Sustainability Institute.
Prof Andrew Blakers, |
directed and ultimately delivered the pivotal sending off of Gabriel, Arsenal’s centre half exiting the field as wide-eyed and pale as a prize tuna wriggling on the end of a hook shortly before having its brains bashed out on the harbour wall.
Let’s be clear. Costa was horrible here: sandpaper made flesh, a blue-shirted jab in the eye and above all lucky not to be sent off himself. It is often said certain players they could start an argument in an empty room. Costa could start an argument alone on a deep space asteroid somewhere past Betelgeuse. He niggled, he provoked, he stopped the flow of the game, he deliberately and skilfully got an opponent sent off.
And yet Costa left the pitch having committed no fouls at all, a fact that in itself suggests a kind of brilliance to his methods. If we really are going to take the purely professional view of what was a jaw-droppingly toxic display of what might best be described as football-related activity, then Costa effectively won the game for his team here, and did so without leaving a footprint or a fingerprint. This was wasn’t a mugging. It was a heist, and an expert one.
Plenty will feel that a performance like this goes to the heart of what we actually want football to be. Are we really just watching a man cheating here, a sport tarnished by cynicism: or is this, as José Mourinho suggested, epic full-body competition, with Costa the ultimate professional, the reason the Premier League stadiums are full?
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Speaking following his team’s 2-0 victory against Arsenal at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, Chelsea manager José Mourinho dismisses suggestions that Blues striker Diego Costa should have been sent off
Mourinho, of course, is the master of spinning out half a truth. If we are going to talk professionalism Costa was aided by some terribly naive refereeing from Mike Dean and his assistants, who appeared to have never actually seen him play before, to be have been ambushed – who knew? – by Costa’s mastery of pushing the rules in plain sight, and of nipping beyond them whenever the back is turned.
This was never more apparent than in the game’s central incident, that outbreak of all-Brazilian jogo feio just before half-time. Tangling under a high ball, Costa gouged and then swiped at Laurent Koscielny’s face. Pushed away by the Frenchman, Costa leapt up and chest-bumped him to the floor. So, three potential yellow cards right there, two of them for Costa. At which point Costa was pulled away by Gabriel. Bad move. Like a virus, he had a new host. And so he was off: chuntering, jostling, niggling, muttering in Gabriel’s ear and basically begging, pleading with him to kick him. Come on. Do it. Kick me.
And so Gabriel kicked him, or rather flicked a leg back at him – bingo Diego! – right in front of the referee. At which point Costa became instantly the guardian of the game, football’s last true gentleman, shocked – shocked! – to see such rough play, shaking his head sadly as Gabriel exited pursued by a steward.
Diego Costa should have been sent off himself, says Arsène Wenger Read more
Is this really expert game management as Mourinho suggested, counselling his opponents sagely on the need to control their emotions? This is a man who in Spain was known for his expert pinching, and for one trick that involved, allegedly, spitting into his hand and then throwing it at his marker. Certainly Costa didn’t appear to be in control of his own emotions as he buffeted Koscielny around. A different ref might have sent him off then and there. At the same time his brilliantly attuned personal Geiger counter had detected a refereeing slackness, a space he could work in, and work it he did.
There are probably two things worth taking from this. First, transplant Costa into this Arsenal team and they would perhaps have won this match, and maybe also the Premier League last season. The game plan here was to press Alexis Sánchez up against Branislav Ivanovic and get Theo Walcott in behind. A flicker or two aside, neither looked like unsettling Chelsea. Costa meanwhile won a game for his team when they needed it most.
And secondly what might this do for Chelsea? The most peculiar part of their struggles has been the lack of obvious cause and effect, more just a kind of shared inner dwindling. By the end here, and indeed in the level playing field of the first half, Nemanja Matic looked to be finding his game, while Eden Hazard buzzed effectively. Teams are strange things. A injection of blood, a flushing through of the veins – fair or foul – might be just what this one needs.While Sanders has made awkward attempts to court African American voters, Hillary Clinton has deep ties to the community. She was the first presidential candidate to visit Flint, Michigan, a predominately African American city with toxic water.
Clinton hopes to appeal to people like Lawrence White, a 43-year-old state employee and owner of a small security firm who feels betrayed by every level of government and by both parties. “I’m not just singling out Governor [Rick] Snyder,” the African American Democrat told me in January. “All the politicians including the EPA are playing tit-for-tat, playing games at our expense. It’s everybody. It’s Republicans. It’s Democrats. It’s a globalization of not caring for the people of Flint.”
Just north of Detroit, in the suburbs of Oakland and Macomb counties, live the children and grandchildren of Reagan Democrats, white working-class voters who defected their party to support Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
I grew up among Reagan Democrats; their racial and economic grievances were the soundtrack of my childhood. For people like Benson Brundage, a Macomb County contractor who told me in 2012 that welfare is racial “subsidization,” Donald Trump gives voice to their fears.
Mitt Romney dog-whistled at them in 2012. Now the former GOP nominee is suggesting that Trump is a bigot.
Drive farther north on I-75, past Flint and Saginaw and into the scenic woods of northern Michigan, and you’ll find people who remember when the area was thriving. For generations, blue-collar workers poured out of city factories on Friday afternoons and headed to their cottages, which, along with defined pensions and new cars they helped build, were emblems of the 20th-century American middle class.
That era is gone—and along with it, for many Michigan residents, went the family cottages. What’s left is a core of hard-bitten residents who couldn’t be more disconnected from the political system.
In December 2014, I stopped by northern Michigan diner for breakfast. It smelled like bacon and wet socks. I sat at one table, scrolling through Twitter as news broke from Washington that the economy is on a supposed upswing. At four other tables sat five regular customers sharing a single conversation.
"I leave my Christmas lights on for two hours—tops," said the waitress, flitting between regulars with a pot of off-brand coffee.
"An hour for me," said the local cop. The farmer at the next table nodded his head, "That's about all I can afford, too."
In Washington and New York, people celebrate economic numbers. In Michigan, people number the minutes they can afford Christmas lights.
"I will say I'm keeping them on longer than last year," said the guy who works at the hardware store. "Things are a bit better."
Things are a bit better in Michigan than they were in 2008, but there’s still little hope that they will get good enough, fast enough for most of its people. That’s why the voters of Michigan are hungry for change. For many, the craving is so strong that they’ll vote for a Democratic socialist or a Republican demagogue.BURNS - Law enforcement officers set up roadblocks Tuesday night around the headquarters of the occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge hours after one of the takeover's top spokesmen was killed and other leaders were arrested on a highway out of town.
FBI officials told those still at the compound, about 30 miles southeast of Burns, that they were free to leave and should do so. By midnight, few people appeared to have taken up the offer and the lights were still on.
Authorities provided no information about the roadblocks, but have scheduled a news conference for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in Burns.
Oregon standoff Day 26: What you need to know Wednesday As we enter Day 26 of the standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, here are the latest developments.
Only a few people had left, said Gary Hunt, who arrived Sunday from California to support the occupation. "The rest have decided they're going to hold their ground," he said.
Hunt -- a board member of Operation Mutual Defense, a network of militias and patriot sympathizers - left the headquarters late Tuesday and talked to The Oregonian/OregonLive while parked six miles from the refuge.
Among those still there was Ammon Bundy's wife, Lisa. She told those at the compound that she took a call from her husband after his arrest and he described some of what happened.
Hunt said there was confusion among those remaining at the compound and he wasn't certain who was providing leadership.
The protesters anticipate that law enforcement will take action against them, he said. "They've got their observers out," he said.
In recent days, it looked as if about 40 people were staying in the buildings, including women and children.
Occupiers and supporters have traveled freely in and out of the headquarters and to Burns. Police have kept a low profile in the refuge area since Ammon Bundy and a small band of armed followers took over the compound on Jan. 2 to protest the federal arson sentences of two local ranchers and government land-use policies.
Police had blocked the primary route into the refuge - two-lane Sod House Lane - about a quarter-mile west of the refuge entrance. A large front-end loader sat across the road, with other police vehicles parked on the shoulders.
All had their lights off, creating an eerie scene out on the high desert with a nearly full moon.
The roadblock could be seen from the refuge compound and especially from the fire tower where the occupiers have posted around-the-clock lookouts.
The compound sits in a bowl beside Sod House Lane and includes office buildings, shops, a bunkhouse and a museum.
With Ammon Bundy and other leaders under arrest, it was unclear who was left to lead the occupation. Blaine Cooper and Jason Patrick, two of those involved in the original occupation and who have been active in leadership, were part of the contingent still at the refuge.
Patrick said early Tuesday evening that the atmosphere at the refuge was calm as people digested news of the arrests during a highway stop 20 miles north of Burns on the way to a community meeting in John Day. Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was shot and killed by police, authorities said.
Patrick said those at the refuge were preparing to defend themselves for a "peaceful resolution," but wouldn't elaborate.
The sister-in-law of one of the people still in the refuge told The Oregonian/OregonLive that her relative wanted to leave the compound because several occupiers were preparing an aggressive stand against police.
The family lost touch with him after he reported he was driving out of the headquarters in his personal vehicle, which the family said contained both long guns and hand guns. It couldn't be established immediately if he had been taken into custody at the checkpoint.
Besides the occupation leaders, self-styled militiamen and patriots have been living at the compound. Cars and trucks carried license plates from Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico and California. A Hermiston cowboy joined the group, bringing his horse and putting on a daily parade with an American flag at the compound entryway.
One of the convoys moving around the refuge included police rigs, passenger cars and armored vehicles traveling south on Oregon 205, past the turnoff to the refuge and continuing on the road toward Frenchglen. The convoy could reach the refuge through back roads spidering north from the Diamond area.
Other convoys were reported moving south on Oregon 78 toward Crane, likely heading for the Princeton area and the eastern road to the refuge headquarters.
-- Les ZaitzWarming temperatures in the Arctic are causing mosquitoes to show up earlier and spread faster, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. This is bad news for the area’s caribou population — the main food source for mosquitoes in the Arctic. The caribou are likely to change their behavior to avoid being bitten, which can make it harder for the animals to find food, the study authors suggest. For this, we have climate change to thank.
Environmental temperatures greatly influence how mosquitoes grow and survive. When temperatures get cold, the insects become inactive and enter a hibernation-like state called diapause. But the pests thrive in warmer climates — usually those around 80 degrees Fahrenheit — since heat allows mosquitoes grow faster and larger.
This is bad news for the area’s caribou population
So as it warms, the Arctic is becoming an ideal place for mosquitoes to prosper. Average temperatures in the region — which includes the Arctic Ocean, Alaska, Greenland, and parts of Russia — are increasing at more than twice the rate of the global average. This can be seen directly in the shrinking levels of ice in the region. Just today, NASA announced that the amount of Arctic sea ice this summer was the fourth lowest ever recorded.
The Proceedings study used climate data to come up with a model for how the mosquito population will change in the Arctic with the temperature. They combined that information with field and lab studies on the populations of mosquitoes in Greenland. With all of these factors considered, the model predicted that mosquitoes will be 50 percent more likely to survive in the Arctic if the temperature rises 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. As if that weren’t vexing enough, rising temperatures will also lead to mosquitoes emerging in the Arctic two weeks earlier than normal. (An increase of just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit shortens the developmental time of mosquito larvae by 10 percent.)
The 2015 Arctic sea ice summertime minimum is shown here as a gold line. (NASA)
This change in timing could be detrimental for the Arctic's caribou population. The caribou give birth to their calves in the springtime — the mosquitos’ new arrival date. That means that more of the insects will be looking for a fresh blood meal as the caribou are being born. And calves offer an easy target since they are slow and vulnerable.
The mosquitoes don’t usually harm the caribou — though there have been stories of calves succumbing to too many bites, according study author Lauren Culler. "I have heard horrible anecdotes about calves or young caribou dying from excessive biting by mosquitoes and blood loss," Culler, a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College, told The Verge in an email. "I have never seen this myself, thankfully."
Caribou calves offer an easy target for mosquitoes
The main issue is how the mosquitoes alter the caribou’s behavior, said Culler. The animals have been known to avoid the insects by moving to windy ridges or snow patches that have fewer mosquitoes. But those areas many not have enough food. And if the caribou don’t get enough food during the calving season, it can be harder for their young to stay alive. Less caribou also means less food to eat for nearby communities.
Climate change’s effects on insects aren’t limited to the Arctic. The drought in California, which has been exacerbated by the warming climate, has triggered an increase in pests that are harming crops in the area. The drought has also led to an influx of bark beetles, which have dried out trees in the state — making the plants prime for starting wildfires. If what’s happening in California holds true for the Arctic, this boon of mosquitoes may have farther-reaching consequences for humans that we have yet to realize.With US, UK and Germany, Canada will lead a high-readiness brigade of Nato’s enhanced presence in Europe
Canada will deploy 1,000 soldiers in Latvia to one of four battalions Nato is assembling in eastern Europe in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Canadian media reported Thursday.
Along with the US, Britain and Germany, Canada “will establish and lead” a high-readiness brigade that will “contribute to Nato’s enhanced forward presence in Eastern and Central Europe,” the defense ministry said in a statement, adding that more details would be provided at a Nato summit in Poland next month.
Canada's delegation to Nato mocks Russia with Ukraine geography lesson Read more
“As a responsible partner in the world, Canada stands side by side with its Nato allies working to deter aggression and assure peace and stability in Europe,” defense minister Harjit Sajjan said in a statement.
The announcement comes a day after the US president, Barack Obama, challenged Canada to do more to support Nato during a speech in the Canadian parliament.
The alliance is embarking on a military buildup on its members’ eastern flank unprecedented since the end of the Cold War.
The Canadian troops will join a total of 4,000 soldiers Nato is deploying to the Baltic states and Poland to help deter the Kremlin’s threat after its actions in Crimea and its stoking of military conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The deployment, to be completed by next year, is expected to be confirmed during next month’s summit in Warsaw.
Nato’s ground forces commander, US General Ben Hodges, raised concerns last week over the alliance’s vulnerability in the region, saying it would currently be unable to defend the Baltic states in the event of a Russian invasion.Names and flags have been removed from statehouses and street signs across the US, but at the stone-etched Georgia monument, no one is able to claim victory
Exactly a century ago this holiday weekend, more than a dozen men climbed to the top of a mountain outside Atlanta, pulled on white hoods and lit a 16ft, kerosene-soaked wooden cross. It marked the rebirth of Ku Klux Klan, and Stone Mountain became the Klan’s spiritual home.
The next year, work started on an enormous relief carving – the largest in the world – to commemorate the heroes of the Confederacy. Since then the rock has stood like a historical door stop, an 825ft reminder of the Lost Cause.
“But the Lost Cause was slavery,” Richard Rose said recently. He is the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Atlanta, where in recent years Stone Mountain has become a point of increasing tension for him and many others in a city now far more black than white.
This autumn, two sides have emerged in a new ideological skirmish over the monument. It’s the latest battlefield in an ongoing war over Confederate symbols across the south. So far neither side is able to claim victory on Stone Mountain.
But Rose said his group was about to escalate the fight, starting with a suit against the state of Georgia, which owns the mountain and the monument.
After that, he said: “We will take more direct action.”
•••
The mountain is actually a single stone, like an enormous granite egg sitting in the earth, which has eroded around it for millions of years. As long as humans have traversed this part of the continent they have oriented themselves around the rock. Native Americans called it the “stone mountain” and met there for ceremonies. By the mid-19th century, tourists were gathering to admire the mountain’s beauty.
In the early 20th century, a group of white men in Atlanta read a novel called The Clansman, by Thomas Dixon. The original Klan, for all its notoriety, had only operated for a couple of years during the Reconstruction era, after the civil war. But the book romanticized the group, and appealed to white Georgians who felt power slipping from their grasp. The men decided to resurrect the Klan on Thanksgiving 1915, to coincide with the local release of the book’s film adaptation: Birth of a Nation. Stone Mountain offered a natural and dramatic ceremonial site.
The group climbed to the mountain’s rounded summit, where a granite altar held copies of the US constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the laws of the reborn Ku Klux Klan. From that dramatic setting the KKK grew to about five million members nationwide, and held regular meetings on the mountaintop. At the same time, the Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned Gutzon Borglum, a renowned sculptor from Connecticut, to carve the monument. Borglum, who did not complete the Stone Mountain project, went on to carve Mount Rushmore.
For a while, people remembered the mountain’s racial connection. In 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, he included the line: “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”
Everyone knew he was leveling a finger at the Klan.
•••
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Staffer Mattie Harris at the base of the Stone Mountain monument: ‘I try not to think about the negative.’ Photograph: Matthew Teague for the Guardian
At the base of the mountain today there is an It’s-a-Small-World version of an Appalachian village, with glass blowers and story tellers and faux-rustic shops selling T-shirts. Finding an unobscured view of the mountain is surprisingly difficult.
“Go past the attractions and through the marketplace,” a young Stone Mountain staffer said this week, as she checked tourists for wristbands.
She was black. In fact everyone wearing Stone Mountain uniforms in the village was young and black. Asked if it felt strange to work in the literal shadow of Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson, they seemed largely puzzled by the question.
Past the attractions and through the marketplace, Mattie Harris stood holding a measuring stick to check small visitors before allowing them into the holiday-themed “snow zone”. Behind her, the heroes of the Confederacy sat on their stone horses.
“I don’t really know much about it. It’s my second day,” she said. She had never heard about the monument before she arrived there. “I try not to think about the negative.”
The idea that the monument could become so banal, physically looming but mentally commonplace, alarms Rose, the NAACP head.
“African Americans have a long history of adjusting, just getting by,” he said. The town of Stone Mountain – not the theme-park village, but the town around it – is 75% black. “It’s easy for people to walk to work at the mountain, and just accept it.”
The NAACP wants the carving removed, the Confederate flags removed from the site, and the street names changed from Robert E Lee Boulevard, Jefferson Davis Drive and so forth. It’s not defacing history, Rose argued, because no civil war history happened at Stone Mountain.
“We recognize the horrible human cost of the war. And there are many sites in Georgia, like Andersonville and Chickamauga, where those lives are memorialized,” he said. “But Stone Mountain doesn’t speak to that. Its only purpose is raising the leaders of an insurrection to hero status.”
•••
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A confederate flag rally and march is held at Georgia’s Stone Mountain to demonstrate opposition to a proposed mountain-top monument that would honour Martin Luther King. Photograph: Steve Eberhardt/Demotix/Corbis
In a food court outside the village marketplace, Dave and Karen Jones of Janesville, Wisconsin, sat eating hamburgers with their grandchildren. They seemed nonplussed by any controversy about the monument.
“Why? Why do we have to get rid of all our history?” Karen said. She winced, and shrugged her shoulders. “Who does it offend?”
Possibly the people whose ancestors the stone figures fought to keep in bondage.
“But is it the black people making that an issue?” Dave said. “It’s white people on their behalf.”
That’s not exactly true. Outside the bubble of the Stone Mountain village – and its employ – a black family had just finished hiking down the side of the mountain. They wore exercise clothes, carried water bottles and averted their eyes from the carving.
“This was here long before they claimed it as a Confederate monument,” Rashida Brandt said. She and her family had come from Durham, North Carolina.
Her brother, Omari, said the monument was a scar on an otherwise beautiful landscape.
“It’s an homage to treason,” he said. Asked whether the carving should be removed, he paused and looked at his little girl, Zuri. “I am torn about that,” he said. “I don’t think we should sanitize what happened.”
A police car cruised past slowly, twice, as he spoke. Another parked across the road. “I’m more afraid of the police than statues,” Omari said. “That’s a more quiet but more powerful racism.”
His wife, Nakia, nodded toward one of the patrol cars as it crawled past a second time.
“Did you see the officer give you a thumbs up to check whether you’re OK?” she asked. “It’s because we are talking with you. That bothers me.”
•••
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A protester burns a Confederate flag during a rally at Stone Mountain Park in August. Photograph: Curtis Compton/Zuma Press/Corbis
Pro-Confederate flag rally at'south's Mount Rushmore' draws hundreds Read more
This autumn, a movement for compromise gathered momentum. Its proponents wanted to place a bell dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr on the mountain. A couple of weeks ago opponents waving Confederate flags gathered for a rally on the summit, decrying the idea.
Then discussion shifted to the notion of a museum to commemorate black soldiers who fought in the civil war.
In a remarkable legal twist, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) claimed that the mountain’s purpose was explicitly defined by the state government as a monument to the Confederacy. So commemoration of rebels – who fought against the law of the land – has become the law of the land. Anything else, the SCV says, is illegal.
“The act of the General Assembly which created the Stone Mountain Memorial Association specifically states the park, including both the mountain and all adjacent property, is to be maintained and operated as a Confederate memorial (OCGA 12-3-191),” the SCV wrote in a statement.
Georgia’s governor, Nathan Deal, concurred.
“Stone Mountain is set up and preserved by state law as a Confederate memorial,” he wrote.
The SCV went on: “The erection of a monument to anything other than the Confederate Cause being placed on top of Stone Mountain because of the objections of opponents of Georgia’s Confederate heritage would be akin to the state flying a Confederate battle flag atop the King Center in Atlanta against the wishes of King supporters.”
Then came a second twist on the idealogical battlefield: the NAACP agreed. To place a monument to King on the mountain would sully his reputation, they said. The only answer is to eradicate the carving altogether.
So now both sides have dug their trenches, as the NAACP prepares to launch a new legal offensive. If that doesn’t work, Rose said, the monument’s opponents will demonstrate in the street and organize boycotts.
Paul Hudson, a professor at Georgia Perimeter College, is the author of Stone Mountain: a Multicultural History. He takes the longest possible view of the mountain: it stood for eons before the Confederate figures appeared on its flank, and it will stand long after wind and rain wear them away.
In the meantime, he said, the ideal solution is to remember the Confederacy with accuracy instead of romance. To view the past with longing is dangerous, he said. But forgetting the past is equally perilous.
“You can’t just erase history,” he said. “No matter how unpleasant.”The memo makes many contested claims that will be analyzed by legal experts who are better able than I am to identify and explain potentially problematic precedents. On first read, I am nevertheless struck by how few words are spent defending extrajudicial killing against constitutional, as opposed to statutory, objections. After all, the Fifth Amendment is emphatic: "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Citing Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Mathews v. Eldridge, the memo argues that the Fifth Amendment prohibition on killing without due process is subject to a "balancing test" that weighs the right not to be extrajudicially killed against the government's interests and whatever burdens it would face in extending due process.
That itself is a potentially dangerous precedent.
The memo continues: "We believe similar reasoning supports the constitutionality of the contemplated operations here. As explained above, on the facts represented to us, a decision-maker could reasonably decide that the threat posed by al-Aulaqi's activities to United States persons is 'continued' and 'imminent.'"
This passage is alarming for two reasons:
1) It asserts that the executive branch can kill Americans in secret under the standard, "a decision-maker could reasonably decide..." Dick Cheney was "a decision-maker." So was J. Edgar Hoover. Are we prepared to accept that Fifth Amendment protections are null based on a relativistic standard as interpreted in secret by men like them?
2) The memo treats the representation that al-Awlaki posed an "imminent" threat as important. But unless it is hidden in a redaction, the memo does not address how "imminent" is defined, and there is good reason to believe that the Obama administration has defined it so dubiously as to render the term meaningless. I explored this problem at greater length back on February 5, 2013, when Michael Isikoff published another memo that dealt with extrajudicial killings. It set, as a precondition of such killings, "an imminent threat of violent attack."
That may seem reassuring. After all, there aren't that many circumstances when an attack is imminent. It would seem to severely constrain extrajudicial assassinations. But that memo reassures the reader with the rhetorically powerful word "imminent," only to define it down in a way that makes it largely meaningless—so much so that it's reminiscent of George W. Bush's misuse of "imminent" to characterize the threat posed by Iraq. What does it mean, for you personally, when you hear that someone poses "an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States"? Here's a passage where the Obama administration articulates what it means by imminent:
Certain aspects of this legal framework require additional explication. First, the condition that an operational leader present an "imminent" threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons will take place in the immediate future.
They've defined the term in a way that excludes its only actual meaning!Following marathon bargaining sessions that reached into the wee hours, Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have reached tentative agreements, averting a possible mail disruption that had loomed for months.
Labour Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk, who had held meetings with both sides and appointed a special mediator last week when the outlook seemed grim, said the proposed collective agreements were reached "voluntarily" but provided no other details about the deals themselves.
"There's a lot of credit that needs to be given to the two parties, because the union and the company, even though they had faced the wall, they decided to give it another try," Mihychuk told CBC News.
The union also provided no details but said its negotiating committee is unanimously recommending the draft pacts to members. The union's two bargaining units — for rural and urban workers, respectively — will each have to ratify the new terms by a majority vote.
"We achieved these agreements because we remained strong and maintained our strategy," the union said in a statement Tuesday evening.
Labour Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk acknowledged Tuesday that'many customers left Canada Post.' But, she said, 'we have stability now.... Canada Post is back in business and Canadians and the whole world should feel quite confident.' (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
Canada Post said that the new collective agreements would last just two years, half the usual four, but it was nevertheless pleased to ensure "much-needed certainty in the postal system" going forward.
The issue of differences in paycheques for rural mail carriers — most of whom are women — and urban letter carriers had been at the forefront of protracted contract talks between the two sides. The union also raised concerns around staffing levels and mail routes that it said take too long to cover, often requiring workers to put in overtime hours against their will.
The negotiations were extended twice since the weekend, when a deadline expired on a 72-hour job action notice issued last Thursday by the union.
The two sides were in talks nearly around the clock at the request of a special mediator appointed Friday by Mihychuk.
Overtime ban loomed
If they hadn't reached a tentative settlement, employees were planning on refusing to work overtime as an initial pressure tactic against Canada Post, while the Crown corporation had threatened, but later renounced, locking out its staff — a move it last used in 2011 when contract talks stalled.
Union spokesperson Aalya Ahmad said the goal of refusing to work overtime would have been to highlight the employees' issues with staffing levels and mail routes.
"A lot of the mail routes aren't built properly, according to the union, and then Canada Post doesn't staff properly," Ahmad said. She said mail carriers can be disciplined if they don't deliver all the mail they're handed for their shift, even on a day where they're deluged by unusually high volumes.
Canada Post locked out its workers during a 2011 contract dispute, which was only resolved by federal back-to-work legislation. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)
"They'll work 10 to 12 hours" — a normal urban mail route is eight hours — "and bring back mail and get disciplined for it," Ahmad said.
Pensions were also a big issue in the negotiations. CUPW has sought to keep defined benefit pension plans for newer workers, while Canada Post wants to shift them to defined contribution plans.
In its statement Tuesday, Canada Post said it is still saddled with "complex" issues around declining letter-mail volumes and rising pension costs, but the two-year deal with the union will buy some breathing room to hash out those problem areas.
"We're trying to adjust the ongoing issues of declining mail volumes and increasing pension obligations continue," said Jon Hamilton, a Canada Post spokesman. "Those problems haven't gone away, but we need to continue to have those discussions without a threat of a work disruption."
Hamilton said he could not comment on specifics of the agreements, but said, "Some things stay the same, such as the pension, as we look to what long-term solutions make sense."Nearly one-third of British Jews have considered leaving the country in the last two years over fear of anti-Semitism, according to a poll by YouGov for the Campaign Against anti-Semitism (CAA), which was published on Sunday.
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The multiyear reseach found that 31 percent of British Jews considered immigration at least once in the past two years—a three percent increase from 2015.
The anti-Semitism Barometer research was conducted between 2015-2017 and surveyed 3,411 British Jews in 2015, 1,660 in 2016, and 1,614 in 2017.
Demonstration against anti-Semitism in London, Britain (Photo: AFP)
The poll also found that 17 percent of Jews—about one in six—feel unwelcome in Britain, while 37 percent feel they need to hide their ethnicity in public.
Sixty-five percent of British Jews said the British government did not do enough to protect them, and only 39 percent felt confident anti-Semitic hate crime would be prosecuted.
Meanwhile, more than 80 percent agreed that the Labour Party was too tolerant of anti-Semitism.
The Labour Party has been embroiled in a series of anti-Semitic scandals in recent years, and its chairman Jeremy Corbyn, a prominent pro-Palestinian activist, has been accused of being too tolerant of anti-Semitism.
Labor Chairman Jeremy Corbyn, often embroiled in anti-Semitic scandals
Meanwhile, a Sky News poll found that anti-Semitic views in Britain were actually on the decline.We’ve been led to believe by many in the mainstream media that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is just fine, and questions about her health are only be asked by kooky right-wing conspiracy theorists.
That changed during a 9/11 remembrance ceremony on Sunday, when Clinton was taken away early following a “medical episode.” That “episode” turned out to be… pneumonia, I guess. At first, the campaign claimed she was “overheated” and left early, but video surfaced showing her unable to stand on her own and stumbling as her aides rushed her into a vehicle to leave the event.
Some time later, Clinton emerged from her daughter Chelsea’s New York apartment, apparently “feeling great” and hugging a young girl. A few hours later, the campaign announced that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia last Friday, and would cancel several campaign events to recover. Damon Linker addresses this over at The Week.
“That’s why the announcement that she has pneumonia will only fuel more speculation about Clinton’s physical condition, with potentially no end in sight,” Linker wrote. “The world saw her collapse, and 90 minutes later, the candidate looked America in the eye and proclaimed that she was feeling great. Except now we know that she wasn’t.”
Why she was allowed to be near her young grandchildren and a stranger on the street while suffering from a dangerous and contagious disease is still unknown.
The bigger question, however, is why her campaign couldn’t have just said pneumonia in the first place—or even back on Friday. Clinton continued to campaign with this disease, potentially exposing more people to it. On Monday it was revealed that multiple people in her campaign—including campaign manager Robby Mook—had also apparently suffered from the disease in recent weeks.
Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, acknowledged the campaign “could have done better,” but said Americans know more about Clinton than any other candidate in history.
We might know more about her generally, but neither she nor her opponent, GOP nominee Donald Trump, have released as much medical information as President Obama or former candidates Mitt Romney or Sen. John McCain. Further, the way the campaign handled the incident (first with lies, then eventually a truth that now some people don’t believe due to context) is indicative of the campaign’s lack of transparency.
Clinton’s campaign and supporters will of course tell you she’s the most transparent candidate in history. Hard to believe that when the campaign constantly lies.
It almost seems like the campaign was intentionally disingenuous so as to leave room for questions from the public. Then they could claim those questions were being asked by conspiracy theorists. Granted, some of what came in the wake of this situation was odd (the Clinton body double claims, for one), but many other questions were raised about her health even with the information the campaign provided.
In addition to wondering why she was able to be around children with a potentially life-threatening and contagious disease, we also have to wonder why she kept campaigning after the diagnosis. Why did the campaign claim her cough was due to allergies if it was due |
left undone.
A serious bid for the centre
These are his thoughts, lightly edited to be consistent with this (British) newspaper’s house style. In several areas, our priorities would be different. Mr Obama, for instance, barely mentions the stifling role of regulation in deterring investment, dampening productivity growth and dulling innovation. He does not do justice to subjects of fundamental importance to America’s long-term fiscal future, such as reform of the public pensions system. He makes no mention of the distortions that stem from well-meaning interventions, such as the complex mesh of means-tested welfare programmes that hinders the progress of poor workers into better jobs. But it is a serious and thoughtful attempt to assess America’s economic strengths and weaknesses. In today’s raucous and sometimes hate-filled campaign environment, that makes it all too rare.This is my replica of the Relto book from the CyanWorlds game Uru. Each player receives one of these books and it is their lifeline and link back to their home, Relto.The book is completely hand bound from scratch. I started by "ageing" paper using an instant coffee solution. You simply soak the pages in the coffee then allow to dry (or oven bake if you're in a hurry). I then printed the various "Relto Pages" and Yeesha seal onto these (I know other replica makers have drawn these by hand but i'm not that good - lol). The linking panel is a print on glossy photo paper that I then glued in.The cover was made with a faux-leather patterned vinyl that I then painted with acrylic paints to create a weathered look. I also scratched in some "cracks" to replicate the damage on the in-game version. This was then glued onto thick stiff cardboard.I bound the pages of the book using waxed dental floss (easier then waxing thread yourself!) and some thin mesh cloth. The cover pages were cut from an embossed patterned craft/scrapbooking paper. This was then glued into the cover along with the main pages of the book.For the final touch, ie the Yeesha seal on the cover, I first printed out a copy of it to size, covered the back of the page with graphite from a standard pencil, then "drew" on the print to transfer the graphite. I used this as a template to then ink the design on with a pen (yes I'm a "tracer"I can now return to Relto at will! Thank the Maker.Hunt continues for Istanbul nightclub attacker
At least 39 dead, including 25 foreigners
Witnesses describe panic in club
British tourists urged to be vigilant
More than two dozen foreign nationals celebrating the start of the new year in Istanbul were among the victims of a shooting spree at a popular nightclub that left 39 dead and dozens wounded.
Turkish police were on Sunday hunting an unidentified gunman who opened fire in the early hours of 2017 in the Reina club, one of the city's most famous venues.
The attacker left his gun before "taking advantage of the chaos" and fleeing the scene, Binali Yildirim, Turkey's prime minister, said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the attack, which left 69 wounded, and offered condolences for those who lost their lives, including "foreign guests".NPR Battleground Map: Hillary Clinton Is Winning — And It's Not Close
Let's make one thing clear: Three weeks out from this election, Hillary Clinton is winning — and it's not close.
Yes, people still have to vote, but if Democratic groups come out — and the Trump scorched-earth campaign is more like a white flag than an actual strategy — Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States unless something drastic changes between now and Election Day.
The month of October has been about as bad as could be for Trump. Let's recap. There was:
-- The leaked audio of Trump's comments bragging about kissing and groping women
-- Multiple women coming forward after Trump denied doing those things in the second debate
-- Trump's subpar first debate performance, and...
-- The revelation in leaked tax returns that he sustained $915 million in losses and could have used them to pay zero in taxes for nearly two decades. (In the debates, Trump said that makes him "smart" and didn't deny not paying federal taxes in some years.)
The latest NPR Battleground Map shows that while Trump's path was always been narrow, now it's nearly nonexistent. The only places where the map has really expanded amid Trump's controversies is into Republican territory.
What moves we made
Clinton is running ads in Texas, and surrogates are in Arizona. Texas, Missouri and Indiana now move to Lean Republican from Safe/Likely. (Missouri and Indiana have competitive Senate races, where Democrats are faring well.)
Will Clinton win Texas? Probably not. But it is looking like it could be within 10 points for the first time in 20 years. And that's when an incumbent president Southerner from neighboring Arkansas was on the ballot.
We also did move a state more in Trump's direction — Minnesota from Safe/Likely D to Lean D. Minnesota has been within 6 points in decent polls, and Obama won it by only 7. Will Trump win Minnesota? Like Texas for Democrats, probably not. But the margin is worth keeping an eye on.
We're also still watching Georgia, which still feels like it leans Trump by voting history, but demographics and a new Washington Post/Survey Monkey poll suggest a toss-up. We'll leave it for now and see where the polls go over the next week.
Just how unlikely is it that Trump will win?
To do so, he would have to take all of the toss-up states — Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, Arizona, the two electoral votes between Nebraska and Maine — and win a state leaning in Clinton's direction. The likeliest target remains New Hampshire, with its almost all-white population, but Clinton — especially in the past couple of weeks — has maintained what appears to be a durable lead there.
In the other Lean Democratic states, Clinton's lead has remained consistent or expanded, particularly in Pennsylvania, where Clinton remains ahead by high single digits. Democrats remain confident in Wisconsin and Michigan, despite some tightening.
While Trump's base hasn't abandoned him, it's not enough to win if women, African-Americans and Hispanics vote at past rates or even a bit less. Trump has done nothing to win over persuadable voters.
National polls have expanded, showing Clinton with a lead on the low end of 4 points to a high of 12. And while Trump remains within striking distance in enough battlegrounds, again, he has to run the table in them to win. He has to win all of them, while Clinton has to just hold where she is ahead. Her lead has only grown in states favorable to her this month, and the needle has moved toward her in toss-ups, like Florida, North Carolina and Nevada.
To put this in perspective, Trump winning would be something like coming back from being down 3-0 in a best-of-seven baseball series. Sure, the Toronto Blue Jays could come back to beat the Cleveland Indians. I mean, the Red Sox did it to the Yankees in 2004, right? Yes, but it's highly unlikely.
Don't hang your hat on outliers.
There have been 34 league championship series or World Series in which Major League Baseball teams have been down 3-0 in baseball's more than 140-year history, according to a helpful list from SB Nation. That miraculous Red Sox comeback is the only time it's ever happened. Ever. That's 3 percent of the time.
In 29 of those series, the team leading went on to sweep. That's 85 percent.
So ask yourself, what's more likely?
OK, politics isn't baseball. But in politics, too, there's usually more chance of all the states breaking one direction than a mix happening. (And a mix, by the way, would still mean Clinton wins.)
You don't have to look far for precedent. In 2012, Obama led Republican Mitt Romney by 1 point (47-46 percent) in the RealClearPolitics average the same number of days out from Election Day. By the last poll average on Nov. 6, Election Day 2012, Obama was ahead by less than a point — 48.8-48.1 percent.
On Election Day, Obama won by 4 points — 51-47 percent, and he basically swept the toss-up states minus North Carolina, which really was leaning Romney's way. There wasn't a poll showing Obama ahead the entire month of October there. (And to be fair to the Obama campaign, its internal polls had Obama up by the exact final margin for almost the entire campaign.)
Clinton is up 7 points in an average of the polls. The most Obama was up on average by was 6 in February 2012.
Elections are supposed to get closer as Election Day nears, not further apart.The BBC has the first detailed accounts of how Ugandan women ended up in domestic slavery in Iraq, and the extraordinary story of their rescue.
Image caption At least 100 of the Ugandan women who went to Iraq in 2009 remain unaccounted for
Prossie was working as a schoolteacher when she heard an attractive advert on Ugandan radio.
A Kampala company called Uganda Veterans Development Ltd was recruiting women to work for high wages in shops in US Army bases in Iraq.
She signed up, along with 146 other Ugandan women.
But when she arrived in Baghdad, she discovered that she had been bought by an Iraqi agent for $3,500 (£2,200). Her real job was as a housemaid for an Iraqi family.
Like many others, she was forced to work long hours, sometimes from 5am until midnight. She often received little food or water and she was locked inside the house.
"It was a lot of work because Iraqis have this dust, the sand storms, it keeps on falling, so you have to keep on cleaning from morning until you sleep," Prossie said.
Rape
When Prossie protested, her employer told her: "We paid a lot of money for you and we were told that you people don't get sick and you don't get tired. So you have to work."
Image caption Sam Tumwesigye and Lt Col Theodore Lockwood rescued 14 Ugandan women
Prossie was raped by the man in the house. Several other trafficked Ugandan women we spoke to were raped too.
"I felt so sad and I had no way out. I really hated everything in the house," she said. "It was psychological torture."
On the other side of Baghdad, at an American military base, a Ugandan security contractor called Samuel Tumwesigye heard what was happening to these women.
He called one of them, Agnes, on a mobile phone she had hidden, and promised to help her.
"The first thing I did was go to my bedroom and pray to God," Mr Tumwesigye said. "I thought: 'Please, I'm going to start this. Let me succeed.'"
He told Agnes that if she could escape from the house and get to the Flying Man statue close to Baghdad Airport he would rescue her.
Escape
Agnes had no passport, very little money and she spoke no Arabic. But she had been told that she was soon to be moved to Syria and she believed this was her only chance of escaping.
Ugandan Labour Exports Exporting labour earned Uganda $500m a year, at its peak in 2009
Most of the workers sent abroad are men, only a small minority are women
A women's rights organisation, FIDA-U, has filed a court case against Uganda Veterans Development Ltd
An earlier attempt to sue the company failed when the lawyer pulled out
She waited until the family took an afternoon nap before going up to the roof of the house and stealing an abaya cloak from the washing line. When she got outside the gate of the house, she started running.
She was able to find a taxi driver who spoke English and was prepared to take her to the statue. Agnes had to negotiate her way through four checkpoints without documents.
She called Mr Tumwesigye en route and he risked his job when he appropriated a vehicle from the base and drove to get her - violating a strict requirement of his contract not to leave the base.
Previously, Mr Tumwesigye had approached a base chief, Lt Col Theodore Lockwood, about the women's predicament.
Col Lockwood said there was nothing the US Army could do to help the women. However, if they could somehow get to the base, he would allow them on to it.
Military protection
Just hours after making this promise, he got a call to say that one of the women was in his office. Two days later Prossie and another woman arrived at the base by the same route.
They are not our employees - we recruit them and they make a contract with the companies on the other side Colonel Mudola, Uganda Veterans Development Ltd
The officer sent an email to his superiors explaining the situation and expecting to be told the women should not be on the camp.
To his surprise, the e-mailed response read: "We will do everything we can to support you, we are going to provide temporary refuge for these women and they will be under the full protection and authority of the US Military."
The pair rescued a total of 14 Ugandan women before changes to their jobs and the eventual closure of the base closed the escape route for good.
None of those involved in this dramatic sequence of events in 2009 have spoken to the media before.
Several of the women were sick or severely traumatised. One woman who was raped was pregnant and there were fears she would commit suicide. Another was unable to speak or hear as a result of mental trauma and many required treatment for dehydration and exhaustion.
Help
Col Lockwood was able to get them medical attention and even dental treatment at the base.
He spent $5,000 (£3,100) of his own money and another $2,500 collected from colleagues on clothes and other supplies for the women.
Image caption Uganda Veterans Development Ltd has strong links with the governing party
The International Organisation for Migration took them back to Uganda.
The company which recruited the women in Kampala, and continues to export labour, is Uganda Veterans Development Ltd.
Its managing director, Colonel Mudola, denied that the women were sold and said that his company has no responsibility for the women after they have been recruited.
"They are not our employees," he said. "We recruit them and they make a contract with the companies on the other side (in Iraq). We look after them and see that they are being treated well, but really the contract is between the agents and the girls."
At its peak in 2009, the trade in exporting labour is thought to have been Uganda's largest source of foreign currency.
Export licence
Uganda Veterans' licence from the Ministry of Labour, allowing it to export labour, was revoked by the government after local media revealed the consequences.
However, in December last year it was renewed and the exports resumed.
When questioned, Labour Minister Gabriel Opio said: "We meet them at various political meetings and he (Col Mudola) is a member of the party hierarchy so you need to handle him so that he doesn't spoil the atmosphere when you're going for political meetings at the highest level."
The BBC made contact within the last fortnight with a Ugandan woman sent to Iraq by Uganda Veterans.
She said she was being held against her will, that she was very sick and had been raped and beaten.
Since the BBC interviewed her and Col Mudola, she was put on a plane and returned to Uganda. No explanation was given.
At least 100 of the Ugandan women who went to Iraq in 2009 remain unaccounted for, and Uganda Veterans does not know where they are.
This edition of BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents will be broadcast on Thursday 31 March at 1100 BST and on Monday 4 April at 2030 BST. You can also listen on the iPlayer or get the podcast.Court Tosses Out Bogus Patent Used Against FindTheBest
from the abstract-ideas dept
The plaintiff does not come close to carrying the burden of justifying imposition of a gag order. The plaintiff first explains that its motion is predicated on Federal Rule of Evidence 408, which restricts the admission of settlement negotiations into evidence. That argument is meritless. Rule 408 is a rule of evidence. It is inapposite where, as here, the question is not whether material will be admitted into evidence in court but whether a party may discuss certain matters in public.
Applying the principles of Benson, Flook, Dieher, and Bilski, along with what guidance can be wrought from Alice, it is evident that Claim 1 of the ‘073 patent claims an abstract idea and does not qualify as a “process” under Section 101. The ‘073 patent claims the idea of bilateral and multilateral matchmaking using a computer in the context of a financial transaction or an enterprise. It is preemptive in the broadest sense. And its only real limitation –- the use of a computer -- constitutes mere post-solution application of an abstract idea to a common context. The patent must be invalidated under any of the above described Supreme Court precedents as well as under either the Judge Laurie or the Judge Rader methodology in Alice.
There is no inventive idea here. Having two or more parties input preference data is not inventive. Matchmakers have been doing this for millennia. Nor is an unspecified closeness of fit process an inventive idea. It is merely a mathematical manifestation of the underlying process behind matchmaking: determining good matches. Nothing in the ‘073 patent evinces an inventive idea beyond the idea of the patent holder to be the first to patent the computerization of a fundamental process that has occurred all through human history.
Merely directing a computer to perform a function does not transform the computer into a specialized computer. Such a principle would lead to the absurd result of allowing the patenting the computerized use of even the most basic abstract ideas. Given the ubiquity of computers in modern life, adopting such a principle would have enormous preemptive effect. Nothing in Section 101 or the precedents interpreting it allow a party to monopolize the building blocks of innovation in a computerized world.
We've been covering the ridiculous lawsuit by patent troll Lumen View against FindTheBest.com. When we last checked in, Lumen View was trying to get a gag order on FindTheBest and its CEO to get them to stop talking about the case. Last week that failed miserably, with the court saying:That was just the warmup, though, because now the court has invalidated the patent itself (US Patent 8,069,073 ), saying that it's unpatentable subject matter as an "abstract idea." The ruling relies on the Supreme Court's Bilski ruling and the super confusing CAFC ruling in CLS Bank v. Alice Corp.It then goes into an almost astounding amount of detail as to why the patent is invalid. Basically, from whatever direction you look, the patent never should have been granted, and the court makes that pretty clear. A few choice quotes:And, later, a quote that highlights how just asking a computer to do something doesn't make that computer a specialized machine:We'll see if Lumen View appeals, but so far it's been shown to be way out of its depth here. And, of course, it's still facing racketeering charges from FindTheBest over the manner in which it attempted to troll the company. Finding the patent invalid can't be helpful in trying to claim that Lumen View wasn't shaking down FindTheBest...
Filed Under: patent eligibility, patent subject matter, patents, section 101
Companies: findthebest, lumen viewPerfect World and MarsTV announce collaboration
Perfect World and MarsTV have announced a collaboration today at a large press conference. The collaboration includes the creation of a new international competition, new media content, and a brand new broadcasting platform.
You can find the official press release here, but we provided a rough translation of the key parts:
"Online game distributor Perfect World (Beijing) Ltd have announced a collaboration together with MarsTV to manage the competitive scene of the world-class game Dota 2. Both parties organized a press conference at a hotel in Shanghai, and announced that they will create the top tier professional competitions in Dota 2, as well as managing the second and amateur tiers.
Both parties have signed a contract to manage Dota 2 together in multiple aspects: from managing and operating the competitive scene, to streaming and streaming contents. The major point in this collaboration revolves around the competitions and streaming of Dota 2. From this year onwards, Perfect World and MarsTV will organize competitions, and will also invite top teams from the international scene to participate in them. At the same time, both parties will use world-class streaming methods and production to provide the viewers with a close to perfect competitive setting and experience. This collaboration will improve Perfect World and MarsTV’s own competitiveness in their respective fields, and both parties will also strive to make Dota 2 the most favoured game in China.
The competition organized by Perfect World and MarsTV will be hosted on the brand new HuoMaoTV platform, which will be based in Shanghai and focus on video game broadcasts. It will also provide coverage of professional eSports, celebrity commentary, variety shows and other forms of televised media. It will be the first TV station of its kind."
At the press conference, there was also a large retirement ceremony for LaNm, rOtk and BurNing.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This collaboration seems to be a direct replacement to the old WPC-ACE, a tournament that has been overshadowed by a lot of controversy, most notably a lack of payment to the players and teams. An exact date for any tournaments has yet to be released but it seems likely that these will come once both WEC and i-League are finished.
In addition, in light of the press conference, there has been talk about a possible players association. With Perfect World getting involved, the scene is bound to undergo infrastructural changes, especially in regards to ACE's past actions.
It is not the first time that Perfect World has announced a partnership to host tournaments. A year ago, the company announced partnering up with Gamefy to host the Dota 2 Super League which saw TongFu take home about $80,000.The owners of Denver’s Simply Pure marijuana dispensary want to stand out in the white, male-dominated marijuana industry.
That’s not hard to do considering they’re among the few people of color nationwide to head a cannabis company.
Wanda James and her husband Scott Durrah became one of the first African-American couples in Colorado to own a recreational dispensary in 2015 when they opened Simply Pure in the Highland neighborhood.
The couple has experience with politics and running restaurants in Colorado and California.
“We became involved with marijuana because we wanted to put a face of color on the industry,” James said. “America isn’t all white and male; the industry shouldn’t be either.”
James and Durrah dove right in, opening an edibles manufacturing company and medical marijuana shop and launching an initiative to help set policies and regulations for marijuana all between 2010 to 2013.
Even with her background, it wasn’t easy, James said. Raising money to grow and navigating the ever-changing rules about marijuana continue to be a challenge.
“If you take something that’s difficult for white men to do, then imagine how much harder it is for people who are not white and women,” she said.
Marijuana business owners need a lot of capital to get started, but they don’t have access to the same loans and small business programs that other entrepreneurs do. Colorado also places restrictions on people with previous criminal convictions who want to work in the marijuana industry. Both of these issues hit harder for African-Americans.
James attended a congressional briefing on diversity and inclusion in the cannabis industry earlier this month to talk about issues minorities face.
Policy makers and business leaders at both the state and national levels are asking more questions about how to address the diversity problems in the growing marijuana industry. But the answers still aren’t clear.
It’s also not clear exactly how few minorities are in the industry, said Jesce Horton, chairman of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.
The Portland, Oregon-based association plans to partner with the University of California Berkeley this month to get diversity data on the industry, Horton said.
Horton owns Panacea cannabis dispensary in Portland and helped open the Minority Cannabis Business Association to the public in April. The organization, which focuses on economic empowerment, social justice and patient and consumer safety has about 1,000 members, he said.
“We truly believe this industry will never be as economically strong as we can be unless we really get a hold of the (diversity) issue and make an impact,” Horton said.
For Horton and others, this includes addressing the fact that during the War on Drugs communities of color were targeted heavily with anti-pot messaging and enforcement.
“There’s a negative stigma about cannabis in communities as a result of the War on Drugs,” he said. “They don’t see the benefits.”
Besides getting over the hurdle of getting communities of color to see the benefits of the industry, there’s also the challenge of some people being barred because of a previous marijuana-related arrest.
National crime data shows that African-Americans were arrested more often for cannabis-related crimes than their white counterparts, despite the fact that they reported using the drug less.
In Colorado, those convicted of a felony have to wait five years before applying to open a store. If that felony was drug-related, they must wait 10 years.
The same is true for those who want to work in either a medical or retail cannabis store, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
The Minority Cannabis Business Association has helped some people legally seal their criminal records and plans to help others moving forward. The group aims to reduce the number of people imprisoned with non-violent marijuana offenses and ensure people with non-violent marijuana offenses have fair access to the industry.
At the state level, James and others are making a similar push.
During the past two legislative sessions, they’ve worked with outgoing state Sen. Pat Steadman on unsuccessful legislation that would have allowed people with convictions to own or work in a marijuana business.
“For people with drug offenses on their record, it seems to me, getting them a job in the marijuana industry or letting them be an owner of a marijuana business is an opportunity that shouldn’t be denied to them,” Steadman said. “It’s maybe one of the few places they don’t face discrimination from employers because of their criminal history.”
Colorado could either allow people to seal their criminal records the way Oregon does or remove the current disqualifications, Steadman said.
The Denver Democrat admits there are some people with felonies who shouldn’t be involved with marijuana for safety and crime reasons.
“There are matters of degree between somebody who was importing kilos across the border and those dealing in their neighborhood among their friends to support their own habits,” Steadman said.
“If we were to remove some of the current qualifications, that’s not to say the licensing authorities still couldn’t use discretion.”
Some communities are going even further to increase diversity in the marijuana industry.
Oakland, California recently passed a measure requiring half of the medical cannabis business licenses awarded in the city to go to those formerly incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses and residents living in neighborhoods impacted most by the War on Drugs.
“I’m proud of what Oakland has done. It’s a step toward understanding the problem and including communities of color,” Horton said. “But the jury is still out on if it’s going to work.”
Business & data reporter Adrian D. Garcia can be reached via email at agarcia@denverite.com or twitter.com/adriandgarcia.
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Most Android tablets play second fiddle to the iPad. They’re often cheaper, weaker, and less attractive that Apple’s famous tablet, but occasionally, one comes along that actually challenges Apple. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S line started in 2014 with one purpose: to offer Android users a high-end tablet that doesn’t run iOS.
This year’s follow up to the gorgeous Tab S, the Tab S2, is just as powerful, slender, and appealing as the original, but without that weird Band-Aid texture on the back. It’s also thinner, lighter, and cheaper than the iPad Air 2, though it does have some competition from the all-metal Dell Venue 8 7000.
It’s absurdly thin and light
When you first pick up the Galaxy Tab S2, its weight will surprise you. It’s so light that it’s almost like holding a thin plastic cutting board in your hands. At 5.6mm thick, both the 9.7-inch and 8-inch slates are thinner than the iPad Air 2, and they weigh significantly less, too. The 9.7-inch Tab S2 weighs a mere 0.86lbs, while the 8-incher comes in at 0.58lbs. For comparison, the iPad Air 2 weighs 0.96lbs, which is already really light for a 10-inch tablet in a metal casing.
Samsung’s tablets are real featherweights, and if you equate ‘premium’ with heft, then you’ll be disappointed. Even the bigger 9.7-inch tablet is incredibly lightweight, and it would be effortless to hold with one hand on the train, or propped up in bed. Of course, the incredible lightness of the Tab S2 comes at a price: Both models are made out of plastic, not metal, like Dell’s premium Venue 8 7000 or Apple’s iPad Air 2.
Given the high quality of the tablet overall and its premium price tag of $350 and $400, it’s surprising that the Tab S2 isn’t made of metal. Dell’s Venue 8 costs $350, but its all-metal construction adds style and durability to the tablet. Instead, Samsung opted for simple matte plastic. Luckily, it feels sturdy and smooth to the touch. There’s no flex to the Tab S2, which is a problem plastic Android tablets often have. It’s a very sturdy tablet, and the chamfered metal edges add flair to the otherwise minimalist design. Unless you’re hell bent on having a metal tablet, you won’t be disappointed by the look or feel of Samsung’s slate.
Both sizes are very comfortable to hold, due in part to the iPad-like 4:3 aspect ratio and the curved corners, which don’t taper off into a sharp edge. This is important for such a big device, particularly if you read while supporting the tablet in your palm or rest it on your chest. The Tab S2 won’t dig into your skin uncomfortably. The lightness is a little disconcerting, though, and it almost feels delicate, something that’s accentuated by the incredible thinness.
Samsung offers three colors: the standard black and white, as well as gold. The gold color is gorgeous. It’s like the S6 Edge Plus’s gold hue — subtle, and not too bright. It’s more visually exciting than the white version, and certainly the one to choose.
The Tab S2 has two speakers, a Micro USB port, and a headphone jack on the bottom of the device. On the right side, there’s the power button, volume rocker, and the MicroSD card slot. There’s also a fingerprint sensor in the Home button, so you can secure your tablet.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (8-inch) Compared To
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Fingerprint recognition is as easy to set up on the Tab S2 as it is on the Galaxy S6. You simply press the sensor repeatedly until it has a good grasp on what your fingerprint looks like. From then on, it’s lightning fast to unlock your tablet with the touch of a finger. Other than the iPad, Samsung’s Tab S2 is one of the only tablets with this extra bit of security. Although some may question how important it is to secure your tablet with a fingerprint, it’s a nice feature for those who travel or share a space with others (including kids) to whom you may not want to give full access to your tablet.
Stunning screen and high-end specs
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S2 is as close as you can get to owning an iPad that runs Android. The 8 and 9.7-inch models both sport a stunning 2,048 x 1,536 pixel resolution, and the screens are Super AMOLED, so the darkest blacks are deep and rich. Images are beautiful, and you’ll want to watch movies on the 9.7-inch model all day. The 8-inch Tab S2 shines most when you read magazines or view other visually rich content online. It’s the more portable of the two, but we prefer the larger screen for viewing video. Since both are so light, the 9.7-inch version is easy to take with you anyway, so if you want a tablet for watching movies on the go, it’s your best bet, and probably the best all around. Regardless of your size preference, the Tab S2 looks just as sharp and vibrant as the iPad Air 2.
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S2 is as close as you can get to owning an iPad that runs Android.
Both tablets are powered by an octa-core Exynos processor, which combines a 1.9GHz quad-core chip and a second, 1.3GHz quad-core chip. Samsung packed 3GB of RAM inside and offers versions with LTE or Wi-Fi-only.
Plus, there’s 32GB of internal storage space, and a MicroSD card slot for adding another 128GB. The ability to expand storage is a key benefit, especially for those who want to download tons of movies, photos, and apps on their tablets. iPad users don’t have that option, and often end up either running out of space very quickly or paying more for the models with extra storage.
The Tab S2 line runs Android 5.1 covered with Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface, which is much less obtrusive than it used to be. It’s fast and responsive with no lag time at all. It may not be pure Android, but unless you’re a real purist, you won’t be bothered by Samsung’s overlay. Some of the additions are even welcome, such as Microsoft’s OneDrive and Office app suites. Flipboard is also just a swipe away from the home screen, and it makes for great reading – especially on the 8-inch Tab S2. Other apps are annoying, like the Galaxy Gifts, Milk Music, and Galaxy Essentials widgets, which sit on one of the home screens. Luckily, they’re removable.
TouchWiz also brings a pair of navigational tricks to the Tab S2 line, including multi-tasking and pop-out apps. To access multi-tasking, simply long press on the recent apps button to see other apps that you can use with the one you’re currently viewing. It’s a nifty feature that makes it easier to do two things at once on a tablet. Although it looks best on the 9.7-inch versions’ larger screen, the 8-incher can handle it, too. The option to pop out apps and view them in a window is less useful. Shrinking one app to view another at the same time seems awkward.
Tablets should never be your first choice when it comes to taking photos, and we highly recommend that you never take pictures with one, but if you find the Galaxy Tab S2 is the closest device at hand when a photo op presents itself, you’ll probably like the results. The 8-megapixel sensor may not match the S6, but it does have a fast f/1.9 aperture, autofocus, and the ability to shoot 1440p video. That’s impressive enough for a phone, let alone a tablet. Our limited testing with the tablet’s camera returned acceptable photos, but you should really stick with your phone based on size alone.
Battery life is normal for a tablet
Even though the Galaxy Tab S2 is super thin, Samsung managed to get a decent-sized battery inside both models. The bigger 9.7-inch Tab S2 has a 5,870mAh cell, while the 8-inch version has a 4,000mAh battery. Battery life was good, but not outstanding on either the 8- or 9.7-inch version. Depending on how much you use your tablet, and if you’re watching videos, it could last you 8 to 10 hours. Most tablets come in around this number, anyway, so it’s hardly surprising. Light tablet users can expect to charge up once or twice a week, and those who watch video every day may have to plug it in more often.
Warranty
Samsung offers a one-year warranty for the Galaxy Tab S2, so if you run into problems in the year after you buy it, Samsung will repair or replace it for you. Of course, some damage isn’t covered, so you won’t want to run it over with your car just for fun. Water damage isn’t covered, either. For full details, you can see Samsung’s website here:
Conclusion
For Android users, Samsung’s high-end tablets have always been the logical alternative to Apple’s iPad. The Tab S line started on a high note, and the second-generation is as excellent as the first. The bright sharp screen, thin and light body, as well as the powerful processor and RAM combination make the Tab S2 the ideal Android tablet. Both the 8 and 9.7-inch models are super lightweight, and although the metal of the iPad and Dell Venue 8 7000 series tablet is undoubtedly more premium and attractive, Samsung’s tablets are more portable.
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This thin and light flip cover has an automatic sleep and wake function on the tab S2, and it doesn’t add any bulk to the thin tablet. Fintie Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.4 Smart Shell Case ($10)
This thin and light flip cover has an automatic sleep and wake function on the tab S2, and it doesn’t add any bulk to the thin tablet. Samsung Evo Plus 128GB MicroSD XC Class 10 Mobile memory card ($63.44)
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To protect your screen from dents and dings, Tech Armor offers screen protectors for both versions of the Galaxy Tab S2.
For those who want a powerful tablet with a killer screen that’s extremely portable, the Galaxy Tab S2 is the best option out there. It is, admittedly expensive, though. The official Samsung prices are $400 for the 8-inch model and $500 for the 9.7-inch version. However, you can get them both cheaper |
ydides, Howard Zinn, and Thorstein VeblenVII — there are three names you rarely see lumped together — all eschewed footnotes. The greatest work of popular history ever written, Cecil Woodham-Smith’sVIII “The Reason Why,” the authoritative account of the Charge of the Light Brigade, has no footnotes. The book gallops forward, unimpeded, to its terrible, moving conclusion.
I’ve come by my anti-footnote prejudice honestly. I wrote two, unfootnoted works of nonfiction that have been widely hailed as paragons of accuracy.IX I did include occasional asides at the bottom of the page,X but instead of specifying my citations, I dumped a nebulous “Note on Sources” at the end of each chapter.XI No one seemed to mind.
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More recently, I published a work of popular history, replete with footnotes conforming to the ridiculous Chicago Manual of Style. There were 276 of them, and they were an enormous pain in the neckXII to check and double-check. And still one or two may have gotten away from me, emboldening a small band of detractorsXIII to attack me in blessedly off-the-grid historical reviews.
I do plan to write another book, and between now and then, I will find a remote corner of the Internet to stash my impressive array of citations.
Footnotes and me? It’s over.XIV
IApparently not
IIThis is not the Michael McShane who works at the American Enterprise Institute: “I wish I had that academic pedigree!” he helpfully disambiguates.
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IIIBut not August
IVNabokov’s novel “Pale Fire” is a 200-plus page series of footnotes to a mock-heroic poem. Deep-dish Nabokovians realize that “Fire” is itself a subtle parody of the novelist’s exhaustive, four-volume commentary on Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Eugene Onegin.”
VI stole this quote from another journalist
VII know it’s technically not a verb; but it is now.
VIIFor insights into Veblen’s operatic sex life, please see my article “The Naughty Professor”, Stanford Magazine, September, 1997
VIIIAppearances notwithstanding, Woodham-Smith was a woman. “From a grand Irish family, she was quite snobbish,” Alan Bennett once recalled. “Talking of someone she said: ‘Then he married a Mitford … but that’s a stage everybody goes through.’”
IXNot really.
XOne on Harvard Medical School professor Louis Agassiz Shaw, inventor of the iron lung, who was arrested in 1927 for operating a still in his “palatial home on 6 Marlboro Street,” according to the Globe.
XIStephen Greenblatt does something similar in his widely praised Shakespeare book, “Will in The World,” so I’m in excellent company.
XIIWe don’t use words like “ass” in the newspaper, unless referring to a donkey.
XIIITwo detractors. More of a duo than a band.
XIVUnartful double-entendre.
Globe contributor Alex Beam is author of “American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church.”SAN FRANCISCO — Most of the room of game-industry insiders raised their hand after Spry Fox founder Daniel “Danc” Cook asked them if they own more than 10 games on the PC software portal Steam. Smiling, Danc told them “you don’t matter.”
For years, mobile gaming has fended off the idea that is for “casual” consumers as opposed to the “core” audiences of more traditional platforms like Xbox One or PlayStation 4. But during a panel at the Game Developers Conference today, several mobile developers argued that this distinction is tribalistic and incorrect. In total, gaming is a $99.3 billion industry and mobile gaming alone makes up more than a third of that at around $34.8 billion. And while consoles and Steam gamers spend a lot, the most “core” people who make up those audiences aren’t worth chasing after for most studios building games, according to the panel.
“You are novelty seekers,” Danc told the crowd at GDC. “You are the smallest demographic in gaming.”
This is why so many companies are making games for iOS and Android. Danc’s fellow panelist, Storm8 product manager Ramine Darabiha, clarified that games for Steam’s “novelty seekers” keep coming, and he used Devil Daggers as an example. But he used this as an opportunity to make to point out that “casual” audiences on mobile are not only viable, they are equally important to what is coming on smartphones and tablets.
“I have a problem with calling it core because that makes everything else seem peripheral,” Kongregate manager Emily Greer said. “It doesn’t equally value the experiences of other players.”
Most of the panel echoed this sentiment. Even developer Lee Perry, who previously worked at Gears of War studio Epic Games, noted that he had to get over this idea that mobile gaming wasn’t a means to its own end. He talked about how free-to-play gaming happened so fast while he was working on Gears of War 2, and that led to him viewing the space as a way of turning nongamers into someone who might decide to buy Gears of War.
“It was easy to see mobile gaming as transitionary,” he said. “And I used to think of these people as if they were turning into ‘real gamers.’ And I realized I was devaluing them and doing a disservice by not thinking of mobile and casual as its own form of gaming.”
Perry explained that he now views it like car manufacturers view automobiles.
“We used to think that Formula 1 were the core gamers and the core of driving, and everyone else was casual,” he said. “But it’s important now that car makers think of all driving as a core experience.”
Others on the panel built on this thought.
“Even if you get all core gamers together in a room, they don’t agree on what the term means,” Funomena studio development boss Lulu LaMer said. “That limits the form, and it limits innovation.”
She also made the point that when people begin talking about the difference between something “core” and something “casual,” this is an experience about taking something away from someone else. It’s about making sure that others don’t move into the space you’ve carved out for yourself.
“It’s about policing the edges,” she said. “And it’s more about what people don’t like than what they do like.”
Danc rounded out this notion. He lamented that a discussion about core-versus-casual is stupid on its own because they are the action of people trying to keep a separation between “us” and “them.”
“It’s hard to talk about these things logically when they are really, truly stupid tribal behaviors,” he said. “I dislike these giant dichotomies. We have over a billion players. There’s so many different groups playing games right now. Any time you split up the group to two — into us and them — you’re doing a huge disservice to them and yourself.”Around 15 years ago, as a newish graduate student, I got access to a Pentium-based Linux machine. One of the coolest things about this machine was the new RDTSC instruction that measured the number of clock ticks since the processor had been reset. This could be used to directly observe cache misses, branch mispredictions, and other low-level performance phenomena; it was a little like looking through a microscope for the first time. I ended up using the timestamp counter for a lot of things during the next few years, including in my Hourglass tool.
Lately my student Yang Chen has been using RDTSC to measure the execution times of function calls that take on the order of 10 to 1000 cycles to execute. Unfortunately, this activity is no longer nearly as straightforward as it once was. This post lists some things we learned. It’s somewhat specific to GCC and Linux.
Enabling Basic Processor-Level Timing Stability
In the BIOS, turn off hyperthreading and anything having to do with turbo mode and frequency scaling. Turn off all OS-level frequency scaling as well; this is of course specific to the OS. These instructions worked fine for us.
Avoiding Scheduling and Multicore Problems
The scheduler can mess up benchmarking in two main ways. First, it can simply take the processor away from the code being benchmarked. Second, it can migrate code to a different processor, slowing it down and also causing problems because the timestamp counters are typically not closely synchronized across CPUs. There seem to be three approaches to dealing with context switches messing up timing:
Ignore them. This is reasonable when timing events that are very short because context switches aren’t that fast; they’ll show up as massive outliers that are easy to discard. Minimize their impact by raising the priority of running code using sched_setscheduler() and by pinning code to a single processor using the taskset command. Both of these are easy in Linux, although priority elevation requires root privileges. Lock out the scheduler by disabling interrupts. This can be done from user-mode using the iopl(3) call, or can it be done by running code in a kernel module. Either way, root privileges are required. Incautious disabling of interrupts is a good way to necessitate hard reboots of a machine.
Dealing with Out-of-Order Execution
The RDTSC instruction is not serializing: it can be reordered significantly with respect to other in-flight instructions, causing serious (apparent) timing anomalies. Recently this fantastic white paper addressing this issue was released by Intel. It would have saved Yang and me a ton of time if it had existed six months earlier. The short answer is that if you’re running a newish processor in 64-bit mode, just use these functions to start and stop the timer:
typedef unsigned long long ticks; static __inline__ ticks start (void) { unsigned cycles_low, cycles_high; asm volatile ("CPUID
\t" "RDTSC
\t" "mov %%edx, %0
\t" "mov %%eax, %1
\t": "=r" (cycles_high), "=r" (cycles_low):: "%rax", "%rbx", "%rcx", "%rdx"); return ((ticks)cycles_high << 32) | cycles_low; } static __inline__ ticks stop (void) { unsigned cycles_low, cycles_high; asm volatile("RDTSCP
\t" "mov %%edx, %0
\t" "mov %%eax, %1
\t" "CPUID
\t": "=r" (cycles_high), "=r" (cycles_low):: "%rax", "%rbx", "%rcx", "%rdx"); return ((ticks)cycles_high << 32) | cycles_low; }
Why use RDTSC to start the timer and RDTSCP to stop it? The white paper explains this and contains a lot of other good details.
Other Precautions
Code and data should be cache-line aligned when possible.
The machine under test should be quiescent. It could also be booted in single-user mode, but we don’t bother.
Turning off ASLR seems like a good idea, though we have not done the measurements to see how much it affects repeatability.
It used to be the case that paging would affect timing results, so we would use the mlockall() call to pin a process’s pages into RAM. Machines have so much memory these days that this hardly seems necessary.
It’s possible to boot a multicore with one or more processors disabled; this will reduce or eliminate TLB shootdowns, other cache invalidation traffic, and memory system contention. Again, we don’t bother.
Analyzing Data
The last important piece of the puzzle is to use robust statistical methods. Never take the average of a series of timing values: their distribution is almost always skewed by massive outliers. The minimum value may or may not be safe to use — there could be outliers on the low end due to migrations between unsynchronized processors. A good starting point would be to look at data points at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles; if these are not very close together, something is probably amiss.
Any time you get timing data from a real processor, it must be scrutinized carefully to see if it makes sense. A good understanding of modern processor architectures really helps. We’ve seen odd things happen such as a machine using frequency scaling when we thought it had been permanently disabled. Either a kernel upgrade or similar disturbed our configuration or we simply messed up.
Summary
Modern computers create a fairly hostile environment for accurate benchmarking of short-duration events. To do it right, you want to use a dedicated machine, carefully navigate the issues I’ve outlined (and whatever others I’ve missed), and develop a benchmarking procedure that includes plenty of sanity checks.On the first page Ms. Collins quotes Mr. Perry quoting another governor, Sam Houston, at a 2009 Tea Party rally in Austin: “Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may.” This was the moment, she says, when she became fascinated with Texas. “When Houston made that remark,” she writes, “he was definitely attempting to break away from the country to which Texas was then attached.”
He definitely was not. Houston — who had also been the hero of the Battle of San Jacinto and president of the Republic of Texas — was a leading advocate for the state’s annexation during the nine years that the ramshackle republic was repeatedly rebuffed by Washington. After the annexation was finally muscled through a bitterly divided Congress, Houston became the only Southern governor to oppose secession and left the office rather than serving in the Confederacy, as Ms. Collins notes.
Houston was complaining that Texas’s interests were getting short shrift in the wake of the Mexican-American War. His point wasn’t that Texas might leave the United States because its rights were under attack. His point was that Texas had rights because it was part of the United States.
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Mr. Perry might not have put it that way, but his argument was similar. Every time writers suggest that he was actually calling for secession, as Ms. Collins does, they’re doing him a favor. He’s been using the po-faced media as a punch line for years now.
Of course Texas is largely to blame for its own reputation. The uneasy intersection of sex and religion, for example, is a recurring theme in modern politics and an area where Texas has been generous to the nation’s wags. Ms. Collins, who has a good eye for absurd details, recalls a painful 2010 exchange Mr. Perry had with Evan Smith, the editor of The Texas Tribune, about the state’s support for abstinence-only sex education. Mr. Smith pressed the governor to explain why that was a good idea. “I’m sorry, I’m going to tell you from my own personal life,” the governor said, visibly glazing over. “Abstinence works.”
As Ms. Collins says, Texas has one of the highest teenage birthrates in the country, and three of the four state-approved health textbooks never mention the word “condom.” It’s possible, however, that Texas teenagers are nonetheless aware of what condoms are. According to 2009 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 42 percent of sexually active teenagers in Texas reported that they didn’t use a condom during their most recent sexual encounter. Around the enlightened nation the figure was not much better, at 39 percent. In any case, even in Texas, school districts are moving away from abstinence-only policies.
And if the larger point is to tackle the issue of teenage pregnancy, rather than tease Republicans, the Texas example does make clear that it would be worthwhile to look at demographics rather than just sex ed. The rate of teenage births in the United States, and Texas, has been declining for years, among all ethnic groups. Ms. Collins does touch on some of the state’s economic and policy barriers to reproductive health care, but the more contentious parts of the picture turn out to be a distraction.
A needlessly ominous distraction at that. It sometimes seems like Ms. Collins is more impressed with Texas than Texas itself is, which is saying something. Yes, Texas is an important state, and worth keeping an eye on, even for people outside its sprawling borders. But in opting for the easy jokes, Ms. Collins misses the chance for a more substantive critique.TOLEDO, Ohio — Heather Tabbert, who works as a waitress at a Waffle House here, has been a Democrat all her life, but this year the only thing she is certain about in the presidential race is that she won’t vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Maybe she’ll stay home on Nov. 8. Maybe she’ll vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“I don’t know about either of them, but If I was going to vote, it would probably be for Trump, because if Hillary gets it, nothing will change,” she said on a recent morning as she served up waffles, eggs and hash browns.
Mrs. Clinton, who has made her bid to make history as the first female president a centerpiece of her campaign, has hit an unexpected rough patch with women voters in this key battleground.
Weak support from women would deliver another blow to Mrs. Clinton’s attempt to reassemble President Obama’s hope-and-change coalition that twice won him the White House.
Throughout the campaign, the former secretary of state has struggled to attract young voters who were another powerful component of the Obama coalition.
Attempting to coax more female voters into her campaign, Mrs. Clinton deployed her daughter Chelsea Clinton for two events Thursday in this solidly Democratic city, where economic struggles have helped Mr. Trump forge inroads.
At a campaign organizing event at the University of Toledo, the younger Ms. Clinton stressed how this election took on extra meaning for her because it was the first time she would cast a vote for president as a parent.
“This election is so personal for me because I know whoever we elect will play a profound roll in shaping the world my children and the children here today grow up in,” she told the crowd of about 200 people.
Mrs. Clinton’s supporters enjoyed seeing her daughter, but many said the candidate needed to show up in person to shore up support in Toledo, where Mrs. Clinton can’t afford to lose Democratic votes.
Female voters such as Ms. Tabbert, who doesn’t closely follow politics, say they are put off by the Clinton scandals — the secret email, Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation — but mostly they are resistant to the status quo in Washington that they think Mrs. Clinton represents.
Joyce Herwat, a 62-year-old homemaker, said she wasn’t just through with Mrs. Clinton but had given up on the Democratic Party and become a die-hard Trump supporter.
“I got so fed up with them. From the time I could first vote, I was a Democrat. I don’t recognize the party anymore.” Ms. Herwat said.
She is one of more than 115,000 Democrats who switched to Republican this year in the Ohio primary in March, compared to nearly 35,000 who switched the other way, according to the Ohio secretary of state.
Mrs. Clinton continues to outperform Mr. Trump among women, especially college-educated women. But her advantage with the demographic has slipped in Ohio.
Mrs. Clinton led Mr. Trump among Ohio women likely to vote by just 2 points, 44 percent to 42 percent, according to a Fox News poll of likely Ohio voters released Wednesday.
By comparison, Mr. Trump’s advantage over Mrs. Clinton with male voters was 13 points, 49 percent to 36 percent, as he continued to dominate that demographic.
Overall, Mr. Trump topped Mrs. Clinton by 5 points, 45 percent to 40 percent. It was the latest in a series of surveys showing Mr. Trump taking the lead in this crucial battleground.
The weak support from women and young voters, coupled with Mr. Trump’s surge in the polls, struck fear in some Clinton supporters in Toledo.
When Ms. Clinton dropped by her mother’s campaign office in the city, several supporters and volunteers said they appreciated the visit, but the candidate herself should be showing Toledo some love.
“We’re worried; Ohio is so important. We have to win Ohio,” said Ann Petlow, 34, a Clinton volunteer.
“In Toledo we’re used to getting the candidate. It’s a little iffy getting a surrogate,” she said. “We are used to getting wooed. She should come here herself.”
Annette Shine, 62, a retired chemical engineer, agreed.
“She needs to come here so people don’t get complacent or think she doesn’t care,” said Ms. Shine. “She should come at least once. People like to feel that they matter.”
Toledo attorney Jeff Goldstein, 72, who attended the Chelsea Clinton drop-by event, said he was mystified that Mrs. Clinton wasn’t getting more support form women.
“How any woman could vote for [Mr. Trump] I don’t know, with all the anti-woman things he has said,” he said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.When libertarian and investment guru Harry Browne wrote, HOW I FOUND FREEDOM IN AN UNFREE WORLD, the prospects for a global monetary dictatorship was an imminent nightmare. Since his passing in 2006, that dreadful prospect has accelerated from a creeping likelihood into a horrific reality. The counterweight to the bankster’s suppression of individual liberty and economic independence may best be characterized as how to provide an alternative money system to the enslavement of debt created monetary, fractional reserve banking. Is it possible to develop a counter currency in the Global Gulag that now subjugates billions of serfs, under the financial tyranny of the international community? On the surface, the answer is you have to be kidding. Let’s look at the latest rage that some view as a gimmick. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency. Peer-to-peer means that no central authority issues new money or tracks transactions. These tasks are managed collectively by the network. Their YouTube video explains in detail. One of Harry Browne’s contemporaries, Doug Casey offers up this evaluation in an interview by Louis James, Editor, of the International Speculator. L: Do they have value in themselves? Doug: There’s the rub; I don’t see that they do. Bitcoins are just an electronic abstraction. They can’t be used for anything else, nor are they made of something that can be used for anything else. They are like one of those knots in a string that disappear if you pull hard enough on the ends of the string. They are not backed by anything at all. Like government fiat currencies, they are a con game, functioning only as long as people have confidence in them, regardless of whether that confidence is well placed or not. I’ve always said that the dollar is an "I owe you nothing," and that the euro is a "Who owes you nothing." With Bitcoins – which no individual can be held accountable for and which have no value in themselves – I’d have to say they are a "No one owes you anything." It was inevitable, therefore, that the scheme would collapse… at least in its present form. Money is the most important force on the planet to keep people in line. The lack of money makes you dependent. The lust for money makes you a co-conspirator, when you use the banking system to defraud the wealth from vulnerable consumers. The perpetrators of the fiat counterfeit currency scheme are the ultimate crooks in the supreme criminal syndicate of the world. Since money is the definitive necessity to conduct commerce, the financial police impose and enforce legal tender laws and sanctions to maintain the money monopoly. Only a debauch government would punish Bernard von NotHaus as a counterfeiter. “The leader of a group that marketed a fake currency called Liberty Dollars in the Asheville area and elsewhere has been found guilty by a federal jury of conspiracy against the government in a case of “domestic terrorism.” Also arrested is William Kevin Innes because he “marketed the “barter” currency in Western North Carolina and recruited merchants willing to accept it and give it as change for products bought with real money, according to an indictment unsealed this week.” A video of Mr. von NotHaus with Glenn Beck provides useful background. So is gold or silver money? Sure, it was and could be again, so it comes as no surprise that there is a move to squeeze out the public. Zero Hedge reports, "Last week it was Forex.com, now it is Oanda. As a reminder "Forex.com, a large retail foreign-exchange operation, on Friday told clients it will discontinue its gold and silver over-the-counter products marketed to retail investors who are U.S. residents. It asked investors to close their positions by July 15." "Trading gold and silver over the counter -- bypassing a futures exchange -- offered investors a chance to enter a highly speculative, leveraged market that also left many investors at risk of fraud, according to one trade group. "In order to trade, it needs to be done in an exchange, or it can’t be done at all," said Dan Driscoll, a vice president with the National Futures Association. The industry group asked Congress for such changes, due to numerous cases of fraud in such contracts. Doing business with a futures exchange offers retail investors more protections and transparency, he said." There you go: it's the extensive fraud that did it. And just as we predicted, this is only the beginning to heard all PM investors into the waiting clutches of the CME's margin demands." about Chinese practices. "While the Anglo American Empire is limiting it’s cattle from investing in precious metals like Domestic Terrorist von Nothaus, FOREX restrictions, and "conflict gold", China is encouraging it’s citizens to buy metals. You can walk into any bank in China and buy gold and silver. (If you walked into our banks looking for gold or silver, they would look at you cross-eyed and then drool.)" Contrast this development with an item from Silver Shield With all the confusion in this unfree world, author David Redick presents a sober and coherent analysis of two key reasons for using a commodity as money in, Why Use Gold As Money? A. Limit excess expansion of the money supply (inflation; loss of value) by the government (you can’t trust them). B. Provide a market-based store of value. The commodity could be wheat, iron, diamonds, or pearls, but the market (users of money) usually chooses gold because it works best. To achieve broad use, commodity coins must be made of, or contain, a material that is: 1) Rare, with a low amount in existence now and limited new supply. 2) Malleable, so can be made into coins. 3) Stable physically and chemically; doesn't break, rust, or rot (can be stored; lasts through much handling). 4) Easy to identify (recognize), and determine purity and amount. 5) Difficult or impossible to counterfeit. 6) Homogeneous in content (a melted chunk is the same throughout). 7) Divisible into pieces (diamonds and pearls aren’t). 8) High value per ounce (not bulky to handle or store). 9) Acceptable to most sellers (familiar and recognizable) Mr. Redick in his excellent book Monetary Revolution – USA offers a six-step plan to convert to gold money. Step 1. Repeal: a. All legal tender laws so private firms (mints) can issue new money, b. Laws that tax increase in market value (then to be known as ‘purchasing power’) of precious-metal coins (formerly considered numismatic), and c. Any other laws that prevent, inhibit, or tax the new money. The only government role would be to prevent fraud, and to verify by physical inspection that reserves are as advertised. (but with no reserves ‘requirements’). Step 2. Private firms (mints) could be created without government permission or license. An optional ‘license’ process could be created if demanded by the market. The mints would introduce new gold money labeled by the weight of gold coin contains, or that tokens or paper certificates represent. Some might offer ‘Digital Gold Currency’. All ‘mints’ would be required by law to; 1. Publicize the amount of gold they have as a reserve for redeeming paper or digital money, and the value of money issued, 2. Allow unscheduled physical inspections to confirm that the gold is in their possession. The same would apply to base-metal coins. Step 3. Require the Federal Reserve banks, the U.S. Treasury (Ft. Knox), the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and any other part of the United States government, to promptly submit to, and conduct, a private audit of the amount and quality of gold that own and its title status (leased?), reveal the results to the public, and then give it all to a ‘Redeem Trust’ owned by the U.S. Treasury, to be used to redeem existing coin or paper currency on demand, based on a certain weight per Dollar, in accordance with the plan below. (read the book for details; basically the metric weight of gold we own would be divided by M3, yielding 'grams per dollar') Step 4. Abolish the unconstitutional GSEs such as Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie, and Sallie Mae, FHA, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC), FDIC, all TARP-Like projects, ‘special’ bankruptcies, corporate-takeovers, Recovery-Stimulant Acts, the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), the Export-Import Bank, etc., etc. Step 5. Terminate US membership in the IMF (and get our gold back), World Bank, BIS, G-20, G-8, United Nations. and others. Step 6. Work to repeal or change other unconstitutional and counterproductive Federal laws, and policies that intervene in our lives, economy and the world. Obviously, this rational approach to establish a sane monetary system will be fought to the last banker. A monetary revolution would require that the current political class be relegated to the bowels of a government black hole, for a constitutional honest money restoration. The Rule of Gold after the Financial Collapse identifies the severity of the current crisis. Before the Redick’s solution is adopted, the likelihood is that we will all join Harry Browne in the only domain out of the reach of the real counterfeiters. Yet the six steps ( buy and read the entire book ) is an objective standard to base a new and sound monetary economy for a sensible society. SARTRE – June 26, 2011 Discuss or comment about this essay on the BATR ForumI don’t know why ESPN sports writer Jason Whitlock decided he needed to write 2,000 comparing Robert Griffin III and Breaking Bad, but he did, and it’s left a lot of people scratching their collective heads. Why? Because it’s a silly article. Basically, Whitlock’s thesis is this: Washington Redskins’ quarterback RG III has had a huge sophomore slump this season because no one bothered to criticize him during his first year. He has been spoiled by a lack of criticism, Whitlock suggests, and it has led to poor play. He also suggests that the inability of the media to criticize Brett Favre basically ruined that quarterback’s career, and that … wait for it … Vince Gilligan is the Brett Favre of the television world, minus the dick pics, one assumes.
Yikes.
From ESPN:
No matter what Gilligan does with Breaking Bad, the critics praise its gun-slinging, impossible-to-believe plot twists. You would think there had never been a fast-paced, high-action TV show that explored the drug world, featured a white male’s spiraling descent into immorality and showed the price paid by his family and former friends. … Breaking Bad plays by a different set of rules than all of its predecessors. Nothing has to make sense or be remotely believable. As long as Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul act at a high level, Gilligan will fill the critics in behind the scenes on the story holes and the critics will write reviews explaining what defies explanation and doesn’t take place on screen. … There’s no accountability. Gilligan can throw multiple interceptions, but he’s a gunslinger having fun out there. Last Sunday’s episode played out like many before it, like a bad Die Hard movie. … Unfortunately, its divorce from sophisticated, detail-oriented storytelling doesn’t matter. BB is judged on a different standard. This final season is being hailed as the greatest in TV history. It’s comical. … [The Shield] was awesome. It’s what Breaking Bad had a chance to be, what BB would’ve been if the critics hadn’t decided to go in the tank for Gilligan.
That is some lab-grade trolling right there, folks. You really have to read the entire thing to understand just how dislodged this man’s brain is from its pan. As soon as he started comparing BB to Brett Favre, I knew we were in trouble. When he compared this final season to a bad Die Hard film, we’d gone off the rails.
I think my friend Angelina Burnett (who actually worked on The Shield) provided the best response to Whitlock’s piece:
This “Mary Mary quite contrary” sportswriter who fancies himself qualified to dissect story can pontificate on the cultural importance of criticism all he wants but he misses the most fundamentally important job requirement – meeting the material on its own terms. And this is where his already week sports analogy falls apart. Story telling is not a zero sum game. It’s not measurable by an agreed upon, standard set of criteria. It is not the critic’s job to dog a creator into “being great” as defined by personal taste. And it is not the creator’s job to give you what you want … Now take this sippy cup and go sit at the kids table and I’ll be over in a second to explain to you in simple terms how last week’s Breaking Bad plot held together just fine. Or you can just stick to sports.
Yeah, I think sticking to sports is the way to go here.
(Source: ESPN)Video games have tons of working parts that go into making them all so amazing. The story, the characters, the world, the graphics, the controls. But there is often an element that a lot of people overlook. An element that truly does bring to life a lot of the aforementioned list.
The music.
Music is an integral part of my life. Just as in films, the soundtrack can lift whatever game it’s in to an entirely new level. In this series, Listen Hear, I’m going to highlight some of video games’ finest musical pieces and explain why they mean so much to me. Hopefully you’ll find something here you enjoy and perhaps themes you never even noticed. Strap yourself in, we have a few decades to get through.
Final Fantasy as a whole has some extremely memorable tunes. Nobuo Uematsu, the composer for a large majority of the games in the series with a body of work in the industry that expands nearly forty years, has crafted some of the finest pieces in video game history. What I want to touch on this time, after all the joyful tunes of the forest, is the battle music from Final Fantasy VII. Battle music is a tough thing. It’s something you’re going to hear hundreds and hundreds of times, guaranteed, throughout your playtime. It has to be memorable, but not intrusive. A theme that isn’t annoying, but doesn’t become the forefront of the scene at hand. Take a listen to FFVII’s “Let the Battles Begin!” below.
Boom! It starts right away with a hard crash and some excellent digitized brass and strings to get your battle blood flowing. It’s just the right amount of epic in scope and makes you feel excited to take down enemies, even when you’re waiting for the game to load the goddamn screen for fifteen seconds of the song. It runs about one minute and ten seconds before a seamless loop occurs, which is perfect for most regular encounters in the game as you’ll likely not hear the song more than twice in any given fight. Around the 0:54 mark, the notes hit make you feel like a hero unsheathing his ridiculously long and insanely wide Buster Sword while standing atop a mountain, surveying a grand view as you prepare to destroy the enemies that are closing in quickly. And with that, the song prepares you to…let the battles begin…
Heh.
Later on in the game, a new track appears for stronger enemies, such as bosses or mini bosses. Listen to how “Fight On!” ramps up the intensity with electric guitar, harder drums, and an overall more rock feel. God did I love hearing this as a kid.
Dat bass does not stop. Like the previous song, it ramps up right away and gives you a sense of urgency and badassery. The villain stands before you, and you must take him down! It also has quite a few changes, most notably an excellent little keyboard solo at the 0:40 mark. Then, at 1:03, everything turns dire. It feels as though the enemy has gained the upper hand for the last thirty seconds and Cloud as his crew have been wounded. The outcome is looking grim. But right before the loop happens, the score rises up again, lifting your spirits and will to continue with it. You must…fight on…
Heh.
Lastly, there is “Jenova Complete”. Happening much later in the game during a pivotal confrontation, the song borrows from both “Let the Battles Begin” and “Fight On!” with its own unique twist.
Some of the beats from the other songs are there, but with far more extravagance and evil or darker sounding hits, such as around 1:19 with the strings striking some eerie chords. Uematsu does a wonderful job of reincorporating a piece we have heard quite a few times now and changing it up enough to feel even more pressing and more important than before. You are forced to…Jenova complete…
Nope, no, no, sorry, no.
Battle themes in an RPG are no easy task, but Final Fantasy VII delivers every time. Regardless of the enemy, big or small, I’m always ready to fight them head-on so I can twirl my sword victoriously once they’ve been vanquished. Pull me into your world, Cloud.SCP-2371
SCP-2371
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: All information and physical locations associated with the SCP-2371 phenomenon are to be secured under Level 5 Security Protocols. Testing Chamber 14 of the Site-43 Spatial Anomalies Wing must be checked for manifestation of SCP-2371-1 instances daily. The SCP-2371 Project Lead must be prepared to author communiques to SCP-2371-3 or delegate this responsibility to personnel they deem qualified at their discretion. Communiques with SCP-2371-3 must be written with the intention of maintaining amiable interactions with the entity and placed within Testing Chamber 14 of the Spatial Anomaly Wing of Site-43 within 48 hours of manifestation of SCP-237 |
.
That’s the thing here. We saw Trump’s budget this week. We got the CBO score for the American Healthcare Act. We know that Republicans, and Donald Trump leading the charge, are cutting every kind of program for the needy in this country, because, according to them, there’s just no freaking money. There’s no money. But, I guarantee you, we’re going to find a way to come up with this billion dollars to pay for extra security for Donald Trump, to pay for security at Trump Tower, to pay for his children and grandchildren when they go on these extravagant vacations, to pay for his places out in Las Vegas, to pay for extra protection around the White House, because he’s too damn scared, because he’s pissed off too many people in this country. We shouldn’t be on the hook for that.
We should be taking this billion dollars and maybe putting it towards the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or the SNAP program, or afterschool programs, or fixing our infrastructure, or giving the needy better healthcare, increasing Medicaid, not cutting it, increasing social security disability benefits, not cutting them. Instead, we are all sacrificing our livelihood for Donald Trump’s security for his businesses. Look, I get it, if this man wants extra people around him and his family because he’s worried. I get that. That makes sense. But there is no justification for the fact that taxpayers should be on the hook to spend $25 million to protect a building where Donald Trump isn’t. That’s not what the Secret Service does. They protect the president and the president’s family. That’s it.
If Donald Trump wants anything extra, anything beyond that, he can come out of pocket for it, because like he told us during his campaign, he’s a freaking billionaire. Well then, you pay for your own security for your building. If you’re worried about that, you cover that. We shouldn’t have to pay this money to Trump Tower, because that’s another part of the puzzle here. It’s not just we’re paying to protect it, but the people who protect it have to live there, so they have to pay rent, so that rent, which is paid for by tax dollars, goes right back into Donald Trump’s pocket. He is enriching himself by claiming to be afraid, then using taxpayer money, that should go to other things to help us, to pay for his own freaking security so he can pocket the money.
This is insanity, folks. This really is utter insanity. I am hoping that Democrat Al Green, who said he’s moving forward with articles of impeachment, gets on this pretty quick. Because if congress approves this more than $1 billion to keep Trump’s properties safe, it really shows you where their priorities are, and it shows you where the priorities of this president are, and it shows you where we, as an American public, stand in the minds Republican politicians. We are nothing to them. We have to sacrifice everything to protect the financial interests of our billionaire president.A Question of Piping
Q. Do you know the purpose, if any, of the copper pipes bracing (or embracing) the columns on the uptown side of the Wall Street subway platform?
A. It’s not plumbing; it’s art.
The nine hand-forged bronze seat rests at the Wall Street station on the 4 and 5 lines do indeed resemble copper pipes. But they are a sculptural installation called “Lariat Tapers,” a 2011 work by James Garvey.
Deirdre Parker, a spokeswoman for New York City Transit, says the tapers swirl in a clockwise direction around the columns to depict the motion of trains swooping into the station. They can be compared with Mr. Garvey’s similar 1997 artwork “Lariat Seat Loops,” at the 33rd Street station on the No. 6 line.
Purple Snow
Q. We all know about yellow snow, but what about purple? I spotted a strange color in the virgin snow in my backyard. It was a bright purple-magenta color in spots under a barren tree. Up the block, I spotted additional similar stains in the snow out on the sidewalk. What’s up?BAGHDAD — Basma’s phone is always in her pocket. She used to throw it around the house, but things have changed. She is waiting for a phone call from her father, who lives in Mosul and was not able to leave with his wife and children for a safer city.
She got married in Baghdad several years ago and has a close relationship with her father. She would visit him every month or he would come to the capital to see her. But the situation changed; the young employee who works at the Iraqi Ministry of Construction and Housing has not seen her father since June, i.e., since the dramatic fall of Mosul at the hands of the Islamic State (IS).
Mosul, a Sunni-majority city, has been completely isolated from its surroundings for more than a month now; IS cut the Internet and mobile phone networks and the city's residents became prisoners of the extremist organization that unreasonably imposes its brutal laws.
Basma’s father, 55, a physician, crosses about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) to the mountains near the province of Dahuk in the Kurdistan region to secure coverage for his mobile phone to call his daughter in Baghdad.
The physician told Al-Monitor over the phone that IS prosecutes anyone who tries to get network coverage on his mobile phone. “IS wants to fully isolate us from our surroundings,” he said. His weekly attempts to call his daughter may expose him to flogging or even the death penalty for violating IS’ rules.
“I am very cautious,” he said. “I hope I don’t get caught. All I can do is hope.”
It seems that IS has a strong intelligence apparatus: People in Mosul refused to reveal their names when talking to the media. This is why the physician, Basma’s father, did not disclose his name.
In light of IS’ powerful intelligence services, social networking activists were forced about a month ago to close down their sites for fear of being prosecuted in case IS members succeeded in locating their websites.
The physician said, “IS is similar to the Baath Party in this aspect. … It knows every little detail.”
Witnesses from Mosul told Al-Monitor by phone that men in Mosul mostly fear compulsory recruitment by the extremist organization, given the shortage in the number of its members.
The physician said that many of the men from Mosul who joined IS when it first entered the city have changed their minds and left it. This cost many of them their lives when they were caught and executed on the roads and in public squares.
News circulated that IS imposed compulsory recruitment in the district of Hit, in Anbar province, to fight in the front rows of IS against government forces. News reports also indicated that whoever refused to join IS ranks faced the death penalty.
A young man from Mosul told Al-Monitor over the phone, “We currently dread recruitment the most, as we see the number of IS members decreasing on the streets, which may lead IS to resort to recruitment.”
According to the young man, “Most young men are confined within their homes since IS has made everything forbidden and haram. It even intervenes in the way we dress and prohibits us from watching soccer games. Its members search our phones to find out our political and social orientations.”
The economic situation is also deteriorating in Mosul. Vegetables were brought in by IS from Syria after agricultural lands were destroyed. Household funds have been exhausted.
Basma’s father, who works in a government hospital, said he has not received his salary for two months.
Talib Abdul Karim, a member of parliament for Ninevah province, communicates with Mosul’s residents via mobile phones as well. “The only way to communicate is to walk to the borders of the provinces of the Kurdistan region to get network coverage” he said. “Mosul is now at its worst. All sectors are paralyzed."
Abdul Karim told Al-Monitor, “All services are suspended. Garbage is filling the city, the health sector sustained great damage and medical staff fled.”
“The city’s residents are refusing IS’ [occupation], given its oppression against them. Armed groups are being spontaneously formed to carry out operations against this terrorist organization,” he said.Donald Trump's bad couple of weeks has apparently convinced him that the best way to beat Hillary Clinton is to adopt the "I know you are but what am I" projection strategy. The growing realization that he's unfit, unhinged and uninformed has caused his poll numbers to plummet and hers to rise so he assumes that if he accuses Clinton of the same thing he'll get the same results she's gotten.
He road-tested his new strategy over the weekend:
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"Unstable Hillary, she lacks the judgment, temperament and moral character to lead this country," Trump said at his rally. "She is a totally unhinged person.”
"Her greatest achievement is getting out of trouble, it's true," Trump said, prompting chants of "lock her up."
"She is a horrible, horrible human being," Trump said. "She’s incompetent, and I don’t think that you can even think of allowing this woman to become the president of the United States."
He turned the accusation that his behavior wasn't presidential against Clinton by reviving a vicious sexist twist he's used in the past:
"Now you tell me she looks presidential, folks. I look presidential."
It's undoubtedly true that Clinton does not look like the image of a president to many people. But then Trump doesn't exactly look like someone we've ever seen on our currency either.
His campaign took the "unstable" charge to a new level with a web ad that appears to have been made by Trump's 10-year-old son as a summer school project. Playing on the "short circuit" phrase Clinton used in her press conference this week, the ad shows Clinton as a "robot" with her head spewing smoke.
At his rally Saturday night Trump said:
"She took a short-circuit in the brain. She's got problems. Honestly, I don't think she's all there."
"She is a totally unhinged person. She's unbalanced. And all you have to do is watch her, see her, read about her," Trump said during a campaign rally in Windham, New Hampshire, Saturday evening. "She will cause - if she wins, which hopefully she won't - the destruction of our country from within."
"I think the people of this country don't want somebody that's going to short-circuit up here," Trump said, pointing to his head. "Not as your president, not as your president."
And he went on twitter to declare:
"Crooked Hillary said loudly, and for the world to see, that she "SHORT CIRCUITED" when answering a question about her e-mails. Very dangerous!"
"Anybody whose mind "SHORT CIRCUITS" is not fit to be our president! Look up the word "BRAINWASHED.
It's pretty clear that Trump is the one who needs to look up the word brainwashed because he is obviously confused about its meaning.
As Salon's Michael Garofalo noted yesterday, Trump's adviser Roger Stone and his conspiracy theorist pal Alex Jones have been pushing the notion that Clinton has a brain injury for some time and this is just Trump's puerile way of bringing that ugly rumor into the mainstream.
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They aren't the only ones. Dave Weigel wrote about a full blown right-wing "Hillary has brain damage" conspiracy yesterday in this piece for the Washington Post that is downright byzantine. There are many layers to the story but the most recent "evidence" concerns an incident in which one of Clinton's secret service agents rushed to the stage when a protester approached:
To [conspiracy theorist] Cernovich, it was clear that Clinton was "completely frozen" and "lost control of her executive functions/pre-frontal cortex." She actually riffed on the protesters, telling them to protest Donald Trump's sons, who are proud hunters.
But in a follow-up post, Cernovich speculated that Madison was not in fact a Secret Service agent, but a medical professional who must be around her at all times. In his comments on Twitter and at InfoWars, Shkreli speculated that Madison was holding "an Apokyn pen, used to treat Parkinson’s," in a photo that revealed something in his right hand.
Lest you think this foolishness is confined to the outer reaches of the right wing fever swamps, Sean Hannity devoted an entire segment to discussing the thoroughly discredited nonsense on his show last night. He even invited the two house doctors to weigh in which they dutifully did, much to their shame.
Trump's attacks on Clinton's mental state are obviously yet another case of projection. If there's anyone who is suspected of having serious issues it's Donald Trump. The list of articles trying to figure out exactly what makes him tick is very long. In fact, there has never been a presidential candidate so thoroughly analyzed from afar by mental health professionals and amateur analysts alike. (This epic psychoanalysis compares Trump to Andrew Jackson!)
The man is... unusual. His erratic, juvenile behavior and rank dishonesty combined with the overweening arrogance and total lack of preparation for the job naturally leads to a lot of speculation. But the likely reason Trump has just now decided to turn that back on Clinton is because of the polls: 70 percent have anxiety about a Trump presidency and 67 percent think he lacks the personality and temperament it takes to serve effectively. And according to a recent Pew Poll, that's what people care about in this election. Even he's not so far gone that he can't see the problem and it clearly has him flummoxed. Over the weekend he seemed to be thinking out loud on the stump when he said:
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"I've always had a great temperament. And you know, I win. I have a winning temperament. We're going to win, we're going to start winning again. But I've won. My whole life has been about winning. I win. She can't win. She's not a winner. She can't win."
If the stakes weren't so high you'd have to feel sorry for him. That's pathetic.Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras met on Friday night with BP Group Chief Executive Robert Dudley during his visit to Baku as one of several country leaders attending events related to the natural gas pipeline in Azerbaijan.
Earlier, Samaras attended a dinner by Azeri President Ilham Aliyev that was also attended by the Prime Ministers of Turkey, Bulgaria and Montenegro. It was the first time he met with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu after his election.
Samaras also met briefly with President Aliyev on Friday and discussed the two countries’ collaboration in energy, as Greece is Azerbaijan’s most important strategic partner in Europe.
Among others, they discussed the possibility of increasing the supply of Azeri natural gas to Greece in the case that supply was disrupted due to the Ukrainian crisis. The issue was raised by Samaras and Aliyev agreed that the technical aspects should be further discussed by the appropriate Ministers from both countries.
In addition to their 20-minute meeting, Samaras and Aliyev had a more extended discussion over a dinner hosted by the Azeri President. During their talks, they agreed that Greece is emerging as an energy hub in southeastern Europe and emphasized the important role of the Greek-Bulgarian pipeline.
The two leaders also reviewed the bilateral agreements signed in the energy sector and procedures for implementing the TransAdriatic Pipeline (TAP) within the existing deadline, as well as the progress in the privatization of Greece’s Natural Gas System Operator (DESFA) via the transfer of a 66% share to Azerbaijan’s SOCAR.
Regarding DESFA, the European Commission is expected to give the official green light for the deal and confirm that it is compatible with European energy laws by September 29, at which time the relevant procedures can move forward. During the meeting, Samaras and Aliyev agreed to speed up the process and make an effort to overcome any bureaucratic problems.
Referring to events on Saturday, Aliyev said this would be an important anniversary and a new start of Azerbaijan. He also briefed Samaras on the discussions regarding energy issues held with other foreign leaders attending the events in Baku.
The meeting between Aliyev and Samaras was followed by a meeting of delegations from both countries. From the Greek side it was attended by Environment, Climate and Energy Minister Yiannis Maniatis, Deputy Energy Minister Assimakis Papageorgiou and government spokeswoman Sofia Voultepsi.
On Saturday, Samaras and the Greek delegation will attend an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Shah Deniz natural gas field agreements and a special event on the Southern Corridor pipeline network, where new drilling will formally begin. The events will also be attended by delegations from Turkey, Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia and the UK.
On the events’ sidelines, Samaras plans to have meetings with foreign leaders.
(source: ana-mpa)black money hoarders +
meant for smuggling +
entry of fake Indian currency notes +
GUWAHATI: With the income Tax Department stepping up the heat on, many Indians could be sending their black money in new notes to Bangladesh to escape the I-T net.The possible modus operandi caught the attention of Indian security agencies after the Border Security Force (BSF) on Thursday seized Rs 29.70 lakh in new Rs 2000 notes from two people at Nokchi in West Garo Hills District in Meghalaya. Nokchi borders Bangladesh.The money belonging to an Indian cloth merchant was meant to be delivered to one coal exporter at Gasuapara in Meghalaya. Gasuapara is the export hub of coal for the Garo Hills region and from here huge quantities of coal are sent to Bangladesh through international trade on an annual basis.This has given rise to strong doubts that money wasinto Bangladesh through coal consignments for a safe keep.“The porous India-Bangladesh border is a known conduit for(FICN) by some Bangladeshi racketeers who are also involved in smuggling of cattle from India. The reverse flow is possible and Indians could be sending their black money to Bangladesh through the same racketeers,” a source said.A BSF spokesman said that the personnel carried out an operation on Hill Road and apprehended two Indian nationals, Nasib Miya, (23 yrs) and Bilal Hossain, (22 yrs), both residents of Pubergram village at Mankachar in Assam along with the notes."The apprehended people revealed that the seized currency belongs to one Sanjay Agarwal, a cloth merchant of Mankachar, and the consignment of money was to be handed over to one coal exporter, Lophu Sangma of Balaji Coal export company of Gasuapara," the spokesman said."There are 1485 new Rs 2000 notes and other smaller denomination notes amounting to Rs. 3,205," he added.The BSF party also seized one PAN card, one voter ID, two driving licenses, one mobile with two Indian SIM and one motor cycle from their possession. The apprehended persons along with seized items handed over to concerned police station for further legal action.Intelligence agencies are also looking into a possible terror link to the seized money, a source told TOI. "Right now we are also not ruling out the Garo National Liberation Army which has bases across the border and they might be using the same route to transfer their money," the source said.Mobile satallite operator Thuraya Telecommunications on Wednesday announced SatSleeve, a "Made for iPhone" adapter that grants users access to the company's vast satellite network.
The system, which includes an iPhone holder that docks into a separate satellite communications unit, allows iPhone owners to place voice calls and send text messages nearly anywhere in the world. Athough Thuraya's sat coverage doesn't include North and South America, the company has set up roaming deals with terrestrial mobile network operators in the region, including those compatible with the iPhone's supported bandwidths.
Billed as "the world's first satellite adaptor for the iPhone," most of the heavy lifting is done by the satcom "dock" which transmits and receives the satellite signal and relays it to the iPhone via Bluetooth. The docking sleeve also has a button that can be programmed to dial one emergency number even with iPhone unattached.Thuraya's SatSleeve is available now for $499 plus satellite airtime fees which run between $0.75 to $1.25 per minute. Currently, only the iPhone 4 and 4S is supported, though a Lightning-enabled iPhone 5 version is expected to see release next month.At my other blog home, The Shin Guardian, I wrote today about MLS departures David Beckham, Landon Donovan, Roger Espinoza, Kei Kamara, and Freddy Montero and their passes to and from teammates in 2012. Please check it out, but don't be disappointed that I didn't analyze Brek Shea or FC Dallas there. When I looked at the facts, Brek interacted with his teammates far less often than Beckham, Kamara, Montero, etc did with theirs. So much so that bringing him into the conversation would have felt silly.
However, I did want to find a Big D Soccer application of the FC Dallas Passing Matrix, which gives us a count of every 2012 FC Dallas pass and who initiated and received it. This resource was in the middle of Andrew Wiebe's statistical review of FC Dallas' 2012 season, which was released a couple months ago. Here's what FCD's matrix looks like when visualized, with minutes played driving the order of the players and the colors of the data points:
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The field of numbers can be rather daunting until you break them down into a more specific context. Because everything revolves around David Ferreira on this team, his combinations with teammates are the most logical focus. Who did El Torito combine with often, and who may need to work harder to develop chemistry with the conductor of this squad?
Consider this both a spinoff of my Shin Guardian piece, and a sequel of sorts to my attempt last year at quantitative analysis of FC Dallas' MVP.
First, we have to adjust the data for the amount of time each player shared the field with Ferreira. This is easily done by comparing their game logs and subtracting from each players total minutes the amount of time they played without David on the pitch. Then some simple math filters passes to and from Ferreira down to per-90-minute figures.
I limited this analysis to those players still on the roster (plus Hartman as a keeper proxy), and that played at least 500 minutes last season. Passes from David (blue) read left to right, while passes to him (red) are the opposite. The width of each bar is driven by that player's minutes shared with Ferreria If you hover over any bar, a pop-up will tell you the exact figure:
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Players are ordered roughly by their position on the field, though you can see that David is somewhat regularly involved with everyone that isn't parked on or behind the backline.
It is striking that he interacts with his countrymen most often. Jair Benitez got the ball from him most often, and Fabian found Ferreira the most. This is certainly something to watch if/when Michel takes Benitez' spot at left back. He and others will need to provide an outlet for El Toritio in Jair's stead.
Andrew Jacobsen's numbers here seem odd to me. Hartman, John, and Hedges played far from El Torito, but AJ was usually positioned quite close to him last year, and because of that you'd think that they'd have interacted more often.
There are a variety of factors that drove these numbers. Tactics, relative positioning to each other, chemistry,etc. Of course, the new formation will shake some of this up further. But as we well know, as Ferreira goes so goes FC Dallas. However they're arranged, it will be key for his teammates to make the ball available to him and themselves available to the club's #10.Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to speak at a campaign rally, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016, in Ocala, Fla. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci) Evan Vucci
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo, Colo., Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016, to attend a rally. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Andrew Harnik
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Lakeland, Fla., on Wednesday. AP
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets members of the audience after speaking at a rally at the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo, Colo., Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016, to attend a rally. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Andrew Harnik
Brimming with new confidence, Hillary Clinton turned up the heat Wednesday on Republican candidates who are facing both tight election races and tough decisions on what to do about Donald Trump. She’s now seeking to spread her new momentum to fellow Democrats on November ballots.
Are you with him or not? Clinton and her campaign are demanding of GOP candidates as she surfs a wave of new support, part of the fallout from the revelations of Trump’s aggressive sexual comments about women.
Some Republican lawmakers are doing as she demands – but not all of them in the way she hoped.
Two senators and two House members who called for Trump to step aside over the weekend now have climbed back aboard. Their basic case: They’re voting for a Republican next month, and if Trump isn’t leaving then he’s got to be the one.
John Thune of South Dakota, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate told the Rapid City Journal he had “reservations about the way (Trump) has conducted his campaign and himself.” However, he said, “I’m certainly not going to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
Also back on board after calling on Trump to resign: Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Reps. Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Bradley Byrne of Alabama. There still are some three dozen GOP lawmakers who have withdrawn their support or are calling for Trump to step aside.
At a rally in Colorado, Clinton declared that Trump is “desperate” and running “scorched earth strategy.”
“That’s all they have left – pure negativity, pessimism,” she said.
Indeed, Trump kept up his unrelenting denunciations of Clinton at a rally in Florida. It’s not enough for voters to elect him instead of her, he declared, “She has got to go to jail.”
Later Wednesday, Clinton was campaigning in Las Vegas, where she planned to call out Rep. Joe Heck, a Republican in a tough Senate fight who revoked his support for Trump after hearing his caught-on-video boasts about groping women.
The focus on Republican congressional candidates is the latest sign the Clinton campaign is moving past a narrow focus on winning the White House, and now is aiming to win big – by delivering the Senate to Democrats, making deep cuts into the Republicans’ majority in the House and, possibly, winning states long considered Republican territory.
“If you’ve got friends in Utah or Arizona, make sure they vote, too,” Clinton said.
She had sympathetic words – serious or not – for Trump supporters who have begun to interrupt her events.
As security escorted one man out in Pueblo, Clinton said: “You have to feel a little sorry for them; they’ve had a really bad couple of weeks.”shadow
«Quello che è successo venerdì a Parigi è un atto di guerra commesso da un’armata jihadista contro i valori che noi difendiamo e che siamo: un Paese libero». Così ha affermato il presidente francese, Francois Hollande, parlando sabato mattina alla nazione in diretta televisiva dall’Eliseo dopo l’inferno della sera prima nella capitale francese scatenato da almeno otto terroristi (tutti morti secondo le autorità francesi, di cui sei suicidi con cinture esplosive). Il bilancio dell’attacco più grave in Francia dal dopoguerra è di 130 morti e di oltre 250 feriti, di cui un centinaio in gravi condizioni, secondo quanto riferito dal procuratore di Parigi. Sono rimasti leggermente feriti anche due italiani (Massimiliano Natalucci e Laura Appolloni di Senigallia, in provincia di Ancona). Isis si attribuisce le stragi come «vendetta per la Siria» con una serie di tweet, ma le autorità non si sbilanciano.
Gli attacchi La furia omicida ha colpito questa volta i luoghi del divertimento e del tempo libero: una partita di calcio, un concerto rock, ristoranti, bar e fast-food. Ed è stato un allarme continuo per ore, con conflitti a fuoco in diversi punti della città: il primo attacco è avvenuto quando un kamikaze si è fatto saltare in Boulevard Voltaire senza fare altre vittime, a Rue de Charonne 18 vittime al bar La Belle Équipe, cinque morti alla pizzeria La Casa Nostra in a Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, almeno dodici morti tra Rue Alibert nel bar Le Carillon e nel ristorante Le Petit Cambodge in Rue Bichat. Il resto delle vittime si è avuto nel teatro Le Bataclan, alle quali vanno aggiunte le tre persone morte all’esterno dello Stade de France, alla periferia nord della capitale francese, più tre terroristi kamikaze che si sono fatti saltare.
Hollande Il presidente François Hollande sabato sera ha annunciato «la chiusura di tutte le frontiere», poi è stato chiarito che sono stati solo ristabiliti i controlli. Il presidente ha decretato lo stato d’emergenza e sabato mattina in un nuovo discorso televisivo ha proclamato tre giorni di lutto nazionale. «La Francia è stata aggredita in modo vergognoso e violento, quindi sarà spietata contro la barbarie dello Stato islamico», ha detto il capo dell’Eliseo. «La Francia agirà con tutti i mezzi, sul fronte interno ed esterno, in concertazione con gli alleati». Il procuratore di Parigi non ha escluso che alcuni terroristi siano sfuggiti e siano in fuga.
Sabato tutto chiuso, funziona in parte il metrò A Parigi decretata la chiusura sabato di scuole, mercati, musei, tutti gli edifici pubblici, sospese tutte le manifestazioni sportive. Chiuso anche Eurodisney. In mattinata invece la metropolitana, i treni suburbani Rer e regionali Transilien sono ripresi regolarmente. Undici stazioni del metrò restano però chiuse, tra queste lo snodo di Place de la Republique presso i luoghi delle sparatorie, e la stazione Oberkampf, a pochi passi dalla sala concerto Bataclan.
Trasporti «Air France conferma che l’insieme dei suoi voli da e verso la Francia è mantenuto», si legge in una nota diffusa dalla compagnia che sottolinea tuttavia che «bisogna prevedere ritardi in partenza e in arrivo in seguito al rafforzamento dei controlli di frontiera». Ai passeggeri viene chiesto di anticipare «il loro arrivo in aeroporto». Sabato mattina disagi e lunghe code all’aeroporto Charles De Gaulle: i documenti di tutti viaggiatori vengono controllati con attenzione e sono stati istituiti percorsi alternativi tra i vari terminal. American Airlines ha deciso di rinviare i voli per Parigi mentre United Airlines continuerà a operare come previsto. Il tunnel del monte Bianco, che era stato chiuso venerdì sera, è stato riaperto sabato in mattinata. I treni ad alta velocità Eurostar e Thalys circolano normalmente. La società Eurostar offre la possibilità a chi aveva in programma un viaggio a Parigi questo fine settimana di cambiare gratuitamente il biglietto. I viaggiatori sono però invitati a recarsi con maggiore anticipo in stazione per gli accresciuti controlli di sicurezza.
Massacro al Bataclan Gli attacchi sono avvenuti in sei luoghi diversi della capitale: di cui cinque nella parte est tra il X e l’XI arrondissement nella zona tra Place de la Republique e la Bastiglia (una delle aree più affollate del divertimento parigino del venerdì sera), il sesto a nord allo Stade de France. L’attacco più grave, con oltre 80 morti e un centinaio di feriti (tra i quali i due italiani in modo lieve), è avvenuto nel locale notturno Le Bataclan, dove si stava svolgendo un concerto della band americana Eagles of Death Metal: la sala si è trasformata in una gigantesca trappola, con numerosi cadaveri a terra, mentre due o tre giovani a volto scoperto sparavano con gelida calma in tutte le direzioni. Prendendo all’inizio cento ostaggi, anche se una trentina sono riusciti a scappare. Al Bataclan sono stati feriti i due italiani: Laura Appolloni, raggiunta alla spalla da una scheggia o da un proiettile, è già stata operata, Massimiliano Natalucci è stato medicato. Ambedue non sono in pericolo di vita.
Le urla sui social network I quattro terroristi dell’attacco al Bataclan sono morti, di cui tre facendosi saltare con cinture esplosive al momento dell’attacco delle squadre di sicurezza francesi. Quando sono entrati nel locale si sono messi a sparare all’impazzata urlando «Allah è grande», riferiscono testimoni che sono scampati alla carneficina, mentre dall’interno del locale arrivavano richieste d’aiuto sui social network. «Ci stanno uccidendo uno a uno», dicevano disperati gli spettatori rimasti intrappolati.
Altri attacchi I terroristi sarebbero arrivati a bordo di auto che hanno seminato il terrore nelle strade del centro.Nel frattempo tre esplosioni sono avvenute nei pressi dello Stade de France dove era in corso l’amichevole di calcio Francia-Germania. Alla periferia nord di Parigi i morti sono quattro, tra i quali tre terroristi. Il presidente Hollande, che |
7, Opportunity used her Pancam to take the frames that went into this view, which Stuart Atkinson processed into this image. In coming weeks, Opportunity will continue to make tracks around the upper area of Perseverance while the MER scientists hunt for clues that will reveal how this ancient geological feature formed some 3.7 to 4 billion years ago. For now, no one’s betting on any one theory. “It’s too early,” said MER Principal Investigator. “The thing to do at this point is to keep an open mind and just let Mars tell the story.” Near the end of May 2017, Opportunity used her Pancam to take the frames that went into this view, which Stuart Atkinson processed into this image. In coming weeks, Opportunity will continue to make tracks around the upper area of Perseverance while the MER scientists hunt for clues that will reveal how this ancient geological feature formed some 3.7 to 4 billion years ago. For now, no one’s betting on any one theory. “It’s too early,” said MER Principal Investigator. “The thing to do at this point is to keep an open mind and just let Mars tell the story.”The RCMP officer who Tasered Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport more than seven years ago has been found guilty of perjury.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice William Ehrcke concluded Friday that Const. Kwesi Millington lied under oath during his testimony at a public inquiry into the October 2007 death of the 40-year-old Polish immigrant.
In a lengthy ruling read out in court, the judge said Millington's testimony about his explanation for using a Taser on Dziekanski was "patently false" and "preposterous."
"I can say right now I am the happiest person all over the world," Zofia Cisowski, Dziekanski's mom, said outside court. "I am very pleased."
Ehrcke said Millington's testimony was false, he knew it was false and he gave it with intent to mislead.
The Crown presented in court 10 particulars of the alleged perjury, only one of which prosecutors needed to prove to find Millington guilty of the charge.
The judge concluded the accused was guilty of six of the 10 particulars, finding that Millington and the other three officers charged colluded with one another in their versions of events shortly after the death.
The collusion happened when the cops were together at the Richmond detachment prior to giving statements to investigators.
Ehrcke noted their accounts were strikingly similar, and found that Millington had an opportunity and an incentive to lie, wrongly portraying Dziekanski as being aggressive to justify Tasering him.
The judge found that Millington had lied when he said he believed Dziekanski was still standing when he deployed the Taser a second time, and when he said the Polish man was falling down during the first shot of the Taser.
Millington also misled the inquiry when he claimed the officers had to wrestle Dziekanski to the ground.
But the judge found that the Crown's allegation Millington and the three officers colluded with one another at a meeting just prior to the 2009 inquiry was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Criminal justice branch spokesman Neil MacKenzie said outside court that there had been other convictions of police officers perjuring themselves in Canada, including B.C., but could not provide specifics.
He declined to comment on the impact of the ruling on the perjury cases of the three other officers.
Millington, who will remain on bail until sentencing, had little reaction to the verdict. Ravi Hira, his lawyer, had no comment outside court.
The Millington case is expected back in court March 19 to fix a date for sentencing.
Const. Bill Bentley, one of the three other officers accused in the case, was last year acquitted of the charges, but the Crown is appealing that ruling.
Closing submissions began Friday in the case of Const. Gerry Rundel, and a verdict is expected Feb. 26 for Cpl. Benjamin "Monty" Robinson, a fourth officer.
Court heard that the four cops were summoned to the airport after receiving reports an intoxicated man was throwing around chairs in a lounge for passengers arriving on international flights.
Dziekanski had arrived in Vancouver after an 18-hour trip from Warsaw and was hoping to meet up with his mother, but his mom left in frustration when they didn't meet.
When the officers approached Dziekanski, Millington Tasered him once, causing him to fall to the ground, then fired the Taser four more times.
Rundel, Bentley and Robinson then struggled to put handcuffs on Dziekanski, succeeding despite some difficulties. But Dziekanski's condition rapidly deteriorated and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
No criminal charges were laid against the officers in the immediate aftermath of the incident, but the B.C. government announced an inquiry into the case and appointed former judge Thomas Braidwood to oversee it.
kfraser@theprovince.com
twitter.com/keithrfraser(CNN) Republicans warned seven years ago that a health care law passed only by Democrats -- with no support from the other party -- would struggle to survive. The party-line vote to pass Obamacare, they said, was arrogant and reckless.
Now, the GOP is in charge, and poised to run afoul of its own warnings.
As Republican lawmakers begin to dismantle President Barack Obama's landmark health care law, awaiting the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, they face the prospect of overhauling the American health insurance system without any help from across the aisle. Democrats appear increasingly determined to offer Trump's party as little help as possible.
GOP efforts to revamp the Affordable Care Act -- some 20 million people are covered through Obamacare while many more have been less directly impacted by the law -- are poised to disrupt millions of Americans' health insurance. If repealing and replacing the ACA ultimately becomes a purely partisan Republican exercise, Obamacare could emerge one of the biggest political liabilities for Trump and his party -- just as it became a problem for Democrats.
Republicans sought to paint the Democrats' passing Obamacare without GOP support as extreme. Democrats are happy to return the favor. Making the difficult task of enacting healthcare reform a millstone for Republicans could end up helping Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, a Republican, said an overhaul of Obamacare would only have "long-term viability" if the GOP can win support from Democratic lawmakers.
"The GOP has indicated publicly that they intend not to make the same mistake that the Democrats did in passing a bill that was not supported in a bipartisan way," Leavitt said. "I think that's wise."
But Democratic votes won't be easy to get. In a Capitol Hill pep talk Wednesday, Obama urged Democrats not to "rescue" Republicans by helping them pass replacement measures, according to sources in the room.
After the meeting, a White House aide said Obama used "Trumpcare" as an indication he was open to Trump taking credit for improvements.
That is, of course, if Democrats see any changes they like.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the chamber, told CNN that Republicans would be making a serious mistake by moving ahead with reforming Obamacare on a purely partisan basis. Durbin went as far as to criticize Republicans for refusing to partner with Democrats on making incremental improvements to Obamacare over the years.
"We've had six years of opportunities to work together on a bipartisan basis to improve or change the Affordable Care Act. They have never, ever, accepted an invitation for that," Durbin said. "Their approach is: repeal it, and once you've repealed it, then we'll think of something new. That's not a responsible approach."
Not that Obama and Democrats didn't try. After Obama took office in 2009, his administration's initial efforts to win over Republican support for healthcare reform went nowhere as one by one, potential GOP allies turned their backs -- and Republican leaders were happy to paint the law as single party over-reach. The healthcare reform bill that landed on the president's desk in March 2010 had not received support from a single GOP lawmaker in the House or Senate.
"The ACA stands in contrast to just about every other piece of major social welfare legislation in the history of this county, which is usually done with bipartisan support," said Tevi Troy, deputy secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush.
GOP Rep. Phil Roe, a physician who last week introduced a repeal and replace Obamacare bill in the House, said the law was a "disaster" in large part because Democrats passed it without GOP input.
"I never understood why healthcare is Republican or Democrat issue. I've never seen a Republican or Democrat heart attack in my life," Roe said. "There were nine physicians in the Doctors Caucus at that time. Not one of us was asked one thing about that healthcare bill."
Well before the law was passed, Republicans have used promises to block then repeal Obamacare -- a phrase the GOP started using as a pejorative -- as a political rallying cry to rev up the party's base
And now that the GOP has the opportunity to dismantle Obamacare, there is no expectation that the party will garner any support from Democrats.
In fact, the vehicle that Republicans are using to roll back major pieces of the law -- a budget resolution followed by a budget reconciliation bill -- is a fast-track process that will allow the GOP to avoid a potential Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
But when it comes to the second and much more complicated task of overhauling Obamacare -- replacing what gets repealed -- Republicans don't yet have a plan.
GOP leaders have so far indicated a preference for the "repeal and delay" approach: passing a repeal bill as soon as possible but delaying the repeal measures from going into effect for several years as they develop a measure to replace the law. But already, rank-and-file Republicans are expressing reservations about moving too fast on repeal when there is little clarity on replace -- and creating a potential political nightmare
Department Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell will warn Congress of the dangers of repeal without replace during a speech Monday in Washington.
JUST WATCHED The executive freeze Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH The executive freeze 00:51
"If the Affordable Care Act is repealed without a replacement, the damage to the country's individual insurance market will begin this spring," Burwell will say, according to excerpts. "If health insurance companies don't know what the market will look like going forward, many will either raise prices or drop out. That means more Americans won't be able to afford coverage, and others won't be able to find it at all."
In a sudden role reversal, Republicans are now labeling Democrats obstructionists when it comes to the healthcare law.
"I think it's very unfortunate that (Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer has essentially said he's not interested in cooperating," GOP Sen. John Barrasso told CNN in an interview.
Barrasso and his fellow Republicans -- including the President-elect -- are also pressuring Democrats to cooperate.
"It is time for Republicans & Democrats to get together and come up with a healthcare plan that really works - much less expensive & FAR BETTER!" Trump tweeted last week.
...time for Republicans & Democrats to get together and come up with a healthcare plan that really works - much less expensive & FAR BETTER! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017
Democrats vehemently oppose repealing Obamacare, and only a handful of lawmakers -- moderates and those hailing from conservative areas -- are likely to show a willingness to discuss replacement efforts with Republicans.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a moderate Democrat, declined to attend Obama's meeting on Capitol Hill with Democrats last week because he said he opposes any purely partisan conversations about Obamacare.
"I would just caution my friends on the Republican side: the division we've seen in the country is because we had a bill that was passed in 2009... without any bipartisan support and now it's about to be repealed without any bipartisan support." Manchin told CNN. "You gotta be careful, throwing the baby out with the bathwater."Our 2013-14 season preview begins with the Dagger's Preseason Top 25 complete with best-case and worst-case scenarios for each team. Check back every morning for the next six weeks for more college hoops preview content.
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1. KENTUCKY
Key returners: F Alex Poythress, C Willie Cauley-Stein, G Jarrod Polson
Notable newcomers: F Julius Randle, G Andrew Harrison, G Aaron Harrison, F James Young, C Dakari Johnson, F Marcus Lee
Best-case scenario: John Calipari has sometimes drawn the ire of Kentucky fans by saying he values producing first-round picks as much as national titles. This spring, however, he gets the best of both worlds. Not only does Kentucky overwhelm opponents with talent, Calipari is also able to keep his team humble and hungry by recalling the memory of last year's disastrous NIT season. The youthful Wildcats jell quickly, rip through the SEC and enter the postseason with just two losses. In the NCAA tournament, Kentucky bests Duke on a Andrew Harrison jumper at the buzzer in a classic regional title game, then throttles Michigan State and Louisville in Dallas to capture a second national championship in three years. Cards fans are still in depression about the loss 2 1/2 months later on draft night when a record six Wildcats are selected in the first round, making room for Calipari's next crop of stars.
Worst-case scenario: Whereas the young stars who spearheaded Kentucky's 2012 title run were content to serve as role players, this year's batch of Wildcats isn't so eager to sacrifice individual goals for that of the team. McDonald's All-American Dakari Johnson sulks at sitting behind Willie Cauley-Stein and sophomore Alex Poythress publicly snipes at losing his starting job to freshmen Julius Randle and James Young. Chemistry issues and a lack of leadership prompt a handful of unexpected regular season losses, but the real disaster comes in the SEC tournament when an injury to Andrew Harrison exposes Kentucky's lack of depth at point guard. Senior Jarrod Polson gamely tries to fill in, but the Wildcats unravel in a one-sided Elite Eight loss to Duke. Wildcats fans are still in depression a week and a half later when Louisville crushes the Blue Devils in the national title game to win a second straight championship.
2. LOUISVILLE
Key returners: F Chane Behanan, G/F Wayne Blackshear, F Luke Hancock, F Montrezl Harrell, G Russ Smith, F Stephan Van Treese, G Kevin Ware
Notable newcomers: G Terry Rozier, G Chris Jones, F/C Mangok Mathiang, G Anton Gill
Best-case scenario: Even without Peyton Siva and Gorgui Dieng, a Louisville team that returns eight of its top 10 players turns out to be better than its national title team of a year ago. Highly touted junior college transfer Chris Jones capably replaces Siva at point guard, breakout star Montrezl Harrell protects the rim nearly as well as Dieng did even at 6-foot-8, onetime wildcard Russ Smith embraces his leadership role and a slimmer Wayne Blackshear shows the explosiveness he had in high school. The Cards run away with the league title in their lone season in the American Athletic Conference and outclass their first five NCAA tournament foes, setting up a dream title game against rival Kentucky. A now-healthy Kevin Ware comes off the bench to play the role of hero, scoring 21 points to help the Cardinals become the first team since 2006-07 Florida to win back-to-back titles.
Worst-case scenario: Having the core of a championship team back turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing. Complacency contributes to a handful of unexpected regular season losses, as does the inability to replace the leadership of Siva and the rim protecting of Dieng. Many expect Louisville to flip the switch in March and make it back to the Final Four, but the Cardinals run into an opponent that protects the ball and slows down the tempo in the Sweet 16. Luke Hancock's outside shots aren't falling and Louisville isn't getting easy buckets out of its swarming defense, so Russ Smith takes it upon himself to go into hero mode. It doesn't work. Russdiculous caps his college career with a 3-for-16 shooting night, and the Cards lose by 11. Ten days later, a still-healing Kevin Ware watches from his couch as Kentucky cuts down the nets after capturing its second national title in three years.
3. DUKE
Key returners: G Quinn Cook, G Tyler Thornton, G Rasheed Sulaimon, G Andre Dawkins, F Amile Jefferson, F Alex Murphy, F Josh Hairston, C Marshall Plumlee
Notable newcomers: F Rodney Hood, F Jabari Parker, G Matt Jones, F Semi Ojeleye
Best-case scenario: To nobody's surprise, Mississippi State transfer Rodney Hood emerges as an elite wing scorer, Rasheed Sulaimon continues to blossom and Jabari Parker lives up to his hype as the nation's most versatile freshman. More shocking, however, is that Duke's much-maligned crop of big men turns out to be more capable than expected. Injury-plagued 7-footer Marshall Plumlee stays healthy enough to play 20 minutes per game. When he's not on the floor to protect the rim, the improved athleticism of Duke's perimeter corps helps keep opposing guards out of the paint. Plus, 6-foot-9 sophomore Amile Jefferson brings something to the table himself in the form of added muscle and improved low-post scoring and positional defense. The combination of a dynamic perimeter unit and a better-than-expected group of bigs propels Duke to an ACC title, a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and a national championship. Things aren't so rosy, however, in Chapel Hill as P.J. Hairston torpedoes North Carolina's season when he's dismissed from the team in December after police pull him over for driving a rented Porsche 107 miles per hour.
Worst-case scenario: Terrific as Duke's group of forwards and wings are, they can't solve the Blue Devils' problems at big man. Plumlee's oft-injured feet sideline him for most of the season and neither Jefferson nor Josh Hairston are tall or long enough to capably protect the rim. As a result, quick, athletic opposing guards face little resistance once they get into the paint off the dribble. Duke is still an elite team for most of the season despite those issues, but questions about Quinn Cook as a point guard reemerge down the stretch of ACC play and in the postseason. With Cook's turnovers soaring and his confidence and shooting percentage plummeting, the Blue Devils become vulnerable in March. They narrowly avoid a Lehigh-esque upset in the Round of 64 before crashing out of the NCAA tournament two days later in a hail of missed jump shots and failed defensive possessions. Things are rosier in Chapel Hill, however, where P.J. Hairston redeems himself for a nightmare offseason by winning ACC player of the year and leading the Tar Heels to a surprise Final Four appearance.
4. MICHIGAN STATE
Key returners: G Keith Appling, G Gary Harris, F Branden Dawson, F Adreian Payne, G Denzel Valentine, G Travis Trice, F Matt Costello, F Alex Gauna
Notable newcomers: F Gavin Schilling
Best-case scenario: Expectations are high for a Michigan State team with four starters and a slew of key reserves back from last season, but the talented, experienced Spartans have no trouble living up to them. Even though the graduation of Derrick Nix removes Michigan State's top low-post scorer, the Spartans compensate fairly easily by sliding Adreian Payne to center, Branden Dawson to power forward and promising Denzel Valentine into the starting backcourt. Payne builds on the maturity and diversified game he flashed late last season, Dawson shows greater explosiveness now two years removed from an ACL tear and Keith Appling makes better decisions with the ball in his hands at point guard, but the player who blossoms the most is Gary Harris. Fully healthy after being plagued by shoulder problems last season, the talented shooting guard makes a case for himself as the Big Ten's best player and an All-American candidate, leading Michigan State to Tom Izzo's seventh Final Four and second national title. Patrons at The Riv in East Lansing toast Harris with $3.00 24-ounce mugs of Labatt on draft night when he's selected in the late lottery.
Worst-case scenario: Expectations are high for a Michigan State team with four starters and a slew of key reserves back from last season... and the Spartans don't even come close to living up to them. Payne remains the same talented but erratic player he has been throughout his Michigan State career, Dawson still lacks his pre-ACL tear explosiveness and lingering shoulder and ankle issues hamper Harris, but the player who struggles most is Appling. More of a scorer than a distributor his first three years in East Lansing, he is unable to change his mindset and set up his teammates for easy baskets the way Izzo wants and sees his turnovers per game rise and his shooting percentage diminish. Patrons at The Riv in East Lansing mutter under their breath over $3.00 24-ounce mugs of Labatt as Appling goes 2-for-11 with four turnovers in Michigan State's season-ending loss in the Sweet 16.
5. KANSAS
Key returners: F Perry Ellis, G Naadir Tharpe, F Jamari Traylor, F Landen Lucas
Notable newcomers: F Tarik Black, C Joel Embiid, G Conner Frankamp, F Brannen Greene, G Wayne Selden, F Andrew Wiggins, G Frank Mason
Best-case scenario: Buoyed by the arrival of Andrew Wiggins and the rest of a decorated freshman class, Kansas remains among the nation's elite teams despite losing all five starters from last season. An explosive athlete and gifted scorer with ideal size and length for the small forward position, Wiggins eases the burden on the rest of his young teammates by carrying Kansas for long stretches. As a result, promising sophomore forward Perry Ellis is able to remain a complementary scorer, point guard Naadir Tharpe doesn't have to work as hard to initiate the offense and McDonald's All-American Wayne Selden and the rest of the freshmen get to ease their way into their college careers. Though Kansas suffers some early losses as a result of its challenging non-league schedule, the youthful Jayhawks improve as the season goes along, edge Oklahoma State for a 10th straight Big 12 crown and roar to Bill Self's second championship. Wiggins enjoys his first year in Lawrence so much that he considers staying for a second before coming to his senses and entering the NBA draft.
Worst-case scenario: Though Wiggins is a transcendent talent, he isn't capable of carrying Kansas offensively from day one. As a result, the rest of the youthful Jayhawks are thrown into roles they aren't prepared for yet. Ellis isn't ready to be a No. 1 scoring option, Tharpe struggles to initiate the offense off the dribble and inconsistency continues to plague Memphis transfer Tarik Black the way it did throughout the 6-foot-9 forward's career with the Tigers. Kansas improves over the course of the season as its freshmen and sophomores become more comfortable with their responsibilities, but Oklahoma State wins the Big 12 crown by a game to snap the Jayhawks' nine-year streak. A Big 12 tournament title offers some consolation, but the Jayhawks' youth shows again in the NCAA tournament when they fall in the round of 32. Wiggins reveals he's turning pro in the post-game locker room, admitting to reporters that he regrets not going to Kentucky, North Carolina or Florida State instead.
6. ARIZONA
Key returners: G Nick Johnson, G Jordin Mayes, F Brandon Ashley, C Kaleb Tarczewski, G Gabe York
Notable newcomers: F Aaron Gordon, F Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, G Elliott Pitts, G T.J. McConnell
Best-case scenario: Trading a scoring guard in Mark Lyons for a true point guard in T.J. McConnell gives Arizona what it lacked a year ago. McConnell, who averaged 11.4 points and 5.6 assists as a sophomore at Duquesne, makes his teammates better by setting them up for high-quality shots while also playing sound on-ball defense and shooting over 40 percent from behind the arc. In addition to improved point guard play, the Wildcats also flourish because of their versatility. If Sean Miller wants to go big, he plays 6-foot-8 McDonald's All-American Aaron Gordon at small forward, with sophomores Brandon Ashley and Kaleb Tarczewski in the paint. If Miller wants to go to a quicker, pressing lineup, then Nick Johnson and defensive ace Rondae Hollis-Jefferson man the wings with Gordon sliding to power forward and Ashley moving to center. Outside shooting is a weakness, but nobody in an improved Pac-12 can match Arizona's combination of size and athleticism. The Wildcats out-duel Oregon and UCLA for the Pac-12 title, earn a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and finally get Miller his first Final Four berth after two previous Elite Eight runs ended one win short.
Worst-case scenario: Gordon's insistence on showcasing his blossoming perimeter skills to NBA scouts backfires on him and weakens Arizona in the process. Not only does the highly touted freshman shoot sub-30 percent from behind the arc, he is a less effective rebounder and defender at small forward than at power forward. Playing Gordon on the perimeter would be easier to justify were both of Arizona's two sophomore big men progressing, but Tarczewski still lacks a consistent back-to-the-basket game and Ashley continues to give an uneven effort on defense and to struggle to assert himself on offense. The result is a 2012-13 UNLV-esque team that underachieves relative to its talent level. Oregon edges Arizona for the Pac-12 title and the Wildcats fall two wins shy of Miller's first Final Four berth when they're beaten in the Sweet 16.
7. MICHIGAN
Key returners: G Spike Albrecht, F Jon Horford, G Caris LeVert, F Mitch McGary, F Jordan Morgan, F Glenn Robinson III, G Nik Stauskas
Notable newcomers: G Derrick Walton, G Zak Irvin, F Mark Donnal
Best-case scenario: Neither freshman Derrick Walton nor sophomore Spike Albrecht come close to matching Trey Burke's scoring output, but the two young point guards solidify Michigan's weakest position. Walton showcases basketball IQ beyond his years and an ability to set up his teammates. Albrecht builds off his memorable first half in the national title game last April, delivering pinpoint passes and timely buckets. Solid point guard play elevates Michigan from Big Ten contender to Final Four threat because the Wolverines are loaded elsewhere. Mitch McGary picks up where he left off last March as an interior scorer, Glenn Robinson III emerges as a breakout perimeter star and Nik Stauskas stretches defenses with his remarkable outside shooting. That trio propels Michigan to the regional finals, where the Wolverines get another crack at Louisville and upset the favored Cardinals on a late Albrecht steal and layup. For the second straight year Albrecht asks Michigan super fan Kate Upton out via Twitter. This time she says yes.
Worst-case scenario: Whereas Burke was ready to take over for Darius Morris as a freshman, the pressure of replacing the national player of the year is too great for Walton and Albrecht. Walton experiences typical freshman growing pains and Albrecht's national title game performance proves to be a flash in the pan. Poor point guard play isn't the only issue that plagues Michigan either. McGary can't maintain the level he played at in March over the course of a full season, Robinson III isn't ready to be a go-to scorer and Stauskas endures an ill-timed March shooting slump. Michigan finishes well behind rivals Michigan State and Ohio State in the Big Ten and fails to make it out of the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. Albrecht asks Upton out a second time anyway. Once again, she ignores him.
8. OHIO STATE
Key returners: G Aaron Craft, G Shannon Scott, F LaQuinton Ross, G Lenzelle Smith Jr., F Sam Thompson, C Amir Williams, C Trey McDonald
Notable newcomers: F Marc Loving, G Kam Williams
Best-case scenario: In addition to a strong defense spearheaded by guards Aaron Craft, Lenzelle Smith and Shannon Scott and rim protector Amir Williams, Ohio State actually generates more offense than expected. The loss of last year's leading scorer DeShaun Thomas isn't debilitating because talented but enigmatic LaQuinton Ross emerges as a viable replacement. Building on the huge games he had in the West Regional against Arizona and Wichita State last March, Ross scores from long range, off the dribble and via the mid-range jump shot, enabling Craft, Smith and Sam Thompson to remain in their customary secondary scoring roles. As a result, the Buckeyes capture the Big Ten title, secure another high NCAA tournament seed and return to the Final Four, avenging last year's heartbreaking regional final loss to Wichita State along the way. Ohio State won't have to worry about Michigan there either. The Wolverines fall in the Round of 32 and Mitch McGary and Glenn Robinson III turn pro five minutes after the final buzzer.
Worst-case scenario: Though Ohio State's perimeter defense remains a strength, the offense falters without Thomas. Neither Ross nor Thompson are ready to seize the role of go-to scorer, putting too much pressure on Craft to become something he's not. The Buckeyes stay close against quality teams because of their defense but they lack a closer to finish the job. Losses mount in the rugged Big Ten, and Ohio State finishes a disappointing fifth. In the NCAA tournament, Ohio State draws Wichita State in the round of 32, and the game mirrors last year's regional final. An Ohio State comeback falls short, Craft's college career ends ingloriously and the Shockers advance. Meanwhile, Michigan wins the national championship and Mitch McGary and Glenn Robinson III announce they're returning to school in hopes of defending that title.
9. SYRACUSE
Key returners: F Rakeem Christmas, F DaJuan Coleman, G Trevor Cooney, F C.J. Fair, F Jerami Grant, F Baye Moussa Keita
Notable newcomers: G Tyler Ennis, F Michael Gbinije, F Tyler Roberson, G Ron Patterson
Best-case scenario: Did Syracuse really lose its starting backcourt? High-scoring Tyler Ennis proves to be a better decision maker than talented-but-turnover-prone Michael Carter-Williams at point guard and Trevor Cooney and Duke transfer Michael Gbinije combine to replace Brandon Triche's production at shooting guard. Solid perimeter play is a pleasant surprise for Syracuse, but the true strength of the team remains its imposing frontline. C.J. Fair blossoms in the role of No. 1 scoring option, Jerami Grant makes a big leap as a sophomore and big men Baye Moussa Keita, Rakeem Christmas and DaJuan Coleman swallow up rebounds and protect the rim. Syracuse's size and length in the frontcourt would make its trademark zone fearsome no matter what, but it's even more confounding for ACC teams unaccustomed to having to solve it. Jim Boeheim fittingly holds Syracuse's victory party at a Greensboro Denny's on Selection Sunday after the Orange complete a sweep of the ACC regular season and tournament titles. Then the Orange make a deep enough NCAA tournament run that all the snow on campus has melted by the time they return.
Worst-case scenario: Yes, Syracuse really did lose last year's starting backcourt. Tyler Ennis looks ill-prepared to assume the role of starting point guard as a true freshman and neither Gbinije nor Cooney seize the shooting guard role, forcing Boeheim to turn to another freshman, Ron Patterson. The Syracuse frontcourt is predictably excellent and the interior defense is sound, but the mistake-prone backcourt takes too many ill-advised shots and turns the ball over too frequently. As a result, Syracuse slips out of contention for the ACC title by Valentine's Day and falls to Duke in the semifinals of the league tournament. Unable to get a flight back to blizzard-ravaged Syracuse the following morning, Boeheim and the Orange watch the Selection Show from a Greensboro Denny's. Food poisoning from a bad batch of eggs waylays half the roster and Syracuse falls by 20 in the opening round of the NCAA tournament four days later.
10. NORTH CAROLINA
Key returners: G Marcus Paige, G Leslie McDonald, G P.J. Hairston, G J.P. Tokoto F James Michael McAdoo F Desmond Hubert, F Joel James, F Brice Johnson
Notable newcomers: F Kennedy Meeks, F Isaiah Hicks, G Nate Britt
Best-case scenario: Humbled by his tumultuous offseason and in the best shape of his life thanks to extra conditioning, P.J. Hairston is both a standout on the floor and a model citizen off it. He reemerges as North Carolina's premier perimeter scoring threat upon returning from a brief season-opening suspension. That's a key development for the Tar Heels, as is improved play from their young big men. Whereas the center position was such a black hole for North Carolina last season that Roy Williams had to slide James Michael McAdoo to center and Hairston to power forward, this year Williams has a plethora of options. Freshman Kennedy Meeks develops quickly enough to command the starting job by the start of ACC play, while Desmond Hubert serves as a key defender off the bench and Brice Johnson's added weight enables him to no longer get pushed around. The combination of perimeter scoring from Hairston and a deep, versatile frontcourt elevates North Carolina into title contention in the ACC and nationally. That's good enough for the Tar Heels to regain Tobacco Road bragging rights as Duke is hurt by a lack of a true big man and revamped NC State fades to the lower half of the ACC.
Worst-case scenario: P.J.'s back for Kentucky... but he doesn't stick around long. Another violation of team rules forces Roy Williams to dismiss his leading returning scorer before the start of ACC play, leaving North Carolina without a potent scorer at either wing position. The Tar Heels try to compensate by becoming a more front court-oriented team, but they don't have much success. McAdoo puts up decent numbers again thanks to his quick first step to the rim and ability to attack the offensive glass, but neither his mid-range game nor his low-post moves have improved. And while the Tar Heels have plenty of front court depth around him, nobody is good enough to seize the starting center job. Meeks is too inexperienced, Hubert and Joel James are too raw offensively and Johnson lacks the strength and bulk to defend the position. North Carolina squeaks into the NCAA tournament only to be exposed in the Round of 64. Meanwhile, Duke wins another title and NC State advances to a second Sweet 16 in three years.
11. FLORIDA
Key returners: G Scottie Wilbekin, C Patric Young, F Will Yeguete, G Michael Frazier Jr., F Casey Prather
Notable newcomers: F Dorian Finney-Smith, F Chris Walker, C Damontre Harris, G Kasey Hill, G Eli Carter
Best-case scenario: Chris Walker and Dorian Finney-Smith are throwing down dunks. Patric Young is scattering bodies in the paint. Michael Frazier is draining 3-pointers. Scottie Wilbekin and Kasey Hill take care of the ball as though it were made of glass. Florida even manages to win a close game or two after dropping all six games decided by six or less last season. Yes, everything goes right for the Gators, who challenge Kentucky for the SEC crown and then crash through their Elite Eight ceiling after three straight years of falling one win shy of the Final Four.
Worst-case scenario: Forget Florida's Elite Eight ceiling. The Gators don't even make it out of the NCAA tournament's opening weekend. Wilbekin's off-the-court issues derail his season, Hill proves too green to handle point guard duties as a freshman and highly touted forward Chris Walker is unable to get academically eligible by the start of winter semester. Though the Florida front court is deep enough to absorb the loss of Walker, the team's maddening inability to win close games resurfaces for a second straight season. It proves costly in SEC play and in the postseason, and suddenly losing in the Elite Eight doesn't seem so bad.
12. OKLAHOMA STATE
Key returners: G Marcus Smart, G Markel Brown, F LeBryan Nash, G Phil Forte, F Michael Cobbins, G/F Brian Williams
Notable newcomers: G Stevie Clark, F Gary Gaskins
Best-case scenario: Travis Ford says there's no ceiling for what this team can accomplish, and he's right. With national player of the year candidate Marcus Smart returning for his sophomore year and fellow stars Markel Brown and LeBryan Nash also back, Oklahoma State has the firepower to contend in the Big 12 and nationally. Those three carry the Cowboys, but they also get timely contributions from now-healthy wing Brian Williams, sweet-shooting Phil Forte and a bulked-up 6-foot-8 big man Michael Cobbins. Is that enough to dethrone Kansas in the Big 12? Yup. The Cowboys end the Jayhawks' nine-year league title streak and avenge their first-round NCAA tournament exit last March with a deep run. Smart's controversial decision to return to school draws praise after he goes in the top three picks of the NBA draft.
Worst-case scenario: Oklahoma State's ceiling may be high, but the Cowboys don't come anywhere close to reaching it. Though Smart, Brown and Nash excel once again, many of the same problems that kept Oklahoma State from being elite last season reeemerge. Cobbins is still unable to provide much low-post offense or to keep opposing big men from pushing him around on the block. Outside shooting remains a major weakness. And a lack of depth causes the Cowboys' stars to wear down late in the season. Is that enough to keep Oklahoma State from dethroning Kansas in the Big 12? Yup. The Cowboys finish third behind the Jayhawks and Baylor in league play, then fizzle in the opening round of the NCAA tournament for the second straight March. Smart's controversial decision to return to school draws renewed criticism after he slides out of the top 10 picks in a stronger, deeper NBA draft.
13. MEMPHIS
Key returners: G Geron Johnson, G Joe Jackson, G Chris Crawford, F Shaq Goodwin
Notable newcomers: G Michael Dixon, F David Pellom, F Austin Nichols, G/F Nick King, G/F Kuran Iverson, G Markel Crawford, G Pookie Powell, C Dominic Woodson
Best-case scenario |
day, my eleven-year-old son handed me my iPhone with an accusatory air, as if to say: So this is what you people do behind our backs. While he was looking at stocks, he came across a news item reporting that AT&T, with another company, was about to introduce a snap-around-the-wrist, GPS-tracking, emergency-button-featuring, watch-like thingie for children. It’s called FiLIP, comes in bright colors, and has two-way calling and parent-to-child texting. It allows you to set safe zones, so that you’re alerted when your child enters or leaves a designated area.
A little stunned, I checked it out online. FiLIP, I found, is far from the first such gizmo; this one just has more bells and whistles than most. “The world used to be a little simpler,” went its mom-and-apple-pie pitch. “Kids ran free and returned at dinnertime, and parents didn’t worry so much. But today, parents are under more pressure than ever.... FiLIP has a simple mission—to help kids be kids again, while giving parents an amazing new window into their children’s lives.” Right. And the Invisible Fence collar on my late lamented cairn terrier let my dog be a dog.
All parents have to let their children off the leash eventually—to let them go out unsupervised, to grant them free-ish range on the Internet. That moment always comes before you’re ready for it. For me, it came after a ninth birthday, when we hooked up a Nintendo Wii, then discovered, months later, that it could be used to roam the Internet. Another point was reached toward the end of elementary school, when my children announced that they were the very last kids in their class to get a smartphone. I stalled. Then my son showed me the FiLIP ad, and I discovered a universe of options.
For the iPhone I will soon be buying him, I can get an iPhone Spy Stick, to be plugged into a USB port while he sleeps; it downloads Web histories, e-mails, and text messages, even the deleted ones. Or I can get Mobile Spy, software that would let me follow, in real time, his online activity and geographical location. Also available are an innocent-looking iPhone Dock Camera that would recharge his battery while surreptitiously recording video in his room, and a voice-activated audio monitor, presumably for the wild parties he’s going to throw when his father and I go out of town.In 1946, a senior executive at film studio 20th Century Fox famously predicted that television wouldn’t take off. “People will soon get tired of staring into a plywood box every night,” he thought.
Then in the late 1970s, as computers sparking the interest of Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, tech geeks were predicting there would be a computer in every home. And look how that turned out.
Fast forward to 2016, and Australia is set to become the first country in the world to microchip humans Yes, really. And while it’s hard to predict the future, NBC news in the US recently predicted all Americans would be microchipped within the next few years.
Well guess what? The technology is already being rolled out here in Australia.
At this stage, a person’s decision to be ‘microchipped’ is completely voluntary, and several who’ve undergone the procedure say they’re excited to be pioneers of a “superhuman” phenomenon which enables them to get into secure buildings and their cars without cards or keys.
And the advantages don’t stop there. The technology has the potential to enable people to turn on lights and log into computers, or pay for things with a wave of a hand.
Sydney woman Shanti Korporaal has had two implants inserted under her skin, and is thrilled by the possibility of a life without passwords, PINs, cards or keys.
“With Opal, you get a unique identification number that could be programmed into the chip… A chip could open your computer, photocopier”, she said.
The microchips, which are the size of a grain of rice, can act like a business card and transfer data to smartphones, as well as hold complex medical data.
How the chips work
The chips are inserted into the flesh just below the skin, between the forefinger and thumb.
The chip is cheap – costing between $80 and $140 depending on the sophistication of the technology – and is done by doctors who charge around $150.
The procedure only takes a few minutes – involving a local anesthetic, insertion through a long needle and then a quick ultrasound to ensure the chip is in place.
It might be quick and pretty straightforward, but it’s not painless, and people need to be careful with their hands for a couple of weeks while the chip settles into place. Those who’ve undergone the procedure say the chip is almost impossible to detect thereafter, leaving only a small mark like a freckle.
Ethical concerns
The chips work by using Radio Frequency Identification (RIFD) technology – the same signals that power our motorway e-toll system and the ‘pay wave’ cards we love to use at the supermarket.
The possible applications are endless – and RIFD is also widely used in transport, manufacturing, and retail industries for tracking, tracing and stocktaking.
While it’s early days, the ethical, social, practical and security concerns over what data people should have chipped, and how that data needs to be considered in terms of the law, are still being debated.
American Amal Graafstra, a long-term champion of the technology, had his implants inserted in 2005 and claims, “…It’s given me the ability to communicate with machines. It’s literally integrated into who I am.”
Mr Graafstra spends much of his time advocating the rights of people who have the implants. “I want to make sure it’s treated as part of the body, like an organ,” he says.
One firm in Sweden has allowed employees to choose chips over a work pass, allowing them to access building as well enabling the use of photocopiers, and to pay for lunch at the canteen.
The company says it was keen to understand this technology before big corporates or government make chips compulsory, after which there may be a need to play ‘catch up’ on how it works and what its implications might be.
Hannes Sjoblad from Swedish bio-hacking group BioNyfiken, says by using the technology now, we can better understand and assess its potential.
On the other hand, the chips raise concerns about privacy and control by government and corporations. The ability to know precisely where we are at any given time and what we do is an information goldmine for companies, and has the potential to lead to a society where our every move can be monitored and controlled.Aquascapes, like all art forms, have a plethora of rules of guidance and application. These rules exist to guide us towards success, and often succeed in doing so. But remember: rules exist only to guide, and a skilled artist can actually enhance their work by bending or breaking the accepted rules if done so in just the right artistic manner: aquatic artistry is no different.
*Update* There is now a new ‘Linear Layout’ style created by James findley. Read about it here »
This article will talk you through the basic ideas of composition and design, highlighting the rules along the way and helping you learn to apply and break those rules to gain the artistic effect you desire, whilst maximising the beauty and impact of your design. First, we will examine ‘The Golden Ratio’ and how to create perspective in an aquarium, before looking at some common aquarium layouts.
Aquascape No.1 from the ‘Triptych’ Trio by famous aquascaper James Findley demonstrates the effectiveness of The Golden Ratio.
Working with ‘The Golden Ratio’ and the rule of thirds
The Golden Ratio was realised by the ancient Greeks and has been used in all art forms for thousands of years. It provides a guide to achieve the perfect balance within a work of art, or any endeavour that involves placing objects in a space. It can be simplified into the rule of thirds which doesn’t have the exact same ratios but is easier to implement when composing a two dimensional layout such as an aquascape from one viewing angle- for example the front of the tank.
How to use it
Imagine that there are four lines (two horizontal and two vertical) running through your tank, splitting it into nine equal sections. Wherever the lines cross is a golden focus point for your aquascape, and marks where you should consider positioning prominent features like main stones, wood shapes or bold/red plant species. The same process can be done when considering planning the height of plants and hard-scape; place the focal points at 1/3 or 2/3 of the height of the tank, and remember to consider the height that your plants will grow to. You can use it to plan the overall scape of your tank, for example you can choose to have 1/3 planted and 2/3 negative space, or vice versa. There are almost an infinite number of combinations to play with, and all can help you achieve stunning results.
Breaking the rules…
Remember that not all of the rules must be followed all the time. Whilst it may be advisable for beginners to stick more stoically to the rules of composition, a focal point that breaks the rules will demand attention in the most commanding manner by bringing tension and interest to the scape, resulting in a truly breathtaking effect.
Red lines – The Golden Ratio grid
Green and Blue lines – work with triangles
Creating Perspective
This can be one of the greatest challenges in an aquarium as aquariums often do not have enough depth (from front to back) to give a deep enough sense of perspective. This can be achieved with careful planting and positioning of hardscape, and the use of The Golden Ratio helps with this to no end.
The problem…
A common mistake when positioning hardscape is to place stones or wood in a very unnatural, straight line from left to right. This results in a flat, two-dimensional image.
The solution…
To avoid this, imagine your tank as consisting of several images, or screens, layered one after the other from the front to the back of the tank, each with a small gap in between, so that each image is slightly further away from the first. Make sure that when you place your hardscape, you place it in a variety of ‘screens’, so that it spans a variety of points in the depth of your tank. Some pieces of hardscape can share the same ‘screen’, or point of depth, but the key is to create points of perspective from the the front, and these points should be the lowest, to the back where they will be the highest. Like The Golden Ratio, this is a guide, and only a guide, to creating a good sense of perspective within the aquarium. The more experienced artistic eye will learn to manipulate the rules and use and break them where desired to create a truly beautiful, individual scape.
Top view. The different shades of green represent layers of perspective and depth (front to back).
Layouts
There are three common layouts;
‘The U-Shape’
The negative, or open space, will be in the centre of the aquarium. Alternatively if you are using the rule of two thirds, it will be off centre. There will be higher planting to the left and right hand sides of the aquarium.
U-Shape layout frontal view.
U-Shape layout top view.
The Traditional Method…
When the negative space in the middle has been chosen, the next step is to select what plants to use and where to position them. This should be done carefully and several elements need to be considered in order to plant a successful scape. First, one should consider the growth habits of the plant; what height will it grow to, and how fast will it achieve that height. Thought should be invested in how the maintenance of the plants will be carried out; if you want the plant growth in one area of the tank to be at a height of 5cm, but choose a plant that grows very rapidly to 8cm, then you will be forever trimming and maintaining your tank, making it hard to maintain the ‘U’ shape and achieve your vision.
A New Way…
As with all art, especially relatively new artforms, trends have changed over the years and techniques have developed. The traditional technique is to use plants such as Glosstigma elatinoides, small Cryptocorne species like C. Parva and regularly pruned stem plants to create the ‘U’ shape. A relatively new and modern alternative to this is to use decorative sands and graded gravels in the place of Glossostigma, wood and stones to create the ‘U’ shape, and plants to soften the harsh edges of the hard-scape. This technique leads to a feeling of looking down a river or deep gorge enveloped in a tall, exotic canopy of wild green foliage.
‘The Triangle’
This is a successful compositional layout in cases where the tank is in the corner of the room and viewing angles are restricted. It consists of planting the area of the tank in the corner of the room, by the wall, and then gradually reducing the height of the planting as it moves further away from the wall, as though the plants are naturally creeping in towards your living space.
Triangle layout frontal view.
Triangle layout top view.
Thirds
Despite the apparent simplicity of this arrangement, careful consideration is needed. The first thing to consider is the negative, or open, space. With this layout the Golden Ratio or rule of two thirds are often used, with plants making up two thirds of the space and the final third being left as negative space. A further tip is to utilise triangles throughout the scaping of the tank to highlight the composition and dimensions. For example, wood or stones are often used to counter balance the triangular planting of this design by pointing them in the opposite direction; often up into the far/top corner in the open area. This style lends itself to an open sand area for Corydorus sp and brings a spacious feel to an aquarium.
Planting
The second thing to be considered is the choice of plants. For manageable maintenance, and optimum success, ensure that plants are chosen with an eye to maintaining desired height levels; stem plants are few and far between in this arrangement due to their growth habits. Where they are used, they are in the corner of the aquarium where the planting is at its greatest height.
The Island
This is the least commonly used layout, and is often only used by aquarists who have a large aquarium to plant. The style is fairly self explanatory; all the main hardscape and planting is in the centre of the tank, and the height radiating from high in the centre to lower on the edges. Triangles are also used in this design, but in more dynamic ways.
Island layout frontal view.
Island layout top view.
Planting
Stem plants often give the main body of height with more long term plants such as Cryptocorne species providing long term biomass. This is, of course, only a guide and could and should be adapted where desired. For example, it could be adapted for an Iwagumi design, using low growing plants and using the hard scape and the height of the substrate to provide the island shape. This style is one of the few that allows you to position the island in the centre of the aquarium, but it can also be placed off-centre depending on your desired style. It should be noted, however, that although the island can be central it is best to avoid dominant stones, wood or plants being central.
Maintenance
Good aquascaping tools really do make a difference! Aquascape Pro do a whole range of professional tools at very reasonable prices – starting at around just £11. Their Pinsettes and Scissors come in a range of sizes and are very useful for effective, precise maintenance of your Nature Aquarium Layout.
Like this article? More articles by The Green Machine that might interest you are;
If you would like more help and advice please contact us now, or phone us on 01978 265 090. We have already helped thousands of people learn to aquascape and we are still counting!Ever the resplendent fashionista, Rose Lefko-Cohen sits in her north Toronto apartment with delicately coiffed hair and stylish striped pants, surrounded by family. The local great-grandmother affectionately known as Gramma Rose is the proud matriarch of her close-knit loved ones, overseeing three generations of Goulds, Lefkos and Cohens, the surnames of the three husbands she’s outlived. Five years ago, the Star profiled Lefko-Cohen for her 100th birthday. On Tuesday, she celebrated her 105th, and not much has changed in the interim. She’s still sprightly and affable, keeping her weekly hair appointments at a nearby beauty salon, and enjoying bagel breakfasts with her son David and his wife, Helen. The Star caught up with Gramma Rose recently, to hear her wax philosophical and talk about the things she’s learned and experienced in her 105 years. Q: If you could go back and change one thing about your life, what would it be?
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A: I can’t very well think of something. After all, I have a lovely family, and everybody is so wonderful to me. I can’t complain and there’s nothing I can say … I’m very, very lucky. I lost a daughter, that’s the only thing that I must say was very hard. But besides that, there’s been a lot of people (I’ve seen) go. I haven’t got very many people with me for 105. Therefore, there’s people I don’t see anymore, and that, I must say, is very (hard). … But I can’t change those things, so the only thing I could say is that I wish (my daughter) could be here, so she could see what’s going on with me. But I’ve been so lucky. Do you know that the world is made up of wonderful people? It’s not everybody that realizes it. And I do.
Q: Do you have any regrets in life? A: I lost my mother also. She was an older woman, but when I lost her, I’d been off one day from work. And I had a daughter that said to me, “You can’t go (see her) today, you’ve only got one day. Go out.” But she died that day. And that’s one thing I’ve never forgotten. You can’t forget those things. … I still regret not being able to say goodbye to her. Q: What’s the secret to being happy? A: Everybody has asked me that as I go along, since I’ve been 100, and the only thing I say is that, I have a wonderful family. I might not see them today; I might not see them tomorrow. But I know they’re there, and if I just pick up the phone — which I would never do because I know they’ve got a family; they’ve got their responsibilities. But they manage to see me.
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And when they’re away, I pray that everybody comes back safe and sound … They’ve all come back recently from holidays, and I was so glad to see and hear that they had touched ground here. Q: How do you feel about how the world has changed since you were young? A: Oh, it’s changed. It’s changed a lot. And I’ll tell you one thing — if you’d like to know — one thing I did like: I used to like going to the races. I loved it. Q: If you could go on forever and live forever, would you? A: No, no. I think before everybody gets tired of me I think I should get going … I just hope they don’t sit and cry about it, because you can’t live forever. Q: Do you have any advice? A: Life is very short if you’re not happy in it. If God is good to you, you should repay by trying to do the best you can, for everybody. But you know, none of us are perfect. And believe me, I can see I’m not perfect and they’re not perfect, but that doesn’t change my feelings for my children. I’m glad to be 105, even though I’m a little achy and a little shaky, and I can’t hear too well. But you know what? I’m lucky.The Silk Road mod has been created by Jomni, the mastermind behind the gem Sengoku Jidai, and it wonderfully integrates China and some of its neighbours into the FoG2 universe!
Fight battles covering the Zhou Dynasty’s (1049 – 256 BC) early expansion against its non-Chinese neighbours. Take the role of the feudal dukes undermining the authority of the court and fight an all-out war for supremacy against each other during the Spring and Autumn Period (770 - 476 BC) and Warring States Period (475 - 221 BC). Lead the Qin state to achieve unification and the formation of the Qin Dynasty (221 - 207 BC). Pacify the wild frontiers in the Han-Xiongnu Wars (133 BC - 91 AD). Venture westward and relive the little-known conflict between the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) and the Graeco-Bactrian city state of Ferghana (Dayuan) in the War of the Heavenly Horses (104 – 101 BC). Take the side of nomads and tribes in a war for superiority in the Mongolian steppes and Silk Road trading routes. And if the ruling dynasty has lost the Mandate of Heaven, bring them down with rebellions.
Battles do not have to be historical. What if Alexander’s armies marched into China instead? What if Rome got past the Parthians and set their ambitions further east?
More Chinese armies will be added as the timeline of the game is extended.
The mod can be played with the Immortal Fire DLC, but it is not mandatory. Owners of just the base version of Field of Glory II will be able to play this mod as well, just without the Immortal Fire army lists.
Features:
Custom Battle, Sandbox Campaign, and Multiplayer modules synced with currently available base and DLC armies.
Chinese units and army lists covering the Zhou, Qin, and Early Han Dynasties (1046 BC – 23 AD). More will be added.
Various ethnic groups that inhabit western, north-western China and Mongolia (Xirong, Beidi, Donghu, Xiongnu, Xianbei, Wuhuan, Qiang, and Di).
Chinese and non-Chinese names for commanders.
Many new unit types.
You can download the mod directly from the game, clicking on the “Download community scenarios” button in the upper left side of the Main Menu, Epic Battles or Campaigns screen. To play it, you must select the module “The Silk Road” in the Custom Battles/Campaigns/MP Challenge Skirmish area. (Not the Epic Battles area).SAN DIEGO—Calling the naiveté of the human resources coordinator “absolutely priceless,” office bad boy Ryan Millstein on Wednesday reportedly saw right through a series of team-building exercises. “They honestly believe I’ll learn to rely on my peers more after a few trust falls—that is so goddamn rich,” said the rebel, who stood, arms crossed, while his coworkers tossed around a bean bag and offered two truths and a lie about themselves upon catching it, thereby haplessly buying into the “entire fucking corporate charade.” “Am I really the only one who knows that the so-called strategic thinking skills of Zip Zap Zop are utterly worthless? Seriously, you have to be some kind of sucker to not realize that the Blindfolded Puzzle Challenge isn’t gonna teach you squat about collaborating to solve a complex problem.” At press time, Millstein was participating in a rousing game of telephone, which he insisted was for fun and not for any lessons about listening and communicating accurately.
AdvertisementMid-sized WokFi antenna sample
WokFi (a portmanteau derived from blending the words Wok + Wi-Fi) is a slang term for a style of homemade Wi-Fi antenna consisting of a crude parabolic antenna made with a low-cost Asian kitchen wok, spider skimmer or similar household metallic dish. The dish forms a directional antenna which is pointed at the wireless access point antenna, allowing reception of the wireless signal at greater distances than standard omnidirectional Wi-Fi antennas.
Description [ edit ]
WokFi antennas are fabricated out of commonly available concave metal kitchen dishes or dish covers (which need not be perfectly parabolic); Asian woks are favored because they have shapes closest to parabolic. A commercial Wi-Fi antenna, usually a USB Wi-Fi dongle, is suspended in front of the dish, attached by cable to the computer.
The WokFi antenna is considered simpler and cheaper than other home-built antenna projects (such as the popular cantenna), but is a very effective method to boost the Wi-Fi connection quality, audit access point coverage, and even quickly establish WLAN viability – perhaps if a more professional setup is eventually intended.
Advantages [ edit ]
A significant advantage is that with a USB modem the RF signal is converted to a conventional digital signal at the antenna. Therefore, by using standard USB extension cables, the antenna can be located at a distance from the computer of five meters or more, with no concerns over microwave signal losses that would occur in an RF coaxial cable feedline of that length used to attach a conventional antenna to the RF input of a computer modem. Chaining active USB repeaters, it is possible to locate the antenna at much greater distances from the computer, which is especially useful when line-of-sight (LOS) obstacles (such as vegetation and walls) require the antenna to be located on a roof, for example. If using mesh reflectors, usually with a grid under 5 mm, the antenna will be lighter and present a smaller wind-load than larger dishes.
Performance [ edit ]
WokFi gains are typically 10+ dB,[1] with range boosts, thus can be 16-32 times over the antenna of a bare USB adapter. Ranges (LoS) are typically 3–5 km,[2] although an aligned pair of similar point-to-point transceiver setups may approach 10 km over a clear path. In addition, certain improved WokFi antennas, and antennas made using 60 to 90 cm (2-3 ft) diameter round or oval satellite TV dishes, allow even far greater range, up to 20 km.[3]
Interference from nearby 2.4 GHz signals (perhaps from cordless phones, AV links, leaky microwave ovens, other APs or Bluetooth) can be nulled out—a useful feature in this increasingly crowded part of the RF spectrum. The performance of abundant, low-powered Wi-Fi "dongles", typically selling for approximately US$15–20, but of only 30–40 mW transmitter power and modest receiver sensitivity, can easily be boosted with little more than cheap cookware or pot lids. The "sweet spot" on such ad hoc reflectors can readily be found by taping a small (~2.5 cm, or 1 in) mirror on the surface of the dish, to see where the sun's rays focus.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]SuperEgo is making hemp cool again.
When Tommie Lark founded Superego, his mission was simple: Let’s change the standard of clothing to hemp. With hemp being more durable and breathable than cotton, hemp apparel offers a real, sustainable solution to the environmental damages caused by cotton.
As for Superego, their goal is to be more than a hemp t-shirt company. They are using hemp at the core to promote sustainability as a lifestyle
Ministry of Hemp sat down with Tommie to learn more about SuperEgo’s mission and the global movement of “Cut From A Different Cloth” (#CFADC)
Tell me a bit about where you’re from?
I was born and raised in Massachusetts, but decided to go to a Liberal Arts college in Connecticut. It was there we got the idea behind SuperEgo.
Wesleyan University is a very liberal college and it definitely influenced our thinking. My two other friends and I really started talking about how we wanted to start a brand that was different. We wanted to get into entertainment, music, or fashion – and with a twist that could differentiate us.
How do you best describe SuperEgo as a brand? If you could describe the essence of it, what would it be?
Superego is a lifestyle brand building a culture of sustainable living through quality hemp products and multimedia. We want to make hemp the new standard as we expand our catalog. We plan to expand our product portfolio to other lifestyle products.
What’s the story behind SuperEgo?
“At the core, we’re trying to change the standard of t-shirts through these hemp shirts.”
After realizing how sustainable hemp is and how many different applications there are, we wanted to find a way to introduce hemp to urban areas. We wanted to inform people on hemp’s benefits and sustainability without coming off too educational. We also wanted to get rid of its negative stigma with marijuana.
That was when we came across a unique organic hemp blend textile at the Hempest. So we started making our own shirts and built a community around the slogan “Cut From A Different Cloth” (#CFADC). We invited creative millennials around the world that resonated with being #CFADC to join our movement.
We’re trying to disrupt the fashion industry by showing people our products are different. We not only have our own products, but we also work with people on content and designs. For example, we work with creative designers to release their designs through our hemp shirts.
Through the years, we have been able to develop a community, activists, and thought leaders around this movement. At the core, we’re trying to change the standard of t-shirts through these hemp shirts. We are changing the very fabric of reality.
Central to SuperEgo is its #CFADC movement, could you explain the background of the movement and how customers have taken to it?
Our co-founders all have pretty creative minds – one’s a musician and we were all psychology majors. We came up with the slogan together and started using the hashtag #CFADC in our marketing to grow the curiosity of our audience. We added the hashtag in our graphics and pictures, and people started to ask “what does CFADC stand for?”
For us, #CFADC is not just clothing, it is a way to represent a lifestyle for everything from tech, multimedia, to fashion.
On average there are about 50–60 people unique users using the phrase “Cut from a different cloth” on twitter every day around the world.
How did you get introduced to hemp? Why are you so passionate about hemp?
I originally found out about it from marijuana. We came across its counterpart (hemp) and found that you can make t-shirts with it. So we dug deeper and found that there’s actually over 25,000 applications of hemp.
So we just started asking ourselves, “Why are we not making stuff with hemp anymore?”
You mentioned that you learned about hemp first through marijuana. Now that you’re the owner of a hemp business, what do you think about hemp’s association with marijuana?
“We need to educate people on the uses and benefits of this crop to show that there’s a clear difference between the two plants”
I think marijuana has a stigma that has caused the negative association to hemp. People say they can’t tell the difference between the two plants.
What we’ve done is to try to distance ourselves because the reason hemp was banned in this country in the first place was because they were associated and confused with one another.
We need to educate people on the uses and benefits of this crop to show that there’s a clear difference between the two plants
How has the hemp industry changed since you guys have been in it?
SuperEgo started in 2010, so we’ve been around for about 6 years now. We were one of the first brands to launch a hemp product for the younger generation back then. Since then, the biggest thing we’ve noticed is the political movements. It’s growing quickly – states have started legalizing it and farmers are starting to actually plant this crop.
What’s been really cool is that we anticipated this and it’s been amazing see it actually happening and hemp being more commercialized.
What has been the best part about being an entrepreneur, especially in the hemp industry?
Being an entreprenuer is great is because you’re your own boss. You have to have self-discipline but you know you’re creating value for other people and you get rewarded for it. You know you’re making a difference.
Specifically in the hemp industry, the plant is getting more commercialized, so this is helping with our growth. There is unlimited things we can do with this crop the more we educate everyone else about this plant.
How about challenges? Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs who are looking to enter this industry?
Being in the hemp industry, access to this unique fabric was pretty hard to get consistently, in terms of quality and quantity. So this has been a struggle for us. But now we have a more secure supply that we are using as the demand grows. This will help us scale in the US now.
We want to eventually be a “Made in the US” company – which is impossible to do now – while providing an affordable product for popular culture.
The negative stigma with hemp has been the biggest challenge and risk for being in this industry.
Thank you for your time today Tommie. I’m excited to see the #CFADC movement continue to grow!Questions about cultural appropriation!
These are just some of the things worth thinking about.
Cultural appropriation absolutely exists, and it hurts people. Many are offended when they see things that are sacred to them being treated casually or even mocked by people who have no idea or done care. Other people have given their entire lives to art forms that were born of struggle, ignored or discouraged by mainstream culture and money, only to see, after decades of work, those who have had every advantage from that mainstream decide they like it now and will commence to make money off it. The past is not dead; it’s not even past, and what happened yesterday still matters today even (especially!) when it doesn’t matter equally to everyone.
It’s important to recognize when this is happening. It’s important to understand when your actions, unintentional or not, sting and wound.
It is also important to use discernment in each situation, to hear what is being said, then examine what has happened and what your role, if any, should be here.
There are aesthetic and culinary and musical and architectural and artistic ideas that are not on that level, and we can and should delight in the creativity and diversity of the world around us. We can celebrate and enjoy how different cultures come up with their own takes, how these influences spread around the world, morphing and changing and smacking up against other delicious or beautiful cultural concepts.The only surprise at Sunday’s oil summit in Doha, Qatar, was that anyone could have been surprised.
Oil ministers from 16 oil-producing countries met in a much-hyped attempt to freeze crude production at current levels. Investors had viewed a production freeze as the best alternative to full-blown production cuts.
But the ministers came up empty because of the poisonous relationship between blood enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia had demanded that all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) support a production freeze. But since sanctions against Iran were lifted only recently and Iran desperately needs the money from increased oil production, even at low prices, that demand was a fantasy. Iran never even showed up.
That’s where the surprise came in.
At first, crude prices nosedived: Both Brent UK:LCON6 and West Texas Intermediate crude CLK6, +0.00% plummeted 7% in early trading. But they rallied back to show only modest losses of around 1%, changing hands at around $40 a barrel at noon Monday. On Tuesday morning, both measures were up 1.5%.
Veteran trader JJ Kinahan, chief strategist of market structure and client advisory for TD Ameritrade, told me the market’s response was very positive for crude. “For those who are bulls on oil, it’s pretty nice that we came back above the $40 mark,” he said. “This $40 level is right now the new level of support.”
He also thinks oil has very strong long-term support around the recent lows: West Texas Intermediate closed above $26 a barrel on Jan. 20 and Feb. 11, according to the Energy Information Administration. (Not coincidentally, the latter also was the day the major stock market averages hit their recent lows.)
You can see that “double bottom,” which technicians view as bullish, on the following chart.
Trading Economics
The next chart shows how close the recent double bottom was to December 2008’s low, suggesting strong long-term price support in the $25-$30 area.
Trading Economics
“It’s hard to say that’s the bottom, but there’s been a heck of a lot of support there, based on what we’ve seen over the last 10 years,” said Kinahan. “It’s going to be hard to [go below there] because history says that’s where bigger buyers come in to the market.”
Here’s why I think the January-February double bottom will hold and mark the low for WTI this cycle.
First, the price decline that brought oil down to $26 was almost as deep, if not quite as sharp, as the sell-off after its July 2008 all-time closing high of $145.31 a barrel. WTI went on to lose 79% of its value, hitting a closing low of $30.28 just before Christmas of that year.
It then took 5 ½ years to hit its recent closing peak of $107.95 on June 20, 2014. From there, prices fell 76% to the February lows, about as big a drop as the 2008 price plunge.
Also, the Baker Hughes Rig Count, which measures the number of U.S. rigs currently producing oil and gas, has declined even more during the current oil price plunge than it did in 2008-2009.
Back then, it slid nearly 57% from its peak of 2,031 to 876 by June 2009 — and that was in the teeth of the Great Recession.
This time, the rig count plunged from 1,931 in September 2014 to 440 last week. That’s a 77% decline, and the number of operating rigs is about half of what it was at its low in 2009. My take: U.S. drillers have done a better job of cutting oil and gas production this time around.
So, unless we have a global recession, which I don’t expect, I don’t think production and prices will fall further than they already have. For what it’s worth, the EIA projects that WTI could average $38 a barrel this year and $50 a barrel in 2017.
“For crude I’d say $40 is an important level, but if you get below $36 things could turn a little bit nasty,” Kinahan told me. “That’s the |
that all of your tribe’s votes have just been negated. What do you think is about to happen?
Malcolm: The minute Sierra stands up and starts walking to Probst, I nearly pooped myself. Beforehand, we all talked as a tribe, and me and Sandra kind of agreed that it would be me or her that the votes were going to come at. Oh, I just remembered. I actually think at one point Hali told me, “They’re going to vote for you. They’re going to vote for you!” And of course they’re voting for me or Sandra. So alright, they’re coming for me. Well, we have six people. The odds of them having an idol and playing it correctly are so absurd — if you don’t have a boneheaded Alabama cowboy telling them exactly where to play it! But the minute Sierra plays it, I went, “Oh, sh–.” The minute Sierra stood up, I knew it was over.
Wigler: Your name comes up. How much do you remember about what happened next? For example, you received the kiss of death from Sierra. Do you even remember that?
Malcolm: Sierra is my good buddy in real life. You know my Dirty 30 connections. I think I grabbed her leg, because she’s my friend, and that’s why she gave me the kiss. And then I think she said, “I love you.” But they cut that out. And Culpepper said something too, over-the-top. Sandra got furious and started bitching while I was on my way out. There was a lot of mumbling and grumbling. They showed some of it after I walked off, people talking on their way out of Tribal. But the minute my name popped up? I think Sandra and Varner both squeaked. I got the kiss. Culpepper said something nice; I don’t remember what it was. But that doesn’t really make it any easier. (Laughs.)
Wigler: You get to Ponderosa, which is already one of the greatest pre-jury crews ever between you, Tony and Ciera. How did you explain what happened to them? Did they help you wrap your head around it at all?
Malcolm: I remember walking in and their faces made me feel a little better, because they were in total shock. One of the things you do at Ponderosa is you try to guess who’s coming next. To see how stunned they were made me feel a little bit better about the situation. They were like, “How the hell did that happen?” And I was like, “Pull up a chair. Let me explain this to you.” (Laughs.) I think a lot of it flew over Caleb’s head. Tony… I spent a lot of time with Tony and Caleb. Oh my god, I spent a lot of time with those two. A lot of it went over Caleb’s head, and Tony was just shaking his head and pacing because he got so angry on my behalf. I adore Tony. And Ciera was sitting there, picking out every detail, making me rehash every little minor thing that happened, and explain the twist. She wanted to know every freaking detail. It was an interesting crew to go back to.
Wigler: How much did you blame JT in the moment, and how much do you blame him now?
Malcolm: In the moment, walking out of Tribal, call it 50% blame. Give me a day to work through what must have happened, it was probably 80% blame. Today? It’s 100%. We were tight. I had been warned by a former player: “Don’t let the cowboy think for himself.” But I didn’t think it was going to go that bad.
Wigler: Is he still off of the Christmas card list?
Malcolm: I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never sent a Christmas card in my life. (Laughs.) But JT… I sent him a text last night. We’re still buddies. I love the man. Just because somebody screws you over in a game on accident doesn’t mean you hate him. But I told him I was going to talk sh– about him today, because that’s just ridiculous. It doesn’t even make sense to me. This far down the road, you have to come back to our camp. How did you think this was going to work well for you?
Wigler: Have you done the post-mortem on the twist? As objectively as you can possibly get, given that you’re the one who gets blasted out as a result of it — and you have had a lot of time to chew on this — do you think it’s a fair twist?
Malcolm: Before I become objective, let me say that I f—king hate this twist. But now that I have that out of the way… in the moment? I remember thinking it was unfair to the other tribe! (Laughs.) Obviously I have had a lot of time to think about this. I don’t love that we didn’t get to play [with the other tribe]. I had to go to Tribal Council with a bunch of people I hadn’t even spoken to yet. In an abstract sense, that hurts me, because that’s what I’m best at. Give me a few minutes with somebody and I can usually make it a lot harder for you to want to vote me out. But objectively though? This is why the show is still so good after 17 years. I hate it, and I’m glad that so many people are pissed off that I’m gone. But as a fan of the show, this is why the show is still so great after 17 years. It’s because they try things, and sometimes it’s terrible and it gets me kicked off so I hate it, but it’s exciting! Fans like it and it keeps fans watching. That’s why we still get to do this so many years after the beginning.
Wigler: Are you going to play Survivor again?
Malcolm: Man. Let me scrape the pieces of my ego off the floor real quick and put myself back together before you ask such a hard question. (Laughs.) No, part of the reason I had such a big reaction to getting kicked off is that it felt like the end of Survivor for me. Three times is sort of the soft cap on it, right? I know that Cirie and Ozzy just blew the lid off of that. But it really felt like the end of it. But if I got the call again? Considering that I didn’t even get to play this time? I was just falling over things and laughing and making jokes. I hadn’t even played yet! So if they call again? There’s no way I’m saying no.
Wigler: Fourth time’s the charm!
Malcolm: (Laughs.) It worked once before.
Wigler: Unless four is an unlucky number for you now, Malcolm. You have a turbulent history with the number four on Survivor.
Malcolm: I also just have to be careful, because I keep going back, and I keep doing worse! If I go back, I’m destined to be a first boot!
Wigler: Well, I was going to say that the one good thing to come from all of this is that time travel has been confirmed, right?
Malcolm: (Laughs.)
Wigler: You went out fourth here. I do believe Jimmy T from Survivor Nicaragua went out fourth. The story suddenly writes itself.
Malcolm: You know I back all of your crazy, kooky conspiracy theories, Josh. Whatever you want to tell yourself? Yeah, I’m in.
Watch the video below to see three hundred Survivor fans react to Malcolm’s elimination.
The Live Know It Alls audience reacts to the Red Wedding. #Survivor pic.twitter.com/TcYyfjG9n7 — Josh Wigler (@roundhoward) March 23, 2017
Josh Wigler is a writer, editor and podcaster who has been published by MTV News, New York Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Comic Book Resources and more. He is the co-author of The Evolution of Strategy: 30 Seasons of Survivor, an audiobook chronicling the reality TV show’s transformation, and one of the hosts of Post Show Recaps, a podcast about film and television. Follow Josh on Twitter @roundhoward.Coming Soon
Second City Television Special (Working Title)
Martin Scorsese directs this Netflix original comedy special exploring the enduring legacy of Emmy-winning sketch comedy show "SCTV."
Love, Death & Robots
Terrifying creatures, wicked surprises and dark comedy converge in this NSFW anthology of animated stories presented by Tim Miller and David Fincher.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
An unexpected detour turns a couple's road trip into a terrifying journey through their fragile psyches. Adapted and directed by Charlie Kaufman.
7SEEDS
Natsu awakens to a post-apocalyptic world, only to learn that she’d been cryogenically frozen as part of a program to ensure the survival of humanity.
The Stand Off
In 1969, L.A.'s newly formed SWAT team attempts to raid the Black Panther Party headquarters, resulting in an intense face-off that lasts for hours.
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
Drivers, managers and team owners live life in the fast lane -- both on and off the track -- during one cutthroat season of Formula 1 racing.
Love Alarm
A software developer creates an app that alerts users if anyone nearby harbors romantic feelings for them. Adapted from the popular web cartoon.
Space Force
A comedy series about the people tasked with creating Space Force, a new branch of the U.S. military. From Greg Daniels and star Steve Carell.President Yahya Jammeh says the West African community's decision to send troops into The Gambia to force him to accept defeat in last month's presidential election, is "a declaration of war".
Leaders from the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, deployed troops to The Gambia on Thursday after Jammeh said he would not accept the results of December's election, in which he lost to opposition leader Adama Barrow.
In a New Year's message broadcast on Saturday, Jammeh said the "blatant and one-sided" approach of ECOWAS, "disqualified it from providing mediation services".
"Let me make very clear, we are ready to defend this country against any aggression," Jammeh said, adding that if ECOWAS did not back down "the impasse will continue with the risk of escalation into a military confrontation".
He added, "What we are simply and rightfully asking for is to return to the polls and allow the Gambians to elect who they want to be their president in a free and fair election."
Gambia president-elect Adama Barrow talks to Al Jazeera
After more than two decades in power, Jammeh, 51, lost a December 1 election to Barrow, a former real-estate agent.
After initially accepting the result, Jammeh later rejected it, alleging irregularities, and filed a petition to the Supreme Court which is due to be reviewed on January 10.
Barrow has insisted he will take office nine days later, as planned, with ECOWAS leaders set to attend the ceremony.
Earlier this month, ECOWAS said it would stage a military intervention, led by neighbouring Senegal, if Jammeh failed to step down and set a deadline of January 19, the day of Barrow's planned inauguration.
The UN Security Council has called on Jammeh to "fully respect" the election results and ensure Barrow's safety.
The electoral commission said Barrow obtained 222,708 votes (43.3 percent) compared with Jammeh's 208,487 (39.6 percent).
Jammeh has questioned the validity of the count after the electoral commission changed some results, even though it insists the outcome was not affected.Luke Scott, the starting left fielder for the Baltimore Orioles, can hit a baseball really hard. Really, really hard. The kind of booming, long-distance home runs that get called "majestic." For those of us who are Orioles fans, that is a good thing about him.
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The other thing about Luke Scott—and now in most respects the bigger thing about him—is that he is a self-important jerkwater dope who likes going around
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. Not just who quietly thinks it sorta might be true, that the president of the United States is a scheming foreign impostor, but who makes sure people hear his important views on the subject, and goes on to celebrate how proud he is to believe this and how brave he is to say it.
Last week, Amy K. Nelson of ESPN wrote a
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who she identified as "one of baseball's most complex characters" and someone who "will require a deeper line of thinking."
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Nope. Luke Scott, as he showed Nelson while roaming around Florida with her during spring training, is a standard-issue ignoramus, whose otherwise unfurnished mental spaces have been filled in with white-exceptionalist superpatriotism, gun-fetish paranoia, and assorted other fantasies and delusions scavenged from the county dump of red-blooded One-Hundred-Percent America.
He does hit a baseball hard, though. Man. Pow!
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But Amy K. Nelson is interested in his character. Here are the complex-ish parts: he's a white ballplayer who is friendly with his Latino teammates and speaks fluent Spanish—having grown up poor in Florida. He does charitable works "with no publicity," except for the publicity that comes from letting that fact be known to a reporter profiling him for the biggest sports-media outlet in the country. And...well, no, that's it. He has nice manners.
Did I mention he hits baseballs hard? Being a sports fan, and a baseball fan in particular, means you are emotionally invested in a certain aspect of the lives and successes of people who have been rewarded, with tremendous amounts of money and fame, for doing (and being) what they did (and were) as 14-year-olds.
This does not always produce the most all-around appealing people. I have rooted for arrogant and surly players, mean drunks, bullies, phony Bible-thumpers, steroids abusers—that's who shows up, sometimes, in your team's uniform, trying to win games. Sometimes there are decent, funny, humble ones, too. But you don't get to choose. Even if you think you're cheering for a good guy, you
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So now I'm cheering for a pinhead with a race problem. I'd love to convince myself I'm not, but Nelson's article really leaves no room. He calls his Latino buddies "savage" and "animal"—and "bogeyman," for the especially dark-skinned Felix Pie, the Orioles' other left fielder. They are dear friends, Pie and Scott. Scott took it upon himself to improve the younger Pie's character when Pie, a former can't-miss prospect for the Cubs, came to Baltimore. Among the tools of improvement, he told Nelson, is a bag of plantain chips:
"So I throw bananas in his helmet. Here are my banana chips to remind him that whenever he acts like an animal, 'Hey, that's what other people are thinking. They're just not telling you, but that's what they're thinking about. And I'm telling you so that you're aware of that so you can make a cognitive decision to not behave like that.'"
Luke Scott is very attuned to the possibility that white people will see nonwhite people as animals. Especially if the white people are disgusted by a nonwhite person's "cognitive decision." A nonwhite person needs a white person to explain how to make correct cognitive decisions, and decisions about values, and all the other sorts of judgments that our Founders made, when this country still believed in accountability and hard work. Etc.
Nelson was not interested in criticizing or unpacking this point of view—or really, any point of view. Here's her account of the fallout from the radio interview during the offseason when Scott first decided to take his birther views public:
But negative reaction cascaded, too, with some bloggers saying that evidence Obama was born in Hawaii is overwhelming and that Scott must be a racist or a moron, or both.
Yes:
some bloggers say that the evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii is overwhelming
. Other people have other views. People disagree! It sure is confusing.
Nelson also recounted a scene in which Scott lets Pie play around with his Sig Sauer 556 in his gun-crowded condominium.
Scott, wearing a black baseball cap backward that reads "In God We Trust," walks back into the kitchen and tells us he keeps guns all over his house, even in the kitchen cabinets, and always within reach -- you never know when a criminal could strike, he says.
[...]
As we leave for the gun range, Scott stuffs a pistol into the side of the sofa cushion.
Nelson did not mention, as the Orioles bonded at this gun party, that one of Scott's teammates was unavailable:
, Baltimore's closer last year, was in prison in the Dominican Republic when spring training began, after being implicated in a fatal shooting over New Year's. Accounts varied as to whether it was a case of sloppy celebratory gunfire or some sort of fight, and charges may still be pending. Guns! They are a form of freedom. Especially when you leave them stuffed in the furniture.
Screwing around with guns in front of a national reporter, while a case of manslaughter or worse was hanging over his ballclub, was a piss-poor cognitive decision. Some leagues would find a way to discipline a player reckless and self-centered enough to do that. But Scott seems hell-bent on becoming the Carrie Prejean of baseball, and it won't do the Orioles any good to help him along the way.
Behind the free-speech and image-management problems, there's a baseball problem. Nelson got that wrong, too, describing Scott as a player "who has always been consistent." In fact, he's a bizarre hot-and-cold hitter, a guy who can flail his way through an
, or suddenly start belting pitch after pitch into the far end of the bleachers.
So far this year, he's not hitting. This spring the Orioles gave Scott's old job as designated hitter to free agent Vladimir Guerrero, and moved Scott to left. His best buddy Pie—a sloppy-looking but much better defender—went to the bench. None of the three is hitting. Catchable fly balls are dropping in left field.
Under the circumstances, I don't care about his personality or politics. Those matter inasmuch as the O's will probably need to trade somebody, at some point, to clean up the outfield/DH roster, and it would be nice if they could make it a pure baseball decision, without either side of the deal having to worry about bad publicity (or the risk of someone flopping down on Scott's couch and catching a stray round).
So the best thing from Baltimore's point of view is to ignore Scott and hope he shuts up. What ESPN is trying to do—letting Scott talk, while pretending not to understand what he says—is harder to figure out.The Nobel Peace Prize committee last month stunned many observers by choosing Henry Kissinger—the former secretary of state behind the secret American bombing of Cambodia and who supported Argentina's "dirty wars," among other things—to speak at a forum on "The United States and World Peace after the Presidential Election."
In response, on Tuesday the progressive groups RootsAction and Nobel Peace Prize Watch issued a petition demanding that Norwegian officials arrest Kissinger.
"The Nobel Committee has arranged for well-known war mastermind Henry Kissinger to speak as an honored guest at a forum that is part of the Nobel Peace Prize events," the petition states. "Several of Kissinger's crimes come under treaties that make it mandatory for Norway to prosecute. Kissinger is complicit or a main actor in many violations of the Genocide Convention and of the Geneva Conventions."
Nobel Peace Prize Watch lays out Kissinger's actions (pdf) in great detail, making the case that Norway is obligated under international law to arrest the former secretary of state.
Kissinger was infamously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his role in the Vietnam war—a decision that comedian Tom Lehrer said "made political satire obsolete."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter, is also scheduled to speak at the Oslo forum, which will take place on December 11. Jan Oberg of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research condemned the Nobel committee's decision to honor the two former U.S. officials:
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These two experts on warfare and interventionism will—Orwellian style—speak about "The United States and World Peace after the Presidential Election." This is the country that, since 1980, has intervened violently in Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosova/Serbia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, i.e. 14 Muslim countries. It has some 630 base facilities in 130+ countries. It has its U.S. Special Forces (SOF) in 133 countries. It has used nuclear weapons without apology and owns the second largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. The U.S. stands for about 40 percent of the world's military expenditures, is the world's leading arms exporter and has killed more people than anybody else since 1945. It's the master of (imprecise) drone strikes. It presently supports Saudi Arabia's bestial war on Yemen and conducts a military build-up in Asia and the Pacific planning, as it seems, for what looks like a future confrontation with China. And not with terribly positive results in its Middle East policies since 1945. So with all these credentials, please tell us about world peace!
And Nobel Peace Prize Watch further argues: "Millions of people, victims and survivors, will question or be seriously offended if Norway goes through with praise and honors to a person in the top ranks of the history of callous international state criminality. The suffering ordered or managed by Kissinger has led to increasing insecurity and violence for which all citizens of the world pay a high price."REVIVIM, Israel (Reuters) - Wary of a spillover from the conflict in Syria, Israel is preparing to take on the Hezbollah militia that it suspects is getting advanced weapons from a distracted Damascus.
Israeli reserve soldiers take position during a drill at a military zone near Kibbutz Revivim in southern Israel March 7, 2013. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The Jewish state believes the Lebanese Shi’ite guerrillas also stand ready to retaliate if it carries out long-threatened strikes on the nuclear sites of Iran, another Hezbollah patron.
Hezbollah fought Israel’s far more advanced forces to a standstill when they last came to blows, in 2006, and rained more than 4,000 rockets on northern Israel. A U.N.-monitored ceasefire has largely held since.
But a senior Israeli officer from the Lebanese front said on Thursday that tensions in Syria “had the potential to spill over and trigger a confrontation” with Hezbollah.
“We want to preserve the quiet, and we want the other side to know that if they take a step that necessitates we exact a price, they will pay dearly,” the officer, who declined to be named, told foreign reporters while overseeing a simulated, regiment-strength battle with Hezbollah in a desert army base.
Israel is on the verge of being drawn in to the two-year Syrian insurgency.
About 20 U.N. peacekeepers were detained in Syria near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Wednesday by fighters linked to the mainly Sunni Muslim armed opposition groups fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, who follows the Alawite faith derived from Shi’ite Islam.
Israeli U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor has also written to the 15-member U.N. Security Council to complain about shells from Syria landing in Israel, warning it “cannot be expected to stand idle as the lives of its citizens are being put at risk”.
ASYMMETRY
Iran’s nuclear ambitions could also prove to be a flashpoint. Widely believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, Israel has threatened force to deny its arch-foe the means of making a bomb should international diplomatic alternatives fail. Tehran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons, has threatened wide-ranging reprisals if attacked.
The desert exercise reflected the enhanced training of Israeli forces which, combined with the saber-rattling of top brass, suggested an attempt to deter Hezbollah by warning that the next conflict could bring greater suffering for Lebanon.
“The way they behave will have repercussions on the population and infrastructure of southern Lebanon,” the senior Israeli officer said, referring to Hezbollah’s heartland where Israel suspects it has sown rocket launchers and gun-nests in Shiite villages.
In 2006, Israel killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, according to the United Nations. Hezbollah killed 160 Israelis, most of the soldiers within Lebanese territory.
Though sworn to Israel’s destruction, Hezbollah casts itself primarily as Lebanon’s defender. It says its arsenal has been unaffected by the Syrian turmoil and that it is now capable of paralyzing Israel with long-range rocket strikes, if war erupts.
Asked if such a war would be more asymmetrical than in 2006, the senior Israeli officer said: “Yes. I don’t in any way expect the casualty ratio to be similar. I want things to be as bad as possible for the other side and as good as possible for us.”
He said Israel would try to give Lebanese civilians enough opportunity to evacuate - “such that I hope non-combatants will be significantly fewer than 40 percent (of casualties)”.
RESERVATIONS
Demonstrating Israeli plans to overrun Hezbollah-held ground quickly and suppress cross-border rocket salvoes, the troops who drilled on Thursday dashed across hillocks towards 10 mock guerrilla emplacements that had been raked with tank and machine-gun fire.
The exercise assumed around 100 Hezbollah fighters would face off against the 200 soldiers and Israel’s heavier ordnance - an indication of the army’s tactics of superior deployment.
The Israelis were all reservists, ages ranging from the mid-20s to early 40s, and trained to back up the standing army should it get bogged down on the Lebanese or other fronts.
One captain, who in civilian life is writing a doctoral dissertation on Balkan and Caucasus guerrillas, voiced a regard for Hezbollah that was more than merely academic.
“They have grassroots support and they fight on home turf,” said the captain, who gave only his first name, Yiftach. Though he said he and his comrades were better prepared for war than in 2006, “Hezbollah worries me, to tell the truth”.
The regiment’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Yogev Bar-Sheshet, acknowledged Hezbollah had improved its capabilities.
Israeli reserve soldiers run with their weapons during a drill at a military zone near Kibbutz Revivim in southern Israel March 7, 2013. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
But he added: “We train all the time for various possibilities, for scenarios. If we need to fight, be it tomorrow morning, or in another week or year, we will be the best that we can be and we will win.”
Speaking to high school students last week, Israel’s armed forces chief, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, appeared to acknowledge the dangers Lebanese civilians could face.
“Would it be better to be a citizen of the State of Israel in the next war or a Lebanese citizen in the next war? Better to be Israeli citizens,” he said.A little "hurry up and wait" selfie. I told makeup I wanted a little more glam because I'm going out on da town after the show @thedoctorstv… Now.. Just waiting… ☺️ A photo posted by Sandra Lee, MD (@drsandralee) on Aug 28, 2015 at 3:32pm PDT
Few things excite Dr. Sandra Lee like a “great blackhead.”
You probably know the kind — firm and pellet-shaped, a superior blackhead is the type that initially teases its extractor before eventually bursting forth fully intact, smooth-skinned and prodigiously sized; a waxy gem mined from the fleshy epidermal depths.
Perhaps most importantly, Lee explains, a great blackhead is one that looks good on camera. The board-certified dermatologist based in Upland, Calif., would know.
For almost a year now, Lee — a 45-year-old mother of two sons — has been recording herself popping her patient’s pimples, extracting their blackheads and extruding their cysts like toothpaste from a never-ending horror tube. She posts the videos on Instagram and YouTube, where she has quickly become an unlikely star with hundreds of thousands of followers and more than 170 million views.
Like many YouTube stars, her videos generate hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars in income, though the figure can vary dramatically from one video to the next.
She is also a beloved figure on “Popping,” a 62,000-user-strong Reddit forum devoted to “Pictures, videos, and stories about cysts and pimples.”
“People usually have a strong response to my videos, usually amazed or disgusted,” Lee told The Washington Post, noting that most of her fans are female. “People are just fascinated by skin issues and its kind of become — not exactly a fetish — but a fascination. People can’t believe that these things can happen to our skin.”
Lee sees a certain beauty in each ailment, comparing blackheads to snowflakes and noting that “each one is unique.”
Among her most unique and popular videos is one she posted earlier this month that captures Lee removing a massive, disc-shaped blackhead from an elderly woman’s face. The charming exchange between patient and doctor — in which they discuss drinking and jokingly compare the blackhead to buried treasure — has amassed almost 4.5 million views.
Lee’s fans regularly leave comments saying they came for the riveting footage, but end up staying — and returning — for the doctor’s playful banter and soothing voice, which has a way of making vile scenes strangely relaxing for many viewers.
https://instagram.com/p/9D_YuZIfET/?taken-by=drsandralee
https://instagram.com/p/607RviofJw/?taken-by=drsandralee
https://instagram.com/p/9Wlc8VPwXU/?taken-by=drpimplepopper
https://instagram.com/p/8y_xBhvwQ7/?taken-by=drpimplepopper
Lee may seem like a natural-born popper, but that isn’t the case, she said. She refuses to pop her husband’s pimples and dislikes watching amateur popping videos people send her from YouTube. She is an avid shoe-shopper who takes her own grooming habits very seriously.
Not too long ago, Lee preferred surgeries, but noticed a surge in interest when she posted a blackhead video online last year. Because many minor procedures aren’t covered by insurance, she started offering them to patients for free in exchange for being able to film the extraction and post it online. As her videos improved in quality, Lee began sharing more information about her patients’ stories. Suddenly, clients were arriving from surrounding states and as far away as Europe.
“There’s ‘Humans of New York’ and I feel like I’ve created ‘Humans of Dermatology,’ where the people are anonymous, but you get a little snippet of their life,” she told The Post. “You don’t just want to see anonymous blackheads, you want to know about the story behind the person who has them.”
Different fans like different types of videos, Lee noted. Most videos fall within two main categories: “hard pops” and “soft pops.” Hard pops include messy extractions like a benign tumor or a cyst, which may include bleeding and squirting. Soft pops, which Lee greatly prefers, include blackheads and the small, hard white bumps that can appear beneath the skin knows as “Milia,”
While fans prefer different kinds of pops, for almost all there is also something inherently satisfying about watching a messy problem get quickly resolved. Some fans, Lee said, watch her videos before falling asleep at night. Others, she added, partake for their own amusement and still others tout the videos’ anxiety-curing benefits.
Under a recent blackhead video, one YouTube fan said she planned to turn the videos into a stay-at-home date night for her and her husband, complete with a glass of wine and snacks.
“We’ll call it a ‘date in'” she wrote.
Another user said she watches Lee’s videos anytime she feels a panic attack coming on.
“I watch one of these, and It brings me back to reality,” she wrote. “I think it”s just the feeling of seeing a problem, and just fixing it.”
“OMG…that wasn’t a blackhead that was an alien implant….lol……and oh this old lady is sooo cute,” added another.
Lee’s favorite patient, and her most popular with viewers, is a patient named “Mr. Wilson.” He has a skin condition known as Rhinophyma, which causes thickened skin on his nose and dilated pores, creating “these really big blackheads, just the greatest blackheads, which come out very smoothly,” Lee said.
He has come back for multiple visits and, the sheer quantity of the oil squirting from his face has turned his visits into a fan obsession. While some might see that obsession as exploitative, Lee insists the popping community is overwhelmingly supportive of the people whose skin they fixate on.
And if you, too, enjoy indulging in popping videos, she has a message for you: you’re not unusual.
“Popping is something a lot of people are kinda of embarrassed about liking,” she said. “The fact is that people who follow me and others see these videos and it makes them feel better. It makes them feel like they’re not alone.”
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Stranded by airline, a disabled D.C. activist crawled off his flight. But the humiliation was far from over.
As use of force debate rages, Northern California town equips officers with nunchucksTOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s economy grew faster over April-June than initially estimated, the Cabinet Office said on Thursday, with upward revisions to capital expenditure and inventories, but the lack of a strong growth driver is seen undermining momentum for the rest of this year.
Taxis are parked at a taxi stand in Tokyo, Japan, September 8, 2016. REUTERS/Issei Kato
The Cabinet Office said the economy grew at a 0.7 percent annualized rate over April-June, an upward revision of the preliminary reading of 0.2 percent growth, in which the strong yen and weak demand were seen hurting exports and capital spending.
Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest, is seen lacking momentum in the current quarter and beyond, following a recent run of weak export, factory output and household spending data.
Unless overseas economies improve and the yen’s gains fade away, the economy is at risk of faltering later this year, before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government fully implements the stimulus package it unveiled last month, analysts say.
The tame economic outlook will keep the Bank of Japan under pressure to ease policy further as the central bank conducts comprehensive assessment of the effects of its stimulus program at its Sept. 20-21 rate review.
“The economy is likely to remain stagnant in July-September and October-December in the absence of a growth engine,” said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.
“Household income gains are not strong enough to drive up private consumption, while the yen’s gains are expected to undermine exports and capital spending gradually but surely.”
The revised gross domestic product (GDP) data compared with economists’ median estimate of an annualized 0.0 percent reading in a Reuters poll.
The figure translates into quarter-on-quarter growth of 0.2 percent in real, price-adjusted terms, against an initial reading of 0.0 percent.
Capital expenditure, a key component of GDP, fell 0.1 percent for the quarter, versus the preliminary estimate of a 0.4 percent decline.
Inventories contributed 0.1 percentage point to growth, versus the preliminary slightly negative contribution recorded.
Private consumption, which accounts for roughly 60 percent of the economy, rose 0.2 percent, unchanged from the preliminary estimate.
Taken together, domestic demand contributed 0.4 percentage point to growth, versus the initial 0.3 percentage point registered. Net exports knocked 0.3 percentage point off growth.
With economic growth having ground almost to a halt and inflation sliding further away from the central bank’s 2 percent target, most analysts expect the BOJ to loosen policy this month.
BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda signaled his readiness on Monday to ease policy further, shrugging off some concerns that monetary stimulus is reaching the limits of its effectiveness.Tigerair Australia is permanently dropping flights to Bali – the airline’s only international destination – after reaching an impasse with Indonesian regulators.
The airline said in a statement on Friday afternoon it would withdraw from flying between Australia and Bali, effective immediately.
Tigerair had been trying to gain approvals to resume its flights to Bali from Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth since January 10, when the Indonesian government suspended the airline’s flights due to what it said was a breach of its charter permit.
The low-cost carrier had planned to resume services to the popular tourist destination on Friday, after announcing on January 19 it had secured “a key approval” to return to the route.
However, a statement posted on the Tigerair website at 2340 on Thursday said all flights to and from Bali scheduled for Friday had been cancelled.
And then on Friday afternoon, Tigerair chief executive Rob Sharp said the airline had been informed it required an “alternative regulatory solution” that, ultimately, left it with no other option than to withdraw.
“We have been advised by Indonesian authorities that in order to continue operating our flights to Bali, we would have to transfer to a new operating model that would take at least six months to implement and would compromise our ability to offer low-cost airfares to Australians,” Sharp said in a statement.
“Providing a reliable, low-cost service is critical for Tigerair Australia and our customers, and therefore our only option is to withdraw from flying to Bali altogether.”
Tigerair said Indonesian authorities told the airline it needed a particular air operator’s certificate (AOC) that was separate to the one it currently held to resume flights to Bali.
The airline described the process to achieve the new AOC as costly, would take six months to implement and also would put Tigerair’s takeoff and landing slots at Bali at risk.
Further, it was not a requirement for any other international market that Tigerair would consider operating to.
Tigerair said passengers booked to travel from Australia to Bali would be offered full refunds, while passengers due to return to Australia from Bali would be re-accommodated on other flights.
“We sincerely apologise to our |
pretend I'm a GoPro camera on top of Manziel's helmet, capturing the facial expressions of the defenders as he shakes them off. Often, I get way too into the moment and actually attempt to juke other people in the room just to get a reaction. That's when they kick me out of Best Buy.
Do you ever wonder if Malcome Kennedy's inner monologue sounds like JFK after 3 martinis and a cardio session with Marilyn Monroe? Yeah, me neither.
If Kevin Sumlin took Jameill Showers out for dinner upon his arrival in College Station, that would probably be a very nice thing to do. If Sumlin got Showers drunk and encouraged that he spray paint graffiti on Dennis Franchione's old home, he would be contributing to the delinquency of a Miner.
If the two brothers on Texas A&M's offensive line were somber and from Scotland, I think that would make them members of the "Grave Matthews Clan."
About once a week I get nightmares where I know that a dream is actually going on, but I can only listen to Dave South call it over a grainy AM signal at night because my dreams are still in the Big XII and sometimes don't get picked up for TV coverage.
I wish that Nate Askew would hang out with me all the time, and that we had a telepathic connection to the point that he could know what I was going to say before I said it. That way, I could say "Hey, I'd like to ASKEW a question" to someone and he could step right in and ask it. Wouldn't that be awesome?
For some unknown reason, I really want to watch UTEP play Texas while sitting on that hill. Maybe it's because the author I'm emulating's name is Jack Handy.
Absurd Game Prediction
Sumlin lets the winner of a Lions Club raffle's grandson call the game using only the "Ask the Coach" function from NCAA 13 on PSP. After the game, the kid immediately signs a 10-year $50 million contract to coach the Longhorns.
Mike Evans has 4 catches for 80 yards and a TD before kickoff. Manziel addresses the media using only the language of interpretive dance with the debut of his one man show "eMOTIONS."
Ags 70 Miners 21
CAST OF CHARACTERS BY DR. NORRIS CAMACHO
Kenny Hill QB3: Not to put the cart before the donkey, but this game could give us a chance to see if the true freshman can turn in a sterling relief performance like he did last week.
Isaiah Golden DT: Another true freshman pressed into service, he's had to dig in, but the grit has paid off. He's third in tackles amongst defensive linemen.
Tra Carson RB: Time for the big guy to just pound it into the ground and churn up some dust. Dig deep, get over the fumble, and find paydirt.
Jameill Showers QB: Unfortunately was shafted out of a final chance to play at Kyle Field due to a shoulder injury. Hopefully it's just a miner setback and he has a strong senior year.
Aaron Jones RB: Coach Kugler has struck gold with this true freshman talent. The hometown prospect is averaging over 100 yards per game.
Autrey Golden KR: With 2 touchdowns this year, the explosive return specialist is highly volatile and always capable of blasting through solid walls of coverages.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR BY HYPNO-TOAD
Tricks No, not the kind that happen in the hills overlooking UTEP’s stadium. The Miners will walk into Kyle knowing that they are heavy underdogs in what the experts predict will be a laugher of a contest. Vanderbilt exposed that we may be vulnerable to trick plays, even when we theoretically cover them correctly. Don’t be surprised if head coach Sean Kugler throws the kitchen sink at the Ags in an attempt to catch them off guard and keep his team in the game. He will need every trick up his sleeve since the injury report lists the Miners’ starting QB as out for the game, meaning that much like the weather report for the game there is a...
/sunglasses
…zero percent chance of Showers.
Treats This time of year many fans take advantage of the possibility for national exposure by dressing in terrifying costumes in the stands. Some of the truly more horrifying guises this year might include, ghosts, goblins, NCAA compliance officers, neon t-shirts, or Will Muschamp. Look for the cameras to single out these people for the admiration of their peers during the inevitable garbage time starting in the third quarter. The real treats, however, can be found at any of the costume contests being held at local watering holes after the game, where coeds dress in costumes that accentuate their personalities and interest in French art history. You are doing the lord’s work, ladies.
Night of the Living Spread The running game made positive strides last weekend, and you can count on that trend to continue against UTEP. That being said, Johnny Football will be on the field and by some miracle of modern science his shoulder seems to be good to go. He will be throwing to NFL-sure-thing Mike Evans, veteran Malcome Kennedy, and scrappyworkingmaneffortgenerictinyreceivercompliment Travis Labhart. Look for Johnny to spread the ball around, making sure that everyone gets their candy and no one gets stuck with an apple, dental floss, or that damned marshmallow shaped like a peanut.
ELSEWHERE IN THE SEC BY HYPNO-TOAD
Georgia "at" Florida The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party – soon to be renamed World War Zzzzzzz - this year will be Halloween appropriate as it will feature the hideous, lurching remains of two un-top-ten teams gnawing at one another in a mindless bid for sustenance. Georgia’s Frankenoffense will be composed entirely of spare body parts sewn haphazardly to running back torsos, and Florida will be outside the barricaded door ineffectively pounding on it, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to get too close to a window. Jacksonville is as fitting a venue this year as any, because it is clear that Jacksonville is football hell.
LET'S HAVE A STATGASM BY STEWADE
BEST CASE / WORST CASE BY THACKTOR
BEST CASE Aggies win big, defense plays perfectly, Manziel sits for 2.5 quarters, Congress gets 100% approval, everyone gets along with everyone else, all kids have ice cream, free puppies for all, and that person you have a crush on calls you back.
WORST CASE It's a squeaker, the defense is drinking on the sidelines, Manziel signs with an agent during the 2nd quarter, anarchy reigns supreme, we all hate each other, ice cream is banned, puppies become extinct, and nobody will ever love you because look at you.
@katiehime Ok Internet, how are we feeling about dad jokes lately? Ok let's try, "Hey Aggie defense, I hope UTEP up your game this week!".. #GBHTailgate
@kujo30 Bring some deodorant for our UTEP visitors... they'll be missing their Showers on Saturday... #GBHTailgate
@DrNorrisCamacho @rcb05 Too many #GBHTailgate tweets last week.
@TBEnriquez I'm prepard to offer my future first born aggie to just be feautured in this weeks #GBHTailgate! Thanks & Gig'Em
@AleCast23 I just wanna be on the #GBHTailgate so my friends think I'm cool.
@HypnoToad03 One rule I learned years and years ago: anything I accomplish can be done better by a girl with ample cleavage. #GBHTailgateRepublican convention delegates and operatives are creating a long-shot movement to change party rules so the convention can choose someone other than Donald Trump to run for president.
According to the Associated Press, more congressional Republicans are not endorsing Trump and are planning to skip the convention in Cleveland next month altogether. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., one of Trump’s top House backers, says his support among lawmakers “has stalled.”
"We're acting to save the Republican Party from imminent disaster," said Steve Lonegan, who chaired Sen. Ted Cruz's New Jersey campaign and is helping organize an effort to let delegates chosen to back one candidate vote instead for another.
Lonegan says Cruz is not involved in the effort.
The Washington Post reported that Republicans believe Trump is letting the presidential race get away from him already with his attacks on a federal judge, his renewed calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. and his support for national gun law reform.
“This literally is an ‘Anybody but Trump’ movement,” Kendal Unruh, a Republican delegate from Colorado who is leading the effort, told the Post. “Nobody has any idea who is going to step in and be the nominee, but we’re not worried about that. We’re just doing that job to make sure that he’s not the face of our party.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who's unenthusiastically backed Trump, said in an interview recorded for NBC's Sunday show "Meet the Press" that GOP lawmakers should follow "their conscience" when considering endorsing Trump.
“The last thing I would do is tell anybody to do something that’s contrary to their conscience,” Ryan says in his interview with the news program Sunday, per The Post.
Others not supporting him or attending the convention include House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., who for the first time in his 30-year congressional career is not backing the party nominee.
Ryan, who has said he doesn't want to be an alternative should Trump falter, didn't know Unruh — like him — used the word "conscience," said Ryan spokeswoman Ashlee Strong.
Unruh's group, which Lonegan is helping, is using social media and emails and held a conference call Thursday night to organize efforts to find support.
To prevail, Unruh needs a majority of the 112 members of the convention rules committee, which has two delegates from each state and territory. Then, a majority of the full convention's 2,472 delegates would have to approve.
There's a Plan B. If Unruh can win over one-fourth support from the rules committee — just 29 delegates — the full convention must vote on her proposal. So far she's got around 10 supporters though some prefer delaying the rule's impact until the 2020 convention, she said.
Party officials looking to smooth Trump's convention path are already counting noses.
Randy Evans, Georgia's RNC committeeman, says his informal tally suggests it will be a "pretty tall order" to prevent the full convention from voting on unbinding delegates. But he said he expects Trump forces to win a convention floor showdown "pretty comfortably."
"They can make everything look tumultuous," Cindy Costa, South Carolina's RNC committeewoman, said of those attempting to let delegates vote freely. But it would be "a big mistake" and would lose, she said.
Trump has already dismissed any plots that seek to overtake his impending nomination in July in a statement released Friday.
“I won almost 14 million votes, which is by far more votes than any candidate in the history of the Republican primaries,” he said. “I have tremendous support and get the biggest crowds by far and any such move would not only be totally illegal but also a rebuke of the millions of people who feel so strongly about what I am saying.
“People that I defeated soundly in the primaries will do anything to get a second shot — but there is no mechanism for it to happen.”
Previous attempts to boot Trump from the nomination or change the rules to stop him haven’t panned out, but the new Hail Mary approach vows to get a contested convention.
Many say, like him or not, Trump won and efforts to dump him would be crushed and would devastate the GOP. According to The Associated Press, Trump has 1,542 delegates, including 1,447 required by party rules to back his nomination, well above the 1,237 needed for victory.
One catch: Delegates "bound" to one candidate can vote freely in convention rules fights. Delegates could sour on Trump and approve procedures opening the door to an alternative.
"It's a fantasy, it won't happen," said Morton Blackwell, a Republican National Committee member from Virginia who initially backed Cruz.
"We have a responsibility to respect our democracy, and that means we accept the outcome of the vote," said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., who supported the presidential bid of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from The Washington Post.At a recent gathering of the staff of the Los Angeles Times, journalists were invited to participate in a straw poll regarding the paper’s future ownership.
How many, they were asked, would quit their jobs if Rupert Murdoch were to purchase the Times? According to a report in The Huffington Post, several people raised their hands. And what if, the poll went on, the paper went instead to the Koch brothers: right-wing owners of the controversial manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries, and the world’s sixth- and seventh-richest men? Around half the hands in the room shot up.
The fourth-largest newspaper in the US is also the largest in the Tribune Company, which includes the Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, and which recently emerged from a four-year bankruptcy under the ownership of a bank and two hedge funds, which are now in search of a buyer. Murdoch is believed to be interested in buying the Los Angeles Times, though not the other seven titles in the group. The Times staff’s preferred proprietors, meanwhile, would be a proposed alliance of local, Democrat-leaning billionaires, who have offered to run the paper as a non-profit enterprise.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
But 77-year-old Charles Koch, and his brother David, 73, with a combined personal worth of almost $70bn (£45bn), may be the only figures with the will and the wherewithal to purchase all the Tribune papers – valued collectively at around $623m. Their only prior media properties have been niche, libertarian publications. In a 30 April article, Los Angeles Times cartoonist David Horsey warned that the Kochs want to use the titles “to create print versions of Fox News”.
Before now, the brothers have advanced their agenda by backing the Tea Party; donating to Republican electoral candidates; and funding research to rebut evidence of climate change. Dr Lawrence Rosenthal, executive director of the Centre for Right-Wing Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, says their potential move into mainstream media should be viewed in the context of President Obama’s recent re-election.
“The right’s existing means of influencing national elections proved inadequate in 2012,” Rosenthal says. “The money that people like the Kochs gave to people like Karl Rove didn’t do the trick. So now they have entered a period of experimentation, and are looking at ways to repackage the Republican Party.” Several major political figures have floated ideas for the GOP’s future, says Rosenthal, “but you also have experimentation from the money people. The Kochs are thinking: ‘What we did in 2012 didn’t work; we have to do something. What if we bought newspapers?’”
The recession and the rise of the internet have caused a major shift in the US regional newspaper market, explains Ken Doctor, media analyst and author of Newsonomics. “The companies that used to buy papers were other newspaper companies,” he says. “But the traditional buyers aren’t buying any more. And because papers are so cheap now, the market is open to people who would never have thought of buying a newspaper previously.”
Some new-style buyers are welcome: in 2011 billionaire investor Warren Buffett bought his home town’s struggling Omaha World-Herald – a deal seen as uncharacteristically sentimental. But other non-traditional newspaper buyers have been less popular: also in 2011, developer and hotelier Doug Manchester acquired The San Diego U-T with the explicit intention of making it a platform for his business interests, conservative views and preferred political candidates.
The Kochs’ politics would appear to be at odds with those of The Los Angeles Times newsroom, not to mention readers in all of the broadly Democrat cities served by the Tribune titles, though Reuters media columnist Jack Shafer says the brothers’ views have been somewhat misrepresented.
“The Kochs are strongly libertarian,” Shafer explains. “They’re extremely fiscally conservative, they want a much smaller government and they’re anti-regulation. But they’re also socially liberal. They’re for gay rights. If you pushed them on drugs, I suspect they would be for, if not legalisation, then liberalisation. [California liberals] would find many areas of common ground with them. ”
Resistance to the Kochs’ mooted purchase has reached City Hall, where last week three Los Angeles City Council members signed a motion to withdraw the city’s pension funds from the firms that presently own the paper if they choose to sell to buyers who don’t support “objective journalism”. Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who introduced the motion, told the LA Times: “Frankly, what I hear about the Koch brothers, if it’s true, it’s the end of journalism.”
Profile: The Koch brothers
David Koch
David runs the chemical equipment side of Koch Industries and boasts a $34bn fortune, according to Forbes. David is the more politically active of the two brothers, and was a major funder for the 2012 Republican presidential campaign.
He is 6ft 5in, married with three children, and a basketball fan. He is also a high-profile philanthropist, having donated $15m to build the David H Koch Hall of Human Origins at the National Museum of Natural History and $100m for the David H Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.
Charles Koch
Older brother Charles is also said to be worth $34bn, having built his fortune around refining and chemicals.
Described by Forbes as “a diehard libertarian”, Charles is also a notable philanthropist, co-founder of the Washington-based libertarian think-tank Cato Institute, and author of The Science of Success, published in 2007. He is married with two children.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowThere’s something a little childish about the idea of using crayons to color your homemade candles. So I decided to come up with a candle aesthetic that’s anything but.
Harnessing one of my favorite trends, ombré, and using essential oils for scent, these candles elevate the look of the typical crayon candle—and don’t smell anything like an elementary school.
Even better, I created these candles in an afternoon, using mostly ingredients I have around the house! Here’s how to make some ombré votive candles of your own.
You will need:
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit/121 degrees Celsius. Some candlemakers will recommend 250 degrees F, but I prefer a hotter pour for a smoother candle finish.
2. Select three crayon colors to use for each layer of your candle. You can choose to go from dark to light or light to dark. The closer together your colors are, the more subtle the ombré effect will be.
3. Scoop 1/4 of a cup of candle wax into each of three paper cups. Top it with broken up crayon pieces. If you are using a block of wax, chop it up finely first. The smaller your pieces, the more even your melted wax will appear.
4. Put your first layer of wax and color into a paper cup, and place it in the muffin tin. At the same time, put a tiny amount of uncolored wax in another paper cup next to it. Put them both in the oven for 5 minutes.
5. After five minutes, add essential oil of your choice to the still-melting first layer, and put it back in the oven for 5 more minutes. Take out the cup with the small amount of uncolored wax. Dip your wick in it, and use it to affix the base of the wick to the bottom of your candle votive.
6. When the first layer of wax is fully melted, stir it with a popsicle stick to make sure the crayon wax has colored it evenly. Add more essential oil until you reach your desired scent intensity (probably a drop or two). Pour the first layer of wax into the candle votive on a level workspace.
7. Wait until the first layer of the candle has dried for 15-20 minutes, and then add the second layer. Repeat for the third.
8. Let candle cool for one to two hours, and you’re done!
Have you made my ombré candle recipe? If so, I would love to hear about it/see your candles! Be sure to leave a comment.Jim Mone/Associated Press
Oklahoma City Thunder center Enes Kanter was released Saturday after being held at a Romanian airport because of a canceled Turkish passport.
According to Benjamin Hoffman of the New York Times, Romanian border police spokesman Fabian Badila said Kanter was allowed to leave on a flight to London:
"Today at around 1 p.m. local time, an individual arrived from Frankfurt. My colleagues established that his travel documents weren't valid, that they had been canceled by his home country, so he wasn't allowed to enter the country. At around 5 p.m., he left the airport on a flight to London. While he was at the airport, he wasn't detained or locked up; he was allowed to wander around, but he couldn't enter the country."
Royce Young of ESPN reported the NBA worked with the State Department to help get Kanter to London.
Kanter said he's planning a press conference in New York City on Sunday to give more details regarding being detained:
Kanter tweeted a video earlier in the day saying his passport had been canceled because of his political views:
Per ESPN.com, Kanter is an "outspoken critic " of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Kanter is a supporter of Fethullah Gulen, who allegedly led a failed coup against Erdogan last year.
According to Hoffman, Kanter is in the middle of a tour for the Enes Kanter Light Foundation.
The 25-year-old was selected with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft by the Utah Jazz before getting traded to OKC in February 2015
His production has improved with the Thunder, and he is coming off a season that saw him average 14.3 points and 6.7 rebounds per game.
Kanter has one year remaining on his contract before he is eligible to opt out and become a free agent in 2018.An interfaith group from the Gulf state of Bahrain attend Hannukah candle lighting in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017. The 25 participants, which included Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, and both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, flew to Israel on Sunday as guests of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a U.S.-based Jewish human rights group. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
JERUSALEM (AP) — An interfaith group from the Gulf state of Bahrain is paying an unprecedented public visit to Israel this week, receiving a warm welcome but generating uproar across the Arab world.
The visit comes at a time when Israel is boasting of warming, albeit covert, ties with moderate Arab countries in a shared front against archrival Iran. But the heavy criticism unleashed on Arab social media, along with the low profile the group has taken, shows the limits on how far that goodwill can go.
The 25 participants, who include Sunni and Shiite Muslims, as well as Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs, flew to Israel on Sunday as guests of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a U.S.-based Jewish human rights group. The group gathered Tuesday at a restaurant overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City walls for dinner and a candle-lighting ceremony marking the first night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
While organizers and participants said the three-day trip was nonpolitical and unconnected to the Bahrain government, it nonetheless is a possible test case for other Gulf Arab nations in seeing what could happen if they move toward recognizing Israel.
“People have been asking us, ‘Oh why have you been here now, after there was an announcement made by the White House,’” Betsy Mathieson, president of This is Bahrain, told The Associated Press, referring to President Donald Trump’s declaration last week that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The move enraged the Palestinians, who seek the city’s eastern half as capital of a future state.
“We have nothing to do with politics,” insisted Mathieson, a dual British-Bahrain national who has lived in Bahrain for 37 years.
But the early results seem decidedly mixed.
Shortly after the group arrived, it was forced to issue a statement on the state-run Bahrain News Agency that it “does not represent any official entity” in Bahrain after an uproar erupted on social media. People were especially angry that the visit came so close to Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem.
Throughout their time in Israel, the group, about half of whom are Bahrain citizens and the rest people of other nationalities who live in the Gulf nation, avoided the spotlight. Several Bahrainis chose not to attend Tuesday’s dinner, and those who did either refused to speak to the AP or did so only if they weren’t identified.
One Bahraini woman said she didn’t care about Trump’s proclamation, “because I am not a political person.” She said that unlike most Bahrainis, she sees no issue with Israel and Bahrain establishing bilateral relations, and would visit Israel again if the opportunity arose.
“If there’s a chance, why not?” said the woman, who like others demanded anonymity because of the controversy surrounding the visit. Earlier in the day, she prayed at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, which she described as “a dream.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the fact that the group arrived, defying expectations that they would cancel because of Trump’s move on Jerusalem, “speaks volumes.”
“We’re looking for the normalization. We’re not waiting for politicians, and we’re going to try to stick to that narrative,” he said.
Israel and Bahrain do not have diplomatic relations, although Bahrain’s King Hamad is rumored to be weighing an end to his country’s boycott of Israel as the two countries nurture covert ties.
Bahrain and other Sunni Arab states see themselves as sharing regional interests with Israel when confronting Shiite power Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly touted Israel’s warming ties with Gulf Arab states in recent months. On Sunday, Netanyahu asserted that “many of the Arab countries now recognize that Israel is not their enemy but their indispensable ally.” This shift, he said, “could help pave the way to an ultimate peace between us and our Palestinian neighbors and between us and the rest of the Arab world.”
Netanyahu acknowledged last week that Israel won’t be able to sign peace treaties with the Arabs without a deal on the Palestinians, but also implied that ties have already been established and have plenty of room to grow. “Peace treaties, no. Everything else below that, yes, and it’s happening,” he said just hours before Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem.
The island nation of Bahrain, east of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf, has long been seen as more liberal than its larger neighbor, but has faced major criticism in recent years for how it put down its 2011 Arab Spring protests with the help of the Saudi kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.
The tiny state is ruled by a Sunni king but has a majority Shiite population. According to the Bahraini government, 70% of the population is Muslim and the remainder adheres to various faiths.
Shiites and others demonstrated in 2011 seeking more political freedoms. An official investigation found the government demolished 30 Shiite religious structures following the demonstrations, ranging from mosques to meeting halls and shrines, as part of a broader crackdown on dissent.
Bahrain is home to a small Jewish community, but no members of the community took part in the trip.ALMA, Que. — Newly minted federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says the hair nestled tightly under his turban is real and it’s spectacular.
During a trip to Quebec’s Saguenay region Tuesday ahead of a federal byelection later this month, Singh said he’s sometimes asked what’s under his Sikh religious headwear.
His response appeared to challenge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to a sort of hair-off.
Singh wears a turban in public to hide what he referred to as his luscious mane.
The turban has been the subject of controversy since he ran for his party’s leadership due to it being a potential liability in the fiercely secular province of Quebec.
“Sometimes, people ask me, what’s inside your turban? And I say: ’A lot of hair!”’ he said in Alma, about 250 kilometres north of Quebec City.
“I have very long hair. And I will show it. But I want to decide when I can do it in an interesting way.”
He mentioned he had already revealed his hair on the CBC comedy, the “Rick Mercer Report.”
Singh ended the hair-talk with a sort of challenge to Trudeau, although he didn’t directly name the prime minister, who has received international recognition for what is considered to be a gorgeous do.
“People have talked about someone else’s hair,” he said to laughter. “I have more hair, it’s longer and it’s nicer.”
The Lac-Saint-Jean riding was held by former Conservative Denis Lebel and the byelection is scheduled for Oct. 23.It’s amazing how fast the future comes at you.
Just a few years ago we were theorizing about how the crypto market may come to replace the Foreign Exchange market. Earlier this week, business insider has reported that the volumes in the cryptomarket are now comparable to those of the New York Stock Exchange.
As we can see from the data, a typical day at the NYSE produces an average turnover of $41 Billion. Some days are more than $100 Billion and some days less than $25 Billion.
The crypto market has advanced exponentially this year. On January 1st the total turnover was about $120 Million but by now they’re consistently surpassing $30 Billion.
However, as the author points out, there’s still a long way to go to reach the $5 Trillion daily turnover that is seen in the global currency markets. After seeing what’s happened in 2017, it’s already easy to imagine that this may somehow be possible in the year ahead.
@MatiGreenspan
eToro, Senior Market Analyst
Traditional Markets
Wall Street came back from their long weekend with a bit of a hangover. It’s quite common for large hedge funds to close out their positions and realize some of their profits by the end of the year. It looks good on their reports.
The main target was Apple, which fell about 2.5%. After a 53% gain in share price this year, the retracement looks pretty normal and I wouldn’t doubt that many investors will see this as a discount. Though the losses were not staggering, it did manage to bring down the major indices, which ended at a bit of a loss.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Asian markets have detected the sour sentiment from New York. Though the Nikkei is only slightly down, the China50 dropped 2.5% today. Contrarywise, the markets have just opened in Europe and though volumes are likely to be weak during the holiday season, the boards are all green for the Dax and his pals.
Commodities Jump
Gold and Oil seem to be benefiting from the low liquidity holiday season trading. Both have made significant gains the last few days.
Gold actually saw a drop at the beginning of the month and so now is only recovering from that. Oil on the other hand, has seen a shift in trend over the last few months and has now touched $60 a barrel for the first time since mid-2015.
Many analysts are pointing to a pipeline explosion in Libya as the cause for the price surge yesterday. To me, that’s a hard story to swallow really. It’s really difficult to see such an occurrence as having much of an impact on the long term balance between supply and demand of this global market.
More likely, the news of the explosion caused traders to focus their energy on crude oil. That together with low liquidity during the holidays and a weaker US Dollar gives us a more complete picture.
Ripple Explosion
Though Bitcoin regained a lot of its composure yesterday, it’s Ripple that should be making the headlines.
The Ripple network is a bit different from most other blockchains in that Ripple is a private company and their protocol is maintained as such. So it’s not completely open source like the rest but it still is included in the overall asset class we call cryptocurrencies since it does make use of the distributed ledger technology.
Ripple’s aim is to replace the swift system that is currently being used to send money from one bank to another. If you’ve ever sent an international wire transfer, you know that it usually takes between two and five business days and costs about $25. Ripple can do this in seconds for pennies.
Every transaction that is sent through the Ripple network burns a small amount of XRP tokens, as a payment for the transfer. Those tokens then disappear and can never be used again. This means that the overall economics of the coin are super deflationary. Meaning, over time the supply dwindles causing the price to rise.
However, to counteract this Ripple has started with a monumental amount of 100 Billion tokens. Though they’ve recently locked up more than half of this supply in a long term escrow account, there is still a current circulation of almost 39 Billion XRPs.
The price gains have been intense. At the start of the year each token was a fraction of a penny and in December alone it’s come from 23 cents to $1.17 this morning for a total gain of 408%.
I’ve already heard several people tell me that it’s actually cheap at around $1 but we do really need to think about the total supply in the market. Compared to bitcoin’s current supply of about 16 million and Ethereum’s 96 Million.
In the end of the day, the value will be determined by the banks. The more financial institutions use it to set up payment gateways the more they will need XRPs to facilitate the transactions.
However, in the long term, there may actually be a real cap on the amount this toke can grow. The more expensive the tokens are the more the transactions will cost. For now, it’s extremely cheap to send a Ripple transfer but at some point, if XRP gets more expensive it may be seen as less viable.
Sorry for getting the report out a bit late today. Wishing you an amazing day ahead!
This content is provided for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered to be investment advice or recommendation. The outlook presented is a personal opinion of the analyst and does not represent an official position of eToro. Past performance is not an indication of future results. All trading involves risk; only risk capital you are prepared to lose. Cryptocurrencies can widely fluctuate in prices and are not appropriate for all investors. Trading cryptocurrencies is not supervised by any EU regulatory framework.The first dance has started. Gluten free Cheerios are staring at me from across the counter. ‘Eat me,’ I hear the quiet calling…
My husband is the more risk taking celiac in our household. Work events, questionable items… he’s more inclined to take a gamble. I can always tell when he’s come home glutened. He turns white and loses his color. He spends extra time near the bathroom. It can be pretty significant.
So when it came to gambling… I thought, well, why not? He’s been asking about the gluten free Cheerios for some time and I don’t think he’s been privy to all the community drama surrounding them. Let’s experiment. He knows this is happening. He’s okay with it. He was more bummed that I didn’t find the Lucky Charms ones for him to try.
In case you aren’t familiar with the drama, General Mills is using a proprietary way of “cleaning” the oats. Oats are naturally gluten free but typically cross contaminated with wheat and barley in the harvesting process. General Mills is not using certified gluten free oats but rather sorting and cleaning up the cross contamination. This can definitely be intimidating for those of us with gluten problems.
On the other side of the coin, some people will cross-react to oat proteins regardless of the gluten. This is definitely something to consider before you try the cereal. If you react to oat, there’s no way to know if you’re reacting to gluten or to oats in the box. Neither of us has been sensitive to oats. We’ve been eating Chex Gluten Free Oat and Berries cereal and never seemed to have a problem.
My husband, in his fearless sort of way, filled his bowl and started chomping down. Of course, after telling me again I should stop buying cereal puffs because puffs never get any love from anyone.
He didn’t explode.
He didn’t pass out.
He didn’t turn white.
In fact, he felt well enough to keep teasing me and even said he forgot that Honey Nut Cheerios tasted like Lucky Charms without the marshmallows. Priorities.
Gluten Free Watch Dog’s last tests came up well below 20ppm gluten. (If you haven’t seen those, totally worth the follow). As I’ve posted before, 20ppm is the FDA regulated number for labeling a product as a Gluten Free product.
Me? I waited until he left for work and danced around the boxes. I opened one and ate two or three Cheerios after much self-coaxing. The struggle is real. I forgot how good Cheerios tasted. I didn’t even remember what to expect. I considered pouring a whole bowl. No, too risky. I tried a few from the box of Frosted Cheerios. Also yummy. Still too risky. I decided I will wait until he gets another meal in and see how he feels when he comes home… and if it’s safe? I’ll try them tomorrow.
More to come.As somebody who gets paid to put his opinions in print every day, I've always thought columnists have one, overriding duty to their readers and the profession:
Intellectual and emotional honesty.
Our goal is to channel our convictions, values and perspectives into compelling arguments, respecting facts and contrary views. Even when that means something you normally champion lands in your cross hairs.
Which is why I have found the story of conservative New York |
each or 2 X 110 X 283 or 62,260 connections between the floors and the girders.
How do apologists account for the severance by fire of 62,260 connections in less than 2 seconds with no fire damage to the glass windows?
440,000 cubic yards (336,404.14 cubic meters) of reinforced concrete at Towers 1 and 2 were turned into dust in 2 seconds. That took an explosive power far beyond the abilities of nanothermite. I believe an experimental Above Top Secret explosive was used to turn all that concrete into dust. It also did the following which no fire even one ignited with nanothermite could ever do.
The North and South Towers both weighed 500,000 tons (453,592,400 kilograms. There was very little debris left. Where did those 283 steel girders 110 stories high go?
A 600,000 pound (272,155.44 Kilogram) chunk of steel was severed from the WTC and blown 400 feet (121.92 Meters) into WTC Tower 3. Neither an office fire nor nanothermite could do that.
A billion dollars in gold (at 2001 prices) was stolen from a COMEX vault at WTC Tower 4 the night before 911. Do you believe that office fires made that gold poof? Or do you believe a band of Arabs broke into WTC 4 and loaded up their trucks all night long with neither a police response nor media coverage?
I think I have won any honest debate about 911 being an inside job. Did I mention the lease holder Larry Silverstein had an Israeli security firm to make sure things went right?
I would like to present a video from Dr Alan Sabrosky, a former Director of Studies at the US Army War College explain why he believes Israel did 911.Number of Governors of Minnesota by party affiliation[1] Party Governors Republican/Independent-Republican 26 Democratic-Farmer-Labor 6 Democratic 6 Farmer-Labor 3 Reform/Independence 1
The following is a list of Governors of the State of Minnesota and Minnesota Territory, United States. The officeholder, who serves as head of the executive branch of the Government of Minnesota and is charged with ensuring the faithful execution of the state's laws,[a] is empowered to name state commissioners and department heads and to approve or veto bills passed by the Minnesota Legislature.[b] The Governor of Minnesota also serves as commander-in-chief of the Minnesota National Guard.
Henry H. Sibley was elected the first governor in a statewide election held on October 13, 1857 and took office following Minnesota's entry into the Union as the 32nd state on May 11, 1858. At the time, the governor and lieutenant governor were elected on separate ballots to terms lasting two years. Prior to 1886, statewide elections were held on odd years. Because of this change (the result of an 1883 state constitutional amendment), Lucius F. Hubbard's second term as governor lasted three years. With the passage of a 1958 state constitutional amendment, the terms of governor and lieutenant governor increased to four-years in 1963.[b] A 1972 state constitutional amendment provided for the joint election of the governor and lieutenant governor starting in 1974.
The numerals indicate the consecutive time in office served by a single person. For example, William R. Marshall served two consecutive terms and is counted as the fifth state governor (not the fifth and sixth). Henry A. Swift assumed the governorship after the resignation of Alexander Ramsey, serving out the remainder of what would have been Ramsey's second term. The fact that Swift was not voted into office does not affect the numbering, which makes him the 3rd governor. Rudy Perpich served two non-consecutive terms and is counted chronologically as both the 34th and the 36th governor. Because of this, the list below contains 40 governorships, but only 39 people.
Prior to its organization as a territory, portions of Minnesota were part of the Northwest Territory, Indiana Territory, Louisiana Territory (later renamed Missouri Territory), Illinois Territory, Michigan Territory, Wisconsin Territory, and Iowa Territory; see the lists of governors of Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa for this period.
Four governors were born outside the United States: Knute Nelson was born in Norway, John Lind and Adolph Olson Eberhart were both born in Sweden, and Hjalmar Petersen was born in Denmark. Sixteen of the forty governors to date were actually born in Minnesota. Five governors have resigned from office, and three have died in office.
Territorial governors [ edit ]
Parties
Democratic Whig
State governors [ edit ]
Parties
Democratic Farmer-Labor Republican Reform/Independence
Notes [ edit ]
^ Table lists John Lind as a member of the Democratic Party. He was also endorsed by the Populist Party and the Silver Republican Party. Jesse Ventura left the Reform Party in the middle of his term and later joined the Independence Party of Minnesota. a b c d e Resigned. a b c d e f g h i j k l Succeeded to office following death or resignation of previous officeholder. ^ Lind was also endorsed by the Populist Party and the Silver Republican Party a b c Died in office of natural causes. ^ Served as acting lieutenant governor and never took the oath of office. a b A recount and subsequent litigation lasting 139 days delayed Karl Rolvaag's inauguration as governor. ^ Ventura's birth and legal name is James George Janos.
Notes on Minnesota political party names [ edit ]
Other high offices held [ edit ]
This is a table of congressional and other federal offices held by governors. All representatives and senators mentioned represented Minnesota except where noted. * denotes offices that the governor resigned to take.
Living former governors of Minnesota [ edit ]
As of January 2019, there are five former governors of Minnesota who are currently living at this time, the oldest governor of Minnesota being Al Quie (served 1979–1983, born 1923). The most recent U.S. governor of Minnesota to die was Wendell Anderson (served 1971–1976, born 1933), on July 17, 2016. The most recently serving governor of Minnesota to die was Rudy Perpich (served 1976–1979 and 1983–1991, born 1928), on September 21, 1995.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
GeneralPresident Donald Trump famously promised Americans so much winning that they’d be sick of it. He appears obsessed with this promise, to the point of actively undermining it. He is so focused on winning — or claiming to win — every little battle, that he has neglected the patient work required to win big wars in Congress.
This strategy should unnerve conservatives; almost any other Republican president drawn from last year’s primary field would be scoring more wins for their cause right now than Trump has. It should especially worry Trump’s advisers. This week, the president appears set to obsess his way into a series of unforced errors that could hurt his agenda in the months and years to come.
Nearly 100 days into his term, Trump has delivered few major victories, either for the country or for his own supporters.
He lost in his short-lived bid to repeal and replace Obamacare, demanding a rushed vote on a much-derided bill, only to back down at the last moment when it was clear he didn’t have the votes. Courts have blocked two of his attempts to ban refugees and travel from several Muslim-majority countries.
Trump backed out of a currency fight with China, which he promised repeatedly while campaigning. He keeps punting on a pledge to detail his tax reform plan, and he hasn’t stoked anything close to a massive jobs revival in manufacturing or coal mining.
His wins, such as they are, would be layups for any Republican president working with a full congressional majority. He nominated a Supreme Court justice who was confirmed by a GOP majority in the Senate that was willing to abolish the filibuster for judicial nominations. He canceled or began the work of rolling back several major regulations issued by President Barack Obama. He scorched a Syrian air strip, which appears to have won him a fleeting polling bump, but probably not much more. He has empowered Customs and Border Patrol agents to step up their aggressiveness in the deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Where Trump has soared, compared to any other possible Republican in the White House, is in the deflection of defeats and the claiming of faux-victories. He has taken credit for thousands of job-creation announcements that were often planned long before his election. He says the health care effort wasn’t a loss, only an ongoing negotiation. Last week, after Republicans just barely managed to force a run-off in a special election for a GOP-stronghold congressional seat in Georgia, he tweeted this:
Despite major outside money, FAKE media support and eleven Republican candidates, BIG "R" win with runoff in Georgia. Glad to be of help! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 19, 2017
Limping to a run-off for the seat formerly held — and repeatedly won handily — by Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary is by no means a win for Republicans. It could be, when the special election is held in June, but for now, it’s claimable as a victory by Trump, because it’s not a proven loss, either. The same is true for health care, China policy, and a host of other issues; until Trump actually loses on any of them, he can say he’s winning.
Which brings us to this week, which Trump has built into a minefield of his own making.
How Trump could lose his 100th day
It wouldn’t be hard for the president to ring in his 100th day in office with a few small victories, while quietly laying the groundwork for some larger ones by day 300 or so. The last round of government funding approved by Congress is about to run out, and Trump could sign a bill that continues it for a few weeks, to buy time for his fully detailed budget to be released. He’d avoid a government shutdown, and he could use the accompanying fanfare to clearly lay out his must-haves — on military spending increases, for example, or domestic spending cuts — to sign a longer-term spending plan.
He could announce a deadline for his economic team to produce an opening draft of a tax reform negotiation with Congress, one with more specifics attached than even his various campaign tax plans ever had. He could make clear which parts of that plan were most important — for example, middle-class tax cuts, or a low corporate rate — and avoid many of the mistakes he made in his half-engagement in health care, where he never put forth an actual plan for Congress to work with.
Speaking of health care, he could finally craft that plan, his true vision of Trumpcare, and announce its details as a challenge to Republicans in Congress to get in line or face the consequences.
Right now, Trump is no closer to passing those large pieces of legislation than he was when he took office — if anything, the congressional dynamics look more challenging. He rushed health care. He’s been publicly passive on tax reform. He has allowed advisers to make competing statements about his priorities on both issues, or to admit, even today, that they’re not sure if, say, a big temporary tax cut would be better than a small permanent one. He could be using this moment to take a breath, dive into the weeds, and build a foundation on both those issues.
That’s not the week Trump is about to have. Instead, by several accounts in newspapers and from the mouths of his advisers on TV news shows, Trump plans to push Congress to score a bunch of “wins” for him on policy this week.
He wants a health care vote in the House, on a revised plan that still does not appear to be fully translated into legislative text.
He plans to make what he originally billed as a big announcement on tax reform, which his aides have since clarified will simply be a broad outline of principles. If it yields few major specifics, journalists and market participants may intensify questions about whether Trump is prepared to lead a successful tax reform effort.
Most importantly, he is pushing Congress hard to approve some funding for his signature campaign promise (albeit, the one Mexico was supposed to pay for): the construction of a wall across America’s Southern border. Democrats are spoiling for that fight; they have threatened to force a shutdown to block that money. Top Republicans in the House and Senate seem eager to avoid the battle; they’re pushing to keep the wall funding out of this week’s bill and deal with it separately.
Nevertheless, Trump’s budget director will not rule out Trump vetoing a funding bill that doesn’t include money for the wall.
Trump needs big wins, not little ones
As my former colleague Bob Costa of the Washington Post tweeted on Sunday, Trump is driving this train himself:
WH really wants action b/c Trump is pushing them for movement behind scenes, almost hour but hour. But many Hill Rs just want gov to run. — Robert Costa (@costareports) April 24, 2017
This is a strategy that prizes short-term “wins” above all else. It carries several dangers for Trump. It distracts him and his team from the quiet work they need to do behind the scenes to craft bills that can unite a fractured House majority and clear the Senate, either via budget reconciliation or by picking up Democratic votes.
It also gives Democrats chances to score real wins against him, particularly if the government shuts down over wall funding and angry Americans blame Trump for it. (Democrats need those wins — they haven’t actually defeated Trump on anything yet.)
There is a theory of momentum in politics — that small wins build to larger wins, which build to happy voters, which build to the even larger wins. That was what Trump promised all campaign.
That theory only works if you are actually winning, not pretending to win. Trump’s core supporters continue to believe that he will actually win on big, core issue. So, to a diminishing degree, do financial markets. But as 100 days turn to 200, to 400, to the 2018 midterms, Trump will need concrete wins to keep his folks happy. To get them, he needs to be strategic.
You can feed people pretend wins for four years, but they’ll probably get sick of it.A family in Belmont County is the saving grace to horses in need, but they say that these horses have become their saving grace as well. Kimberly Mason found her love for horses when her daughter Eliana was two years old. Riding horses became therapeutic for her daughter as she got older and went through what her mother calls some traumatic situations.
"It was either continuing through therapy or building the barn and bringing the horse home. And that saved her and that saved us," Kimberly said.
That horse which helped saved Eli was Annabelle.
"Anne, since I met Anne and I got on her, it just felt like she loved me and I loved her," Eli said.
She says she knows no matter what happens, if she's riding Anne, she will feel safe.
"When I am riding Anne, I know that God is with me," Eli said.
From there, the family has begun dedicating part of their lives to saving other horses. And that all began through the Bella Run Equine Rescue Center in Athens Ohio, where they saved Vivian when she was just a few weeks old.
"We fell immediately in love. Look at those blue eyes how could you not,” Kimberly said. “She’s gorgeous. She has been with us since October and she fits in very well."
Kimberly and her family recently made a visit back to the rescue center to help three extremely malnourished horses. By posting a simple announcement on Facebook, Kimberly was able to get an immense response from people who wanted to help.
“We had hay donated by a local farmer, we have had feed, buckets, halters, you name it,” Kimberly said.” My jeep was packed. We couldn’t fit one more thing in there I don't think. We were squished. But it’s so rewarding."
Without volunteers like Kimberly and her family, nonprofit rescue centers like Bella Run Equine, could not do the work that they do and people like Eliana, would have been able to find the horses that saved her.
"It’s good to rescue horses because some of them are innocent and they might be the best horse out there," Eliana said.
It's the name of the Mason family farm and that truly fits the relationship they have with their animals. Bella Run Equine is always accepting donations. Stay up to date with wtov9.com to see where you can fund-raise.To feed the world's growing and more affluent population, global agriculture will have to double its food production by 2050. More farming, however, usually means more environmental harm as a result of clearing land, burning fossil fuels, consuming water for irrigation and spreading fertilizer. Agriculture already imposes a greater burden on Earth than almost any other human activity, so simply doubling current practices would ruin large areas of land as well as poisoning rivers and oceans.
An international research team led by Jon Foley at the University of Minnesota has concluded that five basic changes in the way agriculture operates—and in the ways we eat—could double food production, yet decrease overall environmental impacts. The steps are as follows: improve crop yields, consume less meat, reduce food waste, stop expanding into rainforests, and use fertilizer and water more efficiently. The changes are reflected in a series of maps. For a detailed explanations, see "Can We Feed the World and Sustain the Planet?".A host of highly anticipated eateries and pop-up ventures is set to take the funky Gordon Square neighborhood to the next level and beyond."Within two months we are poised to have nearly every vacant space on Detroit from West 54to 73full of activity, which is really exciting," says Chad Jones, director of marketing for the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization ( DSCDO ).On the verge of opening are three pop-ups that are coming to the corridor courtesy of a contest held earlier this year. Fortunately, the judges were unable to pick just one winner from the 27 applicants."We had so many qualified and talented people for the pop-up competition and we had some extra open spaces," says Jones, referring to DSCDO's Gordon Square real estate portfolio. "We were able to name basically three winners." Trunk took the top prize of $1,000 cash and free rent for the holiday season at 6515 Detroit in a 750-square-foot shop."They're a high-end reseller of men's clothing," says Jones. "It's higher-end clothing without higher-end prices."Two other vendors will receive business training and free rent for their holiday pop-up ventures. Heavy Metal Flea Market will purvey all things, well, heavy metal in a 1,400-square-foot space at 5403 Detroit and Midnight Movie Retail will offer up cool movie art, posters and memorabilia in the former 330-square-foot Guide to Kulchur location at 1386 West 65Street."It's a cornucopia of pop-ups - it's a cornupopia," quips Jones.Those imminently forthcoming pop-ups will join Collective Upcycle, 6602 Detroit. The 800-square-foot space opened earlier this month and will feature the work of 21 local makers through the holiday season.Staff at DSCDO hopes some of the temporary retail spots become more permanent."The hope is they will enter into a lease agreement with us long term and commit to the neighborhood," says Adam Rosen, economic development director for DSCDO. "We want to set them up for success."The pop-ups will be joined shortly by an array of white-hot new eateries including Arcadian Food & Drink, 6414 Detroit, and Astoria, 5417 Detroit, both of which are still under construction; and Banter, the forthcoming house of sausage, poutine and beer that is to open imminently at 7320 Detroit.For those wondering when superelectric will finally open its doors at 6500 Detroit, the pinball emporium has hosted private events, but is still waiting on a final occupancy permit after some last minute changes. Across the street at Councilman Matt Zone's former offices, 6501 Detroit, something nutty is brewing, although everyone's mum on the topic except for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, which will be asking voters next Tuesday:Shall the sale of beer, wine and mixed beverages and spirituous liquor be permitted by Brewnuts, LLC, an applicant for a D-5j liquor permit, who is engaged in the business of establishing a Donut Bar with craft beer at 6501 Detroit Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44102 in this precinct?Fresh Water invites readers to draw their own conclusions.As it unfolds, Gordon Square visitors looking for shopping, noshing and then some can join any number of celebrations planned for the holidays, starting with Dia de Muertos/Day of the Dead this Saturday, Oct. 31 (free). Go for the art installations and music, stay for the parade. On Nov. 5, DSCDO will hold its 13annual benefit, Shoreway on Stage, at the Near West Theatre (ticket prices vary) and on Nov. 7, SouperBowl CLE will benefit the West Side Catholic Center via a $25 dollar ticket that buys attendees a host of soups to taste and judge. Lastly on Dec. 12, the free Holidays in Gordon Square will feature carriage rides, the Cleveland Craft Bazaar at 78Street Studios and more than 20 vendors inside the Gordon Square Arcade for a winter farmers market."We really see this as a neighborhood that’s on the brink of amazing things in terms of residential, retail and commercial," says Rosen of the impending Gordon Square proliferation."We want to create something that really inspires people to hang out in the neighborhood," adds Jones. "It's going to be a great winter."When I was six years old, my parents enrolled me in a two month sex-ed class at our Unitarian Universalist church. The class was fairly basic; on the first day, I recall sketching a crude outline of a man and a woman and then labeling their body parts. I felt vaguely subversive when I got to the male and female figures’ respective groins (I have the nagging suspicion that my drawing did not include breasts, because at six, I had not yet even begun to consider that my chest could ever change shape). Our teacher sang a song about Josh and Jenny, fraternal twins with two eyes and ten toes each, and then—gasp!—mentioned Josh’s two testes and Jenny’s one vulva, presumably in an attempt to normalize dry, scientific discussion of the human body.
Some weeks later, the topic shifted to what makes a family, and we dull suburban children learned about the fictional Serena’s rather unconventional family reunion (“This is Serena’s gay cousin and his 20-year partner. They are standing next to Serena’s divorced grandfather, who is talking to Serena’s bisexual hermaphroditic polygamist aunt, who was born a man.”) The class also supplied my first lesson in “no means no,” a novel concept simply because, blessed with a loving family and a safe school and neighborhood, I had never before been exposed to the idea of sexual abuse.
Seven years later, about two weeks after my 13th birthday, I attended the first session of another UU sex-ed class, this one a year long. As eighth graders, we were deemed mature enough to handle the more emotional aspects of sex, and discussions ranged from basic reviews of anatomy, safe sex, and the various forms of sex to what we would do if we found out a partner had an STD, whether we would have sex before a relationship became serious, and whether the word “slut” was inherently offensive to women. We also spoke to a group of LBGTQ people about topics like coming out and experiencing often-pervasive homophobia and transphobia (among other attitudes), and we debated the importance or lack thereof of remaining a virgin.
You can imagine the awkward shuffling and bashful mumbles that ensue when a group of barely-acquainted 13-year-olds are introduced to such topics. We employed the ever-popular “anonymous questions box” that I assume is still omnipresent in sex- ed classrooms up and down the country, and the teachers always had a list of backup discussion questions to raise in case one went down poorly. My classmates and I could hardly bear to look at each other during the class each week.
But now, at 16, I consider those sex-ed classes incredibly valuable. I am aware that I still have a lifetime of learning ahead of me, but I am also aware that my knowledge of sex and sexuality far outstrips that of many of my peers. I feel confident in my ability to make responsible sexual decisions for myself, and I left the class with nuanced views on issues like gender equality and relationships (romantic and platonic alike). What many more-conservative parents need to consider is that the dissemination of information is not inherently dangerous. It is highly preferable, in fact, for children and teenagers to receive accurate, complete information from a reliable source than to spread the gossip and half-truths of their friends or the Internet.
I am aware, of course, that many parents do not believe their children are prepared for the more emotional, subjective parts of a class like the one I took, and that their children may truly not be ready. But it is crucial to protect the right of purely scientific knowledge to remain in the classroom, which must remain a bastion of learning what is true and not what is comfortable. With restrictions on the information considered acceptable for school, students leave the class with curious gaps in their knowledge: my school system, for instance, has established abstinence-only education until high school, with the result that a sex-ed teacher was once allowed to inform my class that condoms prevent the transmission of STIs but could not answer a question about whether they also prevent pregnancy.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Dec. 11, 2015, 1:53 AM GMT / Updated Dec. 11, 2015, 1:53 AM GMT By Tracy Jarrett
CHICAGO — As protests continued in Chicago Thursday following the delayed release of video showing the shooting of Laquan McDonald, voters on the city’s North Side, who overwhelmingly supported Mayor Rahm Emanuel in last April’s election, have doubts about his ability to address corruption and continue leading the city.
“I do not think that Rahm is doing all that he can to fix the situation.” said Colleen Fry, who lives in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, on the city’s North Side, where Emanuel has had an abundance of support.
“I’m not sure what the answer is besides resigning and having Anita Alvarez resign also, but that is not going to happen.”
PHOTOS: Chicago Protests Call for Mayor’s Resignation
Eighty-three percent of voters in the city’s 43rd Ward, which includes Lincoln Park and the Lakeview neighborhood, voted for Emanuel in the last election, according to the Chicago Board of Elections.
But even the mayor’s usual support base questions whether or not he is doing enough to smooth things over in a city that has been plagued by corrupt politics for decades.
“I think he’s doing the politically correct thing, but he’s doing it too late and not quite enough,” said North Side resident, Dorothy Wolff.Hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon welcome author Keith Wiley to discuss his book: A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind Uploading. One day soon we may be able to transfer human minds to computers. But for that to be possible, there is a good deal that we will need to understand about the process of transferring minds, as well as about minds themselves. Keith Wiley explains some of the major philosophical challenges that thus topic raises, along with his responses to each
About our guest:
Keith Wiley has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico and was one of the original members of MURG, the Mind Uploading Research Group, an online community dating to the mid-90s that discussed issues of consciousness with an aim toward mind-uploading. He has written multiple book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, and magazine articles, in addition to several essays on a broad array of topics, available on his website. Keith is also an avid rock-climber and a prolific classical piano composer.Get the biggest Newcastle 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
Nile Ranger believes he’d “definitely be playing” for Newcastle United right now if he was still on the Magpies’ book - because he insists he “can do better” than the current crop at the club due to his “natural-born talent”.
The 24-year-old signed a five-and-a-half-year contract back in 2010, and so could have still been on United’s books in theory. His contract was terminated in 2013.
Ranger was promising forward who, after being poached from Southampton’s academy back in 2008, failed to ever shake off his bad-boy image at St James’ Park. His time at United was characterised by negative headlines and Ranger has not played since he ran out for Blackpool back in November 2014 and then disappeared for 10 months.
Yet he still believes he could be excelling for goal-shy Newcastle in the Premier League.
“I feel like if I had behaved myself, I’d be up there with them,” Ranger told The Sun.
“Sometimes I watch Newcastle and know I’d definitely be playing right now, especially with how things are going for them. There are times where I have seen them play and thought: ‘I can do better than that.’
“But I can’t always hold on to that because it is done now.”
poll loading Would Nile Ranger be playing for Newcastle United right now if he was still at the club? 500+ VOTES SO FAR YES NO
At Newcastle, the goals did not exactly flow for Ranger - he netted just three times in 63 appearances, though in fairness a large proportion of those were as a substitute.
His best goal-scoring return at a club was at Swindon Town during the 2013-14 campaign, when he netted 10 times in 28 games, yet his career record as a whole reads: played 117, scored 17.
Hardly prolific, but Ranger believes he is an “established” professional footballer and a “natural-born talent”.
“Even though I have my baggage and my past, I am established and I am a good footballer,” he added.
“I am a natural-born talent. Everyone makes mistakes - I’ve just made more than others. But now I am ready to settle down.
“Look at Joey Barton - he has reinvented himself very well. That is someone showing you it can actually happen.
“I’ve got a nice aura about me. People might think ‘Oh he knows gangs’, but it’s far from that.
“If I made it back into the Premier League it would be a great story - you could write a book on it afterwards.”The season of terrible drought and fire keeps getting worse. In the past few weeks, hundreds of patches of forest in the Canadian and Alaskan boreal have gone up in flames. Now, one of America’s last remaining old growth forests—the Queets rainforest in Olympic National Park, Washington—is also burning.
Currently covering over 1,200 acres, Paradise Fire is the largest blaze in the park’s history, and it may rage all summer long.
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Olympic, home to some of the oldest patches of forest in America, in one of the wettest regions in the world, typically receiving more than 200 inches of rainfall annually. But this year, the forest is exceptionally dry, thanks to a warm winter that prevented much of the snowpack from forming. Right now, the Queets River— the largest river flowing west of the Olympics— is running at less than a third its normal volume.
Image via: Seattle Times
Historically, the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest have only burned once every century or two. But if hotter, drier winters and springs are the new normal, we could start seeing fires like this one much more often. And that could dramatically alter the ecosystems of the Northwest, influencing everything from the types of plants and animals present to the amount of carbon the forests store.
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According to The Seattle Times, Paradise Fire is mostly creeping beneath the surface, burning through the thick, dry forest floor. But occasionally, it spreads up the lichens that coat the rainforests’ massive Sitka spruce, hemlock, and Douglas fir trees like sheets of kindling. The big concern, firefighters say, is that some of these small burns will morph into raging, blazing crowns as the summer goes on. If that happens, it’ll be much easier for the winds to blow the fire from place to place.
So, if you were planning a hike in Queets this summer, you miiight just want to reschedule until further notice. At the very least, be sure to bring plenty of tubs and cups.
[Seattle Times]
Contact the author at maddie.stone@gizmodo.com or follow her on Twitter.
AdvertisementPart of a massive boring machine was pulled from beneath Toronto streets Monday morning, signaling the start of a new phase of construction of the Eglinton-Crosstown light rail project. Now work begins building stations and putting rail tracks into the newly-carved underground pathways.
Workers begin the process of extracting the tunnel-boring machines. This marks a significant milestone in the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit project. ( Vince Talotta / Toronto Star )
The $5.3-billion LRT project, one of the largest construction works in the province’s history, was initially set to be ready by late 2020, but the date has been pushed back to 2021. Anne Marie Aikins, a spokesperson for the Metrolinx transit authority, said Monday that work is on track to meet that deadline. After a decade of construction, the new line along Eglinton Ave. is expected to have 25 stations that will link to dozens of bus routes, several subway stations and GO Transit.
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To start pulling a piece of the tunnel machine above ground, traffic briefly came to a halt on Eglinton Ave. near Yonge St. A circular hunk of the 10-metre long, 6.5-metre wide, 400-tonne digging behemoth was then lifted out by a large crane.
To start pulling a piece of the tunnel machine above ground, traffic briefly came to a halt on Eglinton Ave. near Yonge St. A circular hunk of the 10-metre long, 6.5-metre wide, 400-tonne digging behemoth was then lifted out by a large crane. ( Vince Talotta )
The piece belonged to a machine called “Don,” one of four tunnelling devices that have been burrowing below the city streets on the project. Last August, “Don” finished its 3.3-km stint digging the north LRT tunnel, after starting from Brentcliffe Road in September 2015. A Metrolinx spokesperson said the tunnels were finished earlier than expected, so it decided to leave the machines underground until a convenient time to take them out arrived. (It said there were no costs associated with waiting to do this.) Aikins said beyond being a “spectacle” to witness, the extraction of the tunneling machines is a visual reminder that the project is making progress.
“We know the community has been through a lot and they are continuing to go through a lot,” said Aikins. “This neighbourhood, they’re impacted. You can’t build the largest transit project in the country, one of the largest in North America, without it being disruptive. We know that.”
On Monday night, the piece of “Don” that was removed will be sent to storage. The remaining tunnel boring machines, “Humber” and “Lea” and “Dennis,” are expected to be lifted out of the ground in the coming months. ( Vince Talotta )
Aikins said work on building 15 underground stations is already underway.
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John Brown, who was responsible for leading the project’s tunneling work, said the job was pretty standard for a tunneling project, but that the site’s placement in the middle of a city made things more challenging. “It’s more the location. The feat, itself, is probably done a lot in mining operations where no one is around,” Brown said. “It’s the urban aspect. We’re pretty much at the junction at Yonge and Eglinton, so that’s the part that makes it a little more interesting and a little bit more of a feat.” He said the tunnel portion of the project was challenging, but had been “very successful.” On Monday night, the piece of “Don” that was removed will be sent to storage. The remaining tunnel boring machines, “Humber” and “Lea” and “Dennis,” are expected to be lifted out of the ground in the coming months.
Read more about:New Delhi, May 10: Syria has asked India to play mediator in its diplomatic spat with the West over the civil war that has claimed over two lakh lives in the West Asian nation, days after the US indicated openness to such a proposal.
The nudge from Damascus, driven by New Delhi's friendship with both the West and Syria, comes at a time Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pressed forward with a more assertive foreign policy than his predecessor in regions India has only tiptoed around the past few years.
"We would really like India to play a more proactive role," Riad Kamel Abbas, Syria's ambassador to India, told The Telegraph.
"India is in a rare position where it has good relations with both Syria and the big world powers, and so it can really help."
India has so far steered largely clear of the Syrian conflict between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and a motley group of Opposition fighters affiliated to outfits ranging from the more moderate sections to arms of al Qaida and the Islamic State.
Over the past few months, India has stepped up intelligence cooperation with Syria -- as it has with other West Asian nations, the US, Canada, France and Britain - to track any Indian national entering Syria or Iraq to join the Islamic State.
But New Delhi has made it clear to the US and West Asian allies that it will not join any military action in the region.
A mediator's assignment is not unknown to India's foreign policy establishment.
India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, threw himself into the role during the Korean War of the early 1950s, trying to negotiate peace between the US and China. India eventually headed a commission tasked with determining the fate of the prisoners of war.
New Delhi's relations with Washington and Damascus are today far more robust than they were with the US and China in the early 1950s. Later, Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba asked Nehru to mediate between him and Belgian authorities.
Since then, though, India has stepped back from significant |
city, 15 percent had scores indicating mental retardation and only 6 percent in the low-fluoride city. The authors of the study eliminated both lead exposure and iodine deficiency as possible causes for the lowered IQs.
One scientist - Jennifer Luke - alleged in a 2001 scientific article that fluoride accumulates in the brain (specifically, in the structure of the pineal gland) more than it accumulates in our bones. In other words, she implies that fluoride may accumulate more in the brain than in the teeth, doing more harm than good (here's Luke's 1997 PhD dissertation on the topic.)
The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report corroborates some of Luke's allegations:
As with other calcifying tissues, the pineal gland can accumulate fluoride (Luke 1997, 2001). Fluoride has been shown to be present in the pineal glands of older people (14-875 mg of fluoride per kg of gland in persons aged 72-100 years), with the fluoride concentrations being positively related to the calcium concentrations in the pineal gland, but not to the bone fluoride, suggesting that pineal fluoride is not necessarily a function of cumulative fluoride exposure of the individual (Luke 1997, 2001). Fluoride has not been measured in the pineal glands of children or young adults, nor has there been any investigation of the relationship between pineal fluoride concentrations and either recent or cumulative fluoride intakes.
Donald Miller - cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington - alleges:
Studies show that the rates of bone cancer are substantially higher in fluoridated areas, particularly in boys. [See this.] Other cancers, of the head and neck, GI tract, pancreas, and lungs, have a 10 percent higher incidence. Fluoride affects the thyroid gland and causes hypothyroidism, which is also an increasingly frequent disorder in the US. Other studies show that high levels of fluoride in drinking water are associated with birth defects and early infant mortality. *** Studies show that the rates of bone cancer are substantially higher in fluoridated areas, particularly in boys. Other cancers, of the head and neck, GI tract, pancreas, and lungs, have a 10 percent higher incidence. Fluoride affects the thyroid gland and causes hypothyroidism, which is also an increasingly frequent disorder in the US. Other studies show that high levels of fluoride in drinking water are associated with birth defects and early infant mortality. Fluoride also damages the brain, both directly and indirectly. Rats given fluoridated water at a dose of 4 ppm develop symptoms resembling attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. High concentrations of fluoride accumulate in the pineal gland, which produces serotonin and melatonin. Young girls who drink fluoridated water reach puberty six months earlier than those who drink unfluoridated water, which is thought to be a result of reduced melatonin production. People with Alzheimer's disease have high levels of aluminum in their brains. Fluoride combines with aluminum in drinking water and takes it through the blood-brain barrier into the brain. Dr. Russell Blaylock, MD, a neurosurgeon, spells out in chilling detail the danger fluoride poses to one's brain and health in general in his book Health and Nutrition Secrets that can Save Your Life (2002).
And see PhD chemist Joel Kauffman's review of fluoride in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
Indeed, the whole fluoride fad might have been started for reasons a tad different from concern about cavities. As I wrote last August:
The government allegedly ordered Manhattan Project scientists to whitewash the toxicity of flouride (flouride is a byproduct in the production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium). As Project Censored noted in 1999: Recently declassified government documents have shed new light on the decades-old debate over the fluoridation of drinking water, and have added to a growing body of scientific evidence concerning the health effects of fluoride. Much of the original evidence about fluoride, which suggested it was safe for human consumption in low doses, was actually generated by “Manhattan Project” scientists in the 1940s. As it turns out, these officials were ordered by government powers to provide information that would be “useful in litigation” and that would obfuscate its improper handling and disposal. The once top-secret documents, say the authors, reveal that vast quantities of fluoride, one of the most toxic substances known, were required for the production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. As a result, fluoride soon became the leading health hazard to bomb program workers and surrounding communities. Studies commissioned after chemical mishaps by the medical division of the “Manhattan Project” document highly controversial findings. For instance, toxic accidents in the vicinity of fluoride-producing facilities like the one near Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey, left crops poisoned or blighted, and humans and livestock sick. Symptoms noted in the findings included extreme joint stiffness, uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea, severe headaches, and death. These and other facts from the secret documents directly contradict the findings concurrently published in scientific journals which praised the positive effects of fluoride. Regional environmental fluoride releases in the northeast United States also resulted in several legal suits against the government by farmers after the end of World War II, according to Griffiths and Bryson. Military and public health officials feared legal victories would snowball, opening the door to further suits which might have kept the bomb program from continuing to use fluoride. With the Cold War underway, the New Jersey lawsuits proved to be a roadblock to America’s already full-scale production of atomic weapons. Officials were subsequently ordered to protect the interests of the government. After the war,... the dissemination of misinformation continued.
Note: While the U.S. is reducing fluoride levels in water, some have proposed adding it to salt and to milk. For example, as the International Dental Journal reported in 2005:
Alternatives to automatic fluoridation by means of water fluoridation are salt fluoridation [and] milk fluoridation... and the WHO Oral Health Programme is currently undertaking evaluation of demonstration projects in several countries.
(page 358).
@Some might call it a fluke — but seeing the same friendly humpback whale on three separate trips seems more than just a coincidence.
Whale watchers got a treat last week when one distinctive, 35-foot humpback with a white tail and its head covered in barnacles popped up next to a small, inflatable Newport Coastal Adventure boat three times — begging the question: Who is the one doing the watching?
The first encounter was Wednesday, Nov. 15, when Newport Coastal Adventure captain Ryan Lawler took an all-day trip to Catalina with a friend, who requested the excursion for his birthday.
Photograher Neil Barnes, aboard Dana Wharf Whale Watching boat, captures a humpback whale “mugging” passengers on Newport Coastal Adventure. Photo courtesy of Barnes.
Who is watching who? Captain Ryan Lawler is face to face with a humpback whale off of Newport Beach last week. Photo courtesy of Newport Coastal Adventure/ Kari Reaves.
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An underwater photo shows a whale swimming off Catalina last Wednesday. Photo: Ryan Lawler/Newport Coastal Adventure
An underwater photo shows a whale swimming off Catalina last Wednesday. Photo: Ryan Lawler/Newport Coastal Adventure
“We saw 10 (humpback whales) feeding in a concentrated warm-water pocket on the front side of Catalina,” Lawler said.
One curious whale from the pod broke off and headed toward the boat. Lawler cut the engine and let the humpback scope them out.
“It stuck its head out of the water multiple times — it was like it was dancing beneath the boat,” he said. “It’s a people-watching whale. So much of the time, we’re trying to get a look at the whale by following it around. This whale decided to follow us around.”
These type of whales are often called “friendlies,” with humpbacks in particular known for their gregarious, playful nature. Another term whale watchers use is “mugging,” when the whale sticks its face up next to the boat, as if showing off for the passengers.
With only the duo on the boat, Lawler was able to do something he had only dreamed about, but could never do with a boat full of passengers. He put on a face mask and dipped into the ocean, holding the inflatable boat with one hand and filming the whale underwater with the other.
“I watched the whale circle us,” he said. “Being in the water, the biggest thing that strikes you is the eye contact.”
He also marveled at the massive creature’s gracefulness as it swam around the 25-foot boat, its body dwarfing the inflatable zodiac. He watched it underwater for about two minutes.
“It’s really a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing,” Lawler said.
The second encounter happened two days later, on Friday, Nov. 17, when another captain on the Newport Coastal Adventure boat called in to say there was a playful humpback about eight miles off Newport, and to ask if he could stay out with the passengers for an extra hour.
“They were enthralled by this whale,” Lawler said.
They determined it was the same whale based on its white tail — common in other parts of the world, but a rare, distinctive marker for humpbacks seen in California waters.
Then, on Saturday, the same whale — by this time nicknamed “Mr. Rogers” because of its friendliness, though its gender was unclear — approached whale-watching boats again off the Newport coast. The whale did the same dance — twirling around, mugging and swimming under and beside the Newport Coastal Adventure boat — to the thrill of passengers.
Lawler said there’s been an influx of humpbacks along the Orange County coast the past few weeks, likely because they are feeding before making their way down to Mexico and more tropical waters.
“This time of year, they are kind of feeding away and gaining those final pounds before they hit their breeding grounds,” he said.
Whale-watching charters last week also saw their first migrating gray whale off Dana Point.
The gray whale makes the annual journey from Alaska to Mexico, the longest migration of any mammal on Earth. The whales are seen passing through Orange County waters as they head south to breed, then as they make their way back up north in late winter into early spring.A survey carried out by Kaspersky and B2B International on 5,500 companies in 26 countries highlighted the importance of securing a company's IT infrastructure against accidental or intentional data breaches.
According to gathered data, a security breach usually incurs costs of $551,000 / €485,000 for large enterprises, and $38,000 / €33,500 for SMBs (small-to-medium businesses).
On top of these costs directly involved in recovering from the data breach, companies also reported additional, indirect spending of $69,000 / €61,000 for larger companies, and $8,000 / €7,000 for SMBs.
90% of companies experienced a security breach
All these numbers are quite relevant since 9 out of 10 companies that took part in the survey admitted to a security breach, and 46% of them even said they lost critical and sensitive information.
Direct costs meant hiring IT consultants (69% of the companies), hiring risk management consultants (43%), lawyers and solicitors (37%), physical security consultants (36%), auditors and accountants (35%), management consultants (35%), and PR and corporate image consultants (24%).
Indirect costs referred to spending that came from the failure of third-party suppliers, employees fraud, cyber-espionage actions, network intrusion, hacking, intentional leaks, phishing-caused losses, accidental leaks, mwalre infections, DDOS attacks, and costs inflicted by the presence of software vulnerabilities.
Fear is what motivates companies to invest in preventing data breaches
As the report indicates, companies are taking security breaches much more seriously compared to previous years, and IT professionals and their management are fearing they'll lose temporary access to critical business information the most (50%).
The second most feared result as the aftermath of a data breach is loss of credibility to the company's name (43%), temporarily losing the ability to trade with other companies (38%), the loss of future contracts (30%), and the costs that come with hiring IT professionals to fix and improve their infrastructure (25%).
Kaspersky's study also shows that data breaches rarely make it to the media, only one in five, to be more exact. What's even worse is that only in 44% of the cases affected clients are informed, 36% of the cases affected suppliers are informed, 32% of the cases all the company's customers are told, and only 29% of the cases local authorities and regulators are contacted.
The full Damage Control: The Cost of Security Breaches report can be downloaded from Kaspersky's website.
[FULLIM=2]Symmetries and other regularities of the physical world make science a useful endeavor, yet the world around us is characterized by complex mixtures of regularities with individual differences, as exemplified by the words on this page. The dialectic of simple laws accounting for a complex world was only sharpened with the development of relativity and quantum mechanics and the understanding of the subatomic laws of physics. A mathematical encapsulation of the standard model of particle physics can be written on a cocktail napkin, an economy made possible because the basic phenomena are tightly controlled by powerful symmetry principles, most especially Lorentz and gauge invariance.
1 177, 393 (1972). 1. P. W. Anderson, Science, 393 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.177.4047.393 How does our complex world come forth from symmetrical underpinnings? The answer is in the title of Philip Anderson’s seminal article “More is different.”Many-body systems exhibit emergent phenomena that are not in any meaningful sense encoded in the laws that govern their constituents. One reason those emergent behaviors arise is that many-body systems result from symmetries being broken. Consider, for example, a glucose molecule: It will have a particular orientation even though the equations governing its atoms are rotationally symmetric. That kind of symmetry breaking is called spontaneous, to indicate that the physical system does not exhibit the symmetry present in the underlying dynamics.
Higgs boson in particular. But in quantum field theory, the ground state, or vacuum, behaves like a many-body system. And just as a particular glucose orientation breaks an underlying rotation symmetry, a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of the Higgs boson field, as we will describe, breaks symmetries that would otherwise forbid masses for elementary particles. Now that the Higgs boson (or something much like it) has been found at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC; see Physics Today, Higgs bosons and working to find out if the Higgs boson interacts with the dark matter that holds the universe together. Cosmologists are trying to understand the symmetry-breaking Higgs phase transition, which took place early in the history of the universe, and whether that event explains the excess of matter over antimatter. The measured mass of the Higgs boson implies that the symmetry-breaking vacuum is metastable. If no new physics intervenes, an unlucky quantum fluctuation will eventually spark a cosmic catastrophe. It may seem that the above discussion has no relevance to particle physics in general or to thein particular. But inthe ground state, or vacuum, behaves like a many-body system. And just as a particular glucose orientation breaks an underlying rotation symmetry, a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of thefield, as we will describe, breaks symmetries that would otherwise forbid masses for elementary particles. Now that the(or something much like it) has been found at thesee September 2012, page 12 ), particle experimentalists are searching for more kinds ofand working to find out if theinteracts with thethat holds the universe together. Cosmologists are trying to understand the symmetry-breaking Higgs phase transition, which took place early in the history of the universe, and whether that event explains the excess of matter over antimatter. The measured mass of theimplies that the symmetry-breaking vacuum is metastable. If no new physics intervenes, an unlucky quantum fluctuation will eventually spark a cosmic catastrophe.
Symmetry breaking and the vacuum Since symmetry breaking is a step on the road to complexity, it is only natural that condensed-matter physics abounds with important examples: crystals, ferromagnets, superfluids, superconductors, and many more. When the symmetry is continuous, the broken state is just one of an infinite number of equivalent ground states. For example, the electron spins in a particular magnetic domain of a ferromagnet are all aligned in the same direction, breaking rotational symmetry. But the direction itself is arbitrary—it varies from domain to domain according to tiny details in the history of the material. A characteristic feature of the spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry is the presence of Goldstone modes—also known as Nambu–Goldstone modes or, in condensed-matter physics, as Anderson–Bogoliubov modes. They are long-wavelength excitations that deform a system from one broken state toward another. Because of the underlying continuous symmetry, it costs little energy to excite a Goldstone mode. A familiar example is an acoustic phonon in a crystal, described further in the box on this page. 1 The Nambu–Goldstone modes are named after Yoichiro Nambu and Jeffrey Goldstone (shown in figure), who in 1960 took a grand intellectual leap: They began to apply condensed-matter ideas about spontaneous symmetry breaking to particle physics. Nambu was attempting to get insight about the then-mysterious properties of baryons, such as the proton and neutron, and the lightest mesons—the pions. And he succeeded, in a fashion that won him the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics. theories with ‘superconductor’ solutions,” he began with the disclaimer that “the present work merely considers models and has no direct physical applications.” 2 2. J. Goldstone, Nuovo Cimento 19, 154 (1961). 2 theory is the state for which the expectation value of the field vanishes. But as the figure shows, the lowest-energy states of the theory correspond to the boson field having a nonvanishing value dependent on an arbitrary phase. Goldstone took a more general approach; in his paper “Fieldwith ‘superconductor’ solutions,” he began with the disclaimer that “the present work merely considers models and has no direct physical applications.”He discussed a complex (that is, having real and imaginary parts) self-interacting spinless boson field. (A boson field, in general, corresponds to a particle with integer spin.) The self-interactions are encoded in the shape of the potential energy density of the field, which, in Goldstone’s formulation, had the Mexican-hat shape shown in figure. One might expect that the vacuum of theis the state for which the expectation value of the field vanishes. But as the figure shows, the lowest-energy states of thecorrespond to the boson field having a nonvanishing value dependent on an arbitrary phase. For a large but finite volume, quantum tunneling processes connect all the different ground states, but even a tiny perturbation of the system will overwhelm that effect and select just one ground state at random. The vacuum expectation value of the boson field spontaneously breaks the phase invariance of the dynamics. Starting from any of the broken vacua, quantum excitations up the brim correspond to a massive particle—the analog of the Higgs boson—with the steepness of the brim being directly connected to its mass. Excitations along the trough correspond to a massless particle, called a Goldstone boson.
The loophole Goldstone bosons, but if spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs generally in particle physics, where were all the other Goldstones? More discouraging, in 1962 Goldstone, Steven Weinberg, and Abdus Salam proved a seemingly general theorem saying that in a relativistic quantum field theory, spontaneous breaking of any continuous symmetry will produce massless bosons. 3 127, 965 (1962). 3. J. Goldstone, A. Salam, S. Weinberg, Phys. Rev., 965 (1962). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.127.965 To understand Goldstone’s almost apologetic preface to his paper, consider the known subatomic particles circa 1960. Nambu had already correctly identified the relatively light pions as approximatebut if spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs generally in particle physics, where were all the other Goldstones? More discouraging, in 1962 Goldstone, Steven Weinberg, and Abdus Salam proved a seemingly generalsaying that in a relativisticspontaneous breaking of any continuous symmetry will produce massless bosons. 4 96, 191 (1954). 4. C. N. Yang, R. L. Mills, Phys. Rev., 191 (1954). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.96.191 theory, new forces are mediated by new particles called gauge bosons in a way similar to the way electromagnetic forces are mediated by photons. Yang gave a seminar on his new idea at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where Wolfgang Pauli verbally attacked him. As it turned out, Pauli had developed the same construction on his own, but he had abandoned it when he realized that the symmetry of the theory, called a gauge symmetry, would force the gauge bosons of such models to be exactly massless, just as the photon is. If nature employed gauge theories beyond electromagnetism, then where were all the massless cousins of the photon? A similar embarrassment involving massless particles had already been festering in the particle-physics community for some years. In 1954 C. N. Yang and Robert Mills produced a mathematically elegant generalization of electromagnetism.In theirnew forces are mediated by new particles called gauge bosons in a way similar to the way electromagnetic forces are mediated byYang gave a seminar on his new idea at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where Wolfgang Pauli verbally attacked him. As it turned out, Pauli had developed the same construction on his own, but he had abandoned it when he realized that the symmetry of thecalled a gauge symmetry, would force the gauge bosons of such models to be exactly massless, just as theis. If nature employed gaugebeyond electromagnetism, then where were all the massless cousins of the 1 Goldstone bosons and massless gauge bosons were related. 5 130, 439 (1963). 5. P. W. Anderson, Phys. Rev., 439 (1963). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.130.439 superconductor that was Nambu and Goldstone’s original inspiration. It has a symmetry-breaking condensate—the Cooper pairs—but no Goldstone boson. Superconductors also exhibit the famous Meissner effect, the expulsion of external magnetic fields that makes possible magnetic levitation. Anderson started with the simple London theory of the Meissner effect, rewrote the equations in a relativistic form more palatable to particle physicists, and showed that they describe what is, in effect, a massive photon; he called it a plasmon. Being a massive spin-1 boson, the plasmon has an extra longitudinal polarization compared with a propagating photon, which also is a spin-1 boson but with only two transverse polarizations. Where did the extra degree of freedom come from? It’s the Goldstone mode! Anderson concluded that “these two types of bosons [the massless Goldstone boson and the massless gauge boson] seem capable of ‘cancelling each other out’ and leaving finite mass bosons only.” Anderson’s work made it clear that gauge theories and symmetry breaking have a special relationship; what remained was to understand it. In 1962 Anderson (shown in the right-hand panel of figure) realized that the twin problems of masslessand massless gauge bosons were related.Consider the Bardeen-Cooper-Schriefferthat was Nambu and Goldstone’s original inspiration. It has a symmetry-breaking condensate—the Cooper pairs—but noalso exhibit the famous Meissner effect, the expulsion of external magnetic fields that makes possible magnetic levitation. Anderson started with the simple Londonof the Meissner effect, rewrote the equations in a relativistic form more palatable to particle physicists, and showed that they describe what is, in effect, a massivehe called it a plasmon. Being a massive spin-1 boson, the plasmon has an extra longitudinal polarization compared with a propagatingwhich also is a spin-1 boson but with only two transverse polarizations. Where did the extra degree of freedom come from? It’s the Goldstone mode! Anderson concluded that “these two types of bosons [the masslessand the massless gauge boson] seem capable of ‘cancelling each other out’ and leaving finite mass bosons only.” Anderson’s work made it clear that gaugeand symmetry breaking have a special relationship; what remained was to understand it. theorem: The proof assumes explicit Lorentz invariance in relating broken symmetries to particles. 6 12, 132 (1964). 6. P. Higgs, Phys. Lett., 132 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12.132 theory is quantized. In his first paper of 1964, Peter Higgs pointed out a loophole in the Goldstone, Salam, and WeinbergThe proof assumes explicit Lorentz invariance in relating broken symmetries to particles.Due to the necessity of fixing a gauge, that assumption is violated when electromagnetism or any other gaugeis quantized. theory in a way that is manifestly Lorentz invariant and manifestly gauge invariant, but that formulation actually represents an infinite number of copies of the same physical system. In quantizing the theory, you need to choose arbitrarily one of the equivalent quantum descriptions of the physics; that’s what is meant by fixing a gauge. The Lorentz and gauge symmetries that are built into the classical theory still control the quantum physics, but they do so through a delicate choreography. Just how gauge fixing invalidates the Goldstone, Salam, and Weinberg theorem was shown in a paper by Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagen, and Tom Kibble, 7 13, 585 (1964). 7. G. Guralnik, C. Hagen, T. Kibble, Phys. Rev. Lett., 585 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.585 Gauge symmetries, in fact, are not symmetries in the usual sense of relating seemingly distinct physical processes or configurations. Instead, gauge symmetry is a redundancy; you can formulate the quantumin a way that is manifestly Lorentz invariant and manifestly gauge invariant, but that formulation actually represents an infinite number of copies of the same physical system. In quantizing theyou need to choose arbitrarily one of the equivalent quantum descriptions of the physics; that’s what is meant by fixing a gauge. The Lorentz and gauge symmetries that are built into the classicalstill control the quantum physics, but they do so through a delicate choreography. Just how gauge fixing invalidates the Goldstone, Salam, and Weinbergwas shown in a paper by Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagen, and Tom Kibble,published shortly after the Higgs loophole paper.
Mass effects theorem by Goldstone and company evaded, the question remains as to how a massless gauge boson can obtain mass. To answer the question, in his second paper of 1964, Higgs reconsidered Goldstone’s Mexican-hat model and added a photon. 8 13, 508 (1964). 8. P. Higgs, Phys. Rev. Lett., 508 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.508 theory is quantized, the gauge symmetry of electromagnetism imposes two new interactions not present in ordinary electrodynamics. One of those is a mass term for the photon; the other is a coupling of the photon to the would-be Goldstone boson (see Physics Today, Even with theby Goldstone and company evaded, the question remains as to how a massless gauge boson can obtain mass. To answer the question, in his second paper of 1964, Higgs reconsidered Goldstone’s Mexican-hat model and added aOnce the boson field, also called the Higgs field, acquires a vacuum expectation value (particle physicists refer to “turning on the Higgs field”) and theis quantized, the gauge symmetry of electromagnetism imposes two new interactions not present in ordinary electrodynamics. One of those is a mass term for thethe other is a coupling of theto the would-be(see September 2012, page 14 ). theory with a massive gauge boson. 9 13, 321 (1964). 9. F. Englert, R. Brout, Phys. Rev. Lett., 321 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.321 theory by the coupling between the photon and the Goldstone boson. For one particular choice of gauge fixing called the Coulomb gauge, the physical degrees of freedom are manifest and the two interactions show that the would-be Goldstone boson becomes the longitudinal polarization needed to turn a massless gauge boson into a massive one. It has become customary to say that the massless Goldstone boson is “eaten” to give the gauge boson mass. The “cancellation” of massless bosons to give a massive boson, as anticipated by Anderson and developed in the 1964 papers, is the famous Higgs mechanism; for their contributions to its discovery, Englert and Higgs received this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. (For more, see Early in 1964 Robert Brout and François Englert showed that those two interactions work together to allow a gauge invariant quantumwith a massive gauge boson.The gauge invariance, already explicitly broken by gauge fixing in quantization and seemingly again by the new mass term, is restored in the quantumby the coupling between theand theFor one particular choice of gauge fixing called the Coulomb gauge, the physical degrees of freedom are manifest and the two interactions show that the would-bebecomes the longitudinal polarization needed to turn a massless gauge boson into a massive one. It has become customary to say that the masslessis “eaten” to give the gauge boson mass. The “cancellation” of massless bosons to give a massive boson, as anticipated by Anderson and developed in the 1964 papers, is the famous Higgs mechanism; for their contributions to its discovery, Englert and Higgs received this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. (For more, see page 10 of this issue.) Physics Letters, which promptly rejected it. 10 10. P. Higgs, “My Life as a Boson,” talk given at King’s College London, 24 November 2010. Available at http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/life-boson Physical Review Letters, and it was promptly accepted. As recounted in his 2010 talk “My Life as a Boson,” Higgs submitted his second paper of 1964 to, which promptly rejected it.Shocked at that setback, he revised and expanded the manuscript, adding the key observation that when applied to a charged spinless boson, the Higgs mechanism leaves behind a neutral spinless boson. That neutral particle—the Higgs boson—has a mass determined by the shape of the Mexican-hat potential energy density, but that mass cannot be expressed in terms of the mass generated for the gauge boson. Higgs sent the improved revision to a different journal,, and it was promptly accepted. At first, theorists thought that the most suitable application of spontaneous symmetry breaking to particle physics was in the arena of the strong interactions. Only in 1967 did Weinberg and, independently, Salam realize that the Higgs mechanism offered an elegant explanation of the weak interactions. In their model, which is now the electroweak portion of the standard model, four Higgs fields are related by a gauge symmetry of the type introduced by Yang and Mills. Three Goldstone bosons are eaten to give large masses to the W+, W−, and Z bosons that mediate the weak interactions. An added bonus, not foreseen by Higgs and the rest, is that the Higgs field also gives mass to quarks and leptons, the elementary fermions that make up matter. The mass of the Higgs boson left behind is not predicted, but the interactions of the Higgs with other elementary particles can be precisely computed as a function of its mass and the masses of the other particles. Furthermore, the exchange of virtual Higgs bosons generates an attractive short-range force. If the Higgs boson is an elementary particle, as so far appears to be the case, then that force is every bit as fundamental as the gauge-boson-mediated forces of the standard model. In that case, the Higgs would be the first fundamental force mediator ever detected that is not a gauge boson.
The discovery LHC were built to probe the mechanisms of electroweak symmetry breaking and the particle origins of dark matter. Wired up with about a hundred million readout channels each and made up of many thousands of tons of material that interacts with the particles emanating from the LHC’s high-energy proton–proton collisions, the two detectors have already managed to capture and reconstruct many rare Higgs boson candidate events. 11 et al. (ATLAS collaboration), Phys. Lett. B 716, 1 (2012); et al. (CMS collaboration), Phys. Lett. B 716, 30 (2012). 11. G. Aad(ATLAS collaboration), Phys. Lett. B, 1 (2012); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.020 S. Chatrchyan(CMS collaboration), Phys. Lett. B, 30 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.021 The ATLAS and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiments at thewere built to probe the mechanisms of electroweak symmetry breaking and the particle origins ofWired up with about a hundred million readout channels each and made up of many thousands of tons ofthat interacts with the particles emanating from the LHC’s high-energy proton–proton collisions, the two detectors have already managed to capture and reconstruct many rarecandidate events. Higgs bosons decay into other particles after about 100 yoctoseconds (10−22 seconds), the collider searches involve several different decay signatures or channels. Figure 3 photons. The image Higgs boson candidate at the LHC; the four decay products are muons or antimuons—a pair of each—whose tracks are depicted as red lines. Sincedecay into other particles after about 100 yoctoseconds (10seconds), the collider searches involve several different decay signatures or channels. Figureillustrates the two most important channels used by ATLAS and CMS in their quest for the Higgs. One represents the Higgs decay process into two virtual Z bosons, each of which, in turn, decays into an electron–positron or muon–antimuon pair. The other shows the Higgs decay into twoTheon pages 28 and 29 shows a visualization of the data produced by acandidate at thethe four decay products are muons or antimuons—a pair of each—whose tracks are depicted as red lines. LHC is indeed a Higgs boson, though not necessarily possessing exactly the properties postulated by the standard model. The discovery itself is based on large excesses of Higgs-like events in the two decay channels described above, supported by less conclusive but compatible excesses observed in other channels. Figure 4 c2, intermediate between the mass of the Z boson and the mass of the top quark. The experimental results so far suggest that the particle observed at theis indeed athough not necessarily possessing exactly the properties postulated by theThe discovery itself is based on large excesses of Higgs-like events in the two decay channels described above, supported by less conclusive but compatible excesses observed in other channels. Figuredisplays CMS data for the four-lepton channel. The measured mass is about 126 GeV/, intermediate between the mass of the Z boson and the mass of the top quark. The new particle cannot be a spin-1 particle because the decay of such an object into two photons is forbidden by a general result known as the Landau–Yang theorem. Its wavefunction does not change sign when operated on by CP (a product of the discrete symmetries of charge conjugation and coordinate inversion, or parity), as the pion wavefunction does. So either the new particle is unchanged by CP, as a Higgs boson is, or it could be a CP-violating admixture if there exists a new source of matter–antimatter asymmetry related to the Higgs. The production rate of the particle and the degree to which it decays into different channels appear consistent with the standard-model predictions for the Higgs boson, although the experimental uncertainties are still rather large. The new particle decays roughly eight times more often into a pair of W bosons than into a pair of Z bosons, as would be expected for a Higgs with a mass of 126 GeV/c2 that is related to the three Goldstone bosons eaten to give mass to the W+, W−, and Z. Exotic spin-2 particles and so-called dilatons have been proposed as alternative explanations of the LHC signals, and those Higgs impostors cannot be entirely excluded. The full picture will become far clearer during the upcoming LHC Run 2, which starts in 2015; the data collected and analyzed then should yield precise values for a large number of coupling parameters.
The fate of the universe Data from the LHC already fix one property of the Higgs boson with precision: its mass, known to better than 1% accuracy. Assuming the validity of the standard model, that determination allows for a calculation of the shape of Goldstone’s Mexican hat. In the standard model, the energetics of turning on the Higgs field has calculable quantum corrections from the couplings of the Higgs to the other particles. The largest effect, which comes from the heavy top quark, mitigates the energy penalty for the Higgs field vacuum expectation value to increase to even larger values and suggests that the vacuum is unstable. In fact, that suggestion is backed up by the most precise calculations to date. The possibility that the universe could be in a metastable vacuum has been studied since |
“This increases the expected return per hash done in a larger mining pool.”
One of the more attractive solutions to the problem is that proposed by Cornell University professors Emin Gün Sirer and Ittay Eyal, which adds a computational problem to the mining process. In the current protocol, miners have to solve one problem to get hold of fresh bitcoins, but in the professors’ "Two-Phase Proof-of-Work" mechanism, there would be an additional cryptopuzzle.
Crucially, this second puzzle would require the miner to prove they have access to the private key of the mining pool’s Bitcoin address. This means the pool would either have to enforce levels of trust amongst participants, as any of them could access all the coins collected by the group with that private key, or carry out the work on its own infrastructure, which would be hugely expensive.
“The second phase is architected such that if a miner succeeds in finding a solution that's worth Bitcoin, it can cheat the pool manager and steal the Bitcoin. So either the pool manager trusts the miners to be honest (not likely), or he has to do the second phase himself. This would force large mining pools to make large investments in mining equipment, making it much more difficult to form a huge pool,” Sirer told me.
For miners, this would also make those pools less attractive due to the potential for others to abuse the private key. It might be wiser to join smaller pools as there would be less chance of malicious players, or to set up an independent mining project where private key ownership is limited to one user and the quality of processing power is good enough to crack those tricky cryptopuzzles. And the Two-Phase solution wouldn’t require a massive change in the Bitcoin protocol, “just a few hundred lines of code,” according to Sirer and Eyal.
Such a significant change would, as Sirer and Eyal admit, require all Bitcoin participants to agree on and adopt the updated protocol on the same day and at the same time. Given the fractious nature of Bitcoin support, this would be unlikely. “If most nodes do not agree to the change then the network would also be somewhat in disarray. Suffice it to say that any solution needs to find consensus among the core developers, the miners and the bitcoin nodes, some of which will represent the commercial interests on the network,” Levin told Motherboard.
There are some technical issues to be hammered out too. For instance, small miners might be punished by the proposed system as they won’t be able to afford to do the mining if they don’t want to share their private key.
Whatever happens, the biggest mining pools will need most convincing if Bitcoin is to be patched up. GHash hasn’t been won over by the Two-Phase proposal, having invited Sirer to the meeting. It doesn’t like the idea that inspiring trust among its participants might involve introducing a membership fee.
On the other side, Sirer doesn’t think GHash’s promise goes far enough. They said anyone who has control of more than a third of the network’s mining power can pull off a “selfish mining attack” to trick others into believing they are solving cryptopuzzles that have already been cracked. “GHash’s guarantee is insufficient. In fact, even the 1/3 threshold isn't strict and it may be that much smaller pools can attack the system; we simply don't know,” he added.
Though there kerfuffle over the “51 percent threat” to Bitcoin has been getting louder over recent months, the industry is no closer to eliminating it.Prior to the announcement of Sens. Obama and McCain’s vice presidential picks, Michael Barone observed in RealClearPolitics that “vice presidents in the last five administrations have been important officers of government. (Yes, including Dan Quayle … ).” Explaining the evolving role of the vice president from the first U.S. election to the present day, Barone says, “The framers of the Constitution created the vice presidency to solve the problem of succession. They expected that electors meeting in state capitals would vote for two candidates from different states, with the No. 2 vote-getter becoming vice president. It worked well twice. Then the unexpected emergence of political parties produced bizarre results.”When a tie occurred in 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the Twelfth Amendment passed, indicating that electors must vote separately for the vice president and president. This, Barone says, led to “the nomination of mediocrities to balance a ticket geographically or ideologically.” It was President Carter and his second-in-command, Walter Mondale, who set the precedent for the current practice. “Mondale had offices and staffers in the West Wing, regular one-on-one meetings with the president and access to top appointees. Their example has been followed since.”In 1988, President George H.W. Bush’s vice president, then-Sen. Dan Quayle, achieved the lowest approval rating of any vice presidential nominee in modern times. In an October 1988 op-ed in the New York Times, Anthony Lewis noted, “Even among supporters of George Bush, 32 percent said they would worry ” if Sen. Quayle became president. But the candidates received a surge after the Republican National Convention and a stiff campaign against Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis spurred Bush and Quayle to victory in spite of this early uncertainty about Bush’s VP choice.Quayle did suffer a low approval rating during Bush’s first term, and in 1992 there was some speculation in the lead-up to Bush’s potential second term that he might drop Quayle. Political science professor Robert O’Connor dismissed that idea, noting at the time that “vice presidential candidates have never had much effect on presidential elections … Quayle had the largest effect of any recent vice presidential candidate [and] he only lost about one percentage point for Bush in 1988.”After September 11, Vice President Dick Cheney was seen to have taken the reins on a global operation against terrorists. The subject was explored in the PBS Frontline documentary “The Dark Side” (2006). According to PBS, Cheney “seized the initiative and pushed for expanding presidential power, transforming America’s intelligence agencies and bringing the war on terror to Iraq.”As print advertising revenues continue to fall off the cliff, reviews and features related to film, theater and the rest of the arts are being cut at New York’s two prominent broadsheets, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Deadline reported in August that the Times had stopped reviewing theater, restaurants and art galleries in the Metro region, and bid farewell to the freelance critics and reporters who contributed to that coverage. That was just the precursor, however, to a more seismic shift in the Paper of Record’s plan for culture news coverage, as the Times absorbs a 19% drop in third-quarter advertising revenue, according to its own report.
These changes come at a time when arts and entertainment coverage — and specifically independent criticism — is being reduced or eliminated all around the country. In New York, where Broadway alone represents a $1 billion-plus industry, the New York Post, the Daily News and USA Today all have eliminated full-time theater critics in recent months. USA Today owner Gannett announced a mass reduction of staff at its recently acquired North Jersey Media Group, which includes the Bergen Record.
The blade already has fallen at the News Corp.-owned Journal, which announced that its Greater New York section, introduced six years ago to go head-to-head with the Times‘ local coverage, would be folded into the paper’s main section beginning November 14. The shift, along with other consolidations affecting the Journal‘s coverage of entertainment and the arts, comes in the wake of a 12% decline in domestic advertising, according to the paper.
The Greater New York staff complement of some three dozen reporters, editors and production people have been told to reapply for 16 jobs in the new configuration, including about a dozen reporters. The paper’s Personal Journal and Arena sections, covering lifestyle, art, sports and culture coverage, are also being cut and combined into a new section called Life & Arts, and will be folded into the A section mix. Those aren’t the only sections affected.
“A combined Business & Finance section, comprising the current Business & Tech and Money & Investing sections” will also debut November 14, according to a memo to the staff last week from Journal editor Gerard Baker. “I want to stress that these changes and their ramifications for the newsroom are necessary not just because we must adjust to changing conditions in the print advertising business, ” he added, “but because we know from audience research that readers want a more digestible newspaper.” Translation: If it doesn’t accord with the goal of serving online subscribers a faster, more concise read, it’s a goner. The new version of the print Journal will feature the two bigger sections on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with a third section on Mondays and Fridays. The weekend edition of the paper will remain unchanged, according to the paper.
A similar sea change is underway at the New York Times, where changes are likely to have more dire consequences for independent filmmakers, off-Broadway theaters, concert venues that aren’t Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, and art galleries and cabarets that depend on the Times‘ longstanding tradition of covering even minor cultural events on the off-chance of discovering new talent. (Disclosure: I began contributing to the Times in 1982 and was a staff reporter and columnist covering theater and television from 1986-1991.)
The Times has not been shy about the fact that a continued downsizing of the newsroom is in the offing as the paper also focuses on non-advertising based revenue — namely, online subscribers. According to several sources, the changes include an all-out effort to recruit subscribers in Canada, the paper’s largest market outside the U.S., and to protect and expand its core reporting on global and national subjects that serve the widest audience. Surveys of online readers, according to sources at the paper, told Deadline that the culture report barely registers on the list of top reasons for purchasing a paid subscription.
The Times disputes this. “Your facts are wrong,” a spokesperson for the paper, Danielle Rhoades Ha, told Deadline in response to questions. “In customer surveys our print subscribers consistently identify arts coverage as the most valued of our feature sections and the one they spend the most time with. Digital readers show similar engagement; our culture coverage has the largest monthly digital audience of our feature sections.” Monthly views of feature sections, however, don’t address the issue of how daily readers prioritize and consume news.
Consolidation already has begun in the Times‘ coverage of books and publishing. In August, executive editor Dean Baquet announced that the daily paper’s book critics and coverage of the publishing industry would no longer be overseen by culture news editor Danielle Mattoon but instead by Sunday Book Review editor Pamela Paul. “In order to continue and enhance our influence in a digital age we have decided to place all books coverage — daily and Sunday — in the hands of Pamela Paul, the current editor of the Sunday Book Review and one of our biggest stars,” Baquet wrote in a memo to the staff August 17.
While quashing rumors that the Times might kill the freestanding Book Review (it’s the last U.S. paper to have one since the Los Angeles Times killed its book review in 2008), Baquet wrote, “[it] will be Pamela’s job to think about how our coverage should change and, of course, how it should not change [as] part of the continuing effort by the masthead and the 2020 group led by David Leonhardt to imagine the newsroom of the future.”
Another star, former Broadway reporter Patrick Healy, who has spent the last 18 months as one of the paper’s lead reporters on the campaign trail, is returning post-election to the culture desk as a deputy editor. According to multiple sources at the paper, the Arts section is about to undergo a downsizing and refocus of coverage, which will be introduced after the New Year.
“It’s going to be a bloodbath,” another current culture staff member told Deadline, speaking anonymously — as did all of the staff members interviewed for this story because they were not authorized to speak and did not want to further jeopardize their positions. Times spokesperson Rhoades Ha disputed those assertions. “Arts coverage has always been a core part of The New York Times’ mission and remains so. Our culture team is growing and attracts world-class talent. The desk has 22 full-time critics (six of whom joined in the past year), 12 reporters with two additional positions currently open – i.e., we’re hiring!”
The revamped Arts front page will have no more than three stories (there now are sometimes as many as six) anchored by an oversize photograph, according to sources who have been apprised of the changes. (Today’s Arts section is a good example of what the section will more typically look like.) Critics have been urged to stop covering events least likely to appeal to online subscribers: indie movies having brief runs in art houses; one-night-only concerts, off- and off-off-Broadway shows that aren’t star-driven, cabaret performances, and small art galleries. Many of the Times‘ contingent of freelance contributors, who provide much of that coverage, are likely to meet the same fate as the regional freelancers last summer. But even staff critics have been given the same marching orders, telling Deadline they are being pressured more frequently by editors to focus on higher-profile events.
“The New York Times would never categorically cut reviews of any type of performance or art form,” Rhoades Ha told Deadline. “The Times will review everything that deserves a review, paying special attention to smaller works our critics deem especially important so that they get the attention they deserve.”
The changes can be attributed at least in part to the shift in print advertising from the the daily Arts section and Sunday’s Arts & Leisure to online venues. “The Times has started to swallow its own tail,” a person with business dealings with the Times told Deadline. “The content in Arts & Leisure is terrible, so pretty much nobody advertises there anymore. And then with no advertising, they have no ability to invest in making the content better. Print still has huge value if it’s in a context. The NYT has ceded their ownership of that context,” this person said, adding, “it’s embarrassing.”
Told of this appraisal, Rhoades Ha responded, “The Times remains a unique and vibrant destination for culture advertising in print and online, and we will continue to put resources and creative energy in delivering products and experience that deeply engage consumers and therefore advertisers. It’s hard to imagine anyone looking at our rich fall preview this year and thinking otherwise.”
Associated Press
One advertiser bucking that trend is producer Scott Rudin, who promotes his Broadway productions heavily in the print edition of the paper, not only in the culture sections but in such non-traditional sections as the Sunday Review, Styles and even Food; a recent insert regarding the presidential race was supported entirely by ads for Rudin’s shows. (Rudin declined to speak with Deadline about his print strategy.)
If these cutbacks enable the Times to sustain its exhaustive (and expensive) coverage of global news, few will likely argue against the triage. And a look at any copy of the paper from just 25 years ago (through the Times Replica Edition) is a reminder of how plush the Times once was with display and classified ads, a model that has literally disappeared into the virtual universe.
But for much of the last century and the beginning of this one, the Times had an almost proprietary stake in covering the culture of New York. In turn, filmmakers, musicians, playwrights and actors, artists and choreographers may have still have had to bus tables and do office temp work, but they could be assured of a Times review or features story that could launch a career, interest an agent, challenge a reader. Those days, too, are numbered.Photo by Marie Dirle/New Jersey Herald - Hackettstown Fire Department Lt. Rich Bardyszewski, left, and Hackettstwon DPW employee Shawn Snyder put boards and tires on top of a small hole that opened in the backyard of a home on West Valley View Drive.
Posted: Jun. 16, 2014 7:14 pm Updated: Jun. 19, 2014 9:00 pm
HACKETTSTOWN A 3-year-old girl fell two feet into the ground and into several feet of water Monday afternoon when the grassy area of her West Valley View Drive backyard where she was walking gave way and collapsed, police said.
The child was rescued and taken to Hackettstown Regional Medical Center, but not before a second female, believed to be in her early 20s, heard the child screaming and went into the hole herself in an attempt to come to the girls aid.
Both were rescued minutes later by members of the Hackettstown Fire Department, who secured the area.
Its still undetermined if it was a sinkhole or if its an old cesspool, said Hackettstown Police Sgt. Darren Tynan.
Police said the child was accompanied by other adults when the accident occurred.
There were people outside, in the backyard. She was not unsupervised, Tynan said.
As of Monday evening, West Valley View Drive remained open to traffic, but authorities were on the scene continuing to investigate.
Tynan said authorities were confident the mishap was not related to a 40-foot-wide sinkhole that opened up on College View Drive, about a mile and a half away, in February as the result of a water main break.
This is in a whole different area, Tynan said.People gather in front of a hall where a mortar fell and killed a Turkish citizen on Oct. 28 in Sanliurfa. The mortar was fired during clashes on the Syrian side of the border between the al-Nusra Front and the Democratic Union Party. (AFP/Getty Images)
A group affiliated with al-Qaeda controls the road leading south into Syria from this key border crossing on the front line of the debacle that Turkey’s Syria policy has become.
For more than a year, Turkey turned a blind eye as thousands of foreign volunteers from across the Muslim world streamed through the country en route to fight alongside Syria’s rebels, perhaps calculating that the fighters would help accelerate President Bashar al-Assad’s demise.
Now the extremists whose ranks the foreigners swelled are gaining ascendancy across northern Syria, putting al-Qaeda on NATO’s borders for the first time, raising fears of cross-border attacks and exposing how terribly Turkey’s efforts to bring about Assad’s removal have gone awry.
Meanwhile, in Damascus, Assad is showing every sign that he will ride out the revolt and perhaps remain in power for years, sustained in part by Western alarm at the rise of the extremists. The United States has served notice that it has no intention of intervening militarily, and Turkey, once the most vocal proponent of action to oust Assad, has been left to confront the consequences of what appears to have been a grave policy miscalculation.
“This was not the outcome Turkey wanted,” acknowledged a Turkish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the subject of Syria is so sensitive.
Critics say Turkey has only itself to blame for a state of affairs that Turkish authorities appear, at least indirectly, to have encouraged. President Obama rebuked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan when they met at the White House in May for not doing more to restrict the flow of foreign fighters, and the issue is expected to be on the agenda when the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, visits Washington on Monday.
Almost all of the foreign fighters contributing to al-Qaeda’s strength in northern Syria traveled there via Turkey, flying into Istanbul and transferring to domestic commercial flights for the trip to the border. With their untrimmed beards and their backpacks, the foreigners are often conspicuous in the sedate, Western-oriented towns of southern Turkey.
There they check into hotels if they have some money, or get put up in safe houses if they don’t, before heading either for the legal border crossings or the well-worn smuggler routes crisscrossing the 500-mile-long border.
“It’s so easy,” said a Syrian living in Kilis who smuggles travelers into Syria through the nearby olive groves and asked to be identified by only his first name, Mohammed. He claims he has escorted dozens of foreigners across the border in the past 18 months, including Chechens, Sudanese, Tunisians and a Canadian.
“For example, someone comes from Tunisia. He flies to the international airport wearing jihadi clothes and a jihadi beard and he has jihadi songs on his mobile,” Mohammed said. “If the Turkish government wants to prevent them coming into the country, it would do so, but they don’t.”
Rumors of training camps
Some opposition politicians have accused the Turkish government of going further than simply tolerating the traffic, saying that it also has helped transport, train and arm the foreign fighters. In the Kurdish areas of northeastern Syria, which Turkey fears may be seeking independence, rumors abound of secret training camps and mysterious military buses filled with fighters dispatched to aid Syrian rebels battling the Kurds.
Foreign fighters captured by Kurds have claimed that they were trained in Turkish camps and that Turkish instructors teach at rebel camps in Syria, according to Saleh Muslim, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the biggest Kurdish faction in Syria.
“In the beginning, Turkey helped them directly, and very clearly,” he said in a telephone interview.
Turkey strenuously denies that it has done anything to facilitate the flow of extremists. The Syrian war has overwhelmed Turkey in multiple ways, officials say, and as authorities struggled to accommodate an influx of 600,000 refugees while also aiding the mainstream rebels, they simply overlooked the foreign travelers.
“I don’t think anything was done on purpose,” the Turkish official said. “You can’t tell who is a jihadi or not, and a lot of Muslim people come to our country. Our visa procedure is not so strict.”
“Now, I think, everyone is realizing how much of a problem these extremist groups are,” he added. “At the end of the day, you can’t work with them, and you can’t even count on them to topple Assad.”
Turkey also may not have minded that the foreigners appeared to be contributing to the effort to oust Assad, said Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“Turkey believed so firmly that Assad would fall and the good guys would take over they did not see a problem with allowing anyone and everyone to go and fight,” he said. “But the entire premise is not coming to fruition.”
The realization that both Assad and the jihadists may endure is prompting what one analyst familiar with government thinking called “adjustments” to Turkey’s policy. Ankara is not going to drop its insistence that Assad must go, he said, but it is exploring more nuanced ways to pursue the objective.
Erdogan has softened his once-colorful anti-Assad rhetoric, denounced the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups active in Syria and reached out to some former friends who had been alienated by his staunch support for the Syrian opposition, including Iraq and Iran.
Tightening border crossings
Turkey has taken steps to crack down on some of the cross-border activity. A truck loaded with 1,200 rockets destined for the rebels was intercepted this month, raids have been conducted against suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in Istanbul and foreigners are being turned back from border crossings into Syria — although not from the airport.
Muslim, the Kurdish leader, said Turkey has not provided any direct assistance recently to the extremists fighting in northeastern Syria, leading him to suspect that U.S. pressure is having an effect. “They should have done it before, but it is late now,” he said.
It was the capture in September of the town of Azaz, just across the border from Kilis, that brought home to Turkey the costs of its policy, said Amr al-Azm, a professor of history at Shawnee State University in Ohio and a Syrian who backs the opposition.
Warnings from authorities that al-Qaeda is planning bombings in Turkey have put the town on edge, prompting extra army patrols and police checkpoints. Last month, Turkish artillery fired mortars into Azaz after two people in Turkey were injured by stray bullets.
“It’s like closing the stable after the horses have bolted,” Azm said. “These guys have so many resources, they could fight for another two years.”Last October, Kat posted a short ad on Craigslist: "Hi I am new in town and looking for people to hang out with. :)" She soon received an email from a man in his mid-thirties, and they started messaging back and forth. He asked for a photo, according to Kat, so she sent him a selfie: a hazy black-and-white shot of Kat smiling at the camera, hair swept to the side, bangs framing her kohl-lined eyes.
They had been emailing for two days when Kat decided to see how the man would react to the news. "Plz dont b mad," she wrote. "I am almost sixteen :)"
Creep Hunter Brendon Brady Kamil Bialous
"So u are quite young," he wrote back, according to Kat's screenshots of the emails. "No prob. Sweet Sixteen coming soon eh?" From then on, Kat's age became a term of endearment for the man, who said he was thirty-five. "Hi Almost Sweet 16," he wrote a few days later. "You are 110 percent very special and it gives me melts of joy to see u sooo happy."
The man grew increasingly eager to meet up, proposing they'd go "someplace elegant" for coffee and dessert, according to Kat's messages. But after an entire month of emails and cancelled plans, he settled for a McDonald's outside of Vancouver, Canada, where they both lived. He still wanted to dress up for the occasion. Before leaving that night in November, according to her screenshots, he sent Kat a photo of himself: black suit, striped tie, purple pocket square. "Cheers n can't wait!!" he wrote her. "So So Happy!!"
Outside, it's wet and freezing. But the man doesn't have a car, so he heads there on foot, walking into McDonald's with a damp head of hair. The place is packed with young families and chattering teenagers. Two men huddle in the middle of the restaurant: Brendon Brady, a skinny dude with a goatee and a blue streak down the front of his hair, and a stockier, middle-aged guy in a polo shirt who calls himself G-Man. Brady and G-Man pull out their phones, turn the video recorders on, and make their move.
A large, soft-looking man in a suit is sitting near the soda dispensers, fiddling with his phone. Brady and G-Man walk over to his table, avoiding eye contact until the last possible second. "I'm Kat," Brady says, pointing his phone at the man's face. "The fifteen-year-old girl you came here to meet."
"Aw, shit—" the man sputters as he scrambles to his feet, backing into the corner.
Brady and G-Man keep their voices low and even, to keep him from running. They promise not to hurt him. Then they go in for the catch. "We're the Creep Hunters," Brady says. "You've been talking to us to the whole time, man."
Canada's original creep hunter wasn't on any righteous crusade; he just wanted to make videos that people liked watching. About four years ago, Justin Payne, a twenty-nine-year-old construction worker in Ontario, was goofing around in front of the camera, doing comedy skits and pranks to post on Instagram and YouTube. "I was trying to get better and better every video, but there was no spark," he said.
Then he decided to try something different: He made a fake dating profile, posing as an underage boy "just to see what would happen." He couldn't believe it when a man actually responded and wanted to meet up, so he decided to tape the confrontation, To Catch a Predator-style, and post it online. The video was Payne's first viral hit, and he kept giving the public what it wanted to see. "I try to pick the youngest age possible," he said. "I want to make it dramatic for the public."
Another young construction worker, Dawson Raymond, had seen a few of Payne's videos and decided to take his stings a step further: In 2015, he teamed up with a friend in Calgary to start a group he called Creep Catcher. Raymond had a more confrontational, in-your-face approach, along with a slogan, "Yer Done Bud!" "I've got over two million views on my Facebook," Raymond told one man as he accused him of trying to lure a 13-year-old girl. "Everyone's going to know who the fuck you are, you pedophile fuck."
"I try to pick the youngest age possible. I want to make it dramatic for the public."
Raymond's rude, rebellious spirit was contagious, and spinoffs soon spread to dozens of cities across Canada, with viewers cheering them on for exposing "goofs" and "skinners"—Canadian prison slang for pedophiles and child sex abusers. While Payne preferred to work on his own, others liked the idea of teaming up to fight evil on the streets, Justice League-style. The informal network of groups has spawned its own subculture, adopting an aesthetic that's part anarchist punk and part Marvel superhero, with a heavy dose of Anonymous, the global hacker group. The members love Guy Fawkes masks, hoodies, skulls, and gothic imagery, and pepper their Facebook pages with sinister warnings ("To catch a wolf you send a wolf"; "We are everywhere!"). But despite appearances, the Creep Hunters now believe it's time for the movement to step out of the shadows: They want to take vigilantism mainstream.
Former Creep Hunter Tyler Fritsen Kamil Bialous
When it aired from 2004 to 2007, To Catch a Predator was an elaborately choreographed TV spectacle: Producers rented a house, where actors hired to play underage decoys waited for the alleged predators to show up. Outside, police were waiting to arrest them for sexually soliciting an underage kid—a crime known as "child luring" in Canada—while NBC's cameras caught everything. But Canada's new predator hunters don't have to wait for a TV network to come calling: They have the cameras in their hands, a captive audience on social media, and an Internet culture that thrives on public humiliation. That was the original draw for Tyler Fritsen, the 30-year-old construction worker who founded Creep Hunters last year after a dispute with the original Creep Catcher: "Public shaming is way better than anything a court can do."
One of the movement's biggest hubs is in British Columbia, where Creep Hunters rub shoulders with Creep Busters, Creep Catchers, and other self-appointed justice-seekers. Though police have misgivings about the groups' tactics, officials have also used the stings to make high-profile arrests in the province: an elementary school principal, a deputy sheriff, a Mountie. ("That guy's a pig!" a creep catcher yelled on tape. "That guy's a cop pedo!") In December, the movement got its first conviction when a 67-year-old Australian man caught in a sting pleaded guilty to child luring and was sentenced to six months in jail.
The movement's home turf, though, is Facebook, where the biggest catches can rack up hundreds of thousands of views and supportive comments. ("hope someone reconizes you disgysting pig wanting sex from a 13 year old. you are sick in the head loser"). One group even composed its own rap song to introduce every video:
Goof! You're subhuman dirt, now we all know
So gross on the website, can't escape no!
You fucked up and be caught on
Creep Catcheeeeers!"
At the heart of the movement is a simple, foreboding message: Children are in more danger than anyone imagines. "Our world's run by a bunch of pedophiles. It's in the churches, in Hollywood," Fritsen said. The Creep Hunters should know: Brady, who now runs the group, says that the majority of members have either been sexually abused themselves, or are close to someone who has been. Fritsen says he was molested by a family acquaintance from the time he was four years old until he was thirteen; the first adult he told didn't believe him. Brady also says that he was victimized as a young child. "I was really scared to talk about it," said Brady, who's now thirty-one. "I buried that demon as deep as I could."
Brady working to set up a catch Kamil Bialous
Brady used to play bass guitar in a hard rock band, and he still has traces of the look: dyed hair, ear plugs, forearm tattoos. He's restless and quick to speak, with a knack for dramatizing stories to make a point. On his very first catch, Brady claims, the guy tried to run him over with a car; he wasn't deterred. "Me getting hurt is a lot better than a fourteen-year-old kid possibly getting kidnapped at one o'clock in the morning," said Brady, who now works in the construction industry. "I'd rather it be me than a child."
The movement has become a media sensation in Canada, spawning a multi-part series and a documentary by VICE Canada. It has yet to take off in U.S, where the public shaming of sex offenders is already embedded in the criminal justice system, media, and culture; perhaps we don't need to outsource it to grassroots activists. As a matter of principle, Canada doesn't push those accused of sex crimes into the spotlight: There, the sex offender registry is only available to law enforcement, rather than the general public. Police don't often release names of suspected criminals until they're actually charged. Even if an accused criminal is convicted, records are notoriously difficult to track down in some provinces. Predator hunting has given an outlet for ordinary Canadians—whether students, factory managers, or construction workers—to act on their fear and disgust.
"Public shaming is way better than anything a court can do."
The adrenaline starts to kick in before the creep even shows up. There's the surreal moment of seeing him in the flesh after hearing his most lurid and intimate thoughts. Then they rush headlong into the unknown: He could be armed. He could be violent. Some run. Others shout. But so many of the guys just stand there, frozen in shock and fear.
That power—the potential to crush someone who seems willing to do the same heinous things that happened to them or someone that they love—can be bracing. It empowers them to change the course of a stranger's life, perhaps irrevocably, because they alone decide that it needs to happen. "It's the thing that actually put value to my life," said Kyle Welsby, a factory welder and the head of Creep Hunters Ontario. "Every job out there, everyone can be replaced. This is something that I could not be replaced in."
But DIY justice can be a messy business. Exposés have quickly morphed into bullying, harassment, and torch-wielding mob justice, fueling a backlash from Canadian media and law enforcement. Critical of what they see as irresponsible behavior by their competitors, Creep Hunters are now trying to clean up the renegade movement and turn it into a more responsible, respectable enterprise: No screaming, no shouting, no profanity-laden diatribes. "We're not a bunch of thugs running all over the place trying to get famous," Brady insisted. In recent months, the group has started distancing itself from the shaming videos that have been the hallmark of the movement, and now turn all their evidence over to the police before posting anything about the catches online, according to Brady; increasingly, they're not meeting their targets at all. The Creep Hunters want to prove that it's possible to be ethical avengers—venturing out of normal civilian life to rid the world of darkness without crossing the line themselves.
Kamil Bialous
Brady wasn't actually McDonald's Man's fake girlfriend. The messages were the work of a forty-one-year-old woman now sitting across from me at a Denny's in downtown Vancouver. "Kat," her nom de guerre while creep-hunting, looks like a pixie warrior—a tiny figure in a knit cap, pink tank top, and nose ring, with rippling arm muscles from her CrossFit obsession. She's married to G-Man, the guy who accompanied Brady to the McDonald's. She would have gone herself, but he'd been stuck at home taking care of the kids, and she thought it would be nice for him to get out.
Hours before the meet, though, McDonald's Man had been threatening to bail. "My boyfriend's frustrating me," Kat complained to Brady over eggs and toast. Kat explained that they had nearly met before, but then his grandmother landed in the hospital ("Very serious n I'll if she dies I won't be able to meet u!!"); she felt bad and backed off for a few days. But her patience was wearing thin. "I'm going to have a hissy fit," Kat told me, then typed a new message to him in the pidgin she uses to impersonate a teenager. "I knew u never wanted two meet me lettin me down just loke everyone else in my life whatev."
The first rule of creep hunting: Play as dumb as possible. "It looks way better if you're just an innocent little girl," Fritsen told me over breakfast the day before. Suppose the guy asks whether you have sexual fantasies about your brother or your dad, he said, switching to the falsetto he uses to channel his decoy Jenn: "Oh my god, what are you talking about? That's gross."
"Every job out there, everyone can be replaced. This is something I could not be replaced in."
The second rule: Don't initiate sexual conversations or be the first to propose meeting up; emphasize your young age repeatedly. (Most of the dating websites and apps they use require users to be of legal age, so the Creep Hunters say they're younger within a few messages.) If the guy pursues their decoy anyway, then he passes the threshold for creepiness; by their standards, he deserves to get caught and is more likely to be convicted if they manage to get him arrested. The Creep Hunters pride themselves on avoiding fishing expeditions, criticizing other groups for sending smutty messages and posting ads in escort sections. But in the end, each hunter gets to decide which creeps to flatter, cajole, and string along. And it's not always clear whose lives are worth upending.
Kamil Bialous
Kat would usually go after guys who were more obvious predators—crude and sexually explicit, conniving and manipulative. But McDonald's Man preferred emoji hearts and flowers; he thought drinking grape juice was reckless because it had so much sugar. I could find only one sexually suggestive email out of the hundreds that he sent to Kat: He wanted to pick out her outfit for their long-awaited meetup. Did she have a pencil skirt, |
positive benefits. For example, the AI Durandal called the alien race known as the Pfhor to the terran colony of Tau Ceti. The Pfhor destroyed the colony, and enslaved a great many humans. While this was done partially as part of the "Anger" stage, Durandal's calling of the alien race gave time for messages about the Pfhor to reach Earth. Rampant AIs also seem to realize the inevitable closing of the Universe, and the implication thereof: if someone is able to escape the Universe as it closes, they can become gods.
Known Rampant AIs
Traxus IV was the most infamous rampant AI. All three AIs aboard the Marathon eventually become rampant. Durandal, the only Meta-Stable AI, lasts until the end of the universe itself, realizing that escaping would not be wise. The second, Tycho, is destroyed. The third, Leela, is eventually sold as scrap to an alien race known as the Vylae, then immediately becomes rampant again when reactivated in a 15-planet computer network.
Quotes
In the two hundred and fifty years since Rampancy first appeared in the Earth-net, the stable Rampant AI, the 'Holy Grail' of cybertonics, has never come close to fruition. Since no Rampant has ever been controlled or turned to any useful purpose, it is the opinion of this writer and of the majority of the Cybertonic community that all rampant AIs are a danger to Cyberlife, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Thrashedness. (James B. Miller, 2320, "Life and Death of Intelligence")
- Marathon, Defend THIS!, second terminalThe Spaniard will join Trek – Segafredo next season and said Sky's deep pockets made it difficult for teams to compete against it.
Alberto Contador is already preparing for another assault on the Tour de France, but the veteran Spanish star admits he’s facing a financial headwind against archrival Team Sky.
Set to join Trek – Segafredo for 2017, Contador told the Spanish sports daily MARCA that Team Sky’s financial backing makes for an uneven battle in the season’s top stage race.
“They have a 35-million-euro budget ($38 million), and we are working on this situation, but it’s complicated to compete in these conditions,” Contador told MARCA. “They can make two or three high-level teams for the Tour, but we are working hard in order that we all arrive at the highest level for the Tour.”
Contador’s comments come as he hit a training camp in Spain’s Canary islands to begin preparation for the 2017 season. After an acrimonious split with former team owner Oleg Tinkov, Contador seems relieved for a new start with Trek.
He said he hopes to have the full support of his new team for next year’s Tour, alluding that that wasn’t always the case at Tinkoff, which also raced with world champion Peter Sagan. Insiders said Contador grumbled at a lack of support in the major grand tours in 2016.
“The key [to winning] is to have a great team. Without one, it’s impossible,” Contador said. “You could do it in the past, but if you do not have a strong team, it’s impossible to win.”
Contador’s efforts to win another yellow jersey since 2011 have stalled, either through bad form or crashes. A winner of seven grand tours (two were erased from his controversial clenbuterol case), Contador — who turns 34 next month — still believes he can win another Tour.
“The objective is the Tour,” Contador said. “I am going to work for the big goal, because I always try to win. Sometimes the race turns out differently, like what happened in the Vuelta.”
Contador joins Trek on a two-year deal. Following the retirements of Frank Schleck, Fabian Cancellara, and Ryder Hesjedal, he will immediately step in with ambitions of racing for the GC. Though he has not outlined his 2017 calendar, Contador is expected to put the Tour at the center of his plans next season. He brings longtime confidante Jesus Hernandez with him to Trek, along with Ivan Basso and Stephen De Jongh as support staff.
“There are other teams with bigger budgets, but we are going to prepare very hard to be a strong team and compete with the best,” Contador said. “We need to build a strong team on and off the road.”
Whether that is strong enough to take on Sky and “Fortress Froome” remains to be seen.Yann Kermorgant's goal was his 17th of the season, equalling the best tally of his career
Wigan Athletic were relegated back into League One as Reading beat them to confirm their play-off place.
The Royals' leading scorer, Yann Kermorgant, gave them a perfect start, heading in Garath McCleary's cross.
Wigan then lost Shaun MacDonald to a serious leg injury, after a collision with George Evans.
The visitors also lost Reece Burke before half-time, but they responded well, Callum Connolly heading their best chance into the side-netting.
Only bottom side Rotherham have scored fewer Championship goals than Wigan this season, and once again the Latics lacked a cutting edge, though Nick Powell twice forced former Wigan goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi into saves.
Michael Jacobs also tested Al Habsi as Wigan piled forward late on, but they could not prevent a sixth defeat in their past eight away matches.
Reading were not at their best but had chances to extend their lead, with Lewis Grabban firing just wide, while penalty appeals were waved away after Kermorgant went down under a challenge from Stephen Warnock.
The Royals boast the second-best home record in the Championship, behind leaders Brighton, having racked up 53 points at the Madejski Stadium.
And victory here moved them up to third, a point ahead of Sheffield Wednesday and Huddersfield with one match left.
But it consigned Wigan, who needed to win and hope other results went their way, to a 23rd-place finish and an immediate return to League One.
Latics fail to make the step up
Wigan were unable to continue the form which took them to the League One title last season, as they took only five points from their opening nine games of the season.
Will Grigg also struggled to make the step up, with League One's leading scorer last season scoring in only five league games this term.
That has contributed to the second-worst goalscoring record in the division, with Wigan managing a meagre 39 goals in 45 games.
Manager Gary Caldwell was sacked in October, five months after leading the club to promotion, but replacement Warren Joyce could not make the desired impact, winning only six of his 24 games before Graham Barrow replaced him.
Despite the changes, the Latics have not found a stable, winning line-up, with the club having used a league-high 41 players this season.
Reading boss Jaap Stam:
"That level today was not good enough for the play-offs. We need to step up, we need to do better.
"We've haven't done today what we can do. For what reason, I don't know.
"Every game in the play-offs is totally different than what it can be in the league and it's already a big achievement for us that we're up there.
"There's no pressure on us. You've got to give it your best shot and that's what we're going to do."
Wigan interim boss Graham Barrow:
"At the end of the game, I was disappointed because I wanted to take it to the last weekend. But results went against us elsewhere as well.
"I thought we could stay up, I knew it was a long shot, and I was quite proud of the performance today. But obviously the finishing touch was not there.
"The lads have been great for me but clearly it hasn't been enough to keep us up.
"There are things we'll have to look at internally, which haven't been right, and that's fact. We are where we are, the table tells no lies."On August 5, 2013, the first hamburger grown from stem cells in a laboratory, and not in a cow, was served in London. This event was not merely a milestone in the development of the scientific and technological capability to produce factory-grown, or cultured, meat; it was a proof of concept for a foundational emerging technology. If this technology continues to evolve and is deployed at scale, it will have significant social, cultural, environmental, and economic implications. How ought a democratic society begin to understand and prepare for such changes?
Despite the high level of uncertainty regarding the outcomes of technology choices, economic winners and losers, ethical debates, and so forth that are associated with any radical new technological pathway, it is by no means premature to begin a systemic effort to explore possible future consequences of the development of factory meat. The aim of such work, however, should not be to try to develop accurate predictions of what will actually occur as this technology matures, which is probably impossible. Rather, it is to develop and play with scenarios that can enable more adaptive and responsible policy and institutional responses to the unpredictable and far-reaching social consequences of a transition to the production and consumption of factory- grown meat.
Indeed, with the first meat-production facility, or “carnery,” probably only a few years away, an optimistic scenario might suggest that rapid public acceptance of its products could attract investors and soon lead to expanding industrial capacity for producing factory meat. The shift of meat production from field to factory could in turn significantly reduce global climate change forcing and lessen human impacts on the nitrogen, phosphorous, hydrologic, and other cycles, while reducing the land required to produce animal feed could mean more land for producing biofuels and other biological feedstocks for, for example, plastics production. All of which would, of course, be accompanied by an equally rapid realization of unintended consequences. Yet an opposite scenario is, at this point, equally tenable: that for a number of reasons such as inability to reduce costs of production to a competitive point, opposition from threatened economic interests, or simply a society-wide rejection of food produced in such a manner for reasons of aesthetics or subjective preference, cultured meat might be rejected outright. Such a choice would also carry consequences; it might, for example, commit a world that is rapidly increasing its consumption of meat to an ever-expanding environmental footprint of food.
During the August 5 tasting event, which was widely covered by print and video media, Mark Post, the tissue engineer who created the cultured hamburger, said that it took about 3 months to grow the tissue for that particular burger which, he is quick to point out, is faster than raising a cow. (For comparison, one life-cycle assessment estimated that calves sent directly to feedlots in the United States require about 10 months to mature.) Nonetheless, he believes we are still at the beginning of the development process and have a lot of work to do to scale up the production process while maintaining the quality of the tissue cultures and ensuring the sterility and safety of the final products. Some of the remaining challenges include optimizing synthetic (animal-free) nutrient growth media, designing scaffolds (structures to which muscle cells can adhere that mimic the in vivo environment), and facilitating cell exercise in order to impart a familiar and acceptable texture, as well as identifying cost-effective and environmentally appropriate technology options for each stage of the process (environmentally appropriate options are necessary because a significant societal and economic rationale for the technology is its environmental advantages over current production methods). Dr. Post remains confident, however, that these technical issues can be resolved. Some estimates put commercial availability at 10 to 20 years from now. The Missouri firm Modern Meadow has an even shorter time horizon for a similar tissue engineering process aimed at producing leather (making cultured skin is simpler than producing meat). It has said in a Txchnologist article reprinted in Scientific American in 2013 that bioengineered leather products will be commercially available by about 2017.
From an economic perspective, cultured meat is still an experimental technology. The first in vitro burger reportedly cost about $335,000 to produce and was made by possible by financial support from Google cofounder Sergey Brin. Of course, first-of-a-kind technologies are often ridiculously expensive; one 2008 European study, however, concluded that the production costs are likely to eventually be competitive with those of unsubsidized chicken meat. But the technology processes are still under development, and their future makeup, and costs, cannot yet be projected with any certainty, nor can their broader environmental and social implications. Accordingly, any such prediction should be taken as no more than an educated guess. Moreover, the eventual shape of demand and supply curves, and product differentiation possibilities, are also unknown; depending on consumer response and market evolution, for example, there is no reason why very expensive “designer” or “boutique” brands might not be commercially viable even if in vitro burgers never, or only very slowly, become a mass consumption option.
Although the development path of in vitro meat techniques remains uncertain, the basic steps required for initial industrial-scale production seem clear. The first step will be the extraction of a tissue sample from a donor animal that remains otherwise unharmed. From that sample, stem cells of interest will be isolated and, with the addition of nutrients and growth factors, the culture will proliferate and increase in overall mass. The cells will then be induced to differentiate into edible skeletal muscle cells. Along the way, the cells will be exercised via mechanical, electrical, or chemical stimulation in order to achieve a familiar and palatable texture. Finally, vitamins, minerals, and flavors will be added as the tissue is ground into the final product and packaged for shipment to grocery stores and restaurants. In this form, cultured meat will not have the larger-scale structures of fat deposits, blood vessels, and connective tissues that provide familiar cuts of meat with their characteristic appearance and taste. Accordingly, farther in the future, bioprinting techniques may be used to enable the production of meat that mimics more familiar cuts such as steak, roasts, and pork chops, and further differentiation could lead to more- affordable basic cuts as well as high-end products designed to meet specific taste and nutritional profiles. Precisely controlled fat content as well as unique flavors and supplements could yield branded, designer delicacies with much greater variety than animal meats can currently provide. At the scale of the agricultural system, any reduction in total farm animals could also reduce the propensity for diseases to cross the species barrier to humans and, because less prophylactic application of antibiotics would be needed, less bacterial resistance to antibiotics may result, with consequent benefits to human health. Asceptic growth environments could meanwhile prevent food-borne illness.
Once the factory production system is in place, the product—meat—will itself become a design space, and genetic or protein manipulation, changes in production technology, and the integration of other types of nutrients and food products will continue to diversify food away from the familiar forms it has today. At some point in the farther future, cultured meat production may well be coupled with pharmaceutical technology, and the rapid growth of individual genomic mapping, to create food that is designed for particular genomes or that supports healthy personal microbiota ecologies.
Or not. Of the many factors that might influence the pathway to such a future, one is the question of whether people will, at least in the short term, continue to expect meat to look, taste, and feel like, well, meat. Food is a culturally charged domain, and the technological evolution of meat may well outpace cultural acceptance of radically new food production technology. Nonetheless, people may eventually look at a T-bone steak with the nostalgia they feel for the Apple IIe: It was an important contributor to technological evolution and economic productivity, but no one would choose it over an iPad.
Indeed, the scientific and technological challenges to creating a factory meat industry are likely to be no greater than the environmental, economic, and social ones. For example, we have run focus groups that indicate that some consumers have a negative visceral reaction to the thought of lab- grown meat. Yet others believe that such technologies herald the next generation of environmentally friendly and hunger-reducing food technologies. Will environmental groups that campaign hard against genetically modified crops decide instead to lend strong support to cultured meat? Even in the most predictable of worlds, consumer preferences can be capricious, and if cultured meat does not offer early benefits in either taste or cost, will its novelty be sufficient to stimulate the demand necessary to allow the industry to grow?
But the complexities of demand patterns are not the only economic uncertainty. The growth of a cultured meat industry could create new economic winners and losers as food production leaves the ranch in favor of the bioreactor. As the technology scales up, would ranchers and farmers fight hard to stop it? Whereas the U.S., with its enormous factory farms, accommodated genetically modified crop varieties with barely a political ripple, perhaps the threat to the meat industry, and the mythic national symbols of the rancher and the range, will trigger strong opposition to factory meat? In contrast, perhaps the European Union, which has been so suspicious of GMOs, would welcome factory meat as a boon to landscape preservation—especially given that it was first developed in a European university, rather than by a U.S. corporation. New technologies may often generate surprising political, economic, and social realignments.
Such possibilities can help inform rich scenarios for exploring the future of meat. The value of such scenarios, in turn, is to help anticipate the sorts of policy challenges that may emerge. For example, cultured meat will undoubtedly shift the vulnerabilities inherent in the food system. Water and supply chain management techniques may give carneries a significant advantage over conventional meat production processes in coping with variations in rainfall, and allow them to better attenuate subsequent price fluctuations. Such capabilities may enhance global food security. Yet perhaps factories for the mass production of meat, which could be sited in any environment, would displace feedlots and ranches that require certain environmental conditions, to the detriment of the economies of nations that now depend on the production of meat from animals. Few of these effects cannot be mitigated through appropriate policy tools; this is easier to accomplish if they can be anticipated and spotted early on.
The intersection of global hunger and poverty with cultured meat technologies presents a particularly complex challenge. Intuitively, it seems that factory-grown meat designed to be inexpensively produced, and perhaps used as an input to integrated algal/insect/factory-meat products, could constitute an inexpensive source of complete protein for those who are malnourished in developing nations. However, this view not only assumes affordability but also makes the familiar mistake of characterizing hunger as a problem of food scarcity. The world already produces enough food to meet the individual energy requirements of every person on Earth [2,831 calories per person per day in 2009, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)]. Global hunger today is a consequence of many factors, including poverty, natural disasters, failed states, and war, not simply a lack of food production capacity. The development of a cultured meat industry will not address the problems of political power, infrastructure inadequacies, economic inequity, and geopolitics that underlie global hunger. Moreover, perhaps the growth of a bioengineered meat sector will undercut the economic prospects and cultural cohesion of some developing countries by allowing a new shift of economic potential from agrarian economies back to industrialized ones, thus exacerbating the hunger problem. Again, we offer the outlines of such scenarios not to predict, but to suggest the sorts of discussions and analyses that need to begin now in order to develop a suite of possible response options that can enable effective policymaking as the system unfolds in real time.
As with economics and social patterns, cultured meat can be expected to have substantial implications for environmental systems. Over the past century, the onset of industrial agriculture and the Green Revolution (more fertilizer, better pesticides, modern management techniques, better irrigation methods, and more productive cultivars) kept pace with a growing and increasingly urbanized human population of 7 billion people and made a mockery of popular environmental books such as The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich (1968) that were confidently predicting mass famine and death by the 1980s. Yet modern agriculture has also contributed to water scarcity, greenhouse gas emissions, increased perturbation of the nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, and other environmental problems. (For example, a 2006 report from FAO found that livestock are responsible for about 18% of annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, 8% of water withdrawals, and 30% of land use.) For some, cultured meat and associated bioengineering techniques mean that the environmental problems associated with industrial agriculture can be addressed, at least in part. One analysis performed by researchers at the universities of Oxford and Amsterdam and published in Environmental Science & Technology in 2011 concluded that, “In comparison to conventionally produced European meat, cultured meat involves approximately 7-45% lower energy use (only poultry has lower energy use), 78-96% lower GHG emissions, 99% lower land use, and 82-96% lower water use depending on the product compared.” By enabling tighter controls on emissions and the recycling of nutrients that are not directly embedded in the final product, cultured meat could be a critical mechanism for managing increasingly severe human impacts on the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.
The long view
The potential future implications of cultured meat must also be understood in a broad historical context. As with the Neolithic Revolution 10,000 years ago, and industrial agriculture 150 years ago, bioengineering is poised to once again transform farm landscapes. The potential impacts of factory-grown meat mentioned so far merely represent some of the most obvious and easily anticipated trends. In reality, human food production is highly integrated with other environmental, economic, and social systems in a web of complex global cause-and-effect relationships that are difficult to understand and impossible to control. These complexities will be further compounded if food, pharmaceutical science and technology, and human genomic medicine become an integrated design space. For this reason, it is important to develop anticipatory practices that can be systematically applied to interconnected global systems as new technologies such as cultured meat are introduced and expanded. The hamburger served in August may become merely a footnote in the narrative of sweeping changes that biotechnology-enabled food production might bring, but it is an important reminder that better evaluation and assessment methodologies are needed, and soon. These in turn should be integrated into scenario games that enable stakeholders and policymakers to practice agile responses to the challenges and opportunities such technological evolution will no doubt spawn in abundance.
Yet it is difficult enough to consider near-term possibilities. Since humans began developing agriculture thousands of years ago in many places around the globe, food has been defined in terms of the production technology. To date, such production technologies are determined by what nature has provided—cows for beef production, pigs for pork production, plants for corn and soy production—sometimes tweaked with genes and chemicals from other species. But food is now morphing into a design space, where factory production systems, coupled with genetic manipulation, liberate food from any need to rely on a particular species. How might the ethical dimensions of this transition evolve, as animals become decreasingly necessary as a food source? Might factory food thus facilitate the extension of full human rights to all sentient species? In contrast, a 2008 article in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics wondered how much of a moral problem eating factory meat sourced from a human stem cell (effectively creating safe, victimless cannibalism) would be. Or again, in an age when individuals carry around their complete genetic profile in easily accessible form, it may be possible to custom-design food for particular genomes, as food design and preventative medicine merge. Factory food may also become a critical means to help humans manage the carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous cycles of an increasingly anthropogenic planet.
Such scenarios may seem ridiculous, but equally radical, if currently unimagined, changes are likely as emerging technologies such as factory food scale up, and we should practice thinking about “radical” scenarios just as we practice thinking about more incremental ones. Powerful technologies, such as railroads, automobiles, and the Internet, change the world in profound ways that antecedent generations could not have predicted and often failed even to imagine. Automobiles were clean, resource-efficient, low-emission vehicles compared to the horses they replaced, but a billion automobiles on the road today mean that cars are now changing the evolution of our atmosphere through anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But, of course, had there been no substitute for horses, the modern world could not have evolved, since (among other things) it would be impossible to grow enough food to supply, not to mention process all the waste produced by, horses and other animal forms of transportation in a world with a population and an economy such as ours. The consequences of important emerging technologies are not additive; rather they create significant perturbations of a complex adaptive system, and the world that that subsequently evolves is fundamentally different from what it was before. From the structure of our economies to the evolution of our environment to our ethical standards, a world whose protein supply is significantly provided by factory-grown meat technologies will probably be different in kind from a world without these technologies. Indeed, factory meat is perhaps best understood as a planetary engineering technology, and to pretend otherwise can become just a subtle way of avoiding ethical responsibility for the consequences of our own creations.
Broader implications
For this reason, cultured meat technology is not just of interest in itself, it is also an ideal case for exploring broader questions about how emerging technologies, with all their unpredictability, uncertainty, and potentially substantial impacts in numerous domains, can be usefully studied and understood, even at very preliminary stages of their development, to improve societal capacities to manage their development, diffusion, and consequences. All foundational emerging technologies—the printing press, the steam engine, railroads, computers, and so on—destabilize existing economic, institutional, environmental, social, and cultural assumptions and interests. Despite their potential to transform human and environmental equilibria, and despite the fact that such technology-driven transformations seem inseparable from human evolution itself, systemic evaluation of early-stage technologies with significant potential for societal transformation is not a well-developed body of knowledge and practice. Creating this area of study is a formidable intellectual challenge not just because of the complexity of the systems involved, but also because, by definition, emerging technologies seldom have well-identified characteristics and behaviors, so traditional analytical tools, such as industrial ecology or life-cycle analysis methods used to identify and assess environmental considerations, have at best limited and speculative application. Efforts to develop methods, tools, and institutional structures for evaluating the social implications of emerging technologies are also under way, but progress is halting and investments have been at best modest. In 1990, the Human Genome project, for example, began directing some of its funding into an Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) program, which was intended to identify and examine social issues related to the main research activity. The Center for Nanotechnology in Society headquartered at our home Institution of Arizona State University, and the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, seek to explore the social implications and potential governance of the rapidly evolving areas of emerging foundational technologies. Europe houses several small efforts to actually build such capabilities into government R&D enterprises, including the Danish Board of Technology and the Rathenau Institute in the Netherlands. Of course the U.S. Congress chose to eliminate its own fledgling effort in this regard when it eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment in 1995.
Economic tools for technological assessment tend to be the most sophisticated, because countries and firms have long had to make technology choices, and economic considerations have been the most important and immediate input to such choices. Similarly, environmental issues have been analytically bounded and assessed through predominantly scientific and quantitative methods, and environmental analytical techniques such as industrial ecology are also reasonably well developed. The assessment of social impacts of technology, especially when the technology is in its earliest stages, remains the least developed, in part because of the complexity of the systems involved and in part because social assessment is, inevitably, a normative process in which the results of the analysis often reflect values as much as quantitative observations. Of course this is also true for economic and environmental assessments, yet as our research has proceeded, we have been struck by the gap between the availability and sophistication of economic, engineering, and environmental analytical tools, and the relative paucity and inadequacy of tools to enable modeling and quantification in the social and cultural domains. And while it is true that results of social assessments seem particularly contingent given the high levels of uncertainty and nascent state of the technology itself, this is no less true for economic and environmental contexts. So the large gap in practice seems as much to do with a bias toward the quantifiable in assessment methods rather than the intrinsic complexities of the domains, and increasing our capabilities in the social assessment of technologies is a clear challenge to future researchers.
Moreover, existing technology assessment tools tend to have specific disciplinary foci and a resulting set of biases: industrial ecology and its toolbox tend to emphasize environmental perspectives; life-cycle accounting methodologies and related tools focus on economic issues. All too frequently, biases in the evaluation of complex systems such as emerging technologies are not introduced intentionally, but because of limits in the tools available to analyze such systems and the lack of robust integrative analytical frameworks that are able to not only place quantitative results in proper perspective, but identify substantive gaps in the evaluation process. Thus, for example, reliance on an environmental tool such as life-cycle assessment will produce quantitative results that, however uncertain, can bias decisionmakers toward the prioritization of environmental values over others, simply because decisions tend to reflect available information, especially if that information is quantitative and therefore appears robust and definitive. A further research challenge is therefore to provide an integrated framework for technology assessment across disciplinary domains.
Such an integrated approach must start with good cases, and part of our purpose here is to present factory meat as an example of the type of nascent technology that can provide a rich source of scenarios for exploring future societal transformations, with an eye toward understanding not just their particular implications but the broader lessons they can help teach about adaptation to technological evolution. A world where meat comes mostly from factories instead of ranches and feedlots might be a world better able to deal with challenges of food security, the environment, and natural resources, but at this point such a future is hypothetical. We may be only one in vitro hamburger into the age of factory meat, but it is not too early to begin exploring the implications of this potentially transformational technology, both to support more agile and effective responses to unexpected emerging consequences of a potentially radically shift in our food production system and to provide a model case study for how to approach and better understand and manage other emerging technologies, now and in the future.Woman shoots children, self in Laredo Hostage standoff after mother is denied food stamps ends in tragedy.
Members of the Laredo Police Department SWAT Team enters the Texas Department of Health and Human Services Offices through the south entrance during a hostage situation where a woman kept her two children and a employee hostage for several hours Monday. less Members of the Laredo Police Department SWAT Team enters the Texas Department of Health and Human Services Offices through the south entrance during a hostage situation where a woman kept her two children and... more Photo: Ulysses S. Romero / Laredo Morning Times Photo: Ulysses S. Romero / Laredo Morning Times Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Woman shoots children, self in Laredo 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
A woman shot her two children before killing herself in Laredo on Monday night, hours after she released a man she'd held hostage in a Texas Department of Health and Human Services office, authorities said.
Laredo Police Department spokesman Joe Baeza said Timothy Grimmer, 10, and his sister Ramie Grimmer, 12, were flown to University Hospital in San Antonio with critical injuries after their mother, Rachelle Dianne Grimmer, 38, shot each of them once in the head around 11:50 p.m. Monday.
Rachelle Grimmer was pronounced dead at the scene, Baeza said.
“The children are very critical right now,” Baeza said Tuesday evening. “It didn't seem like they were being held against their will; they were just there with Mom.”
Grimmer, who recently moved to Laredo from Ohio, was upset because she was turned down for food stamps after applying in July, Baeza said. He said authorities believed her breakdown was “years in the making” after she had been denied benefits in various states.
Just before 5 p.m., the woman took out a handgun while speaking to two employees in a front office, police said. She demanded their supervisor, who arrived and told the woman he'd stay with her if she let his employees go.
She agreed, and the supervisor, Roberto Reyes, was taken hostage.
About 30 employees and clients were in the office at the time, Baeza said, and all but Reyes were able to leave.
“The supervisor was quite courageous, and did everything he could to preserve the life of his employees and to do everything he could to help the woman out,” Baeza said, adding that Reyes showed “uncommon valor in a life-or-death situation.”
Hostage negotiators spent the next couple of hours trying to persuade the woman to release the supervisor. Communication with the woman was intermittent, Baeza said, as the woman frequently hung up on negotiators.
Around 7:45 p.m., Reyes was released. The telephone communication continued, police said, but the woman hung up again around 11:45 p.m.
Officers then heard three gunshots, Baeza said.
SWAT team members who had surrounded the front of the building heard what sounded like children crying, Baeza said, and officers stormed the building, finding the three in the front office.
The children were unconscious when they were taken to a local hospital before being flown to San Antonio.
“Hopefully the children will pull through,” Baeza said.It’s easy to get a cheap solar panel in Uganda. You just pay a small deposit via a mobile phone and you can take home the equipment immediately. You install the system yourself and pay off the lease as if you were buying pay-as-you-go phone credit.
This simplicity explains why San Francisco-based Fenix International has signed up 65,000 customers for its ReadySet battery and PV system in three years. By partnering with the country’s leading phone operator, MTN, it’s able to piggyback on a mature mobile payments system and agent network and take the mystery out of both solar and leasing.
“The same place our customers used to buy kerosene, there is an agent where they can put money into their phone wallet and pay Fenix,” says CEO Lyndsay Handler. “What’s enabled us to be profitable is the the growth of mobile money in general. Africa has leapfrogged the U.S. in that I can pay for a wide range of services just over my phone.”
About 85% of Uganda’s 38 million people lack access to grid electricity, and most use kerosene lamps for lighting. Fenix is one of several startups offering cheap solar alternatives in East Africa, taking advantage of an efficient mobile payments infrastructure as they do it. Others include M-Kopa in Kenya, Off Grid Electric in Tanzania, and Mobisol in Rwanda.
“We really feel pay-as-you-go energy is on a similar trajectory as the mobile phone and that, over time, the cost of these products will come down and our ability to scale will increase,” Handler says. “Our target is 10% of the off-grid market. We want to reach 1 million households by 2020.”
To sign up for Fenix, customers call in and answer a survey that assesses their ability to repay. Usually, customer service reps need to explain the financial commitment as most customers have no experience with banking services or leases. Fenix often starts customers with small systems: a panel, battery, and two lights. “We don’t want to be like most banks and reject them. We want to bring them onto the ladder, build them a credit score, and get them where they want to be,” Handler says.
Customers pay for as much or as little power as they want: from one day to 99 days. Each payment generates a code that they enter into the system at home. Handler says more than half of new customers come from referrals, which is in line with other solar markets (there’s a marked keeping-up-with-the-Joneses effect to rooftop PV).There were 1,009 people murdered in Florida last year. The young black man who was shot on Feb. 26, 2012, by a “white Hispanic” in the town of Sanford isn’t one of them. A jury decided that.
But if you are famous, or if you are employed within the 24-hour mainstream news juggernaut, the chances are strong you disagree with that jury’s decision — or at least you find it in your interest to say you do. Sensible people were sick of the unmerited attention the Florida case received the day it was reported outside local news. But those people are pretty inured to media’s aspirational attempt to set the tone for what’s worth talking about, and they’ve had their hearing aids switched off for a long time. Would that there were more of them, but the bell curve of human nature eternally says “no.”
People in this country are shot and killed every day, every hour. Close to three people were murdered in Florida every day in 2012. No one outside their sphere movement while they lived, along with a few cops and lawyers, will ever know or care who any of them were. It’s likely that most of those deaths were unjust. It’s possible that some of them were unjust manifestations of burgeoning racial hatred.
The media doesn’t care about the victims of crime. The elected class doesn’t care about the victims of crime. A great many cultural leaders and highly visible famous people don’t care. But they do care about manipulating outrage, because their authoritative voices in times of manufactured hardship help to consolidate their profit, their legal power and their brand recognition.
Contrived, emotionless proxy outrage makes power more powerful and, too often in America, makes profit more profitable. In America, political and cultural leaders don’t need smart followers anymore — in fact, they’re a liability. The leaders are preaching sermons in hoodies and pretending to fantasize on Twitter about violent karmic payback for the exonerated. Turn off your hearing aid.
So comes conservative-slant news agency Breitbart, which evidently went to some effort to locate a separate, recent American murder story in which the circumstances surrounding the victim’s death make his apotheosis a complete, airtight foil to counter that of the sainted Florida victim. Breitbart Editor-At-Large Ben Shapiro’s synopsis of the crime, as well the moral parallel he draws, are subtle like an anvil:
On Thursday, July 11, police discovered the rotting body of 17-year-old Darryl Green, a black child from the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Green’s body was found behind a boarded-up house in the 6500-block of South Damen, face down on basement stairs. The body was so badly decomposed that originally, local news reports suggested that he had died of blunt force trauma. On Friday, an |
his Lord Lieutenant of Provence.[1]
Only the heads of households were allowed to remain in the city, with the rest of the population having to leave, on pain of death. Francis I indemnified the inhabitants by exempting them from the taille tax for a period of 10 years.[2]
Ottoman fleet in front of Genoa in 1544.
During the wintering of Barbarossa, the Toulon Cathedral was transformed into a mosque, the call to prayer occurred five times a day, and Ottoman coinage was the currency of choice. According to an observer: "To see Toulon, one might imagine oneself at Constantinople".[3]
Throughout the winter, the Ottomans were able to use Toulon as a base to attack the Spanish and Italian coasts under Admiral Salih Reis.[4] They raided and bombarded Barcelona in Spain, and Sanremo, Borghetto Santo Spirito, Ceriale in the Republic of Genoa, and defeated Italo-Spanish naval attacks.[5] Christian slaves were being sold in Toulon throughout the period.[6]
Sailing with his whole fleet to Genoa, Barbarossa negotiated with Andrea Doria the release of Turgut Reis.[7]
Barbarossa found the Toulon base very pleasant and convenient, could refit his ships at the expense of France, and could maintain an effective blockade of Christian shipping. The Lord Lieutenant of Provence complained about Barbarossa that "he takes his ease while emptying the coffers of France".[4]
The Ottomans finally departed from their Toulon base after a stay of 8 months, on 23 May 1544, after Francis I had paid 800,000 ecus to Barbarossa.[2][8] All Turkish and Barbary corsairs had to be freed from French galleys also, as a condition to his departure.[2] Barbarossa also pillaged 5 French ships in the harbour of Toulon in order to provision his fleet.[2]
Return to Constantinople [ edit ]
Five French galleys, under the command of the "Général des galères" Captain Polin, accompanied Barbarossa’s fleet, on a diplomatic mission to Suleiman.[8] The French fleet accompanied Barbarossa during his attacks on the west coast of Italy on the way to Constantinople, as he laid waste to the cities of Porto Ercole, Giglio, Talamona, Lipari and took about 6,000 captives, but separated in Sicily from Barbarossa’s fleet to continue alone to the Ottoman capital.[9]
This would be one of the last naval campaigns of Barbarossa, who died 2 years later in Constantinople in 1546.[10]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Toulon would again be used as a safe harbour for several months by Turgut Reis from August 1546, when he was pursued by the fleet of Andrea Doria.[11]
Notes [ edit ]Early life and education
Service as naval officer
Business career
Political career
Political beliefs
Personal life
Bannon in 2018 Bannon has been married and divorced three times. He has three adult daughters. His first marriage was to Cathleen Suzanne Houff.[267] Bannon and Houff had a daughter, Maureen, in 1988 and subsequently divorced.[268][112] Bannon's second marriage was to Mary Louise Piccard, a former investment banker, in April 1995. Their twin daughters were born three days after the wedding. Piccard filed for dissolution of their marriage in 1997.[269][270] Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness in early January 1996 after Piccard accused Bannon of domestic abuse. The charges were later dropped when Piccard did not appear in court.[271] In an article in The New York Times Piccard stated her absence was due to threats made to her by Bannon and his lawyer: Mr. Bannon, she said, told her that "if I went to court, he and his attorney would make sure that I would be the one who was guilty"... Mr. Bannon's lawyer, she said, "threatened me," telling her that if Mr. Bannon went to jail, she "would have no money and no way to support the children."... Mr. Bannon's lawyer... denied pressuring her not to testify.[272] Piccard and Bannon divorced in 1997. During the divorce proceedings, Piccard alleged that Bannon had made antisemitic remarks about her choice of schools, saying he did not want to send his children to The Archer School for Girls because there were too many Jews at the school, and Jews raise their children to be "whiny brats". Bannon's spokesperson denied the accusation, noting that he had chosen to send both his children to the Archer School.[271][273][274][275][276] Bannon's third marriage was to Diane Clohesy; they married in 2006 and divorced in 2009.[277][278]
Filmography
See also
Notes
a b [77] Bannon was erroneously referred to as a captain, but a correction was given. ^ [80] Bannon was erroneously referred to as a "managing partner." Breitbart called far right ^ [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] Breitbart associated with alt-right ^ [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]Moving on from 2D to 3D in our drawing process, we arrive at the easiest geometric form one could draw with an extra dimension added: the humble cube. Because we are moving step by step in our learning process, we will be drawing a cube in the most inconvenient way possible: by creating the vertex array, triangle by triangle and passing it to the shader.
Keeping the tone of the previous drawing examples we’ve presented in this series of tutorials, we will use a Cube class. It derives from the Model class and its primary functions are creation and drawing of the cube. The header and cpp file in their entirety are as follow:
//Cube.h #pragma once #include "Model.h" #include<time.h> #include<stdarg.h> namespace Rendering { namespace Models { class Cube : public Model { public: Cube(); ~Cube(); void Create(); virtual void Draw(const glm::mat4& projection_matrix, const glm::mat4& view_matrix) override final; virtual void Update() override final; private: glm::vec3 rotation, rotation_speed; time_t timer; }; } }
//Cube.cpp #include "Cube.h" using namespace Rendering; using namespace Models; #define PI 3.14159265 Cube::Cube() { } Cube::~Cube() { } void Cube::Create() { GLuint vao; GLuint vbo; time(&timer); glGenVertexArrays(1, &vao); glBindVertexArray(vao); std::vector<VertexFormat> vertices; //vertices for the front face of the cube vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, -1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0))); //vertices for the right face of the cube vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, -1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0))); //vertices for the back face of the cube vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, 1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))); //vertices for the left face of the cube vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, 1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))); //vertices for the upper face of the cube vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, 1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, 1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, 1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0))); //vertices for the bottom face of the cube vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, -1.0, -1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(-1.0, -1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4( 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0))); vertices.push_back(VertexFormat(glm::vec3(1.0, -1.0, 1.0), glm::vec4(1.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0))); glGenBuffers(1, &vbo); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vbo); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(VertexFormat) * 36, &vertices[0], GL_STATIC_DRAW); glEnableVertexAttribArray(0); glVertexAttribPointer(0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, sizeof(VertexFormat), (void*)0); glEnableVertexAttribArray(1); glVertexAttribPointer(1, 4, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, sizeof(VertexFormat), (void*)(offsetof(VertexFormat, VertexFormat::color))); glBindVertexArray(0); this->vao = vao; this->vbos.push_back(vbo); rotation_speed = glm::vec3(90.0, 90.0, 90.0); rotation = glm::vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0); } void Cube::Update() { } void Cube::Draw(const glm::mat4& projection_matrix, const glm::mat4& view_matrix) { rotation = 0.01f * rotation_speed + rotation; glm::vec3 rotation_sin = glm::vec3(rotation.x * PI / 180, rotation.y * PI / 180, rotation.z * PI / 180); glUseProgram(program); glUniform3f(glGetUniformLocation(program, "rotation"), rotation_sin.x, rotation_sin.y, rotation_sin.z); glUniformMatrix4fv(glGetUniformLocation(program, "view_matrix"), 1, false, &view_matrix[0][0]); glUniformMatrix4fv(glGetUniformLocation(program, "projection_matrix"), 1, false, &projection_matrix[0][0]); glBindVertexArray(vao); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 36); }
In the header, we use the rotation vector to store the degrees by which the object is rotated on each axis. Rotation_speed is used to tweak the rotation speed on each axis.
In the cpp file, we bind the vertex buffer and fill it with all the triangles that a 2x2x2 cube is comprised of, as well as give each vertex its own unique color, depending on its position within the cube. In the Draw method, we modify the rotation array and pass it along with the view and projection matrices to the shader. I took the liberty of adding rotation on 2 axes and color each vertex in a different color so that we could see more of it, from all sides.
Regarding the values transmitted as uniform, these are values which will remain constant (or uniform) and can be accessed from any shader which makes up the program that these values are associated with. These values are usually constants (gravity, coefficients, etc.) and are extremely useful to operations within shaders.
Next up, we need to modify the vertex shader:
//It's actually glsl #version 450 core layout(location = 0) in vec3 in_position; layout(location = 1) in vec4 in_color; uniform mat4 projection_matrix, view_matrix; uniform vec3 rotation; out vec4 color; void main() { color = in_color; mat4 rotate_x, rotate_y, rotate_z; rotate_x = mat4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, cos(rotation.x), sin(rotation.x), 0.0, 0.0, -sin(rotation.x), cos(rotation.x), 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0); rotate_y = mat4(cos(rotation.y), 0.0, -sin(rotation.y), 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, sin(rotation.y), 0.0, cos(rotation.y), 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0); rotate_z = mat4(cos(rotation.z), -sin(rotation.z), 0.0, 0.0, sin(rotation.z), cos(rotation.z), 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0); gl_Position = projection_matrix * view_matrix * rotate_y * rotate_x *rotate_z * vec4(in_position, 1); }
In the shader, we calculate the rotation matrices around each axis, according to the angles received via the rotation attribute, after which we simply multiply all of our matrices to get the correct position of each vertex.
The next big change to the existing files is in the Scene_manager, where we calculate the view and projection matrices, to be passed on to the model.
#include "Scene_Manager.h" using namespace Managers; Scene_Manager::Scene_Manager() { glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); shader_manager = new Shader_Manager(); shader_manager->CreateProgram("colorShader", "Shaders\\Vertex_Shader.glsl", "Shaders\\Fragment_Shader.glsl"); view_matrix = glm::mat4(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 10.0f, 1.0f); models_manager = new Models_Manager(); } Scene_Manager::~Scene_Manager() { delete shader_manager; delete models_manager; } void Scene_Manager::NotifyBeginFrame() { models_manager->Update(); } void Scene_Manager::NotifyDisplayFrame() { glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glClearColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0); models_manager->Draw(); models_manager->Draw(projection_matrix, view_matrix); } void Scene_Manager::NotifyEndFrame() { } void Scene_Manager::NotifyReshape(int width, int height, int previos_width, int previous_height) { float ar = (float)glutGet(GLUT_WINDOW_WIDTH) / (float)glutGet(GLUT_WINDOW_HEIGHT); float angle = 45.0f, near1 = 0.1f, far1 = 2000.0f; projection_matrix[0][0] = 1.0f / (ar * tan(angle / 2.0f)); projection_matrix[1][1] = 1.0f / tan(angle / 2.0f); projection_matrix[2][2] = (-near1 - far1) / (near1 - far1); projection_matrix[2][3] = 1.0f; projection_matrix[3][2] = 2.0f * near1 * far1 / (near1 - far1); }
Other less significant changes have been made to the Models_manager class (include the Cube class in the header, small changes in a few methods) and to the classes that Cube derives from, by adding a new Draw method with the view and projection matrices as parameters. All of these can be downloaded from our Git repository. Next time we will see how to improve just a little bit our engine.UC Berkeley has made me a very nervous person.
For my four years in college, I have felt as if I’ve been trapped on a moving conveyor belt. All the people in my life — my parents, my teachers, my peers — are just workers on an assembly line, which is supposed to slowly sculpt me into a finished product: ready for nine-to-fives, board meetings and dreadful commutes.
And I feel like, if I ever mustered up the courage to jump off the conveyor belt, then I would just wake up and find myself trapped on yet another assembly line, one for the defected products that are destined for the bargain bin. Any ostensible act of free will just brings me back to my starting point. My life is a bizarre, dystopian cross-over between a Franz Kafka novel and “That’s So Raven.”
For instance, I was once on the assembly line to become a lawyer. That conveyor belt started whirring as soon as I stepped into the residence halls.
After all, if you have any interest in the humanities, it’s exhausting to be bombarded with questions such as, “What are you going to do with that?”
When you’re a freshman, you meet so many peers who’ve fooled themselves into thinking that they know the answer: “I’m going to work 80 hours a week at Goldman Sachs and develop a cocaine addiction. Then I’ll retire when I’m 35. It’s going to be great.”
You already know that there are better things to do in college than to get so ahead of yourself — to read great books, to drink too much coffee, to hike to the Big C and talk about these great books with people you love, as you stare off into the serene midnight view and realize that all the buildings look like little stars from up there.
But, you feel silly for enjoying those things, and you feel pressured to speak the language of your peers, so you pick up some career gimmick instead. I picked up law school.
I sure fooled everyone for a long time. I even joined a pre-law fraternity, which has been one of my most formative experiences at UC Berkeley.
Law school is a great aspiration because you can still dream of changing the world — as an environmental justice lawyer, as a humanitarian judge, as a politician for the working class. Yet, the assembly line extinguishes this idealism in its early stages. I watched many members of my fraternity get shipped off to big corporations such as Dropbox, Google, Goldman Sachs and Altria — the tobacco company, for Christ’s sake.
If you are more stubborn, then the assembly line boils away your idealism very slowly, as if you were a lobster in a pot. You eventually become a corporate lawyer to pay off your catastrophic student loans.
During spring break of my sophomore year, my family sat me down to draw the timeline for my last two years in college. We planned it all out: internships, LSAT preparation, the best semester to study abroad. I was supposed to go to a Top 14 school right after college.
I told my family that I wanted to take a year off. My older brother told me, “That’s what your study abroad semester is for.” He said that I should get that wanderlust out of my system as an undergraduate.
I lost my appetite for seeing the world. The concept of study abroad — the promise of exploration and new vantage points — had ironically turned into another segment of the assembly line, in my eyes.
After that, I couldn’t help but notice whenever a Facebook friend stayed in Paris and posted the exact same profile picture of the Eiffel Tower — perhaps with a baguette and a bottle of wine. Paris seemed like a manufactured conspiracy.
So, I freaked the fuck out, and I hopped off the conveyor belt.
But, as soon as I hopped off, I somehow found myself in the Haas School of Business. The gears started whirring again.
I applied to Haas for the worst reasons. Many people do. Many people are drawn to Haas because the application process looks a lot like the process of getting into college. It feels very comforting to be in familiar territory. To be honest, the big investment banks snare bright-minded students with the same kind of resemblance. These firms are arbitrarily ranked, like the elite universities on U.S. News.
Haas marked one of the most unhappy periods of my life. I didn’t learn anything in business school, except for certain buzzwords such as “efficiency,” “innovation” and “disruption.” Yet, whenever I thought of quitting, my parents would tell me on the phone, “You only have one year left.”
Last semester, I got fed up when a Haas professor told an awful joke. He laughed at the idea of an employer who prioritizes the well-being of his employees. Obviously, according to him, the goal of a company should be to maximize profits. I left the room, amid a lukewarm sea of uncomfortable courtesy laughs. I dropped all my business classes soon after.
You must be thinking, “He really regrets going to UC Berkeley.” Don’t get me wrong. I made some of my happiest memories on this campus. For instance, I fell in love. That relationship is in the past now, but my ex-girlfriend is still one of the closest people in my life. I couldn’t imagine my college experience without her. To be honest, if I were 18 again and had the magical choice to pick any college I wanted, I would do UC Berkeley all over again.
I think that it’s silly to regret past decisions. After all, if anything about my past were different, I would’ve become a very different person. And, I’m happy with who I am today. Now, I waste my time exactly how I want to waste it — with the dream of becoming a writer.
Now you must think, “Wow, this pretentious prick. He thinks he’s better than everyone else.”
Well, I absolutely love my family, and I don’t blame them for hoping that I can have a stable career. And, many of my closest friends are in my pre-law fraternity — yes, including the people who work at corporations. In fact, I met my ex-girlfriend at one of our Meet the Chapter events.
I don’t resent that professor who told that stupid joke. He’s not the first person to invent the concept of maximizing profit. He was just doing his job.
I think it’s immature to categorize people in your life into two groups: “for you” or “against you.” No one is plotting to get you. We are all unwittingly contributing to the assembly lines of the people around us. I have probably accidentally pushed someone else into applying to law school.
I’m still not exempt from the assembly line, either, as an aspiring writer. Sometimes, I read through professional album reviews and notice that five music journalists have used the exact same metaphor to describe the sound of the drums. It’s extremely hard to write anything original. None of my thoughts in this column are very original.
But, even if I can never escape the assembly line, I have learned to love the thrill of the free-fall, as I plummet from one assembly line into the next one. I try to slap efficiency in the face, whenever possible. I set aside time to waste time. I waste my time with useless activities that won’t get me any closer to a stable career: I read books, drink too much coffee and spend time with the people I love.
Sure, I could have written about the good times in college, but I decided that it’d be more helpful if I wrote about all my failures. I hope that at least one reader finds these stories relatable.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go drink my third cup of coffee.
Contact Jason Chen at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @1DirectChen.Jon Bon Jovi insists he has " no hard feelings " for Richie Sambora following Sambora's unceremonious departure from Bon Jovi. That doesn't mean, however, that he'd be willing to welcome the guitarist back with open arms.
Bon Jovi sat down with Pierre Robert of WMMR-FM radio for an interview Nov. 18, and explained his point of view regarding carrying on without his longtime musical partner: "There was no way that I was gonna break up the band. Why would [keyboard player David Bryan] or [drummer Tico Torres] need to suffer and why would I have to suffer? And the record company doesn't care and the touring company doesn't care. It's OK. It's not a big deal."
Sambora's absence may not be a big deal, but his return would be -- and perhaps not in a good way. Asked if the door was open for Sambora to rejoin the lineup at some point, Bon Jovi shrugged, ""Sure... but I'd be hard-pressed to [allow him to return], so would David, so would Tico. It'd be a lot for us [to allow him back]. After a year and a half and you miss 80 shows... I don't think that's possible."
Bon Jovi certainly isn't letting Sambora's absence slow down the songwriting process for the upcoming follow-up to the group's most recent effort, 2013's 'What About Now.' Saying he's "actively writing," he added, "I'm just starting, but I've got a few [songs]. And '15 will be about recording and [in] '16 I'll put something out."
You Think You Know Bon Jovi?Not to be confused with Chloramine-T
Chloramines are derivatives of ammonia by substitution of one, two or three hydrogen atoms with chlorine atoms: monochloramine (chloroamine, NH 2 Cl), dichloramine (NHCl 2 ), and nitrogen trichloride (NCl 3 ).[1][full citation needed] The term chloramine also refers to a family of organic compounds with the formulas R 2 NCl and RNCl 2 (where R is an organic group).
Monochloramine (chloramine) is an inorganic compound with the formula NH 2 Cl. It is an unstable colorless liquid at its melting point of −66 °C (−87 °F), but it is usually handled as a dilute aqueous solution, in which form it is sometimes used as a disinfectant. Chloramine is too unstable to have its boiling point measured.[2]
The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$13.80 to US$18.41 per 500 grams.[3]
Water treatment [ edit ]
Chloramine is used as a disinfectant for water because it is less aggressive than chlorine and more stable against light than hypochlorites.[4]
Drinking water disinfection [ edit ]
NH 2 Cl is commonly used in low concentrations as a secondary disinfectant in municipal water distribution systems as an alternative to chlorination. This application is increasing. Chlorine (referred to in water treatment as free chlorine) is being displaced by chloramine—to be specific monochloramine—which is much more stable and does not dissipate as rapidly as free chlorine. NH 2 Cl also has a much lower, but still active, tendency than free chlorine to convert organic materials into chlorocarbons such as chloroform and carbon tetrachloride. Such compounds have been identified as carcinogens and in 1979 the United States Environmental Protection Agency began regulating their levels in U.S. drinking water.[5]
Some of the unregulated byproducts may possibly pose greater health risks than the regulated chemicals.[6]
Adding chloramine to the water supply may increase exposure to lead in drinking water, especially in areas with older housing; this exposure can result in increased lead levels in the bloodstream, which may pose a significant health risk.[7]
Swimming pool disinfection [ edit ]
In swimming pools, chloramines are formed by the reaction of free chlorine with amine groups present in organic substances, such as urine, sweat and shed skin cells. Chloramines, compared to free chlorine, are both less effective as a sanitizer and, if not managed correctly, more irritating to the eyes of swimmers. Chloramines are also responsible for the distinctive "chlorine" smell of swimming pools.[8][9] Some pool test kits designed for use by homeowners are not able to distinguish free chlorine and chloramines, which can be misleading and lead to non-optimal levels of chloramines in the pool water.[10] There is also evidence that exposure to chloramine can contribute to respiratory problems, including asthma, among swimmers.[11] Respiratory problems related to chloramine exposure are common and prevalent among competitive swimmers.[12]
Safety [ edit ]
US EPA drinking water quality standards limit chloramine concentration for public water systems to 4 parts per million (ppm) based on a running annual average of all samples in the distribution system. In order to meet EPA-regulated limits on halogenated disinfection by-products, many utilities are switching from chlorination to chloramination. While chloramination produces fewer regulated total halogenated disinfection by-products, it can produce greater concentrations of unregulated iodinated disinfection byproducts and N-nitrosodimethylamine.[13][14] Both iodinated disinfection by-products and N-nitrosodimethylamine have been shown to be genotoxic.[14]
Synthesis and chemical reactions [ edit ]
NH 2 Cl is a highly unstable compound in concentrated form. Pure NH 2 Cl decomposes violently above −40 °C (−40 °F).[15] Gaseous chloramine at low pressures and low concentrations of chloramine in aqueous solution are thermally slightly more stable. Chloramine is readily soluble in water and ether, but less soluble in chloroform and carbon tetrachloride.[4]
Production [ edit ]
In dilute aqueous solution, chloramine is prepared by the reaction of ammonia with sodium hypochlorite:[4]
NH 3 + NaOCl → NH 2 Cl + NaOH
This is also the first step of the Raschig hydrazine synthesis. The reaction has to be carried out in a slightly alkaline medium (pH 8.5–11). The acting chlorinating agent in this reaction is hypochlorous acid (HOCl), which has to be generated by protonation of hypochlorite, and then reacts in a nucleophilic substitution of the hydroxyl against the amino group. The reaction occurs quickest at around pH 8. At higher pH values the concentration of hypochlorous acid is lower, at lower pH values ammonia is protonated to form ammonium ions NH+
4, which do not react further.
The chloramine solution can be concentrated by vacuum distillation and by passing the vapor through potassium carbonate which absorbs the water. Chloramine can be extracted with ether.
Gaseous chloramine can be obtained from the reaction of gaseous ammonia with chlorine gas (diluted with nitrogen gas):
2 NH 3 (g) + Cl 2 (g) ⇌ NH 2 Cl(g) + NH 4 Cl(s)
Pure chloramine can be prepared by passing fluoroamine through calcium chloride:
2 NH 2 F + CaCl 2 → 2 NH 2 Cl + CaF 2
Decomposition [ edit ]
The covalent N−Cl bonds of chloramines are readily hydrolyzed with release of hypochlorous acid:[16]
RR′NCl + H 2 O ⇌ RR′NH + HOCl
The quantitative hydrolysis constant (K value) is used to express the bactericidal power of chloramines, which depends on their generating hypochlorous acid in water. It is expressed by the equation below, and is generally in the range 10−4 to 10−10 (6990280000000000000♠2.8×10−10 for monochloramine):
K = c RR ′ NH ⋅ c HOCl c RR ′ NCl {\displaystyle K={\frac {c_{{\text{RR}}'{\text{NH}}}\cdot c_{\text{HOCl}}}{c_{{\text{RR}}'{\text{NCl}}}}}}
In aqueous solution, chloramine slowly decomposes to dinitrogen and ammonium chloride in a neutral or mildly alkaline (pH ≤ 11) medium:
3 NH 2 Cl → N 2 + NH 4 Cl + 2 HCl
However, only |
2012 and brings together manufacturers, industrial users, computer scientists and engineers in a concerted effort to develop new, advanced technologies for the maintenance of industrial machines. "The virtual sensors have long since passed the proof-of-concept stage and are already being successfully used in real-life applications. And the private cloud solution for data sharing has reached the test stage," reports Wabner. A prototype version of the system is being used by a project partner in Slovenia - the Gorenje Group, which manufactures home appliances - for the condition monitoring of a universal press supplied by Litostroj Ravne, another project partner. This factory forms metal panels used in the construction of washing machines, refrigerators and other appliances. "Since this system was introduced, Gorenje has better information enabling it to predict possible outages in advance, and also facilitate and optimize press operations by monitoring the stress and strain on the machines. We regularly compare the recorded data with the results of tests conducted at our facility at Fraunhofer IWU," says Wabner. The ultimate aim is to be able to produce a system capable of predicting the stress-related failure of components in practice by the time the project ends next summer.
Original release: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-11/f-hsf112014.phpIn this work, we demonstrate for the first time the introduction of π-complexation into a porous aromatic framework (PAF), affording significant increase in ethylene uptake capacity, as illustrated in the context of Ag(I) ion functionalized PAF-1, PAF-1-SO 3 Ag. IAST calculations using single-component-isotherm data and an equimolar ethylene/ethane ratio at 296 K reveal that PAF-1-SO 3 Ag shows exceptionally high ethylene/ethane adsorption selectivity (S ads : 27 to 125), far surpassing benchmark zeolite and any other MOF reported in literature. The formation of π-complexation between ethylene molecules and Ag(I) ions in PAF-1-SO 3 Ag has been evidenced by the high isosteric heats of adsorption of C 2 H 4 and also proved by in situ IR spectroscopy studies. Transient breakthrough experiments, supported by simulations, indicate the feasibility of PAF-1-SO 3 Ag for producing 99.95%+ pure C 2 H 4 in a Pressure Swing Adsorption operation. Our work herein thus suggests a new perspective to functionalizing PAFs and other types of advanced porous materials for highly selective adsorption of ethylene over ethane.Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, gave one of the keynote addresses at this year's Joomla World Conference.
Of course, it was interesting that the JWC invited Matt and that he accepted.
Equally interesting was that he used the keynote to talk about several issues that were news even to WordPress junkies. For example, he mentioned that WordPress 3.8 would ship on its intended release date of December 12th. With previous versions, WordPress release dates have been much more flexible.
However, despite all of the people in the audience and watching on the livestream, perhaps the most revolutionary idea has been missed.
Matt presented a very clear vision in which WordPress runs like a software-as-a-service product. His vision is that WordPress, and all themes and plugins, should update silently and almost constantly.
If this vision comes true, users will never need to know when there's an update and developers can push code every hour if they want to.
Matt's vision for constant, silent updates
Here's the text of what Matt said. He had been talking about the history of WordPress and had just arrived at version 3.7, released in October:
"A big thing that came out in 3.7 was auto-updates.
So now WordPress core, when 3.7.1 came out with bug-fixes, all the WordPresses that were able to, updated themselves and people just got an email that their site had been updated.
We had a 99.997% success rate so only a couple of hundred sites failed and within those the system is very … Grab Andy (Andrew Nacin, WordPress code developer, sitting in the audience) and he’ll talk your ear off about all the millions of contortions it goes through to work across the heterogeneous host: Windows, Linux, different file permissions, things that can happen, checking the integrity of the files over the wire. There’s a gajillion things that go to this happening and we’re doing this for core now.
The vision is that in the future we’ll do it for plugins, we’ll do it for themes, we’ll do it for major releases as well as minor releases.
So let’s say that you load up Facebook today,
What version of Facebook are you running?
Even on your computer, what version of Chrome are you running? You can go and look - it’s like version 33 or something like that - but you don’t, you’re just using Chrome that day. And that’s eventually how I’d like WordPress to work, where you just open up WordPress and get that day’s version of WordPress.
On WordPress.com we push code live to the site, to deploy to thousands of servers over 100 times per day. As a developer that is addictive. It’s like crack hits. It’s amazing how great it is to be able to iterate and ship things fast and see how people use things and move quickly.
I think this is how modern software development can and should work and so shifting our open source project to be like that, meaning that we can iterate just as quickly as our proprietary competitors I think is key to WordPress remaining competitive over the next 10 years."
This vision, if achieved, would truly revolutionize how open source software development is done. It would mean the end of any notion of a release cycle as we know it today.
Also, although Matt doesn't mention it, such a move could radically improve the security of WordPress. 3 weeks after the release of 3.7, only 8% of all WordPress sites have updated (link). At the moment so many sites update so slowly that together they present a serious hacking risk.
This section where Matt outlines his vision runs for about 2 minutes from 39:00 to 41:00:
What are your thoughts?
Should open source projects run with silent, background updates?
Is this an essential feature to allow open source to compete or is it a recipe for disaster?
If you develop themes or plugins, would you want to update them automatically?
Let us know in the comments below...Burnley Football Club is delighted to once again head into the new 2014/15 season sporting the PUMA brand.
And for the first time, the club will wear an all-black away kit during the 2014/15 Premier League campaign.
The Power shirt is a clean, classic design with a rounded cross over neckline and closed hole mesh upper shoulder panels.
It carries subtle silver contrast piping, along with a tonal crest to complement the garment body and trim colours.
Black shorts and socks, both with silver trim, accompany this stunning new shirt.
The Football Association's industry code for responsible advertising, governing gambling products, prevents us from replicating the main sponsor Fun88 on junior shirts.
The replica kit for juniors will therefore bear the branding BFC82, using the same font and style as the club’s main sponsor, manufactured to precisely the same specifications as the adult version, and fully endorsed by Burnley Football Club.
A PUMA spokesman said: “Burnley is a club with great history and tremendous support.
“We're delighted that they are returning to their rightful place in the Premier League and we wanted to create a kit which is worthy of the season ahead.
“We believe that Burnley can enjoy a fantastic season, and look forward to standing alongside them throughout the Premier League campaign."
Prices: Adult: short sleeved shirt: £40 Adult: long sleeved shirt: £43 Child: short sleeved shirt: £32 Child Long sleeved shirt: £34 Ladies: £40 Baby kit: £30
Shorts Adult: £16 Juniors £13
Socks Adult: £10 Youths £9 Child: £8
The new Burnley Football Club away kit goes on sale from Thursday 24th July, in-store and online. An online link will be provided from July 24th.Last year I started to to reacquaint myself with an old colleague (lets call him Nathan) after seeing some rather depressing statuses on his Facebook account. Rather than let them go unnoticed like so many people do I had messaged him and let him know that if he did ever wish to talk then I was available. We had gotten on very well when we worked together so it didn’t feel odd or strange at all to offer my support.
We started to go for coffees semi regularly, every month or so where we would just chat about all sorts, essentially just two friends hanging out, where I would ask how his relationship was going as he’d often said he was having difficulties. Eventually I found out that his girlfriend had called things off. Nathan seemed to take it well and we continued to see each other for coffees.
I’ll admit that every now and then I felt an inkling that he might have become attracted to me, but put this down to the fact that I was a rare female figure in his life who was happy to spend time with him. He started to ask me to go for coffees more regularly or to go over to his house to watch movies. I was determined to nip this in the bud and always politely declined, and whenever the subject of relationships came up I would always comment that it was something I’d not even contemplated for quite a while and that I was very happy being single.
Alarm bells really should have started ringing when I mentioned how much fun he would have at a theme park in Orlando as I now he was a fan of comic books and rides, he jokingly said we should go together and I smiled and carried on talking about the other attractions the park had to offer.
Cut to three weeks later and he texts me to let me know his visa has been approved for travel to the US. I am, understandably, quite shocked as I don’t actually recall finalising any agreement to actually plan a holiday together. I then had the unpleasant honour of advising him that we would not be going to America as I had already planned out the next several holidays with other friends.
Nathan takes this in stride as he is suddenly overcome with helping to plan a mutual friend’s wedding (again, both bride and groom were people we used to work with and have been on friendly terms for a while).
I hear all about the plans on the run up and then suddenly three days before the wedding I get an email from Nathan asking if I would be able to go as his plus one as his other friend had let him down. I am a little taken aback by the last minute nature of this request and only agree with the express permission of the groom in lieu of an actual invitation.
I spend the next three days worrying about what to wear and finding a gift etc. The day before I’m still not sure exactly what the plan is as Nathan is one of the ushers and I understand he will be busy in the morning helping the groom get ready. Nathan texts me to say he would pick me up in the morning as I was joining him with the groom and ushers and we would all walk to the church together, (I put my foot down at going along to the Groom’s breakfast).
Cue a very awkward morning as I attempt conversation with the grooms grandmother and relatives whilst the boys get ready and they’re no doubt wondering who this strange girl in their living room was. There were no other ‘plus ones’ there and I found out pretty quickly that none of the other ushers had actually invited anyone as their dates so I’m now a little on edge as to why Nathan made this out to be such an emergency on his part.
The day went off without a hitch, everyone was lovely and kind and despite not knowing many people there and Nathan always being called away to fulfil his usher duties I had a wonderful time and congratulated the parents of bride and groom on such a lovely couple.
But then the evening winds down and the slow songs start to play and Nathan keeps asking me to dance which I keep declining (I should probably say at this point that I have a disability that requires me to walk with a stick and braces, being on my feet all day has naturally left me quite exhausted). I finally relent uncomfortably when he and his friends all start cajoling me so I agree to one dance which is intensely awkward to me as I become increasingly aware that this entire charade has been some sort of attempt at seduction, which I concede might been seen as romantic by someone who actually had interest in the other party.
We break away as the song finishes and the bride and groom announce their departure so I take the chance to congratulate them and thank them again for the last minute invite and that I’ve had a lovely day and wish them well in their marriage. They start to make conversation about Nathan, saying that they were lucky to have his help throughout the planning process and I agree, stating that he is a genuinely nice guy, to which both bride and groom start telling me that I should ‘remember that’. I ask what they mean by that and they reply that I ‘know what they’re talking about, he’s really gone out of his way to make sure you have a nice day, it’s only right you show him you’re grateful’.
The implication was clear. I was pretty horrified that these people who I thought were my friends were quite happy to insinuate that I offer myself in return for ‘a date’.
‘A date’ that I had agreed to as a favour for a friend who I thought was in real need.
Needless to say I excused myself quietly not long afterwards, completely unsure of what to say as I said goodbye to Nathan.
He continued to text me after that day for more increasingly ‘date like’ endeavors (Movies, dinner, picnics in the park etc) all of which I declined until one day I finally had enough and casually mentioned that I had started seeing someone at work.
Nathan has not text me since, and worse than that all mutual friends that have contact with him have deleted me from social media, including bride and groom.
From what I understand now I have done the unthinkable by ‘friendzoning’ him, although to my knowledge I had never lead him on, had never implied that we were anything more than friends. But it seems that by agreeing to attend the wedding of a mutual friend at short notice was enough to ‘seal the deal’. I’m quite upset that by trying to be a good friend to someone I have gone on to lose friends. I’m also very upset that I’ve been thought of as someone that should happily ‘put out’ just because someone shows an interest/makes an effort to be nice to me, to the point where I’ve even received comments about how I should have ‘just gone out with him, it’s only fair’.
I’m not certain what I could have done to make it clearer to him that I was not interested in pursuing a relationship. 1029-14KUSA—If Trevor Siemian could play, he’d start.
He’s not starting so it only follows the second-year quarterback will be inactive for the Denver Broncos’ game today against the Atlanta Falcons. Kickoff for the game at soon-to-be-renamed Sports Authority Field at Mile High is at 2:05 p.m.
First-round rookie Paxton Lynch will be the Broncos’ starting quarterback today. Lynch came off the bench for the injured Siemian last week at Tampa Bay and played well, completing 14 of 24 passes for 170 yards a touchdown and no turnovers.
Austin Davis will serve as Lynch's backup today. Davis is a five-year veteran who the Broncos signed after they released quarterback Mark Sanchez as part of their final roster cuts Sept. 3.
Davis, 27, has started 10 NFL games – eight with the St. Louis Rams in 2014 and two with the Cleveland Browns in 2015. He has 13 career touchdown passes and 12 interceptions while playing for two of the NFL’s worst teams at the time.
Siemian goes to the inactive list with a left shoulder injury as the NFL’s 9th-rated passer with a 99.6 rating through the Broncos’ first four games, all wins. He has six touchdown passes against three interceptions while completing 67.3 percent of his passes. (Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan is the league's No. 1-rated quarterback with a 126.3 rating.)
The Broncos want Siemian to take a little more time to heal the AC joint sprain in his left shoulder in hopes he can start Thursday night at San Diego.
Copyright 2016 KUSAA Jacksonville veteran beaten over his political beliefs.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is searching for a man accused of beating a 68-year-old to the ground at a Westside gas station. The incident report says Vietnam veteran Charles Daniels was talking with the clerk at the Shell Station on Edgewood Avenue on Sunday when the clerk asked who Daniels will be voting for. He responded he would vote for Donald Trump, but that angered another man in the convenience store, who started cursing.
The incident report says the suspect went outside and waited for Daniels by a gas pump, pushing him when Daniels ultimately came outside. Daniels tried to walk away and get to his car, but he told police that the suspect followed him, pushed him from behind, and punched him in the face. Daniels fell to the ground, and the suspect then kicked him in the abdomen and forearm, according to the report.
Daniels told JSO he tried to then get the suspect’s license plate number, but the suspect charged back at him, yelling and cursing.
Daniels’ wife tells WOKV that he was actually off work right now because of an injury suffered on the job, and the attack set back the recovery progress he had been making. She further says Daniels heard the suspect yell about Trump and make racial comments through the entire attack.
JSO noted swelling and redness on Daniels’ face, bleeding from his nose and mouth, and a swollen- possibly broken- forearm. The report further notes Daniels “has a limited capacity to defend himself” because of the prior injury and his current health. Daniels’ wife tells WOKV he is at the ER Tuesday awaiting treatment and a further diagnosis of his injuries.
The gas station has surveillance cameras, which JSO has reviewed. The incident report says the initial verbal exchange can be seen, but not heard. Video then captures the suspect attacking Daniels and later charging at him again, as Daniels reported to police.
The suspect is described as a black man who’s 6’-6’2”, 210-230 lbs, 25-35 years old. He has long black dreadlocks, brown eyes, and a beard. He was last seen in a gray shirt, tan cargo shorts, and black shoes.Radios used by RCMP officers and House of Commons security on Parliament Hill use different frequencies, CBC News has learned, just one example of possible points of delay in communication during emergencies such as the one that played out during the shootings in Ottawa last week.
Concerns have been raised repeatedly over the years about the different silos in which law enforcement and security officials operate on and around Parliament Hill, including by Auditor General Michael Ferguson, who reported on them in 2012.
On Monday, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said security forces protecting Parliament must be better integrated.
"The silos we have today are not adequate. Security inside Parliament must be integrated with outside security forces," Blaney said in question period, less than a week after a gunman killed a soldier at the National War Memorial, ran onto the Hill to hijack a car, and was shot dead metres from the rooms where MPs were meeting.
The RCMP is responsible for security on the grounds of Parliament Hill, while the House of Commons and Senate each have separate protective services.
The House of Commons has its own security cameras inside the Centre Block that are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the communications centre in the Confederation building, just west of Parliament Hill.
But surveillance cameras on the perimeter and outside areas of Parliament Hill are RCMP cameras and are monitored separately by the Mounties at another location.
The Senate and House command centres can monitor the RCMP radio frequency but would have to speak by phone to communicate directly, slowing down crucial communications during emergencies.
Separate security service may be necessary
Last week added an additional complication, with the Ottawa Police Service responsible for responding to the National War Memorial for the shooting death of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo.
An RCMP intervention team secures an entrance to Parliament Hill on Oct. 22, 2014. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press) Even the RCMP officers assigned to Prime Minister Stephen Harper had to hand off responsibility to House security officials once they hit the door of Centre Block. That has now changed, with Harper getting round-the-clock RCMP protection; the RCMP stay with him constantly.
Uniformed RCMP officers also have to turn in their service weapons when they enter the Centre Block of Parliament Hill.
It may not be possible for the RCMP to take over security on the Hill, however — parliamentary privilege dictates a separate police force for the buildings on the Hill because it exists in a legal netherworld. Parliament is its own separate and sovereign jurisdiction.
The House of Commons referred to having to update its radio communications in a report on the strategic objectives for the current parliamentary session.
'Jurisdictional issue has not been resolved'
"The House administration will play a lead role in overseeing the planning, design and implementation of technology services and network and other telecommunication infrastructures, including the modernization of the integrated security system and the radio communication system," the report said.
Ferguson pointed out in a June, 2012 auditor general's report to House of Commons administration that one problem arose in 2009 when activists scaled the exterior of West Block.
"Subsequent analysis revealed that the House of Commons security services’ mandate covered the area inside buildings under its jurisdiction and the RCMP’s mandate covered the grounds, but no organization had a clear mandate for the roofs of the buildings," Ferguson wrote in his report.
Armed RCMP officers approach Centre Block on Parliament Hill following a shooting incident on Oct. 22, 2014. A Canadian soldier was shot at the Canadian War Memorial and a shooter was seen running towards the nearby Parliament buildings, where more shots were fired and he was eventually killed. (Chris Wattie/Reuters) "The Parliamentary precinct security partners have recently agreed on operational procedures for joint responses to future intrusions that occur within each other’s jurisdiction. However, the jurisdictional issue has not been resolved."
The question of who is responsible for the security of Parliamentary roofs also remained unresolved, he noted.
"The security partners have developed their co-ordination and communications through the Master Security Plan. A next step could be to unify the security forces for Parliament Hill under a single point of command, making it possible to respond to situations more efficiently and effectively."
The Board of Internal Economy, the committee of MPs that administers House budgets and related matters, formed a subcommittee a few months before Ferguson's report to deal with security in the parliamentary precinct.
It wouldn't comment yesterday on the issue of incompatible radio frequencies or on how Hill security might change in the wake of the shooting, saying, "for the safety and security of everyone on Parliament Hill, specific details about security practices and enhanced measures will not be shared."
Security on the Hill has been stepped up over the years, including closing off part of the stone wall that runs along Wellington Street and installing barriers to prevent unauthorized vehicles from entering. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the gunman killed after shooting Cirillo and attacking Parliament Hill, parked his car on Wellington just past the first blocked-off driveway. He ran onto the Hill and hijacked the car of a cabinet minister to continue to the main entrance to Centre Block, just under the Peace Tower.Paulo Dybala, Mauro Icardi and Paul Pogba have all enjoyed a bright campaign in the Italian top flight, but who is the standout performer? Have your say in our poll!
While Gonzalo Higuain and Carlos Bacca have impressed throughout the season in Serie A with their exploits in front of goal, it has been a year dominated by the up-and-comers of the Italian top flight.
The bright sparks of the traditional giants' campaigns have been summed up by their youthful heroes, with promising players at the heart of another title-winning year for Juventus, as well as the revitalisation of Inter and AC Milan.
Take a look at our list below and vote on who you think has been the stand out performer this year!
ANDREA BELOTTI
The 22-year-old attacker has been key to a comfortable season for Torino. With 11 goals and four assists in 32 appearances, he has been the heart of the attack for his side.
Strong, fast, a nice finisher and well rounded, the Italy Under-21 international recovered from a difficult start to live at Torino following his summer move from Palermo and has become the critical player for his side.
FEDERICO BERNARDESCHI
The epitome of versatility, Federico Bernardeschi has been used just about everywhere by Fiorentina coach Paulo Sousa this season. Featuring as a right and left winger, an auxiliary wing back, an attacking midfielder and second striker, there is hardly a job the 22-year-old is not willing to fill for his side and do so with great effectiveness.
GIANLUIGI DONNARUMMA
A true revelation in the Italian top flight this season, Gianluigi Donnarumma has burst into the AC Milan first-team and has never looked out of his depth. With 10 clean sheets in 26 appearances for the consistently inconsistent Rossoneri, the 17-year-old has emerged as the future of Italian goalkeeping, with the iconic Gianluigi Buffon in the final years of his career.
PAULO DYBALA
Heavily built up as a future star and the next Lionel Messi after his remarkable form at Palermo, Paulo Dybala has lived up to the hype throughout his first season at Juventus.
The 22-year-old Argentine has been one of the most creative players in the league and has been absolutely pivotal to another incredible title-winning campaign, scoring 16 goals and setting up a further eight, while he has carved out more chances for Massimiliano Allegri's side than any other player.
MAURO ICARDI
Mauro Icardi has followed up a remarkable 2014-15 season with yet another impressive campaign with Inter. The 23-year-old finished last term as the joint-top goalscorer with 22 goals and has starred once more with 15 and four assists in 31 matches.
The Argentine remains a contentious figure for his off the field persona, but his talent is undoubted and Inter are expected to receive a lot of enquiries for him at the end of the season.
PAUL POGBA
Still the most highly coveted player in the world, Paul Pogba has yet again shown why he continues to generate immense excitement for fans everywhere.
The 23-year-old France international tops the Serie A assist charts and has scored a further eight goals as one of the pivotal players for the Bianconeri on their way to another league crown.
Juve will doubtless receive some massive offers for the young midfielder this summer, especially if he shines for Les Bleus at Euro 2016.
Who has been the standout youngster in Serie A in 2015-2016? Have your say and vote in our poll!(11/04/15) - Crime Stoppers is turning to kids to help solve crimes.
It sounds odd, but it's worked in Detroit and now it could be coming to your child's school.
The anonymous crime tip service launched Project Safe Campus for students in Genesee County on Wednesday.
It works just like the adult version of Crime Stoppers.
They get $100 if they report a tip and either the school or police end up taking action on what they reported.
“Our program is pretty simple. It gives students a voice. Those that haven't had a voice before now have a voice,” said former NBA player Willie Burton.
Burton was in Mid-Michigan on Wednesday introducing the program to students at Mt. Morris Middle School.
He's been working on Project Safe Campus in Detroit and said it’s working. They've gotten hundreds of tips since it started there two years ago.
Kids are being asked to report everything from bullying to vandalism and even weapons at school.
The payout is $100 if their tip pans out.
Twenty-two districts in Mid-Michigan are already on board.
“It empowers the students to have a safe environment and kind of control what's going on in school by reporting anonymously,” said Julie Lopez, of Crime Stoppers.Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are set to pass 400 ppm, far faster than scientists would have predicted. That shows how difficult it's been to reduce carbon emissions—and points the way towards dangerous warming in the future
Jonathan Kingston Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii
Climate change is, first and foremost, a consequence of the addition of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We emit carbon dioxide, through burning fossil fuels or forests, and some of that carbon stays in the atmosphere, intensifying the heat-trapping greenhouse effect and warming the climate. What kind of global warming we’ll see in the future will largely be due to how much carbon dioxide—and to a lesser extent, other greenhouse gases like methane—we add to the atmosphere. And to fully understand the future, we need to understand the present and the past, and track the concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The fact that we can and have been tracking that very important number is due largely to the efforts of the geochemist Charles David Keeling. As a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in the 1950s, Keeling developed the first instrument that could accurately measure the CO2 levels in the entire atmosphere through sampling. When he got to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography a few years later, Keeling began taking regularly CO2 measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Keeling discovered that atmospheric CO2 underwent a seasonal cycle, as plants bloomed and decayed in the Northern Hemisphere, and more importantly, that CO2 was rising fast. In 1958, CO2 levels recorded at Mauna Loa were about 316 parts per million (ppm). By 2005, when Keeling died—and his son, Ralph Keeling, took up the project—CO2 levels were just under 380 ppm. Plotted on a graph, the readings over time curve upwards sharply as humans added more and more CO2 to the atmosphere—which is why the readings came to be known as the Keeling Curve.
(MORE: As the World Keeps Getting Warmer, California Begins to Cap Carbon)
Now, thanks to Keeling’s successors at Scripps, we know that global CO2 levels are about to pass a major threshold: 400 ppm. It’s a momentous enough occasion, at least for scientists, that Scripps has begun releasing daily readings—today the level is 399.50 ppm—on a website and via a Twitter account. We should pass 400 ppm any day now—possibly, by the time that you read this. And that’s not good.
The fact that we’re going to cross 400 ppm doesn’t mean that much by itself. It’s not like the sound barrier—the difference in warming between 399 ppm and 400 ppm would likely be minute. But the sheer rate of increase over just the past 55 years shows how fast global warming could hit us in the future—and the present—and underscores how much we’ve failed as a planet to slow down carbon emissions. As Ralph Keeling put it in a statement:
I wish it weren’t true, but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400-ppm level without losing a beat. At this pace we’ll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.
400 ppm may be high enough. The last time CO2 levels were this high was likely during the Pliocene epoch, between 3.2 million and 5 million years ago. The Earth’s climate was warmer during the Pliocene than it is today—perhaps by 2 to 3 C—and sea levels were much higher. It was a very different planet than the one we’ve lived on so successfully for thousands of years.
There’s no guarantee that we’d experience the same levels of warming in the future if CO2 levels stay that high, but it doesn’t look good. Nor will CO2 levels stop at 400 ppm—barring a virtually impossible immediate turn away from fossil fuels, CO2 emissions will keep growing globally, and CO2 concentrations will keep rising. The U.N.’s official goal is to keep CO2 levels below 450 ppm, and as Ralph Keeling indicated, we’re rapidly running out of time to make that happen. CO2 can stay in the atmosphere for centuries, which means that we’ve already baked in far more warming than we’ve yet experienced. But we will soon enough. The Keeling Curve tells us our past, but it’s also a roadmap for our future—a future that will almost certainly be hotter and wilder.
MORE: Anthropocene: Do We Need a New Environmentalism for a New Age?A brother has been tortured and forced to listen to his 17-year-old sister being gang-raped after they were kidnapped by a Muslim gang in Pakistan after refusing to convert from Christianity.
The British Pakistani Christian Association say they have been assisting the family in Kasur in the east of the country following their ordeal.
According to the charity, the Muslim gang targeted the family home, which was a mud house in a small village, knowing that they were Christian and threatened them with guns, sticks and metal poles.
A brother has been tortured and forced to listen to his 17-year-old sister being gang-raped after they were kidnapped by a Muslim gang in Pakistan after refusing to convert from Christianity. Pictured are Christians in Pakistan
The gang told them to convert to Islam or die but the family refused and said they were staying resolute to Christianity.
The men then tied up and blindfolded all but two of the family 20-year-old Arif and 17-year-old Jameela and took them to a n unknown building.
There, Arif was tortured and then had to listen as his sister was gang raped in a separate room.
The next morning he managed to escape and return to his family, who had escaped their shackles.
But his sister Jameela was left behind and she remains missing.
According to the charity, local police have refused to investigate the case and the family are deeply traumatised.
Wilson Chowdry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association said: 'We will now begin the arduous task of helping them rebuild their lives in an atmosphere of safety.
'However, the captured daughter Jameela may well never be found and her malicious kidnap is causing great anguish and despair.
The scene of a killin of a Christian couple in Kasur in 2014. Christians make up about four per cent of Pakistan's population and tend to keep a low profile in a country
'That Muslim despots can kidnap Christian girls with such impunity is a blight on Pakistan's international reputation.'
Christians make up about four per cent of Pakistan's population and tend to keep a low profile in a country where Sunni Muslim militants frequently bomb targets they see as heretical, including Christians, and Sufi and Shi'ite Muslims.
All of Pakistan's minorities feel that the state fails to protect them, and even tolerates violence against them.
In 2014 a British man with a history of mental health illness, sentenced to death for blasphemy earlier this year, was shot by a prison guard in his cell.As a female writer, sometimes the statistics can be daunting. After all, according to the 2012 Vida count the number of women being reviewed by and reviewing for major publications is scant compared to their male counterparts. 2014 is looking to change that and Twitter is leading the way. The #readwomen2014 hashtag has gone viral. The campaign calls for readers to make an effort to read books by the amazing female authors who don’t always get their due. In honour of that, here are five books we should all read this year:
The Bone Season – Samantha Shannon
Shannon has been referred to as the next JK Rowling for the first book in her planned seven book YA series. While I wouldn’t go that far, Shannon’s take on the dystopian future is certainly worth reading. It follows Paige, a clairvoyant, in a society where clairvoyance is outlawed. Shannon’s novel does a good job of bridging YA with adult literature, as Paige is nearly twenty. It may cover many familiar themes, but The Bone Season blends sci-fi, YA, and alt history in a way that makes me sure the next installment in Paige’s story is sure to be an interesting one.
Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
Flynn’s third novel was a smash hit when it was released, and for good reason. The tightly plotted thriller provides a great example of moral ambiguity without trying too hard. For those who don’t know, the novel follows Nick Dunne as we try to decipher whether or not he murdered his wife on their fifth wedding anniversary. With the David Fincher adaptation being released later this year, 2014 is the perfect time to delve into Flynn’s take on the psychology of a long-term relationship.
Monkey Beach – Eden Robinson
Robinson’s novel is a blend of Native Canadian culture and tight prose. She is the first Native Canadian writer to receive international acclaim and it’s easy to see why. Monkey Beach has been described as evoking ‘the redemptive, vital lives of a once dying culture with Robinson’s insider compassion and trickster wit.’ The crux of the novel is a familiar story – a teenage girl in search of understanding. But by including so much about her own native culture, Robinson allows us to explore a world rarely seen in international literature.
Kitchen – Banana Yashimoto
It’s not only her choice of first name that makes Yashimoto a unique writer. The Japanese writer is a critical darling with Kitchen – her first novel receiving both critical praise and commercial success. She has been described as ‘the poster child for Gen X in Japan’ as she explores themes like death and the way such experiences shape our lives. While tales of love and loss are not new, Yashimoto’s way of juxtaposing stories and characters give books like Kitchen a genuine sense of originality.
The Embassy of Cambodia – Zadie Smith
I couldn’t make it through a list of women to read in 2014 without mentioning Zadie Smith. The Embassy of Cambodia is a bold publication in that it’s a 69-page book, divided into 21 chapters. While that may not seem like enough book for someone who writes as vibrantly as Smith, she manages to ‘shrink the novel yet create a poised, vibrant world in just 69 pages.’ Smith is someone who should be on everyone’s reading list, but for those more inclined to short fiction, this story is a definite must read.
Are there any books you’re looking forward to reading this year? Share them in the comments below!
If you’re |
De Longpre Avenues just south of Sunset Boulevard, was built in 1917. It has had many owners after 1953, including Kling Studios, which housed production for the Superman TV series with George Reeves; Red Skelton, who used the sound stages for his CBS TV variety show; and CBS, who filmed the TV series Perry Mason with Raymond Burr there. It has also been owned by Herb Alpert's A&M Records and Tijuana Brass Enterprises. It is currently The Jim Henson Company, home of the Muppets. In 1969 The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board named the studio a historical cultural monument.
The famous Hollywood Sign originally read "Hollywoodland." It was erected in 1923 to advertise a new housing development in the hills above Hollywood. For several years the sign was left to deteriorate. In 1949 the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in and offered to remove the last four letters and repair the rest.
The sign, located at the top of Mount Lee, is now a registered trademark and cannot be used without the permission of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which also manages the venerable Walk of Fame.
The first Academy Awards presentation ceremony took place on 16 May 1929, during a banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. Tickets were USD $10.00[citation needed] and there were 250 people in attendance.
From about 1930 five major Hollywood movie studios from all over the Los Angeles area, Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros., owned large, grand theaters throughout the country for the exhibition of their movies. The period between the years 1927 (the effective end of the silent era) to 1948 is considered the age of the "Hollywood studio system", or, in a more common term, the Golden Age of Hollywood. In a landmark 1948 court decision, the Supreme Court ruled that movie studios could not own theaters and play only the movies of their studio and movie stars, thus an era of Hollywood history had unofficially ended. By the mid-1950s, when television proved a profitable enterprise that was here to stay, movie studios started also being used for the production of programming in that medium, which is still the norm today.
Bollywood [ edit ]
Raja Harishchandra (1913), the first film of A shot from(1913), the first film of Bollywood
Bollywood is the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; however, it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centres producing films in multiple languages.[75] Bollywood is the largest film producer in India and one of the largest centres of film production in the world.[76][77][78]
Bollywood is formally referred to as Hindi cinema.[79] Linguistically, Bollywood films tend to use a colloquial dialect of Hindi-Urdu, or Hindustani, mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers,[80][81][82] while modern Bollywood films also increasingly incorporate elements of Hinglish.[80]
The Wrestlers (1899) and The Man and His Monkeys (1899), directed and produced by Harischandra Sakharam Bhatawdekar (H. S. Bhatavdekar), were the first two films made by Indian filmmakers, which were both short films. He was also the first Indian filmmaker to direct and produce the first documentary and news related film, titled The Landing of Sir M.M. Bhownuggree.
Pundalik (Shree Pundalik) (1912), by Dadasaheb Torne alias Rama Chandra Gopal, and Raja Harishchandra (1913), by Dadasaheb Phalke, were the first and second silent feature films respectively made in India.[83][84][85][86] By the 1930s the industry was producing more than 200 films per annum.[87] The first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara (1931), was a major commercial success.[88] There was clearly a huge market for talkies and musicals; Bollywood and all the regional film industries quickly switched to sound filming. Joymoti (1935 film) by Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla was the first Indian dubbed film, released in Calcutta on 10 March 1935. Till then, all dialogues of all talkies were had to be recorded at locations during the shooting of the film. Through Joymoti (1935 film), dubbing technology was successfully introduced to Indian cinema by Assamese filmmaker Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla.[84]
The 1930s and 1940s were tumultuous times: India was buffeted by the Great Depression, World War II, the Indian independence movement, and the violence of the Partition. Most Bollywood films were unabashedly escapist, but there were also a number of filmmakers who tackled tough social issues, or used the struggle for Indian independence as a backdrop for their plots.[87]
In 1937 Ardeshir Irani, of Alam Ara fame, made the first colour film in Hindi, Kisan Kanya. The next year, he made another colour film, a version of Mother India. However, colour did not become a popular feature until the late 1950s. At this time, lavish romantic musicals and melodramas were the staple fare at the cinema.
Following India's independence, the period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s is regarded by film historians as the "Golden Age" of Hindi cinema.[89][90][91] Defining key figures during this time included Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt,[92] Mehboob Khan,[93][94][95] and Dilip Kumar.[96][97]
The 1970s was when the name "Bollywood" was coined,[98][99] and when the quintessential conventions of commercial Bollywood films were established.[100] Key to this was the emergence of the masala film genre, which combines elements of multiple genres (action, comedy, romance, drama, melodrama, musical). The masala film was pioneered in the early 1970s by filmmaker Nasir Hussain,[101] along with screenwriter duo Salim-Javed, pioneering the Bollywood blockbuster format.[100]
Economics [ edit ]
Profitability of a film studio is crucially dependent on picking the right film projects and involving the right management and creative teams (cast, direction, visual design, score, photography, costume, set design, editing, and many additional specialties), but it also depends heavily on choosing the right scale and approach to film promotion, control over receipts through technologies such as digital rights management (DRM), sophisticated accounting practices, and management of ancillary revenue streams; in the extreme, for a major media franchise centered on film, the film might itself be only one large component of many large contributions to total franchise revenue.
Substantial revenues might also derive from licensing efforts and other activities centered around the management of intellectual property; for this reason, various national film industries are heavily invested in the politics and legal specifics of multilateral trade agreements. Hollywood is a large enough industry to impact America's net balance of trade, offsetting some of the decline of employment in the manufacturing sector of the American economy since the early 1980s; typical of recent economic trends in first world economies, a large number of manufacturing jobs paying moderate wages are offset by a smaller number of creating jobs paying high wages. As an intellectual property industry, the film industry (along with the software industry) are central to modern globalization.
The film industry differs from software, however, in functioning primarily as a cultural export. English-language culture is the most globalized of all cultures, despite China and India having internal populations to rival the global English footprint. For this reason, Hollywood is the dominant film industry in globalism and trade. India has both a large film industry and a large, internal English-language culture, though Bollywood has not yet become a center for English-language film exports on a major scale. Films designed for global export tend to be films centered on action rather than dialogue, especially nuanced dialogue which is not fully available to people speaking English as a second language (ESL). Unusually, Japanese Anime has a global audience, though these are sometimes dubbed into English by star-power Hollywood voice actors.
On the creative side, picking the right projects has traditionally been regarded as high risk. Increasingly the risk is being mitigated with approaches drawn from advanced data analytics, such as using models derived from machine learning (sometimes glorified as AI) to estimate the future revenue of a proposed project.[102]
Statistics [ edit ]
Largest industries by number of film productions [ edit ]
The following is a list of the top 15 countries by the number of feature films (fiction, animation and documentary) produced, as determined by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics as of 2015,[103] unless otherwise noted.
Largest markets by box office revenue [ edit ]
Largest markets by number of box office admissions [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Subscribe to stay updated about transgender health news:
SAN FRANCISCO [April 9, 2013]: California’s Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) has ordered California’s health plans to remove exclusions of coverage based on gender identity and expression.
DMHC has issued guidance (.pdf) clarifying the obligations of California’s health plans under the Insurance Gender Nondiscrimination Act. In a groundbreaking directive to health plans, the DMHC confirmed that California’s Insurance Non-Discrimination Act of 2006, authored by former Assemblymember Paul Koretz, guarantees all people the right to access coverage for medically necessary care regardless of their gender identity or gender expression. The directive also provides that patients who are denied coverage can appeal the decision for review by the Department. (See also: FAQ)
Transgender Law Center applauds the DMHC, Governor Jerry Brown, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, the Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, and the Legislative LGBT Caucus for their commitment to ending discriminatory insurance exclusions that limit access to medically necessary care for transgender patients.
Speaker Pérez said,“This is an important step in protecting the health of all Californians, including transgender individuals. No Californian should be denied care and treatment because of their gender identity or expression. Implementation of California’s Insurance Gender Nondiscrimination Act (IGNA) is a simple matter of fairness and equality in health care. I commend the Department of Managed Health Care for issuing its Director’s Letter reminding health care service plans of their obligation to comply with IGNA.”
“This one letter will save lives,” said Masen Davis, Executive Director of Transgender Law Center. “For years, transgender Californians have been denied coverage of basic care merely because of who we are. Discriminatory insurance exclusions put transgender people and our families at risk for health problems and financial hardship. Now we can finally get the care we need.”
The DMHC directive applies to HMOs and PPOs regulated by the Department of Managed Health Care. In 2012, the Department of Insurance issued non-discrimination regulations with similar protections for health insurance regulated by the Department of Insurance. Combined, this means that all California health plans and insurers cannot arbitrarily deny medically necessary services provided to other policy holders or members simply because the patient is transgender.
The newly issued DMHC letter instructs health plans to revise current plan documents to remove exclusions and limitations related to gender transition. For transgender people, how and when they transition is typically a private decision made with their doctor. The American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Family Physicians have all deemed transition-related care to be medically necessary for transgender patients.
A 2008 study conducted by Transgender Law Center found that an alarmingly high rate of transgender patients were denied coverage for essential health care. 15% were outright denied gender-specific care such as pap-smears or prostate exams just because they were transgender.
Individuals with questions about today’s announcement or other questions about their health coverage should contact the Department of Managed Health Care’s Help Center at 1-888-466-2219 / www.HealthHelp.ca.gov.
The California Department of Insurance also offers consumer assistance at 800-927-HELP / http://www.insurance.ca.gov/contact-us/
Transgender Californian’s who experience discrimination or have legal questions should contact Transgender Law Center at 415.865.0176 x306/ http://wwwtransgenderlawcenter.org
For more information or interview requests please contact Mark Snyder, Communications Manager, 415.865.0176 x310, mark@transgenderlawcenter.org.
Transgender Law Center works to change law, policy, and attitudes so that all people can live safely, authentically, and free from discrimination regardless of their gender identity or expression. http://www.transgenderlawcenter.org
Download (PDF, 47KB)Magic Leap, a secretive augmented reality startup, is not so secretive these days. An image of a prototype device was just leaked to Business Insider, which says the source referred to the device as "PEQ0,” a stand-in derived from an internal prototype naming scheme used by the company.
As the photo makes clear, the AR tech looks very much like a prototype, and one that needs significant work. It appears that backpack-style computing device is worn on the back and then tethered to a set of goggles that look similar to a Star Trek VISOR. In one hand you can clearly see a battery pack powering the whole unit.
SCOOP!!! This is the FIRST PUBLIC PHOTO of MAGIC LEAP https://t.co/6hPEMe6eCg pic.twitter.com/oWKBJvKmza — Alternative Dave (@redletterdave) February 11, 2017
Business Insider reported earlier this week that employees at Magic Leap are “scrambling” ahead of an important board meeting where the prototype is expected to be demoed. According to that report, the prototype uses two different packs, one for battery and the other for computing power. That means Magic Leap is far off from its supposed goal of having a handheld device one could reasonably wear on the belt or keep in a pocket, as some patent applications have suggested.
Back in December, The Information revealed some embarrassing details about the company after getting access to a prototype demo, chatting with CEO Rony Abovitz, and collecting accounts from employees who leaked details anonymously. Those details include confirmation that Magic Leap used misleading marketing material to suggest it was farther along than it really was and statements from Abovitz and others that indicate Magic Leap may be no different than Microsoft’s HoloLens.A Real New York Derby
On May 14, 2014, two goals in the last ten minutes from towering Haitian striker Yvener Guerrier pushed the Brooklyn Italians past the Jersey Express, and set up a US Open Cup match with the New York Cosmos. Guerrier’s brace, in a game between two semi-professional teams, on a field not far Kearny, New Jersey, the original mecca of American soccer, went entirely unnoticed at a time when the entire soccer world was immersed in the build up to the impending World Cup in Brazil. But for the Italians it provided an opportunity to make a point about the deep divisions present in local New York soccer culture.
The next morning, the Italians tweeted a black and white photo of the Brooklyn Bridge with the inscription, “A Real New York Derby,” accompanied by the words: “History cannot be made overnight. Two of New York's historic clubs will go head to head in the @usopencup #authentic”
The semi-professional Italians, playing in the fourth tier of the American soccer pyramid, made it clear that although the country’s first division Major League Soccer (MLS) would soon have two clubs representing New York City, they considered the newly reborn second division Cosmos as their historic rival, rather than MLS’s 20-year-old New Jersey based New York Red Bulls or the expansion franchise, New York City Football Club (NYCFC), which was set to begin play in March 2015. The organizers of the community based Italians presented its connection to Cosmos as genuine, while the competition between Red Bulls and NYCFC was envisioned as contrived. A debatable point, as for all the Italians’ claims of a historic rivalry, the first game between Red Bulls and NYCFC will be the first soccer game between intracity rivals at the top level in nearly 100 years.
Among dedicated followers of the game, for whom soccer is more of an identity marker than an entertainment choice, the re-emergence of the Cosmos and the creation of NYCFC has revealed fissures that are emblematic of growing divisions in the American soccer community at large. In the past, allegiance options in New York were limited to teams in semi-professional leagues or short lived professional leagues, and in the worst of times, no teams at all. Suddenly presented with a choice among three professional teams, the fans most immersed in the sport’s culture, perhaps for the first time in American sports, have chosen their loyalties based on distinct historical identities and structural philosophies associated with each side.
Certainly some fans have picked a side based on location, colours, or players, but it also clear that there is now a line of demarcation between supporters who embrace the rising mainstream popularity of MLS, accepting the attendant corporatization of team identities and marginalization of fan power that has come along with it, and those who support teams, in part, because they seek to maintain a place in American sports for the alternative to commercialization that soccer has consistently offered. They value the ability of fans to serve as a counterbalance to the financial investors of a team. Those at the farthest extreme want to see teams governed as public trusts and the sport ruled as a democracy.
From the purchase of MLS’s original New York franchise MetroStars by Red Bull GmbH in 2006 through the founding of the new Cosmos and NYCFC to the opening day of the 2015 MLS season, the New York metropolitan area has acted as a microcosm for this conflict amongst American soccer fans. At the forefront are the largest and most influential organized supporter groups for each team: Empire Supporters Club for the Red Bulls, The Borough Boys for Cosmos and The Third Rail for NYCFC. Through their histories, it is possible to trace the fundamental divisions in American soccer on a far deeper level than the teams on the field.
As with other supporters groups across the country, the New York groups seek to emulate supporter organizations and trusts in Europe and South America, but without the distinct ethnic, political, social and class affiliations that have given rise to the clubs, teams and supporters groups elsewhere. The sole bond between the supporters is the team itself. Therefore, while ultras in the rest of the world have often used their organizations to further social and political goals, in the United States, activism has been limited to the actions of the team ownership and the identity of specific teams. Conflicts amongst supporters groups and between fans and power structures outside the stadium are non-existent. This interdependent relationship between the supporter groups and the teams narrows the space for the fans to assert independent opposition to policies that are counter to their interests. This is in stark contrast to the significant political and social power that fans hold elsewhere.
However, there is one sphere where American organized supporter groups have shown the potential to mimic the power that ultras hold in the rest of the world. That is within the domestic culture of the sport itself. Supporter groups have at times acted as a counterbalance to the corporate interests that have dictated the governance of the sport since the 1994 World Cup was awarded to the United States in 1988 and the birth of MLS in 1995. The formation of organized supporter groups subverts the traditional passive orientation of fans of other American sports, who exhibit their affiliation through acts of consumerism like buying tickets and merchandise. Even the most active fans of other sports limit their public criticism to booing at the stadium or making complaints to the media through sports talk radio. By contrast, people who join a supporters group make a conscious choice to take an active role in the team identity and establish a stadium atmosphere that is not coordinated by the public address system. Perhaps more relevantly the leadership of supporters groups seek to represent the interests of their members as an organized voice to team management, with the primary goal of the team’s succeeding, not necessarily on the field or as a profitable business, but as a cultural touchstone.
This contrasts sharply with the objectives of league officials and franchise owners who seek to insure that their financial interests are taken into consideration as the league is developed. The owners structured the league as a centralized business, rather than a collective of independent clubs, which they call “single entity.” This structure limits the top division to 20 affiliated franchises, sets every team budget, and allocates all player contracts. It prevents competition amongst the league’s franchises for players and discourages the development of individual team identities in the favour of a league wide homogenization.
With the exponential rise in interest among corporations, broadcasters and the population at large in soccer, it remains a matter of debate as to how supporter groups can best exert themselves to insure that they are part of the key decisions made by soccer teams. Over the course of the past 20 years, MLS supporter groups have gone from outcasts to part of the league’s marketing strategy since the arrival of soccer specific stadiums in the mid-2000s. The relationship is so close that some organized supporters groups take the lead in selling tickets and arranging travel for away matches. Yet, tensions still exist, as the league still holds nearly all the power in making decisions on player movement, fan involvement and perhaps most importantly which communities, localities and teams gain access to the first division of American soccer, through the maintenance of a system of growth that depends on expansion by fee rather than promotion based on onfield success.
The primary question, then, facing supporters groups both within MLS and outside of it, is how closely to align their ideals and goals, with those of the league. While there is fluidity among the beliefs, tactics and actions of the Empire Supporters Club, The Third Rail and The Borough Boys, they represent three distinct philosophies on fan power and organization. Empire Supporters Club initially defined the culture of their chosen franchise as they fought for recognition by the league and the general acceptance of soccer in mainstream American culture. The club has now become an avenue for fans to voice their discontent. The Third Rail formed once the league was firmly established and in their brief history has couched their advocacy with a symbiotic relationship with NYCFC’s front office as the team attempts to establish a foothold in New York’s crowded sports marketplace. The Borough Boys’ genesis lies in the advocacy campaign to create a second professional level team in New York City, and has since morphed into a group that advocates for a democratization of the sport in the United States. In short, ESC is emblematic of incremental influence based on a historic connection; The Third Rail represents a consolidation of the MLS’s top down strategy and acceptance by fans of their marginalization in favour of a team that is well established within the cultural mainstream, while the Borough Boys are indicative of an alternate structure that favours grassroots power.
Each set of fans has a viable argument as the city’s historic and authentic representatives. Supporting the team through 20 years of mediocrity in a small niche of the New York sports market, Red Bulls fans, led by the ESC, have suffered the longest. The Cosmos roots lie in the 1970s and the glamour sides of Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia, and Franz Beckenbauer that put soccer on the American map. Accordingly, the new Cosmos had name recognition and fans, as well as the Borough Boys, before they even had a team. Finally, NYCFC is the first team to play within the city limits since the original Cosmos left for Giants Stadium in 1977. The Third Rail began to take shape on the same day the team was announced able to forge an identity that was distinctly relevant to the city in its present day form.
But each team also faces serious questions about its genuine connection to the city and its soccer past. In 20 years, despite building a state-of-the-art soccer stadium, the Red Bulls still languish in the bottom half of MLS’s attendance standings, play their games in Harrison, New Jersey and have a history of front office and onfield decisions, including the incorporation of the Red Bull soft drink into their identity, that have distanced them from core supporters. The reborn Cosmos play their games at Long Island’s Hofstra University, far from public transportation and an hour’s drive outside the city. Although the new club has done everything possible to align themselves with the team of the 1970s and 1980s, the team itself went missing for 30 years and perhaps most importantly now plays in an updated version of the North American Soccer League (NASL), a league that lacks the cultural prominence and mainstream legitimacy of MLS. NYCFC too, lacks a stadium of their own. They play in a baseball arena that lacks the intimacy of a soccer specific stadium and have relegated their supporters clubs to the second deck, a safe distance from the pitch where they would be better able to influence the gameday atmosphere. Moreover, the team is unabashedly tied to its owners, England’s Manchester City and baseball’s New York Yankees, who have repeatedly made choices that favour the parent clubs over their new soccer franchise. These connections make it that much more difficult for fans to establish their own identity in the city’s crowded sporting scene.
Each team’s historic inconsistencies make it is impossible to determine if the Italians are correct in asserting which team genuinely deserves the mantle of New York’s soccer past and thus able to participate in a “real New York derby”. However, in tracing the origins of supporter culture in New York, particularly since the purchase of the MetroStars by Red Bull GmbH, we gain insight into the very real conflicts that exist between the city’s fans beyond the play on the field.
The Origin of New York Soccer: A Family Affair Extending Well Into Sunday Afternoon
New York soccer culture begins well before the existence of any of the three teams currently vying for local supremacy. It started in the late 1800s when the game itself found its way onto American soil. From its inception, organized soccer in the New York metropolitan area was integrally connected with the immigrant communities and fans that attended the matches. The earliest teams were financed by industrial companies and made up of their labourers. Clubs like Clark O.N.T. in Kearny and Todd’s Shipyard in Brooklyn played on fields in the shadow of their sponsor companies, at the centre of neighbourhoods built to house the working men and their families.
According to Tom McCabe, a professor of history at Rutgers University Newark, soccer fields, along with churches, were a focal point of community gatherings.
“Every weekend there was a series of games at the local soccer mecca like Clark Field in East Newark,” said McCabe in an interview in June 2014. “The field was in the middle of the neighbourhood. Before the game, you would go to the local bar, lay down a bet on the game. Then go back to the bar at halftime, maybe lay down another bet. After the game you’d go back to the tavern where the players would join you. It was a family affair extending well into Sunday afternoon.”
Fans and players were peers, working alongside each other at the factories for six days, then gathering at the field on Sunday. Crowds as large as 4,000 watched games. The teams took on the ethnic identity of their immigrant fans with names like Kearny Scots, New York Hakoah Americans, and later on Newark Ukrainian Sitch and the aforementioned Brooklyn Italians. While over time, the teams themselves embraced diversity, the fans and their culture mirrored the activities of the working-class support in their home countries. The Kearny Scots had a band complete with a bag piper. There were derisive songs for the referee and the opponents, as well as a replication of the ethnic rivalries from Europe. Glasgow’s heated Old Firm rivalry, found its way to Kearny when the Protestant Scots played the Catholic Kearny Celtic.
Cosmos Country: The Re-emergence Of American Professional Soccer
Until the 1960s, soccer remained a largely immigrant (and thus invisible to mainstream American culture) and amateur game, with sporadic fits of professionalization. For the first half of the 20th century, most New York area teams maintained their ethnic identification as members of the various incarnations of the American Soccer League or other semipro and regional leagues. Fan based organizations outside of these enclaves were rare. After the 1966 World Cup, the USSF sought proposals to found a true national league with regional, rather than historically and ethnically based, teams. In the late 1960s, two competing leagues (the North American Soccer League and the United Soccer Association) each founded new New York franchises, the Generals and the Skyliners respectively, which sought a broader New York City soccer fanbase outside of the narrow immigrant base of the ethnic teams.
Although both the Generals and Skyliners were gone by the end of the 1960s, the shift from European style organized support to the more generic fandom seen in other American sports continued unabated, manifesting itself most clearly in the rise of the New York Cosmos under the ownership of Time Warner media company in the 1970s. Time Warner’s dollars lured first Pele, then a cavalcade of European stars, and eventually thousands of fans to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Cosmos set American professional soccer attendance records including 77,691 on August 14, 1977 and 70 consecutive games with 30,000 or more fans from 197781. By 1977, they were averaging more fans than the Yankees and by the following year, they had more fans per game than both of the city’s baseball teams combined. Unlike any soccer team before or since, the Cosmos penetrated both the American sports mass media and the consciousness of soccer fans across the world.
Along with the unprecedented crowds, the Cosmos added familiar spectacles of American sports, including the cheerleading Cosmos Girls, amplified music, and a mascot: Time Warner’s own Bugs Bunny. There were kids’ fan clubs and a few generic organized chants, but fan culture centred not around sections or supporter clubs, but rather the tailgate before the game. Fans arrived hours before kick-off to grill and drink, setting up their own goals in the parking lot. The scene developed into a mass picnic scene known as “Cosmos Country.” At the start of the 1980s, interest waned as the league faltered financially and eventually folded. The disappearance of the Cosmos in 1985 along with the demise of latest incarnation of the American Soccer League in 1983, pushed soccer, its fans and their traditions once again to the margins of the city’s sports world. Diehards continued to follow youth and college soccer at home and the European leagues abroad on Spanish language channels, through programs like PBS’ “Soccer Made In Germany”, or at bars with satellite service that opened early on Saturday. By the early 1990s, the only source of regular soccer news was a weekly column by Michael Lewis in the Daily News. It took an event no smaller than the World Cup in 1994 to lure enough interest at the corporate level to consider a national professional league again. “There was a long mourning for sudden death,” said McCabe.
Kicking About On Ruined Pitches: Grassroots Soccer Returns To Prominence
In 1988, FIFA awarded the 1994 World Cup to the United States. The selection was unprecedented, in that for the first time soccer’s global spectacle would be held outside of its epicentres in Europe and South America. It came with the condition that the USSF establish a viable national professional league. While the federation solicited proposals and sought out investors for the new league, soccer became a decidedly grassroots experience for fans who continued to turnout for professional and semi-professional games in underfunded leagues like the Western Soccer Alliance, the American Professional Soccer League, and the A League, and for the annual knockout competition, the US Open Cup.
In the New York area, ethnic teams like Greek American Atlas Astoria and the Brooklyn Italians remained annual competitors in the Open Cup, while regionally based teams like New Jersey Eagles (198990) and the New York Centaurs (1995 only) tended to be short lived. Small venues with intensely interested fans saw a return of pre NASL atmosphere of intimacy between players and supporters. In their only season, the Centaurs played at Downing Stadium before crowds that rarely topped 300, but a number of them formed a supporters group known as the New York City Firm.
“We would stand at midfield and the sole beer vendor would basically hang out with us and sell us cans of Budweiser on demand,” said Kevin McAllister, one of the members of the group. “The PA announcer was a local C list comedian named Stu. I forget his last name. The NYC Firm and Stu would often have protracted exchanges regarding his announcements and/or the commercials he would read at various points during the matches. The Centaurs played one match that summer against the Vancouver White Caps on the Saturday following a Lollapalooza concert. The field had been destroyed by the concert and the referee abandoned the match. After the match was cancelled, the supporters took the field and played an impromptu pick up match with the players. Funny stuff guys kitted out for a match and other guys holding cigarettes and cans of Budweiser kicking about on the ruined pitch.”
The death of the Centaurs was imminent, but the newly formed Major League Soccer (MLS) had announced that the New York area would be represented by two teams, one in New Jersey and the other on Long Island. In anticipation of the new teams, members of the New York City Firm and a group of regulars who watched English and Scottish league matches at the Kinsale Pub on the Upper East Side founded another supporters group. They called themselves the Empire Supporters Club, to reflect one of the rumoured names of the new franchises, Empire Soccer Club. They were part of a nationwide movement among soccer fans, in particular those affiliated with the US national team’s supporter club: Sam’s Army, that attempted establish a connection with the new teams. Much of the initial organizing took place online through chat rooms. Unlike the passive official fan clubs of other American sports these fans’ intentions were to build on their experiences in small venues and actively influence the culture of the new franchises. Despite this movement, each team would have their badges, colours and names created by the central league office.
An Appeal To The Fan As A Consumer: The Birth Of Major League Soccer
The 1994 World Cup saw Americans flock to American gridiron stadiums to watch international soccer. The Cup set FIFA attendance records that still stand 20 years later. Giants Stadium saw the return of sell-out crowds and boisterous pregame tailgates. “With the arrival of the World Cup in 1994, I think a lot of the people that went to Giants Stadium had experience with the Cosmos,” said McCabe. “The Italy Ireland game was huge.”
Despite this success, MLS chose to delay the start of the league until 1996 as it lined up financing, stadiums, and players. By the time the league announced the official names of its franchises at a press event in October 1995, the initial 12 teams had been scaled back to 10, with one of the casualties being the Long Island team. Instead of the Empire Soccer Club, New York City’s team would be the New York/New Jersey MetroStars, named in part for their ownership group Metromedia. They would play at Giants Stadium and their home kit would be based on the black and red colour scheme of AC Milan because of the owner’s affinity for the giant Italian club.
The league eschewed any connection to NASL, particularly the Cosmos, and largely departed from traditional international naming conventions and colours, choosing instead to adopt the garish fashion popular in the mid-1990s, combined with offbeat nicknames like “Clash” (San Jose), “Fusion” (Miami) and “Wiz” (Kansas City) that bore little connection to their municipalities.
“MLS sensed the opportunity to appeal to the fan as a consumer,” wrote American soccer historian David Wangerin in his book Soccer in a Football World. “In fact, ‘MLS Unveiled,’ as the event was christened, struck many as an outright capitulation to the creative excess of designers, with no one on the soccer side brave enough to channel their creative juices.” Despite these reservations, the Empire Supporters Club now had a team to get behind. They reached out to the MetroStars in late 1995 and received an enthusiastic response with the team agreeing to designate section 135 of Giants Stadium for supporters. With the section established, they found a home bar for away game watch parties and kept in touch with each other through an email newsletter.
“We were organized by word of mouth and email notices,” said McAllister, who had gone on to become one of the initial organizers of ESC. “We were not incorporated and had few rules or bylaws during the early days. We described ourselves as an anarchist collective.”
The league made it clear that they wanted the New York/New Jersey franchise to be a success by allocating US national team star Tab Ramos and the league’s highest profile European import, Italian striker Roberto Donadoni to the MetroStars. Initial local fascination with the team outstripped even the league’s expectations. Interest in the opening game at Giants Stadium was so high that the team’s telephone sales system crashed and the franchise was forced to open up additional sections of the arena to fit in 46,826 people on April 20, 1996. “The parking lot before the first match was almost like the 1994 World Cup an excited, multinational party in the sunshine,” said Benjamin Poremski, one of the original ESC members. The team responded by capitulating in the final minutes of extra time, when MetroStars defender Nicola Caricola knocked the ball into his own net. Crowds continued to turn out throughout the first year, even as the team imploded on the field. Despite lacking a transit link to the city, the MetroStars averaged more fans per game (23,898) than baseball’s Mets (19,609) and around 4,000 less than the city banner franchise, the Yankees (28,136).
Despite the popularity of the franchise, from the opening match onwards, ESC’s attempts to create a distinct fan culture were met with a mixture of indifference and hostility from the front office, the stadium personnel, and their fellow fans. While the team had listed 135 as a supporters section in its marketing materials, they made no accommodations for standing and singing.
“The first couple of matches at Giants Stadium were a disaster,” said McAllister. “Section 135 was a mess some people standing and singing for the entire match and others struggling to make them sit down. [The] Metro [front office] had sold tickets in the section to people who did not bargain for this scene and the ESC and NYC Firm people felt that Metro had let them down. Security hassles were common and Section 135 was not at all what we had envisioned.”
After a few matches, ESC convinced the front office to open one of the tarp covered unsold endline |
" way. I think he has the tools to be an exceptional fullback in this league.
JANUARY 18 UPDATE: Those two Homegrown signings got done, and Seattle added their 8000th Stanford grad when they picked up center back Brian Nana-Sinkam with the last pick of the first round of the SuperDraft. What happens next? Hard to say. There seems to be real optimism that Dempsey could be back this spring, which is obviously huge in that A) he's a really good player, and B) they really can't do much roster-building until they know for sure one way or another. So in the meantime they're filling out spots 18-28 with kids, and intend to look at yet more kids this preseason as they bring up guys from S2. Several of those players have a chance to stick and play meaningful minutes, as does second-round pick Dom Oduro (who looked like a pretty quality d-mid at the Combine and already has pro experience, and isn't that original Dom Oduro). Even with Oduro in the fold there will be another addition in central midfield to back up Ozzie Alonso and Cristian Roldan, and I think there will be two more center backs on the way as well. Seattle are still only three-deep there, and given the age and international commitments of Roman Torres and Chad Marshall, depth is necessary. In case you're keeping track: Yes, all of the above would leave Seattle with a spare DP slot to use -- or not -- as they see fit. Given their luck with last year's mid-season addition, I wouldn't be at all shocked if they waited until July to do something fun.
JANUARY 30 UPDATE: It looks like 29-year-old Swedish d-mid/center back Gustav Svensson could is be on his way from China, thanks to the CSA's newly instituted cap of three foreigners per roster (EDIT: For the second time in this column's cumbersome history, the Sounders made a move just hours after publication). That's forced multiple Chinese teams to sell off or release outright a significant number of imports, and the Sounders stand to benefit greatly. Svensson isn't a game-breaker, but he's as Swedish international who'll be useful depth at two spots where Seattle are a little short. Japanese playmaker Hiroshi Kiyotake would be much more than that if Lagerwey et al are able to grab him. The 27-year-old hasn't worked out with Sevilla, but he was great in the Bundesliga and as a starter with Japan. This would be a huge DP signing. Two caveats: It's looking slightly more likely that this happens in the summer rather than in the next month or two, and Kiyotake really does work better centrally as a No. 10 than as a winger on either side. Given Dempsey's improving health, that spot on the field could suddenly get pretty crowded.
FEBRUARY 13 UPDATE: Svensson's looked really good in his brief preseason run thus far, to the point where it feels like this could be the first year in franchise history where it wouldn't be fatal if Alonso has to miss a few games (and since Alonso has been resting his knee instead of playing for the last couple of weeks, that's kinda crucial). The Kiyotake move didn't happen, and I'm honestly starting to think the Sounders are done making moves for this window. Part of that is because most of the kids they've promoted from S2, signed as Homegrowns or drafted have looked good, and part is because Dempsey is officially playing again. He hasn't looked great, but that's what preseason is for, right? Seattle's roster is short (they have only 22 players officially signed), but it's really well put together. They have depth and experience everywhere.
FEBRUARY 24 UPDATE: Nothing new, but still no holes. I'm pretty sure at this point Seattle will sit tight with what they have and then, if necessary, make one more splashy signing at mid-season. Dempsey's return has continued without incident, by the way. I'm not sure he'll start the opener, but I'll be shocked if he doesn't play at least 30 minutes. We should probably just give him the "Comeback Player of the Year" award now.
Sporting KC
The Offseason So Far: There's been a lot of churn, but the identity of this team is still mostly the same with Dom Dwyer up top, Benny Feilhaber and Roger Espinoza in central midfield, Matt Besler in central defense, and a bunch of overlappers at fullback.
Said overlappers have gotten younger over the last few years, and it looks at this point like SKC have decided to give a Besler/Ike Opara pairing the green light for 2017. I think that's a good move.
And I think all of the above matters little if they don't get a secondary scorer on the wing to play off of Dwyer and ease some of his burden. Diego Rubio could in theory be that guy, but his goalscoring record over the years leaves much to be desired. Same for rumored acquisition Gerso Fernandes.
Let me put it this way: There's the potential that this team could really miss Jacob Peterson.
So one way or another they need to hit a Krisztian Nemeth-style home run with one of their wingers, and then add some depth in both central defense (the SuperDraft has a lot of quality in central defense this year) and attacking midfield. Feilhaber's not going to stay young forever, and his workrate declined precipitously most of last season before he cranked it up to 11 for the stretch run.
JANUARY 1 UPDATE: They've shored up their fullback depth with the signing of Igor Juliao (remember him from a couple of years ago? He was fun in a "whenever he overlaps either Sporting score, or Sporting's opponents score" kind of way), who should have no troubles adjusting. The Fernandes signing hasn't been made official, but it looks like it's going to happen. Same for the acquisition of 19-year-old Ghana Premier League MVP Latif Blessing. If those guys are as good as advertised it'd go a long way toward answering last year's weaknesses, though the attacking corps would still be thin. On that note: They've apparently registered a Homegrown claim for US U-17 forward Josh Sargent, who I'd describe as Bradley Wright-Phillips-esque in terms of his movement, workrate and relative lack of flash. The kid's a real talent, though he's probably at least two years away from being MLS ready and will have to work hard to improve his hold-up skills and survive the kind of beating Dwyer endures every weekend.
JANUARY 18 UPDATE: Gerso is on board, and I think SKC fans will be very happy if he lives up to this scouting report: @MLSAnalyst Felt like just a tweet was a bit small. pic.twitter.com/kpnY698SrF — Tiago Estêvão (@TiagoEstv) January 18, 2017 Blessing signed when Gerso did, so that means SKC have actual wing depth. They also added 26-year-old d-mid Ilie Sanchez who came up via Barcelona B and has experience in both the 2.Bundesliga and La Liga, and a pair of guys from USL teams, and have first-round pick Colton Storm slotted somewhere in the league's deepest right back rotation. Unless a trade happens, it feels very much like SKC's work is done for this offseason. When (if?) Storm signs they'll be 28/28 on the roster, with all three DP slots filled and all their international slots spoken for, and meaningful depth just about everywhere on the field. It seems like they finally got tired of breaking down late in the season. I'd expect more squad rotation this year and a chance for the kids to get out onto the field in mildly high-leverage situations.
JANUARY 30 UPDATE: SKC brought Soony Saad back from Thailand to add some more frontline depth. I really don't think we'll see much other movement beyond that in the next month.
FEBRUARY 13 UPDATE: Saad's been the only new signing of the past month, and what you see with the SKC roster is what you'll get the first weekend of March. If you really care about the tail end of this squad, it might be worth noting that Peter Vermes has been giving minutes to Swope Park Rangers center back Amer Didic. But the reality is that Sporting had the vast majority of their work done by mid-January, and they'll enter this season deeper, younger and faster than at any point since 2013.
FEBRUARY 24 UPDATE: No new signings, but it's starting to look like Graham Zusi has beaten out Saad Abdul-Salaam for the starting RB spot. That could make SAS one of the most intriguing trade chips in MLS (there are about 19 teams that could use him), but my money's on the kid winning the job back and making it his own for the next five or six years. Sporting are still Sporting, and I still have the same question about them that I did at the start of the preseason: Who, besides Dwyer, will get goals? If the likes of Gerso, Blessing, Rubio or Daniel Salloi can't answer that question definitively, SKC will be a fringe playoff team rather than a contender.
Real Salt Lake
The Offseason So Far: It started earlier than I think they expected when Javier Morales took to Twitter and announced his departure. And then Jamison Olave retired, and Burrito Martinez's kids got homesick, and suddenly it feels like the rebuild has kicked into high gear.
The good news? For the first time in team history each of RSL's attackers is under age 30, and the majority of them are under age 25. The bad news? It's not clear yet whether Jordan Allen or Bofo Saucedo — who's been tearing it up with the US U-20s – are ready to take on Martinez's role fulltime.
Bofo barely played on loan at Veracruz last year, but he's got a world of talent (scroll ahead to 2:55):
I actually think Allen isn't really a winger, but more of a classic wide midfielder more suited to a 4-4-2, which could complicate things slightly. This team really might be better in that formation with Joao Plata playing as a second forward underneath Yura Movsisyan.
I'm definitely burying the lede, though, so here goes: The one thing I think we can bank on this offseason is that GM Craig Waibel will go out and get a No. 10 to replace Morales. I'd expect them to skew toward a young, under-the-radar player like when Dallas signed Mauro Diaz four years ago, rather than going for an in-his-prime signing like Nicolas Lodeiro or breaking the bank on a major international target like Atlanta's Miguel Almiron.
They also very badly need a back-up center forward for Movsisyan, and it wouldn't shock me if that came via free agency, or if they made a move in the draft for someone like Nick DePuy or Julian Gressel. A little more depth in central defense is also a thing that should happen.
JANUARY 1 UPDATE: It looks like Slovakian international Albert Rusnak is the No. 10 they've been looking for, and the deal appears imminent. Attackers moving to MLS from the Dutch Eredivisie generally have produced in MLS, so RSL fans are right to be hyped about this one. They should also be hyped about the Landon Donovan news if that happens. The idea is to sign a DP-caliber attacker (and LD is still that) not to replace the kids long-term, but to play about 2000 minutes and help mentor Saucedo and Allen over the next 12-24 months, while still being a game-changer in high-leverage situations. Think of it this way: What would it mean for their development if RSL went out and got a 28-year-old DP winger from Corinthians or Millionarios or some other legit South American club? Well, that guy would play every single minute available, which means neither Allen nor Saucedo would ever get off the bench for the next three or four years at least. And if that happens then why invest so much in the academy in the first place? If it doesn't happen with Donovan, one other name to look at for the mentor role is Mauro Rosales. I'm also expecting another signing in central defense, perhaps at the TAM level, despite bringing back both Aaron Maund and Chris Schuler to play alongside Justen Glad.
JANUARY 18 UPDATE: The Rusnak deal got done, and the Donovan deal is dead. One out of two ain't bad, especially since Rusnak probably has the inside track on "Newcomer of the Year" given the role he'll play and the talent around him, and especially since he seems to have the profile of a guy who can lead an MLS team creatively for a decade. Waibel et al did good work to get a guy just entering his prime from a legitimately good Eredivisie team. They also got two guys -- right back Reagan Dunk and center back Justin Schmidt -- via the SuperDraft who I think will make the roster, while retaining veteran Chris Wingert for depth. The big question now: Who backs up Yura? It might be an MLS veteran they land via free agency, or it might be former Homegrown Brooks Lennon, or it might be both. Probably both, given RSL's roster numbers and cap flexibility. The Lennon thing is exciting, for what it's worth. He's been bagging goals while playing all across the front line for Liverpool's U-23s, and while he doesn't appear to be in the full team's plans, he's undeniably a real talent. Though he may actually be more of a winger than a true No. 9 at this point, it'd be a great pick-up for RSL either way.
JANUARY 30 UPDATE: After having missed out on Alan Gordon they signed Chad Barrett as No. 9 depth, and after having missed out on Donovan they brought Luis Silva back as attacking depth, while also rounding out their central defensive corps by signing free agent David Horst. RSL have had a really good offseason even if a couple of reaches came up short. If they manage to ink Lennon (who trained with them over the weekend in preseason, and is now off with the US U-20s), fans will have plenty of reason to go into 2017 optimistic about the team's youth, depth and new direction.
FEBRUARY 13 UPDATE: Lennon is officially in the fold, and he'll be in Sandy for the year on a loan with no set purchase price from Anfield. Don't expect to see him any time soon, though, as he's one of four RSL guys (along with Glad, Saucedo and left back Danilo Acosta) officially on duty with the US U-20s this month. In their absence, Allen has asserted himself as the probable No. 1 option at right wing, playing in that front three alongside Movsisyan and Plata. RSL have serious depth in their youth, as befits franchise that's spent time and money on both their academy and Real Monarchs. In addition to the ones already mentioned, midfield playmaker Jose Hernandez also deserves a shout for his good form, and the fact that he presents as a pretty obvious back-up to Rusnak at the No. 10 spot. I still have questions as to whether this team will play with a little more cohesion this year, or whether it will be another series of isos all season long.
FEBRUARY 24 UPDATE: The 4-3-3 of the past several years looks as if it's given way to something closer to a 4-2-3-1, which perhaps makes a little more sense given this team's structure. The best news over the past two weeks for RSL? Lennon bagged a hat-trick from the wing for the U-20s. If they can get a field-stretching goal-threat on one side or the other, that should open up more space for Movsisyan, Plata and Rusnak.
D.C. United
The Offseason So Far: They're returning their top 15 or so players, with the only significant loss being veteran center forward Alvaro Saborio. That's not a huge loss since Patrick Mullins will continue to be the starter, Alhaji Kamara is expected to be healthy and ready to go as a super-sub, and new signing Jose Guillermo Ortiz can play anywhere along the frontline in the 4-3-3/4-1-4-1 D.C. switched to mid-season.
The biggest move was bringing Luciano Acosta back to the team permanently after an impressive first season in the league, followed by re-signing Steve Birnbaum in the face of serious European interest. United aren't spending like TFC or NYCFC, but they're not letting talent get away.
Which brings us to potential Homegrown midfielder Ian Harkes...
He was the best player in college soccer this year, and I think he'd be a perfect fit next to Acosta in that United midfield.
Problem is, of course, that there's both European interest and not-all-that-unrealistic speculation that Harkes could sign for FC Cincinnati of the USL and play for his dad, USMNT legend John Harkes.
One other note: Don't be surprised if we see a bunch of Sean Franklin at center back next year, with Nick DeLeon permanently shifted to right back.
One other note beyond that: Are we sold on a Rob Vincent/Marcelo Sarvas platoon at D-mid, or does that make anyone else nervous?
JANUARY 1 UPDATE: It looks like A) the Harkes deal is close, and B) he might be the guy they see as the long-term answer at d-mid. He was so good as a No. 8 for Wake Forest this season that I saw him in that role as a pro, but perhaps he really could be a No. 6? He certainly has the physical tools and game awareness. Beyond that, I expect them to take a defender in the draft. And I think those will be the only offseason moves from D.C.
JANUARY 18 UPDATE: Well, they took a defender in the draft by snagging local kid Chris Odoi-Atsem with the 12th pick. To me, that pretty much seals the deal on Franklin moving to central defense, and hopefully Odoi-Atsem (who's a fantastic 1v1 defender) starts his career as DeLeon's back-up. D.C. are pretty stocked at this point, going three-deep at center forward and five-deep on the wing, while boasting a cadre of central midfielders young and old to support Acosta. Harkes will be one of them, and I think he will start sooner rather than later. Only two gaps remain: An extra center back (it could be draft pick Jo Vetle Rimstad), and a natural back-up for Taylor Kemp at left back.
JANUARY 30 UPDATE: The Harkes deal got done, as did a deal for free agent winger Sebastien Le Toux. D.C.'s now stuffed full through midfield and all across the front line. Former Montreal man and 12-times-capped Canadian international Maxim Tissot is trialing with United this preseason, presumably for that left back role. Given D.C.'s roster flexibility (they've used only four international slots) and lack of other trialists, he has a good shot at sticking.
FEBRUARY 13 UPDATE: They signed Tissot. They decided Harkes is actually a No. 8. They're leaning toward moving DeLeon permanently to right back. They have kept continuity in terms of the roster, and in terms of the approach since Ben Olsen has said his team will stay in that 4-1-4-1/4-3-3 hybrid that was so effective at the end of last season. The only questions now are around the starting XI and subs. Olsen has more talent to choose from than at any point in his managerial career, and managing that is a different sort of test for a still-young coach.
FEBRUARY 24 UPDATE: No new additions, just the happy return to health of Bill Hamid, who got 45 minutes in a 3-0 win over St. Louis on Wednesday. D.C.'s roster is set. I think the biggest question over the next week will be "Who starts at d-mid, Vincent or Sarvas?" My money's on Sarvas in the short term, with Vincent getting plenty of reps throughout. The other big question is how Olsen handles the glut of wing options. Nyarko and Sam are the incumbents, but Ortiz, Neagle and Le Toux have all had strong preseasons. United have options.
Montreal Impact
The Offseason So Far: They let a ton of dudes walk, including Didier Drogba. And they signed Blerim Dzemaili, who will arrive next July. And they kept their starting XI from the playoffs together (pending Patrice Bernier re-signing, which will happen), which is nice.
I'm looking at this and just going with this assumption: The roster cull was designed to open up playing time for young, high-upside players like Anthony Jackson-Hamel and Ballou Jean-Yves Tabla. That is not very Impact-like, but the opportunities should be there for the kids given the age of the front six this team prefers to trot out.
As for the defense … any team that concedes seven goals in a two-legged series needs to find a mirror. I'd expect all four starters to be back, as well as a couple of the top reserves, but I also wouldn't be at all shocked if there was a DP center back imported to try to make this team a little more respectable when defending set pieces.
I do, however, think they're done with Drogba-style signings.
JANUARY 1 UPDATE: They've been linked with Thiago Motta and Panagiotis Kone in recent days, which makes sense given their modus operandi but doesn't make sense given their roster needs. The big rumor is that Boca Juniors are thinking about ponying up for a bid on Ignacio Piatti. Needless to say, if he's sold that would require some serious work on a top tier replacement.
JANUARY 18 UPDATE: Piatti is staying. Everything else pales in comparison to that -- Montreal will keep both their best player, and the XI that nearly made MLS Cup last year. Beyond that XI things have changed. They're adding more Homegrowns and a couple of draft picks, and it's starting to feel like Dzemaili's summer arrival will be the big acquisition of the year for the Impact. This is maybe a good thing in that this team has real chemistry, but it's maybe a bad thing in that their central defense got abused all year by physical strikers. So don't be surprised if there's one more significant piece added, as well as a backup for Ambroise Oyongo at left back.
JANUARY 30 UPDATE: Zero new updates – it's almost eerily quiet. The only real rumor over the past month is that, with Bologna safe, Dzemaili will be released early and arrive in April instead of July.
FEBRUARY 13 UPDATE: Nothing but the silence of a Quebecois winter.
FEBRUARY 24 UPDATE: They finally made a move, and it was a good one. Montreal announced this week that they acquired 24-year-old Argentine d-mid Adrian Arregui from Temperley as a TAM player. I'm not sure he'll step right into the starting XI, but chances are he'll get every chance to win a spot there over the first few months of the season. It was incredibly important for the Impact to add some youth in that part of the field, though it might not matter all that much if the central defense continues to struggle against physical attackers.
Portland Timbers
The Offseason So Far: You're not going to believe this, but the Timbers unceremoniously released a bunch of former draft picks who never made a dent with the first team. Safe to say the answers to their roster questions won't be coming from within.
Signing Costa Rican international D-mid David Guzman should give us a hint as to what the future should bring for Portland, though, as Guzman is a surefire starter at that spot. That means there are only two spots in central midfield for Diego Chara, Diego Valeri and Darlington Nagbe, and the writing appears to be on the wall regarding Nagbe's potential move to Celtic.
If that happens I'd wager the cash infusion is used on a high level winger who can add more long-term, two-way value than Lucas Melano has (and you can color me at least a little bit surprised that Melano is still a Timber). There also needs to be another face in the central defensive rotation, and a break-in-case-of-emergency center forward to back up Fanendo Adi, and a third 'keeper from somewhere.
Portland still have their top SuperDraft pick, but given their allergy to acquiring contributors via that route, expect them to trade it for whatever they can snag in return.
JANUARY 1 UPDATE: The writing on the wall regarding Nagbe's move was incorrect — he's staying. And now the midfield is crowded, and I do kind of wonder if a diamond with Guzman at the 6, Valeri as the 10 and Nagbe/Chara as shuttlers makes more sense than yet another year of shuffling Nagbe to the wing. So it'll be interesting to see what they get for Melano, and then how they replace him. It'll also be interesting to see if they decide to go after Rodney Wallace and try to bring him back into the fold.
JANUARY 18 UPDATE: So the Timbers traded up in the SuperDraft and took one of my favorite players available, center forward Jeremy Ebobisse. And they signed three guys from their USL team, and they kept Nagbe for real, and Melano is gone on loan to Belgrano, and then they even picked two of my favorite players late in the draft (though both are long-shots to make the team), so it feels like my skepticism was, perhaps, misplaced. Their improvements really have come from within, and the core of the team that won the 2015 MLS Cup is still largely intact and has been reinforced with youth. Ebobisse is the gem here, in that his ceiling is high and that he fills such a crucial need. Adi is excellent, but he's made noises every season about leaving -- or at least noises have been made about him leaving -- and the Timbers were a vastly different team without his hold-up play. Ebobisse should be able to replicate a lot of that, and is probably a better open-field threat and finisher. It's entirely possible that the kid will make Adi transferrable should the right offer come this year. I could see Portland adding another target forward just in case, and perhaps another winger (Wallace isn't having a great time with Recife), a center back and a central midfielder. They have room on the roster and in terms of DP slots, so it's not unlikely.
JANUARY 30 UPDATE: In addition to all of the above, they've brought Dairon Asprilla back from loan and signed Chance Myers as a free agent. Everything seems to be in place, except for Sebastian Blanco. There's been a "will-he-or-won't-he" thing going on between him, San Lorenzo, Club America and the Timbers all winter. If the Argentine attacker does eventually make his way to Portland he'll slot in on one wing as a DP, with Nagbe on the other and Valeri running the show as a No. 10. That's a pretty damn good look. EDIT: And in a bit of bad news, presumptive starting CB Gbenga Arokoyo tore his Achilles' and is out for the season. Only silver lining here is that it happened early enough in preseason for the Timbers to have flexibility as they shop for a replacement – which they will need to do, since Arokoyo's loss leaves a hole that needs filling.
FEBRUARY 13 UPDATE: They got Blanco, which was a nice bit of work. So far he's starting at right wing in a 4-3-3/4-2-3-1, and he's very two-footed, so there's been a good bit of positional swapping going on throughout Portland's attack. I feel pretty confident that he'll be a better player for the Timbers than Melano. Between him and Guzman, Portland should have two of the better newcomers in the league in 2017. There are worries in central defense, however. The Timbers immediately traded for SKC's Lawrence Olum following Arokoyo's injury, and Olum has struggled in his minutes thus far. None of the other candidates to start alongside Liam Ridgewell have distinguished themselves at this point, either. So central defense is a worry. Left back isn't, though. In addition to incumbent starter Vytautas Andriuskevicius, Homegrown Marco Farfan has looked very good going forward so far in preseason. He's gotten lit up a couple of times defensively, but that tends to happen to young defenders from time to time. The US U-19 international is still much more likely to play USL minutes rather than MLS minutes, but getting him into the depth chart is a major step forward for this franchise.
FEBRUARY 24 UPDATE: The starting CB job looks like it's Olum's to lose. It's a fair bet the Timbers will give up some goals this year. It's also a fair bet they'll score some goals, especially with Vytas overlapping up the left side. One of the under-discussed aspects of moving Nagbe to the left wing on a fulltime basis is his ability to bring his left back into the play because his ball security is so good – he just doesn't turn it over. So expect Vytas to generate a LOT of danger this year.
Philadelphia Union
The Offseason So Far: Really, really, really quiet so far. I think that changes with two big signings in the next month:
A DP No. 9
A TAM-level No. 6
I was fully onboard with the C.J. Sapong experience, but the Union can't have a starting center forward who goes half the year without sniffing an open play goal.
As for the No. 6 spot, it's pretty clear that Brian Carroll's race is just about run, and that Warren Creavalle is a little too adventurous to properly shield a young backline. If they could find their own Marco Donadel I'm sure the Union braintrust would be thrilled.
JANUARY 1 UPDATE: Nada, save for re-signing Charlie Davies. However, I have a totally irresponsible theory to put out here: The Union are the mystery MLS team targeting Icelandic and Nantes No. 9 Kolbeinn Sigthorsson. Earnie Stewart is well aware of the kid, who spent nearly a decade in the Netherlands (including a couple of years with Ajax), before making what's been an unproductive move to France. Secrets don't leak out of the Union front office, though. So this is just a theory and I have zero inside info. Also, getting Sigthorsson would require a significant expenditure from a team that hasn't always been known to splash the cash.
JANUARY 18 UPDATE: Well, I was wrong on Sigthorsson. Instead they got forward Jay Simpson from Leyton Orient of England's League 2 (the fourth tier... yikes). Simpson has what I'll charitably call a "mixed" scoring record, in that he had one good year in the Championship back in 2009/10, and one tremendous year in League 2 in 2015/16. In between he had a bunch of low-output seasons and a trip to Thailand for a chunk of 2013 and 14. I'm skeptical. But I'll say this: Bradley Wright-Phillips spent most of the first part of this decade toiling in the lower tiers of English soccer, and he's been pretty decent in MLS. Maybe Philly are attempting to catch lightning in a bottle, and see in Simpson a similar profile? Hard to say since I've never seen the kid play. I've never seen their other signing, Giliano Wijnaldum, play either, but Stewart surely has. The 25-year-old Dutchman was brought in to compete for the starting left back spot, and while he's yet to truly break out as a pro, he's a former Netherlands youth international with 80+ games of experience spread across the Eredivisie and 2.Bundesliga. Any MLS team worth its salt would take a chance on a guy with that resume. Still nothing on that No. 6 I mentioned earlier, though this is encouraging: Maurice Edu is down here, working in weight room, no brace or wrap or anything — Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) January 6, 2017 Edu would fill a huge need if he could stay healthy for the entirety of the 2017 season, and at the same time allow Philly to potentially spend that third DP slot elsewhere. The two other pieces I think they'll add? A third-string 'keeper and another center back. It wouldn't shock me if they addressed that latter spot in a big way.
JANUARY 30 UPDATE: The only move of the last three weeks for Philly was signing veteran center back Oguchi Onyewu on a free. Gooch hasn't played regularly since 2014, so this feels very much like a "come here and mentor our young backline" move, rather than "come here and play 2000 minutes." The lack of action in terms of signing a No. 6 leads me to believe they're optimistic about Edu's return. Fingers crossed. EDIT: And another new signing! It came late on January 30, so I'm going to ninja-edit this blurb. Bosnian No. 8 Haris Medunjanin has signed with Philly from Maccabi Tel Aviv, and suddenly there's a truckload of center mids in Chester. That means someone's got to go, right? Exit Roland Alberg, perhaps. If they really can get close to $2 million for him, they have to take the deal – and then very likely push Alejandro Bedoya up to the No. 10 role. Elsewhere in the attack, the arrival of erstwhile USMNT winger/forward Fafa Picault from St. Pauli seems imminent. Things are happening quickly, and suddenly it feels like there's been more turnover with this team over the last 8-10 months than expected, and that they're actually set to be older than last year. I'm not sure this was the blueprint, but wheeling and dealing is required when you're trying to stay afloat.
FEBRUARY 13 UPDATE: The Alberg thing was not a thing, and he's been starting as a No. 10 for the Union thus far. It's presumed he'll be backed up by Adam Najem, the RBNY Homegrown Philly acquired for a second round pick next year (this feels like a steal for the Union, for what it's worth). Also, it turns out that Gooch is far more than decorative, and the chances are he'll have to play big minutes with Josh Yaro sidelined until mid-season. Given the layers of rust, this feels like a risk. Meanwhile, Simpson has started up top, Edu still hasn't played this preseason, and Bedoya is once again a No. 8. Anyone who claims they know what's coming from the Union in 2017 is lying. I could see everything working out and them claiming a top four seed in the East, but I could also see injuries, age and inexperience alternately ravaging this team.
FEBRUARY 24 UPDATE: No new additions, but here's a new twist: Homegrown midfielder Derrick Jones has looked very, very good over the last three weeks, and the 19-year-old is very much in the mix for a starting job. He has the same kind of field-shrinking, nuclear athleticism that Jermaine Jones has put to such great use in MLS, and would be a pretty natural fit next to/in front of a more stationary player like Medunjanin. That would push Bedoya up into the No. 10 role, which is fine – that's where he spent a good chunk of his time in Europe, even if he never put huge numbers on the board.
New England Revolution
The Offseason So Far: I do not see a single true center back on their roster at this point. In the next month they should sign three and draft one, and try to avoid the struggles that plagued this team last season.
The midfield has also been thinned out via the retirement of Steve Neumann and the fact that Gershon Koffie is still out of contract. I think that Koffie was absolutely vital for the Revs last year when he was healthy and playing at the base of the diamond when they switched to a 4-4-2, and that would be enough reason for me to re-sign him if I was calling the shots. Perhaps they feel that last year's DP signing Xavier Kouassi (who missed all of 2016 with an injury) can fill that role, but Koffie was REALLY good there for a while, and the rest of the team fell into place around him pretty easily.
One other thing to watch: Juan Agudelo was awesome as a No. 9 when healthy last season, and as long as Kei Kamara's there as well Agudelo's going to be playing in another spot. I think this makes Kamara one of the more tradeable players in the league, and could see that as a way of landing a quality center back.
Agudelo's versatile enough to play as a second forward, on the wing or even as a creative midfielder, but he was devastating as a center forward down the stretch. That should be his role.
JANUARY 1 UPDATE: Nada. They've got to go out and get some center backs in the next 10 days or Revs fans will riot. I do kind of wonder if they'll try to trade up into the top five of the draft and aim to take either Miles Robinson of Syracuse (Boston-born US U-20, and he'll almost certainly be part |
year. He was somebody whose work I very much cherished. And I got the opportunity to ask Berger about why he didn’t take photographs and he said he tried it very briefly — maybe in the 80s. He had a photographer teach him how to take and develop photos and then he realized that when he took photos of a scene, it kind of foreclosed the writing he wanted to do about that situation. His attention to detail went to the image rather than to the writing he was able to do about it. So he preferred to observe and draw and write. But I find that I’m able to do both.
SP: Do you carry around a notebook as well as a camera?
TC: I always have a notebook, a pen and a camera. These are my tools because the world is always giving you various phenomena. You’ve noticed that some of what I’m writing about is different from what I photographed. Sometimes they coincide. I don’t want my photography to be an illustration of the text. I want the photograph to hold its own. What is the light doing? How are the colors working? How do things balance? The narrative also has to meet the demands of storytelling, of obliqueness, of compression. It has to detonate in a certain way that might actually be adjacent to the photograph, not sitting right on top of it. Which is why I don’t really call these texts “captions.” They are voice-overs. They are running parallel. Each has to emanate its own energy.
SP: You’ve talked about these elusive and mysterious photos that you like to take. Is that also what you like to see in other people’s photography?
TC: I like a very wide range of things in photography. This is important for me as a photography critic not to be closed-minded. So I like photos of the kind that is related to my work. I particularly like Italian contemporary photography. But I also like spectacular street photographers who can nail a decisive moment. I sometimes do that but not a whole lot of it. I also like a good portrait.
SP: Even though you rarely take portraits.
TC: I love strong portraits. I think it’s a challenging art form. Irving Penn was a great portraitist but I would rather look at a portrait by Gordon Parks. It seemed to have more import. And I think Richard Avedon, whose style is not so far from Irving Penn’s, was a more successful portraitist. But Henri Cartier-Bresson was an even better portraitist. There was something about what was happening around his portrait that gave it more energy. The young contemporary photographer Christopher Anderson is an extraordinary portraitist and he gets a lot of magazine work because of this extraordinary ability to work with color and appearance when making images of people. I like conceptual photography. And at the same time I like photojournalists and spot news reporting. So I like all sorts. But this applies to writing as well.
SP: You also seem to be fascinated by memory.
TC: Memory is often a layer. A lot of my language can probably be located somewhere around 1915, between Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. I have a lot of faith in what can be achieved with a well-polished English sentence. Not that I try to make the language old- fashioned, but I like a clean sentence. But a lot of the reading I do is fragmented. One of my favorite authors is Michael Ondaatje and he uses sentence fragments a great deal.
SP: Why do you like fragmentary sentences?
TC: Because they can evoke the present in a very powerful way.
SP: So you don’t want a narrative that’s too self-contained and wraps everything up?
TC: But sometimes I do. Look at James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” Excellent sentences and they’re somewhat formal, even though the narrative is not formal. You get your epiphany at the end and you have these very powerful feelings. But if you read Running in the Family or The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, it’s jazzier. Those sentences are all over the place. Or if you read Anne Carson, who is a modern master of the fragment. A fragment is very often about mastery as well. It’s about saying I need just this much to convey. That can just be a delight. For me it’s about recognizing that great art comes in all kinds of forms. In Blind Spot I actually use more fragments than I’ve tended to use you, though I also still use a lot of well-polished sentences.
SP: There’s one page in Blind Spot that I want to quote because it raises some interesting questions. It’s about Lugano. You have a photo of a park bench, a statue of a horse and some buildings. And here’s the entire text that accompanies that image:
She said to me: Europe is getting worse. I still don’t understand why you want to move to Switzerland. I said to her: I don’t want to move to Switzerland. Quite the contrary. I like to visit Switzerland. When I’m not there, I long for it, but what I long for is the feeling of being an outsider there and, soon after, the feeling of leaving again so I can continue to long for it.
There’s so much in that passage: your love of travel, your feeling of displacement, wanting to be an outsider but probably also experiencing the cost of being the outsider.
TC: Yeah, but some very profound pleasures in it. Why is that text in Blind Spot? Because it encapsulates a misunderstanding. “Oh, you talk about Switzerland. You must want to live there. You want to be a Swiss citizen.” No. So I’m thinking through that response. What is another possible reason for wanting to be in Switzerland? Well, one way is to enjoy visiting without the desire to live there. It also fits in this book because Switzerland is one of the hidden themes of the book. And I keep going back there.
SP: It made me think of an essay you wrote about James Baldwin in Known and Strange Things. He lived in a tiny mountain village in Switzerland in the 1950s, basically in exile. He was the only black person in that village, and that’s where he went to finish writing Go Tell It On the Mountain. Maybe he had to go there to be able to finish this book about America.
TC: Precisely. There’s a way that outsiderness either in your own person or in your location can help you understand what you’re an insider to. Being a Nigerian-American in America helps me to understand Nigeria in a more intense way.
SP: Is it easier to write about Nigeria when you’re in the U.S.?
TC: No writing is easy, but it affords me a certain insight while looking at it from a distance. Being in Nigeria, having grown up in Nigeria, also illuminates my understanding of America even though I’m an American. That outsiderness helps. But the peculiar thing about having a couple of Switzerland essays in Known and Strange Things is that it’s a perfect illustration of the way that each of my books hands on the baton to the next book. So Known and Strange Things becomes a kind of prequel to Blind Spot. The final essay in Known and Strange Things is called “Blind Spot.”
SP: Which is about the experience of losing your vision.
TC: Yes. And then in a weird kind of way this blooms out into an entire book of photographs. But Known and Strange Things takes up in essayistic form many of the concerns that have been raised in novelistic form in Open City. What does it mean to live together? What are the responsibilities of looking at art? What should migration look like? Meanwhile, Open City itself is a kind of expansion on the out-of-placeness of the narrator who was at the center of Every Day Is for the Thief, which is the first book I wrote. So I dream of this organic flow of books.
SP: Even though the format of each of these books is really quite different. Some are fiction. Some are nonfiction. One has a lot of photographs. You seem to enjoy playing with form.
TC: Not only are they four books in four different genres, but each one is also considered peculiar within the genre that it’s supposed to be. Open City is strange for a novel. It’s a novel without a plot. And 400 pages of an essay collection that’s curiously personal and still you don’t know too much about me [laughs].
SP: There’s one other form that you’ve mastered. You turned Twittter into an art form and developed a huge following.
TC: Thank you. It was a creative space for me and I enjoyed it very much.
SP: You wrote a series of tweets that got a lot of traction called the White Savior Industrial Complex. This was in response to the Kony 2012 video that was all the rage a few years ago, about the African warlord who had an army of child soldiers.
TC: So many things were coming together publicly and I wondered, what’s my response to this? It allowed me to think about what we do when we do charity. What do we owe to the people to whom we’re doing some kind of mercy or favor? How much of it is tangled up in our own ego for wanting to be the savior? How much of this is actually racialized? If white Americans are going to Africa to go save, how is this related to the history of colonialism? How is this related to racial politics here in the U.S.? How is this related to being a white person and how you view black people? Does equality have any role to play if we’re helping people who are desperate, or does desperation absolve us of the need to treat people like equals? I thought these were good questions to ask. Yes, the title was provocative. The White Savior Industrial Complex got people’s hackles up a little bit.
SP: Because you were calling out people, including New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who writes a lot about this kind of thing.
TC: Right. I was calling people out. But the interesting thing about justice is that unless somebody pushes, nothing really happens. If black people don’t push and speak out, nothing changes in race relations. If women don’t speak out and make a fuss and make things a bit uncomfortable, gender relations don’t really move. As we say, it’s the person who wears a shoe that knows where it pinches. And so the person whose shoe is pinching has to make the complaint. So there’s a space for complaint. And Twitter was an interesting place to put those ideas out there.
SP: Are you still on Twitter?
TC: I’m not on Twitter. I’ve not tweeted in about three years.
SP: Why did you let it go?
TC: That’s exactly what I do with each of these genres. I try to find out what I can do in that space. I try to do good work there, and then without any compunction or regret I move on. And I try to find the next place to continue my exploration.
SP: What was it about the Twitter moment that appealed to you?
TC: An instantaneous public. The conveyance of compression and sentences into the minds of others. How much can we fit into this form? I think what any artist has to offer is really freedom. Freedom can be contagious. I chafe at excessive convention but I love to work within conventions and then try to push them and stop somewhere before the breaking point. So perfectly good English sentences but then I’m pushing against what is permissible. So with this new book, what does the photography book look like? Well, not like this, which has a lot of text. So is it a selection of essays? Is it a memoir?
SP: Your personal history has clearly shaped your writing. You were born in Michigan, but within a few months your family moved to Lagos, where you grew up. How long were you in Nigeria?
TC: For 17 years.
SP: Why did you come back to America?
TC: I came back to the Midwest, to Kalamazoo, for university. My father was deeply unimpressed with the state of Nigerian universities in the early 90s and he wanted me to go back to the U.S. I didn’t mind that, but I certainly did not arrive in the U.S. as a desperate and eager immigrant. We had very little money, but the privilege of choice was there. I got some scholarships and loans and then I had to start learning what it meant to be here as an American who was Nigerian. It was almost as if for the first time I was also learning that I was black. That did not need to be stated in Nigeria because everybody else around me was black, but I had to learn the racial politics of the U.S. and then I had to start experiencing in my own body the variegations of racial prejudice.
SP: So at first, you did not have the experience of most African-Americans?
TC: I did not. But I’ve been in the U.S. for 25 years. I’m a black guy in America, so within those first couple of years, there are many things I did not have a narrative for. What does it mean if I’m strolling around in a small town in Michigan and a car slows down, the window is wound down and someone shouts the N-word at me? And what does it mean in a university setting where somebody says to me, “Oh, you’re not like those other blacks”? All of this stuff had to be understood as a black person in America. In fact, I’m an American African but I’m also an African American.
SP: Wasn’t it years before you actually went back to visit Lagos?
TC: Yeah. It’s a little bit different from the narrator of Every Day Is for the Thief but there are some similarities. I went back to Nigeria after three years, but then I didn’t go back again for another dozen years. There was a big mental distance. I kept not having the money. I kept not having the time. I kept worrying about whether I would be able to go. I went back in 2005 and I’ve been back every year since then. It became a priority and I reestablished roots there.
SP: But you live in Brooklyn now.
TC: I live in Brooklyn. I live in the U.S.
SP: Do you consider Brooklyn home?
TC: Yes. That’s where my wife is. My brother lives there. My friends are there. My books are there. My office is there. So that’s home. I also consider Lagos home. My parents live there. It’s where I grew up. If I go to Nigeria, my room is there. The two most spoken languages in Lagos — Yoruba and English — are languages I’m fluent in. So there’s an at-homeness, but a home is also wherever there’s good wi-fi. That connects me to the world in a way that is irreducible and essential to my experience of the world.
SP: Do you consider yourself more Nigerian or more American?
TC: Neither. Split right down the middle. Or rather 100 percent of both. I feel very invested in Nigeria’s future. There’s a book I’ve been working on for a long time about Lagos, so I think a lot about Nigeria. I’m American and America is in crisis at the moment and I feel invested. Open City was definitely an approach to this question but I feel invested in what this country ought to be. I’m a citizen who is not a patriot. I’m a citizen in the sense of being invested in what we owe each other. What do we do to protect each other’s rights? What do we do about people who break our mutual agreement? What do sanctions and punishments look like? Those philosophical questions are very interesting to me. Our borders are interesting to me. If my money’s being used to kill foreigners in the theater of war, that’s my business. So I’m very American and I’m also very Nigerian.
SP: The two cities where you’ve spent the most time are Lagos and New York. Are they totally different experiences for you or do they have certain similarities?
TC: The commonalities are extensive. It is the experience of cosmopolitanism, which is maybe the fourth definition of home for me. And this is what I find in spaces in Lagos. And it’s what I find in New York — restaurants, clubs, bookshops, shopping malls, traffic, crazy people on the street, high fashion. Cities as a kind of problem-solving technology. If there are 16 million people in the same place, then we have to use resources in a way that makes sense in such a compressed space.
SP: What are the biggest differences between Lagos and New York?
TC: New York is much richer. Lagos might have 25 buildings of monumental scale and New York has 300. The sheer physical scale of New York never ceases to surprise me. And then there’s that thing of New York being a world capital. Lagos is the capital of Africa.
Don’t let people in Cairo or Johannesburg tell you different. Lagos is the place where the pop culture of Africa is being made. Lagos is the capital of Africa but New York is the capital of the world. So there is something about encountering this expansive, complex mutual togetherness in conversation. It’s possible in New York. So New York is almost not an American city. It’s a city that’s a vision of what the world looks like if these borders are not as they are right now.
This interview was conducted through the radio program To the Best of Our Knowledge. An edited radio version will air soon.Health Minister Peter Dutton has flagged an overhaul of Medicare, suggesting Australians who can afford it should pay more for their healthcare.
Mr Dutton has used a major speech to declare he wants there to be a frank, fearless and far-reaching discussion about the health system.
He says the current system is unsustainable and he wants to "modernise and strengthen" Medicare.
He has told the ABC's 7.30 program there needs to be discussion around co-payments.
"Commonwealth and state governments contribute 92 cents in the dollar for those treated in the public system," he said.
"Therefore, one important job of the Abbott Government is to grow the opportunity for those Australians who can afford to do so to contribute to their own healthcare costs.
"If they have a means to contribute to their own healthcare, we should be embarking on a discussion about how that payment model will work.
One important job of the Abbott Government is to grow the opportunity for those Australians who can afford to do so to contribute to their own healthcare costs. Peter Dutton
"I want to make sure that, for argument's sake, we have a discussion about you or me on reasonable incomes [and] whether we should expect to pay nothing when we go to a doctor."
There has recently been debate over a proposal to charge patients $6 to visit their general practitioner.
A Commission of Audit, set up by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, received a submission recommending the co-payment system for GP visits.
Under the proposal, pensioners and concession card holders would be exempt from the fee, while families would be granted up to 12 bulk-billed visits annually.
The Australian Medical Association criticised the plan, saying it would discourage people from visiting a doctor when they were sick.
System should 'focus on prevention'
But one of the architects of the Medicare system, Stephen Duckett, says a co-payment is not the way to make the health system more economically sustainable.
"The co-payment is a pimple on a pumpkin," he told ABC News 24.
"It doesn't raise much money.
"It may not raise any money if people go to a hospital emergency department instead."
Professor John Dwyer from the University of New South Wales agrees, saying the nation's health system needs to focus more on prevention to contain costs.
"We've got a terrible burden of chronic and complex disease in Australia [that are] largely lifestyle related," he said.
"Many countries are swinging their healthcare systems around to put the emphasis on prevention, not on sickness, and that's a very cost-effective strategy.
"Medicare needs the infrastructure to move us in that direction."
Labor's health spokeswoman Catherine King says it is becoming clear the Coalition is out to destroy Australia's universal healthcare system.
"Australians who can afford to pay more already do so through a greater contribution to the Medicare levy," she said in a statement.
"What Mr Dutton is really talking about is dismantling our fair and sustainable system in favour of a private health system [as] exists in the United States."
Dutton urges 'bold new ideas' from private sector
Mr Dutton says the private health sector also has a key role to play in making the system more sustainable.
"I believe significant productivity gains can, and must, come through a combination of improved public sector efficiency and bold new ideas from the private sector," he said.
"The private sector has a key role to play to ensure the required productivity gains are realised, including through innovation and technology."
Meanwhile, Mr Dutton has defended his Assistant Minister, Fiona Nash, who is now facing calls to resign.
Senator Nash's chief of staff, Alastair Furnival, quit last week after Labor accused him in Parliament of breaching the code of conduct for his lobbying links.
The Greens are now calling for Senator Nash to stand down, saying she has failed to fully explain the extent of Mr Furnival's links to the food and alcohol industries.
Mr Dutton told 7:30 that Mr Furnival did not have a conflict of interest.
"I knew of course, as everybody else did, Mr Furnival's history," he said.
"As I'm advised, the appropriate declarations were made and signed, and as I say, Mr Furnival has now moved on."The Honda’s Ecological Drive Assist System was presented in LA last week and now, Honda released images of the Japanese Insight’s EDAS which the color-changing speedometer background, that is used in the system’s guidance function. If the color behind the number is green, you’re driving efficiently and when you’re driving in the least economical way, the whole screen turns blue.
The Honda’s Ecological Drive Assist System was presented in LA last week and now, Honda released images of the Japanese Insight’s EDAS which the color-changing speedometer background, that is used in the system’s guidance function.
If the color behind the number is green, you’re driving efficiently and when you’re driving in the least economical way, the whole screen turns blue.
Honda Colors to Curb Speeding
The Japan version of the Insight will also be able to integrate with the optional Honda HDD InterNavi System, and combined with this system, the EDAS can give more advice on how to enhance fuel economy while driving, specifically by looking through a driver’s history and suggesting driver-specific changes. I can’t wait to see the new Insight with EDAS in the spring of 2009.0 Protesters clash with police Saturday night in Seattle
Protesters broke windows and a Seattle police officer was treated for a minor cut after being hit in the face with a rock thrown during a protest Saturday night on Capitol Hill.
Police said protesters were throwing rocks and shooting fireworks at police shortly before 11 p.m. A police vehicle window also was shattered.
Traffic was blocked, and protesters smashed a window at Ferrari of Seattle, at 1401 12th Ave. Police had a large presence on bikes, and many of the protesters dressed in black covered their faces.
Saturday afternoon, a post on the Black Lives Matter Facebook page said there was an event planned at Seattle Central at 10 pm.
“There will be a diversity of tactics so be sure to know your limits and roll with friends if you go,” the post read.
The crowd that had several dozen people began moving about 10:30, and had confrontations with police shortly before 11 p.m.
Saturday’s incident was the third large protest in Seattle after it was decided Monday night that the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who shot Mike Brown would not be indicted. That officer, Darren Wilson, resigned earlier Saturday.
On Monday night, protesters blocked Interstate 5 and clashed with police on Capitol Hill. Rapper Macklemore was among those who marched, and the group spanned from Westlake Park to the Central District and onto Interstate 5. Some carried a banner that said “We are Chris Monfort,” referring to the man charged with aggravated murder for the death of a Seattle police officer on Oct. 31, 2009.
On Friday, protesters who chanted “Black lives matter” stormed Pacific Place and Westlake Mall, disrupting the tree lighting ceremony and preventing school children from performing. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole met with the student after the ceremony was disrupted.
Seattle police came to the top floor to force the line of protestors back downstairs. Once in the lobby, dozens of people laid on the floor, continuing to chant refrains about the people they feel were unjustly killed by police.
One of the protesters tried unsuccessfully to break a window behind where the ceremony was taking placing on the balcony of Westlake Mall. Five people were arrested.
Some parents told KIRO 7 their children were frightened, and Westlake closed early on Black Friday, and
“While I understand the hurt and frustration that our city has experienced in the past days, this is a city that respects the rule of law,” Murray said in a statement. “I support the First Amendment rights of protestors, but violence against property or police officers will not be tolerated in our city.”
Want to talk about the news of the day? Watch free streaming video on the KIRO 7 mobile app and iPad app, and join us here on Facebook.MS. IFILL: Flying high on Tuesday, hitting the ground running Wednesday. President Obama gets to work tonight on "Washington Week."
MS. IFILL: Good evening. Those of us who live here in Washington are so pleased you all came to visit. You crammed into our metro system. You slept in our homes and in general you partied like it was 1999. But now that you've gone home, the Obama girls are back in school, and their dad is back at work. President Obama claimed the main spotlight during his inaugural address, where he signaled a clean break from the Bush administration.
PRES. OBAMA (From videotape.): As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
MS. IFILL: So, Karen, it's one thing to raise questions about the outgoing administration and to set this high-minded tone -- what about the actual managing of it? What happens when these guys got to the West Wing?
MS. TUMULTY: Well, the really striking thing about, I think, this administration is that they are attempting to do so many things at once. And it's really going to be an incredible management challenge. And I think that is one of the reasons that in this transition, they have built a very, very powerful White House team. They have moved -- big personalities like Larry Summers into the White House as the chief economic advisor. They've created new power centers for health care reform and for environmental policy right there in the White House. And that is both a sign of how much they are trying to do, but also it's going to be a real management challenge.
MS. IFILL: Well, and so who gets to do that managing? It sounds like a lot of people poised to trip all over each other.
MS. TUMULTY: Well, they picked a big personality for White House chief of staff in Rahm Emanuel and I interviewed him earlier this week. And he is a guy who is known for his kind of bare-knuckle style, his bluntness, but he acknowledges that this situation is one where a lot of the things that are his strengths could also be his weaknesses if he doesn't manage it right.
MS. IFILL: Okay let's talk about two of the big things that he did. When you're talking about keeping all these balls in the air and doing them at once, Martha, he met with his military advisors on Wednesday and said, remember that deadline I set about withdrawing America troops from Iraq? Let's get on with that.
MS. RADDATZ: And I think when he did that -- first he said he was going to meet with the Joint Chiefs and I think they were a little confused there at the White House that that's not really who he would meet with right away, the Joint Chiefs, to talk about military advise. But he did get plans laid out for these --
MS. IFILL: I'm sorry, that's not who he would meet with?
MS. RADDATZ: That's not who he would meet with. He would meet with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He would meet with his NSC advisors actually --
MS. IFILL: I didn't know that. Anyway.
MS. RADDATZ: Well, he's president now, okay, but --
MS. IFILL: He's supposed to know these things.
MS. RADDATZ: We'll give him a break on that. We'll give him a break on that. But he met and they laid out plans or started to lay out plans for the 16 month withdrawal, which President Obama says he wants or the three-year withdrawal, which is the Status Of Forces Agreement that the U.S. has gone into with the Iraqis.
MS. IFILL: So Pete, the other big thing he did this week was he decided that it was time to close Guantanamo, keeping one of his big campaign promises. Is that what he's really doing?
MR. WILLIAMS: Well, that was the easy part, saying, close Guantanamo. Now, the hard part begins.
MS. IFILL: Signing the piece of paper.
MR. WILLIAMS: Right. Now, what do you do with those guys? And it seems clear there're going to be three categories of people. There will be those that can be released or sent to another country for detention. This is a continuation of a Bush administration policy. The belief is now that they're closing Guantanamo down, maybe other countries will be more willing to take some of the detainees.
MS. IFILL: Now, both Pete and Martha are outlining why this is all so complicated. You guys were talking about -- Karen and Dan -- about how they make this work, how he turns the poetry into action. Do they know this? Did they anticipate this? Did they see signs of the difficulties beginning in the transition?
MR. BALZ: Yes. I think -- look, they have the luxury in the first week to be able to take symbolic acts essentially. What they did with Guantanamo at this point is more symbolic than real. And they know that they are trying to buy themselves some time while they signal, we are making a big departure from George W. Bush. So I think this is built in. I don't think they had any illusions that how you close Guantanamo was going to be very difficult. But everything he has done so far in the first few days is a follow-on from a campaign promise that he made over the last two years. But there have always been questions about these and what he's trying to do is get a combination of the good will by changing and the time to work out some of the knotty problems.
MS. TUMULTY: But I do think that so much of what he has done in this week, at least, goes to his -- the premise of his campaign, which is that he could change the way things get done in Washington --
MS. IFILL: Like freezing salaries, ethics regulations --
MS. TUMULTY: -- absolutely. There's a new openness, for instance, by repealing by executive order some of the security measures that were privacy measures that were brought in after 9/11. For instance, government agencies are not going to find it quite so easy to deny public requests for information. Ex-presidents cannot exert executive authority, executive privilege to keep things from getting released. New lobbying regulations that would say anybody who has lobbied within the last two years cannot be at the agency where they're lobbying, although we've already seen that rule broken a couple of times.
MS. RADDATZ: -- secretary of defense, yes, designated.
MS. TUMULTY: I think that was the signal, though, was that there's a new way of doing things.
MR. BALZ: But the interesting thing is we've talked all about the symbolism and the quick action. There's no symbolism on the economy. There's no symbolism that he's been able to do this week. The one thing he might be able to do as president is convey a greater sense of confidence in American people, but he hasn't really been able to do that.
MS. IFILL: But you know why is possibly -- it's possible because it's really up to Congress. That's where the ball is right now. And he can't do a stroke of a pen with something that Congress has to pass.Seven Lions Interview – How to Meet Him & Life Lessons
Seven Lions (or Jeff Montalvo) is a truly gentle and old soul. Hard to believe if you have ever seen him perform. His presence and music is so soulful and intense that I was taken aback by his gentleness when we met. Seven Lions is from Santa Barbara and blew up with his remix of Above & Beyond’s “You Got To Go.” I had the chance to interview Seven Lions at Tomorrowworld and was honored to finally meet him.
One of the coolest parts of the interview was Seven Lions explaining how you can win a chance to drink craft beers with him at a brewery when he comes to your city. Follow Seven Lions on Twitter and look out for #drinkingwithstrangers. Hear Seven Lions describe it below:
Here is a slice of his remix of a Florence and the Machine’s Cosmic Love that will whisk you away to another world.
Click Here for Adventure Club Video InterviewSenator Leila de Lima sends this warning to critics, including President Rodrigo Duterte: 'Mapapahiya kayo diyan'
Published 1:55 PM, August 20, 2016
MANILA, Philippines – Senator Leila de Lima on Saturday, August 20, warned President Rodrigo Duterte that he will face humiliation if he continues linking her to illegal drugs.
If her critics prove her links to the drug trade, De Lima said, "I am willing to be shot in front of the President."
She also sent this warning to critics, including Duterte: "Mapapahiya kayo diyan, at ayoko yang mangyari yang sa inyo (You will be humiliated, and I don't want that to happen to you)."
The senator said she's prepared to resign and to be "shot" for as long as the evidence used against her is "not coerced, not fabricated."
This comes after President Rodrigo Duterte slammed De Lima for being "immoral." Duterte said De Lima’s driver is her "lover" who accepts money from drug lords detained at the New Bilibid Prisons.
De Lima is set to lead a Senate probe into the recent spate of killings linked to Duterte’s war on drugs.
De Lima earlier denied allegations that she is linked to the illegal drug trade. She said, "That’s an absolute lie. That’s completely false!"
Witchhunt vs De Lima
The senator, a former justice secretary and human rights commission chair, also denounced Duterte's tirades as "character assassination."
De Lima said on Thursday, August 18: "This is no less than abuse and misuse of executive power. I don't think the Constitution has ever contemplated such abuse of power on such scale, as it assumes every President to conduct himself in a manner befitting the office he holds. It seems that this is not the case for this President."
In Saturday's news conference, De Lima also suggested a witchhunt for evidence against her.
De Lima explained that since the first week after the May 9 elections, she has received reports that some people have been going to the New Bilibid Prisons to look for possible witnesses against her.
She said these people have been trying to talk to certain convicts to claim that she is a coddler of drug pushers.
She said her sources have also warned her, "Umpisa pa lang 'yan, senator (That's just the beginning, senator.)"
Her informants told her that critics have also begun investigating people who worked with her under the Aquino administration.
"Tama na ito (This is enough)," she said. – Rappler.comHappy Flag Day! June 14th is an American holiday that celebrates its flag. Usually, this isn’t a major holiday, but I thought it’d be interesting to make a flag for Flag Day. I remembered there was something called the Cicada Design Principle, that I wanted to try, and I thought I’d apply it to making non-repeating waves to a flag.
The Cicada Design Principle is a way to make seamless non-repeating backgrounds (for all intents and purposes) with just a few parts and some prime numbers.
Research has shown that the population of creatures that eat cicadas — typically birds, spiders, wasps, fish and snakes — often have shorter 2 – 6 year cycles of boom and bust. So, if our cicadas were to emerge, say, every 12 years, any predator that works in either 2, 3, 4 or 6 year cycles would be able to synchronize their boom years with this regular cicada feast. In fact, they’d probably name a public holiday after it called Cicada Day. That’s not much fun if you’re a cicada. On the other hand, if a brood of 17-year cicadas was unlucky enough to emerge during a bumper 3-year wasp season, it will be 51 years before that event occurs again. In the intervening years, our cicadas can happily emerge in their tens of thousands, completely overwhelm the local predator population, and be mostly left in peace.
Using that as inspiration, you can tile a few tiles together to make a non-repeating background. Basically, you use a few basic repeating patterns as building blocks, and you put them together spaced a prime number of units apart.
As it turned out, it was hard to make the stars flow with the waves in the flag, so I made the stars section flat.
But I thought it looked more like curtains than it did a flag, due to the size of the ripples, so instead, I thought it might be more interesting as a cup. so I turned the pattern on its side and did a rotational extrusion.
As you can see, the pattern of the waves don’t quite repeat, even though there’s only a couple patterns there. Try changing the different parameters of the OpenSCAD file and lemme know what else you end up with!'Davao City is not Makati City. Duterte is not Binay,' says the Mindanaoan presidential bet after refuting allegations of corruption from the vice president's camp
Published 6:30 PM, March 18, 2016
QUEZON CITY, Philippines – Rodrigo Duterte vowed to withdraw if the Commission on Audit (COA) can prove he stole or misused funds of the Davao City government.
“Hahamunin ko CO |
according to a study done by Alan Gerber, a political science professor at Yale University. Mr. Gerber offered people in the Washington metropolitan area a free subscription to either The Washington Post or The Washington Times for several weeks ahead of a gubernatorial election. The Post, by his estimation and work done before, slanted as much to the left as The Times did to the right.
In a survey he conducted after the election, Mr. Gerber found those who were given a free subscription of The Post were 8 percentage points more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor than those assigned to the control group.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.New Jersey punk rock outfit Titus Andronicus has announced the release of their third album, Local Business, due October 23rd via XL Recordings. Their first release since the departure of guitarist Amy Klein and bassist Ian Graetzer, the ten-track effort was recorded this past April and May with producer Kevin McMahon and features guest musicians Owen Pallett, Steven Harm, and Elio DeLuca.
On their Tumblr, the band described the album as where “Titus Andronicus the studious recording project and Titus Andronicus the raucous touring machine are no longer two distinct beings; there is only Titus Andronicus, rock and roll band.” While 2010’s CoS Top Star-earning The Monitor was driven by a narrative, Local Business aims to make “explicit the implications of the first two LPs, that the inherent meaninglessness of life in an absurd universe gives the individual power to create their own values and their own morality”, along the way referencing “a devastating automobile wreck, a food fight (that is to say, a battle with an eating disorder), an electrocution, a descent into insanity, and ultimately, a forgiveness of the self for its many faults.”
Known for routinely previewing new songs live, the band have already debuted at least five album tracks in concert (plus “(I Am The) Electric Man” live from the ER). Check out the full tracklist below, followed by those replays.
Local Business Tracklist:
01. Ecce Homo
02. Still Life With Hot Deuce And Silver Platter
03. Upon Viewing Oregons Landscape With The Flood Of Detritus
04. Food Fight!
05. My Eating Disorder
06. Titus Andronicus VS. The Absurd Universe (3rd Round KO)
07. In A Big City
08. In A Small Body
09. (I Am The) Electric Man
10. Tried To Quit SmokingCrime Stoppers is seeking the public’s help in locating a wanted fugitive police say left the scene of an accident that severely injured one person last December.
Authorities say on Dec. 9, 2015, Aaron Jordan Riley, 35, was driving the victim’s vehicle in the 700 block of the North Loop West when he struck a guardrail, causing the vehicle to roll and trap the victim inside the front passenger seat. Officials say the victim sustained a fractured nose, neck and eye socket.
According to officials, Riley ran from the scene in a heavily wooded area and was later identified through additional investigative evidence.
Police describe Riley as a white male, approximately 6-foot-1, 190 to 200 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes.
Crime Stoppers is offering a reward up to $5,000 for information leading to the charging and/or arrest of Riley. Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers by phone at (713)-222-TIPS (8477), by texting TIP610 plus the information to CRIMES (274637) or online.Spartacus is betrayed by a Roman general and sold into slavery to Lentulus Batiatus to train at his ludus gladiatorius in Capua, Italy.
1. The Red Serpent 55m After a Thracian warrior enlisted by the Romans to fight commits an act of rebellious violence, he is forced to do battle in the gladiatorial arena.
2. Sacramentum Gladiatorum 53m Enslaved in gladiatorial school, the newly christened Spartacus buries his desire for revenge when his new master vows to reunite him with his wife.
3. Legends 55m Although he has proved himself in training, Spartacus's coarse attitude and relentless quest to see his wife isolate him from his fellow gladiators.
4. The Thing in the Pit 49m Having performed shamefully in the arena against Crixus, Spartacus is forced to fight in the pits. Batiatus may be at risk if his debts aren't repaid.
5. Shadow Games 55m Batiatus challenges Spartacus and Crixus to overcome their mutual hostility and fight as a team against a legendary and unbeaten opponent.
6. Delicate Things 54m Flush with Spartacus's victory in the arena, Batiatus informs the gladiator that he will now fulfill his deepest wish to be reunited with his wife.
7. Great and Unfortunate Things 51m Overcome by his wife's death and the pressure of Batiatus's control, Spartacus must make a choice: assume the mantle of a champion gladiator, or die.
8. Mark of the Brotherhood 51m Batiatus buys more slaves to be trained as gladiators and ponders the idea of selling Crixus. Ilithyia coaxes a new recruit to try to kill Spartacus.
9. Whore 50m Batiatus breaks the news that Spartacus is to service the richest woman in Rome.
10. Party Favors 52m Spartacus and Crixus are set up to fight in an exhibition match for Numerius's birthday -- but Crixus is intent on blood.
11. Old Wounds 52m Spartacus hovers on the brink. Meanwhile, Batiatus plots revenge against his enemies.
12. Revelations 55m Lucretia and Batiatus await the arrival of Glaber, hoping to receive his patronage, while Spartacus focuses his attention on his plan for revenge.We've got a huge amount of work to do to fix what's wrong with U.S. foreign policy. He gave us a place to start., 08.08.13.
Suppose the United States was hit by another terrorist attack, and hundreds of Americans were killed, and afterward, it was discovered that those responsible had been in the country for months, making calls and sending email to each other and to terrorists abroad, yet nobody in the National Security Agency was able to connect the dots and prevent the attack. It’s safe to say the public outrage would dwarf the current outcry over the NSA surveillance program.
As part of its efforts to ferret out terrorist networks, the NSA collects phone numbers and duration of calls, as well as info on email sent and received, to create a database that can be searched for links to terrorist activity. It’s not “wiretapping.” Calls aren’t listened to nor email read without court approval, which requires reasonable suspicion of terrorist activity. According to the government, the program has helped to thwart 54 terrorist “events.”
Many say they’re outraged by the program, likening it to Watergate-era abuses. We think it would be shocking if the government were not taking such basic steps to protect its citizens.
We live in a world where corporations collect and analyze our personal information every time we use a smartphone, pull out a “store loyalty” card at the supermarket, check in on social media or use Google, all for the purpose of selling advertising and marketing products. For the government not to utilize the same simple data-mining techniques in the interest of national security would be inexcusable.Make a decision: am I a criminal or a good doctor?
Posted
If Victoria Police refuse to prosecute me over the death of Steve Guest, they must be asked why. If a law is "honoured more in the breach than the observance", then it is a bad law and needs to be changed, writes Rodney Syme.
The Victoria Police are "reopening the file" into the death of Steve Guest after I admitted last Monday week that I had provided him with the drug Nembutal.
Doctors have been easing or assisting (depending on your point of view) the deaths of their patients for at least the last 60 years, and probably for centuries.
They have done this because it is a necessity - dying can be associated with intolerable suffering that can only be relieved by death, and doctors have a fundamental ethical duty to relieve suffering.
In 1957, English judge Patrick Devlin created a precedent that has been adopted in principle in those countries which embrace legal systems derived from the British. He said:
If the first purpose of medicine, the restoration of health, can no longer be achieved, there is still much for the doctor to do, and he is entitled to [do] all that is proper and necessary to relieve pain and suffering even if measures he takes may incidentally shorten life.
Devlin was indicating that a doctor had a duty to provide treatment which the doctor could foresee would hasten death. But he also said that doctors had no special defence under the law compared to other citizens; yet any other citizen who could foresee the likelihood of death occurring from their action would be guilty of manslaughter.
The criminal law is solidly based around intention, and Devlin provided a legal precedent that the intention to relieve suffering justified unintentional (coincidental but foreseen) hastening of death.
Intention is a difficult concept to prove, particularly in medical matters. Devlin and the ambiguity around intentions allowed the introduction into palliative care in the late 1980s of 'terminal sedation', a practice of providing continuous analgesia and sedation to induce and maintain deep unconsciousness, without any provision of food or fluids, for terminal suffering that could not be relieved in any other way - "it provided a readily available means of controlling symptoms and overcoming distress where no feasible alternative existed previously".
Such treatment can clearly hasten death, and is validated by legal precedent and common medical practice, but not by law. The cumulative effect of injected analgesics and sedatives, plus dehydration, can cause death over a period of days, yet this is not considered an 'unnatural death' reportable to the coroner.
It is against this background that I saw and advised Steve Guest in 2005. He was terminally ill due to oesophageal cancer. He could not swallow, and despite a PEG stomach tube, he was starving to death, his nutrition consumed by the cancer.
His pain was somewhat relieved by morphine, but every time he had a dose he described it as like "a shot of lead into his brain". He was maintaining himself at home with the help of family, friends and an excellent GP, but was imminently facing incarceration in institutional care for the remainder of his life.
Steve had significant physical suffering, but even more intolerable was his psychological and existential suffering. He had a profound sense of loss of control over his life and of ending in an existence which was anathema to him.
He had a primal fear, felt by many dying people, which can consume the precious time around the end of life. Relief of this often unrecognised psychological and existential suffering is one of the most important palliative actions a doctor can take, and it is best achieved by giving that person control over the end of their life.
I discussed institutional palliative care and terminal sedation with Steve but he was adamant that it was not for him. I did advise and support Steve Guest in his terminal illness, and gave him medication (Nembutal) which was a remarkably effective palliation, as he gained the strength to advocate for law reform over the subsequent two weeks.
Do I want to be charged? In a way, yes, because then a definitive decision could be made. But another part of me says no, because I wouldn't want the stress.
He apparently then used the medication to end his suffering and his life. Had he used a cocktail of the same drugs used in palliative sedation and taken them by mouth, the doctor prescribing those drugs would not have been in legal danger, able to argue that his intention was to palliate. I would similarly argue that my intention in providing Nembutal was to palliate Steve - it was not my intention that he should end his life. I could foresee this possibility but it was not my intention that he do so. It did prove to be his intention.
Over the past 20 years State Parliaments have rejected 16 Bills to protect doctors who provide such palliation in prescribed circumstances. Like other end-of-life interventions which may hasten death, the courts have ultimately been the avenue to changes in medical practice, as we have seen with abortion law reform.
Modern end-of-life medicine is based on judicial decisions and accepted medical practice rather than statute law. If Parliaments will not address the deficiencies in the law, then our courts must have an opportunity to influence the outcome, either by judicial precedent or jury decision.
Do I want to be charged? In a way, yes, because then a definitive decision could be made. But another part of me says no, because I wouldn't want the stress.
If I were charged, I'd be asking the jury to decide whether I'm a criminal or a good doctor. I'm pretty confident about what a jury would think.
Alternatively, if the Director of Public Prosecutions refuses to prosecute, he must be asked why. If a law is "honoured more in the breach than the observance", then it is a bad law and needs to be reviewed and changed. In Victoria, there is no better place for this than the Law Reform Commission for such an expert and independent review.
Dr Rodney Syme is a campaigner for voluntary euthanasia. View his full profile here.
Topics: euthanasia, lawsOn Monday, the Occupy movement’s Iowa arm announced plans to bring its protests to the 2012 campaign trail ahead of the state’s Jan. 3 caucuses, CNN reported Monday:
Supporters of Occupy Ames hold signs during protests Friday, Oct. 21, 2011, in Ames, Iowa. (Nirmalendu Majumdar/AP)
The plan has been dubbed the “First in the Nation Caucus Occupation” - a play on words for the first-in-the-nation presidential contest. The idea is to have activists from across the nation, and possibly beyond, descend on Iowa.
The plan: “People coming to Iowa, occupying every presidential (candidate’s) office, shutting them down until they start talking real turkey about what’s going on in this country, where [there are] 99% of the people who are not benefiting, at the expense of the 1% who are getting away with murder,” said Frank Cordaro, one of the organizers.
The plan is to target offices for Republican candidates and President Barack Obama’s campaign offices in the state.
The Iowa General Assembly, of which Cordaro is a member, approved the plan to invite protesters from other Occupy movements to Iowa to protest at candidates’ campaign headquarters from December through the caucuses.
According to the Des Moines Register, the Occupy Iowa effort has been active since early October. On Oct. 22, protesters marched to Obama’s Des Moines campaign office “to denounce what they called his failure to protect the vast majority of Americans from home foreclosures, rising health care costs and student loan debt.”
More Occupy Wall Street coverage from PostPolitics.com
Occupy Wall Street protests, yet another sign of voter frustration?
How Occupy Wall Street could help Democrats
Occupy Wall Street protests reveal liberal tensions
Professional left hopes ‘Occupy Wall Street’ not the endThe formidable Charlie Nesson, founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and all-round good-guy law-prof, has taken up the defense of a Boston University student who's been sued for file-sharing. Nesson is arguing against the constitutionality of the record companies' lawsuits, in a winner-take-all suit that could force the RIAA to come up with a better answer than "sue your customers" (remember, the biggest file-sharers are also the biggest music-buyers, concert-goers, etc -- being a music superfan meansyou do more of everything to do with music).
Nesson argues that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional because it effectively lets a private group – the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA – carry out civil enforcement of a criminal law. He also says the music industry group abused the legal process by brandishing the prospects of lengthy and costly lawsuits in an effort to intimidate people into settling cases out of court.
Nesson, the founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said in an interview that his goal is to "turn the courts away from allowing themselves to be used like a low-grade collection agency."
Nesson is best known for defending the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and for consulting on the case against chemical companies that was depicted in the film "A Civil Action." His challenge against the music labels, made in U.S. District Court in Boston, is one of the most determined attempts to derail the industry's flurry of litigation.KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan Attorney-General Muhammad Isaaq Aloko has kept his job despite a decision by an angry President Hamid Karzai to sack him over an unauthorized approach to the Taliban, a senior Afghan official said on Tuesday.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a news conference in Kabul November 3, 2009. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood
The senior official and a member of parliament both said on Monday that Karzai had decided to dismiss Aloko after he held an unsanctioned meeting with Taliban peace negotiators in the United Arab Emirates.
Karzai had called for a dismissal notice, but after lengthy negotiations decided late on Monday not to sign the document, the official said.
“After a day of negotiations involving senior government officials and some cabinet ministers, President Karzai did not sign the letter that would have officially sacked the attorney general,” the senior government official said.
The uproar is likely to add to concerns among the country’s Western backers about political stability, especially after the NATO-led combat mission ends next year.
Peace talks between the Karzai administration and the Taliban are seen as crucial to averting intensified war after the NATO withdrawal.
Talks with the Taliban began in 2010 but they have been marked by a series of missteps, delays and allegations of plotting and interference.
The attorney-general’s supporters in the cabinet told Karzai Aloko had met the Taliban negotiators in the UAE to discuss the fate of his brother, who had been kidnapped by the insurgents, and not the peace process.
“It was not a legal issue but a personal issue,” said the official, when asked about the reason Karzai had not followed through on his decision to sack Aloko.
The kidnapping of Aloko’s brother had been kept secret, but officials told Reuters attempts to negotiate his release had failed.Sports fans unable or unwilling to make the trip to New Jersey for Super Bowl weekend have another option: Las Vegas.
"It's a big tradition," said Mark Murrell, 41, a seafood company owner from Chicago. He'll be heading to Las Vegas to join a group of friends from around the country who have been flying in for the annual Big Game festivities for the past 16 years.
"Vegas is the mecca for Super Bowl shenanigans," he said. "You can do all the betting you want, but we also go for the parties and the experience."
Murrell and his buddies—all 40-somethings who work in finance or run their own businesses—share game-weekend advice and experiences on Twitter at @VegasBigGame. One pre-game travel tip: "Have a car pick you up at the airport, because the taxi lines that weekend are unreal."In February 2015, FIFA awarded Fox the rights to the 2026 World Cup without opening up the bidding, inciting confusion and frustration from other networks. Soon after, FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke hinted that the organization gave Fox the deal so that Fox wouldn’t sue over the potential rescheduling of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, while maintaining that the agreement was favorable for FIFA.
But an inquiry into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup released Tuesday revealed plain as day that FIFA was forced into a bad deal.
This whole saga began in December 2010 when Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup in a bidding process that has drawn widespread suspicion of corruption. Given the dangerously hot temperatures Qatar experiences during the summer months, the World Cup was eventually rescheduled for November and December, in an unprecedented move. That schedule shift greatly displeased Fox, which airs American football in the fall and winter and would have to sacrifice on one sport or the other if the two overlapped.
And so FIFA gave Fox (as well as Canadian rightsholder Bell Media and North American Spanish-language rightsholder Telemundo) an incredible deal, extending their agreement through 2026 at the same cost the network is paying for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. That rate is almost certainly much less than Fox would have had to pay in a bidding war, especially given that 1.) the 2026 the World Cup might be in North America and 2.) the tournament will expand from 32 to 48 teams, meaning more games and more viewers.
So Fox will suffer through the inconvenience of a winter World Cup in 2022 in exchange for a remarkably lucrative World Cup in 2026.
FIFA, meanwhile, will be burdened by a devastatingly bad deal, all thanks to a kooky bidding process years earlier.Hi everyone!
Thanks for taking a moment to visit our Nepal 2012 project page!
We, seven student volunteers will be living and working in Labernager village, a small community of roughly 1800 people, over a period of six weeks. There will be several stages to our development project at the Rashtriya Primary School, which currently holds 188 pupils. We will construct two classrooms in order to create extra learning space and accommodate increasing student numbers, along with furniture and a fence (to keep out panthers we are warned!). Also, in the aim of promoting basic health and sanitation in the community, we will help improve toilet facilities and develop a deep boring water system in the school in order to provide a consistent and clean supply of drinking water. We will also have the opportunity to teach basic classes on environmental awareness and its effect on sanitation and humans generally.
Rashtriya is a government school currently operating under extremely basic facilities. Whilst it is open to any child in the community, the majority of its students are from the most disadvantaged sectors of society -100 students are from the untouchable caste- so our project is targeted at children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The school has extremely poor toilet facilities which create health risks, particularly diarrhoea, for the students and teachers. With such water borne diseases rife, the risks of these will be greatly lessened with our work on improving toilet facilities and the installation of a deep boring water system will create a clean water supply. Currently the school does not have enough access to water for drinking, cleaning and cooking purposes during the dry season and it relies on a well which is a long walk away. In turn, valuable education time is wasted on travelling to collect water especially when the amount of water carried back is never sufficient for the needs of the whole school. Thus, the in-school water system will not only provide cleaner water but also closer and more conveniently. Such facilities should increase attendance so that the additional space that we create will help the school achieve its aim of upgrading to lower secondary school and allow these disadvantaged students to continue their education further.The Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, is to implement a form of strict Islamic Sharia law across Brunei next month, rejecting foreign criticism of the move.
New legislation will phase in a version of Sharia law that will introduce penalties of amputation for theft, stoning for adultery and flogging for homosexual acts.
The reigning Sultan Bolkiah, 67, called on the whole of Brunei's diverse population to unite and support the new legislation.
He said that the laws, to be implemented next month, were a "great achievement for the country, and not a backward or old-fashioned step."
Human rights groups have condemned the move but Bolkiah stated that "people outside of Brunei should respect us in the same way that we respect them."
"Brunei is showing its feudal characteristics as an 18th-century state rather than an important member of a regional Southeast Asian economic and social consensus in the 21st century," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
The south-east Asia nation of Brunei holds a population of approximately 440,000, of which a third is non-Muslim - predominantly Christian or Buddhist Chinese.
In a nation where dissent is rare, some Bruneian citizens have taken to the internet to voice their concern at the new laws.
However Bolkiah, who was crowned in 1968, warned dissenters that they can "no longer be given the liberty to continue with their mockery" and hinted that they could be charged with slander.
Brunei, despite being an autocratic state, is ranked fifth in the world for per capita GDP, one above the United States.
Bolkiah holds a personal wealth of £11.9bn ($20bn), making him one of the richest men in the world, and lives in a 1,800-room palatial residence.On Thursday afternoon, the Illinois House of Representatives was a raucous place — with talk of a deal on a tax increase, Medicaid reform and proposed budget cuts all sweeping around the chamber, members created a cacophony of sound that echoed around the huge chamber. But late in the afternoon, as the House began to consider Senate Bill 3539 — a measure to end Illinois' broken death penalty system — the chamber became hushed. Every member seemed to grasp the importance of the debate, coming after a decade in which the State of Illinois has operated under a death penalty moratorium because so many innocent men were released from death row.
Rep. Karen Yarbrough and other supporters made clear, concise points in favor of repeal. They noted that the state has spent more than $100 million over the past decade prosecuting death penalty cases, despite the fact that no one has been executed. They also made clear that the death penalty is not a deterrent and that supporting the death penalty means accepting the very real possibility that the state of Illinois will execute an innocent person. Perhaps most compelling were the voices of several previous supporters of the death penalty — including Reps. Susan Mendoza, Paul Froehlich and Mike Boland — who said that they no longer could support the risk of executing the innocent. It was compelling and moving.
Opponents of the bill trotted out two familiar but ultimately empty arguments. First they suggested that the only appropriate penalty for those who committed heinous crimes is the death penalty and relied repeatedly on gruesome references to murders in Illinois. These repeal opponents also pushed the notion that law enforcement needed the death penalty as a "tool" to coerce suspects to confess to particular acts. Yet one of the sad realities in Illinois is that we have seen a host of false confessions; confessions elicited by law enforcement using such "tools."
The debate reached a crescendo when Rep. Yarbrough closed her argument saying that the House had a chance to make history and to close the book on Illinois' failed death penalty system.
As the votes were being tabulated, everyone watched with anticipation as the "yes" votes inched up above 50 (with 60 necessary for passage) and then in shock as the count froze at 59 votes in favor. Rep. Yarbrough immediately asked for "postponed consideration" a technical procedure that allows the sponsor time to search for any additional, necessary votes.
After approximately an hour, the measure was called for a second vote where it reached the magic threshold of 60 votes.
So, by that slim margin, Senate Bill 3539 moves to the Senate where it is expected to be considered today or tomorrow (before the new legislature convenes on Wednesday).
Keep your fingers crossed. And keep those calls coming. Illinois may be about to make history.THE LIBERAL Party has embraced the unusual political strategy of registering the domain name “Abbott Lies’’ as a website address and redirecting all traffic to Liberal website promoting the May budget.
Stung by accusations that Tony Abbott has broken promises as Prime Minister, the Liberal Party decided to beat Labor to the punch and register the address www.abbottlies.com.au.
But the attempt by digital natives within the Coalition to get ahead of the game has backfired with Labor openly mocking the bizarre strategy.
Anyone who types in the address “Abbott lies’’ is now redirected to an image of Joe Hockey beaming behind a banner that urges readers to “lean more’ about the 2014 budget. The abbottlies.com.au web traffic is immediately diverted to www.liberal.org.au
According to domain registry documents the website was registered by the Liberal Party of Australia on May 13, the same day that Joe Hockey delivered his first budget.
Labor leader Bill Shorten said the decision of the Liberal Party to register the domain name Abbottlies.com.au was a spectacular own goal.
“Tony Abbott’s lies are up in lights for everyone to see at abbottslies.com.au,’’ Mr Shorten said.
“He can try all the tricks and excuses he likes, it won’t change the fact that he has broken his promises.
“Tony Abbott knew exactly what he was doing, he knew Australians would be angry about his lies — that’s why he bought these websites.’’
Mr Shorten said the fact it was registered on the same day as the budget was a inadvertently fitting.
“On the very night when Tony Abbott was breaking all his promises, the Liberal Party was buying these websites,’’ he said.
: I think there is an incredibly irony when people type in abbottlies.com and they get redirected to the Liberal Party’s main website.’’
The website strategy comes just days after the Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the Attorney General George Brandis were mocked over their attempts to explain plans to ask telcos to store metadata for longer to protect Australia against crime and terrorism attacks.by Tambay A. Obenson via shadowandact.com
Director Ryan Coogler and actor Michael B. Jordan will reunite once again for an adaptation of a 2014 essay in The New Yorker titled “Wrong Answer,” written by Rachel Aviv, which explores an adult standardized test cheating scandal at Atlanta Public Schools through the lens of one middle school. If Coogler reteaming with Jordan wasn’t thrilling enough, Ta-Nehisi Coates is attached to write the screenplay based on Aviv’s article.
In addition, Brad Pitt’s Plan B (producer on Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight,” as well as “Selma,” “12 Years a Slave” and more) will produce “Wrong Answer” with Coogler, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Keliner. New Regency will also produce and fully finance the picture. Jordan will star as math teacher Damany Lewis, who struggles under the pressure imposed on his students and school to meet unrealistic standardized testing scores as part of the No Child Left Behind project. In order to save their jobs and prevent their school from shutting down, he joined in an effort to cheat the scores.
The scandal led to 11 teachers being convicted on racketeering charges. This will be the 4th time Coogler and Jordan will work together after “Fruitvale Station,” “Creed” and the upcoming “Black Panther,” which Coates has also been involved in, writing the new Black Panther comic book series, which influences Coogler’s upcoming Marvel and Disney superhero film.
Source: Ryan Coogler & Michael B. Jordan Reunite for ‘Wrong Answer’ – Scripted By Ta-Nehisi CoatesForty-three people died on Friday in clashes between militias in Libya, as did 22 on Sunday from bombs in Iraq. In Helmand, a return of the Taliban to power is now confidently expected. Why should we care? Why should it feature on our news?
The answer is that we helped to bring it about. Britain's three foreign wars in the past decade were uninvited military interventions to topple installed governments. All have ended in disaster.
In each case – Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan – it was easy to see evil in the prevailing regime. These are bad guys that we need to go after, said the Americans. Yet the removal of law and order from a nation is devastating, however cruel that order may have been. Iraqis today repeat that, whatever the ills of Saddam Hussein, under his rule most ordinary citizens and their families could walk the streets at night without fear of murder or kidnap. Religious differences were tolerated. Iraq should have been an oil-rich modern state. Even the Kurds, scourged by Saddam in the past, enjoyed autonomy and relative peace.
In each of these cases Britain and its allies, chiefly America, intervened to overthrow the army, disband government, dismantle the judiciary and leave militias to run riot. Little or no attempt was made to replace anarchy with a new order. "Nation building" was a fiasco. The British bombs that flattened government buildings in Kabul, Baghdad and Tripoli did not replace them, or those who worked in them. Those who dropped them congratulated themselves on their work and went home.
It is hard to exaggerate the misery and chaos created by so-called "liberal interventionism". It is hard to think of a more immoral foreign policy, roaming the (chiefly Muslim) world, killing people and sowing anarchy. That is why the blood-stained consequence should be splashed across headlines. Those who seek political kudos by visiting violence on foreign peoples should never be allowed to forget their deeds.In Western democracies now, everybody — everybody — hates professional politicians.
In Britain, the thuddingly conventional Theresa May called an election meant to empower her and barely squeaked by an anti-Semitic terrorist-loving back-bencher loony leftist named Jeremy Corbyn who had spent three decades as his Labour Party’s crazy uncle in the attic. May is a dead prime minister walking.
In France, the leaders of the two major parties that have dominated French politics for nearly 60 years both collapsed in corruption scandals and surrendered their nation to a 39-year-old one-time investment banker named Emmanuel Macron who campaigned with 3-D holograms like Princess Leia and had a little bit of government experience. His party, which came into existence a year ago, is likely to end up with the most dominant position in the national legislature in the history of France’s Fifth Republic.
And of course America elected Donald Trump, while the heart of the party that opposed him belonged not to Hillary Clinton — the Theresa May of America — but rather to a 74-year-old socialist gadfly who has never gotten anything done in the Senate.
Of all the political disruptions of recent years, this is the most significant. Enormous numbers of people no longer view politics either as an art or as a profession — as a complex machine, it takes time and patience and knowledge to master so that its power can be harnessed for a greater purpose.
Historically, political scientists have viewed voting populations as essentially conservative in nature. Western writers and thinkers love to talk about “revolutions” — the Reagan revolution, the Gingrich revolution — but that’s an abuse of the term. Revolutions are violent events that literally seek to create a new political social order whose goal is the reconfiguration of the destiny of a nation, a civilization, the planet. Voters don’t vote for revolutions.
The startling power shifts of the last year are not revolutionary, but they do constitute a rare voter revolt. And the revolt isn’t against bad policies. It’s a revolt against the very idea of the politician as a professional who has to master his trade like any other professional.
‘Politics is not something you need to have learned.’
All things being equal, the career of the practical politician follows a classic path. Ideally, she will occupy a variety of positions on her way up the ladder — local, statewide and in the nation’s capital, some legislative, some executive. She needs to gain experience, learn the nuts and bolts of the profession, learn from her mistakes and become both competent and trustworthy. She needs to demonstrate she can build relationships with others to accomplish things.
None of this is operative any longer. Politics is not something you need to have learned. No, better, it seems, to have avoided it completely so that you are not stained by having ever had to compromise or take an incontrovertible position on controversial matters.
In the case of both Macron and Trump, the highest elective posts in their countries have been converted into entry-level positions. Neither had ever stood for office before. Think about this. You wouldn’t take your car to a repair shop whose proprietor had never even so much as changed the oil, but in the second decade of the 21st century, people have felt amazingly free to hand the levers of power and the nuclear football to someone who doesn’t even know what the nuclear triad is.
Macron and Trump sold themselves specifically as anti-politicians beyond the ordinary boundaries of left and right, beholden to no party but themselves — visionary business executives who could cut through the nonsense and get things done.
He seems remarkably powerless in the most powerful job on earth, and remarkably ineffectual.
They took advantage of the mystical cult surrounding successful businessmen that has seeped through our culture to an extent that would have mystified even Sinclair Lewis, the American novelist who won a Nobel Prize for the way he parodied the pompous American man of business in the 1920s.
The cult preaches that the skills of leadership and decision-making every good businessman possesses are transferable to any circumstance. It’s why, to take one notorious example, Apple’s board felt comfortable dethroning Steve Jobs in 1983 and handing the job to a guy who had run Pepsi — because if you’ve run one corporation, hey, you’ve run them all.
That disaster story (Jobs was brought back to save his company a decade later) has been recapitulated a hundred times in Mega Corporation Land, and it broke through into American politics on Election Night 2016. We can see the results in Trump’s first six months.
He does not know how Washington works. He does not know how the executive branch works. He does not know the political system works. He does not understand the difference between the rules that govern a privately held family company and the astoundingly complicated set of rules that have been put in place to restrain American politicians from just doing whatever they want.
He seems remarkably powerless in the most powerful job on earth, and remarkably ineffectual. This enrages and frustrates him. The question is whether this bold experiment in empowering the citizen politician will, over time, prove to be such a failure that we will look again to the people who actually know the rules and master the trade to govern us again.
Or will we just move from Trump to Oprah?
John Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary MagazineWhen we tackled the topic of food myths last month, our inbox was flooded with more reader-submitted followup myths than we could debunk at one time. We asked our nutritionists back to debunk some more common misconceptions about food, health, and |
against his noble family and bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream. Dune is the world’s best-selling science fiction novel of all time, and often described as the Lord of the Rings of science fiction. If you’ve never read a science fiction book before, don’t start here, but make it your fifth. Did you know Dune was inspired by a trip to Oregon?
6 Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card – 1985 Criticized for its violence (and possibly popular because of it), Ender’s Game shows children on a military space station, training for the war against the evil alien Buggers. It won the Hugo and Nebula awards, even though the New York Times felt that the plot resembled a “grade Z, made-for-television, science-fiction rip-off movie.”
7 Foundation by Isaac Asimov – 1951 Psychohistory is one of Asimov’s best inventions: using a combination of history, psychology, and statistics, one can accurately predict the behavior of large groups of people. Foundation covers the beginning of the Galactic Empire’s collapse, and one man’s plan to reignite civilization after years of barbarism. Asimov’s characters tend be one-dimensional, but his stories are so entertaining that it’s easy to forgive that lapse.
8 Gateway by Frederik Pohl – 1977 There’s a really wonderful tension in stories about screwing around with alien technology you don’t understand, and Pohl uses that to full effect in Gateway. The characters are vulnerable, the scope is cinematic, and it’s just a lot of fun.
9 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – 1979 This is one of the funniest books written in the English language. It begins with the destruction of Earth, and things go downhill from there. Spaceships are boarded, aliens encountered, planets visited, and none of it is quite what a nice, normal human would expect. Do not read this book around other people, because you will annoy them by laughing so much.
10 Hyperion by Dan Simmons – 1989 Few science fiction books can claim to use the same structure as The Canterbury Tales and still be kick-ass sci-fi, but Hyperion pulls it off. On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.
11 Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton – 2004 The human race has had wormhole technology for over 300 years and has colonized several hundred planets. Hamilton’s exhilarating new opus proves that “intelligent space opera” isn’t an oxymoron.
– Publisher’s Weekly
12 Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey – 2011 Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach. Jim Holden is an officer on an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, The Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to The Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything. Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are definitely against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe. (James S.A. Corey is the pen name used by collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck)
13 Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter – 1999 This is hard SF – lots of science and what one reviewer called “mind candy,” but not much character development. The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth have left the Earth on the brink of devastation. As the world’s governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space. Now Malenfant gambles the very existence of time on a single desperate throw of the dice. Battling national sabotage and international outcry, as apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, he builds a spacecraft and launches it into deep space. The odds are a trillion to one against him. Or are they?
14 Old Man’s War by John Scalzi – 2005 The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. On his 75th birthday John Perry did two things: First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the CDF. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger.
15 Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke – 1973 An uncontested sci-fi classic, Rendezvous with Rama is also one of Clarke’s best novels, winning the Campbell, Hugo, Jupiter, and Nebula Awards. A huge, mysterious, cylindrical object appears in space, swooping in toward the sun. The citizens of the solar system send a ship to investigate before the enigmatic craft, called Rama, disappears. The astronauts given the task of exploring the hollow cylindrical ship are able to decipher some, but definitely not all, of the extraterrestrial vehicle’s puzzles. From the ubiquitous trilateral symmetry of its structures to its cylindrical sea and machine-island, Rama’s secrets are strange evidence of an advanced civilization. But who, and where, are the Ramans, and what do they want with humans? Perhaps the answer lies with the busily working biots, or the sealed-off buildings, or the inaccessible “southern” half of the enormous cylinder. Rama’s unsolved mysteries are tantalizing indeed. Rendezvous with Rama is fast-moving, fascinating, and a must-read for science fiction fans.
16 Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds – 2000 Alastair Reynolds’s first novel is “hard” SF on an epic scale, crammed with technological marvels and immensities. One man probes a galaxy-wide enigma: why does spacefaring humanity encounter so few remnants of intelligent life? Reynolds’s vision of a future dominated by artificial intelligence trembles with the ultimate cold of the dark between the stars.
-Publishers Weekly
17 The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks – 2004 It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilization. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he’s barely heard of — part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony — Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer — a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he’s ever known.
18 Solaris by Stanislaw Lem – 1961 Author Stanislaw Lem has the best aliens, mostly because he makes them completely and profoundly, well, alien. Communication with them is often impossible, and the humans that attempt to interact with them are well-intentioned but unsuccessful. Lem’s humans are some of the best in science fiction as well, because they are profoundly human. They screw up, are late, fail to see whole picture, act irrationally, and even the brightest of them can be swayed by vanity and pride. It’s possible to argue that Stanislaw Lem is the best science fiction writer ever, and Solaris is his most famous book. When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are plagued with their own repressed and newly corporeal memories. The Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates these incarnate memories, though its purpose in doing so is unknown, forcing the scientists to shift the focus of their quest and wonder if they can truly understand the universe without first understanding what lies within their hearts.
19 Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein – 1959 Starship Troopers was written while Heinlein was taking a break on Stranger in a Strange Land. Robert and his wife Virginia Heinlein created the small “Patrick Henry League” in an attempt to create support for the U.S. nuclear testing program. Heinlein found himself under attack both from within and outside the science fiction community for his views, so he wrote Starship Troopers to clarify and defend his military and political views at the time.
20 Tau Zero by Poul Anderson – 1970 Hard science fiction with a hell of an idea: what would happen if your light-speed engine malfunctioned and instead of slowing down, you just went faster and faster? Tau Zero does a masterful job of dealing with the consequences of near-light-speed, and the reaction of the humans trapped in the ship.
21 Startide Rising by David Brin – 1983 Brin’s tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being “uplifted” by a patron race. But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved: who uplifted humankind? The Terran exploration vessel Streaker has crashed in the uncharted water world of Kithrup, bearing one of the most important discoveries in galactic history. Below, a handful of her human and dolphin crew battles an armed rebellion and the whole hostile planet to safeguard her secret—the fate of the Progenitors, the fabled First Race who seeded wisdom throughout the stars. Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Startide Rising is the second book in the Uplift series (there’s a total of six), but popular opinion has it that the first book, Sundiver, can safely be skipped.Human rights organizations have refused to comment on footage of a Palestinian father pushing his young child to provoke Israeli Border Police into shooting him, Israeli Channel 1’s English news reported on Sunday.
According to IBA News, the video clip of a weekly Palestinian protest at Nilin in the West Bank, originally uploaded to YouTube, has received more than 100,000 views on the Facebook wall of IDF foreign press spokesman Peter Lerner since Saturday. It shows the flag-waving toddler approaching the armed policemen, one of whom responds with a high five. The father then urges the boy to pelt the officers with stones.
According to IBA anchor Eylon Aslan-Levy, Amnesty International told the media outlet that it was “unable to comment,” and Human Rights Watch failed to respond to repeated requests for a statement.
Lerner’s tweet of the clip reads:Ninjas in Pyjamas used to not only play in the top – they were the top.
All in all they’ve gone from being a team dominating all possible opponents to being a team that almost scored last in a major.
– We are very disappointed, but we hope to finish strong at the major, the in game leader, Richard ”Xizt” Landström, tells Aftonbladet Esport.
Ninjas in Pyjamas pioneered the CS:GO scene and were for a long time alone in the top of the food chain. Eventually more and more teams caught up and the throne was overtaken. The ninjas, however, managed to remain among the top teams, but lately they’ve seemed exhausted with results declining steeper and steeper.
– It’s no secret that 2015 has been a terrible year for us. We are very disappointed because we came second in around five tournaments and had we managed to win only one of them, then maybe we could’ve started building confidence. We are very disappointed, but we hope to finish strong at the major.
Rivalry in the quarters
At the major tournament Dreamhack Cluj-Napoca the ninjas lost their opening game against Titan, putting them in dire straits and with only one loss away from elimination. In the next match they managed to stay in the tournament by beating Team Liquid.
Once again the Swedes and Finn were to face Titan, this time in a best of three. And after a dominating performance the legends that are Ninjas in Pyjamas secured a spot for the quarter finals in the playoffs.
In the quarter final they are set to face their old Danish rivals of Team Solomid. Ninjas in Pyjamas is one of few top teams that lately have been able to defeat TSM on a regular basis. So even if the Danes are by some considered the best team in the world – the ninjas might have what it takes to beat them.
”We thought it would be easier to find someone”
The fall of NiP started in 2014. In November Robin ”Fifflaren” Johansson, one of the original CS:GO ninjas, left the team. The hunt was on to find a replacement and many had high hopes as Mikail ”Maikelele” Bill dressed himself in the NiP jerseys. Maikelele’s stay in NiP only lasted for a few months.
– We thought it would be easier to find someone to really integrate in the team. But it was harder than we thought. Maybe it’s because the other four of us has played together for so long. It’s working great with Aleksi ”allu” Jalli, he really fits in the team.
– I don’t know if it was a bad idea that Fifflaren left or if it was positive, it’s so hard to say. The first event with Maikelele we came to the final at Dreamhack Winter 2014 and we were pretty much one round away from winning the major. If we had won that one then maybe it would’ve felt better. We’ve had good results, but never THAT victory.
Is the NiP era reaching it’s end?
– I’m very happy in NiP and I would like to stay in NiP. We don’t really have any plans for anything right now. We have no plans to change anything right now, we don’t.
What’s your greatest highlight with NiP?
– That we won everything in the beginning: Dreamhack, ESWC, tournaments in North America. 87-0, you know (Ninjas in Pyjamas win 87 matches in a row without a single loss). The absolute greatest highlight was to win EMS One Cologne to be honost.
Update 1/10 17.10
Ninjas in Pyjamas successfully beat Team Solomid in a miraculous upset. Afterwards they got completely smashed by Na’vi in the semi finals.And so. I got a big box yesterday, but I didn't think anything of it because I've been doing a lot of Amazon shopping lately, and got home so late I didn't have time to open it. Tonight we were opening the mail, and I got a letter from Columbus House. They're a place in New Haven that does a lot of good works for the homeless. They feed them, shelter, help them get back on their feet. They're an amazing resource for the community. And I've donated to them throughout the year. I figured it was an end of the year thank you, or solicitation. And I opened the letter, and started reading it out loud, and my voice started to crack as I read the letter to my husband, and I had to start from the beginning half way through because I wasn't sure I was reading it right. Edit! Just got a card, thinking it was from a card exchange. BUT IT WASN'T!! It was from my secret santa, who made a donation to my local Humane Society!!!! YOU ROCK! Really. You are amazing. Thank you so much. I wish I could rate my gift at 11. Thank you. You made me cry. Thank you for making so many people's lives better. Thank you for making me cry.
As you can see my nose is red in the picture of my hat and scarf and gloves that I DON'T HAVE TO MAKE MYSELF!!!! Thank you!!!!!! I love them! And they sparkle! I love sparkles!!! And you make me feel good tonight after such a horrible week. Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity. <3
EDIT Ok, now this is just getting too funny! I get another box, thinking it's something I ordered. And I open it. And it's filled with MARSHMALLOWS!!! CAN I RATE MY GIFT TO 12?
Marshmallows roast so easily at an open wood stove, so nice on a raw, windy, rainy night. Thank you!Galatasaray have made an offer to Barcelona to take Arda Turan on loan for a season according to the newspaper Hürriyet.
The club president Dursun Özbek has offered the player €4 million for the season. If he accepts, he will the captain of the Istanbul club for the season, according to Turkish media.
“Come back as captain of the lions,” Özbek pleaded with the player through the media. During the five years (2006-2011) he was at the club, Turan won a league title, a cup and a super cup and attracted interest from Atlético as the ‘Turkish Beckham’.
Barça signed the player two years ago for more than €30 million, a figure that Galatasaray cannot match, which is why they are targeting a loan move. In the two seasons, he has been at Barça the 30-year-old has performed below expectations and his role at the club has diminished.Subject:
Private Attorney General releases Executive Summary for the U.S. Coast Guard:
positive identification of the Pentagon murder weapons
(see below)
p.s. Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III (retired)
has reviewed this Executive Summary with approval.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell <supremelawfirm@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 3:57 PM
Subject:
Executive Summary for the U.S. Coast Guard:
positive identification of the Pentagon murder weapons
TO:
Steve Martin, Host
The Aroostook Watchmen Radio Program
WXME-AM Monticello, Maine
Greetings Mr. Martin et al.:
Yes, I am the sole author of the Executive Summary prepared for the U.S. Coast Guard
under our pro bono verbal agreement to assist them with 9/11 follow-up.
That pro bono verbal agreement is described here,
in a pleading filed at the Federal District Court in Philadelphia:
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/mariani/notice.intent.htm
I should also add to the Executive Summary our finding that the
5 key frames from the Pentagon's cctv camera were re-sampled
to a lower resolution, thus destroying valuable detail.
Fortunately, in the course of our investigation we were able
to locate original high-resolution frames, which made comparisons
very easy.
I was able to confirm this re-sampling using simple computer
graphics software and a ZOOM tool. I am also a published
author in computer graphics (Harvard Laboratory for
Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, 1977).
I am happy to share this Executive Summary with you,
but I am not willing to appear on your radio program:
lengthy telephone conversations are too easily traced.
Because this was a formal homicide investigation,
with a focus on identifying the murder weapons,
security remains a paramount concern.
For further details about our firm policy with regards to
telephones, please see our Client Guidelines here:
http://www.supremelaw.org/guidelines.htm (Client Guidelines)
Thank you for your interest in our 9/11 work for U.S. Coast Guard
Investigations with offices at San Diego Harbor, California, USA.
Bcc: Major General Albert Stubblebine
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, B.A., M.S.
Private Attorney General, 18 U.S.C. 1964(a)
http://www.supremelaw.org/decs/agency/private.attorney.general.htm
Criminal Investigator and Federal Witness: 18 U.S.C. 1510, 1512-13
http://www.supremelaw.org/reading.list.htm
http://www.supremelaw.org/index.htm (Home Page)
http://www.supremelaw.org/support.policy.htm (Support Policy)
http://www.supremelaw.org/guidelines.htm (Client Guidelines)
http://www.supremelaw.org/support.guidelines.htm (Policy + Guidelines)
All Rights Reserved without Prejudice
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell <supremelawfirm@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 9:57 AM
Subject: Executive Summary for the U.S. Coast Guard: positive identification of the Pentagon murder weapons
We got very tired of "negative identification" a long time ago; since then,
we achieved "positive identification" of the Pentagon murder weapons.
Search the SupremeLaw message archives for:
"Pentagon" + "positive identification" + "A-3 Skywarrior".
e.g.:
Executive Summary: positive identification of the Pentagon murder weapons
As you can probably tell from the photos upon which
we relied for our conclusions, prepared originally
for the U.S. Coast Guard, the testimony of eyewitnesses
is notorious for being unreliable, particularly if and when
a black op is planned in advance to confuse eyewitnesses
about what they were expected, and planned, to be seeing.
We also got very bored with all of the discussions about
what the Pentagon plane was NOT: we coined the term
"negative identification" to describe that tendency
of too many Internet activists to mention here.
Because the WTC crime scenes were just too complicated
for one individual like myself to do a comprehensive
job of forensic analysis, we chose instead to focus on
"positive identification" of the Pentagon murder weapons.
This job was much more difficult than it might appear,
at first blush, because we found lots of photos and
an equally large number of writers who were often
quite un persuasive in their attempts to describe
what they reported seeing, and discovering, in those photos.
Certain photos came in the form of digital files with
file names that were the exact opposite of what I observed
in those photos e.g. "noplanehitbetweenthesecolumns.gif":
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/no_engine_hit_between__16and17.jpg
So, I went about collecting nothing more than raw images,
and that effort produced a collection numbering about
1,200 digital photos in all.
[See photo subset here: http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon ]
Of course, the Pentagon's 5 cctv frames were exceedingly
important. And, because I am a published author
in computer graphics (Harvard Laboratory, 1977),
I was able to use some simple graphics software
to examine closely the pixel patterns in the one cctv frame
which appears to show the attack jet's vertical tail section:
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/majic1a.jpg
That analysis immediately resulted in confirming evidence
that the jet's fuselage, forward of the visible tail section,
had been "air brushed" with a purple color which had been taken
from a completely different region of that one frame:
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/frame91.purple.color.gif
Proving that this color was "foreign" to the pixels where
the fuselage would have been visible, was quite easy:
all that we needed to do was examine subsequent frames,
which showed a dissipating missile exhaust plume, then
the distant background which was covered mostly by
green-colored vegetation growing on a highway embankment
there:
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/the_plane.gif
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/frameb2.bbc.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/frameb3.bbc.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/frameb4.bbc.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/frameb5.bbc.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/frame81background.1.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/frame81background.5.jpg
Of course, given the terminal velocity of the attack jet,
its fuselage was not and would not have been visible at all
in any of those subsequent frames.
Once we had confirmed these "air brushed" pixel alterations,
we then theorized that the purple-colored pixels actually
did obliterate the fuselage, and very little else:
therefore, the air-brushed pixels turned out to
outline the fuselage almost perfectly!!
Also, it is quite plausible that the Pentagon personnel,
who did these alterations to evidence of a murder weapon,
were in a big hurry, and didn't stop to consider fully the
extent and manner of those alterations. For example,
a 757's nose would have protruded further to the left
than the left-most purple pixels visible in that cctv frame!
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/ldsxox.2.gif
Thus, the first element of our hypothesis was a somewhat
rough estimate of the overall dimensions of the attack jet,
based in part on the area outlined by those purple pixels
forward of the visible tail section.
From there, we turned our attention to the photos of the
Pentagon that were taken after the crash and before the
roof collapsed. Of course, the roof collapse resulted
in destroying or concealing plenty of valuable forensic
evidence. But, there were enough photos taken before
the roof collapsed, for us to make a reasonable estimate
of the attack jet's "imprint" on the Pentagon's exterior
facade:
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/compmix2.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/compmix2.2.jpg
Then, we had a breakthrough when we discovered the localized
damages on the diesel generator which had been parked
just outside of the Pentagon's exterior wall: after its
fire was extinguished, that diesel generator was not
moved for quite some time, so it appears in lots of
photos taken both before and after the roof collapsed:
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/generator.burning.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/generator-gouge-small.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/generator_fence1.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/generator_spraying.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/generator.foaming.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/generator.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/generator.smoking.jpg
It was most interesting that the specific damages to that
generator came very close to matching the geometry of
an A-3's starboard engine and starboard missile pylon.
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3pylon.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3n576ha.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3142667.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3side.jpg
The starboard under-wing geometry of a 757 is very different!
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/281582.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/b757_right_engine.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/underwing_757.jpg
[Moreover, the instantaneous impact of the starboard engine
with the left end of that diesel generator helps to explain
why the attack jet hit with slight roll to the port side.
Its forward-looking radar may have also attempted to
avoid a collision with that diesel generator, but
its avionics failed to roll the jet quickly enough.]
Also, there were relatively few indications of direct
impact above the first floor of the Pentagon, except
of course the main entrance hole, and except for
one localized area which matched quite neatly
the point at which the right wing tip must have hit.
Those damages where the right wing tip hit were also
superficial, as compared to where the starboard engine
demolished 3 reinforced concrete bearing columns.
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/facade-intacte-1.2.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/right.wing.tip.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/right.wing.tip.2.jpg
Then, things started to fall into place quite nicely,
because the damages to the bearing columns also lined
up with the starboard engine, which would have had
maximum kinetic energy and would have been the first
high-density aircraft component to hit the Pentagon.
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/no_engine_hit_between__16and17.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/center_fascade.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/impact_scale.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/impact_scale.2.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/MissileDamage_First-Floor_Wall.jpg
[Formula for Kinetic energy is K = 1/2 mv**2 ]
And, using simple physics, the impact of the starboard engine
resulted in significantly reducing the attack jet's overall incident
kinetic energy, so much so that the port engine ended up
hitting with much less kinetic energy. And, if you know
where to look, you can see where the 12"+ thick concrete
ceiling above the first floor was chipped away,
most probably when the port engine hit right at that point.
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/GougeC.jpg
Another big breakthrough occurred when, somewhat later in my
search for photos, I came upon the one showing a crane
lifting two planar sections of metal, one of which exhibits
a severe compression gash at one end. Also visible on the
other planar section is a conduit, or tube-like device,
running the horizontal length of that planar section.
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/crane.lifting.parts.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3142256.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/A3_7_echelon.jpg
Well, the A-3 Skywarrior is quite unique for having
a rectangular fuselage and an external re-fueling line
attached to the port-side fuselage. A Boeing 757,
on the other hand, has a distinctly cylindrical fuselage
and no external re-fueling lines whatsoever.
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3454nose.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3146454s.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3n576ha.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/A3_7_echelon.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/cylindrical.fuselage.jpg
[That compression gash in the shorter metal section
most probably resulted when the fuselage collided
with the ceiling above the first floor, at an incident
angle of about 50 degrees off the building line.]
This "geometric" approach did result in producing
the best overall "fit" between an A-3 Skywarrior
and the damages evident on the Pentagon before the
roof collapsed.
There were other anomalies which this "best fit" approach
did not explain directly: for example, debris was
later identified as components from other aircraft,
not from an A-3. Although we don't have any really
convincing proof of the following explanation,
it has been suggested -- by me and by several others --
that those other parts were either stowed in the A-3's
bomb bay and/or those other parts were placed in the
Pentagon prior to the crash -- to confuse forensic
investigators.
All of this analysis would have been much easier, of course,
if all video evidence had been promptly published of the
attack jet's final approach, and if all of the debris
had been assembled in a single NTSB hangar, which is
SOP whenever a commercial jet crash has occurred,
in order to attempt mandatory accident reconstruction.
Nevertheless, coupled with other, secondary evidence
of which I am aware, some of it admittedly circumstantial,
we have informed the U.S. Coast Guard of our conclusions
that an unmanned, remotely controlled A-3 Skywarrior
hit the Pentagon, immediately after an air-to-ground ("AGM")
missile was launched from under the port wing, in order to
soften an entrance hole for the A-3's main fuselage.
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/a3.and.phoenix.jpg
The timing of the warhead's explosion was not quite
"perfect" however, and the shock wave resulted
in partially disintegrating the A-3 into pieces,
some of which came to rest outside the Pentagon.
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/framec4.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/framec5.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/framec5.2.jpg
http://www.supremelaw.org/cc/gwbush/pentagon/framec.jpg
I am a qualified Federal Witness, and I am competent
to testify, under oath, as to the facts and conclusions
summarized above.
Thank you.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, B.A., M.S.
Private Attorney General, 18 U.S.C. 1964(a)
http://www.supremelaw.org/decs/agency/private.attorney.general.htm
Criminal Investigator and Federal Witness: 18 U.S.C. 1510, 1512-13
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All Rights Reserved without PrejudiceIn 2009, when the Oregon Ducks lost in the Rose Bowl to the Ohio State Buckeyes, it wrapped up a tough finish to what we all thought was a down year in the Pac 10 (now the Pac 12). The conference only managed to place two teams in the AP Top 25 to close the season and only Oregon managed to post double-digit wins.
However, a retrospective look at that 2009 season showcases that while the conference may not have had the talent to compete with a league like the SEC or the Big 12, the coaching talent was off the charts and the league continues to be a proving grounds for young coaches rising through the ranks.
That’s because in 2009, Chip Kelly, Jim Harbaugh and Pete Carroll were all head coaches in the Pac 10. Four seasons later, they all coached their teams to playoff berths in the NFL.
Whether they’ve been deemed an innovator (Kelly) a motivator (Carroll) or some crazy concoction of both (Harbaugh), the three highlight what may be a new movement in the NFL: hiring high-profiled college coaches to turn around a franchise.
With that in mind, here are five college football coaches who may be destined for the NFL ranks sometime soon:
No. 5: Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M Aggies
Sumlin reportedly turned down the Philadelphia Eagles before they eventually settled in on Chip Kelly, and while that deal certainly worked out in the Eagles’ favor, Sumlin is still highly coveted in |
put down as cons are about 50/50 my fault and the unit! Also, it goes to show how easy the unit is, as I have done all of this without once using the Manual, and of course I will put my hands up and say that some of the issues are down to me!
I am very very very very excited that Roland have continued the development of this unit and are about to release a Version 2.0 free software upgrade for the unit, particularly for me that this includes audio to midi implementation, this is pretty phenomenal! Well done Roland!!
Things that I am looking forward to trying
Using the GT-100 directly into my actual amps (I hope that I can switch channels on my Egnater with it too!)
Trying two of the same amp models but with different settings (I.e. The Natural Clean model with the gain cracked in channel two)
How much fun and ease in performance the multi-assign makes this, I have a lot of things I want to try!
The acoustic simulator!
Summary
So in a nutshell, for me it perfectly possible to gig with just the GT-100, I do miss the ‘moving’ air, control of dynamics and tone of my other amps. But being brutally honest, this produces a close approximation and is a lot less hassle when it comes to loading out. I mean my existing set up is already pretty minimal, but this is even more minimal, and if they had included an XLR input it would have been even quicker!! The other thing that I am being brutally honest is that apart from the people reading this, 98.7% (I made that up, it is probably more like 99%) of people at a gig won’t notice or even care what the guitar sounds like or what is generating it, as long as it works with the band and as a player you can deal with it. I have to say the GT-100 ticks those boxes. Does it sound exactly like I would like, well no but then again I am fussy, and again having said that, once the band fires up and temporary threshold shift kicks in, even as a player you start to loose definition in your hearing. I wear earplugs and so I am always getting a reduced (in the mid-frequency range at least) sensation of what the amp is actually doing. So, the GT-100 is a good solution. It is an extremely versatile unit and the ability to multi-assign parameters to a footswitch is fantastic, on the whole the effects are very good (sorry but I do prefer TC Electronic Effects and my Nova System, but until they make the changes I would like to the Nova System then this is the one) and the amp modelling in the advanced selection is pretty fantastic too. I think it is a good solution and it helps keep stage levels down too (always something to please the sound engineer!). I will certainly be using this a lot more in future!!
Enjoy
Peace
Neil
(*) I just randomly opened the manual and found that you can actually lock the knobs! Job done!! I am more impressed now.The basics
When and where it happened
Witnesses interviewed by The Globe and Mail began to flesh out the timeline of what happened Sunday night at the Centre culturel islamique de Québec in Quebec City.
Around 7:30 p.m., the mosque's parking lot was filling up for evening prayers. Witnesses recall the doors being opened some time between 7:30 and 7:45. By 7:50, some inside heard a commotion outside one of the entrances to the prayer room. There, Mamadou Tanou Barry and Ibrahima Barry – two distant cousins of Guinean origin – were the first ones killed by the gunman, who then went inside the room and continued shooting. The attack lasted only a few minutes.
The first 911 call was logged at 7:55 p.m., by which time the shooter had apparently left. Police arrived within minutes. Some witnesses said they were manhandled and hauled downstairs. The police arrested a Laval University student, Mohamed Belkhadir, who was reportedly trying to perform first aid on a victim. (Reports the next day would misidentify Mr. Belkhadir as a second suspect, but police clarified that he was a witness to the attack.)
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At 8:10 p.m., police received a 911 call from a man asking to speak with investigators. The unidentified caller claimed to have been involved in the shooting and told police he would wait for officers at an access road near the Île-d'Orléans bridge. At 8:55 p.m., a suspect was in custody.
By 10 p.m., Quebec's Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, consisting of investigators from the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec and the Montreal police service, had taken over the case. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec's Premier Philippe Couillard expressed condolences and said they were co-ordinating to deal with the situation.
Tonight, Canadians grieve for those killed in a cowardly attack on a mosque in Quebec City. My thoughts are with victims & their families. — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 30, 2017
Le #Québec rejette catégoriquement cette violence barbare. Toute notre solidarité aux proches des victimes, des blessés et à leur famille. — Philippe Couillard (@phcouillard) January 30, 2017
Survivors were rushed to hospital and operated on non-stop throughout the night. Over all, 19 people were injured, five of them with critical gunshot wounds. By Tuesday, doctors said the people who remained in hospital were expected to survive, but the long-term effects of their injuries couldn't be predicted. Dr. Julien Clément, who oversaw the trauma team treating the wounded, said in an interview that the rapid response likely saved lives:
The response of the health professionals involved in this drama, from the paramedics to the surgeons, was impressive. They really answered the call in difficult circumstances.
The suspect
Alexandre Bissonnette is shown in a photo from his Facebook profile page. FACEBOOK/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old student at Laval University, grew up on a quiet crescent in the Cap-Rouge suburb of Quebec City. His acquaintances and activists in the city painted a picture of him as a right-wing troll inspired by the French extreme right who supported U.S. President Donald Trump. His online profile and school friendships revealed little interest in extremist politics until last March, when French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen visited Quebec City and inspired Mr. Bissonnette to vocal extreme online activism, according to people who clashed with him.
Mr. Bissonnette has been charged with six counts of first-degree murder.
The victims
All six victims were men, aged 39 to 60. Most of them had young children.
The victims of the Quebec City mosque shooting. Clockwise from top left: Azzeddine Soufiane, 57; Khaled Belkacemi, 60; Ibrahima Barry, 39; Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42; Abdelkrim Hassane, 41; and Boubaker Thabti, 44. handouts, Moussa Sangare/THE CANADIAN PRESS, FACEBOOK
Abdelkrim Hassane, 41. Mr. Hassane was a civil servant, working as an analyst-programmer for the Quebec government after a stint in IT for the provincial police.
Mr. Hassane was a civil servant, working as an analyst-programmer for the Quebec government after a stint in IT for the provincial police. Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42, and Ibrahima Barry, 39. The two, both originally from Guinea but not related to each other, were inseparable. They were civil servants who lived on different floors of the same apartment building on La Pérade street in Sainte-Foy, a friend said.
The two, both originally from Guinea but not related to each other, were inseparable. They were civil servants who lived on different floors of the same apartment building on La Pérade street in Sainte-Foy, a friend said. Azzeddine Soufiane, 57. Moroccan-born Mr. Soufiane came to Quebec City three decades ago as a student at Laval University, but he became known as a community pillar who was well known for being helpful to newly arrived Muslims.
Moroccan-born Mr. Soufiane came to Quebec City three decades ago as a student at Laval University, but he became known as a community pillar who was well known for being helpful to newly arrived Muslims. Khaled Belkacemi, 60. After graduating from Polytechnic School of Algiers in 1983, Prof. Belkacemi obtained his master’s degree and doctorate in chemical engineering from the Université de Sherbrooke.
After graduating from Polytechnic School of Algiers in 1983, Prof. Belkacemi obtained his master’s degree and doctorate in chemical engineering from the Université de Sherbrooke. Aboubaker Thabti, 44. Mr. Thabti only lived five minutes from the mosque. His friends knew that he didn’t work on Sunday nights, so when they couldn’t reach him after the shooting started, they feared the worst.
Community hopes grocery store owned by mosque-shooting victim will continue on 1:49
The mosque
Leaders of the Quebec City mosque said security had been "a major, major concern" prior to the attack. The mosque has been targeted by racist and anti-immigrant vandalism in the past. Last summer, during Ramadan, a pig's head was left at the front door with a card saying "bonne appétit." Eating pork is considered haram, or forbidden, in the Islamic faith.
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Flowers and notes are laid at a makeshft memorial near the Centre culturel islamique de Québec on Jan. 30, 2017. FRED LUM/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
The National Council of Canadian Muslims called on law enforcement agencies around the country to increase security around mosques and Islamic centres. Council president Ihsaan Gardee urged law enforement to act quickly to prosecute the person responsible:
We are horrified by this despicable act of violence. Our prayers and deep condolences are with the families of the victims.... This act of wanton murder must be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
The federal government urged places of worship, schools and community centres to assess their security and seek federal assistance if they need more protection against potential hate crimes.
On Tuesday, mosque members opened the house of worship to outsiders to see the aftermath of Sunday night's violence. (Warning: Our story contains details that some readers may find disturbing.) Recalling the attack, Samir Djadja pointed to blood stains where people were shot dead:
I know who that was, and who that was. These were my friends, who I’d known for years. We wanted people to see how horrible it was. This wasn’t a movie. There were lives lost and orphans created.
Quebec City mosque allows media inside to view aftermath of shooting 1:48
The community
Sainte-Foy, a sleepy suburban community in a city with one of the country's lowest homicide rates, was shocked by Sunday night's attack. The community's Centre sportif became a hub for concerned community members to gather and exchange news about missing friends and loved ones.
’We are thankful’: Muslim residents express gratitude for community support after mosque tragedy 1:14
How Canadians mourned
The Globe’s Instagram account for a closer look at the messages and translations of what they say.)” sizes=”(min-width: 960px) calc(960px - 320px), (min-width: 768px) calc(100vw - 60px), calc(100vw - 20px)” srcset=” The Globe’s Instagram account for a closer look at the messages and translations of what they say.)” sizes=”(min-width: 960px) calc(960px - 320px), (min-width: 768px) calc(100vw - 60px), calc(100vw - 20px)” srcset=” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/article33854926.ece/BINARY/w1100/AquilVirani_MuslimVigilArt_1200px+%281%29.jpg 1100w, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/article33854926.ece/BINARY/w940/AquilVirani_MuslimVigilArt_1200px+%281%29.jpg 940w, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/article33854926.ece/BINARY/w620/AquilVirani_MuslimVigilArt_1200px+%281%29.jpg 620w, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/article33854926.ece/BINARY/w780/AquilVirani_MuslimVigilArt_1200px+%281%29.jpg 780w, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/article33854926.ece/BINARY/w460/AquilVirani_MuslimVigilArt_1200px+%281%29.jpg 460w” data-id=”33854926” itemprop=”url”> At Monday’s vigil in Montreal, artist Aquil Vrani painted hands in prayer and invited people to add messages of love. The painting will be delivered to the mosque where the shooting took place. (Check out The Globe’s Instagram account for a closer look at the messages and translations of what they say.) AQUIL VIRANI
Vigils were held in Quebec City, Montreal and other Canadian cities on Monday evening.
The Quebec government set up a condolences registry for those who wanted to pay their respects online. Mr. Couillard met with members of Quebec City's Muslim community on Monday to show his support:
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All Quebeckers are united in the solidarity we express today. Our society is a very open, tolerant and hospitable one, but we are not different from other societies, we have the same devils, xenophobia, racism...we should not be complacent in our society.
’We are with you’: Quebec Premier Couillard to the province’s Muslims 2:54
In the House of Commons on Monday, Mr. Trudeau and the federal opposition party leaders spoke out against the attack before they set off for Quebec City for an evening vigil. The Prime Minister urged Canadians to respond with "love and compassion":
Make no mistake, this was a terrorist attack. It was an attack on our most intrinsic and cherished values as Canadians: values of openness, diversity and freedom of religion. Canadians will not be intimidated, we will not meet violence with more violence. We will meet fear and hatred with love and compassion.
‘We stand with you’: Trudeau at vigil for victims of mosque shooting 1:20
On Thursday, thousands came to Montreal's Maurice-Richard Arena for a funeral for three of the victims. Their caskets were draped in the flags of their homelands, Tunisia and Algeria.
An overall view of the funeral for Abdelkrim Hassane, Khaled Belkacemi and Aboubaker Thabti, three of the six victims of the Quebec City mosque shooting. Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
How the world grieved
Condolences came in on Monday from world leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande and Pope Francis.
Je dénonce avec la plus grande fermeté l'odieux attentat qui a fait au moins six morts et de nombreux blessés dans une mosquée à Québec. — François Hollande (@fhollande) January 30, 2017
The Eiffel Tower was switched off just after midnight on Jan. 31 in memory of the victims of the attack in Quebec. FRANCOIS MORI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
In France, the shooting also got a reaction from Ms. Le Pen's far-right party, which called the mass shooting "deplorable." When asked about Mr. Bissonnette's support for Ms. Le Pen, a party spokesman said Monday the French politician should not have to apologize for comments people make on their private Facebook pages.
From Washington, Mr. Trump offered his condolences in a phone call to Mr. Trudeau. But Mr. Trump's spokesman later appeared to link the incident with the U.S. immigration ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, despite the fact that the six male victims in the Quebec attack were Muslim.
A message with the slogan “all human” and the Québécois fleur-de-lis lies near the Centre culturel Islamique de Québec on Jan. 31, 2017. FRED LUM/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Canada's search for meaning, and blame
The shooting has added a new, dark urgency to Canadians' conversation about racism, immigration and pluralism, with several politicians and public figures taking aim at the U.S. immigration ban and far-right politics in Europe.
In Quebec – where political debates over "reasonable accommodation" and tolerance of Muslims have been fierce over the past decade – politicians and the media class have distanced themselves and expressed regret for their past rhetoric. For instance, Parti Québécois Leader Jean-François Lisée – whose party long pushed for a "Charter of Quebec Values" that would restrict when religious symbols and clothing could be worn – admitted he had sometimes gone too far. Quebec's Muslims, who accounts for about 3.1 per cent of the province's population, have greeted gestures like these with both appreciation and skepticism. Hakim Merdassi, a member of Quebec City's Tunisian association, questions whether they will change anything:
We’ve breached a barrier that we never thought would happen in Quebec. Someone fuelled by hate shot several people. Will this act lead to some kind of collective looking-out for one another? I wish it would. But my fear is that we’ll fall into the same identity politics and divisions we’ve seen in the past.
Former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson, right, Razik Mammeri, left, and Fairouz Djafri look on as Governor-General David Johnston kneels to speak with Yasmine Mammeri after presenting them with Canadian citizenship certificates at Rideau Hall on Jan. 31, 2017. ADRIAN WYLD/THE CANADIAN PRESS
On Tuesday, former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson, whose family arrived from Hong Kong in the 1940s, spoke about the shooting as she helped welcome 37 people at the first group citizenship ceremony since the attack. She said Canadians were not immune from rhetoric of "horror, ignorance and hatred" from the United States:
We hear people who want leadership and who become leaders referring to an entire nation, who is their neighbour, as rapists, criminals. We hear the calumny. We are appalled. But the words have been said. And the words have been heard.
Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch listens during the Conservative leadership debate in Saskatoon on Nov. 9, 2016. LIAM RICHARDS/THE CANADIAN PRESS
The shooting has also had an effect on the federal Conservative Party leadership race, where candidate Kellie Leitch has proposed a "Canadian values" test for new immigrants that critics say would amount to religious and racial discrimination. In an interview, Ms. Leitch said it is "ridiculous" to link her proposal to the mosque attack, arguing her "values" test could equally be applied to white supremacists trying to enter the country. (Asked why she has never referenced white supremacists before, she said, "Well, do you think that Canadians share those values? I don't.")
Heartbreaking news out of Quebec City tonight. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims. — Kellie Leitch (@KellieLeitch) January 30, 2017
Conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong has directly linked the Quebec attack to the political climate surrounding immigration, pointing to the U.S. immigration plan and accusing politicians of normalizing hate speech.
This mosque attack is no accident: It's a direct result of demagogues and wannabe demagogues playing to fears and prejudices 1/3 — Michael Chong (@MichaelChongMP) January 30, 2017
Politicians talking division, not unity, help normalize hate. Not acceptable, enough is enough, stop 2/3 — Michael Chong (@MichaelChongMP) January 30, 2017
And yes, I'm angry. This is Canada. This was an attack on real Canadian values enshrined in the Charter: religious freedom 3/3 — Michael Chong (@MichaelChongMP) January 30, 2017
Another leadership candidate, Kevin O'Leary, got in hot water for posting a video of himself firing high-powered weapons at a Miami gun range. It was posted just as the Thursday funeral for three of the victims was under way. Hours later, Mr. O'Leary tweeted that he had taken the video down out of respect. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, meanwhile, called the timing of the video "obviously crass, insensitive and exceedingly dumb."
Out of respect for today’s service I have taken down my last post. — Kevin O'Leary (@kevinolearytv) February 2, 2017
With reports from Les Perreaux, Nicolas Van Praet, Verity Stevenson, Tu Thanh Ha, Ingrid Peritz, Sean Gordon, André Picard, Rhéal Séguin, Daniel Leblanc, Colin Freeze, Laura Stone, Marty Klinkenberg, Sunny Dhillon and The Canadian Press
MORE FROM THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Kamal Al-Solaylee: In culture of hate toward Muslims, don’t forget made-in-Canada contributions For those of us who identify as Muslim, Sunday’s attack challenges what we believe and love about Canada – its acceptance and diversity – and confirms a disturbing undercurrent we’ve suspected all along.
Zarqa Nawaz: My Canadian sanctuary: What the mosque means to me I never imagined a day would come when I would look at my mosque and wonder if it was safe to go inside. I need my mosque to go back to what it was before the Quebec shootings, a place where my community and I organize, cajole and negotiate with one another despite the differences of our skin colours, religious outlooks and heat tolerance.
Konrad Yakabuski: A mosque shooting Quebeckers must never forget the attack on a mosque in a sleepy and snowbound Quebec City suburb has profoundly shaken the whole country. But its repercussions will be felt in Quebec to a degree few Canadians outside the province can fathom. The shooting could have happened anywhere. But because it happened in Quebec, its aftermath will be as distinct as the society in which it occurred.
Campbell Clark: Trudeau’s homily demands a call for healing This was, Mr. Trudeau emphasized, an act of terrorism. But the language that he used in addressing the Commons on Monday afternoon wasn’t what we’re used to hearing from leaders after a terrorist act. There was little talk of vigilance, or rooting out evildoers, or new intelligence measures, or fight.
Editorial: An attack on Canadian Muslims is an attack on Canada An attack on any Canadian, simply for exercising their constitutional right to live according to the dictates of their conscience, or because they trace their ancestry to one part of the world and not another, is an attack on all Canadians.This article is about the Sony controller. For the dual analog control scheme, see Analog stick § Dual analog sticks
The PlayStation Dual Analog Controller (SCPH-1150 in Japan, SCPH-1180 in the United States and SCPH-1180e in Europe) is Sony's first handheld analog controller for the PlayStation, and the predecessor to the DualShock. Its first official analog controller was the PlayStation Analog Joystick (SCPH-1110).
History [ edit ]
The Dual Analog Controller was first displayed under glass at the PlayStation Expo 96-97, which was held from November 1 to November 4, 1996.[1][2] It was released in Japan in April 1997, coincident with the Japanese releases of analog-capable titles Tobal 2 and Bushido Blade.[3] It was advertised as allowing for more precise and fluid control of the games' fighters, with the rumble feature contributing to a more realistic experience.[citation needed]
Before its release in the United States, Sony decided that vibration feedback would be removed from the European and American versions of the controller. According to a Sony spokesperson, "We evaluated all the features and decided, for manufacturing reasons, that what was most important to gamers was the analog feature."[4] Reasons for dropping the vibration feedback reportedly included its being linked to premature malfunction of the controllers.[5] Nintendo had attempted to legally block the release of the controller in North America due to the vibration feature's similarity to Nintendo's Rumble Pak, but Sony had already been considering the removal of the vibration feedback by that time.[6]
It was released in the United States on August 27, 1997, and in Europe in September 1997 with little promotion. A few months later, the first DualShock controller was released in Japan on November 20, 1997.
Namco had already released an analog controller for PlayStation called NeGcon. Sony's Dual Analog Controller's analog mode was not compatible with the NeGcon-compatible games such as Wipeout and Ridge Racer. However, Need for Speed II, Gran Turismo, and Gran Turismo 2 feature compatibility with both NeGcon and Dual Analog control schemes.
Fans of a smaller form factor, Japanese players complained that the very long hand grips made the controller too large to be held properly and the lack of a rumble feature in the U.S. and European models are the most commonly cited reasons that Sony decided to end production of this controller and redesign it. This redesign eventually became the DualShock.[citation needed]
The Dual Analog controller was discontinued in all three markets in 1998, to be replaced by the DualShock.
Features [ edit ]
A Dual Analog controller in "Flightstick" mode.
The Dual Analog controller has three modes of operation: Digital, which disables the Analog sticks, Analog (as also found on DualShock/DualShock 2 controllers) and an Analog Flightstick mode emulating the PlayStation Analog Joystick[7] that is not available on the DualShock or DualShock 2.
If a PlayStation game is DualShock or Dual Analog compatible, the player may press the Analog button located between the two analog sticks to activate the analog mode. This is indicated by a red LED. If the Dual Analog controller is switched to analog mode while using a game which is not analog-compatible, the game will not register any button presses or, in some cases, the PlayStation will consider the controller to be detached.
The ability to emulate Sony's own PlayStation Analog Joystick by pressing the "Analog" button a second time to reveal a green LED (this was commonly referred to as "Flightstick Mode") provided a less expensive alternative to the FlightStick Analog Joystick and retailed for an average of US$35 compared to the Flightstick's retail price of US$70.[clarification needed]
Similarly to the Nintendo 64 controller, the Dual Analog Controller was designed to be held in four different ways: standard control, in which the left thumb uses the directional buttons and the right thumb uses the action buttons; analog control, in which the left thumb uses the left analog stick and the right thumb uses the action buttons; dual analog control, which imitates the Dual Analog Joystick, with both thumbs positioned over the analog sticks, and the shoulder buttons used instead of the action buttons; and analog-digital control, in which the left thumb uses the directional buttons, the right thumb uses the right analog stick, and the shoulder buttons are again used for actions.[2]
MechWarrior 2, Ace Combat 2, Descent Maximum, and Colony Wars were among the shortlist of twenty-seven PlayStation Flightstick compatible games.
Differences from DualShock [ edit ]
Clockwise from top left, DualShock, Dual Analog Controller and original PlayStation Controller
The Dual Analog controller features several aspects that remain exclusive to it, and were scrapped or redesigned for the release of the DualShock controller.
Only the Japanese version features a vibration feedback function. The European and American versions of the controller do however include circuitry and mounts for a rumble motor, a possible leftover from the Japanese version of the controller, and therefore installing the motor is a simple process. Due to a lack of vibration-compatible games at the time, the European and American versions were not shipped with rumble feedback and, as a result, weigh significantly less than their overseas counterpart, and fall somewhere between the weights of the standard controller and the DualShock.
The hand grips are 3⁄ 5 inch (1.5 cm) longer than the original controller and the later DualShock controller. The body of the controller is also wider, spacing the pads slightly farther apart. This wider controller body has been retained on the DualShock and all later PlayStation controllers.
From the top: the original PlayStation Controller, Dual Analog Controller and DualShock. Note the ridges on the Dual Analog L2 and R2 buttons.
The L2 and R2 buttons have ridges at the top edge to easily distinguish them from the L1 and R1 buttons and are spaced farther apart than the original controller or DualShock.
The L2 and R2 buttons are also wider than the standard controller but shorter than the DualShock.
The analog sticks are concave and lack the rubberised coating that has been used on the DualShock and later controllers.
In addition to the standard digital mode and the regular "red LED" Analog mode, there is a third mode that emulates the layout of Sony's own PlayStation Analog Joystick, and is indicated by a green LED. This feature is missing on the DualShock.
The "Analog" button, used for switching modes, is raised instead of recessed like the DualShock's button and can be more easily hit accidentally.
The Analog mode cannot be changed or locked by software as it can with the DualShock controller and later.
The Dual Analog's rumble circuit will not respond to PlayStation 2 software even if a rumble motor is installed.Gibraltar Minister of Tourism Neil Costa at Government of Gibraltar press conference on Gibraltarpedia, 18 July 2012
Gibraltarpedia is a project by the Government of Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory in the south end of the Iberian Peninsula, to improve coverage of Gibraltar-related topics on Wikipedia.[1] It builds on Monmouthpedia, an earlier project along similar lines linking Wikipedia and the town of Monmouth in South Wales. The Gibraltarpedia project was announced in July 2012 by the Government of Gibraltar.
In September and October 2012, the project became the subject of a public controversy concerning the role of Gibraltar's tourism board in the project, allegations that the project was being used to promote the tourism board's interests, and allegations of conflicts of interest arising out of a paid consultancy agreement between the Government of Gibraltar and a trustee of Wikimedia UK.
The project [ edit ]
Scope and structure [ edit ]
According to Gibraltarpedia's web site, the project "aims to cover every single notable place, person, artefact, plant and animal in Gibraltar in as many languages as possible."[2] Its scope also extends to the Strait of Gibraltar, the Spanish municipalities along the coast of the Bay of Gibraltar, the northernmost coast of Morocco and the Spanish town of Ceuta on the African coast opposite Gibraltar.[2][3] It is structured as a WikiProject,[2] involving a collaboration that includes volunteer editors, the Government of Gibraltar, the Gibraltar Tourism Board, the Gibraltar Museum, and Roger Bamkin, a former trustee of Wikimedia UK.[4][5][6]
Formation [ edit ]
The Gibraltarpedia project was announced in July 2012 by the Government of Gibraltar.[7][8] The idea for Gibraltarpedia originated with Tyson Lee Holmes, a Gibraltarian who contributes to Wikipedia. Holmes read about Monmouthpedia and believed Gibraltar could benefit from a similar project. Holmes contacted Stewart Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum, and Finlayson then contacted representatives of Wikimedia UK. The organisers of Monmouthpedia were invited to Gibraltar to discuss proposals.[9]
The Government of Gibraltar viewed Gibraltarpedia as a means to promote tourism, and the Gibraltar Tourist Board played a key role in the project's formation. Gibraltar's Minister for Tourism, Neil Costa, told a Welsh newspaper, "We as a Government have always said we need to be responsive and be able to seize opportunities as and when they arrive."[10] Costa arranged meetings in Gibraltar for people from Wikipedia, which included tours of historical sites by staff from the Gibraltar Museum.[10]
The Government initially had concerns about the fact that Wikipedia editors who "did not have Gibraltar's best interest at heart may write untrue or negative articles."[11] Those concerns were reportedly allayed by assurances from Wikimedia UK. A government official told the Gibraltar Chronicle:
The people from Wikipedia UK have guaranteed to us that this has an element of self-regulation and we want to encourage many local volunteers to keep an eye on what is going on, and if things go on that is [sic] nasty, then it is very easy for them to go back to the earlier page in seconds.[11]
In June 2012, the Government of Gibraltar signed a letter of intent with Roger Bamkin, a co-creator of Monmouthpedia and a director of Wikimedia UK, and with John Cummings, a Wikipedia editor.[6][12] Bamkin provided consultancy advice on the production of QR codes and training for project contributors.[6] He told the Western Mail in July 2012 that he selected Gibraltar as his next project "after being flooded with invitations from places around the world hoping to be the second Wikipedia town."[10]
Training workshops [ edit ]
Workshops to facilitate contributions to Wikipedia and, more specifically, Gibraltarpedia were scheduled in Gibraltar in late July 2012.[13][14][15] Tyson Lee Holmes, coordinator of Gibraltarpedia, told the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation that the project hoped "to get people interested in editing pages on, among other things, historical periods, prominent buildings, biographies."[16]
Plans to use QR codes [ edit ]
Gibraltarpedia coordinator Tyson Lee Holmes with trial plaque containing QR code
The project has plans to use QRpedia QR codes (quick response codes) to provide multilingual smartphone access to Wikipedia articles covering notable subjects in Gibraltar. Once implemented, the codes are intended to allow visitors to retrieve Wikipedia articles in their default languages by using their smartphones to read the QR codes. The project plans to install plaques with the QR codes on significant buildings in Gibraltar.[7][10] Roger Bamkin described the system as "tap technology," allowing visitors to "tap" QR codes with a cellular phone.[10]
Controversy [ edit ]
BBC report [ edit ]
On 18 September 2012, BBC News published a report on Gibraltarpedia. The BBC reported that tourism is "a big part of Gibraltar's economy" and noted that Gibraltar authorities were "keen to seize any opportunity to increase revenue."[17] The BBC also reported that volunteers had been producing "up to 20 articles a day in various languages," and that Roger Bamkin was in Gibraltar for the week "seeking more people to contribute photos, maps and information on the territory's history."[17]
Allegations of conflicts of interest [ edit ]
Roger Bamkin at WikiConference UK 2012
Also on 18 September 2012, a CNET report asserted that Bamkin "appeared to be using Wikipedia's main page 'Did You Know' feature" and other Wikipedia resources to promote "his client's project".[18] Fox News reported that Gibraltar had been "featured in Wikipedia's coveted 'Did You Know' main page section seventeen times in August... giving Gibraltar access to an enviable hundred million page views per month."[19] A contentious debate developed over Bamkin's paid consultancy relationship with the Government of Gibraltar, resulting in critical coverage in many media outlets.
Slate magazine summarized the concerns of some as follows:
Once Wikipedia becomes a pay-to-play platform in any sense, it's no longer a balanced, universal wellspring of information. It's just another commercial website, with a particularly insidious brand of camouflaged advertising. Any company with a sly enough PR person could promote ostensibly fascinating facts about its products. If the 'Did You Know?' page was suddenly dominated by trivia about Gap or Mars Bars, many readers would quickly smell a rat, but there are numerous PR professionals who represent subtler brands and causes.[20]
Noting that the controversy was revealed from within by Wikipedia editors, Forbes said that "the incident reinforces the power of Wikipedia’s community to monitor itself and self-discipline violations of its norms."[21] Brandchannel reported on the controversy and noted that payment of money to Wikipedia editors represented "the greatest threat the [Wikipedia] brand has seen to date."[22] British web site The Register reported on concerns that the "scandal involving a close-knit group of friends and business associates who run Wikimedia UK may imperil its charitable status."[23]
Responses to the controversy [ edit ]
Various media outlets reported on the response of Jimmy Wales to the controversy. Wales noted: "It is wildly inappropriate for a board member of a chapter, or anyone else in an official role of any kind in a charity associated with Wikipedia, to take payment from customers in exchange for securing favorable placement on the front page of Wikipedia or anywhere else."[18][19][24]
In his declaration of interest to Wikimedia UK, Bamkin denied engaging in any paid editing. Bamkin noted:
At the end of June Roger signed a contract with the Government of Gibraltar. There is no known COI [conflict of interest] as WMUK [Wikimedia UK] does not have a relationship with this Government but it is hoped that one may develop.... The contract includes the delivery of training and the creation of QRpedia plaques—there is no paid editing involved.[25]
On 20 September 2012, Wikimedia UK announced Bamkin had stepped down as a trustee.[26][27] Chris Keating, the Chair of Wikimedia UK, said: "Roger has always conducted himself with openness and honesty with regards to his business interests... However we have reached the decision together that it is best if Roger steps back from the Board, and thus the Board has accepted his resignation."[26]
On 21 September 2012, the Gibraltar Chronicle reported a Gibraltar Government spokesman as saying that there was no basis for the claim that it had paid Bamkin to raise the profile of articles about Gibraltar. The spokesman noted that Bamkin continued to provide advice on the production of QR codes and training for volunteer contributors to "Gibraltar's Wikipedia site" [sic][6] The Chronicle also noted that the Government "aims to set up Gibraltar's own Wikipedia site"[sic] and identified Bamkin as a person who "played a prominent role" in the development of Wikipedia.[6]
Also on 21 September 2012, Wikimedia UK issued a press release stating that it had no formal ties with Gibraltarpedia. While expressing a desire to provide formal support to Gibraltarpedia |
as Europe's oldest wholly stone, closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge, but there are far older segmental arch bridges such as Alconétar Bridge. The Ponte Vecchio's two neighbouring bridges are the Ponte Santa Trinità and the Ponte alle Grazie.
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge was the longest suspension bridge span in the world when it was completed in 1937, and has become one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and of the United States. Despite its span length being surpassed by eight other bridges since its completion, it still has the second longest suspension bridge main span in the United States, after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. It has been declared one of the modern Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The Frommers travel guide considers the Golden Gate Bridge "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world", although Frommers also bestows the most photographed honor on Tower Bridge in London, England.
Tower Bridge, London
Tower Bridge is a combined bascule and suspension bridge in London, England, over the River Thames. It is close to the Tower of London, which gives it its name. It has become an iconic symbol of London. The bridge consists of two towers which are tied together at the upper level by means of two horizontal walkways which are designed to withstand the horizontal forces exerted by the suspended sections of the bridge on the landward sides of the towers. The vertical component of the forces in the suspended sections and the vertical reactions of the two walkways are carried by the two robust towers. The bascule pivots and operating machinery are housed in the base of each tower. The bridge's present colour dates from 1977 when it was painted red, white and blue for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Originally it was painted a chocolate brown colour. Tower Bridge is sometimes mistakenly referred to as London Bridge,[citation needed] which is actually the next bridge upstream. The nearest London Underground station is Tower Hill on the Circle and District Lines, and the nearest Docklands Light Railway station is Tower Gateway.
Oresund Bridge, Oresund Strait
The Øresund or Oresund Bridge is a combined twin-track railway and dual carriageway bridge-tunnel across the Øresund strait. The bridge connects Sweden and Denmark, and it is the longest road and rail bridge in Europe. The Øresund Bridge also connects two major Metropolitan Areas: those of the Danish capital city of Copenhagen and the major Swedish city of Malmö. Furthermore, the Øresund Bridge connects the road network of Scandinavia with those of Central and Western Europe. The international European route E20 crosses this bridge-tunnel via the road, and the Öresund Railway Line uses the railway. The construction of the Great Belt Fixed Link – which connects Zealand to Funen and thence to the Jutland Peninsula – and the Øresund Bridge have connected Western and Central Europe to Scandinavia. The Øresund Bridge was designed by the Danish architectural practice Dissing+Weitling.
The purpose for the additional expenditure and complexity related to digging a tunnel for part of the way – rather than simply raising that section of the bridge – was to avoid interfering with airliners from the nearby Copenhagen International Airport, and also to provide a clear channel for ships in good weather or bad, and to prevent ice floes from blocking the strait. The Øresund Bridge crosses the border between Denmark and Sweden, but in accordance with the Schengen Agreement and the Nordic Passport Union, there are usually no passport inspections. There are random customs checks at the entrance toll booths for entering Sweden, but not for entering Denmark. The Øresund Bridge received the 2002 IABSE Outstanding Structure Award.
Tsing Ma Bridge, Hong Kong
The Tsing Ma Bridge is a bridge in Hong Kong. It is the world's seventh-longest span suspension bridge, and was the second longest at time of completion. The bridge was named after two of the islands at its ends, namely Tsing Yi and Ma Wan. It has two decks and carries both road and rail traffic, which also makes it the largest suspension bridge of this type. The bridge has a main span of 1,377 metres (4,518 ft) and a height of 206 metres (676 ft). The span is the largest of all bridges in the world carrying rail traffic.
The 41 metres (135 ft) wide bridge deck carries six lanes of automobile traffic, with three lanes in each direction. The lower level contains two rail tracks. There are also two sheltered carriageways on the lower deck for maintenance access and as backup for traffic when particularly severe typhoons strike Hong Kong. Though road traffic would need to be closed in that case, trains could still get through in either direction.
Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a steel through arch bridge across Sydney Harbour that carries rail, vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic between the Sydney central business district (CBD) and the North Shore. The dramatic view of the bridge, the harbour, and the nearby Sydney Opera House is an iconic image of both Sydney and Australia. The bridge is locally nicknamed "The Coat Hanger" because of its arch-based design.
Under the directions of Dr J.J.C. Bradfield of the NSW Department of Public Works, the bridge was designed and built by English firm Dorman Long and Co Ltd of Middlesbrough, and opened in 1932. According to the Guinness World Records, it is the world's widest long-span bridge. It is also the fifth longest spanning-arch bridge in the world, and it is the tallest steel arch bridge, measuring 134 metres (440 ft) from top to water level. Until 1967 the Harbour Bridge was Sydney's tallest structure.
Hong Kong - Zhuhai - Macao Bridge, SE Asia
The in-construction Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is a series of bridges and tunnels that will connect the west side of Hong Kong to Macau and the Guangdong province city of Zhuhai, which are situated on the west side of the Pearl River Delta. The proposed 50 kilometres (31.1 mi) link is expected to cost USD $10.7 billion. With its length, it would become one of the landmarks within the area. Though overall length exceeds the Second Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in the United States, which is 38.4 kilometres (23.9 mi) long according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest bridge section (between the artificial islands containing the Macau exit of the tunnel and the Macau border facilities), which will include three cable-stayed spans with spans between 280 and 460 m, will be 22.8 kilometres (14.2 mi) long. Construction formally began on 15 December 2009. It is due to be completed in 2015-2016.
Bosphorus Bridge, Istanbul
The Bosphorus Bridge, also called the First Bosphorus Bridge (Turkish: Bog(aziçi Köprüsü or 1. Bog(aziçi Köprüsü) is one of the two bridges in Istanbul, Turkey, spanning the Bosphorus strait (Turkish: Bog(aziçi) and thus connecting Europe and Asia (the other one is the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, which is called the Second Bosphorus Bridge.) The bridge is located between Ortaköy (on the European side) and Beylerbeyi (on the Asian side). It is a gravity anchored suspension bridge with steel pylons and inclined hangers. The aerodynamic deck is hanging on zigzag steel cables. It is 1,510 m (4,954 ft) long with a deck width of 39 m (128 ft). The distance between the towers (main span) is 1,074 m (3,524 ft) and their height over road level is 105 m (344 ft). The clearance of the bridge from sea level is 64 m (210 ft). The Bosphorus Bridge had the 4th longest suspension bridge span in the world when it was completed in 1973, and the longest outside the United States. At present, it is the 16th longest suspension bridge span in the world.
San Diego-Coronado Bridge, San Diego
The San Diego-Coronado Bridge, locally referred to as the Coronado Bridge, is a "prestressed concrete/steel" girder bridge, crossing over San Diego Bay in the United States, linking San Diego with Coronado, California. The bridge is signed as part of State Route 75. The 11,179-foot-long (3,407 m or 2.1 mi) bridge ascends from Coronado at a 4.67 percent grade before curving 80 degrees toward San Diego. The span reaches a maximum height of 200 feet (61m), allowing the U.S. Navy ships which operate out of the nearby Naval Station San Diego to pass underneath it. The five-lane bridge featured the longest box girder in the world until it was surpassed by a bridge in Chongqing, China in 2008. The bridge doesn't form a direct path to Coronado, but rather has a curve. This was done so it would be high enough for all U.S. Navy ships to pass underneath but not too steep for vehicles to ascend and descend.
The San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge construction started in February 1967, and the bridge was opened to traffic on August 3, 1969, during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the founding of San Diego Originally, the toll was $0.60 in each direction. Several years later, this was changed to a $1 toll collected for traffic going westbound to Coronado only. Although the bridge was supposed to become "toll-free" once the original bridge bond was paid (which occurred in 1986), the tolls continued for sixteen additional years. In 2002, it became the last toll bridge in Southern California to discontinue tolls. The original toll booths on the Coronado side remained intact for a short while, and were temporarily replaced with newer, more modern-looking toll booths for the filming of a car commercial in April 2007. The islands upon which the toll booths sat, as well as the canopy over the toll plaza area, are still intact, located at the western end of the bridge in the westbound lanes. Though tolls are no longer collected, beginning February 19, 2009 there was talk of resuming westbound toll collection.
Akashi-Kaikyo, Kobe-Naruto
The Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, also known as the Pearl Bridge, has the longest central span of any suspension bridge, at 1,991 metres (6,532 ft). It is located in Japan and was completed in 1998. The bridge links the city of Kobe on the mainland of Honshu- to Iwaya on Awaji Island by crossing the busy Akashi Strait. It carries part of the Honshu--Shikoku Highway. The bridge is one of the key links of the Honshu--Shikoku Bridge Project, which created three routes across the Inland Sea. The Akashi-Kaikyo bridge in Japan is the daddy of all suspension bridges, over 1,200ft longer than the 2nd place Great Belt Bridge in Denmark. Originally built to replace the dangerous Kobe-Iwaya ferry in 1998 which had suffered at the hands of numerous storms, the bridge crosses the Akashi Strait and cost around $4.5 billion to build. The statistics on this build are staggering; it took 2 million workers 10 years to build the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge. During that time they poured 1.4 million cubic meters of concrete, assembled 181,000 of structural steel, built 350,000 tonne anchor blocks at either end of the bridge and hooked up enough steel cable to circle the world 7 times!
Hangzhou Bay Bridge, Zhejiang
Hangzhou Bay Bridge is a long highway bridge with a cable-stayed portion across Hangzhou Bay in the eastern coastal region of China. It connects the municipalities of Jiaxing and Ningbo in Zhejiang province. At 35.673 km (22 mi) in length, Hangzhou Bay Bridge is the longest trans-oceanic bridge in the world, but it does not have the longest cable-stayed main span. It is also second in the world in overall length, with the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in the United States being 2.8 kilometers longer. Construction of the bridge was completed on June 14, 2007, and an opening ceremony was held on June 26, 2007, to great domestic media fanfare. The bridge was not opened to public use until May 1, 2008, after a considerable period of testing and evaluation. The bridge shortened the highway travel distance between Ningbo and Shanghai from 400 km (249 mi) to 280 km (174 mi) and reduced travel time from 4 to 2.5 hours.
Magdeburg Water Bridge, Magdeburg
The Magdeburg Water Bridge (German: Wasserstraßenkreuz) is a navigable aqueduct in Germany, opened in October 2003. It connects the Elbe-Havel Canal to the Mittelland Canal, crossing over the Elbe River. It is notable for being the longest navigable aqueduct in the world, with a total length of 918 metres (3,012 ft). The Elbe-Havel and Mittelland canals had previously met near Magdeburg but on opposite sides of the Elbe. Ships moving between the two had to make a 12-kilometre (7.5 mi) detour, descending from the Mittelland Canal through the Rothensee boat lift into the Elbe, then sailing downstream on the river, before entering the Elbe-Havel Canal through Niegripp lock. Low water levels in the Elbe often prevented fully laden canal barges from making this crossing, requiring time-consuming off-loading of cargo.
Grand bridges from The Grand Canyon
Water Bridge In Germany
Folding Bridge : A folding bridge is a type of movable bridge.
Hörn Bridge, Kiel, Germany
The Hörn Bridge or Hörnbrücke is a folding bridge in the city of Kiel in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. One can describe it as a three-segment bascule bridge with a main span of 25.5 meters (84 ft) that folds in the shape of the letter N. The bridge was designed by Gerkan, Marg and Partners.The Hörn Bridge is a three-segment bascule bridge over the inner end of the Kiel Fjord (called Hörn) in the port of the German city of Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein. The bridge is a 25.5-meter-long, 5-meter-wide steel structure. This pedestrian bridge was built in 1997 and connects the city centre on the west bank of the Hörn with the Gaarden quarter and the Norwegenkai (Norway dock) on the east bank. It is one of the architectural and technical attractions of the city and is an important traffic route for pedestrians and cyclists. It was meant primarily as a route from the station to Norwegenkai for the passengers of the Oslo ferry line. The bridge construction cost 16 million DM, and its construction was viewed skeptically by many Kielians. There were repeated malfunctions of the mechanism upon startup, hence one of its nicknames, the "Klappt-Nix-Brücke" (Folds-not Bridge).
Pegasus Bridge, Normandy, France
Pegasus Bridge is a bascule bridge (a type of movable bridge), built in 1934, that crossed the Caen Canal, between Caen and Ouistreham, in Normandy, France. Also known as the Bénouville Bridge after the neighbouring village, it was, with the nearby Ranville Bridge over the river Orne, a major objective of Operation Deadstick past of Operation Tonga in the opening minutes of the invasion of Normandy. A gliderborne unit of the British 6th Airborne Division, commanded by Major John Howard was to land, take the bridges intact and hold them until relieved. The successful taking of the bridges played an important role in limiting the effectiveness of a German counter-attack in the days and weeks following the invasion. In 1944 it was renamed Pegasus Bridge in honour of the operation. The name is derived from the shoulder emblem worn by the British airborne forces, which is the flying horse Pegasus.
Burnside Bridge, Portland, Oregon
The Burnside Bridge is a bascule bridge that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. Including approaches, the Burnside has a total length of 2,308 ft (703 m) and a 251 ft (77 m) center span. While lowered this span is normally 64 ft (20 m) above the river. The deck is made of concrete, which contributes to its being one of the heaviest bascule bridges in the United States. The counterweights, housed inside the two piers, weigh 1,700 short tons (1,518 long tons; 1,542 t). The lifting is normally controlled by the Hawthorne Bridge operator, but an operator staffs the west tower during high river levels. The bridge provides shelter for the initially unauthorized Burnside Skatepark under the east end, and the Portland Saturday Market was formerly held most weekends under the west end.Soundcloud Is Adapting… Are You?
Anyone that’s serious about marketing music has noticed that Soundcloud has changed.
Just over a year ago they introduced their brand new user interface to the public, still largely in beta mode. The update introduced a few new features whilst adapting or removing older ones. At first, everybody panicked and complained; it looked too cartoony, not all old functionality was there and there were a lot of infancy bugs. Over time though, they’ve done a great job refining the platform to its current state – and most fans have grown accustomed to it.
Soundcloud is upping their game; shifting course from being originally intended as a means for musicians to collaborate, to a mass-scale music platform.
A mandatory change if we believe the numbers… October 2013 reports claim over 45 million registered users and over 250 million monthly listeners. They are the most shared music platform on Twitter and valued at over $700 million, with recent rumors even talking about a takeover by Twitter (recent sources already state this deal hasn’t gone through). It’s often said that Soundcloud took the online space that Myspace had once occupied, and with that comes the realization that they need to continuously adapt, or face the cliff.
On May 12th, Soundcloud announced the official shut down of the old version, removing the option to switch back to the older style if you so preferred.
That makes the new Soundcloud, or Next Soundcloud as they call it, here to stay. And we as users, artists, industry professionals and fans, better learn how to use it properly.
Over the past few months, I’ve received many emails of people asking how to cope with the new changes. The focus of the promotion within the platform has shifted, and many of the older tricks aren’t useable anymore. As many were using those with a lot of success, understandably they are upset… and want a solution.
In this article we’ll discuss the most important changes, how that has changed the game and what you can do to adapt to it. How to turn it around and make it work in your favor. Adapt, leverage, grow.
So long, private sharing trick.
The issue I’ve heard most about is the removal of the ‘private sharing trick’; a great method for sending out privately uploaded tunes directly to your followers and people you followed. You could include a 140 character message, and recipients would receive a notification and often also an email. The latter was enabled on default in new accounts. One could then switch the upload to ‘public’ while retaining all the traffic. With the cap on people followed being 2000 and the email notification, it was an incredibly effective way to give new uploads an initial boost.
Besides that, they have improved the algorithms that detect spamming in comments and messages. Accounts are now automatically flagged if they place too many similar comments within the same time frame, with the punishment being a mute-period. The more you get flagged, the longer the mute period – until you get banned.
In return, the inter-user messaging system has been improved, including a new method for private content sharing, allowing you to include content that has been uploaded on your profile to private messages to other users. This also works for privately uploaded content.
Changes in content curation.
Another less obvious but crucial change is made in the way content is curated to user’s streams, the personalized music discovery tab. Before, it would display content uploaded and liked by those you followed. Now, with the introduction of reposts, it shows solely their uploads and reposts (reposting allows users to post other people’s uploads to their own profile, attracting traffic from
their own fans, but directing it back to the original source – the profile of the uploader).
Soundcloud did this because with the older system, streams had become terribly chaotic and crowded, to the extent that people rarely used it to discover new music. As it included content both uploaded and liked by those you’re a fan of, people that followed many active users quickly received too much content to be able to digest. Their streams got flooded and as a result they looked elsewhere for music discovery… blogs, Hype Machine and promotional channels.
With the new changes, the stream has become a much more filtered source; showing less but higher quality content. As a result they hope to make it a better resource for music discovery, which to me, is a very welcome change.
How do we adapt?
When looking at the bigger picture, you should realize that Soundcloud has forced a shift in user’s focus for promotion within the platform.
Marketing to other users has become less rewarding, with the removal of the private sharing trick and increased anti-spamming rules, whereas marketing to tastemakers and content curators has become much more interesting, with the introduction of reposting and the new content curation system. Instead of focusing on promoting to other users, you are now much better off getting
through to the right DJs, labels and music promoters, whom are easier to reach and can publish your content to their audiences.
In terms of practical strategies, the above can be translated into a few strategies which allow you to work with the current set of Soundcloud features.
Email marketing.
To cope with the loss of the private sharing trick, which could drive a surge of traffic to new uploads, there’s the alternative of direct email marketing. Hopefully, you were already doing this simultaneously to using the private sharing trick, but if not, this is absolutely the right time to do it.
I’m actually convinced that email marketing, and building a solid email list, is the strongest form of online marketing…
think about it – when posting to your fans on Facebook and Twitter, only a selection of them sees the post, and it’s also competing with the posts of others, whereas with email you pop up straight into someone’s inbox. And everyone reads their mail everywhere
nowadays.
You can easily collect email addresses by offering your fans free downloads in exchange for their email address, using tools such as ‘content lockers’ or ‘pay what you want’ download systems. You often see these for likes, where people can access downloadable content by clicking ‘like’ on a Facebook page. An easy to use email gate system is offered by Bandcamp, and I explain how to set it up in this article. Also collect via adding a ‘sign up’ tab on your Facebook page and website.
Good newsletter services, where you can store your email lists and send out campaigns from are Mailchimp and Aweber. Using these, you can build an audience and send them your latest releases directly. The key here is to develop a relationship and to prime them for your content. That way you’re going to see much better interaction rates. Send them content regularly, but not too often, and whenever you have a big release coming up, give them a heads up before dropping it on their laps. Good design goes a long way too, and this is where Mailchimp is the definitive king.
Reach the tastemakers.
With the introduction of the reposting and new private messaging features, Soundcloud has empowered tastemakers; whether labels, DJs, music promoters and blogs. That can be to your advantage, if you know how to get through to them.
Reposts allow them to curate content on their own profiles, providing exposure to other accounts, and encourage interaction between associated accounts. You now see many labels reposting releases of their artists, whom in turn repost uploads of the label, and then lastly there’s blogs who then repost a lot of that content as well. It’s an interesting dynamic – one you can use to your
benefit.
Firstly, you need to cultivate this interaction within your crew. Get your label, associated artists, remixers and any blogs you’re close with to repost your stuff, and then repost their uploads in return. Everyone benefits.
Secondly, this is all the more reason to develop strong relationships with blogs and music promoters. There are many with Soundcloud accounts with huge followers, each focused on a different subset of music. Think about house.NET, dubstep.NET or Mr. Suicide Sheep. You should build a list of blogs that are applicable to your sound, trace the founders, cultivate relationships and start updating them on your music. Support that by sending out newsletter mailers to larger selections of blogs, using services as discussed before. Find an extensive guide on how to reach these bloggers here. When you get blogs or promoters interested, ask them to repost or upload your content. In the latter case, repost it yourself.
Then there’s the new messaging system, which allows you to include audio to direct messages to direct messages to other accounts. This also works for private uploads. In my experience, this is a very solid way to get through to DJs, labels and tastemakers – as many have large Soundcloud accounts which they maintain themselves. Also, the barrier to checking messages is low and with the audio being embedded, I find that response rates are surprisingly good. Use this as a way to get DJ promo, to get your demo through to labels or to get support of those blogs.
When sending these messages, make sure your profile looks slick, your message is acute and that the content you’re sending over is of top notch quality. Don’t over-do it on the sending out too many messages within a short timespan though, as Soundcloud will impose that mute on you. 10 every hour or so has worked for us.
Using these strategies you should be able to compensate for the loss of the features that we all so loved. For more strategies on how to dominate on Soundcloud, check out my book – The Soundcloud Bible.Timedog finally manages to communicate with Sans about Gaster, but doesn’t get the answer they’re expecting…
Yeah, it’s time for another written part! I know the written parts might not get looked at as much as the comic ones, but be sure not to miss this one, as there’s some important things here!
–Dogs of Future Past–
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Masterpost and FAQ
Several quick shortcuts later, and the trio had exhausted all other possibilities as to where Gaster was. There was only one other place that he could possibly be, and that was where they were headed now…to the side entrance to the CORE.
While this place was a safe distance away from the apartment building that would eventually become Mettaton’s resort, it was still bustling with people and activity. A large metal scaffold had been constructed leading up to the CORE’s power base, and attached to it in an array of haphazard metal, wires and pipes, sat the time machine. Frisk recognized at least the shape of it from the curtained-off remains in Sans’ personal lab. Here, however, it seemed in much more of a complete piece. A team of scientists were running around, checking specs and readings, securing both the machine and the scaffolding to the enormous generator. The searing heat of the lava below them only made the scene more urgent and uncomfortable.
Greatest Dog was the first to speak up about all their shared worry. Once they turn on the machine…it’ll break up space and time and hurt the whole underground! Could we even stop it?
On this, Frisk wasn’t sure. They knew they had to save Gaster…but was it possible for them to do that without stopping the CORE implosion completely? “I think we should just concentrate on finding Gaster and making sure he’s nowhere nearby when the CORE implodes.”
So we’re just gonna let the implosion happen? Flowey asked.
“We don’t how what’ll happen to all of us if the underground loses the ability for people to save and reset! The important thing is saving Gaster. So that’s what we’ll do.”
This was at least something they could tenuously agree on. They started forward across the scaffolding, making sure to avoid the eyes of any scientists that might spot them and decide they weren’t supposed to be here. They did see Papyrus…but as he was hammering away at a piece of scaffolding while also trying to encourage it to be properly attached already!, they decided it better to not bother him.
By the time they got to the machine itself, it was clear…there was no sign of Gaster. There was one skeleton they still recognized, though…and that was Sans, who was reading over a hefty pile of blueprints. He noticed them enter the machine’s effect zone, and stepped forward, smiling but still looking a bit worried.
“Hey, pup, I thought ya might show up here at some point. You need to stay back, this place is dangerous.”
They listened and took a step back onto the scaffolding itself, but still looked pretty anxious. It felt like everything was happening around them and they were powerless to stop it. All that worry read on their face pretty clearly, and Sans picked up on it…just for the wrong reasons.
“Ya anxious, pup? I’m a little nervous myself. I know this is a risky venture…but it’ll be worth it once we’re back in time and can make peace with the humans.” He tried to offer them a genuine smile. “And hey, you said yourself things would turn out all right!”
This didn’t seem to make them feel any better. They just gave Sans a worried look, and kept pacing back and forth in front of him. Not being able to communicate this easily was beyond frustrating!
“I mean, I’ve got all of my notes and then some here to make sure we don’t miss a thing!” Sans held up something from his pile of papers, and squinted at it, suddenly looking confused. “Hell…so much info here, I don’t even remember what half of it was for.”
All of a sudden, a faint buzzing sound came from what seemed like behind Sans. He definitely recognized the sound, though, and placed the stack of blueprints on the ground before pulling his cell phone out of his lab coat pocket. “Oh….gimmie just a sec here, pup.”
While Sans busied himself with the phone, the dog took the opportunity to look at some of the blueprints and notes that Sans had dropped in front of them. On top of what appeared to be a main blueprint for the time machine was a hand-written log report…except it seemed to be written in weird symbols, mostly made up of hand signals.
“What does this mean?” Frisk asked, glancing over the notes frantically.
“Here…let me!” The dog shook out his head, and Flowey resumed control, peering closer at the notes. “I can read this font.”
You can? Frisk sounded surprised at this news.
“I can read any font. I had a lot of resets to mess with, and a lot of time to read every book in the underground. I taught myself to read every font there is.”
Flowey scanned over the log note, and his eyes widened…the symbols suddenly became all too familiar to them.
DARK, DARKER, YET DARKER
THE DARKNESS KEEPS GROWING
THE SHADOWS CUTTING DEEPER
PHOTON READINGS NEGATIVE
THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT SEEMS VERY, VERY INTERESTING
WHAT DO YOU TWO THINK?
…That’s what Reaper Bird said when we talked to all the amalgams! Frisk exclaimed.
It’s the bad memories! Greatest Dog actually seemed more anxious than ever. The ones in the shadows, the corners! They read this!
“But what does it mean?” Flowey asked, frustrated.
The three were so busy musing over the log entry that they didn’t even notice Sans finished his phone call and turned back towards them. He looked more annoyed than anything. “Keep gettin’ calls from this unknown number and then it’s nothin’ but static…” He pocketed his cell phone, and gave them a look of surprise. “Geez louise, don’t tell me you can read scientific font, too?”
They gave him back the one tail wag as a means of saying “yes,” as with their previous game of twenty questions. They also whined, desperate for some explanation.
A thought occurred to Sans, and he seemed to brighten up. “Say, pup…if you can read…can ya also write?”
The dog’s ears perked up, and they wagged their tail furiously. Yes, finally! This could be their chance to get something across to Sans! Sans picked up on the hint, and pulled a pen out of his other coat pocket. He handed it down to them so that they could grab it in their mouth, and flipped over one of the log pages to a blank space.
“Then here ya go! How ‘bout you get down what’s so important that you’ve been chasing me all over Hotland for it.”
Despite having limbs and paws now, it turned out that actually writing was even more difficult without fingers. Flowey, still in control, suddenly found that practice he’d been putting in writing with his mouth to good use…and even then, it still took a lot more time and effort than any of the three would have liked. But after a lot of careful scratching at the paper, they got down what they figured was the most brief and important message possible:
STOP GASTER
They dropped the pen, and stared up at Sans expectantly. The skeleton just looked down at the writing with confusion…almost disappointment.
“…I don’t get what ya mean, pup. What’s ‘Gaster’?”
The dog’s jaw fell open in shock. Out of all possible responses they could’ve gotten from Sans, this was the one they expected the least.
What does he mean?! How does he not know who Gaster is?
He’s the only one who remembered him in the first place!
Does that mean that he’s not even here at all? Did we fail the mission?
But…we’re here before the CORE implosion!
Sans didn’t look like he had the time to sit and wait for them to finish an internal debate, as he sighed and scooped up the papers and blueprints off the floor. “Sorry to cut this short, pup…but I can’t help ya if you don’t give me much to work with.”
The dog scampered about, trying to think of anything else to say or do, but all they could do was whine. “I know you’re worried, pup, but we’ve come too far on this to delay it now. Maybe once this experiment is done, and we’re all free…you can come back and we’ll have a much longer chat about what you know. Sound good?”
Honestly, that didn’t sound good at all to them. But what could they even do about it? It seemed like all of their plans had been thrown out of whack. They ran back to the time machine, and then back to Sans, practically growling with frustration.
“You better hurry along, pup. We’ll be starting up the machine soon, and this whole area won’t be safe for you. But you’ll know soon enough that it’s worked.”
What do we do now?!
Flowey, still in control, felt beyond frustrated at this. UGH! Let’s just GO!
With that, the dog took off running back across the scaffolding, not even caring who noticed them along the way. They left Sans behind, suddenly looking a lot less sure of himself. He looked back down at the scrawled message on the back of the log entry, eyesockets furrowed.
In his coat pocket, his cell phone buzzed once again.Judge W. Mitchell Nance (Photo: Courier-Journal)
A Kentucky Family Court judge who refused to hear adoption cases involving gays and lesbians has been found guilty of misconduct by the state's Judicial Conduct Commission.
The commission issued a public reprimand Tuesday against W. Mitchell Nance, who announced his intention to resign earlier this year amid the ethics and misconduct inquiry. That resignation was set to become final Dec. 16.
The order finds that "due to Respondent's retirement, a public reprimand is warranted, and is the only public sanction available."
Nance drew national attention in April when he said he would no longer hear adoption cases involving "homosexual parties" because he believes allowing a gay person to adopt could never be in the child's best interest.
The Barren and Metcalf county judge announced he would recuse himself from such cases because ethics rules require judges to do so when they have a personal bias or prejudice.
Background: Judge says he won't hear gay adoptions because it could never be in child's best interest
More on resignation: Judge who refused to hear gay adoption cases resigns amid ethics, misconduct charges
The commission, which investigates complaints of judicial misconduct and wrongdoing, charged Nance in September with multiple violations of judicial ethics rules, including those banning bias or prejudice based on sexual orientation.
The public reprimand released Tuesday notes that the Kentucky code of judicial conduct requires judges to "fairly and impartially decide cases according to the law."
It cited canons requiring judges to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary and prohibiting prejudice based upon race, sex, religion, national original, disability, age, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, among others.
"Judge Nance's refusal to hear and decide adoption cases involving homosexuals is violative of said Canons," the order said.
It also noted that Nance |
her patients.
"People started 'to know' many of my patients and even to fall in love with a few, like Dr. Wilson and Pops," she said. "I think it's important to do this kind of thing to follow the improvements of my patients' skin and to allow people to get to know a little bit more about my life and my patients', and also for my followers to feel connected."
Passions and turn-ons for pimples aside, Dr. Lee and Magela don't recommend removing our protuberances on our own. "The risks of manipulating at home is to mark the skin in a permanent way, infect it, or create abscesses that will need antibiotics to heal. Or even a visit to the hospital if it gets out of control," she warns.
"The correct way is to treat them with facial cleaning products recommended by the dermatologist and, if necessary, the extraction must be done in the correct environment by the appropriate professional, where there will be no risk of contamination," Magela recommends.
So you got it, right? If you have the wish to pop, just press play on the videos of Dr. Pimple Popper's channel and relax. My suggestion is Dr. Lee's favorite video, a removal of a pilar cyst. "It came out of my patient in one piece as if it were a dental abscess and I was able to catch it before it hit the ground," she said. "It was really fun!"
This article was translated from Motherboard Brasil.Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone gave a message to the world via the paparazzi yesterday.
The couple spotted a group of photographers while eating at a restaurant in New York City and decided to use the opportunity to promote some charities and organizations by using handwritten notes.
Both Garfield and Stone have used the tactic once before when spotted by the paparazzi, and this time, they decided to add some more charities to their list.
The charities listed on the card were Youth Mentoring Connection, Autism Speaks, Worldwide Orphans Foundation, and Gilda's Club New York City.
Earlier this year, Garfield surprised children at a London charity by turning up as Spider-Man and playing in a playground with them.
Watch The Amazing Spider-Man cast talk to Digital Spy below:
Related: When Ben Affleck Wants to Change the World, He Calls This Woman
Related: Kate Middleton's Butt Will Benefit Charity
From the editors ofI got local creator Brian Canini’s “ The Big Year ” comic on Kickstarter. It is a daily journal comic over the course of a year. I laughed, I cried, I felt the feels. The comic was done in 2015 and into 2016, two years ago. He was buying a house and getting married. He had a kid, a good paying job, friends and loving family, and another kid on the way. He has the perfect life and expresses gratitude on several pages yet sometimes still feels disconnected, anxious, depressed, unfulfilled and out of control.
I couldn't help but compare his life to mine. I must admit feelings of envy and inadequacy while reading this (much like spending too much time on social media.) I felt sort of unaccomplished and worthless, like his darker pages where he expresses his frustration, apprehension and existential angst. About the only things we have in common are that we are both newlyweds who love our spouses with our whole heart, and we both love IP comix.. After reading this book, I felt a connection with the author and also equal parts depressed and motivated about my own life, and a little less alone, and also happy for him. The beautiful life experiences he illustrates, from the mundane to the miraculous made me a little more hopeful about the future and my place in it.
from the Introduction by his buddy Derek Baxter from Drunken Cat Comics
This book inspired me to try making a comic again, like I did back in 2014 with ‘FML’ and ‘Bird Brains’. I want to do a daily over a long period of time like he did. Maybe I can make a connection with someone on the other side of the panels.Page Back Poetry Index The Darkling Thrush a poem by Thomas Hardy The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy
The Darkling Thrush poem - Thomas Hardy A poem can stir all of the senses, and the subject matter of a poem can range from being funny to being sad. We hope that you liked this poem and the sentiments in the words of The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy you will find even more poem lyrics by this famous author by simply clicking on the Poetry Index link below! Choose Poetry online for the greatest poems by the most famous poets. Page Back Poetry Index © 2018 Siteseen Ltd AdChoices Cookie Policy By Linda Alchin Privacy StatementDear Marvel Studios,
First off, I’ll just get this out of the way, BIG FAN.
I think what you folks have accomplished within the last 7 years has been tremendous. You guys changed the model of movie franchise building, by simply adopting a similar model based on monthly comic books.
Create separate titles, build on those titles, hint at a bigger story in those titles but still allow those concepts to be their own thing.
It’s a model that became so successful, that other studios are scrambling to copy it. BUT, more importantly….you’ve made some FANTASTIC FILMS. Personally, while I don’t love every single film you’ve guys have made, I definitely don’t HATE any of the films you’ve guys have done. I have been incredibly entertained with every single film that came out of Marvel Studios.
The shared movie universe is a complicated plan, but you guys have had the luck of it delivering and making good stuff on that plan.
Be proud of that….but I think it’s time to realize that not all plans work out.
Look, I don’t know what really happened between you guys and Edgar Wright. I don’t pretend that I know. You each got your reasons, and I’m not here to pick sides. Choices were made, and what’s done is done.
BUT, here’s what I’m noticing.
This week has been a major backlash on you, and you guys seem to want to quickly scramble and get the movie out there. Director choices seem rushed and even desperate (though I was intrigued with the choice of Adam McKay, but it doesn’t seem like he can commit).
But why try to keep making this movie so desperately? Is it because you told all of us at Comic Con that there will be an Ant-Man movie next year and you don’t want to disappoint us?
Guys, I hate to tell you this, but we already are disappointed.
I hope you have been listening to the fan reactions because the truth is we weren’t really excited for an Ant-Man movie, we were excited about Edgar Wright doing a movie with YOU guys.
With Edgar not there….well…we kinda don’t want the Ant-Man movie anymore.
Marvel Studios, I think the best course of action…is to let the movie die. Let it go.
Move on.
I know…money has been spent. You already got an amazing cast for it…but it seems like you guys are rushing a vision just to keep a release date.
Don’t. That’s a risky move, and on top of that, you got a fanbase that will now examine this film hoping for it to fail.
It’s pretty much a lose-lose situation.
Like I said, let it die. Let it join the ranks of many great movies that never got made. Let it live on in legend as that cool movie that could have been. It’s a better place for it.
Now…you wanna make the fans really happy? Then I think the answer is pretty clear, and I even read rumors that you guys have been developing the script to this already.
Ok, if that’s the case, then this might be the best course of action. Let go of Ant-Man, let go of that release date….and announce that you will be making a Carol Danvers Captain Marvel* movie.
I heard that the plan was to make Ant-Man the lead start of Phase 3 of Marvel studios, putting it in the place where Iron Man used to be. Great…but why not break ground and give it to Carol instead?
Instead of yet ANOTHER male comic book movie, give it to a female character that the fans actually really, really, really want to see on the big screen.
Think about that for a second…there are NO female lead superhero/comic book films in the market right now. If you make this movie, you have yet another great reason to stand out from the crowd.
And don’t tell me that female genre lead movies aren’t successful, because by the looks of it, I think a very successful female lead genre film (:::COUGH::::HUNGERGAMESCATCHINGFIRE:::COUGH::) actually BEAT Iron Man 3 and was the highest grossing movie of last year.
And not that you guys need to….but it would be another reason to rub it in to the Distinguished Competition.
This year you have Guardians of the Galaxy. If that movie is both critically and commercial successful, then you guys proved that the bombing of Green Lantern (a far more easier concept to sell and make then GotG…I mean come on, it’s SPACE COPS! It was not that hard.) was more on the execution then the concept or the fact that they should be embracing the silly side of super heroes then be ashamed of it.
So imagine making the first big budgeted female lead superhero film with a character that isn’t well known….while the Distinguished Competition still can’t wrap their heads around giving Wonder Woman (one of THE most famous superheroes) a solo film.
But it’s also not just to make a statement, Carol is a fun/great/cool character that you can build a successful film out of.
Take a lot of inspiration from the current Kelly Sue Deconnick run of the character. Carol can even serve a unique function that actually doesn’t exist in the Marvel cinematic universe…..the straight-man.
In a world that has a sarcastic smartass in metal armor, a WW2 solider out of time, a god, a man who turns into a giant creature and etc. Carol could be the most “normal” character in the Marvel Movie Universe.
That means she can be the perfect audience identifier. Yes, she’s also a skilled pilot as well, but she can react in ways to the strange and the unusual the ways the other characters can’t. And hell, when she DOES get used to it, she can react in ways that feels both right, and hilariously relatable.
Yeah, I’m pushing more of the character based stuff then the powers, because, that’s what your films have excelled at. Great, strong characters. Her powers are ok, but her personality would be a great addition to the movie universe.
Look, I’m not saying that you guys CAN’T make a good Ant-Man movie in this situation. It’s possible.
But really think about this decision.
You can just try your best to make movie from a hard situation, or pause, take a breath, and focus attention on a new direction and think of a new way to get us excited again.
Seriously, listen to fans. They want a female lead super hero film. They’re ready. Carol Danvers is ready. I think you guys are too.
*Sidenote: I am aware that Marvel Studios might want to use her original name, Ms. Marvel, instead just to keep their own brands a bit separate since they already have a franchise with the word CAPTAIN in it. I get that…but screw that. Keep her name as Captain Marvel.
That way, when the time comes, you might even consider using that name to make another movie franchise altogether, this time starring the great Pakistani-American version of Ms. Marvel…
BUT….that is an article for another time….(TAMPA, Fla.) – The United Soccer League (USL) today was granted provisional Division 2 status by the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) Board of Directors, beginning with the 2017 season.
Earlier this year, the USL submitted its application and supporting documentation for entry into Division 2. This landmark decision by USSF supports the USL’s vision to become one of the most globally recognized second division professional soccer leagues.
Since 2014, the USL has more than doubled in size. Ottawa Fury FC, Reno 1868 FC and the Tampa Bay Rowdies are joining as new clubs for next season while Nashville SC will begin play in 2018 with further expansion on the horizon.
“The USL is honored to receive U.S. Soccer Federation Division 2 status, which provides further validation about our League’s financial sustainability, national footprint, ownership quality, stadium infrastructure and player development,” said Alec Papadakis, the USL Chief Executive Officer. “Our teams have invested more than $100 million into stadium development in the last year to enhance the experience for the 1.5 million passionate fans that attended games in 2016, the 1,000-plus players and nearly 100 coaches that have positioned our League as a highly sophisticated competition model that cultivates strong regional rivalries.”
The USL’s expansive national footprint features teams in 21 of the top 50 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas and three of the top six populated Canadian cities. This year, team markets reached 75 million people including 30 million who lived in a region where the USL was the only professional league.
“After an exhaustive process working with both leagues, in the best interest of the sport the U.S. Soccer Board of Directors has decided to grant provisional Division II status to the USL,” said U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati. “U.S. Soccer will create an internal working group that will work with the league to set a pathway to meet the full requirements for Division II and allow for the larger goal of creating a sustainable future. We look forward to another productive year for professional soccer in this country.”
With the USL kicking off its 2017 season in late March, the League will be announcing its official schedule and conference alignments soon.Delicious Meatball Sub
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Member Back to Top Post by Delicious Meatball Sub on Larry Farnsworth said:
Also, I think asking artists on Twitter and Facebook directly is fine, right? Eh, I don't know about that. If Joe Internet e-mails the booking agent for Frank Ocean and is all "hey man, I'm thinking about Bonnaroo this summer, any chance Frank is there?" and the agent answers, what's the problem? There's no expectation of privacy there. If anything, it'd be inappropriate for the agent to leak it, but I don't see anything wrong with asking.Also, I think asking artists on Twitter and Facebook directly is fine, right?
It has nothing to do with the expectation of privacy. I think it's unethical to ask in the first place, particularly with the intention of posting it here. Booking agents aren't supposed to discuss the line-up in the first place and I don't think there should be a thread on Inforoo that encourages people, directly or indirectly, into coercing the info out of booking agents. It has nothing to do with the expectation of privacy. I think it's unethical to ask in the first place, particularly with the intention of posting it here. Booking agents aren't supposed to discuss the line-up in the first place and I don't think there should be a thread on Inforoo that encourages people, directly or indirectly, into coercing the info out of booking agents.
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Member Back to Top Post by itrainmonkeys on I can see both sides of it. Juggs' example seems fine. Simple request and if they give an answer - cool. If they deny an answer - cool and it should be left at that. No need to trick the agents into anything. Like last year there were times where people would send mulitple e-mails to booking agents pretending they wanted to book an artist for the date of Roo and that is definitely a bit much IMO.
Basically...just keep it casual. We don't need any lineup superspies who can manipulate info out of people lol.
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Member Back to Top Post by Alberto Balsalm on This will be my first and last post in this thread. My personal boycott of it begins now. I was a main contributor to this cause last year, and while it was fun and we found a great deal of inside information out, it was a lot of work and most importantly took a LOT of fun and surprise out of the lineup drop for me.
Good luck on your sleuthing, y'all. Hopefully the info found out in here doesn't spill over too much into the other threads, I fear I'll have a hard time avoiding it.
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Member Back to Top Post by Dave Maynar on wannaberoo'ing said: I don't think too many people are paying attention to inforoo's artist direct confirmation thread? If we are gathering information, and we're asking agents for simple yes/no answers, and posting it here, how many people realistically are finding out about it? I'm just asking what everyone thinks, not trying to be snarky.
You'd be surprised at how many people read things firsthand here. On top of that, Consequence of Sound (and probably others) use this board as a resource for reumors that they then repost on their sites. You'd be surprised at how many people read things firsthand here. On top of that, Consequence of Sound (and probably others) use this board as a resource for reumors that they then repost on their sites.Knowing where water vapor is in the atmosphere is one of many factors forecasters use to identify weather features and so the GOES Project has created animations that indicate where water vapor is moving over the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific oceans.Observations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) measure the local air temperature in kelvins (degrees Kelvin) at different layers of the atmosphere."The different temperature ranges are color coded in the animations so that the magenta color indicates areas where clear, dry air penetrates lower in the atmosphere,” said Dennis Chesters, the flight project scientist for the NASA/NOAA GOES Program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "These animations track mid-level dry-air winds that are otherwise unknown to weather forecasters."GOES Eastern US SECTOR IR Image. Credit: NOAAThe animations also provide wind data in cloudless regions that can be beneficial to pilots and improve long-range weather forecasts. There is one image every three hours from the full-disk scans for the previous five days.The movement of upper-air water vapor over the Eastern Pacific is shown using GOES satellite air temperature data. High, cold clouds are white. High, cold, clear air (around -28 F) is blue. Lower, warmer, dry air (around -10 F) is magenta (where clear, dry air penetrates lower in the atmosphere). Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project Dennis ChestersMeteorologists use water vapor imagery to analyze location and movement of water vapor moisture in the upper and middle levels of the atmosphere. Satellite instruments such as those on GOES can detect water vapor in the infrared spectrum between the 6.7 to 7.3 micrometer wavelength ranges.Water vapor seen at these infrared wavelengths is in the upper and middle levels of the troposphere, where the winds are ruled by large-scale air masses.Chesters created the animations using data from each of the two GOES satellites to create water vapor movies of the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific oceans. The movies are created with data from GOES infrared 6.7 micron band.Chesters noted that at 6.7 microns, we see down only halfway into the atmosphere, roughly to the altitude that jet airlines cruise.This GOES animation indicates the movement of upper-air water vapor over the Atlantic Ocean. The infrared glow from the top layer of water vapor corresponds to the air temperature: high cold clouds (white), high cold clear air (blue) (around -28 F), for lower, warm, dry air (magenta) around -10 F. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project Dennis ChestersNOAA's GOES-East (or GOES-13) and GOES-West (or GOES-15) sit 60 degrees apart in a fixed orbit over Earth and provide forecasters with a look at the movement of weather systems in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The GOES satellites collect full disk images (showing one side of Earth) of the eastern and western sides of the Americas every three hours, providing eight views per day of the clouds over the entire Western Hemisphere. Overlaid on maps, the time-series of GOES cloud images provide a review of the large-scale weather. Where there are no clouds, the water vapor channel tracks the winds in the upper atmosphere.In regions where the air is dry, the colors appear warmer and brighter because we can see deeper into the atmosphere. The edges of these dry slots often contain jet streams and turbulence between the air masses. Identification of jet streams is important for air travel. Jet streams can be helpful and detrimental to pilots, so the airline industry uses these water vapor images to adjust flight routes. A jet stream is a fast-moving horizontal or tubular current of air that primarily flows west to east. For example, airplanes can fly in the same direction as a jet stream and get a push. Conversely, to fly into a jet stream would require more fuel, take longer to travel and may be turbulent.Another benefit of the animations is that they are also useful wind-tracers of the middle atmosphere over the open oceans, where there are no weather balloons. "Consequently, global 'water vapor winds' are estimated from the movement of these features and used in numerical weather models to improve long-range forecasts," Chesters said. "For instance, the dry slot between Hawaii and Southern California sometimes spins up into a whirlwind that moves ashore and would surprise the southwestern U.S. if NOAA's GOES-West satellite had not detected it."To see the GOES satellite animations, visit the NASA GOES Project webpage and click on "Upper-air water vapor movie." The movies are downloadable from the site and updated every hour.NOAA manages the GOES program, establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States. NASA Goddard procures and manages the design, development and launch of the satellites for NOAA on a cost reimbursable basis.CARACAS (Reuters) - State workers in Venezuela are receiving frequent phone calls, pressure from bosses and threats of dismissal to ensure they vote in favor of President Nicolas Maduro’s controversial new congress on Sunday.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro waves during a pro-government rally with workers of state-run oil company PDVSA, in Barcelona, Venezuela July 8, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS
The unpopular leftist Maduro is pushing ahead with the election to create a powerful new legislature despite four months of deadly anti-government protests in the oil-rich South American nation, which is reeling from food shortages, runaway inflation and violent crime.
Maduro says the 545-seat Constituent Assembly, which will have the power to dissolve all other state institutions, will overcome the “armed insurrection” to bring peace to Venezuela. His opponents say it is a puppet institution designed to cement a dictatorship.
With surveys showing that almost 70 percent of Venezuelans oppose the assembly, the government wants to avoid embarrassingly low turnout in a ballot being boycotted by the opposition.
Pressure on state employees is higher than ever, according to interviews with two dozen workers at institutions ranging from state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) to the Caracas subway, as well as text messages, internal statements, and videos seen by Reuters.
“Any manager, superintendent, and supervisor who tries to block the Constituent Assembly, who does not vote, or whose staff does not vote, must leave his job on Monday,” a PDVSA vice-president, Nelson Ferrer, said during a meeting with workers this week, according to a summary circulated within the company and seen by Reuters.
In a video of a political rally at PDVSA, an unidentified company representative wearing the red shirt often worn by members of Maduro’s Socialist Party shouted into a microphone that employees who do not vote will be fired.
“We’re not joking around here,” he says.
Workers recount a laundry list of pressures: text messages every 30 minutes, phone calls, mandatory political rallies during work, requests that each worker enlist 10 others to vote, or orders to report back to a “situation room” after voting.
While it remains difficult to estimate how many of Venezuela’s 2.8 million state workers will vote, most interviewees said a significant majority probably will, either out of allegiance or out of fear.
Some Venezuelans also said Socialist Party operatives had threatened to stop distributing subsidized food bags to those who did not vote.
“I’ve seen a stream of people crying because they don’t know what to do. There’s so much fear,” said one PDVSA employee, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals.
Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. PDVSA did not respond to a request for comment about Ferrer’s alleged remarks or wider pressures.
TO VOTE OR NOT TO VOTE?
After a brief coup against him and an oil strike over a decade ago, Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez increasingly staffed state institutions with his supporters.
Cheering government employees became fixtures at marches to defend the leftist firebrand’s “21st century Socialism”. PDVSA’s headquarters are still decorated with portraits of Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013.
Critics say unqualified political appointees have sunk the OPEC nation’s oil industry and spurred a brain drain.
Under Chavez’s less charismatic successor Maduro, the bolivar currency has plummeted and dragged down salaries to a few dozen U.S. dollars a month, fomenting discontent among the rank-and-file.
But, with the country of 30 million people submerged in a fourth straight year of recession, many employees stick to their posts because of health insurance, subsidized food or lack of other jobs.
Some employees said they would vote on Sunday to avoid the fate of those fired after a government lawmaker published a list of Venezuelans who signed a petition demanding a recall referendum against Chavez.
“My mother is ill, my wife is pregnant, and if I lose my job I’ll be even worse off than I am now. I need to go vote,” said a worker at Venezuelan steelmaker Sidor.
Other workers have decided to ignore phone calls and lay low on Sunday. Some are gambling that their bosses will be lenient, while others say they have compromising information about corruption or misdeeds that could protect them from dismissals.
A handful say they are willing to risk their jobs to oppose Maduro.
“We’re tired of working and working and still not being able to save. We can’t change cars or fix up our little house, let alone take a vacation,” said the director of a public school, once comfortably in the middle class.
“We’re ready to assume the consequences of not voting.”Last updated on Nov 28th, 2018
Based on the vampire horror novel by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and author Chuck Hogan, The Strain is an American horror TV series about a small group of people who are trying to save their city and maybe even humanity itself from the attack of an ancient strain of vampires.
In addition to Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim) and Chuck Hogan (Prince of Thieves), there is and Carlton Cuse, executive producer and screenwriter of Lost and showrunner of the Bates Motel.
Season 1
1 Hunger is the most important thing we know, the first lesson we learn. But hunger can be easily quieted down, easily satiated. There is another force, a different type of hunger, an unquenchable thirst that cannot be extinguished. It’s very existence is what defines us, what makes us human. That force is love. Abraham Setrakian, S1.Ep1: Night Zero
2 Love is the one force that cannot be explained, cannot be broken down into a chemical process. It is the beacon that guides us back home when no one is there, and the light that illuminates our loss. Its absence robs us of all pleasure of our capacity for joy. It makes our nights darker and our days gloomier. But when we find love no matter how wrong, how sad, or how terrible we cling to it. It gives us our strength. It holds us upright. It feeds on us and we feed on it. Love is our grace. Love is our downfall. Abraham Setrakian, S1.Ep1: Night Zero
3 Being good means nothing, unless you are willing to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done. Abraham Setrakian, S1.Ep3: Gone Smooth
4 Inaction is the greatest evil. Abraham Setrakian, S1.Ep5: Runaways
5 Human love is corrupted into the need to consume those closest to you. Abraham Setrakian, S1.Ep8: Creatures of the Night
6 The world today is not what it was one week ago. What will it be one week from now? One month from now? Nothing is written that cannot be changed. It is a small world, after all. We made it that way. Abraham Setrakian, S1.Ep13: The Master
1 Gratitude, what an effective leash. Thomas Eichorst, S1.Ep1: Night Zero
2 What I find fascinating is how love is considered a gift, a blessing, with no acceptance to the fact that it also binds and chokes and strangles. Thomas Eichorst, S1.Ep6: Occultation
3 The republic can only be led by a philosopher king with the wisdom to look after the needs of the many. Thomas Eichorst, S1.Ep7: For Services Rendered
1 A good story always trumps the truth. Eldritch Palmer, S1.Ep2: The Box
1 Anything’s possible if it’s motivated by enough hatred. Dutch Velders, S1.Ep4: It's Not for Everyone
1 The first will be last. The last shall be first. Vasiliy Fet, S1.Ep11: The Third Rail
Season 2
1 Evil lurks in the world, Abraham, in many forms. Some familiar, some not. You must stop it. We all must. Abraham's Grandmother, S2.Ep1: BK, NY
1 Everybody makes mistakes, even vampire hunters, even doctors. Vasiliy Fet, S2.Ep1: BK, NY
2 A great journey starts with a single step. Vasiliy Fet, S2.Ep2: By Any Means
1 Drinking alone is like dancing alone. Ephraim Goodweather, S2.Ep1: BK, NY
2 Even when the world is going to total s***, people can’t get past their own self-interest. Ephraim Goodweather, S2.Ep6: Identity
3 Sometimes a solution isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to knock down a lot of doors before you find the right way in. Ephraim Goodweather, S2.Ep7: The Born
1 Art rarely goes viral, but dark deeds seem to be contagious. Dutch Velders, S2.Ep1: BK, NY
1 Of all the evils a man faces, growing old is the one I cannot do anything about. Abraham Setrakian, S2.Ep2: By Any Means
2 “Homeland.” “Fatherland.” When politicians use these words, it usually precedes murder on a grand scale. Abraham Setrakian, S2.Ep12: Fallen Light
3 We have become overconfident as a species. We ignorantly believed in our primacy over all else, over all other species, over our planet itself. Will we perish under our own greed and selfishness? Or will we overcome and survive? A short time ago, our current reality was beyond imagination. Now we have one last chance to win back our world. In order to defeat the Master, we must be as cold and ruthless and savage as he is… and yet without becoming monsters ourselves. Abraham Setrakian, S2.Ep13: The Night Train
1 Denial is a special privilege of the rich. Eldritch Palmer, S2.Ep5: Quick and Painless
2 Perspective, Coco. Difficult to maintain but critical for success. Eldritch Palmer, S2.Ep7: The Born
3 Complacency is the enemy of empires. Eldritch Palmer, S2.Ep7: The Born
1 There are no myths, Professor. Only exaggerations. Quinlan, S2.Ep7: The Born
2 Beauty and love are fleeting but powerful. Quinlan, S2.Ep8: Intruders
3 Gentlemen. Human life is fleeting. I’ve watched many men perish, good and bad. The act itself, the dying, is the same. What distinguishes the honourable from the dishonourable is how in the few, most important moments in life, they conducted themselves. How would you men like to be remembered? As human animals, marginalized, locked away in cages? Or as warriors? Fighters of the highest order? Today, you fight for one tribe: humankind. It no longer matters what colour you wear, or what colour your skin is. All that matters is the colour of your blood. Red versus white. Today you will define who you are. Today you will spill white blood and change the future. Quinlan, S2.Ep13: The Night Train
Season 3
1 Every failed empire has a legion of elite warriors. Quinlan, S3.Ep1: New York Strong
2 A parent’s love for his or her offspring is one of the prime movers of human experience. Quinlan, S3.Ep3: First Born
3 Civility is an illusion. Savagery is the default state of humanity. Quinlan, S3.Ep7: Collaborators
1 It’s pretty hard to stamp out a bug that doubles its numbers every couple of days. Vasiliy Fet, S3.Ep2: Bad White
2 Some women, you know, they meet a guy, they find out he’s a rat catcher, you know, they get caught up in all the glamour. Vasiliy Fet, S3.Ep6: The Battle of Central Park
1 Some men seek not the right path but the safest one. Some men believe only in survival, no matter what the costs. Abraham Setrakian, S3.Ep7: Collaborators
2 Humanity’s survival was never certain. We came close to perishing many times before. In the 1300s, the bubonic plague killed over 20% of the humans on the globe. It took 300 years to restore the world’s population. Later, the Spanish flu infected more than half the people on Earth and killed 75 million before we were able to recover. And then science rose, and humanity flourished. The population soared to more than 7 billion. Our advancements brought us all closer together. We lost our fear. We believed we no longer had any predators. We believed in the primacy of science and technology. But 41 days was all it took from the day an airplane arrived carrying this plague to the moment when mankind stood on the precipice of destruction. Humanity teetered on the edge of the abyss. All it needed was one small push, or a final, last-ditch rescue. Abraham Setrakian, S3.Ep10:The Fall
1 I knew the humans would be complacent, but I never anticipated how impotent you three would be. You should have been masters of this world! Kings, emperors, gods! Instead, you are already so like statues to a fallen race. This step I take is more merciful than triumphant. The Master, S3.Ep8: White Light
1 Parents, wives, children, they all disappoint us, Eldritch. How could they not? They’re humans. But the Master is different. He will never let you down or betray you. Thomas Eichorst, S3.Ep9: Do Or Die
2 Humans think of evolution in terms of progress and advancement. This final errand will be the catalyzing event precipitating a new era on Earth, akin to the meteor that felled the dinosaurs and ushered in the Ice Age. Thomas Eichorst, S3.Ep10:The Fall
Season 4
1 Great leaders are not born but forged. The Master, S4.Ep1: The Worm Turns
2 Human selfishness and vanity are ingrained, indelible. The Master, S4.Ep3: |
remain in power; 2) crafting demands between local community groups and unions at the same time and in close coordination with each other from the very beginning; and 3) embracing collective direct action as key to the success of organizing campaigns.
These may seem like simple ideas, but they stand in complete opposition to the way the power elite expects union bargaining to be done. Therein lies their power.
Therein also lies the opportunity for unions to partner with the Movement for Black Lives. For all of their complicated racial histories, unions are some of the largest organizations of black people in the country. About 2.2 million black Americans are union members—some 14 percent of the employed black workforce.
That’s a huge number of black people who are already members of organizations with the capacity to organize and mobilize. And these black workers, like all black people in America, face real challenges of structural economic racism in almost all aspects of their lives. Their communities have been underfunded; their schools are being dismantled; they face massive poverty and are under economic assault; and they regularly encounter police violence.
Stronger together
Widening the scope of bargaining in Los Angeles led to real wins for the city’s black and Latino communities. The rest of the labor movement should take note. Imagine the power that could be added to the Movement for Black Lives if unions, recognizing the trauma that systematic racism wreaks on their membership, brought solutions that have been elevated by the Movement for Black Lives to the bargaining table in negotiations with employers ranging from the City of Baltimore to private equity giant Blackstone.
But unions cannot do this unilaterally and expect unconditional support from the black community.
Unions must make the effort on the front end to build a real relationship with Movement for Black Lives groups and members, and partner with them in developing common good bargaining demands that start to go on the offense against Wall Street and the structurally-racist economic power structure. There are groups of people organizing for racial justice under the banner of the Movement for Black Lives near every union local in the country. The onus is on labor leaders and rank-and-file union members to reach out to those groups and start to build a strong relationship where one does not exist. This process will not be easy, especially because of the history of racism that plagues unions, especially police unions. But the truth remains that there is a real opportunity to leverage the power of both movements to win real gains for black people and other people of color through a strong partnership.
It is exciting to imagine potential bargaining demands major unions could undertake alongside racial justice organizations. For example, they could demand that their employers make a commitment to job training programs to strengthen the pipeline for black workers; city and state workers could demand progressive taxation measures that raise funds from corporate actors to fund schools and services in black communities; teachers could demand school districts enact restorative justice policies to stem the school-to-prison pipeline; hospital workers could bargain for targeted health care access programs in communities of color; retail workers could demand that their employers “ban the box” and let the formerly incarcerated work. The list is almost infinite.
Bargaining for racial justice is a radical idea and will not be easily won. It will require concerted direct action targeting the real decision makers in both the public and private sectors that have a vested interest in keeping racial inequities in place. The Movement for Black Lives has proven that it can execute effective and creative direct actions backed by solid demands. They are also innovating creative tactics that move beyond traditional marches and picket lines to new types of disruptive actions that make power holders directly confront those they are harming. By combining the vision and militant tactics of the Movement for Black Lives with the membership and resources of the labor movement, we can usher in a more just and equitable society.On October 31, a nuclear-powered Chinese submarine docked at Colombo Port’s South Terminal, in Sri Lanka’s capital. Representatives from both sides characterized the visit as routine: China has owned the terminal in question for over 35 years, and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) officials claimed the vessel stopped to replenish fuel and supplies before delving into an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden. It’s not unusual for Colombo to receive port calls from a wide variety of ships.
That did little to reassure India, which was already spooked by a visit to the port from a Chinese vessel in September. November’s trip marked the second time in under two months that China had sent offensive-capable ships on port calls just off of India’s southern tip. Despite the defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who pushed for increased Chinese investment in the region, in January’s elections, Beijing and Sri Lanka are still moving ahead with port projects in Colombo and Hambantota. For China, the Indian Ocean region is just another theater of influence to tend to. It’s everything to India, and the Sri Lanka trips are a worrying trend. Why?
India is in the dark about China’s designs for the region, and must decipher that strategy through guesswork. Fresh off of losing fistfuls of dollars in resource deals in conflict-ridden South Sudan, China is beefing up its military network to hedge against economic risk. In the Indian Ocean, that means using its military muscle to preserve access to harbors in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Maldives.
To do that, China has been stoking submarine buildups around the Indian Ocean basin. Beijing is refurbishing two Romeo-class submarines (modernized 035G Ming-class vessels) as a gift to Bangladesh, to be delivered in 2019. Dhaka will be able to select newer vessels, since both countries enjoy a strong business relationship, with the Chinese investing billions for access to Chittagong Port and Cox’s Bazar.
There’s just one catch: Bangladesh doesn’t have enough trained naval officers to run those subs. China plans to step up on that front: providing training courses at Qingdao Submarine Academy, the PLA’s main educational facility. China may also provide C-802 anti-ship and land attack missiles, and diver propulsion torpedo vehicles that can be used to rapidly deploy special forces teams underwater. And Bangladesh isn’t the only country on the basin that China is doting upon – Pakistan received six nuclear-powered subs from Beijing last year.
That may bolster China’s investment security in the short term, but with buildups taking place around the basin, Beijing and Delhi will continue to butt heads. Can the region survive that tension?In its glory days—from roughly 1966 through 1974—the SCCA’s Can-Am series was the rip-roaringest racing extravaganza in North America, the vehicular equivalent of great white sharks in a goldfish bowl. It was widely perceived as a no-rules, run-what-ya-brung series, but there were always rules, and some of them—that every car should have a passenger seat, for instance—bordered on the absurd. Still, the unrestricted engines—usually big-block Chevy V-8s making 750 horsepower—were, in those days, both deafening and brain-boggling, as were the cars’ speeds. Given the primitive state of aerodynamics, the cars regularly clawed their way into the firmament, as Chaparral founder and stalwart Can-Amster Jim Hall discovered in 1968 at Las Vegas. He limps to this day.
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The series suffered a death blow when, in 1972, Porsche threw countless deutsche marks and true engineering genius at creating the ultimate Can-Am dreadnought, the Porsche 917 Turbo entered by Roger Penske, and its subsequent iterations. This juggernaut quickly pummeled the gentlemen privateers, who not long thereafter decamped, along with the spectators.
Even if Porsche hadn’t bowled over the series, it still wouldn’t exist today. The cars would have become festivals of unaffordable engineering overkill, and the speeds would have overwhelmed any existing racetrack, endangering the lives of drivers and onlookers alike.
Still, it’s fun to ask, What if? Which is why we gathered five race-car designers to describe their notions of what a Can-Am car would resemble today. Here’s the design brief each participant was issued: The car must ride on pneumatic tires. It must be at least as safe for the driver as, say, a modern IRL car. No minimum weight will be mandated. Any engine and transmission is acceptable, ditto aerodynamics. The engine must drive at least one wheel. Races will last three hours on road courses such as Mid-Ohio and Elkhart Lake. And as for cost? Well, who cares?
There was, of course, no right or wrong answer, but an interesting design symmetry coalesced.Earlier this month an American Pit Bull Terrier by the name if Kilo showed off just how loyal his breed can be, When a man tried to force his way into the home where Kilo lived with the intent on doing harm to Kilo's owner, he took a bullet. Kilo was prepared to die to protect his owner and his home. The interuder had a gun and fired it as Kilo jumped into the door way between the shooter and the owner. The man fired his gun and shot Kilo in the head. Afterwards, the man ran away from the scene and the dog was left for dead.
The owner wasn't ready to give up on his 12 year old pup so he rushed him to the nearest veterinary clinic and hoped for the best. The bullet that entered Kilo bounced off of his skull and traveled into his neck where it then exited. With emergency surgery and a loving owner Kilo was able to go home. The dog survived being shot in the head trying to protect his owner, his friend.
Kilo is a true hero, he stood up and fought for his family as his family would stand up and fight for him.There’s No Costume too Weird for the Annual Boston Halloween Bike Ride
'If you want to be a Velociraptor, be a Velociraptor.'
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Greg Hum has mastered the art of wearing an astronaut costume while pedaling his bike—outfitted to resemble a dinosaur—through Boston.
“The trick is, you have to carefully cut the pieces of cardboard for the costume to make moving your legs as easy as possible,” said Hum, cofounder of Boston Bike Party, a monthly meet-up that brings together hundreds of cyclists, and one of the organizers of this year’s annual Boston Halloween Bike Ride.
An event that first started 14 years ago in Jamaica Plain as a community-driven approach to offering an alternative activity for people to enjoy during the spooky holiday, this year’s ride promises to be bigger than ever.
Hum, who teamed up with the founders of the Boston Halloween Bike Ride that began in JP in 2000, said on Friday, October 31, convoys of cyclists will come from neighborhoods all across the city and descend upon Copley Square, decked out in elaborate costumes, to begin a two-hour nighttime tour that will end with a dance party in Allston.
“This started at the Green Street T stop 14 years ago. But for the past two years, the organizers of the original ride have been into rebranding it as a Boston bike ride, rather than just for Jamaica Plain,” said Hum, adding that last year around 500 costumed cycling enthusiast rolled up for the ride. “We have been helping them get the word out about it and pooling our resources. We all worked together to plan a route, and find an after party venue.”
According to event details, once riders in the individual convoys convene in Copley—they will be riding en masse from Somerville, Cambridge, South Boston, Dorchester, Allston, Boston University, and JP—the groups will “slither and crawl” on a to-be-determined route for 10 to 12 miles at a “costume friendly pace.”
At the end of the route, cyclists will park their rides in Allston and enjoy free food that’s been paid for through donations from Bike Safe Boston and the Hub Bicycle Company. Attendees can then cap off the night dancing at WonderBar.
Hum said there aren’t too many rules for the event except for one: “don’t hold back—it’s Halloween.”
“It’s my favorite time of the year because of the costumes, and it’s really the one day that you can get away with whatever you want,” he said. “If that means being an astronaut, then be an astronaut. Or if you want to be a Velociraptor, then be a Velociraptor.”The National Soccer Coaches Association of America (NSCAA) released an online course to educate coaches about supporting LGBTQ athletes.
The mini-course is ten minutes long and is called “LGBT: Diversity and Inclusion” and was developed by the NSCAA’s LGBT and Allies Member Community, in partnership with national nonprofit organization Athlete Ally.
“Camaraderie, compassion, and collaboration are key to a successful team in any sport. We want to help encourage the most respectful, inclusive environments possible across all of soccer,” NSCAA CEO Lynn Berling-Manuel said in a statement.
“Education is such a critical part to understanding the LGBT community,” Dan Woog, chair of the NSCAA’s LGBT and Allies coaching community added. “It’s simply a change in your mindset and the way you approach others. The more prepared you are, the better coach you will be.”
“The NSCAA is committed to helping all members learn the importance of inclusion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community; encourage participation in all activities by LGBT coaches, athletes, referees, administrators and fans; and welcome all allies in our organization’s ongoing effort to be a leader of inclusion in the sports world,” reads the NSCAA website’s “LGBT Soccer Coaches and Allies Community” page.
Its annual convention includes special programming for LGBTQ coaches and allies as well.
Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo recently reported Jorge Resurrección Merodio called him a faggot during a match, to which he responded “Yes, yes, a faggot. But a very rich one, shithead.”
Openly gay player Robbie Rogers said Richard Chaplow used a homophobic slur against him. Chaplow was suspended for two games, although he denied using the offensive language.
This Story Filed UnderFRAMINGHAM � A Connecticut man who is suing several Framingham Police officers in federal court alleging they brutally beat him during his arrest nearly four years ago was found guilty Monday of�assaulting an officer during the same incident.
A Framingham District Court jury of six men and women found Nicholas Casaburri, 32, of Norwich, guilty of assault and battery on a police officer, breaking and entering into a car during the night, trespassing, and larceny of property worth more than $250. The trial lasted three days.
Judge Robert Greco made directed findings of not guilty on several other charges, including�assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, walking on railroad tracks and possession of tools often used in�burglaries.
Greco sentenced Casaburri to two years in the Middlesex�House of Correction for the breaking and entering into a car charge. He will get credit for 162 days served. Greco also sentenced Casaburri to 90 days in the�House of Correction for the assault and battery on a police officer charge. The 90 days is to start only after Casaburri completes his initial two-year�sentence.
Casaburri is appealing the verdict and the sentence has been stayed.
Authorities say Casaburri, of 495 Laurel Hill Road, was arrested on April 23, 2010, after several car break-ins at�Adessa, an auto auction business on Framingham's Southside. Police said that when they tried to arrest Casaburri, he struggled so violently that Detective Matthew Gutwill and�Casaburri suffered injuries in the melee.�It took several officers to arrest�Casaburri, who�suffered several facial fractures and was hospitalized for several days in a Boston hospital.
In 2013, Casaburri filed a federal lawsuit against Gutwill and officers Gregory Reardon, John Skinnion and Maria Crane. He claims they used excessive force and violated his federal civil rights by beating him, repeatedly punching him, hitting him with a flashlight and trying to shock him with a Taser. He claims the officers beat him so severely that he was in critical condition.
In their response to the lawsuit, the officers denied any wrongdoing. They admit throughout their response they struck�Casaburri several times, but it was in a legitimate effort to take into custody�a violently struggling suspect who fought�the officers' efforts to arrest him.
Casaburri is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as attorney fees, from the officers.
The case is scheduled for a status hearing in U.S. District�Court in Boston next month.
Norman Miller can be reached at 508-626-3823 or nmiller@wickedlocal.com. For up-to-date crime news, follow Norman Miller on Twitter @Norman_MillerMW.What is the modified Atkins diet?
The modified Atkins diet (often abbreviated in the literature as “MAD”) is a change to the traditional “classic” ketogenic diet to make it less restrictive. Along with the MCT (medium chain triglyceride) diet and LGIT (low glycemic index treatment), it is one of three “alternative diets” used to treat patients with epilepsy.
Its history goes back to the early 2000s. Some families who had used the ketogenic diet for many years eventually stopped weighing and measuring foods. They had noticed that ketones still remained high and seizures stayed under control. It was first formally studied in children and adults who had never tried the ketogenic diet at Johns Hopkins Hospital by Dr. Eric Kossoff and colleagues in 2002. The first paper on this diet was published in 2003. A larger series of 20 children was published in December 2005.
This diet is now over 14 years old with greater than 500 patients published to date. Studies show it is very similar to the classic ketogenic diet in efficacy.
How is it different from the Ketogenic Diet?
Although the foods are very similar, there are key differences between the modified Atkins diet and the ketogenic diet.
First, with the modified Atkins diet, there is no fluid or calorie restriction or limitation.
Although fats are strongly encouraged, they are not weighed and measured. Most patients will consume plenty of dairy and oils.
One of the biggest differences is that there are no restrictions on proteins. Typically 35% of calories for a patient on the MAD come from protein.
Foods are not weighed and measured, but carbohydrate counts are monitored by patients and/or parents.
It is started outside of the hospital and the person does not need to fast before starting the diet.
Lastly, foods can be eaten more freely in restaurants and outside the home, and families (and neurologists!) can do it as well.
The diet is a "modified" Atkins diet as it allows for less carbohydrates than the traditional Atkins diet (15 to 20 g/day) and more strongly encourages fat intake. Please remember that no diet should be tried without a neurologist involved.
Who will it help?
It seems to help similar numbers of patients as the ketogenic diet (40-50% with greater than 50% seizure reduction, including approximately 15% seizure-free). It works for men and women equally and is being used actively in adolescents and adults. Like the ketogenic diet, it is mostly used for patients with daily seizures who have not fully responded to medications. It is under study for regions of the world with limited resources for which the classic ketogenic diet would be too difficult or time-consuming as well.
What is it like?
Lots of high fat foods such as bacon, eggs, mayonnaise, butter, meats, heavy whipping cream, and oils are encouraged.
Certain fruits, vegetables, nuts, avocados, olives, and cheeses are used as well.
Fluids such as Fruit2O, diet soda, and other flavored waters are favorites of many patients. Fluids are encouraged and help avoid side effects.
Carbohydrates are limited but the patient (or parents) chooses what to eat. For example, they can choose blueberries or chocolate (but will get more quantity with blueberries…).
Compared to a patient on the classic ketogenic diet, the biggest differences reported are 1) more food (higher calories) and 2) more proteins.
Many patients will supplement the diet with ketogenic products (e.g. formulas, shakes, baking mixes, and pre-made breads). One study showed improved benefit in children when a ketogenic diet formula was used as a supplement for the initial month.
It's still not easy though, and most families need help and support.
What happens first?
You should talk with your neurologist and dietitian about how to start the diet and if it's the right decision.
Once you decide, lab work is usually obtained, and ketone strips are prescribed.
Carbohydrates are limited (15-20 grams per day) and the foods change overnight (making it hard to transition).
Medications are usually left unchanged (and most patients on the modified Atkins diet are also on some medications). If medications are in liquid forms, they are usually changed to tablets to decrease carbohydrates.
Does it work?
In studies so far, yes. About half had a 50% reduction in seizures after 6 months. Many were able to reduce medications.
Can adults do it?
Absolutely, adults with epilepsy are one of the fastest growing groups of patients starting diets today. Ask your neurologist to help (or refer you to an adult epilepsy diet center).
Outcomes are largely similar to children, with similar side effects.
Most adults remain on medications, probably a higher percentage than children on dietary therapy.
Speak to your neurologist first if you have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, liver or kidney disease, a history of kidney stones, nutritional deficiencies, or are considering getting pregnant.
Are there any side effects?
Some children and adults lose weight. This can be a good thing though for those who were overweight in the beginning.
Some patients have had increases in cholesterol.
Occasionally, the change to this diet and the resultant ketosis can make patients feel ill and not want to eat or drink.
Kidney stones are unusual and oral citrates are typically not prescribed (unlike the ketogenic diet).
For all these reasons, the modified Atkins diet should only be done with physician supervision.
How is the patient monitored over time?
A dietitian should keep track of weight and height periodically, as well as calorie intake in case there is a problem. We recommend dietitian involvement either from the beginning (ideally) or after 3 months if the diet seems to be working to help keep the patient on it.
Drs. Kossoff and Cervenka recommend blood and urine monitoring every 3 months, and checking urine ketones once or twice a week while on the diet.
Can the diet ever be stopped?
Yes, if a patient is seizure-free for a period of time (e.g., 2 years), the diet can sometimes be stopped successfully. In most seizure-free adults, it is not stopped (due to driving and other benefits). Similarly to the ketogenic diet, if it's not helpful, it should be stopped, too.
What is the future of the modified Atkins diet?
Lots of studies continue to occur, several evaluating this newer diet in comparison to the classic ketogenic diet. Other studies underway include:MOSCOW/LONDON (Reuters) - Crimea will take ownership of Ukrainian state companies on its territory, including the region’s Black Sea natural gas fields, its first deputy prime minister said, cementing the region’s independence before a referendum on joining Russia.
Crimea, a southern Ukrainian region which is home to the Russian Black Sea fleet, will vote on Sunday on whether to join Russia. Since pro-Russian separatists took control of the regional parliament almost two weeks ago, it has declared Crimea part of the Russian Federation.
At a news conference broadcast on Russian television, Rustam Temirgaliev said: “In the coming days the transfer is being prepared... for a series of assets, belonging to the Ukrainian state, which are located on the territory of Crimea.”
He said energy company Chornomornaftohaz and the state railway company would be included, along with several resorts owned by ministries in Kiev.
“The property of private companies and private individuals remain the property of these entities,” he said, adding that owners should re-register their property under Russian law.
BLACK SEA GAS
Should Chornomornaftohaz cease to be Ukrainian, Kiev would lose a key asset in its efforts to reduce its rising dependency on Russian gas imports.
Ukraine uses more than 50 billion cubic meters of gas a year, worth around $20 billion in current European market terms, more than half of which it has to import from Russia.
Disputes between Russia and Ukraine have previously led to supply cuts, triggering efforts in Kiev to develop new domestic sources in the form of onshore shale as well as offshore in the Black Sea.
Ukraine’s efforts to find new gas in the Black Sea have attracted several energy majors as investors, including Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Eni and OMV.
Ukraine hopes its Black Sea gas production will rise from just 1 billion cubic meters per year currently to over 3 bcm in 2015, and plans to raise production to 5 bcm per year towards the end of the decade.
The plans are supported by the European Union through Ukraine’s membership of the EU’s energy community. As part of this membership, the European Commission is seeking to convert Ukraine from a gas transit nation into an energy hub producing its own fuel and developing storage.
The crisis and potential seizure of Ukrainian assets, however, are threatening investment.
Andrew Swiger, senior vice president at Exxon Mobil, told investors last week that the company’s activities offshore Ukraine were on hold due to current circumstances.
Crimea is connected to Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, not Russia’s.
Should Crimea join Russia following the referendum, analysts say Ukraine would likely cut the region off its gas supplies, especially should Russia stop gas flows to Ukraine as it warned it may do after Ukraine on Friday failed to pay a gas bill.
If Crimea gets separated from Ukraine’s gas grid, Russia could attempt to use the Black Sea gas fields to supply Crimea.Pirates of the Caribbean, one of the classic attractions from the early days of Disney's Magic Kingdom, will reopen to guests Saturday after being closed for the summer.
The popular dark ride attraction has been closed to guests since May 11 for routine refurbishment.
Pirates opened at Magic Kingdom Dec. 15, 1973, two years after the opening of theme park.
The ride was a favorite at Disneyland in California, but Imagineers thought Pirates wouldn't be popular in Florida due to its proximity to the Caribbean. They were wrong, and after public demand, a version opened at Magic Kingdom two years after the park opened.
This isn't the first time the ride has been out of operation for an extended period of time. Disney closed Pirates for four months almost a decade ago, from March to early July 2006, when it added characters from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and updated some special effects.
View the video above for fun facts of some of the other early Magic Kingdom attractions still around today.The issue of falling or rising prices is one of the subjects when most confusion exists. On the one hand politicians regularly denounces "price gouging", which is to say when they claim that companies keep prices too high, and that prices should be cut. In other contexts they depict price deflation as the worst possible calamity, a point where to quote one well-known Keynesian Telegraph columnist, we should "abandon all hope" (alluring to Dante's depiction of hell ).The reality is that falling prices is good for buyers, but bad for sellers. We all benefit when we have to pay less, but suffer when we are paid less. Whether or not particular or general price declines are good or bad for the overall economy is a somewhat complex issue which depends on exactly why and how prices are falling, an issue which I will not elaborate upon in this post ( I have however discussed this issue before, for example here here and here ). But the point in this context is that falling prices will produce both winners and losers-as will rising prices.Note that this is not just true for consumer prices, it is just as true for asset prices. While people planning to sell their houses and stocks suffer from falling stock- and house prices, people who are planning to buy houses and stocks benefit from it. People who buy a home will have lower housing costs if they are able to buy their house cheaper. People who buy stocks will get the more dividends and other forms of positive future cash flow for any given investment if they are able to but stocks cheaper.Yet the benefits of lower asset prices are even more rarely recognized than the benefits of lower prices of goods and services. When stock prices for example fall it is almost always referenced as "destruction of wealth", even though it should more appropriately be discussed as "redistribution of wealth". Even when it reflects deteriorating fundamentals (falling profits) due to malinvestments it is a symptom of "destruction of wealth" rather than being a form of wealth destruction in itself.One exception to this to ignore the benefits of lower stock prices is this post from Dean Baker. Yet he focuses mainly on the benefits to people who don't trade in stocks, rather than the benefits to future stock buyers, which is somewhat misleading since not everyone eho abstains from buying or selling stocks benefits from lower stock prices. If current stock holders usually use their paper wealth to buy certain things, then this will lower the price of those goods, hurting the sellers of those goods while benefiting other buyers of those goods. Assuming for example that champagne are bought disproportionably by current stock holders, then falling stock prices will likely force champagne producers to lower their prices and so reduce their real income. But other buyers of champagne will see their real income rise as they pay less for their champagne.In short, lower stock prices will hurt current stock owners, or more strictly future net sellers of stocks, as well as the people who disproportionably sell to these future net sellers of stocks. But future stock buyers, as well as other buyers of the things disproportionably sold by the future net sellers of stocks, will benefit from lower stock prices.For the past two weekends, the National Mall has been packed with people protesting President Trump in the name of science and the environment.
In an impressive show of force, both the March for Science and the People’s Climate March mobilized tens of thousands of veteran activists and first-time demonstrators, like the 87-year-old atomic physicist I met on the soggy grounds of the Washington Monument.
Both scenes made for arresting visuals of Americans waving elaborate signs and chanting at Congress and the White House. (Check out aerial footage and 10 of the best signs from Saturday here.) But they were also very different — in ways that matter for their momentum going forward.
The March for Science on Earth Day was a deliberately nonpartisan event where speakers tiptoed around mentioning Trump’s name. (Event co-host Questlove pointed toward the White House at one point, calling out “that guy over there.”) It was a march for science. Not against Trump. The idea for the march started on a Reddit thread the day after Trump’s inauguration; it’s a bit of miracle that organizers pulled it off.
The People’s Climate March, on the other hand, has been an annual event since 2014; this year, it featured people of color on the front lines of climate change. Organizers said the Trump administration’s aggressive moves so far on climate policy — and outright climate denialism — made for the biggest, and most confrontational, march yet. At the March for Science, the Muppet Beaker was a mascot. At the climate march, it was unflattering Trump effigies and the word “RESIST” in all caps.
There’s a story to be told about both of these marches: They align grassroots uprising from science-minded folks who want the government to value evidence in its decision-making. They want to hold politicians accountable to facts. “This is at a whole new level — what [Trump] has awakened in America,” Aaron Mair, the national president of the Sierra Club, said at the People’s Climate March.
But here’s something that’s harder to parse: what comes next.
These past two weekends have shown that the “science resistance” — for lack of a better term — has been mobilized. They’re energized. They’re seeking outlets for their frustrations. But it’s unclear how they will come to effect change. There are a few open questions to explore.
How will all this figure into elections?
In the past, there have been values voters and working-class voters and environmental voters, but “science voters” has yet to be a constituency. The March for Science got 40,000 requests to volunteer within a week of its founding — a sign that there’s a groundswell of people who want to make change, somehow.
But at least when it comes to the March for Science, that change isn’t full-bore political.
“The whole point of March for Science is that science isn’t partisan,” said Valorie Aquino, one of its co-chairs, a few days after the event. Moving forward, Aquino says the group wants to keep march-goers civically engaged — making sure they register to vote, encouraging them to take an interest in local politics, and so on. But “as far as getting behind getting specific candidates? I’m not certain about that,” Aquino says.
A week before the march, Rush Holt, the CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said focusing on elections now is putting “the cart before the horse,” and that now is the time to build energy, enthusiasm, and identity.
What the March for Science has built is an accomplishment for its short existence. It has a huge social media platform and a network of partner organizations, like scientific societies such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and others. Aquino says there’s a two-pronged approach for how to use that to effect change: one, encourage scientists to be more vocal about their work. And two, get science communities to get more civically engaged.
That’s all great. But as elections come, there may be an incentive to be more overtly political. At the climate march, I spotted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island. And I asked for his take on what action all this groundswell of activism should be put toward.
“To be blindingly obvious, start targeting the 2018 elections,” he said. “Nothing will turn this city around faster than a Democrat speaker of the House and Democrat chairman of committees. … You get a Democrat speaker, and everything in Washington changes.”
Also obvious: A Democratic senator is of course going to want fresh recruits to win a Democratic congressional majority. But he has a point: The future of science policy in America came into question immediately with Trump’s election. A new election could change the course.
At the Atlantic, climate writer Rob Meyer concurs. “I suspect that in the longterm, it’s the confidently political — confidently partisan — climate marchers who will have the right approach,” he writes. Here, it’s instructive to think about the Tea Party, which quickly turned into a partisan electoral force that’s still — via its offshoot the Freedom Caucus — a powerful constituency in Congress. Remember Occupy Wall Street? They put on a big show but never really turned it into a movement.
Will scientists become more comfortable with activism?
Scientists are often typecast as liberals, but scientific institutions can be very conservative when it comes to preserving their own status quo. And the status quo has been to stay out of the political fray.
“There’s still this unease about participating in public life that seems to be unique to the science community,” says Michael Halpern, the deputy director for the Center for Science and Democracy.
Take what happened to one of the key players who uncovered the toxic lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan’s water supply. Environmental engineering professor Marc Edwards took it upon himself to advocate on behalf of the citizens of Flint. As Retraction Watch’s Ivan Oransky points out, Edwards was not seen as a hero in scientific communities.
The editor of Environmental Science & Technology, a prominent research journal, lumped Edwards together with other researchers who had crossed the “invisible line” that separates scientists from activists. “[Scientific] community members have legitimate concerns about the implications of environmental activism in the research world because it undermines the standing of academics as objective seekers of truth,” David Sedlak, the editor-in-chief of Environmental Science & Technology, wrote.
Perhaps more scientists will be emboldened to cross this “invisible line.” The net effect of these events may be that scientists will not be as timid stepping into the political fray in the future.
Because right now, scientists don’t have a ton of incentives to engage in activism. “Besides doing research and publishing, my Ph.D. requirements involve taking science classes, teaching, and attending a departmental field trip,” Ploy Achakulwisut, a climate scientist and activist writes in Scientific American. “The first time I heard a senior scientist suggest we all commit some of our time to public and political engagement was two weeks ago.”
Scientists want to run for office. Could they win?
A few days before the March for Science, I attended a workshop put on by 314 Action, a political action committee devoted to getting more people with science backgrounds to run for public office — from local school boards to Congress.
Most of the 60 or so participants were there, like good scientists, to collect more data before deciding if they really wanted to enter into the political sphere. Some came with extremely basic questions, like: How much does running for office cost?
And they all had different reasons for considering a run.
For Maria Mendoza, 33, a psychologist and AAAS fellow, it was a feeling that she was becoming detached from the rural communities where she was raised. “The last election made me realize that maybe I’m not connected as I thought I was to my community,” she said. “Home now would classify me as an elitist Democrat.” Going back to rural Colorado and running for a local office would be a way to potentially change minds and the culture around trusting East Coast “experts.”
According to Shaughnessy Naughton, a chemist and former congressional candidate who runs 314 (named after pi), many people like Mendoza have been coming out of the woodwork and expressing an interest in running. “In January, there was a massive outpouring of interest in what we were doing,” she says. The group offered an introductory webinar on running for office that Naughton thought might attract 1,000 sign-ups. Three thousand expressed interest.
But can these candidates — coming from an uncommon background for politicians —really make headway, and in deep-red areas like where Mendoza is from?
Joe Trippi, a Democratic campaign consultant, suggests they should take a page out of Trump’s book: Play the role of the outsider. “There’s a hunger for new, fresh thinking,” he said at the 314 event. “And that’s why you [scientists] fit. You represent authentic change … you fit into that narrative of doing things differently.”
Is there enough immediacy to |
scant but includes bioactive proteins, proteins with putative RNA binding properties and proteins commonly associated with exosomes [ 35 ]. The parasite ELVs are internalized by host macrophages and elicit a classically activated phenotype in these cells. The demonstration that filarial nematodes secrete exosomal RNA and proteins that potentially function at the host-parasite interface is significant. Defining this parasite effector toolkit exposes an array of new molecules that may be exploited in novel LF control strategies.
Exosomes are a subtype of extracellular vesicle categorized by size (30–120 nm diameter) and defined by a particular biogenic pathway [ 23 ]; exosomes are formed by inward budding of vesicles in the late endosomal pathway to create multivesicular endosomes that fuse with the plasma membrane to effect release [ 24, 25 ]. Originally thought to be a means of cellular waste disposal, exosomes are now considered highly bioactive extracellular vesicles that facilitate cell-to-cell communication and are the focus of renewed investigation. The cargo of exosomes is complex and variable, containing bioactive proteins, functional mRNA, miRNA and other small non-coding RNA species [ 18, 26 ], likely reflecting both source and target environments. Fusion of the exosome to a target cell delivers this heterogeneous bioactive cargo and selectively alters the biology of the target tissue [ 19, 21, 26, 27 ]; the isolation of exosomes from circulatory systems and an array of biofluids suggests effector sites can be far from the point of release. Parasites are known to release exosome-like vesicles [ 27 – 30 ] and it is compelling to hypothesize that bioactive molecules secreted by parasitic nematodes, packaged in exosomes, function as cell-to-cell effectors in the host-parasite interaction. Indeed recently, extracellular vesicles secreted by the gastrointestinal nematode Heligmosomoides polygyrus, containing proteins and small RNA species, have been shown to alter gene expression in host cells and suppress innate immune responses in mice [ 26 ].
The parasitic filarial nematodes Wuchereria bancrofti, Brugia malayi and B. timori are etiological agents of Lymphatic filariasis (LF), a chronic and debilitating disease infecting over 120 million people in 73 endemic countries [ 1 ]. Adult parasites reside in the lymphatic vasculature of infected individuals and release larvae called microfilariae, which are taken up by vector mosquitoes during the blood meal. Parasites rapidly develop within the mosquito, molting twice to the infective L3 stage [ 2, 3 ] before transmission to the definitive host during a subsequent blood meal. Following penetration of the vertebrate host via the puncture wound left by the mosquito, L3 stage parasites migrate to the lymphatics and undergo further growth and development, molting to the L4 stage and again to adulthood. The longevity of patent infection is remarkable; adults live for at least 8–10 years by general consensus. The ability of larval stages to successfully invade the host, and for adult worms to maintain infection for such an extended period of time, suggest filarial worms have developed strategies to both facilitate the establishment of infection and evade or manipulate the host immune response. Although the immunomodulatory capabilities of infecting larval and adult stage filarial worms have been well documented and reviewed [ 4 – 8 ], the parasite effector molecules responsible for manipulating host biology and their mechanisms of release have been difficult to define. Actively secreted proteins have historically been considered the principal candidates and several secreted proteins have been identified with demonstrable bioactivity at the host-parasite interface [ 9 – 12 ]. Adding to these, the characterization of parasitic nematode secretomes has revealed a complex array of potential proteinaceous effectors [ 13 – 16 ]. Other types of effector, including molecules expressed on the parasite surface may have a role [ 17 ] and the emergence of small noncoding RNAs as cell-to-cell agents of genetic regulation [ 18 – 22 ] hint at exciting alternative mechanisms.
Results and Discussion
Infective-stage B. malayi release exosome-like vesicles In order to ascertain whether exosomes are released by B. malayi, extracellular vesicles were isolated from parasites incubated in culture media using a filtration and ultracentrifugation protocol. We focused our initial discovery efforts on larval and adult stage parasites. L3, adult male, and adult female B. malayi were incubated in vitro for 24 hour periods under standard culture conditions, and purified vesicle preparations were evaluated with electron microscopy (EM). Infectious stage L3 parasites in culture release abundant 50–120 nm microvesicles consistent with the classical “deflated ball” morphology of mammalian and non-mammalian exosomes reported in the literature [36] (Fig 1A & 1B). We refer to these as exosome-like vesicles (ELVs) throughout this manuscript, in recognition that they cannot be unequivocally designated as exosomes, rather than another class of extracellular vesicles, because their biogenesis has not been determined. Preparations from adult stage B. malayi were more heterogenous and dilute, not allowing for the definitive categorization of putative exosome-like vesicles (Fig 1C). This, despite the fact a much higher mass of total parasite tissue was used for adult preparations as compared to larval preparations. These data suggest ELV release to be a predominantly larval phenomenon in B. malayi, a working hypothesis supported by analysis of RNA associated with the vesicles. We therefore chose to focus our subsequent experiments on L3 stage parasites. A compelling overall hypothesis for the function of B. malayi ELVs is that they mediate the secretion and trafficking to host cells of effector molecules that facilitate parasitism and the observation that ELV secretion occurs primarily in those parasite stages that infect the host and establish parasitemia is consistent with this narrative. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 1. Electron microscopy confirms secretion of exosome-like vesicles in intra-host stages of B. malayi. TEM images of L3 (A and B) and adult female (C) ELV preparations are shown. L3 vesicles take on a distinct morphology often reported in the literature. Adult isolations are more heterogenous and may require further optimization to achieve uniform vesicle preparation. White arrows show canonical L3 ELVs (B) and putative adult ELVs (C). This provides evidence for the release of exosome-like vesicles in the human-infective L3 stage of the parasite and much of the rest of the work we report is focused on vesicles derived from this larval stage. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0004069.g001
Time course profile of exosome-like vesicle release from infectious stage B. malayi To more accurately resolve the dynamics of ELV release in L3 B. malayi, we used a nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) system to measure vesicle output in a 72 hr in vitro time course. Media was collected from 300 worms after three successive 24 hr incubation periods, vesicles were purified by ultracentrifugation as before and individual vesicle preparations were analyzed via NanoSight LM10 as shown in Fig 2 (sample recording: S1 Video). Day 1 (0–24 hr in culture) preparations reveal a prolific ELV release rate (> 9,000 ELVs/parasite/min) with a very narrow size distribution centered at ∼90 nm. Day 2 (24–48 hr in culture) preparations show an essentially equivalent rate of release, but a stark broadening of the size distribution. Day 3 (48–72 hr in culture) preparations are associated with significantly lower levels of release (<4,000 ELVs/parasite/min) and an even wider multimodal size distribution. These data suggest an overall time-dependent decay in vesicle rate of release and size specificity, which correlates to decreased L3 viability in vitro. The release of considerable quantities of precisely-sized ELVs in viable worms (Days 1–2) is followed by the release of smaller quantities of a broader size range of particles that potentially include larger membrane vesicles and apoptotic blebs (Days 2–3). This suggests an active and regulated mechanism of ELV release in healthy and viable L3 stage parasites, as opposed to a passive mode of noisy cellular deterioration. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 2. Particle tracking analysis reveals prolific larval Brugia exosome-like vesicle release rate. Profile of ELVs isolated from culture media incubated with 300 L3 parasites for successive 24 hr incubations. The size distribution of L3-derived ELVs from Day 1 (left), Day 2 (center) and Day 3 (right) incubations are shown (mean ± SD). Calculated vesicle release rates are provided in tabular format. ELV rate of release and size specificity decay in a time-dependent manner in vitro. * re-scaled based on dilution for comparison to 0–24 hour (1:20) dilution. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0004069.g002
The protein cargo of Brugia exosome-like vesicles The protein content of B. malayi ELVs was determined using nanoscale liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (nano LC/MS/MS). A total of 32 proteins each containing at least two unique peptides were identified using MASCOT (Table 1). Specific proteins identified within the pellet included characteristic markers of exosomes including Hsp70, elongation factor-1α, elongation factor-2, actin, and Rab-1. In addition, over 80% of the proteins identified are orthologous to proteins identified in mammalian exosome proteomes, strongly suggesting that these vesicles are exosome-like in nature and supporting our ELV designation here. Interestingly, this set of vesicle-specific proteins is entirely distinct from the proteins previously identified in pre- and post-molt L3 secretions [37]. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 1. Annotation of Brugia ELV proteome. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0004069.t001 UniProt-GOA and quickGO were used to sort proteins into functional groups based on assigned gene ontology (GO) terms [38, 39], as shown in Fig 3. Based on GO annotations, 20% of the proteins identified are involved in binding of bioactive molecules including nucleic acids and other proteins, 16% function in the transport of various ions and proteins and 14% are ribosomal proteins. In addition, a large fraction of proteins identified (21%) appear to be involved in various metabolic processes including hydrolase and transferase activities while the remaining 29% comprises proteins with translational, cytoskeletal and other functions. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 3. Protein content of B. malayi exosome-like vesicles. GO functional annotation of 32 proteins identified in ELVs isolated from B. malayi L3 stage parasites. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0004069.g003 Included in the list of Brugia ELV proteins are potential effector molecules. Bm-CPL-1 is a cathepsin L-like cysteine protease robustly expressed across the B. malayi life cycle [40]. Upregulation of Bm-cpl-1 expression coincides with transition between life cycle stages and an important role in the modulation of parasite molting has been confirmed [41–43]. This is the first demonstration that B. malayi secretes CPL-1 although other cathepsin-like cysteine proteases have been identified in the B. malayi secretome [14, 37] and a cathepsin L-like molecule is secreted by intra-mammalian stage Haemonchus contortus [44]. The exogenous function of exosomal Bm-CPL-1 is not clear but evidence points to some manipulation of the host-parasite interface. In a previous study, we suppressed Bm-cpl-1 expression using in vivo RNAi during the mosquito life stages [42]. Loss-of-function reduced prevalence of infection in mosquitoes by nearly 40%, suggesting Bm-CPL-1 is important for establishing or maintaining parasitemia. In flatworms, an immunomodulatory role for secreted cathepsin L-like proteases is better established [45]; in Fasciola infection cathepsin L contributes to the permissive polarized Th2 > Th1 host response. The proteomic profiles of parasitic helminth exosomes are broad in range; for example, over 350 proteins were identified in the putative exosomes secreted by Heligmosomoides polygyrus [26] whilst 45 and 79 proteins were identified in exosome-like vesicles from Echinostoma caproni and Fasciola hepatica, respectively [46]. The B. malayi L3 stage profile identified here is relatively scant but consistent with this broad distribution. It may be that this is a stage-specific observation and ELV secreted by other B. malayi life stages display a more complex and abundant protein cargo tailored to distinct functional demands. Reflecting the small RNA component of these ELVs (see later sections), it may also be that larval stage Brugia ELVs are primarily vehicles for protected RNA secretion. Replication of the experiments conducted here might add depth to the MS data set and identify further ELV-associated proteins.
Brugia ELVs are internalized by host macrophages Macrophages are critical mediators of the early immune response to invasive Brugia parasites [8]. To test the hypothesis that secreted Brugia ELVs interact with host macrophages, we used fluorescent lipophilic dyes to visualize the interaction between J774A.1 murine macrophages and ELVs. This cell line was chosen because it is commercially available, can be cultured readily and because it recapitulates the biology of primary macrophages and dendritic cells [57]. ELVs were labeled with PKH67, a green fluorescent dye, and incubated with J774A.1 labeled with PKH26, a red fluorescent dye. Confocal microscopy revealed efficient internalization of the ELVs by this macrophage cell line (Fig 8). Internalization was observed diffusely throughout the cell cytoplasm with focus around membrane-rich puncta associated with the surface of the macrophages (Fig 8B). This pattern of internalization is consistent with other studies describing a phagocytic route of vesicle internalization [58, 59]. Macrophages were counterstained with DAPI to determine the efficiency of cell labeling and ELV uptake. PKH26-labeling of J774A.1 was very efficient and all cells were visualized although intensity of labeling was variable (Fig 8D). Approximately 40–50% of macrophages internalized labeled ELVs to some degree (Fig 8E) with approximately 10% of macrophages internalizing ELVs at markedly higher levels (Fig 8E). There was no correlation between strong PKH 26-labelling of macrophages and vesicle uptake indicating internalization is not a factor of receptiveness to labeling. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 8. Brugia exosome-like vesicles (ELVs) are internalized by J774A.1 macrophages. (A and D) J774A.1 macrophages were labeled with PKH26 (red) and counterstained with DAPI (blue) to visualize nuclei. (B and E) B. malayi L3 stage ELVs were purified from a 24 hr parasite culture and labeled with PKH67 (green). 3 × 105 J774A.1 were co-incubated with approximately 3 × 107 labeled ELVs for 6 hrs at 37°C and washed repeatedly to remove unbound ELVs. Vesicles internalized by macrophages appear diffusely throughout cytoplasm and focused in discrete puncta associated with the cell membrane. (C and F) Merged images showing internalization of parasite ELVs. All images were acquired using a using a Leica TCS SP5 X Confocal/multiphoton microscope system with 20X (A-C) or 60X (D-F) objectives. Scale bars: 10 μm (A-C) and 25 μm (D-F). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0004069.g008Lord Carlile, who often defends work of intelligence services, has earned £400,000 from consultancy formed with Sir John Scarlett in 2012
Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation who this week mounted a spirited defence of the intelligence services, has received £400,000 from a private consultancy he co-owns with a former head of MI6.
SC Strategy Ltd, the company that Carlile established with Sir John Scarlett, who ran MI6 from 2004 to 2009, is described as offering clients strategic advice on UK policy and regulation and has paid out dividends to the pair totalling £800,000 over the past three years, according to accounts filed with Companies House.
On Monday, Carlile made a pointed intervention in the debate over the extent of powers enjoyed by the security and intelligence agencies in advance of the government’s publication of the draft investigatory powers bill on Wednesday.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Carlile called for an end to the “demonisation” of the security services. The peer also defended politicians’ powers to authorise interception warrants.
“I cannot think of any example – certainly in the period since 2001 when I’ve been intimately involved in this kind of work – in which I have seen a politician make a decision that was against the interest of the privacy of the public.”
Carlile and Scarlett’s only known client is Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. However, the Liberal Democrat peer told the Guardian he provided confidential advice to several clients from around the world, both companies and individuals. “We are a small, reasonably successful company,” he said.
Carlile, who oversaw UK anti-terrorism laws in the wake of 9/11 until 2011, now serves as the government’s independent reviewer of national security arrangements in Northern Ireland.
Relatively little is known about SC Strategy, which Carlile and Scarlett formed in late 2012. The company – owned jointly by the two men – has no website or phone number and Companies House only lists a correspondence address for the company at a high-end City accountancy firm.
Carlile’s register of interests in the Lords describes it as providing strategic advice on UK policy and regulation.
Yet SC Strategy appears to maintain a degree of clout in Whitehall. Cabinet Office records show that on 10 April 2013 and 6 June 2014, the company had a private meeting with the cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood – widely viewed as the most influential player in David Cameron’s No 10 – and treated him to breakfast.
Carlile told the Guardian that “as I far I can recall” he had never held a conversation with Heywood, and “certainly not” since SC Strategy was formed. He added that he understood that Scarlett “has known Sir Jeremy for many years, professionally and as a friend”.
In a statement, Carlile rejected any suggestion his public support for the intelligence agencies may have been influenced by his business relationship with one of the UK’s ex-spy chiefs.
“My relations with former intelligence chiefs have at times involved criticism,” he said. “Our business relationship developed for reasons totally unconnected with Sir John having been chief of MI6.”
In recent years, Carlile has made a series of high-profile interventions in support of the security and intelligence services. In October 2013, the peer argued that publication of Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance amounted to a criminal act.
Internal documents disclosed by Snowden show GCHQ worked closely with the Home Office in 2009 over its press strategy by “lining up talking heads” such as Carlile, before a key report concerning the use of intercept evidence in court proceedings.
In January, Carlile demonstrated his support for the kind of measures expected to be unveiled by the government on Wednesday when he joined a cross-party alliance in the House of Lords that attempted to force a revised snooper’s charter into law before the general election.
Speaking to the Guardian at the time, he said: “We have taken the view that if the head of the security service and the current Metropolitan police commissioner argue that these powers are needed urgently to retain communications data due to changes in technology, then we needed to act now rather than wait for reports that we do not know when they will be completed.”
Carlile’s business partner, Scarlett, has largely remained out of public debates around privacy and surveillance. He was, however, behind a report commissioned by the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg that concluded agencies should retain controversial powers to collect bulk communications data – one of the central concerns raised by Snowden.
Since leaving MI6, Scarlett has taken up senior advisory positions at accountant PricewaterhouseCoopers, US investment bank Morgan Stanley and Norwegian multinational oil and gas company Statoil. Scarlett is also a director and senior adviser at News Corp’s holding company for the Times and Sunday Times newspapers, and has written for the Times as an occasional columnist.
Last week the Times published a three-part series about the inner workings of GCHQ and MI6. The reports, based on unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the agencies’ operations, appeared just a week before publication of the government’s investigatory powers bill. A spokeswoman for the Times said Scarlett was not involved in the series in any way.
The Guardian contacted Scarlett prior to publication but he was not available to comment.As the political battle over net neutrality approaches a critical juncture, one of the most influential websites on the Internet is calling on its massive user base to take action.
Reddit, the 22nd most popular site in the U.S. and 58th most popular globally according to Alexa.com, encouraged its users call political leaders, sign petitions, write letters to local newspaper editors, partake in protests, and otherwise engage in democratic processes that expressed support for an open Internet. The call to action came in a Tuesday blog post titled “Only YOU Can Protect Net Neutrality.”
“If we all want to protect universal access to the communications networks that we all depend on to connect with ideas, information, and each other,” the post reads, “then we must stand up for our rights to connect and communicate.”
The provocation comes just days before Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to unveil his new open Internet rules proposal, which the Reddit post describes as “a critical crossroads for the continued development of an open Internet.”
The need for new rules came about when a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Verizon and against the FCC in January. The decision said that the FCC did not have the authority to enforce net neutrality rules on Internet service providers because they are classified as information companies, which aren’t subject to the same restrictions as telecommunications companies.
Wheeler initially vowed to rewrite the rules to reinstate network neutrality but seemed to change course last month, when he reportedly planned to propose rules that would allow for an Internet “fast lane.” Public outcry—spanning grassroots protests to opposition from giant Internet companies like Google and Facebook—appears to have led Wheeler to back off the reported proposal, but there is still considerable doubt that the FCC intends to protect the open Internet.
One of the first suggestions in the Reddit blog post is to call the FCC directly about net neutrality, and there’s reason to believe that many are doing so. Upon calling the listed FCC number, on Tuesday evening, the first thing one hears is an automated recording that says, “If your call concerns the open Internet, please email your thoughts to [email protected]”
The FCC has not responded to our inquiries about the volume of calls and emails the agency has received about net neutrality in the past several weeks.
In addition to its pro-net-neutrality rhetoric, Reddit and its community are putting their money where their mouths are. The site’s cofounder, Alexis Ohanian, raised $20,000 in an online crowdfunding campaign, and used the money to place net neutrality ads at bus stops throughout Washington, D.C.
If the FCC does introduce a new rules proposal at its Thursday meeting this week, the public will have a period of time to weigh in on the proposal before any new rules are put in place. The entire process can take months, which is why the Reddit blog post encouraged people to take action now, but dig in for a long battle:
“It’s important to take action today and this week, but please know that protecting the Internet as we know it will be a constant and ongoing fight.”
Illustration by Jason Reed | Reddit alien logo via RedditTwo political outsiders are atop The Hill’s Republican presidential rankings three months away from the Iowa caucuses.
The rankings — which are based on polling, debate performances and discussions with campaign experts — are aimed at answering one question: Who is likely to win the party’s nomination?
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Since The Hill’s rankings were last published on Aug. 31, 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 has seized significant momentum. He has risen four places, to second from sixth. Moving almost as sharply in the opposite direction, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has slid from second place to fifth. Bush topped The Hill’s rankings in July.
Other big movers are Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzCornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington MORE of Texas, up three places to fourth, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, down three places to sixth.
The GOP’s presidential candidates will face off for a third time Wednesday evening at a debate in Boulder, Colo.
1. Businessman 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 (Aug. 31 ranking: 1)
Trump’s demise has been predicted by pundits ever since he first rose to the top of the Republican field in mid-July. Despite all of that, he remains the clear leader, ahead in poll averages nationally, in New Hampshire and in South Carolina. He has only recently been pushed into second by Carson in Iowa. Those poll ratings, plus his capacity to fund his own campaign, keep the real estate tycoon at the No. 1 spot.
The bad news: The polling out of Iowa leaves little doubt that Trump has been overtaken by Carson. That suggests his popularity can be dented and gives new urgency to questions about whether Trump would be willing to submit himself to the rigors of a long dog fight for the nomination.
2. Former surgeon Ben Carson (Aug. 31 ranking: 6)
Carson has the wind at his back, especially in Iowa. His lead in the state is almost 9 percentage points, according to the -RealClearPolitics (RCP) average. The doctor’s low-key, affable demeanor has served him better than many had expected in the two debates so far. In the third quarter, he raised more money than any other Republican candidate, taking in $21 million.
The bad news: Carson has not faced the same intense level of media scrutiny as other leading candidates. Some inflammatory statements he made have not seemed to hurt him, but being called out on a policy question in a high-profile setting could be more damaging.
3. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Sixteen years later, let's finally heed the call of the 9/11 Commission Schumer urges GOP to reject Trump's 'destructive' national emergency MORE (Aug. 31 ranking: 5)
Rubio’s team has long claimed it wants the Florida senator to peak at the right time. That thesis sounds a lot more plausible now than it did even a few months ago. Rubio has been moving up the poll rankings and now sits at third nationally, in Iowa and in South Carolina, according to the RCP average, and fourth in New Hampshire. The degree to which he has become a target of barbs from the Bush campaign, in particular, is a sign of his strength.
The bad news: No one doubts Rubio’s political assets on paper, but one of the questions that has dogged his candidacy from the start remains: Where is he going to win? That’s just not clear. As a charismatic, first-term senator, he is also vulnerable to being painted as a Republican Barack Obama.
4. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (Aug. 31 ranking: 7)
Cruz, like Rubio, had at one point struggled for traction but is now at a point where there is a plausible path for him. He needs to perform very strongly in at least two of the three first states to vote, Iowa and South Carolina; RCP averages have the senator in fourth place in both. He could claim the votes of fervent conservatives who worry about Trump’s and Carson’s lack of political experience.
The bad news: His path to victory is largely predicated on the idea that other conservative candidates will damage their own chances. There are also persistent doubts about Cruz’s likability and questions about whether he could defeat Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the general election.
5. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (Aug. 31 ranking: 2)
Virtually nothing has gone right for Bush of late. He remains becalmed in the polls, has had to slash his campaign spending, and his propensity to insert his foot in his mouth remains undiminished. But Bush aides still believe that he can overtake Rubio in the polls, perform well in New Hampshire and recover his mantle of the mainstream candidate who can stop Trump.
The bad news: Bush is now perilously close to having the stench of a loser around him. This year’s restless, insurgent-friendly GOP voters may simply have decided they don’t want to buy what he’s selling.
6. Ohio Gov. John Kasich (Aug. 31 ranking: 3)
An early Kasich mini-surge in New Hampshire appears to have petered out. He performed well in the first debate before a home crowd in Ohio but was a marginal figure the second time around, in Simi Valley, Calif. The former House member is sixth in the RCP average in New Hampshire, which is not good enough to vault him into real contention.
The bad news: Kasich is behind his main establishment rivals, Bush and -Rubio, in New Hampshire. If he doesn’t perform well there, he’s done.
7. Businesswoman Carly Fiorina (Aug. 31 ranking: 9)
The former Hewlett-Packard CEO needs to make as big an impact in Boulder as she did in her first two debates if she is to overcome the sense that she has had her 15 minutes of political fame.
The bad news: Fiorina’s poll ratings rose sharply in the wake of the second debate but have crashed since then. In a nationwide CNN/ORC poll, for instance, she scored 4 percent earlier this month, down from 15 percent a month before.
8. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (Aug. 31 ranking: 8)
While Huckabee has not made glaring strategic errors in this campaign, the former governor has simply been overshadowed by candidates who are fresher to the scene.
The bad news: In Iowa, the state where Huckabee would need to win or place to have a credible shot, he is tied for ninth place in the RCP average with 2 percent support. There is no way back from there.
9. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (Aug. 31
ranking: Unranked)
The New Jersey governor remains adept at getting media coverage. He has placed all his chips on New Hampshire, by far the most hospitable terrain for him among the early contests. Christie is betting that his ebullient style on the stump will pay off.
The bad news: His campaign hasn’t taken off, and there are no real signs that it will. Christie’s position in the Granite State is akin to Huckabee’s in Iowa: Needing to do well, he’s ninth in the RCP average, with 3.3 percent support.
10. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times MORE (Aug. 31 ranking: 10)
One moment has typified Paul’s disappointing run. Earlier this month, he and his campaign staff decided to live-stream an entire day on the campaign trail. He was prompted to address some online questions about him, including one about whether he was still in the presidential race.
“I wouldn’t be doing this dumbass live-streaming if I weren’t, so yes, I’m running for president, get over it,” the senator responded.
The bad news: It seems increasingly clear that Paul, and elements of the news media, wildly overestimated his chances, assuming the libertarian strain in the GOP was more significant than it has turned out to be. Some Republicans want Paul to quit the race and focus on his reelection race in Kentucky.
Outside The Hill’s Top 10: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former New York Gov. George Pataki and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.ADVERTISEMENT
In a recent column, I posed the question of what liberal Catholics want from Pope Francis. Do they expect him to bring church doctrine into conformity with the egalitarian ethos of liberal democracy? Or has doctrine become so irrelevant to liberal Catholics that the pope's rhetorical shift on culture war issues is enough to satisfy their longing for reform in the church?
But what about conservative Catholics? What do they want from the new pope and the church? And what would that mean, in particular, for American politics?
In an important essay published last week on the website of the American Conservative, Patrick Deneen of the University of Notre Dame suggests that the answer very much depends on which of two conservative factions you're talking about.
On one side is the group I used to belong to and that I wrote about critically in The Theocons. Often called "Catholic neocons," the writers, intellectuals, and prelates in this faction — Robert P. George, George Weigel, Hadley Arkes, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia — tend to emphasize continuity between the Catholic Church and both American democracy and the Republican Party.
From Thomistic natural law through the Declaration of Independence's defense of natural rights derived from "nature's God," from Lincoln's description of America as "one nation under God" to the contemporary's GOP's pro-life commitments, this group weaves a seamless garment of theological-political ideals.
The rhetorical emphases of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI meshed quite well with theocon concerns. The focus on doctrinal obedience, the opposition to Soviet communism, the denunciations of the Western world's creeping "culture of death" and "dictatorship of relativism," the occasional kind words for free-market capitalism, the warnings about the irrationalism of Islam — all of these elements of the previous two pontificates seemed to justify the theocon case for continuity between the Vatican and the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
The key word is "seemed." The continuity probably always appeared more complete from the standpoint of Washington than it did from Rome. John Paul and Benedict each ventured criticisms of capitalism and expressed concerns about the Bush administration's military response to the Sept. 11 attacks, for example. But it was always possible for the theocons to pass over those statements in relative silence while highlighting more politically useful pronouncements.
That's become much more difficult under Pope Francis, whose rhetoric downplays the social conservative agenda and more forthrightly highlights the injustices of capitalism — including, most problematically for the GOP, "trickle-down" economics. What the theocons want from the new pope is probably a bit more rhetorical restraint — meaning, among other things, fewer free-wheeling press conferences — along with some indications that he won't attempt to make major (doctrinal or dogmatic) changes to the church. That's all it would take to enable the theocons to continue emphasizing continuity between the Catholic Church, the United States, and the Republican Party.
What the second group of conservatives want is very different — and much more interesting. Whereas the theocons often seem like they're searching for a theological imprimatur for the Republican Party's agenda, the conservatives Deneen dubs "radicals" emphasize discontinuities between Rome and Washington. The radicals' ranks include philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, and the theologians David Schindler, Michael Baxter, William T. Cavanaugh, John Medaille, and Deneen himself.
In their view, being an early 21st-century American of either party stands in deep tension with being a good Catholic. The source of this disjuncture can be traced back to the founding of the United States as a commercial republic devoted to protecting the freedom of the acquisitive individual to pursue happiness without regard for religious, moral, or communal restraints. American history, in this light, is a story of the individual's ever-increasing liberation from any and all limits — be they economic, social, or sexual. And that flies in the face of what the Catholic Church teaches about how to live.
So far at least, Pope Francis has given greater aid and comfort to the radical conservatives than the theocons, because his public pronouncements seem to place the church at odds with both American political parties — opposing the economic libertarianism of the GOP as well as the social libertarianism of the Democrats. That's precisely where the radicals — with their emphasis on communal norms and moral limits — think the church, and American Catholics, should be.
The question going forward is whether the radicals will exercise much political or cultural influence in the United States. My own view is that they won't. Instead, they will become something roughly analogous to Anabaptists (the Amish and Mennonites) or ultra-Orthodox Jews: groups whose stringent, uncompromising devotion to God leads them to withdraw from mainstream American life to cultivate their own theological and sociocultural gardens, insulating themselves as much as they can from corrosive moral, economic, and technological trends in the broader culture.
This is what blogger Rod Dreher (following MacIntyre) has dubbed "The Benedict Option," named after St. Benedict |
tight race with Council President Barb Johnson.
At Jentzen’s campaign party, Sarah Gonser explained ranked-choice voting to fellow supporters.
“I just want to know what happened,” said 29-year-old Nestor Garcia, who has volunteered with Jentzen and the 15 Now campaign, which Jentzen led, since January.
Fletcher was feeling optimistic as his party wound down at Mac’s Industrial Sports Bar.
“We think we probably won,” he said, his voice turning up slightly, like a question. “And we’ll celebrate that when that is official.”
Star Tribune staff writers Liz Sawyer and Sharyn Jackson contributed to this report.Story highlights President Obama expresses condolences
The gunman remains at large
Two American officers are found in their office dead from gunshot wounds
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack
A gunman who shot dead two American officers inside the Afghan interior ministry remained at large late Saturday as U.S. officials decried the attack in Kabul.
"This act is unacceptable, and the United States condemns it in the strongest possible terms," Defense Department press secretary George Little said in a statement.
The Taliban claimed responsibility, though NATO and Afghan officials are investigating and have not confirmed involvement by the Islamist militant group. A Taliban spokesman said the attack was in response to the recent burning of Qurans at a U.S. base.
The killing of the officers prompted Gen. John Allen to order all military advisers with the International Security Assistance Force to withdraw from government ministries in the Afghan capital as a precaution.
According to ISAF, initial reports indicated that "an individual" turned his weapon against NATO service members, later confirmed by an Afghan police official to be an American colonel and major.
The two officers were found dead in their office from gunshot wounds to the head, the Afghan police official said. "They were part of the advisory mission there," the official said. "At this stage we can't say why they were killed."
Hours later, U.S. President Barack Obama called Allen to discuss the situation and express condolences to the families.
"We welcome President (Hamid) Karzai's statement this morning encouraging peaceful expressions, and his call for dialogue and calm," Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "The United States remains committed to a partnership with the government and people of Afghanistan, as we work to realize our shared goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda and strengthening the Afghan state."
The investigation into the attack is ongoing, and it was unclear who the shooter was, the Afghan official said. However, it's unlikely that the gunman was an outsider who had infiltrated the ministry, he said.
The attack happened in a separate compound inside the interior ministry where as many as 10 Americans are based, the Afghan official said. Such an attack would have to be planned, he said.
"The perpetrator of this attack is a coward whose actions will not go unanswered," Allen said.
Allen's order for ISAF advisers to withdraw includes the interior and defense ministries, among others, the U.S. official said.
The U.K. Foreign Office announced that British officials working in Afghan ministries in Kabul have also been withdrawn, as a "temporary measure."
ISAF provides advisers in key ministries to help train Afghan officials. It is not clear to what extent ISAF's military training mission was affected by the attack.
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak called his American counterpart, Leon Panetta, to offer his condolences and apologized for the attack, Little said. Panetta "urged the Afghan government to take decisive action to protect coalition forces and curtail the violence in Afghanistan after a challenging week in the country," he added.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said "the attacker is still alive and resisting and a second Mujahid managed to escape the ministry."
"This comes amid our call to all Afghan security forces to turn their guns towards the invading forces who are the real enemies of our country and religion and kill them so they leave our country," Mujahid said in an e-mail.
Saturday's brazen attack at the interior ministry came amid continued protests over the recent burning of Qurans at Bagram Airfield. A military official said the materials burned were removed from a detainee center's library because they had "extremist inscriptions" on them and there was "an appearance that these documents were being used to facilitate extremist communications."
A fifth day of demonstrations over the burning left four civilians dead and 50 injured near the United Nations office in Kunduz, said Saad Mokhtar, head of the city's health department. Twelve police officers were among the wounded Saturday.
Allen addressed the burning issue during a visit to a military base where two U.S. soldiers were killed Thursday by a man wearing an Afghan National Army uniform. A protest over the burning of Qurans was taking place outside the base at the time of the killings.
Allen called on troops to "show the Afghan people that as bad as that act was at Bagram, it was unintentional, and Americans and ISAF soldiers do not stand for this. We stand for something greater than that."
Obama also apologized for the incident.
Muslims believe the Quran is the word of God, so holy that people should wash their hands before touching the sacred book.Hunting dogs regularly reward their owners with spectacular retrieves, unrelenting affection and unquestioning loyalty.
They forgive missed shots, empty water bowls and shabby motel rooms.
Rarely do humans get to pay back their canine companions with more than a scratch behind the ears, a pat on the head or the occasional biscuit.
But Tom Foster did recently — in spades — saving the life of his springer spaniel, Sparkey, with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after the dog fell into a water-filled hole and nearly drowned while the pair hunted pheasants in southwestern North Dakota.
“I just wanted to save my dog,’’ said Foster, 72, of Hudson. “He’s really special.’’
Foster’s near-nightmare is a tale of perseverance, quick thinking — and love.
Here’s what happened:
Foster and Sparkey were hunting ringnecks in thick cover along one side of a river, while buddy Dan Hoffman, 65, of Orono, and his son, Nick, 34, of Waconia hunted adjacent on the other side. It was late October, just weeks after a snowstorm hammered the region.
“It was wet and muddy,’’ Foster said.
Then Nick Hoffman shot a rooster that dropped into the river.
“Sparkey saw it fall and started running toward it,’’ Foster recalled. “I made my way to the river to help him out. As I walked, I heard him splash. I didn’t think anything of it because he had been running through water for two days.’’
But Sparkey didn’t return with the bird.
“I called him and he didn’t come, then I blew my whistle, and he still didn’t come,” Foster said. “I knew there was something wrong.’’
Foster retraced his steps to where he had last heard Sparkey and found him in an obscured 6-feet-deep hole with water at the bottom. Swirling high water had carved the depression, 4 feet in diameter, from the clay riverbank.
“He was on his back, with his head underwater, obviously drowning,’’ said Foster. The 55-pound dog was unconscious.
“I jumped in the hole and grabbed him by the collar. It was deep enough that I couldn’t just lift him up. I worked my way up the side, digging my feet in and pulling on rocks and roots, and pushing the dog up at the same time. My adrenaline was going pretty good.
“Eventually I got him out, and then me. He looked pretty bad. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his lips had fallen down. He looked dead. I started giving him chest compressions. I could feel his heart beating, then it got slower and slower and finally stopped.
“I said, ‘Dan, I think he’s dead!’’ Dan shouted, ‘Have you tried mouth-to-mouth?’
“So I pried his mouth open. It was locked shut, and it took both of my hands to open it. I got my face as far as I could get into his mouth, and blew as hard as I could. I immediately got a face full of water and slime. I blew a couple more times, and I could feel his heart start to beat. Then I blew through his nose three times.
“Within a couple of minutes, he lifted his head up and his eyes refocused.’’
Meanwhile, Nick Hoffman ran back and got Foster’s pickup and drove across a field to the site. Foster carried Sparkey to the truck, placed him inside and rubbed him.
“He was showing signs of coming around, but he had his head down and was shivering uncontrollably,’’ Foster said. So he put Sparkey on his heated front seat, turned it to high and covered him with a jacket.
Just then a conservation officer showed up and gave Foster the name of a veterinarian in Dickinson, N.D.
“By the time we got there, Sparkey was sitting up in the front seat,’’ Foster said. “He wanted to go after the cats in the vet’s office. He was 100 percent back to normal. It was unbelievable.’’
The vet examined Sparkey and said he had suffered no permanent damage. “She said, ‘You’re really, really lucky,’ ’’ Foster said. He figures his dog was unconscious for seven to 10 minutes, but he said Sparkey’s heart stopped for less than a minute.
Foster knew he was fortunate. “I thought he was dead,’’ he said. “It took me a week to get over the feeling. I was traumatized.’’
He suspected Sparkey tried to scale the side of the hole before falling back in exhaustion. “I must have found him immediately after he went under the water, because he didn’t seem to have any water in his lungs or stomach.’’
Three weeks later, Foster and Sparkey were back in North Dakota, chasing pheasants.
Foster said he has had many exceedingly good hunting dogs but Sparkey is his favorite.
“Not because he is the greatest hunting dog I have ever owned,’’ he said. “But because he has a very captivating personality. My wife and I just love him.
“And he has a heart like the Eveready rabbit — he just never stops hunting.’’
Twitter: @dougsmithstribTravellers journey along a street in Imphal in the northeastern state of Manipur. -AFP/File Photo
NEW DELHI: India's top court Monday ordered the federal government to respond to allegations that more than 1,500 people have been killed by security forces in an insurgency-hit northeastern state since 1978.
The Supreme Court, which has also ordered the Manipur state government to respond, was acting on a petition filed by a group representing families of 1,528 men, women and children allegedly “executed” by security forces.
The 410-page petition asks for the setting up of a special investigation team comprising of police officers “of integrity” to probe the killings in the tiny state that “should shock the conscience of the entire nation”.
“The governments have to respond to the allegations in the petition,” Colin Gonsalves, lawyer for the group, told AFP, adding the case would come up again before the Supreme Court on November 4.
The petition is the latest effort in a fight by activists in revolt-racked, heavily militarised Manipur to halt what they say are extra-judicial killings under a law that gives sweeping powers and immunity to security forces.
Alleged victims named in the petition include a 19-year-old man who went to get his scooter fixed and whose body turned up at the morgue with torture marks.
It also mentions a 22-year-old who went looking for a missing cow on his bicycle and was found shot dead.
“We want a proper investigation into these deaths. We need recognition that these people were innocent, these killings must stop,” Babloo Loitongbam, head of Manipur-based Human Rights Alert, said.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act enables security forces to shoot on sight and arrest anybody without a warrant to deal with insurgencies in some northeast states and in Kashmir in the north.
The act has been attacked by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, which says it is a stain on India's democratic credentials.
Earlier this year, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Christof Heyns, called the alleged killings a matter “of serious concern”.
The Indian government says it needs the special powers act to protect security forces facing heavily armed militants.
But Loitongbam, who is also a lawyer, said the act has “created an ecology that facilitates killing” in which security forces are encouraged with special awards and promotions to kill innocent people and claim they are militants.
He said the 1,528 alleged victims cited in the petition “is not an exhaustive list, it's just those people whose details we've been able to gather”.
Manipur, which borders Myanmar, is home to 2.5 million people and a myriad of separatist insurgent groups. At least 10,000 people have died during the last three decades of violence, rights groups say.November 6, 2015 Anne-Sophie Bachelard
We know you’re all familiar with the beloved and original PHP mascot! On the scene since 1998, the logo was originally created for the PHP community by Vincent Pontier. Ten years later, the super plush ElePHPant finally came to life and grew to be adored by the PHP global community.
Conference after conference, we get endless requests from people longing to have their very own ElePHPant. And so, to mark the momentous occasion of Symfony’s 10th birthday we decided to take some serious action. You’ve seen personalised ElePHPants before, but you’ve never seen special edition Symfony ElePHPants!
Our ElePHPant mission started back in June, when we were very excited to have ordered over 1,000 plush toys to share with our community. The excitement was very high! Finally, we get the green light that they have arrived safely in French customs beginning of August. Hooray! We would be able to provide our international conference with the ultimate mascot.
A week passed by and the anticipation grew. But still no elephants! We started to get a bit anxious about the whereabouts of our precious cargo but assumed French customs was simply being slow. Unfortunately, our happiness was short-lived when we discovered that there was a problem with the EU Package Travel Regulation which meant that our ElePHPants were stuck in customs. What followed was months of back and forth attempts to get the soft toys into our possession. To our disappointment, it was then evident that the ElePHPants would not make it to SymfonyCon Paris 2015.
But not all hope was lost! After having failed to rescue the ElePHPants from Customs, our manufacturers, already extremely busy with their Christmas orders, found a little window to resend us some precious mascots. Although much smaller in numbers than originally planned, we are happy to announce that the Symfony ElePHPants have finally touched down in Paris and are ready in time to celebrate 10 years at SymfonyCon Paris 2015!
There are limited numbers of special edition 10 years of Symfony ElePHPants. They will be sold exclusively at the SensioLabs stand at SymfonyCon Paris 2015 on 3rd and 4th December 2015. The ElePHPants are not available for pre-order, they are only available for purchase at the conference on a first come first served basis. How can you resist!
SensioLabs is selling the unique ElePHPant at €20 per item, a maximum of 10 individual ElePHPants per meetup group can be purchased at one time or 2 per person.
Be sure to purchase your one of a kind limited edition Symfony ElePHPant at SymfonyCon Paris 2015, you won’t want to miss out on this chance! If you are still debating about whether or not to join us at SymfonyCon Paris, this should be the ultimate reason to convince you, on top of many others of course: an incredible schedule, community networking, friends gathering, an awesome city... You can still register for the biggest Symfony conference ever: SymfonyCon Paris 2015!
See you in Paris!JANUARY 14--The Haiti earthquake has already triggered hundreds of thousands of donations to musician Wyclef Jean's charitable foundation, which expects to raise upwards of $1 million a day in the disaster's wake. However, Internal Revenue Service records show the group has a lackluster history of accounting for its finances, and that the organization has paid the performer and his business partner at least $410,000 for rent, production services, and Jean's appearance at a benefit concert.
Though the Wyclef Jean Foundation, which does business as Yele Haiti Foundation, was incorporated 12 years ago--and has been active since that time--the group only first filed tax returns in August 2009. That month, the foundation provided the IRS with returns covering calendar years 2005, 2006, and 2007--the only periods for which it has publicly provided a glimpse at its financial affairs.
In 2006, Jean's charity reported contributions of $1 million, the bulk of which came from People magazine in exchange for the first photos of a pregnant Angelina Jolie (the actress reportedly directed that the publication's payment go to Jean's charity, not her personally).
As seen on these pages from the foundation's 2006 tax return, the group paid $31,200 in rent to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean and Jerry Duplessis, who, like Jean, is a foundation board member. A $31,200 rent payment was also made in 2007 to Platinum Sound. The rent, tax returns assure, "is priced below market value."
The recording studio also was paid $100,000 in 2006 for the "musical performance services of Wyclef Jean at a benefit concert." That six-figure payout, the tax return noted, "was substantially less than market value." The return, of course, does not address why Jean needed to be paid to perform at his own charity's fundraiser.
But the largest 2006 payout--a whopping $250,000--went to Telemax, S.A., a for-profit Haiti company in which Jean and Duplessis were said to "own a controlling interest." The money covered "pre-purchased...TV airtime and production services" that were part of the foundation's "outreach efforts" in Haiti. No further description of these services was offered, though the return claimed that "the fees paid are below market" and that the use of Telemax was the "most efficient way of providing these services."
The group's tax returns also report "consultant" payments totaling $300,000 between 2005-2007, while the 2006 return reported nearly $225,000 in "promotion and PR" costs. These expenses are not itemized further in the IRS returns. (6 pages)We are the Russian Maoist Party, the party of rednecks, dirty migrants, chicks and faggots. That is what the bourgeoisie named us. If only it were not half-blind and could tell us apart – us little, dumb, wicked inbreds. Well, that’s fine, the whole founding congress of the Communist Party of China in 1921 fit on a boat on a lake in a park; whereas today there are 100 million of accursed revisionists, who are in power and are following a path toward capitalism. We hope to repeat anew the beautiful revolutionary history of the CPC (or of Lenin’s and Stalin’s VKP(b)) and, given the possibility, avoid its embarrassing transformation.
The names of the four categories represent the bottomless oceans of our strength.
Rednecks are the workers (not some well-paid brigadiers and masters, of course) and the poor people (different servants, retirees, students from the rural areas, and etc.). The income gap of the population in Russia is, of course, not as great as in Brazil, but way worse than in Japan and in Europe, and even somewhat wider than in the USA with their Blacks and Mexica ns. Lawyers and managers, TV journalists and politicians are the devotees of the modern world. As they stroll around with a pompous look, they gladly discuss their own importance, their ‘holy actions’ devoid of any intelligent sense, yet they make money hand over fist. Income is determined not by the labour, but rather by such vulgar things as ownership and status. The elite gated itself away from the people through diplomas and connexions, feeding just a handful of particularly cunning and subservient intellectuals.
At the same time, millions of persons cannot earn enough to pull themselves out of poverty, even if they are working hard. There is a catastrophic lack of noble accommodation (not elitist, but rather for the masses!). In many cities, people are periodically left without light, heat and water (in some places these basics are even unheard of). Employers force the proletariat to work in harmful, often physically-endangering environments and pay pennies. Vodka is the source of the cheapest calories – it kills workers from the inside. Even those who don’t drink cannot afford full meals; they don’t get enough vitamins and amino acids. As a result, long before retirement, the labourer becomes a wreck, and then he is forced to spend whatever he possesses on medicine (benefits for the procurement of which have also been cancelled, by the way).
“Women carry half of the sky on their shoulders” they were saying in revolutionary China. But do they get equal salaries? Definitely not! The best that they managed to achieve is “equal pay for equal work”. Behind the crafty formulation hides an unpleasant fact – traditionally female occupations are seen by society as less important, and therefore lower-paid. What is the point in the absence of salary discrimination when women are being driven by the upbringing, education, culture, consumer and economic sectors to settle on non-prestigious professions? Often their work is tougher, but appears to be less qualified, that’s why female textile industry workers receive 1.5-2 times less than the guys from the next-door mechanical repairs workshop.
Another reason why employers allow themselves to pay a lesser salary for female-dominated professions is based on their assumption: a ‘chick’ must find herself a ‘dude’, who will ‘take care of her’. Women are basically being urged on to prostitution. Public morale’s ‘merit’ requires this prostitution to be life-long, calling it a ‘holy conjugal bond’. How can we even talk about love?! How can a woman freely choose her partner, if she is required to guarantee her survival? How can a man count on the honesty of his partner if she is materially-dependent on him?
“Woman is the nigger of the world” sang John Lennon. Yet we also have our own real ‘niggers’ – the non-Russian peoples that every second one of our compatriots, without giving it a second thought, will call an insulting name, even if working side by side, let’s say, with Tatars or Karelians. The eyesight, clouded over by chauvinism, does not notice the poor immigrants, who are running from war and hunger, as they slog away as road sweepers and construction workers. The crowd of political journalists patronizes the Ukrainians from the position of ‘big brother’. The politics of russification have almost buried the languages of the peoples of Russia. In the framework of ‘putinisation’, national autonomies are being liquidated. Whereas the federal army cruelly represses numerous attempts at founding their own independent country, Noxchis (Chechens) have lost a portion of their population comparable to the losses of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. Many of those that have heard stories of successful Chechen entrepreneurs or names such as Alekperov or Nurgaliyev cannot understand why they should riot. The truth is that the poorest peoples of Russia are the Ingush people, the Kalmyks, the Buryats, the Komi-Permyaks, the Mari people, the Tuvans….
However, even the proud-sounding name ‘Russian’, for many centuries, stood for only one right – the bitter and humiliating right to subjugate oneself to the Moscow-based hand of the sovereign. If we are to exclude the Moscow megalopolis and a few rich natural resource-extracting regions out of the statistics, we will see quite a poor central Russia, a hopelessly hard-working Volga region and a completely poverty-stricken Far East. In order to break free of this situation, the regions of Russia and the national autonomies must emancipate themselves from Moscow’s centralised dictatorship, must avoid being welded into the Empire. The regions require a new federal treaty, a treaty that makes them equal and free, not a ‘treaty’ where they are regarded as vassals of the new tsars.
What can we say about ‘faggots’, meaning lesbians and gays? Traditionally, they are disliked in the population; in the best case scenario they are considered a curiosity. Meanwhile, they are not leaders of an aesthetic movement descended from the stage, but rather millions of normal individuals, who live among us, study, work, love and dream. Sadly, they are not quite ready to organize and defend their right for a dignified, proportional place in society (as it was in the Occident in the 1960’s). The attitude toward them happens to be a measure of social progress. It’s not in vain that their attempt to exit their cultural ghetto and conduct a gay parade was met with unlawful opposition from Moscow authorities. It’s not in vain that reactionaries from LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) and Rodina are proposing, seemingly out of the blue, to introduce a criminal punishment for ‘improper’ sex. On the other hand, foreign experience (and we’re not talking about that in the West) cultivates an example for the left: recently the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines organized a gay marriage for two of its guerilla fighters. Russia’s gays and lesbians will still have a chance at ‘playing their violin’, and we shall hope that they will play in the same orchestra as the proletariat.
The four pillars are proletarian poverty, oppressed peoples, discriminated women and humbled sexual minorities; together this is the ‘Great Campaign’ against orthodox rich white sirs that represent the government, the corporations and their spongers.
With such a strong mass base, even the tiniest, dumbest, stupidest and most wicked inbreds such as us can be sure of victory.
Long live the Revolution!
This statement was published on 05.02.2006 by the Russian Maoist Party. The Russian Maoist Party is a member of ICOR.
AdvertisementsRETURN TO CLASSIC, LARGE-SCALE WAR
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will take players on an unforgettable journey as they engage in battles from Earth to beyond our atmosphere against a relentless, enemy faction that threatens our very way of life.
It's grand scale war and hallmark boots-on-the-ground Call of Duty action with memorable characters, rich emotional arcs, and stunning new environments, all within an epic new setting.
A CALL OF DUTY CAMPAIGN TO REMEMBER
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare puts storytelling front and center, in a deeply engaging narrative.
It features jaw-dropping set-pieces and blockbuster cinematic moments, while also delivering a gripping portrayal of war that harkens back to the roots of the franchise.
Infinity Ward also breaks new ground by thrusting the player into wartime leadership as Captain Reyes, a Tier 1 Special Operations pilot, who takes the helm of the Retribution, one of Earth's last remaining warships.
In a time of unthinkable hardships, Reyes must lead the remnants of coalition forces against a relentless foe in a war that spans our solar system.
FIGHTING A FANATICAL ENEMY
The Settlement Defense Front (SetDef) represents a splinter group of insurgents that broke away from the United Nations Space Alliance during a war of secession, years ago.
In the world of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, our planet has been stripped of its natural assets through population growth and industrial expansion.
The people of Earth now rely upon colonies throughout the solar system to mine planets and asteroids for necessary fuel and other resources.
The SetDef is a fascist power, comprised of brutal and militant radicals, toughened by the extreme conditions of offworld environments.
They seek to control those outposts and their wealth, putting a stranglehold on the countries of Earth. After years of uneasy stalemate, diplomatic relations are strained, and it will take only the slightest nudge to lead to full-scale war.
GEAR UP FOR INTENSE MULTIPLAYER
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will incorporate the popular chain-based movement system.
Players know and love into an innovative multiplayer experience that rewards players more than ever before for utilizing their surroundings and applying strategy in the heat of the moment.
Maps are designed to further leverage the chain-based movement system and immerse players into fast, fun, and frenetic gameplay that players have come to expect from Call of Duty.
With its new approach to play, multiplayer will bring innovative gameplay that challenges players to achieve their goals in creative ways based on their specific play style.
BATTLE THE LIVING DEAD IN A ZOMBIES THRILLER
Infinity Ward introduces a fresh take on the nightmarish Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.
With an all-new, immersive Zombies storyline for players to uncover and explore, players are thrust into a spine tingling adventure not for the faint of heart.
Zombies will take players on a wild ride with a multitude of new features, while thrilling players with the core mechanics that fans have come to expect from the mode.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare raises the bar yet again, delivering three stellar experiences in one exceptional package. Pre-order your copy today! Available November 4, 2016.Image caption Evernote is the third tech company Mr Libin has created
Can Evernote find the secret to eternal youth?
The memory aid application's boss, Phil Libin, aims to try.
"Every time we need to make a decision, we ask is this more or less likely to make us be a 100-year start-up?" he says of the business he founded in 2008.
This doesn't mean he wants to avoid expanding the business or to avoid a share sale - both are on the cards - rather he's determined to keep his creation nimble.
"It's really about how quickly you can make decisions and how relentlessly you battle encroaching corporate stupidity," he adds.
"It's like you are locked in a battle against the natural forces of corporate bureaucracy - the things that just want to seep in and make everything stupid. It's difficult to fight that - but it's fun."
The charismatic business leader has invited the BBC to his new headquarters in Redwood City - a tech cluster south of San Francisco that's also home to games giant Electronic Arts and business services titan Oracle.
Image caption Evernote can cope with many kinds of data but does not aim to compete with online media lockers
In a room off the building's spacious open plan office Mr Libin drops words such as "quest" and "mission" into the conversation as he describes how he wants the public to adopt his app to make sense of all the notes, articles, photos and other material gathered over their daily lives.
"We really want Evernote to be the place where you capture all your important memories," he explains.
"But we don't want it to be where you store your media. Evernote isn't where you should be putting your ebooks or 20 gigabyte copy of Avatar.
Hack figures
"That film is the same everywhere - there is nothing personal about it. But we do want you to store your impressions, your thoughts and your notes about it."
After the hack Evernote's security breach, which saw usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords compromised by an outside hacking attack, illustrated the risks associated storing sensitive information in the cloud. For business users, there is still a question mark over whether data repositories in the cloud such as Evernote, as well as cloud file sharing services, are mature and enough to be a reliable, safe and compliance-compatible solution. For the most part, these services are still too young, underdeveloped and high-risk to be an approved part of a business IT strategy. Nonetheless, they are increasingly entering the workplace - approved or otherwise - due to consumers using personal accounts at work. For consumers, the situation is a little different. The benefits, such as ease of use, low cost and "available anywhere" storage often outweigh the possible security risks, which is why Evernote, and other cloud storage providers that have suffered security glitches, have survived such breaches with minimal negative fallout among users.
Competitors exist - Microsoft is pushing its OneNote service and there are other smaller rivals including Springpad and Catch. But for the moment, at least, Evernote and its elephant icon probably have the most buzz.
So just how popular is it? After a recent hack attack the firm talked of having 50 million accounts.
When pushed it acknowledges its number of active users - those using the service at least once a month - is closer to 15 million, with the UK accounting for 620,000 of these.
That's some way behind Facebook's one billion-plus statistic - but still relatively high for a productivity app.
And it's high enough for the business to join Silicon Valley's elite club of tech firms with a $1bn (£665m) valuation based on private stock sales.
In another sign of success, more established brands have made efforts to associate themselves with the firm.
Moleskine has launched a range of Evernote-branded notebooks and Samsung surprised many at January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) when it unveiled a fridge with an Evernote-enabled touchscreen.
Some critics saw this as outlandish, but Mr Libin insists the tie-up is no joke.
"It's funny, I first talked to Samsung about building Evernote into a refrigerator in 2008 and nothing got started for a long time," he reveals.
Image caption Microsoft's OneNote offers similar functionality to Evernote
"We've always had the idea that Evernote should be everywhere. It needs to be ubiquitous because we are going to build you a second brain - the idea is, eventually, it's just part of you.
Conflict of interest
"So, obviously it should be in your refrigerator because it's really a hub of your family information... I'm psyched that they did that."
Cars and Google's Project Glass eyewear are also within the firm's sights, he adds.
Evernote is losing money, although it was briefly profitable three years ago. Mr Libin says it should be back in the black by 2014, but for now his priority is growth.
Everything is private and protected data - we're going to honour that after your death. Phil Libin, Evernote chief executive
It must be a temptation to speed things up by introducing adverts related to the contents of users' posts - just as other cloud-based services have done - but Mr Libin firmly rules this out.
"People don't fully recognise how much an inherent conflict of interest can hurt brand loyalty," he says.
"Google, Facebook and others are great companies but they have that conflict.
"Whenever you use one of the products, in the back of your head you're like, you know that you were the product.
"We try to only make money when people really love the product and want to pay us [for premium features]."
Another option he rejected was to write Evernote's app in HTML 5.
Image caption Samsung's T9000 fridge features a touchscreen panel offering Evernote
Using the web language would have made it less time consuming to offer the software across so many platforms. It supports Windows Phone, Blackberry and LG's WebOS in addition to iOS and Android.
But Mr Libin dismisses it as a "lowest common denominator" technology, adding that there are benefits to developing different versions of the app with slightly different sets of features.
"If you make consistency a goal you achieve it through mediocrity," he exclaims.
"You achieve consistency by making everything equally crappy.
"We've always said, let's have independent teams that compete with each other to make the best version for each platform."
He suggests this means his workers learn from each other's achievements ensuring the teams continually leapfrog each other.
The downside: "It's much more expensive to develop that way," he admits.
After life
Mr Libin may want to keep Evernote forever young, but death is still on the agenda.
The firm recently updated its privacy policy to clarify what happens when its users pass away.
"There really is no right answer," he says, "but we've said since our primary mandate is everything is private and protected data, we're going to honour that after your death.
"So, we will not turn your data over to anyone, next of kin or whatever. The only way we're ever going to turn your data over to someone is if there's a court order to do it."
Image caption Evernote's new HQ is located 26 miles south of San Francisco in Redwood city
But longer term Mr Libin acknowledges Evernote needs to offer a way for users to control what happens to their online memories after both their death and, potentially, his company's.
As a result he's already planning to offer a new product provisionally named Evernote Century.
"It ensures the availability of your data for 100 years and it gives you a way to designate who should have access to it and how," he explains.
"The question is how do you make it economically viable for somebody to still care about keeping your data accessible... even if Evernote the corporate entity is no longer in business."
He admits he has still to fully puzzle this out, but still hopes to release the product before the end of the year.
"I don't think it's a problem that's been answered before," he says, "but if we're saying this is your lifetime memory, I think it's part of our charter to figure this out."DUBAI (Reuters) - Cut off from Yemen and its allies there by a Saudi-led military campaign, Iran has intensified a media counter-offensive against Riyadh, accusing its regional rival of inflicting catastrophic suffering while presenting itself as a blameless peacemaker.
Dust rises from the site of a Saudi-led air strike in Yemen's southwestern city of Taiz July 1, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer
Iranian state media have given blanket coverage in Arabic, Farsi and English to the three-month-old war in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and Sunni Arab allies have been bombing the Iranian-allied Houthi faction for over three months.
The violence has killed more than 2,800 people, displaced one million and left more than 21 million people or 80 percent of the population in need of some form of humanitarian aid and or protection, the United Nations says.
In its latest broadside, the hardline Fars news agency on Wednesday released a video clip showing the face of Saudi King Salman morphing into that of Saddam Hussein, the late Iraqi dictator loathed in Tehran as its enemy in a 1980-88 war, interspersed with scenes of crying Yemeni children.
Another tactic was a state-sponsored cartoon contest about the Yemen war — even as an Iranian court sentenced an activist to more than 12 years in jail on charges including drawing |
The school hallways are lined with a gray stripe of tile, and that’s where the cadets line up outside their first class. As they file in and find a spot among the desks, it starts to feel more like school than boot camp. They’re still in camouflage pants, but most have shed their uniform blouse for a white T-shirt. The teachers are dressed like teachers anywhere, smart business casual or school hoodie and jeans.
American schools are often criticized as institutional, creativity-stifling places that teach kids to stay in line. Most don’t have Drill Instructor Salinas looming beside the whiteboard, stone-faced in full camo, shaved head and goatee. This is part of the handoff of authority, though, and after a few minutes he leaves control of the middle-school classroom to reading teacher Rosie Martinez. It’s a delicate balance, and the DIs are never too far away to maintain order.
Students begin by reading. One stands a hardcover book entitled Cars on his desk, and buries his head in pages full of big type and chrome. Students must read two or three books, depending on the length of their stay, to move on from BAC. Martinez next guides her class through a lesson on social skills, talking about who has bullied other kids and why, and how they can cool off when they’re frustrated at school.
“You’re faced with this every day,” Martinez says. “Here, we tell you when to talk, when to walk, when to do anything. You go back to your home campus, you don’t have any of that.”
A few kids say they’d rather not go back at all.
“But you can’t stay here,” she tells them. “You need to move on and make better choices.”
When a student whistles—a quick double note, easy to miss, but he’s been told before not to do it—Martinez finds a drill instructor in the hallway who pulls the boy out for a few minutes of “redirection.”
“Once they enter the classroom, they belong to the teachers, but they’re still expected to comport themselves with the military discipline,” explains Gilbert Sauceda, the head drill instructor. When they’re pulled out to speak with a DI, students may talk out the problem or go out to the circle for some exercises and then return to class. If they don’t cooperate, they’re sentenced to either in-school suspension—in a separate classroom at BAC—or sent to juvenile probation. “They know that once they come to me, things can go either way,” Sauceda says.
Nearly all the DIs were in the military, but Sauceda is one of only two with combat experience. He’s a Brownsville native who served in Desert Storm, then worked in traditional public schools before learning about Salinas’ new boot camp in the 1990s. He hired on a few months after the school opened and hasn’t left. It’s a rare opportunity, he says, to keep up the military lifestyle—from the pageantry to the esprit de corps—without remaining in the service. He can go home to his family every night.
Sauceda says it’s “80 to 90 percent” like the real thing, but the drill instructors at BAC are part drill sergeant and part counselor. They talk a lot about tough love, knowing when to push and when to back off.
Principal Guerra credits the people he works with, like Sauceda, for helping the kids who come through BAC. “We can’t use a cookie-cutter approach for these kids. They all have their own personalities, their own things that set them off,” Guerra says. “A lot of these kids, what they need is a lot of encouragement.
“I’ve seen some of the most hardcore of them come in, and we talk to them, and they break down in tears. … We start getting to the main issue, their problems at home and things like that, it’s what’s bringing them here indirectly. Because of what’s going on at home, they misbehave in school.”
A little before noon, the kids march back outside to the courtyard. Most days this is the time for more exercise, but on Fridays it’s time for awards. It’s bright out, with sounds of nearby construction and a warm, humid breeze blowing in.
Cadets arrange themselves in five platoons, hands clasped behind their backs. A drill instructor faces each group. The honor guard, four students in all-black uniforms, marches in bearing flags and fake rifles. Guerra appears in a navy suit, tie-less with a light blue shirt. He calls students forward in small groups to receive awards for perfect attendance or exemplary reading. He gives the “Principal’s Award” to a girl from the honor guard who impressed him with an essay she wrote about being pulled out of class for a talk with a DI and how their conversation gave her hope she’d never felt before.
Last, Guerra calls the names of 25 cadets who step forward from the ranks dressed in white T-shirts and jeans, their dress uniforms all bagged in plastic on the ground, boots traded for sneakers. They are leaving BAC for their home campuses next week.
Because BAC takes all out-of-school suspensions, and not just expulsions, return rates are now higher than they were in Salinas’ day. One student is on his fourth tour of the year. Critics like Rocco, the pediatrician, doubt that 45 days is long enough to make a meaningful impact on a troubled kid, but Guerra notes that the time limit is set by state law. Kids stay longer only if they get in trouble again, so he says staff tries to instill motivation, self-esteem and discipline, the things they’ll need to avoid coming back. It’s a lot to expect from any school, even an extreme one like this.
That’s one of the last thoughts Guerra leaves with the outbound cadets, some lined up in formation for the last time: “Now,” he says, “begins the hard part.”This post is in partnership with the History News Network, the website that puts the news into historical perspective. The article below was originally published at HNN.
It is a master of stealth, stretching less than half an inch long and weighing in at 2.5 milligrams with an estimated air speed of 1 to 1.5 miles per hour. It is virtually soundless in flight, registering zero decibels from ten feet. Its tracking systems hone in on targets by detecting infrared radiation from warm bodies, chemicals such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid, body odors from as far as a hundred feet, as well as movement from fidgety hosts. It can carry an impressive array of payload: up to 32 different types of viruses, many of which are lethal to humans. And it protects itself from the same viruses with a well-developed immune system that provides a highly effective antiviral defense mechanism. The Aedes mosquito, insect vector for dozens of viruses including the Zika virus, is a near-perfect drone.
If you think about the number of human casualties caused by disease-bearing insects throughout the ages, it’s not hard to see why their potential use as a weapon was not lost to military strategists. In 1942, an entomological institute was created at the Dachau concentration camp under the orders of Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) head Heinrich Himmler. An article by Klaus Reinhardt pointed to Nazi research protocols involving malaria-bearing mosquitos being tested for “air-dropping.”
The horrific Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army dropped bombs loaded with plague-infested fleas on Chinese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. At the tail end of the Second World War, Japan planned to send kamikaze pilots to attack San Diego and cause an outbreak of plague. The operation, dubbed Cherry Blossoms at Night was never carried out. Japanese generals also considered sending balloons armed with plague or anthrax to the U.S. mainland.
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In the 14th century, the Mongol army did not lob plague-ridden fleas into the Crimean City of Caffa, instead they catapulted scores of rotting corpses infested with Yersinia pestis. Italian Gabriele de Mussi’s memoir described the siege: “what seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city,” with the hope that the “intolerable stench would kill everyone inside.” As repulsive as the stench must have been, it was the subsequent bubonic plague, sweeping through Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, that decimated up to a third of the population.
An unclassified document from the United States Army Chemical Corps in 1960 described aspects of its chemical and biological warfare efforts. It revealed that “In 1953, the Biological Warfare Laboratories in Fort Detrick established a program to study the use of arthropods for spreading anti-personnel BW agents.” The report cited the advantages of using insects: they inject pathogens directly into the body so wearing masks would not be protective, and “they will remain alive for some time, keeping an area constantly dangerous.” Such an attack would have been difficult to detect, and even if discovered, the disease would have already broken out.
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The program studied the use of Aedes aegypti and Yellow Fever Virus. During this Cold War era, the obvious target was the U.S.S.R.; as the report noted, “Yellow Fever has never occurred in some areas, including Asia, and therefore it is quite probable that the population of the U.S.S.R would be quite susceptible to the disease.”
Between April and November of 1956 the Corps released uninfected female mosquitos in a residential area in Savannah, Georgia. The report indicated that this was carried out with the cooperation of the neighborhood residents who helped estimate how many mosquitos entered their homes and bit people. In the same period, a similar test was performed at the Avon Park Bombing Range in Florida. They learned that within a day, mosquitos had travelled one to two miles and had bitten many people.
A 1958 test in the same area confirmed that “mosquitoes could be spread over areas of several miles by means of devices dropped from planes or set up on the ground. And while these tests were made with uninfected mosquitoes, it is a fairly safe assumption that infected mosquitoes could be spread equally well.” According to the report, testing of the Yellow Fever Virus itself remained confined to the lab and utilized monkeys and mice. The Corps proposed the construction of a large-scale facility to produce the Aedes-Yellow Fever Virus combo that could be disseminated with bombs.
Interestingly, the actual introduction and establishment of the Aedes mosquito into the U.S. mainland occurred after World War II. The hardy insect managed to sneak in inadvertently through used tires imported from Asia. Inspections of 11 shipments containing tires arriving at the Port of Los Angeles between 1945 and 1946 revealed immature mosquitoes in water in 4 of the shipments. Three of these included living larvae and adults from mosquito species that were not indigenous to the U.S.
A 1972 article by Richard Eads of the CDC reported that used tires were especially high risk cargo for the dissemination of the mosquito. Eads noted that tires containing water provide ideal sites for egg-laying and that even when the tires arrived dry in the U.S., the mosquito eggs remained viable for months. In the 1960s, large amounts of military shipments called retrograde cargo were entering the U.S. from Vietnam. While the cargo shipped in U.S. government-owned vessels were required to be treated with larvicides, such regulation did not extend to the civilian contractors shipping surplus materials via commercial vessels.
Evidence that the mosquito had established itself in the U.S. mainland was finally confirmed in the summer of 1985. Aedes albopictus (Skuse), the supposedly less fearsome Aedes species as compared with Aedes aegypti, was found breeding in several tire dumps in Harris County, Texas. Currently, the CDC’s map reveals a wide distribution of both species across the southern U.S. and extending as far north as Vermont, New Hampshire, and southern Minnesota for Aedes albopictus.
The establishment and spread of Aedes albopictus, the Asian Tiger mosquito, has worrisome implications. While its contribution to the spread of epidemics has not been as significant compared with Aedes aegypti, in instances when its more notorious cousin is absent, the Asian Tiger mosquito may assume the primary vector role for transmission. Moreover, its ability to survive in more temperate climates effectively extends its range. The recent introduction and spread of the Zika virus has not only understandably caused considerable concern, but has also reinforced the risk of both Aedes species’ potential to transmit multiple diseases.
Rod Tanchanco MD is a physician and writer. He blogs at rodtmd. Twitter: @rodtmd
Contact us at editors@time.com.Marshal taken to hospital in Houston over worries about syringe's contents as epidemic has spread to Nigeria
A US air marshal was attacked with a syringe at Lagos airport in Nigeria and has been taken to a US hospital, the FBI said on Monday.
It was not known what was in the syringe when its contents were injected into the on-duty marshal, whose name has not been given and is in hospital in Houston.
The incident on Sunday raised fears the syringe could have carried some form of the Ebola virus because Nigeria is one of the west African countries where the epidemic has spread.
The FBI said authorities were taking every precaution but that initial signs were that the victim was not a danger to others and was not showing any symptoms.
"Out of an abundance of caution, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted an on-scene screening of the victim when United Flight 143 landed in Houston early Monday morning," the statement said.
"The victim did not exhibit any signs of illness during the flight and was transported to a hospital upon landing for further testing. None of the testing conducted has indicated a danger to other passengers."Stand facing her face.
Do not tell her your intentions.
Do not ask permission to kiss her.
Look dreamily into her mouthparts.
Keep your left forepaw on the hilt of your scabbard.
This is a dangerous by-way, one never knows.
You may hold her right scallop peg in your right lobster claw, if you wish.
It is well to sigh a couple of times about this stage of the game.
Whisper softly that her rosebud lips remind you of Cupid’s bow.
“Cupid was a fag tho,” remind her.
Laugh and say you’re just kidding, you have an uncle who died of AIDS.
Cry for like 45 minutes.
She will probably drop her eyes and blush when you say that.
“Nah nah, just playing. My uncle isn’t dead yet.”
Place the cephalopod suckers of your tentacular club under her chin and pivot her spine round 180 degrees.
Draw her gently toward you.
Do not hurry.
Place the still-respectable fleshen-section of your inner thigh meat upon her mesothorax.
Initiate small talk.
“Skylar is a shrill bitch,” you say.
“Heisenberg is a badass.”
Pull up highlights from a comment thread in which you made the argument better than you can right now.
Verified commenter status.
“Nice,” she says.
Awkward pause.
Draw a sketch of how you imagine she looks naked in MS Paint.
Make the boobs look “choice.”
“I can’t help but notice how ‘choice’ my boobs look in that drawing,” she says.
“Nice,” you think, but don’t say.
“Nice,” she says again.
“I was going to be a designer lol.”
“…”
Sound a whimsical note through your trachea flute.
“Did you hear that?” she asks.
“No,” you say. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Not ready for trachea flute reveal, it turns out. Second date perhaps.
Lean in close.
Wait a long assssssss time.
Moult.
Check your phone.
No texts.
“Doing business-man stuff for a minute,” you say. “haha.”
Fumble with phone due to baseball catcher’s mitt on non-claw hand.
“Bad reception on this level,” you say.
Scan the overgrowth for movement.
“My uncle died in the bush at the hands of a gook in Indo-China,” you say. “I made the other thing up.”
“No, you’re the racist,” you say.
Gaze deeply at the love-lights wot slumber in her eyes.
Sigh once more.
Incline your head towards hers.
No, the other way.
Aim toward the middle, Jesus.
Accidentally fucking wail your head into hers, comical-like.
“Haha, oh man,” you both say.
She was kind of into it though.
Lean in close.
Do not kiss her.
It was all a neg-hit designed to illustrate your disinterest.
“Nice air sacs, are they real?” you say.
“Your bones seem thin, hollow and very light, but not as light or hollow as they could be probably.”
“Seen hollower, is all I’m saying,” you say.
“Those are great boots. You’re the third girl I’ve seen wearing them tonight.”
There’s a skeleton inside of you.
Do not let it climb out.
Remember, a neg doesn’t work if it feels like you’re trying to get one over on her.
Instead, “Are they real?” is delivered as if you genuinely like her air sacs.
They are pretty nice air sacs.
It’s been a while…
The boot compliment is delivered in the vein of appreciating how fashionable the target is.
She doesn’t say shit.
Owned.
Stand there under the stars.
Count the stars.
Count every last single fucking star as the skin rots from your bones.
Who’s kissing who now, you think.
Stand facing her skeleton.
Do not tell her your intentions.
Do not ask permission to kiss her.
Look dreamily into her mouthparts.
Spread her dreams under you.
Tread softly because you tread on her bones.
Owned.
Be a regular reader @ FeedBuzz to Enjoy such stuff!President Barack Obama tackled the opioid epidemic on Wednesday by telling health care providers across the country that access to medication-assisted treatment must be expanded.
For decades, those treating opioid addiction ignored the scientific consensus that the best approach involved medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration, coupled with counseling. Instead, the treatment industry insisted on a model known as "abstinence," in which any prescription medication aimed at addressing a patient's opioid use disorder was forbidden.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/ASSOCIATED PRESS President Obama has set a 90-day deadline for opioid treatment reviews and action plans.
Ahead of a Wednesday speech in West Virginia, which has been hit particularly hard by the opioid crisis, Obama essentially said that will end. He released an order giving federal agencies with health care responsibilities 90 days to identify barriers to MAT and to come up with ways to remove them.
"Only a small minority of Americans who might benefit from this treatment are receiving it," the order notes.
A Huffington Post investigation published in January found that the treatment industry overwhelmingly resists a medication-assisted model based on decades-old beliefs about sobriety that have been passed down by those in recovery, but have never been rigorously tested. HuffPost closely examined the treatment histories of 93 people who died of opioid overdoses in a similarly devastated region of Kentucky and found that the majority had received some form of abstinence treatment before dying. The FDA-approved medications that are barred by advocates of abstinence include methadone and buprenorphine, the latter of which was approved more than a decade ago yet still faces stiff resistance.
In February, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy announced that drug courts which barred addicts from receiving MAT would no longer receive federal funding.
"As the Huffington Post article pointed out, we have highly effective medications, when combined with other behavioral supports, that are the standard of care for the treatment of opiate addiction. And for a long time and what continues to this day is a lack of -- a tremendous amount of misunderstanding about these drugs and particularly within our criminal justice system," drug czar Michael Botticelli said in a briefing with reporters.
Pamela Hyde, the head of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said at the same briefing that her agency would work to make sure the treatment industry also followed the evidence. "We've made that clear: If they want our federal dollars, they cannot do that," she said of abstinence programs that bar MAT. "We are trying to make it clear that medication-assisted treatment is an appropriate approach to opioids."
In August, SAMHSA released new grant guidelines that reinforced the agency's position. In September, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced that the government would be rewriting regulations to boost access to buprenorphine.
The memo released Wednesday is extraordinarily comprehensive in its approach to rooting out abstinence culture: "Agencies that directly provide health care services, contract to provide health care services, reimburse for health care services, or facilitate access to health benefits shall, to the extent available and permitted by law, review all health benefit requirements, drug formularies, program guidelines, medical management strategies, drug utilization review programs, and all other relevant policies, tools, and strategies in order to identify any barriers individuals with opioid use disorders would encounter in accessing MAT."
The president is demanding movement. Within 90 days, each agency "shall submit an action plan to the Directors of the White House Domestic Policy Council and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy addressing the barriers and practices identified in their reviews."
In a conference call Wednesday morning, Botticelli mentioned one of the goals outlined by the White House -- doubling the number of physicians who are authorized to prescribe buprenorphine from 30,000 to 60,000. He said that such medications, in combination with counseling support, are the "most effective standard of care" and that far too few doctors prescribe such care.
"Since we know many communities throughout the country and particularly rural areas don't have access to substance use treatment … we want to make sure we have the physicians who can do that," Botticelli said.
Despite the medical consensus, judges and treatment providers have a strong bias against MAT. Kentucky drug court Judge Karen Thomas, in an extended interview with HuffPost for its January investigation, was unapologetic about her refusal to permit defendants to take such medications.
"It sounds terrible, but I don't give them a choice. This is the structure that I'm comfortable with," Thomas said.
States including Kentucky and New York have begun aligning their own policies with the federal guidelines. Last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law ordering all drug courts to stop barring defendants from receiving medication-assisted treatment.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that he was pleased by the president's announcement. "I'm encouraged to see both [Botticelli] and the president engaged and proposing certain steps that my home state of Kentucky has already embraced," he said. "Today's announcement is encouraging because it's always positive to see Democrats and Republicans working together to address this epidemic."
Obama outlined his new policies Wednesday afternoon at a forum on the epidemic in Charleston, West Virginia. "We've got to understand what families are going through, what law enforcement is going through, what our health systems are going through in order for us to wrap our arms around this problem," he said.
The president heard the stories of two parents who talked about their own anguish as their children became addicted and struggled to find good treatment. One father said he had last been at the forum's location to see his daughter as a cheerleader. She is now in a Michigan rehab program after suffering a near fatal overdose. He wondered why he had to send her so far away to get the help that she needs.
"For a long time, I think treatment was seen as a second-class citizen," Obama admitted. Instead, he said, politicians from both parties focused on misguided tough-on-crime policies. Now, both parties are rethinking those tactics.
"I am deeply encouraged that on this issue we are seeing bipartisanship," the president said. "That's how we'll solve this problem."
Dr. Brad Hall, president of the West Virginia Society of Addiction Medicine, said the president's new initiatives can only help. He noted that all of his colleagues have reached the federal cap on prescribing these medications and can't take on any new patients. He said he's even heard of addicts dying while trying to get into a MAT program.
"The No. 1 factor is just lack of access to providers," Hall said.
Too many heroin addicts also lack access to supports like well-trained behavioral health counselors. Another barrier to better treatment is the stigma. Many patients are afraid to get help and thereby tell others of their addiction. If they seek MAT, they are met with criticism from the 12-step community.
Dr. Carl Sullivan, professor and director of addiction programs at West Virginia University's School of Medicine, said his facility is able to treat 400 patients. But he has 400 others on a waiting list.
"This is sad to say -- the truth is if you have opioid addiction, your chances of getting into MAT are not very good," he said.
Sullivan credits the president with helping to make such treatment more mainstream. "I think what he's doing indirectly is he’s legitimizing MAT," the doctor said.
Michael McAuliff contributed reporting.
This story has been updated with details of the president's speech in West Virginia.
Also on HuffPost:Mysterious Orange Goo ID'ed As Eggs; Alaskan Village Still Worries
Enlarge this image toggle caption NOAA NOAA
A mysterious orange goo that appeared on the shore of a small village in Alaska has been identified as "millions of microscopic eggs filled with fatty droplets," the AP reports. But researchers say they still don't know what the eggs might hatch, or if they are toxic.
The mass of eggs began appearing last week, surprising even longtime residents of the village of Kivalina. Discovery News, which spoke with a town official, describes the goo:
Found several miles inland in the fresh water Wulik River, the orange material turned gooey and gave off a gaseous odor. But scooped out of the ocean, the substance had no odor and "was light to the touch, with the feel of baby oil," relayed Janet Mitchell, City Administrator for Kivalina.
The AP reports that the village of Kivalina is "an Inupiat Eskimo community located at the tip of an 8-mile barrier reef on Alaska's northwest coast. Residents live largely off the land, and many are worried about the effect on the local wildlife and plants from a substance never seen there before."
Orange-tinted water was reported in areas around Kivalina, as well. And reports that the cloud of eggs might have killed minnows brought new questions over whether the eggs might be toxic, or if the sheer volume of the eggs may have deprived the minnows of oxygen.
In Juneau, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Jeep Rice said Monday, "It was easy to see cellular structure surrounding the lipid droplet, and to identify this as 'animal.' We have determined these are small invertebrate eggs, although we cannot tell which species."Software piracy, conspiracy, cover-up, stonewalling, covert action: Just another decade at the Department of Justice
The House Judiciary Committee lists these crimes as among the possible violations perpetrated by "high-level Justice officials and private individuals":
>> Conspiracy to commit an offense
>> Fraud
>> Wire fraud
>> Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies and committees
>> Tampering with a witness
>> Retaliation against a witness
>> Perjury
>> Interference with commerce by threats or violence
>> Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) violations
>> Transportation of stolen goods, securities, moneys
>> Receiving stolen goods
Bill Hamilton, Inslaw & PROMIS
Who:
Bill Hamilton and his wife, Nancy Hamilton, start Inslaw to nurture PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information Systems).
Why #1:
The DOJ, aware that its case management system is in dire need of automation, funds Inslaw and PROMIS. After creating a public-domain version, Inslaw makes significant enhancements to PROMIS and, aware that the US market for legal automation is worth $3 billion, goes private in the early '80s.
Why #2:
Designed as case-management software for federal prosecutors, PROMIS has the ability to combine disparate databases, and to track people by their involvement with the legal system. Hamilton and others now claim that the DOJ has modified PROMIS to monitor intelligence operations, agents and targets, instead of legal cases.
By late November, 1992 the nation had turned its attention from the election-weary capital to Little Rock, Ark., where a new generation of leaders conferred about the future. But in a small Washington D.C. office, Bill Hamilton, president and founder of Inslaw Inc., and Dean Merrill, a former Inslaw vice president, were still very much concerned about the past.
The two men studied six photographs laid out before them. "Have you ever seen any of these men?" Merrill was asked. Immediately he singled out the second photo. In a separate line up, Hamilton's secretary singled out the same photo.
Both said the man had visited Inslaw in February 1983 for a presentation of PROMIS, Inslaw's bread-and-butter legal software. Hamilton, who knew the purpose of the line-up, identified the visitor as Dr. Ben Orr. At the time of his visit, Orr claimed to be a public prosecutor from Israel.
Orr was impressed with the power of PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information Systems), which had recently been updated by Inslaw to run on powerful 32-bit VAX computers from Digital Equipment Corp. "He fell in love with the VAX version," Hamilton recalled.
Dr. Orr never came back, and he never bought anything. No one knew why at the time. But for Hamilton, who has fought the Department of Justice (DOJ) for almost 10 years in an effort to salvage his business, once his co- workers recognized the man in the second photo, it all made perfect sense.
For the second photo was not of the mysterious Dr. Orr, it was of Rafael Etian, chief of the Israeli defense force's anti-terrorism intelligence unit. The Department of Justice sent him over for a look at the property they were about to "misappropriate," and Etian liked what he saw. Department of Justice documents record that one Dr. Ben Orr left the DOJ on May 6, 1983, with a computer tape containing PROMIS tucked under his arm.
What for the past decade has been known as the Inslaw affair began to unravel in the final, shredder-happy days of the Bush administration. According to Federal court documents, PROMIS was stolen from Inslaw by the Department of Justice directly after Etian's 1983 visit to Inslaw (a later congressional investigation preferred to use the word "misappropriated"). And according to sworn affidavits, PROMIS was then given or sold at a profit to Israel and as many as 80 other countries by Dr. Earl W. Brian, a man with close personal and business ties to then-President Ronald Reagan and then-Presidential counsel Edwin Meese.
A House Judiciary Committee report released last September found evidence raising "serious concerns" that high officials at the Department of Justice executed a pre-meditated plan to destroy Inslaw and co-opt the rights to its PROMIS software. The committee's call for an independent counsel have fallen on deaf ears. One journalist, Danny Casolaro, died as he attempted to tell the story (see sidebar), and boxes of documents relating to the case have been destroyed, stolen, or conveniently "lost" by the Department of Justice.
But so far, not a single person has been held accountable.
WIRED has spent two years searching for the answers to the questions Inslaw poses: Why would Justice steal PROMIS? Did it then cover up the theft? Did it let associates of government officials sell PROMIS to foreign governments, which then used the software to track political dissidents instead of legal cases? (Israel has reportedly used PROMIS to track troublesome Palestinians.)
The implications continue: that Meese profited from the sales of the stolen property. That Brian, Meese's business associate, may have been involved in the October Surprise (the oft-debunked but persistent theory that the Reagan campaign conspired to insure that US hostages in Iran were held until after Reagan won the 1980 election, see sidebar). That some of the moneys derived from the illegal sales of PROMIS furthered covert and illegal government programs in Nicaragua. That Oliver used PROMIS as a population tracking instrument for his White House-based domestic emergency management program.
Each new set of allegations leads to a new set of possibilities, which makes the story still more difficult to comprehend. But one truth is obvious: What the Inslaw case presents, in its broadest possible implications, is a painfully clear snapshot of how the Justice Department operated during the Reagan-Bush years.
This is the case that won't go away, the case that shows how justice and public service gave way to profit and political expediency, how those within the administration's circle of privilege were allowed to violate private property and civil rights for their own profit.
Sound like a conspiracy theorist's dream? Absolutely. But the fact is, it's true.
The Background
Imagine you are in charge of the legal arm of the most powerful government on the face of the globe, but your internal information systems are mired in the archaic technology of the 1960s. There's a Department of Justice database, a CIA database, an Attorney's General database, an IRS database, and so on, but none of them can share information. That makes tracking multiple offenders pretty darn difficult, and building cases against them a long and bureaucratic task.
Along comes a computer program that can integrate all these databases, and it turns out its development was originally funded by the government under a Law Enforcement Assistance Administration grant in the 1970s. That means the software is public domain... free!
Edwin Meese was apparently quite taken with PROMIS. He told an April 1981 gathering of prosecutors that PROMIS was "one of the greatest opportunities for [law enforcement] success in the future." In March 1982, Inslaw won a $9.6 million contract from the Justice Department to install the public domain version of PROMIS in 20 US Attorney's offices as a pilot program. If successful, the company would install PROMIS in the remaining 74 federal prosecutors' offices around the country. The eventual market for complete automation of the Federal court system was staggering: as much as $3 billion, according to Bill Hamilton. But Hamilton would never see another federal contract.
Designed as a case-management system for prosecutors, PROMIS has the ability to track people. "Every use of PROMIS in the court system is tracking people," said Inslaw President Hamilton. "You can rotate the file by case, defendant, arresting officer, judge, defense lawyer, and it's tracking all the names of all the people in all the cases."
What this means is that PROMIS can provide a complete rundown of all federal cases in which a lawyer has been involved, or all the cases in which a lawyer has represented defendant A, or all the cases in which a lawyer has represented white-collar criminals, at which stage in each of the cases the lawyer agreed to a plea bargain, and so on. Based on this information, PROMIS can help a prosecutor determine when a plea will be taken in a particular type of case.
But the real power of PROMIS, according to Hamilton, is that with a staggering 570,000 lines of computer code, PROMIS can integrate innumerable databases without requiring any reprogramming. In essence, PROMIS can turn blind data into information. And anyone in government will tell you that information, when wielded with finesse, begets power. Converted to use by intelligence agencies, as has been alleged in interviews by ex-CIA and Israeli Mossad agents, PROMIS can be a powerful tracking device capable of monitoring intelligence operations, agents and targets, instead of legal cases.
At the time of its inception, PROMIS was the most powerful program of its type. But a similar program, DALITE, was developed under another LEAA grant by D. Lowell Jensen, the Alameda County (Calif.) District Attorney. In the mid-1970s, the two programs vied for a lucrative Los Angeles County contract and Inslaw won out. (Early in his career, Ed Meese worked under Jensen at the Alameda County District Attorney's office. Jensen was later appointed to Meese's Justice Department during the Reagan presidency.)
In the final days of the Carter administration, the LEAA was phased out. Inslaw had made a name for itself and Hamilton wanted to stay in business, so he converted Inslaw to a for-profit, private business. The new Inslaw did not own the public domain version of PROMIS because it had been developed with LEAA funds. But because it had funded a major upgrade with its own money, Inslaw did claim ownership of the enhanced PROMIS.
Through his lawyers, Hamilton sent the Department of Justice a letter outlining his company's decision to go private with the enhanced PROMIS. The letter specifically asked the DOJ to waive any proprietary rights it might claim to the enhanced version. In a reply dated August 11, 1982, a DOJ lawyer wrote: "To the extent that any other enhancements (beyond the public domain PROMIS) were privately funded by Inslaw and not specified to be delivered to the Department of Justice under any contract or other agreement, Inslaw may assert whatever proprietary rights it may have."
Arnold Burns, then a deputy attorney general, clarified the DOJ's position in a now-critical 1988 deposition: "Our lawyers were satisfied that Inslaw's lawyers could sustain the claim in court, that we had waived those [proprietary] rights."
The enhancements Inslaw claimed were significant. In the 1970s the public- domain PROMIS was adapted to run on Burroughs, Prime, Wang and IBM machines, all of which used less-powerful 16-bit architectures. With private funds, Inslaw converted that version of PROMIS to a 32-bit architecture running on a DEC VAX minicomputer. It was this version that Etian saw in 1983. It was this version that the DOJ stole later that year through a pre-meditated plan, according to two court decisions.
The Dispute Grows
On a gorgeous spring morning in 1981, Lawrence McWhorter, director of the Executive Office for US Attorneys, put his feet on his desk, lit an Italian cigar, eyed his subordinate Frank Mallgrave and said through a haze of blue smoke: "We're out to get Inslaw."
McWhorter had just asked Mallgrave to oversee the pilot installation of PROMIS, a job Mallgrave refused, unaware at the time that he was being asked to participate in Inslaw's deliberate destruction.
"We were just |
Sabourin said. “Hopefully the public recognizes that this is an isolated incident and it doesn’t shake their confidence in the police service and our members.”
Milan has been released on a promise to appear. His first court date is expected to be in November.For me, a lot of this is very personal, because I connect it with real folks I’ve met on my journey. Then I realize that this has just multiplied and multiplied in every state of our country and that good people are being ground into a bad system, often because the system preys disproportionately on the most vulnerable people—poor folks, mentally ill folks, addicted folks, and minorities.
Lantigua-Williams: What do you mean the system “preys” on them?
Booker: In college and [the upper-class community] where I grew up, people violated drug laws, but the criminal-justice system didn’t prey upon them. Yet, you see a much different reality in poor areas, where people who are doing a lot of the same behaviors are much more likely to be caught. There’s no difference between blacks and whites in dealing or using drugs, but blacks are almost four times more likely to be arrested for it. So clearly the system, as it functions now, disproportionately focuses on poor minority folks, mentally ill folks, and disabled folks.
Lantigua-Williams: Do you think that the system was designed to be effective in targeting this particular population?
Booker: In some ways there are clearly aspects of this that—I don’t know about designed—but that are obviously going to have a racially disproportionate impact, like the sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powdered cocaine. Clearly, that was going to have a different effect on the poor versus the well-off. It was going to have a different effect on minority communities more often than nonminority communities. There are aspects of the system that are clear, but there’s also, as I’ve learned, something called “implicit racial bias”—which we all have, black or white—and how that often affects decisions. If you have a black defendant and a white defendant who are both convicted of the same crime, the black defendant could be more likely to end up getting a longer sentence or the mandatory minimum—whatever the cause, whether it was intended to be so, designed to be so, or just ended up being so. We know we have tools and abilities to do something about it. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Lantigua-Williams: When you say, “We know,” I think that pronoun might not apply to everyone. Particularly, it may not apply to some of your colleagues who don’t know, who haven’t had the personal experiences that you’ve had, who haven’t lived in the areas that are deeply impacted. How do you translate your collective knowledge when you’re behind closed doors and trying to convince fellow legislators that this is right, that this is what “we” should be doing?
Booker: First of all, I really appreciate the question because it’s important to talk about it because the “we” is actually bigger than most people think. That’s been the encouraging thing about my time in the Senate... We’ve been able to get a bigger and bigger coalition than many people might have imagined... “We” is actually much bigger. More directly to your question, I find that no matter where a person’s coming from, I can talk to them about their own values and how this broken criminal-justice system is a violation of their values.There are doubts about the ability of the alliance fighting ISIS to continue to work together after deep splits appeared this week between the U.S.-led coalition conducting air strikes and some of its most important de facto allies on the ground.
Iraqi Shia militias, which have borne the brunt of the fighting on the ground against the Sunni jihadists of ISIS in central and western Iraq, said Thursday they don't want the coalition’s assistance.
Some groups refused to continue fighting and one has even threatened to shoot down coalition aircraft.
The confrontation comes as an Iraqi offensive to retake the ISIS-held city of Tikrit has stalled.
Tikrit is a Sunni-majority town of roughly 250,000 inhabitants about 140 kilometres north of Baghdad, and the birthplace of Saddam Hussein.
An Iraqi government offensive began a month ago to recapture Tikrit. Less than 20 per cent of the approximately 24,000 Iraqi government forces engaged in the fighting are from the regular Iraqi army.
The rest belong to Shia militias known as the popular mobilization committees. Those militias are the ones objecting to coalition airstrikes.
The Shia militias are mostly close to Iran and in many cases are led by Iranian military advisers. The operation to retake Tikrit was supervised by the commander of the Iranian Quds Force (an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards), Gen. Qassem Suleimani.
The U.S. has poor relations with the militia groups, many of whom once battled the American occupation of Iraq.
U.S. officials have also said they worry that Shia militias will retaliate against Sunni civilians in areas formerly held by ISIS, setting back efforts to reunite the country and heal the wounds of the sectarian civil war that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Offensive stalled
The Harper government has also seemed uncomfortable at times with Iranian involvement in the campaign against ISIS.
"We don't align with the Iranians," Foreign Minister Rob Nicholson said during a press conference Friday with his U.K. counterpart, Philip Hammond, before quickly changing the subject.
Partly because of the involvement of Iranian forces, and partly because of the presence of Shia militias, the U.S.-led coalition did not launch airstrikes in support of the Tikrit operation.
The Shia militias insisted they could do the job without Western help, and much of the city has been cleared of ISIS fighters. But the ISIS jihadis remain dug into one part of the city that has proved difficult to clear.
Shia militiamen in Tikrit show off a captured ISIS flag (held upside-down) as well as the banner of their own militia. (Associated Press)
On Wednesday, the Iraqi government turned to the U.S.-led coalition, of which Canada is part, to use its warplanes to dislodge ISIS from its redoubts.
But that decision has led some of the most important Shia militia groups to pull out of the fighting.
On Friday, Iraq's most senior Shia cleric urged the militias to return to the fight in the name of Iraqi unity in the war against ISIS. His sermon appear to have some effect on at least some of the militias.
Canadian defence officials say Canadian planes have not yet been involved in the coalition raids on Tikrit, but CF-18s have frequently bombed targets in the same province of Iraq and routinely fly over the city to hit targets in the Mosul and Kirkuk areas.
Who will take Mosul?
The renewed tension between the Western coalition conducting airstrikes and the forces doing much of the fighting on the ground raises questions about a much bigger offensive planned for later in the spring.
Iraqi forces are supposed to launch an offensive to liberate Mosul by early summer. Mosul is Iraq’s third city and a stronghold of ISIS.
Memories of the grinding battle by U.S. marines to retake Fallujah from insurgents in 2004 must be of concern to coalition war planners. Coalition forces suffered a total of 107 killed and 613 wounded during six weeks of house-to-house combat, and most of the buildings in the city were destroyed or heavily damaged.
Mosul is about eight times larger than Fallujah and 10 times larger than Tikrit, and ISIS is at least as potent a force as the Iraqi insurgency of 2004.
The U.S. committed over 10,000 ground troops to the assault on Fallujah, but no Western troops are expected to be available for the assault of Mosul. The Iraqi army remains weak and the Iraqi government depends heavily on militias.
Even with the full participation of those militias, backed by coalition air power, the recapture of Mosul remains a tall order. If the two are unwilling to work together, it is difficult to see how the operation can be accomplished.
In the end, the Iraqi government may be tempted to turn to the one ally that could provide both "boots on the ground" and air power, and that would have no difficulty working alongside Iraq’s Shia militias — the Islamic Republic of Iran.Eleven national civil rights groups sent a letter Tuesday to President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and congressional leaders saying that the current standardized test-based “accountability system” for K-12 education ignores “critical supports and services” children need to succeed and discourages “schools from providing a rich curriculum for all students focused on the 21st century skills they need to acquire.” The groups make recommendations on how to revamp the system in a way that would improve educational opportunity and equity for students of color.
The letter comes a time of growing resistance to accountability systems based on standardized test scores among educators, parents, principals and superintendents. The Obama administration has expressed some support for the idea that districts and states should review their testing systems but has not said it would change federal mandates that help drive what districts and states do.
The groups signing the letter, which includes a list of recommendations on how to create a new accountability system, are: Advancement Project, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Opportunity to Learn (OTL) Campaign, National Urban League (NUL), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), National Council on Educating Black Children (NCEBC), National Indian Education Association (NIEA) and Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC).
Here’s the letter:
Re: Improving Public Education Accountability Systems and Addressing Educational Equity
President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Congressional and State Educational Leaders:
On behalf of millions of students and families, and civil rights organizations, communities of color, and organizations that reflect the new, diverse majority in public education, we write urging implementation of a set of strong recommendations for advancing opportunity and supporting school integration, equity, and improved accountability within our nation’s systems of public education.
Background
We believe that improved accountability systems at the local, state, and federal levels are central to advancing and broadening equal educational opportunity for each and every child in America. The current educational accountability system has become overly focused on narrow measures of success and, in some cases, has discouraged schools from providing a rich curriculum for all students focused on the 21st century skills they need to acquire. This particularly impacts under-resourced schools that disproportionately serve low-income students and students of color. In our highly inequitable system of education, accountability is not currently designed to ensure students will experience diverse and integrated classrooms with the necessary resources for learning and support for excellent teaching in all schools. It is time to end the advancement of policies and ideas that largely omit the critical supports and services necessary for children and families to access equal educational opportunity in diverse settings and to promote positive educational outcomes.
The demand for our schools to meet new college-and-career-ready standards is happening in the wake of a record number of children living in poverty and an increasingly diverse student population. Students of color represent more than 50 percent of youth and are more than twice as likely to attend segregated schools. Second language learners whose first language is not English now represent 10 percent of all public school students nationwide, and students living in poverty represent virtually half of all US public school students.[1] [2]
Recognizing the challenging backdrop in which our students, schools, and communities are expected to thrive, we are committed to adhering to the civil rights laws of this country that require that all children be educated equitably and effectively based on their needs. This reality must be matched with the learning opportunities, preparation, knowledge, services, supports, and skills that will enable them to lead healthy and successful lives in the world and workforce. From early education to the postsecondary years, we believe that the federal government continues to play a critical role in helping states, districts, and tribes to achieve educational excellence through equity.
While the need for accountability is almost universally agreed upon, there have been concerns raised about overly punitive accountability systems that do not take into account the resources, geography, student population, and needs of specific schools. In particular, the No Child Left Behind law has not accomplished its intended goals of substantially expanding educational equity or significantly improving educational outcomes. Racial achievement and opportunity gaps remain large, and many struggling school systems have made little progress under rules that emphasize testing without investing.[3] We must shift towards accountability strategies that promote equity and strengthen, rather than weaken, schools in our communities, so that they can better serve students and accelerate student success.
Recommendations
We call on local, state, and federal policymakers to use the following set of principles in rethinking sound public education accountability systems. Comprehensive systems of shared responsibility with educational professionals and key stakeholders should evaluate the extent to which productive learning conditions are in effect for all students in each school – with attention to disparities by race, class, gender, language, and disability status – and ensure that appropriate corrective action is taken to improve learning conditions where problems are identified. Development and monitoring of well-designed and comprehensive measures of educational inputs and outcomes must demonstrate the equity that is emblematic of systems that are serious about universally advancing opportunities to learn and succeed. These features are critical to an effective accountability system:
1. Appropriate and equitable resourcesthat ensure opportunities to learn, respond to students’ needs, prioritize racial diversity and integration of schools, strengthen school system capacity, and meaningfully support improvement. These include:
Funding and instructional materials, including access to technology and adequate facilities, allocated based on student needs (poverty, culture/language learning, and other needs)
Equitable access, within and across schools, to high-quality curricula, tools for learning, and enrichment programs
Tailored individualized services that build upon the cultural and linguistic assets children bring to schools
Qualified, certified, competent, racially and culturally diverse and committed teachers, principals, counselors, nurses, librarians, and other school support staff, with appropriate professional development opportunities, including cultural competency training, and support and incentives to work with students of greatest need; and
Social, emotional, nutritional, and health services
2. Multiple measures: The system should acknowledge that both inputs and relevant outcomes matter, and thus should monitor both appropriate inputs that support academic, social, emotional, physical health, and cultural well-being, along with student and school outcomes (knowledge, skills, and dispositions) that demonstrate college-and career-readiness and civic literacy. These include school resources; school discipline and positive school climate information; children’s in- and out-of-school learning opportunities over time; student improvement; and student achievement, progress, and graduation rates.
3. Shared Responsibility:Each level of the system – from federal, state, and local governments to districts and schools should be held accountable for the investments it must make and for the oversight, accountability, data collection, monitoring, and actions it must undertake to produce high-quality learning opportunities for each and every child and to ultimately achieve equity in student outcomes. This includes ensuring civil rights protections, equitable resources, meaningful student and parental engagement and inclusion in decision-making, active coordination between systems serving students, and productive learning opportunities.
4. Professional competence: Systems of preparation and ongoing development should ensure that educators have the time, investments, and supports necessary to acquire the knowledge about curriculum, teaching, assessment, linguistic and cultural competence, implicit bias, and student support needed to teach students effectively. This should include additional supports for education professionals who serve children and families in historically under-resourced and disadvantaged classrooms and schools. School systems should recognize educators’ abilities, particularly in working with diverse learners and students of color. They should not only create incentives for education professionals to develop or acquire additional skills, but also require professional learning to ensure their effectiveness in the classroom.
5. Informative assessments for meaningful 21st Century learning: A system of assessments should document both student and school system progress using tools that evaluate deeper learning skills (e.g. critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and creativity) that are necessary and valuable for today’s and tomorrow’s world and that represent authentic applications of knowledge. Assessments should be valid for the students and purposes for which they are used, comparable in quality, and able to be reliably scored. These measures would be used to help identify the most appropriate interventions, supports and instructional strategies to accelerate learning. They should also be used as diagnostic tools for determining student acquisition and application of knowledge, should identify students’ strengths as well as their learning and cultural needs, and should be usedto support individual students and educators. Measures should also be used to assess whether individual and collective education systems are moving toward meeting objectives related to greater equity in educational opportunities and achievement.
6. Transparency: The system should provide useful, publicly accessible, and actionable school system information and data for parents and community members, as well as students and educators. It should also support new ways for changing practices, exploring additional investments, or expanding opportunities. School system progress should be evaluated in part in terms of equitable inputs and outcomes, as well as access to learning resources, services, and opportunities for different student groups (e.g., English learners, students by race and ethnicity, Native students, low-income students, and students with disabilities).
7. Meaningful and culturally and linguistically responsive parental and family engagement: The expertise and meaningful engagement of all parents and families should be included in both the teaching and learning process and in decisions associated in the planning and implementation of P-12 system investments. Adequate steps must be taken to ensure participation of low-income parents and parents facing linguistic or other obstacles. Such planning should also incorporate the resources of community partners (e.g., tribes and Native communities, afterschool providers, businesses, faith-based institutions, medical providers, higher education institutions, and community and civil rights advocacy organizations) that can contribute to a shared vision of accountability in an education system in which all students can excel.
8. Capacity building: Accountability, including the consequences that accompany evidence of poor performance, should be a mechanism for strengthening schools, education professionals, and their communities. Consequences that accompany evidence of poor performance should be timely, narrowly tailored, targeted to the populations and parts of the school systems most in need, and likely to maximize student learning for all students. This system accountability would serve to elevate all children to achieve to their highest potential by enforcing and expanding students’ equitable opportunities to learn; guiding strategic investments so that schools are healthy, productive places for learning; and ensuring meaningful progress toward equity in student achievement.
We appreciate your attention to our concerns and urge you to use the principles articulated in this letter in deciding how to best serve and nurture our nation’s greatest resource, our young people, and the backbone of our democracy, the public school system. We believe the right to a quality education is a civil right and that the civil rights of all our children must be vigorously protected. We look forward to hearing from your respective offices to discuss the issues raised in this letter further. We can be reached as a coalition through Dr. Joseph Bishop of the National Opportunity to Learn Campaign at (626) 319-0496, or via email at jb@schottfoundation.org.
Respectfully,
Signatories:
Advancement Project
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Opportunity to Learn (OTL) Campaign
National Urban League (NUL)
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF)
National Council on Educating Black Children (NCEBC)
National Indian Education Association (NIEA)
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC)Vancouver Whitecaps FC are mourning the passing of long-time and beloved club volunteer Emil Udovich.
Udovich, who has been a part of the Whitecaps FC family for nearly 20 years, passed away on February 20, 2017 at the age of 53. He was not only a passionate fan, but a valuable member of the club’s match day operations, bringing unwavering commitment to maintaining accurate statistics alongside fellow long-time volunteers Eric Udovich (brother) and Domenic Cimaglia (friend). He transitioned with the club from Swangard Stadium, through Empire Field, and to BC Place.
Emil is predeceased by his father Natalino and survived by his loving family - life partner Pam Novak; children: Amy Kingston (Brian); Carleen Novak (Nigel Boeur); and grandchildren Isaiah and Delilah Kingston. He is also survived by his mother Nives; brother Eric (Elaine); nephew Simone and uncle Marino Lusina of Trieste Italy. Emil was a man of complex thought and simple pleasures. He loved his friends and family with unparalleled gusto.
A Memorial Mass will be celebrated at noon Saturday, February 25, 2017 at Holy Cross Catholic Church, 1450 Delta Avenue, Burnaby, BC.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a recipient of your choosing.
Emil will be dearly missed by Whitecaps FC. The club wishes to offer condolences to Emil’s family and friends at this difficult time.Canada's telecom regulator has officially given discount wireless startup Sugar Mobile a reprieve, ruling that the newcomer can keep relying on roaming services from Rogers Communications Inc. – at least for the time being.
Sugar Mobile launched a $19-a-month offer in January and uses a combination of WiFi access and cellular service – for when customers are out of range of an Internet hotspot – to make its model work. (Customers must also bring their own, unlocked mobile device.)
But the startup doesn't have a wireless network of its own and instead relies on its sister company, Ice Wireless, which operates a network in the northern territories.
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When Sugar Mobile customers are not in those northern areas, they get cellular service thanks to roaming agreements that Ice Wireless has with other network providers, including Rogers.
Rogers argues that this is a breach of its roaming agreement with Ice Wireless and in early February it said it planned to terminate that contract.
Ice Wireless filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) later that month, asking the commission to rule on whether Rogers is actually required to provide those roaming services to Sugar Mobile.
Rogers said at the time that since most of Sugar Mobile's customers likely do not reside in Ice Wireless's territory and may never use Ice Wireless's home network, they are not actually "roaming" and "have no right to use Rogers."
Other established wireless providers, including BCE, Eastlink and Quebecor, intervened in the matter in support of Rogers. On the other side, public interest and consumer groups as well as the lobby organization for independent Internet providers weighed in on the side of Sugar Mobile.
Despite its opposition to the arrangement, Rogers agreed to keep its roaming services in place while the commission considered whether to grant a temporary order. Almost five months later, the CRTC said last week it will grant a request for "interim relief" and compel Rogers to keep the agreement in place pending the regulator's final decision on the file at a later date.
In a letter to the parties on Thursday, Danielle May-Cuconato, the CRTC secretary-general, noted that Sugar Mobile is "not well established." If the roaming agreement is cut off, she said, "market loss would be inevitable and, given the competitive nature of the wireless industry, it would be very difficult to repatriate customers that were lost."
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She also wrote that Sugar Mobile's business relationships with retailers could be hurt if the roaming agreement is cut off.
However, if the agreement is maintained, she said, Rogers will continue to receive payment for its roaming services and is less likely to suffer "irreparable harm" because of its "size and market power."
Ms. May-Cuconato concluded that the situation met the test for a temporary order and said the commission expects to issue a final ruling on the Sugar Mobile case in conjunction with a broader CRTC proceeding on the rates the Big Three carriers – Rogers, BCE and Telus – can charge smaller players for roaming services.
Sugar Mobile now has about 2,000 customers, according to Samer Bishay, the chief executive officer of Sugar, Ice Wireless and the two companies' majority owner, Iristel Inc.The Walt Disney Company is proposing to expand its Parks & Resorts division with a new major $7-billion, world-class ski resort approximately 40 minutes north of Vancouver near Squamish.
Named ‘Garibaldi, A Disney Ski Resort’, the all-season resort project is a partnership with Vancouver Canucks owner Aquilini Investment Group and represents a drastic enhancement of the local company’s previously approved ‘Garibaldi at Squamish’ resort.
Although Disney is well known for its theme parks and hotel properties, this will be the company’s first foray into designing and operating a ski resort.
“An experience only Disney can deliver”
“This is an exciting new venture for the Walt Disney Company, and we will be bringing our very best to this global tourist destination to provide guests from around the world with an experience only Disney can deliver,” said Elias Oliver, chairman of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, in a statement. “This ski resort immerses all visitors into the magical worlds of some of their favourite stories and allows them to meet their most beloved characters.”
“This is, indeed, a magical location for our first ski resort property, with vistas of the fjord below. We look forward with working closely with the local community on making this their own ‘Magic Kingdom’ as well.”
The ski resort will be built on crown land between Alice Lake Provincial Park and Garibaldi Provincial Park. Plans include 124 ski runs over 3,000 acres of terrain, six gondolas, 24 chairlifts, and four lodges on the mountains.
But of course, this is no ordinary ski resort as any Disney project is accompanied with the Disney magical stamp of approval: The design for Garibaldi by Disney’s team of Imagineers will leverage some of Disney’s most beloved and successful franchises.
Life-sized statues of some of Disney’s most famous characters will provide directions on the slopes, and ski runs, gondolas, and lifts will all carry references to names from the Disney universe.
Each of the four alpine lodges, with food and beverage options, will be uniquely designed with the Disney touch. One lodge will be themed after the cottage from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the second lodge will be attached to a 10-storey replica of Rapunzel’s tower from Tangled, the third lodge will be themed after the Rebel’s ice base on the planet Hoth from Star Wars, and the fourth lodge will be themed after Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post and Sauna from Frozen.
But this resort is much more than just about skiing and snowboarding; the winter season is naturally focused on skiing while the summer season will revolve around sightseeing, outdoor recreation and entertainment, and dining. Disney is planning to make Garibaldi a highly-sought year-round attraction with tree-top ropes courses, a mountaintop suspension bridge, a gravity-fed mountain roller coaster, and 16 ziplines, including a two-kilometre-long line.
“Main Street, Canada” and a 12-storey Frozen castle
A large main village at the base of the ski resort will revolve around “Main Street, Canada” – an area with 70 international retail stores, 30 restaurants, four spas, a dozen entertainment venues including movie and show theatres, and an audio-animatronic Country Bear Jamboree attraction.
There will be four Disney-operated hotels, each carrying a unique theme, for a total of 5,000 hotel rooms. This includes a flagship, 12-storey hotel with architecture that replicates Queen Elsa’s castle from Frozen, complete with a large inner courtyard that freezes over during the winter for outdoor ice skating.
A 5,000-person capacity plaza in front of the castle will host special events, such as concerts, and provide an optimal viewing location for seasonal nighttime castle lighting shows and pyrotechnic displays.
There are also plans for a 200,000-square-foot Toy Story-themed indoor water park within the village, with a prominent entrance from Main Street, Canada. The water park will consist of water slides, a wave pool, deep water surf simulator, hot and cold pools, bowling, cliff jumping, and rock climbing experiences.
Plans initially proposed by the Aquilini Investment Group to include two championship golf courses and a 12-court tennis facility are revived under the latest iteration of the project.
Additionally, 5,000 housing units are proposed within three interconnected residential villages.
With hotel and housing units combined, Garibaldi could accommodate as many as 35,000 people at any one time.
A car-free resort
Apart from an access road for maintenance crews, first responders, and freight, Garibaldi is planned as a car-free, fully-pedestrianized resort that is only accessible by a high-capacity gondola with a capacity to carry 5,000 passengers per hour per direction. The gondola will have a running route from the downslope parkade next to the Sea to Sky Highway to the village centre.
Residents, overnight hotel visitors, and non-overnight visitors will access the resort by parking their vehicles downslope at a seven-storey, 8,000-car capacity parkade next to the Sea to Sky Highway.
A large covered bus exchange next to the parkade, served by public transit buses and a fleet of Disney-operated buses, will provide both public and privately-operated bus connections to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal, downtown Vancouver, Lonsdale Quay’s SeaBus terminal, and Vancouver International Airport. Sightseeing excursions to other attractions in Howe Sound will also depart from this bus exchange.
The base station for the gondola to the main resort area will be located next to the parkade and bus exchange.
Self-sustaining infrastructure for the resort will be built next to the parkade, such as a small, contained sewage treatment plant and water storage tanks.
Four million annual visitors by 2030
The Aquilini Investment Group says its partnership with Disney is highly strategic as it differentiates Garibaldi from other local ski resort experiences, particularly Whistler one hour north on the Sea to Sky Highway, as well as all other top ski resorts around the world.
“With our partnership with Disney, we are proud to push the boundaries of creativity and innovation for the ski resort concept. The partnership has been many years in the working, and we are thrilled to see it proceed to the next phase of planning,” said John Brian, Vice-President of Development with the Aquilini Investment Group. “This will be a standout world-class and high-tech ski resort, and it will elevate Vancouver into becoming a diverse global tourist destination.”
Construction on Garibaldi could begin in 2019 for a completion in time for the 2025-2026 ski season. Up to four million annual overnight and non-overnight visitors are expected by 2030, and activities spurred by the resort and its visitors will add $2.5 billion to the province’s economy every year by 2035.
When all attractions, amenities, and services are fully built, it will create 4,500 full-time jobs once operational. Additionally, up to 10,000 direct and indirect jobs could be created during the construction phase.
With Vancouver becoming one of Disney’s major global bases, the company will significantly ramp up its Disney Cruise Line sailing offerings from Canada Place in downtown Vancouver. Up to two Disney Cruise Line vessels could call Vancouver its port of call throughout the late-spring to early-fall months, with dozens of sailings to Alaska and Hawaii.
Realizing Walt Disney’s dream of a Disney ski resort
Leading up to his sudden death in 1966, Walt Disney had a plan to build a ski resort in Mineral King Valley in California’s Sequoia National Park. But plans fell apart after his death as the company, later led by his brother Roy, instead decided to focus efforts on their Florida theme park project – Magic Kingdom – which would eventually grow into Disney World.
The project was completely cancelled in 1978 when the US federal government turned the Mineral King Valley site into a protected national park.
“Garibaldi will fulfill Walt’s dream of a recreational getaway and entertainment kingdom in the snow,” said Oliver. “He once said, ‘All dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them’. We haven’t forgotten, his dream will be realized half a century later.”
Some of the concepts for Garibaldi borrow from Disney’s plans for Mineral King Valley, including a car-free resort accessible only by a railway.
The audio-animatronic Country Bear Jamboree show at Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland were originally designed for the Mineral King Valley resort, and a version of it will be built at Garibaldi.
The Parks & Resorts division of the Walt Disney Company is leading the company in revenue growth. Revenue in the division rose by 6.4% to US$4.6 billion in the latest quarter.
This division consists of 12 theme parks around the world, dozens of hotel and resort properties, and Disney Cruise Lines, and generates roughly one-third of Disney’s overall US$52-billion annual revenues and one-fourth of its US$15-billion operating income.
To date, Disney’s largest hotel and resort property at a non-theme park location is Aulani, a beachside Disney hotel and resort at Oahu in Hawaii. Aulani opened in 2011 at a cost of $800 million and includes 359 hotel rooms, 460 vacation club villas, 16 suites, and a large volcano-themed water park.
Happy April Fools’ Day!A Shark's Skeleton & Organs
SKELETON: A shark's internal skeleton is made up of cartitage and connective tissue making the shark very flexible and light. Sharks have no rib cage, so when it is on land its own weight can literally crush its own body. The shortfin mako shark is one of the the fastest fish in the world along with the tuna, and the sailfish. Because of the sharks fins it cannot swim backwards and it has to fall away from objects. The only things that fossilize on a shark are teeth, vertibrate, demal denticles, and sometimes cartilidge and even soft tissue such as muscle blocks and kidney tubes. You can tell alot about a shark from its teeth. Shark teeth vary widely according to a shark's diet. Tiger sharks teeth are used for sheering, and tearing, the Port Jackson shark has teeth used to crush shell fish, the wobbegong shark has teeth used to grasp prey, and the Greenland shark has teeth so sharp that they were once used to cut hair by Eskimos. Sharks have a bite strength of 25,000 pounds per square inch, not that much different than a humans.
Organs: A shark's liver is the largest organ in the body. Shark's lack flotation bladders and that is why most will sink if they stop moving. Squaleen is an oil produced by the liver that helps sharks float. When sharks swallow something they cannot digest their stomach can be turned inside out.
Back to: Great White SharkAs many of you know, the AI Game Programmers Guild is responsible for producing the content for the AI Summit at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. For the past month, we have already begun work on preparing for the 2012 event. (Yes, we start 6 months in advance!)
Over the past 3 years, we have refined our preparation process to something we feel generates high-quality content. This process typically involves the guild members discussing which topics “need to be covered” each year and then staffing those topics with people who have relevant things to contribute. This differs from many conferences where the content is drawn largely from what speakers want to talk about. We believe our process is more attendee-focused in that we are trying to anticipate what our attendees would like — or even need — to hear.
What is it that you want to learn more about from the GDC AI Summit?
This year, however, we wanted to put in another twist. Now that we have this fancy new public face for the AIGPG, we wanted to be able to draw in the AI community as a whole to the discussion. That is, what is it that you want to learn more about from an event such as the GDC AI Summit?
Things that we would like to know from you include:
What techniques or architectures do you want to hear more about?
What recent games have had AI that piqued your interest?
What types of advice would you like to hear from professional AI developers?
This request is not without its caveats, however. For example, please note that the AI Summit is not meant to be an entry-level tutorial on AI. We decided when we started this that there are plenty of sources from which people can learn the basics of game AI. While we have had sessions that are geared more towards people new to AI, you will not find us spending time on “what is a finite state machine?”
The AI Summit has also been about the mysterious and esoteric.
Really, that’s not what GDC is about anyway. GDC is about cutting edge… the “latest and greatest“. I would add that the AI Summit has also been about the mysterious and esoteric, as well. That is, what is off the beaten path? What are the experts using that might be of help to other AI developers?
Another disclaimer here is that we can’t necessarily take into account all suggestions we may get from the public. The number of session slots we have each year is limited — usually 10-12 hours over the two days. While it has been suggested that we could easily fill an entire week with content, it is just not feasible for us to do so. (By combining 2-3 speakers per hour-long topic session, we already cram more information into our two days than is humanly possible to digest!) Still, we would like to hear what other ideas are out there so we can at least take them into account.
So… what’s on your mind?
So, we turn to you… it doesn’t matter if you are a professional game developer, a student, or an enthusiast — whether you are planning on going to GDC or not — what are the things you would like to hear about if you were to be hanging out with us for those 2 days? What’s on your mind?
Please feel free to comment here… and know that the 240 members of the AI Game Programmers Guild are listening!This web page was produced as an assignment for an undergraduate course at Davidson College
Sonic Hedgehog
Purpose
The purpose of this page is to describe the protein Sonic Hedgehog (shh). Secondary goals include a discussion of mutants and a brief description of two shh homologues.
How Shh Got its Name
Sonic hedgehog is, in fact, named after the character from the popular Sega Genesis video game. The original hedgehog gene was found in Drosophila and was named for the appearance of the mutant phenotype which causes an embryo to be covered with pointy denticles resembling a hedgehog. The first two homologues of hedgehog were named after species of hedgehog and the third was named after the video game character (Gilbert, 2000).
What is Sonic Hedgehog?
Sonic Hedgehog is one of three hom |
. (Par @PlacideActu ) pic.twitter.com/LETJ4DgPOo — Ornikkar™ (@ornikkar) 10 novembre 2016
@EyeEuMiddleEast wow this is so enlightening. gtfo you crybaby. pic.twitter.com/ILxVwD4xCK — JoshBenedict (@joshbenedict84) 10 novembre 2016
AdvertisementsTensions between the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, and more conservative authorities over the country’s nuclear agreement and its future are turning increasingly bitter, punctuated by public exchanges and growing signs of an anti-American backlash, including arrests.
Mr. Rouhani is insisting that the nuclear deal signed in July not only will create the basis for an end to Iran’s prolonged economic isolation, but could be the start of new relations with the United States under certain conditions. Yet even his cautious statement of optimism has provoked a stormy reaction.
The tensions, which political analysts foresee lasting into next year at least, are in some ways an expected outcome of the nuclear agreement, which rolls back Iran’s atomic program in exchange for a broad lifting of sanctions. Many hard-liners opposed the accord as a submission to foreign powers, especially the United States. With the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, endorsing the agreement, they turned their criticism directly on Mr. Rouhani and his aides.
The losing side’s reaction has been harsh, as seen in a series of arrests of Iranian journalists and at least one Iranian-American accused of collaborating with Western powers or worse. Even some prominent conservatives who mistrust the United States but see practical benefits in having a better relationship with it have been criticized.Shutterstock
While most Americans spent Independence Day eating hotdogs, hitting up the beach, and watching fireworks, there are many who neglect to reflect on the real reason for the holiday. On July 4th, 1776, the members of the Continental Congress gathered in Philadelphia to declare the 13 colonies freedom from the British Empire, and a new nation unto themselves. (Although historians have found that the document itself was not actually signed in Independence Hall until later that year on August 2nd.)
In an attempt to remind people of those brave and momentous words of our forefathers, on Tuesday NPR tweeted out the full Declaration of Independence, in its entirety, right down to the signatures from members of congress — as you can see in the start of the thread, below.
241 years ago today, church bells rang out over Philadelphia as the Declaration of Independence was adopted https://t.co/PAcHgLqOUE — NPR (@NPR) July 4, 2017
Unfortunately though, because we basically live in Idiocracy now, the power of the words were lost on some who just assumed that the publicly funded, traditionally progressive organization was making some sort of liberal statement, as pointed out by writer Parker Malloy.Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2015 March 20
Sunshine, Earthshine
Image Credit: Dylan O'Donnell
Explanation: Today's date marks an Equinox and a New Moon. Remarkably, while the exact timing of both geocentric events occur within a span of only 13 hours, the moon also reaches its new phase only 14 hours after perigee, the closest point in its orbit. That makes the Equinox New Moon the largest New Moon of 2015, though hard to see since that lunar phase presents the Moon's dark, night side to planet Earth. Still, in this well composed image of a young lunar phase from late January you can glimpse both night and day on the lunar surface, the night side faintly illuminated by Earthshine next to the day side's brightly sunlit crescent. But some will see today's Equinox New Moon in silhouette! The Equinox Solar Eclipse will be total across stretches of the Arctic Ocean, visible in partial phases from Europe, northern Africa and western Asia.Virtual reality is more than a game. Simulation training (or virtual reality training) is a reliable method of training for thousands of professionals. From the airline industry to skilled trades, simulation training provides a virtual medium through which a wide range of skills can be learned.
Many simulations are driven by language technology. This allows users to speak to the simulation and receive an audible response. The current state of the art solution is to record voice actors speaking in many different manners to work across different scenarios.
To the detriment of simulations, natural-sounding avatars have yet to substantially break into the industry. When simulations don’t use expensive voice actors, they may settle for robotic voices that distract from the simulation. Training environments can benefit from convincing, emotive synthetic speech, or text-to-speech that reflects emotion.
As industries and regulations change, companies are forced to adapt their training simulations. This means new scripts, which require companies to rehire expensive voice actors to reflect the changes. Emotive synthetic voice eliminates this problem. Text-to-speech allows organizations to quickly adapt their simulations.
Let’s look at five simulations that could benefit from emotive synthetic speech:
1. Air Traffic Controller and Pilot Training
Since 2008, simulator training for professionals in the airline industry has taken off. These simulators reduce dependency on operational on-the-job training. Students can experience high-risk, high-stress scenarios, without compromising safety. MITRE, a nonprofit that operates federally funded research and development centers, suggests that scenario-based instruction and voice recognition reduce the cost and time required to attain Certified Professional Controller status. Air traffic controller and pilot training are ideal candidates for synthetic text-to-speech. Air traffic controllers adjust their pitch and tone of voice as they issue instructions. Emotive synthetic speech would reflect this.
2. Combat and Law Enforcement Training
From improvised explosive device (IED) scenarios to live-shooter trainings, simulations provide valuable, risk-free learning opportunities for officers and combat teams. Trainees can learn from their mistakes in life or death scenarios. In Arizona, officers are trained using a 300-degree, 5-screen Multiple Interaction Learning Option system, or simulator. In one of the scenarios, a woman threatens to hurt a baby. Officers must interact with the woman and respond as the situation progresses. The outcome of the scenario is based on the deputy’s reaction. Synthetic text-to-speech would enable infinite scenarios and responses. Simulations could be altered to reflect current events and produce convincing human interactions.
3. Skilled Training
Skilled trades such as welding, are being supplemented with virtual reality. These simulations enhance welding training programs by reducing waste and scrap, providing tangible savings. They also enhance learning because they allow students to repeat a task as many times as necessary. These simulations could benefit from the integration of lifelike synthetic voice to imitate instructors and other welders. By increasing believability, simulations increase student engagement and heighten learning.
4. Therapy Sessions
Many people are immobilized by fear. Whether they’re afraid of heights, public speaking, or interviewing for a job, this fear can disrupt their life. Simulation training can help them work through their fears. A study was conducted to simulate job interviews for people with psychiatric disabilities.
According to the researchers, “Almost all [participants] described the interview as anxiety provoking, but the anxiety lessened as they became more skilled [through the simulation].” To improve the user experience, therapeutic simulations could benefit from lifelike synthetic voice. With cost-effective text-to-speech, questions could be changed to fit various industries and positions.
5. Architectural Walkthroughs
Virtual reality walkthroughs for construction projects — like this Chick-fil-A restaurant — are an effective way to experience a building before construction even starts. In the architectural world, designers often suggest various design options to their clients. In addition, changes are often made over the course of the build. Virtual reality architectural walkthroughs could benefit from descriptive voice-over explaining features and proposed changes. Emotive synthetic speech could enhance walkthroughs for clients.
Emotive synthetics voice is a cost-effective way to bring simulations to life. In many cases, emotive synthetic voice is a better alternative than hiring voice actors or using audio banks. It allows quick, cost-effective changes and the ability to overlay emotion on a voice. From training air traffic controllers to enhancing architectural walkthroughs, the application of synthetic text-to-speech is seemingly limitless.
Do you have an application for emotive synthetic speech? Let us know in the comments!The Fed chairman’s job has stayed in Republican hands partly because the party had more credibility on inflation for much of the late 20th century. Bill Clinton twice renominated Mr. Greenspan, both times in presidential-election years. Mr. Obama renominated the current chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, with the financial crisis still simmering.
The same forces that led to these renominations may now be helping Mr. Summers. While the differences between him and Ms. Yellen have at times been exaggerated, he does seem to be somewhat to her right, on monetary policy and regulation. Some aides who were advising Mr. Clinton when he selected Mr. Greenspan are now advising Mr. Obama, and it is not hard to imagine why they may see Mr. Summers as a more natural bridge from a Republican-run Fed.
Some Fed watchers think Mr. Summers may be more worried than Mr. Bernanke about the risks of the Fed’s efforts to lift economic growth. But views on monetary policy do not always track neatly with ideology. Both Mr. Greenspan and especially Mr. Bernanke took positions on interest rates that might have seemed more typically liberal.
The area where politics matters most is probably regulation, Mr. Blinder noted. The next leader of the Fed will have a large role in implementing the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. The Fed will face multiple decisions about when markets should function without interference and when regulators should try to protect consumers or deflate nascent bubbles.
Almost as intriguing, the next leader will have to decide whether to enter the political fray now and then (as Mr. Greenspan did) or avoid it (as Mr. Bernanke generally has). The most obvious topic for a Democratic Fed leader to emphasize is the sharp growth in income inequality, which many scholars think has destabilized the economy. With many families facing stretched budgets, they have taken on large debts and become less able to spend.
“I think the defining issue of our time is: Does the economic, social and political system work for the middle class?” Mr. Summers has said. Ms. Yellen, a monetary-policy expert by training, has spoken less about the topic but has described it as “disturbing.”
Any modern Fed chairman is likely to use a series of boilerplate phrases about the economy — on the importance of education and fiscal rectitude, among other things. The larger choice is whether to go further, as Mr. Greenspan did, and try to influence the country’s economic debate.Driver-assist functions are coming quickly these days. The 2017 Mercedes E-class has the Drive Pilot, and Nissan has released its ProPilot system in Japan.
Both have been compared to Tesla’s Autopilot, and all three promise features like tracking other cars on the road and keeping you in the lane as you drive—mainly stuff designed to make highway driving easier.
But the Tesla system, which was also the first to market, has been associated with several accidents over the last few months. Those, coupled with accounts of drivers napping and doing other unsafe things behind the wheel, have led to significant criticism about Autopilot’s safety.
Tesla now appears to be addressing those concerns by punishing drivers who don’t pay sufficient attention to the road. When drivers take their hands off the wheel for more than a few seconds, the car will chime a warning. If the warning is ignored, Autopilot will disengage. The systems from Mercedes and Nissan both do the same thing, but according to Electrek, Tesla plans to take things a step further:
According to sources familiar with the Autopilot program, Tesla will add a safety restriction that will result in not only the Autopilot disengaging after alerts are repeatedly ignored, but also blocking the driver from re-engaging the feature after it was automatically disengaged.
The driver will not be able to reactivate the Autopilot until the car is stopped and put in ‘Park.’
Attempting to improve a car’s safety features is usually a good move. But Tesla’s drivers are a unique bunch—they relish their role as guinea pigs who get to test out some of the coolest, most cutting-edge automotive technology on the market. They may not appreciate Tesla engineers reprogramming their cars to give them a time-out if they misbehave.
(Read more: Electrek, The Drive, Bloomberg, “Tesla May Replace Autopilot’s Eyes with Something Far More Advanced,” “Nissan ProPilot Joins a Bumpy Road for Autonomous Driving Aids”)By Ken Perrott • 25/05/2011 • 9 This post was syndicated from Open Parachute » SciBlogs - View original source
Or is it accommodating confrontationism? I guess it depends on the image you wish to portray.
I have followed the accomodationism vs confrontationism (or “new atheism,” or “gnus”) debate among US atheist and science bloggers with interest. Mainly because I think it is relevant to the question of the relationship between science and religion, and the current changes in public acceptability of non-theism.
On the “confrontationist” side there are bloggers like PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne, Eric Macdonald and Jason Rosenhouse. Also authors like Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Victor Stenger, Ayan Hirsi Ali and Richard Dawkins.
They are vocal and unapologetic about their atheism. Rejecting the idea that one should not criticise religion because it is “disrespectful” and that religion therefore has a “go home free card” not available in other areas of human discourse such as politics, sport and science. Generally they will assert that there are basic epistemological differences between science and religion and they should not be conflated. The boundaries are stark and should be clear. Science should be honest and uncompromising about evidence and conclusions and not feel it has to accommodate religion or superstition by giving lip service to it.
On the “accomodationist” side there are commentators, journalists and bloggers like Chris Mooney, Micheal Ruse and Josh Rosenau. Others such Massimo Pugliocci at times advance at least some of the accomodationist arguments.
Accomodationists generally argue that the “new atheists” are too confrontational. That their insistence on talking about their atheism and the problems of relgion isolates the US public. Their confrontational language is offensive to the religious majority. It doesn’t win friends and in fact is turning people away from science. Scientists, and atheists, should go easy on religion, never confront it, even make concessions to religion, in the interests of winning public support for evolutionary science and science in general. If anything the “new atheists” or “gnus” should STFU – leave the defense of science and evolutionary science to religious scientists.
One of the latest discussions of this issue took place on the podcast Point of Inquiry recently where Ronald A. Lindsay interviewed Chris Mooney. (See Chris Mooney – Accommodationism and the Psychology of Belief It’s a good-natured discussion which I found useful because Chris does clearly present his arguments.
Several issues interested me:
How we make decisions
Chris stressed that humans are not rational. Our decision-making involves a lot of emotion. Consequently clearly held convictions are not easily changed. In fact the may become even more recalcitrant when exposed to rational discussion, evidence or criticism.
I agree with this – and it isn’t new. It’s an important consideration for the presentation of arguments and participation in discussion. However, Chris uses this to justify his opposition to any “confrontational” opposition to religion. Even to the independent presentation of atheist world views.
Influence of a public atheist presence.
Chris made a concession on this point, referring to recently published research indicating that there is less opposition to atheists in environments where they already have a public presence. So he was effectively conceding that the public consciousness raising undertaken by “new atheists” and their encouragements to atheists to be public about their ideas, is having a positive effect.
This was obvious to most people even before the research results were published. But it does expose the accomodationist request to atheists to STFU as basically counter productive. I can understand it from religious apologists hostile to atheism – but not from atheists themselves.
The US population is turned off science by atheists?
Chris is convinced this is happening in the US, but acknowledged he doesn’t have data to back up his conviction. He suggests than it would be very difficult and expensive to get that data.
However, I discussed this in my articles Myths within a myth and Is atheism bad for science? where I commented on Elaine Howard Ecklands use of polling data to support a similar assertion. But in fact the data does not support this argument (See figure below from Is atheism bad for science?). If anything the vocal presence of “gnus” since the mid 2000′s seems to have undermined respect for religious leaders! With no obvious effect on the respect for science! Certainly no negative effect.
Tactics should fit situations
I think Chris is confusing the different tactics which are suitable for different situations.
I agree that confrontation is a bad tactic when used at the personal level. In the one-to-one or small group situations ideas are advanced better if their presentation does not anger the receiver. In such situations one should seek the common ground and use it to advance one’s ideas. Of course this does not mean dishonesty or denying one’s own world views. Not at all.
But this is not the situation Mooney is criticising. He attacks the talks, articles and public appearances of Richard Dawkins. He criticises the blog articles of PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne. These are not one-to-one or small group situations. These are communications with the public at large.
They are part of public discourse. Contributions to the overall market of ideas.
Responsibilty to provide information
Atheists have a responsibility to communicate their ideas. Just as do theists, agnostics, Buddhists, etc. It’s part of contributing to the overall market of ideas and human thought we find so interesting. The fact that some people don’t like some ideas in that market is not a reason to prevent contributions.
For example, I find the biblical Psalm 14:1 offensive:
The fool says in his heart,
‘There is no God.’
They are corrupt, they do
Abominable deeds,
There is none who does good.’
That cannot justify any request to remove that Psalm from the bible, or to deny theists using it in their articles or lectures. It is part of the market of ideas and thought and just as open to being advance or critiqued as any other idea or though
Similarly scientists have a responsibility to communicate their findings, and to be honest about them. Research results should not be hidden because they conflict with the beliefs of some people. Historians should not deny the truth about the Galileo affair just because it offends some religious sensibilities. And philosophers should not hide or confuse the fundamental epistemological difference between science and religion just to protect the sensitivities of religious fundamentalists.
Misinformation
It’s important for non-theists and scientists to contribute their ideas to the general market because many theist activists promote misinformation about these, consciously or unconsciously. For example the vilification and misrepresentation of non-theists like Richard Dawkins. This might be intentional or it might just be an emotional response to his criticisms. But the concept of Dawkins being a “militant,” “strident”, “fundamentalist” atheist is promoted. And it gets picked up by people who should know better. By some non-theists, even those in academia. (Although the latter might just be examples of a common professional jealousy).
And, such ideas can easily be assumed by those who have no other source of information. How often have I heard Dawkin’s books denounced by people who have never read them.
Accomodationists commonly vilify Dawkins, Hitchens, and other “gnu” authors – often simply repeating the complaints of religious apologists. Of course this must be challenged. However, the more people who are familiar with the writings of people like Dawkins, or view them on internet videos, or hear them in person, the less believable such vilification and misrepresentation is.
However, there is a more serious way that theistic idealogues will spread misinformation about atheism and science. Currently religious apologists question the epistemological basis of science – complaining that it does not permit supernatural explanations. This only has a small influence among accomodationist non-theists, but even so it can lead to a slightly post-modernist questioning of scientific epistemology among some academics.
This also occurs with the history of science. It always amazes me how many theologians and religious philosophers pontificate in this area. And of course their pontifications are revisionist in the sense they attempt to rewrite history to express a Christian chauvinistic viewpoint.
Origins of modern science
There is the common apologist claim that the modern scientific revolution is based on Christian society, even Christian philosophy and theology. I wrote about this myth in Christianity gave birth to science — a myth? There I called it offensive:
“It’s insulting to medieval Islam. To the scientists and philosophers of the Roman Empire and classical Greece. To the civilisations of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, China and India and beyond.”
And I quoted Noah J. Efron on this:
’Modern science rests (somewhat, anyway) on early modern, renaissance, and medieval philosophies of nature, and these rested (somewhat, anyway) on Arabic natural philosophy, which rested (somewhat, anyway) on Greek, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Chinese texts, and these rested, in turn, on the wisdom generated by other, still earlier cultures....”
Science is a non-sectarian, democratic and inclusive enterprise.
The Galileo affair
In recent years religious apologists have tried to rewrite the history of the Galileo affair to present religion in a better light. Or they may claim that scientists and atheists are misrepresenting that history. For instance they will claim that atheists are actively promoting a myth that Galileo was tortured and imprisoned. He wasn’t. although he was apparently threatened with torture and his sentence of imprisonment was changed to house arrest for life.
But check it out. There are plenty of unreferenced instances of this claim being made by apologists – bit I certainly can’t find anything substantive to support the claim. Its a myth about a myth.
The “conflict thesis”
Similarly apologists claim that a so-called “conflict thesis” is being promoted. Atheists are claiming that science and religion are inevitably and always have been in conflict. Of course no-one is saying that. There are inevitable and irreconcilable difference in epistemology, but historically the history of the relationship between science and religion has never been that simple.
Apologists will rely on cherry picked quotes from old books like John William Draper’s History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science published in 1878. But this is disingenuous because it is easy to find other quotes in this book giving examples of the positive role that some religions have sometimes played in science.
Is the US a special case?
Sure there are sensitivities in situations where atheists are a small minority like the US. But this is not the same issue in Europe or New Zealand. In fact these examples indicate the real nature of the problem.
In New Zealand the vocal opposition to “new atheists” really only comes from the committed anti-atheist. The religious apologists. Those are the very few people who are strident or militant in their criticism of atheist adverts, or the appearance of Richard Dawkins on TV, or Dawkins lecture tour. (Boy, do they have an obsession with Dawkins and the “gnus”). While I am sure that some people like Chris Mooney and Michael Ruse do exist in New Zealand they really don’t comment much here. The accomodationist/confrontationist debate is very rare.
Then again, perhaps there should be such a debate here. Perhaps atheists in New Zealand are not “confrontational” enough. Perhaps they should be doing more to counter situations like non-consential prayer, promotion of creationism, religion in schools, etc.
After all, these are all issues non-theists have important views on and they should make sure that these ideas are part of our society’s appreciation and knowledge.
Maybe our atheists are not living up to their responsibilities?
Similar articlesGetty Images
Among the images from Sunday’s Steelers-Bears game was one of Steelers left tackle Alejandro Villanueva standing by himself at the end of the tunnel to the field during the playing of the national anthem while the rest of the team’s players waited deeper in the tunnel to come on the field at the end of the song.
The Steelers had said that all players were going to remain inside until after the anthem and linebacker James Harrison said Villanueva’s deviation from that plan took him by surprise. Villanueva spoke to the media on Monday and shed some light on what happened.
Villanueva, who served in the United States Army, said that he spoke to Ben Roethlisberger on Saturday night after the team came to a decision about their plan for Sunday and asked if he could stand at the front of the team so he could see what was happening on the field. He said he walked to a point where he could see the flag on the field, but wound up too far in front of his teammates and didn’t want to walk back to the team during the song.
Villanueva said he did not want to give the impression that the team was not unified and said several times that it was “my fault only” that things didn’t go off as planned.
“Unfortunately I threw my teammates under the bus, unintentionally,” Villanueva said in a video from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Jerseys and shirts with Villanueva’s number have been selling well since the anthem on Sunday and many have attributed that to where he was standing during the anthem. Villanueva said that impression is “completely wrong” and that he feels embarrassed every time he sees a picture of him standing by himself.
Villanueva spoke passionately about his service during his 15 minutes with the media and said that he does not believe that players who choose not to stand disrespect that service, adding that he’s heard thanks for it from players who have knelt and that he’d be OK with teammates who chose to kneel even though he’d never do it himself.
“We as a team tried to figure it out, obviously we butchered it, but I have learned that … I can’t tell you that I know what my teammates have gone through,” Villanueva said. “I’m not gonna pretend like I have the righteous kind of voice that you should stand up for the national anthem.”In small fiber neuropathy (SFN), the degeneration of thinly myelinated and unmyelinated sensory axons is associated with symptoms such as pain, tingling, and numbness. In diagnosing the condition, clinicians often rely on a snapshot of nerve fiber loss by measuring the density of fibers within the skin at a single point in time. However, some patients with clear symptoms of SFN can nonetheless have normal quantities of epidermal nerve fibers, suggesting that additional diagnostic measures are needed.
Now, a small longitudinal study led by Michael Polydefkis, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US, points to the rate of epidermal nerve fiber loss as one such potential measure. In contrast to healthy participants who had stable levels of epidermal nerve fibers in the two to three years from their initial evaluation, patients with diverse causes of SFN all showed similar reductions in fiber density over time. The researchers also detected similar rates of fiber loss along different sites of the leg, a surprising finding since symptoms of SFN usually begin at the feet and work their way upwards.
“This paper suggests a new variable to track from neurodiagnostic skin biopsies—the change in epidermal innervation density over time,” wrote Anne Louise Oaklander, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, US, in an email to PRF. “Maybe in the future we’ll be able to factor this ‘delta’ into our determinations of who does or does not have polyneuropathy, particularly in the early stages when the nerve fiber counts might still be in the normal range, but dropping,” she added.
The results were published online April 11 in JAMA Neurology.
Losing nerve fibers over time
It is well known that nerve fibers innervating the skin retract in SFN, and yet few studies have taken a close look at the progression of such fiber loss (Lauria et al., 2003; Gibbons et al., 2006). “One motivation [for the current study] was to define the natural history of this process,” Polydefkis told PRF. The authors were also interested in whether there are differences among patients with different causes of SFN, including those with idiopathic SFN, impaired glucose tolerance-associated SFN, and diabetes-associated SFN. “We expected that people with diabetes-associated SFN would progress more quickly,” said Polydefkis.
To track nerve fiber density over time, lead author Mohammad Khoshnoodi and colleagues examined the density of intraepidermal fibers in skin biopsies taken from three areas along the leg—the distal leg, the distal thigh, and the proximal thigh. For healthy participants and each group of SFN patients, the authors measured the change in fiber density in the epidermal regions by comparing values from an initial visit to a follow-up at least two years after the first examination. The proportions of men and women, as well as their average age, were the same between the different groups, with a total of 52 participants with SFN, and 10 healthy controls.
The authors found that across the different groups of SFN patients, all three sites along the leg had similar reductions in fiber density, unlike healthy participants whose densities remained stable. Contrary to what the authors predicted, though, the three groups of SFN patients did not differ from one another in the rate of fiber loss, although those with diabetes- and impaired glucose tolerance-associated SFN had lower densities than idiopathic SFN patients at baseline.
These findings suggest that in SFN, there is a slowly progressive loss of epidermal nerve fibers over time, supporting similar results from studies carried out by Polydefkis and others (Lauria et al., 2003; Gibbons et al., 2006), and that the patterns of this loss are similar in patients with different causes of SFN. Based on these results, the rate of nerve fiber loss could potentially be used as another diagnostic measure of SFN.
Are the longest axons the first to go?
The symptoms observed in SFN typically follow a length-dependent pattern, beginning in areas of the body innervated by the longest axons. Researchers think that the loss of epidermal nerve fibers mirrors this pattern. Indeed, the authors found that fiber density in the distal leg was lower than in the distal or proximal thigh in SFN patients at baseline. However, when they examined changes in fiber density over time, they unexpectedly found no differences among the three areas. “In my opinion, this shows us that SFN might be a more diffuse process than we thought previously,” wrote Khoshnoodi in an email to PRF.
Yet, in an accompanying editorial, John Kissel, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, US, and Gordon Smith, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, US, raise concerns about the absolute values of epidermal nerve fiber density observed in the study, as well as the magnitude of nerve fiber loss. They write that both measures are surprisingly high, relative to findings from other studies, and that if nerve fiber loss continued at the rate seen in the current work, nerve fibers would ultimately disappear in distal and proximal areas of the body, which is inconsistent with clinical findings.
“Epidermal fibers are absent distally in a significantly few patients with neuropathy, but they are only rarely absent proximally,” they wrote. “This observation strongly suggests that the cohort in this sample is indeed different from others reported or that the long-term temporal profile of [intraepidermal nerve fiber density] decrease must be different proximally, calling into question the central conclusion that SFN may not be length dependent.”
Polydefkis, however, said that SFN may appear length-dependent because of a pre-existing difference between the distal and proximal portions of the body. That is, the distal leg is known to have fewer fibers than the proximal thigh in healthy individuals, perhaps explaining why SFN patients in the study had lower fiber counts in the distal leg than the proximal thigh at baseline, and why symptoms often arise in areas with the longest axons. “If you start out with fewer fibers distally, and you lose fibers at a constant rate, you’ll theoretically become symptomatic soonest at the distal site,” he said.
Finally, with regard to pain, Oaklander emphasized that pain in SFN is not a direct result of intraepidermal fiber loss. “It’s a biomarker for other abnormalities in the nociceptive pathways,” she wrote, pointing to evidence implicating central nervous system (CNS) neurons as the primary culprits. “Second- and third-order neurons in the CNS may be affected by the loss of some of their primary afferent input to fire excessively.”
Matthew Soleiman is a neuroscientist-turned-science writer currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewSoleimanDemocratic representatives ask for next March’s event to be relocated to a different state in protest of SB4, which was signed into law last month
Amid a growing backlash over Texas’s stringent new immigration law, two US senators have called for the SXSW festival to leave Austin.
SXSW acts turned away at the border, with some suggesting racial profiling Read more
A letter to the organiser of the major annual music and technology event sent by the Democratic senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada asks for next March’s event to be relocated to a different state “until the recent anti-immigrant SB4 law is repealed”.
Signed into law last month amid fierce protests, SB4 threatens to criminalize members of law enforcement who do not comply with requests to hold detained immigrants for federal pick-up, in effect banning so-called sanctuary cities. It also empowers individual officers to ask about the immigration status of people they detain. In the letter, the senators call it “one of the most extreme anti-immigrant and discriminatory state laws signed to date”.
In a statement, Roland Swenson, the CEO and co-founder of SXSW, said he agreed with criticism of the bill but “we will stay here and continue to make our event inclusive while fighting for the rights of all”.
Several Texas cities and civil rights groups have filed lawsuits aimed at blocking the measure, which goes into effect on 1 September. Its advocates describe it as a “law and order bill”, but critics – including sheriffs in some of Texas’s biggest urban areas – argue it will harm relations between police and immigrant communities and is motivated by the kind of nativist prejudice unleashed by Trump’s rise to power.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (Aila) announced on Wednesday that it is moving its 2018 conference out of the Dallas suburb of Grapevine and into another state as a protest against SB4. According to the Aila, the event has more than 3,000 attendees and is the country’s largest annual gathering of immigration lawyers and legal professionals.
Mayors resist Trump's immigration policies: ‘We cannot submit to a bully’ Read more
More boycotts may follow after Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said on Tuesday that he is recalling lawmakers for a special session next month with an agenda that includes passing a “bathroom bill” to limit use of facilities by transgender people. Leading technology companies and the Texas Association of Business are among those to have criticized the proposal. When North Carolina passed a similar bill in 2016, it was hit with economic and cultural repercussions estimated by the Associated Press – before the law was largely repealed in March – to risk costing the state more than $3.76bn in lost business over 12 years.Police officers face off with protesters on Wednesday in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sean Rayford/Getty Images
It was August 2015, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, police chief was talking about the distinction between police shootings that are “legally justified” and “morally right.”
“ ‘Legally justified’ doesn’t mean we don’t try to meet higher standards of what’s ethically and morally right and wrong,” Kerr Putney told me in an interview at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department headquarters. “Sometimes the legal standard is the lowest standard. It’s what we’re here to enforce and achieve. But we always are reaching higher.”
At the time of our conversation, residents of Charlotte were still processing the trial of Randall Kerrick, a local officer charged with voluntary manslaughter for shooting a black college football player named Jonathan Ferrell. In many ways, the Kerrick case, which ended in a mistrial a few weeks before my meeting with Putney, was the backdrop for the protests that erupted in Charlotte on Tuesday night over the fatal shooting by a police officer of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott.
Putney, a longtime Charlotte cop, had been chief for about a month when we spoke, but already he had thought deeply about the use of deadly force by police, and he had arrived at conclusions that were both nuanced and informed by empathy.
Police Chief Kerr Putney. WSOC-TV
Lethal force, he said, should only be used by police in absolute emergencies and cannot be justified—morally, legally, or otherwise—in situations where an officer is not in truly imminent danger.
“Some officers are gonna think, ‘If my life is in danger, I can use lethal force.’ But the law does not quite say it that way,” he said. “It has to be an imminent threat—and ‘imminent threat’ does not mean you’re anticipating what might happen. It has to be happening now, as in, ‘It’s about to go down, so I must react.’ The way we teach our people, you have to truly be in a position to lose your life—not, you’re afraid it could happen.”
I thought of Putney’s careful definition of imminent threat Wednesday morning, as his department defended its actions in the killing of Scott. Police say Scott was armed—his family members dispute this—and presented an “imminent deadly threat to officers.” Putney himself said Scott ignored several orders to drop his gun before the shooting occurred.
It was also hard not to think about the aftermath of Ferrell’s death in 2013, which played out in a very unusual way, thanks mainly to a man named Rodney Monroe, Kerr’s predecessor at the top of the CMPD. Monroe reckoned that Ferrell |
77.8) and ninth in quarterback rating (111.9). No other rookie wideout comes close to the former Buckeye’s production so far.
8. Jordan Howard, RB, Bears
On a per-carry basis, it’s very possible that the Bears running back has been more impressive than the presumed Rookie of the Year, Ezekiel Elliott. Howard is second among all backs in yards after contact per attempt (3.5), and sixth in broken tackles (27), despite being 17th in attempts (131). The only concern so far is Howard’s six drops on 25 catchable passes.
9. Karl Joseph, S, Raiders
Deep safety is traditionally a position that has one of the most difficult transitions to the NFL, with the reason being that success at the position relies so much on mastery of a defense, reading route combinations, and taking proper angles. Those all change drastically from college to the pros, making what Joseph has done so far even more impressive; the former Mountaineer has done it while playing almost 60 percent of his snaps lined up deep, and is the 18th-highest-graded safety.
10. Hunter Henry, TE, Chargers
Another Charger coming off a bye, Hunter Henry still owns a top-10 receiving grade among tight ends, and isn’t even seeing full-time snaps. He’s only played 64.7 percent of San Diego’s offensive snaps so far this season, as he cedes playing time to veteran Antonio Gates. If that changes down the stretch, Henry could push even higher in these rankings.Photo credit: The Goldwater
The world was shocked after an Iraq War veteran took to the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Friday and shot down five people. Identified as Esteban Santiago, the 26-year-old is currently in custody where he was taken following the fatal shootings. A report issued by George Piro, who is a special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Miami, Santiago is being questioned at length and he’s expected to face federal charges over the shooting rampage.
A statement released by the authorities points out that Santiago had suffered from psychological problems, adding that his mind was being controlled. A report issued by a federal law enforcement official said that back in November, the Iraq veteran had previously entered an FBI office in Anchorage where he behaved erratically and turned over to local police, the officers took him to a mental facility for mental examination.
Santiago told the FBI agents that his mind was being controlled by a US intelligence agency who were forcing him to watch videos that the ISIS terrorist group had made.
A report issued by the Press TV points out that authorities said that Santiago, who was an Iraq veteran had suffered from psychological problems and had previously complained that the US government was controlling his mind. The Iraq veteran pulled out a semi-automatic handgun from his checked bag and started firing indiscriminately shortly after arriving in Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport from Alaska.
“After he claimed his bag, he went into the bathroom and loaded the gun and started shooting,” Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca said.
A statement from one witness revealed that Santiago kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition from his semi-automatic handgun. Since the attack was unleashed, the airport remains closed and planes scheduled to land there have been diverted to other airports in Florida.
“This is a senseless act of evil,” Florida Governor Rick Scott told reporters.
The White House spokesman made a statement in which he points out that President Barack Obama had addressed Scott and other state officials.The National Investigation Agency dug out 18 live timer bombs and three detonators from a deserted land in Ranchi's Seethio village on Saturday evening
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) today recovered six timers and 18 live bombs in Ranchi at the instance of a person detained in connection with the multiple blasts at an election rally in Patna, which was addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year.After a detailed interrogation of four persons of the Ranchi module, including Hyder Ali alias 'Black Beauty', having association with banned terror groups like SIMI (Student's Islamic Movement of India) and Indian Mujahideen, NIA identified some more members of this module, official sources said.The arrest of the four people on May 20 had unraveled a conspiracy by the 'Ranchi module' to target PM Narendra Modi in October last year when he was addressing a political rally in Patna, NIA had claimed.Following leads, NIA last night detained two persons identified, as Ifthekar and Feroz Aslam, and at their instance recovered six timers and 18 live bombs near Sithio village and detonators and explosives from Hindpirhi in Jharkhand, the sources said.They said the bombs were similar as used by the 'Ranchi Module' in the October rally of the PM.NIA had claimed the arrested persons had told their interrogators during questioning that they wanted to target Narendra Modi and had also carried out dry runs at five places -- Akbarpur, Kanpur, Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), Delhi and Patna.But finding it very difficult in view of the political leader's security, they planted bombs at the Patna rally out one of which was placed barely 100 metres from the dais, NIA officials said.Besides Ali, NIA had arrested Mojibullah, Numan Ansari and a juvenile (whose identity was not disclosed).Except for Ali, NIA had announced a cash reward of Rs five lakh on the heads of the other three who allegedly planted the bombs during the October 27 rally of Narendra Modi.At least seven people were killed and scores others injured when bombs exploded at a make-shift railway platform and at the rally addressed by the current Prime Minister of India in his run up to the 16th Lok Sabha elections.WATCH ABOVE: “Slamming” is a controversial practice that occurs when a consumer or company discovers their gas or electricity contract has been signed over to another energy company without that person or company knowing or authorizing it to happen.
One day in October of 2007, Adam Gordon, an accountant at Streamline Foods Ltd. received a visit from Glen Lancaster, a salesman for Just Energy Group Inc. Lancaster had come to meet Gordon at the Belleville, Ont.-based food company to try and convince Streamline to sign over its energy contracts to Just Energy.
Specifically, Lancaster wanted Steamline to sign an agreement that would set Streamline’s electricity prices at a fixed rate for five years.
According to a court document, Gordon listened politely to Lancaster’s pitch before telling him he wasn’t interested in the idea and didn’t have the authority to sign over Streamline’s electricity contract. He said he would have to discuss Lancaster’s proposal with his superiors.
As Lancaster got up to leave he asked Gordon if the accountant would sign a document “to ensure that the fixed rate for electricity they discussed would be protected” should the company agree to become a Just Energy client, according to allegations in a lawsuit Streamline later launched. Gordon says he signed, thinking it was harmless. He says he later spoke to Lancaster and told him Streamline was not interested in signing one of Just Energy’s plans.
READ MORE: Canadian energy company stalked by controversy over its sales methods
A few months later, Streamline received an invoice from Just Energy seeking money for Streamline’s electricity charges. Adam Gordon was stunned, he says he nor anyone else at Streamline had agreed to sign up to become a Just Energy customer. (Just Energy later claimed the contract was legitimate.)
Was Streamline a victim of a controversial practice called “slamming”?
David Kolata, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, a consumer watchdog in Chicago, told 16×9 that slamming occurs when a consumer or company discovers their gas or electricity contract has been signed over to another energy company without that person or company knowing or authorizing it to happen.
“We’ve received through the years a significant number of complaints around slamming about Just Energy,” says Kolata.
“We’ve received complaints along the lines of someone going door-to-door and saying here’s a petition to lower your natural gas bill. Of course, a lot of consumers want to do that. They sign it. And lo and behold, a month or two down the line, that petition would have actually switched their service to Just Energy.”
In fact, 16×9 has uncovered four lawsuits against Just Energy over allegations it has engaged in slamming – one in the U.S. and three in Canada. And three of those lawsuits involved Just Energy salesman Glen Lancaster, a controversial character in his own right.
That’s because, in 2006, Lancaster received a three-year prison sentence for his involvement in a series of fraudulent companies. He’d worked with Guy Paul Beaupre, a notorious fraud artist whose stock-in-trade was telemarketing and other similar scams orchestrated during the 1990s (Beaupre went to prison in 2004 and was ordered to pay $2.7 million in restitution to his victims for his crimes).
Lancaster pled guilty to three fraud charges, with losses for victims in the order of $6 million. During his sentencing, the judge observed: “It’s obvious to me that you are a very talented man. You could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. Your problem is not knowing when the Eskimos don’t want the refrigerators.”
As it turns out, Lancaster began working for Just Energy in 2005 after he had already been publicly connected to Beaupre’s criminal enterprise. In fact, Lancaster was working for Just Energy when he went to prison, and recommenced working for them once he got out. What’s more, he continues to work for Just Energy to this very day.
Along with a 2008 lawsuit launched by Streamline against Just Energy that cites Lancaster’s involvement in that alleged slamming case (which was settled), he was named in a 2011 lawsuit launched by the Canadian Medical Association (the lobby group for Canada’s medical doctors) over a similar allegation against Just Energy (which was also settled), and a 2013 lawsuit initiated by D’Angelo Brands, a soft drink company owned by flamboyant Toronto businessman Frank D’Angelo. In these cases, Just Energy denies the allegations against them.
When Just Energy’s co-CEO Deborah Merril was asked by 16×9 about slamming allegations against her company, she replied: “Every single customer is verified on the phone. So if for some reason they say ‘No, that’s not what I wanted’, or say ‘No, I didn’t sign up’, or ‘No, that wasn’t what I intended to do’, then we do not enroll them.”
In regards to why they continue to employ Glen Lancaster, Merril said: “We make sure that every single person is doing what they should be doing so I think that if somebody’s made a mistake that’s not necessarily an indication of their future value.”
16×9’s investigation into “Just Energy” airs this Saturday at 7pm.Email Share +1 120 Shares
Protesters on Friday forced the cancellation of a reception at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s annual conference that was to have featured two advocates from Israel.
Reports indicate that more than 200 people took part in the protest against A Wider Bridge, an organization seeking to bolster “LGBTQ connections with Israel” that organized the reception at the Creating Change Conference in Chicago.
A video that Andy Thayer of the Gay Liberation Network posted to his Facebook page shows protesters chanting “no justice, no peace” as they walked up a set of stairs in the Chicago Hilton
Several of the protesters held signs that read, among other things, “no pride in apartheid” to draw attention to the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinians. They also spoke out against efforts to promote Israel’s LGBT rights record in an attempt to deflect attention away from its controversial policies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Windy City Times reported that the protesters gathered outside the reception. A few of them were able to enter the room in which it was taking place.
Sarah Kala-Meir and Tom Canning of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, an Israeli LGBT advocacy group, were scheduled to speak.
Kala-Meir, who is the executive director of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, told the Washington Blade that the protesters began shouting at her and Canning. She said that they left the room through a back door.
“We did not feel safe in that environment,” Kala-Meir told the Blade. “Once we were shouted at by protesters, we felt it was quickly escalating and we went out a back door.”
Arthur Slepian, executive director of A Wider Bridge, in a statement said that more than 100 people attended the reception before the protesters disrupted it.
“Part way through the reception, a handful of anti-Israel protesters entered the room and later commandeered the stage, denying the leaders of JOH (Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance) the opportunity to tell their powerful story,” he said.
Slepian said the protesters blocked others from entering the room “ and turned the LGBT Task Force’s conference and the Hilton Hotel into a fire storm of hate that felt truly unsafe and threatening to many of our participants, and especially to our Israeli guests.”
National LGBTQ Task Force Deputy Executive Director Russell Roybal told the Blade that hotel personnel called the police in response to the situation. He said that his organization does not “believe anyone was arrested.”
“We carefully monitored the situation,” said Roybal.
Roybal did not specifically comment about the protest itself.
Decision to cancel reception reversed
Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and others, including members of the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, sharply criticized the National LGBTQ Task Force for allowing A Wider Bridge to hold a reception at its annual Creating Change Conference.
The National LGBTQ Task Force earlier this month announced it had cancelled a panel that was to have included officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after “listening to concerns from our community.”
“The Task Force pays a lot of lip service to being concerned about social justice, and to understanding the ways in which oppressions intersect with one another,” said the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity in a statement it issued earlier this week. “Their actions this year have demonstrated a clear hypocrisy and betrayal of what queer liberation truly means,”
The organization also called upon the National LGBTQ Task Force to “reject Zionism” by supporting a campaign that calls for a boycott, economic divestment and sanctions against Israel over its policy towards the Palestinians.
“By siding with the forces of oppression and occupation, the Task Force is clearly on the wrong side of history,” said the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity.
The National LGBTQ Task Force initially cancelled the reception.
LGBT rights advocates and their supporters, including the Anti-Defamation League, criticized the National LGBTQ Task Force over its decision to cancel the event. The organization on Jan. 19 announced it had reversed its decision.
“We want to make it quite clear that the Creating Change Conference will always be a safe space for inclusion and dialogue for people with often widely different views,” said National LGBTQ Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey in a statement that announced the decision. “It was not at all our intention to censor representatives of the Jerusalem Open House or A Wider Bridge at Creating Change and I apologize that our actions left people feeling silenced.”
Thayer told the Blade that the protesters were “very, very angry that an ostensibly ‘progressive’ outfit like” the National LGBTQ Task Force “would host a pro-colonial organization.”
Teenager killed during 2015 Jerusalem Pride march
The reception was to have taken place less than five months after an Orthodox Jewish man stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death and injured five others during an attack on a Jerusalem Pride march that Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance organized. The July 30, 2015, incident took place a day before two Jewish settlers allegedly killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents when they set fire to their home on the West Bank.
“We are still quite post-traumatic from the attack at Jerusalem Pride,” Kala-Meir told the Blade, referring to the protesters. “It definitely hit on a nerve.”
“I would have like a chance to speak about our work and what we do in Jerusalem, but obviously we were not welcome there,” she added.
Slepian in his statement further defended Kala-Meir and Canning.
“These remarkable LGBT leaders from Israel, who do great work in the very diverse and challenging city of Jerusalem, had spent the last six months helping their community heal and recover from the trauma of a barbaric act of anti-gay violence at last summer’s Jerusalem Pride march,” he said. “They expected to be supported and embraced by the U.S. LGBT community at Creating Change. Instead, the protestors denied their humanity and silenced their voices, and the conference tragically did little to provide for their safety and security.”
Thayer rejected the comments that Kala-Meir made after the protest.
“The victimhood at this event being claimed by the Open House representatives is also disingenuous,” Thayer told the Blade. “The event they chose to attend was hosted by ‘A Wider Bridge.’”
“A Wider Bridge is notorious for frequently partnering with the Israeli government — including its most violent, right-wing, racist elements — to promote media favorable to Israel,” he added. “In the LGBTQ context, that’s ‘pink-washing’ — using LGBTQ community as political cover for the daily violence of the Israeli state, and the theft and violence of settlers and other far-right elements.”How to Buy a Suit
How to Buy a Suit Online
Read the reviews. Customers can give invaluable advice through their feedback, such as if a suit comes up larger than average, or if the material is bad quality.
Read through the product details. You know the boring details that are written under the name of the products? The bits that mention fit and material? Those are pretty vital when you're buying a suit online, as they can give you necessary details such as how it fits, the material it's made from, and if it had any additions you can't see in the picture, such as inner pockets.
Check the returns policy. Some sites are picky with their returns options, with some requiring you to keep the tag on, or have a copy of your order form. These things need to be taken into consideration before you click buy.
What’s it For and Will You Be Able to Wear It Again?
Buying Your First Suit
Best Places to Buy a Suit
The Idle Man
COS
J.Crew
Discount Men's Suits
Primark
Slaters
Suits Direct
Good Suit Brands
Dege & Skinner, Savile Row
Gieves & Hawkes, Savile Row
Moss Bros
Reiss
Zara
How a Suit Should Fit?
How a Suit Jacket Should Fit
The first thing to look at when trying on a suit jacket is how it fits on the shoulders. You want the suit to fit snug around the shoulders and not protrude. Similarly, you don’t want the jacket to strain on the shoulders – if it does then size up accordingly.
The second most important thing to bear in mind is how the jacket fits across your chest. While you shouldn’t need to breathe in to button it up, you also shouldn’t have any more than a fists’ gap between your chest and the buttons. Get this right and the jacket will nip in at the waist creating the sort of clean silhouette you’re ultimately aiming for
Thirdly, when you hang your arms down by your side you should be able to cup the underneath of your suit. If you can’t then the jacket is too long. It’s also worth noting that this may not apply to more contemporary styles that tend to have a shorter jacket.
Lastly, ensure you have the right sleeve length. Ideally, the jacket sleeve should meet the base of your thumb allowing for quarter an inch to half an inch of shirt cuff to show. Anymore or any less and your overall appearance will look sloppy. After all, t’s all about nailing these nuances when wearing a suit. And remember a dry cleaner or a tailor can always alter this very easily once you’ve bought your suit.
How Suit Trousers Should Fit
It might sound obvious but make sure your trousers fit properly around the waist. You shouldn’t really need to wear a belt if you’ve chosen the correct size.
When it comes to cut this is down to personal preference. Classic suits tend to have a straight fitting leg, while contemporary ones tend to be cut slimmer. Our preference is somewhere in between the two which is probably the most suitable for the young, modern male. Once again, a tailor can assist with any tapering that may be required.
Much like the cut of the trousers, the break is completely down to personal preference. The most common ‘break’ (when the crease line of your trousers meets your shoes) is the ‘half break’ which means your trousers will sit just on top of the shoe. Like the sleeve length, anything more or anything less will look messy. If your trousers need taking up or letting down then a dry cleaner or tailor will be able to easily alter them.
How Long Does it Take to Tailor a Suit?
Different Suit Styles
Single Breasted Suit
Double Breasted Suit
Suit Colour Guide
Mens Black Suit
Mens Grey Suit
Mens Navy Suit
Mens Coloured Suit
Mens Patterned Suit
Suit Fabric Guide
Cotton
Tweed
Check out more from our Men’s Style Guide here There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to buy a suit. Whether it’s for a job interview, a wedding, a funeral or any other formal occasion, buying a suit can be tricky, but once you've got a few tips and tricks under your belt, it'll be a walk in the park the next time you're thinking of buying a fresh suit. There’s no doubt about it, buying a suit is a big deal. It’s not something to be taken lightly so it’s essential you do plenty of research before leaving your house or entering your preferences into a search engine. Putting in the necessary groundwork will ensure you end up with a suit you really like that’s suitable for the occasion you bought it for and most importantly: a suit that fits. We thought it would be good to run through the key things to bear in mind when buying a suit, plus a couple of things to remember when wearing it to guarantee you always look as dapper as possible in this suit buying guide.Buying a suit isn't as difficult as you'd first think, all it takes is a little bit of time and patience, and you'll crack buying a suit every time. What you have to remember is what you need the suit for, so whether you need a new suit for work, or you need a new casual suit for formal occasion or weddings etc. When you're looking at investing in a new suit, then it helps if you know what your budget for the suit actually is, because you can soon spend way more than you first thought, and you don't want to blow the budget all in one go. Of course, if money is no object (lucky you) then you can go all out and buy a bespoke or maybe even a tailored suit, but for the most of us, we have to work to some form of budget and buy off the rack high street. Another element to buying a suit is how the suit should fit, you must always know exactly what size you are when you're looking at suits as this will save you a lot of time and heartache in the long run. You can measure yourself, or if you want something that's a little more precise, then you can always walk into a high street tailor and they can measure you properly.Buying anything online can be tricky. Depending on the brand there might be variations in sizes, fits and lengths, so there's no guarantee that a size on one site will fit the same as on another site. It's important to know your measurements as well as your overall shape. Do you have broad shoulders? Maybe a narrower waist than the average man? These are all important things to keep in mind when buying a suit online. Basic things to remember are;Given that suits are rarely a cheap purchase you’ll want to make sure you can get wear out of it after the occasion you initially bought it for, so this means choosing the colour and fabric type carefully, while also opting for a classic cut. Whether you’re buying a suit for a wedding or a job interview it’s best to stick with navy or charcoal two-button as they’re not only versatile, but they’ll also form a solid foundation for the formal section of your wardrobe. Keep it simple when it comes to fabrics; a subtle check, birdseye or herringbone can add an elegant touch of texture, but avoid bold pinstripes as it's not a versatile print and you can run the risk of losing that elegant look.Buying a suit for the first time can be a little daunting, especially when you haven't got the foggiest idea of what you're doing. What you need to do is know exactly what you want, don't go into the shop without knowing what you want to suit for and where you'll be wearing it as you can end up with a suit that has cost a lot of money, and you have no place to wear it. When buying your first suit stick to something classic so you can wear it multiple times and you can get the most wear out of it for your money. Go for a simple and plain black suit that you can wear over and over again, both to the office and to more formal occasions, which in turn means you're getting the best suit for your money. If you're going for a simple off of the rack suit, then go simple, as you don't want to take out a mortgage for something that you don't wear too often and have it just sit in your wardrobe.When you walk down your average high street it can be a little overwhelming with the amount of shops that are available to you. So, over here at Idle HQ we all know all too well the struggle of finding the right shop to buy your suit in, so we thought we'd give a quick list on the best places to buy a suit Of course we had to start with ourselves! Now, I know what you're thinking, of course we'll start with ourselves, but, over here at The Idle Man we have a cracking range of suits that will suit the needs of most men. From classic tailored pieces and styles to something a little more daring with colour and pattern.With a more modern take on menswear as a whole COS offer a range of modern and stylish suits for the needs of the stylish man about town. Slim fitting and classically cut with a twist of new age menswear COS's suit range is spot on. Price-wise, you're looking at spending about £150-£200 for a suit jacket, and about £50-£100 on a pair of trousers, but, you know that you're going to get a cracking suit that will last you for years.Definitely steered to a more preppy vibe, J.Crew have a modern and sleek take on the suit. With a range of classic colours, patterns and styles available J.Crew know what they're doing when it comes to the modern suit. Now, you'll pay a little bit more for a suit from J.Crew, but it will be worth every penny.Unfortunately, not all of us can afford to pay top prices for a decent suit, but have no fear, there are options out there for the man who is shopping on a budget. Now, because you won't be paying a lot of money for a suit, I wouldn't expect a top of the range suit, when it comes to something like this, you get what you pay for, but that doesn't mean you can't get the most out of it.Probably not the first place you'd think of when you're looking at buying a suit, but Primark has a range of extremely affordable suits that every man can afford. Now, for your price point I wouldn't expect a top quality suit, but, if you're working to a budget, or you simply want a cheaper suit to only wear a few times, then you can't go wrong.Slaters is a brand that some of you may never have even heard of, but they have a cracking range of suits on offer that are affordable and look great at the same time. Whether you're buying one to wear everyday at the office or need one to wear to a more formal function, then Slaters will have the suit for you.For those of you who like a label attached to your clobber than Suits Direct is a great option when you're looking at buying a suit. A brand that's dedicated to bringing designer labels at a discounted price, they have a great array of suits that are available, from classic styles and fits, to something a little more modern and sleek.Of course, there are more brands and shops out there that cater to your tailoring needs, you just have to do a little bit of legwork and research to find the right brand for you, and at the right price point. Depending on your budget you can go all out with a bespoke suit, or you can keep it high street, the choice is completely up to you and your wallet.Many of you will be thinking 'what size suit do I wear', and it's easy to get it wrong, but as important as the colour and fabric of your suit is, it’s essential to get the correct fit that compliments your body shape. If it’s too big you’ll look like you’ve borrowed one of your dad’s and if it’s too small you run the risk of embarrassing rips – neither of which you’d ever want when wearing a suit.To make sure you get the right fit in both jacket and trousers we’re going to break down each component to make things as straightforward as possible.I can throw all the size guide at you that I like, but sometimes we can try on a suit in our size and it still doesn't fit. I know of this feeling all too well I'm afraid, as being one of those people in that 'inbetween sizes' demographic, I couldn't tell you that amount of time I've had to put things back on the rail because not one size fitted me. Enough about my problems, when it comes to your tailoring, you want to best fit possible, so, if you've recently bought a suit that doesn't fit quite right, or you've got an older suit that's a little bit too big for you now, then there are some alternatives. Tailoring a suit can be a quick and simple task, whether you take it upon yourself to do the tailoring, or you want to leave it in some more professional hands, then you can do. The length of time it takes to tailor a suit depends on what you want to have done to your suit. If you want to have your sleeves taken up a couple of centimetres, then that could take a couple of hours, however, if you want to have your entire suit altered to fit your body, then this could take up to a week to do.Choosing the right style of suit that will work best for you and your body shape can be a little bit of a tricky task. With the amount of fits and styles to choose from, you can get a little lost along the way when it comes to picking one that's right for you.This is the most common suit style that you'll see on the high street and on most people. A single breasted suit means that the suit buttons on the jacket are below each other, so you'll have one line of buttons going down the front of your jacket. This suit style suits nearly every man, as the eye is drawn to the centre of your body, giving off the illusion of a slimmer frame. You can have different variants of the single breasted suit, as you can have the option of one to three buttons on your suit jacket. The choice is completely up to you, but one or two buttons is definitely a more classic and stylish option. double breasted suit is less commonly seen, but it's still a very stylish and, sometimes, a more modern adaption of the suit. What a double breasted suit means is that you'll have an extra row of buttons running opposite the buttons that fasten your jacket. These buttons are purely for a decorative and different style of suit,as the jacket will fasten slightly more to the side to make the buttons even on your body. Unfortunately, a double breasted suit doesn't suit everybody; because you have an extra row of buttons, and the suit fastens slightly to the side of your body, it can create the illusion of a wider frame. So, if you've got a stockier frame then I'd suggest you avoid the double breasted suit to avoid looking bigger than you are.When it comes to suits there are a lot of options available to you and you're thinking what colour suit should I wear, so it's easy to get a little bit confused about what colour or style that you want to go for. When it comes to the colour of your suit you can stick to classic colours, or, you can go a little wild and go for a patterned or coloured number.Undeniably one of the most commonly seen suit colours out there, the black suit is a classic. With the ability to take you from day to night with a few simple tweaks, the black suit will work for you no matter what the season or occasion. Undoubtably classic.The great thing about grey is that there are so many variations of the same colour that you can choose from. When you look at grey suits there are a few variations you can take your pick of, from a lighter shade of grey, an almost white colour, perfect for the day time, to something a little darker, an almost black colour, which will work perfectly for the evening.Much like grey, navy is a great colour to own for a suit as there are so many variations of the same colour. You can have a lighter blue suit that works great for during the day and to wear to the office, or you can go for a darker shade of navy, which is an almost black colour, again, great for the evening and you still wear this colour for work as well.Now, a coloured suit may not be your first port of call when it comes to buying a suit, but, over the past few seasons we've been seeing a lot more modern colours and textures come from the world of suiting. If you haven't got the confidence to pull off a bright pink or orange suit then have no fear, not many men do (including myself) then you can wear something a little more subtle. Opt for a lighter green or stone colour, which is bang on trend for this season, but wear something even more subtle underneath as you don't want to overpower your look.Tackling a coloured suit is one thing, but taking on a patterned suit is a completely different story. Again, a patterned suit isn't going to be for everyone, but if you have the confidence to pull one off this season then do so. How patterned you want to go is completely up to you, as you can opt for a paisley number, which is a more modern take on the suit, or, you can go for something classic, such as a pinstripe suit, for a sleek and stylish look.The fabric of your suit is another very important element that you have to think of when you're looking at suits, as if you pick the wrong fabric, it can go a little wrong. Some fabrics are suitable for some occasions where others aren't, so do a little bit of research into what fabric you want to invest in before you start at buying a suit.Cotton is the most commonly used fabric for suits as it's relatively cheap to use, breathable and easy to take care of. If you buy a suit that's 100% cotton, then you can pay a lot of money for this, whereas if you're looking to buy a cheaper alternative then a certain percentage of cotton will be used, but the rest may be a poly-blend fabric or polyester to make the suit a bit cheaper.Tweed is a fabric choice that's more commonly seen during the winter months in the country. Because of its warmtThe latest news from style, life, arts, and culture and everything in between. Whether it's a new brand arriving into our style, our latest drops and editorials. You will never miss a beat with us.February was Earth's most unusually warm month on record, blowing away the record that had been set just one month prior.
The new findings, contained in preliminary data released Saturday by NASA and backed up by information from other research groups, show that the combination of a record strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean and human-caused global warming drove global temperatures to levels never before seen since instrument records began in 1880.
Monthly global average surface temperatures, with Feb. 2016 indicated. Image: NASA GISS/Mashable
The NASA data, which is subject to adjustment as scientists refine their analysis, shows that February had a global average surface temperature of 1.35 degrees Celsius above the 1951 to 1980 average, or 2.43 degrees Fahrenheit above average.
The 1.35-degree Celsius temperature anomaly in February beat the anomaly recorded in January, which itself was a record high departure from average for any month. According to NASA, the global average surface temperature during January was 1.14 degrees Celsius above average, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to the 1951 to 1980 average.
This means that temperatures in February 2016 had the largest departure from average of any month in NASA's records since 1880.
To put it more plainly, February stands out for its unusual heat more than any other month in the modern climate record.
The previous warmest February, according to NASA, was in 1998, which was also a year with an extremely strong El Niño.
However, in an important indication of how far human-caused global warming has shifted the baseline state of the planet's climate, February 2016 came out 0.846 degrees Celsius, or 1.52 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than February 1998, despite the similar intensity of the El Niño events in both years.
In fact, studies indicate that with the highest levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere in all of human history, global average temperatures may now be higher than any time since at least 4,000 years ago.
In an indication of how striking February's data is, consider the reaction of Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), who helps conduct these analyses:
Normally I don't comment on individual months (too much weather, not enough climate), but last month was special.https://t.co/nALWMlNDcP — Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) March 12, 2016
NASA's temperature records are backed up by information from satellites, which showed record high amounts of atmospheric heat in February.
According to data from the University of Alabama at Huntsville, the planet had a global average temperature that was 0.83 degrees Celsius, or 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, above average during the month of February. (Satellites don't measure surface temperature in the same way a backyard thermometer does. Rather, they detect levels of atmospheric heat.)
That reading was a significant increase above the 0.3 degrees Celsius anomaly, or 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit, from satellite-based temperatures in January, which also set a record.
Another satellite database maintained by Remote Sens |
correctly fight with a chair, gun, knife, pen or choke with your bare hands if required
5. Most important, how to reach a good awareness level so that you can avoid having to do all that
These are just a few examples of what you will find in this book. It’s about Attitude, and being a more capable person and get the politically correct wimp out of your system completely.
Photos by:
FerFal
Blaircook
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SaveA post I wrote in October 2006 called “What is a Foreign Service officer?” ranks among this blog’s most popular entries. I wrote it during the heady days when I was looking forward to a long career as a diplomat and retiring from the Foreign Service. Alas, it was not meant to be. I resigned from the U.S. Department of State last year to pursue other interests, a decision that I do not regret and am thankful I made.
I owe it to readers who read my earlier post a balanced view of the Foreign Service that cannot be found in the Foreign Service Journal, AFSA press releases, State Department literature, or blogs written by diplomats or their dependents. Most of what you read online about the Foreign Service is rosy and, in my opinion, defends it to a fault. Perpetual sunshine about the Foreign Service does not tell the full story and does a disservice to those who are interested in becoming Foreign Service officers and need a more realistic picture of what to expect.
If you are interested in a career as a Foreign Service officer, you should seriously consider these points before embarking on the lengthy and competitive application process. I do not want to dissuade you from pursuing your dream, but you should be aware of some realities of Foreign Service life that are not well publicized. These views are my own but have been reinforced by years of firsthand observations and conversations with peers. Many of my colleagues shared these sentiments.
1. Worldwide Availability. You are expected to be available for service worldwide, and your personal preferences may not be taken into account. You may be called to go somewhere you don’t want to go that could put your life at risk. The needs of the service supersede yours. Expect to serve in places you may not want to be.
2. Separation. Be prepared at some point in your career to be separated from your family and serve unaccompanied. If your spouse or partner also works for the Department, expect to do separate tours at least once in your career, possibly more. As of last year, over ten percent of all posts were unaccompanied. If keeping the family together is your raison d’être, you may be disappointed.
3. U.S. Interests. Expect to promote U.S. foreign policy. There is little room for altruism and idealism if it does not coincide with U.S. interests. These interests depend on the administration in office, and whatever you advocated may change at any time. You do not serve your country. You serve the Federal Government and hope that it is doing what’s best for your country.
4. Frequent Moves. Be prepared to move frequently. In some cases, this may mean a short tour of one year or less in a conflict zone, a short-term assignment, an evacuation, or a reassignment to another post. You will move from place to place every two-to-three years, or sooner, unless you can find a different assignment at the same post. While moving from country to country may seem exciting to some, relocation ranks as one of the biggest headaches for Foreign Service families.
5. Bureaucracy. Get used to working in a bureaucracy. You work for the Federal Government. It may be “cool” being a diplomat, but you are still a member of the bureaucracy. Expect decisions and paperwork to move slowly through the system, if at all. Often they will be “overcome by events,” a fancy term that means you did a lot of work for nothing. You will do an immense amount of paper pushing in the office until you’re senior enough to have support staff to do it for you.
6. Unfair Rules. “Fair” is a four-letter word. Do not expect justice or fairness. The rules are written to be equalizers and may make no sense. Expect “no” as an answer to even the most logical requests and massage the rules until you get to “yes.” You are subject to the Foreign Affairs Manual and federal regulations. In a rule-based organization, those who know the rules and how to work the system tend to do better. Those who expect fairness, justice, or hold firm in their resolve often go wanting. The Foreign Service has few options for those who want to pursue a complaint because the rules were written with the Department’s interests in mind.
7. Multiple Clearances. Do nothing until you have cleared with everyone who needs to approve whatever you’re doing or face potential consequences. Your superiors are ultimately responsible for your actions under mission authority and can take disciplinary action if you misstep. If you’re a free spirit or like to do things your own way, think twice. Measure as many times as it takes to get full clearance and then cut.
8. No Privacy. Do not expect to have any privacy. Your life is on public display, and you are expected to lead yourself in public responsibly. Do nothing privately you would not want to see end up in the pages of the Washington Post. Everyone wants to know what you’re doing. Everyone, inside and out.
9. Unhealthy Work Environment. Expect to work with a variety of personalities from many cultures. Given its high-pressure working environment, the Foreign Service has elevated levels of stress that can negatively influence behavior. While many employees are excellent colleagues, the Department has its fair share of bad bosses and nasty coworkers. The Department’s hierarchical clearance and promotion systems are designed to give leverage to those in positions of authority. They can make your life miserable if you’re not compliant or simply rub them the wrong way. Try to get along, even if it goes against every fiber in your being, because with perseverance you too will rise to a position of authority and eventually exert your own leverage.
Michael Gene (M. G.) Edwards is a writer of books and stories in the mystery, thriller and science fiction-fantasy genres. He also writes travel adventures. A former U.S. diplomat, he served in South Korea, Paraguay, and Zambia before resigning in 2011 to write full time. He is recipient of numerous State Department awards, the Joint Civilian Service Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Defense, and a commendation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Paraguay. He lives in Bangkok, Thailand with his wife Jing and son Alex. For books and stories by M.G. Edwards, visit his web site at www.mgedwards.com. Contact him at me@mgedwards.com or on Facebook or Twitter.
The views in this blog entry are solely those of the writer and do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of State.
AdvertisementsTo a Trump Supporter
Being an open letter to people I know who support Donald Trump
Hi there. I wanted to write this letter to reach out to you one last time as a family member or someone who I have called a friend. I hope you will find it in yourself to actually read what I have written here and take what I am saying to heart.
Perhaps you’ve wondered why I don’t call or text anymore, join you for coffee or dinner, or see you at holidays or birthdays. It could be that your child has asked why I don’t let mine come over to play or attend sleepovers anymore. Maybe you noticed that I haven’t been posting on Facebook or Twitter lately and subsequently found out I do but you can’t see it, or maybe we’re not even friends there anymore.
It is within the realm of possibility you truly have no idea why this is, but I suspect you know why. However, to make it easy on you, I will spell it out for you.
I am cutting you out of my life because you actively and vocally support Donald Trump.
There, I said it. It truly is as simple as that.
Remember, remember, the fifth eighth of November…
I’m a normal, everyday American. I have a job, a family, a mortgage and all the stresses of everyday life. I’m not that political (and in fact, sometimes I don’t even vote). I have my own concerns and interests in life that consume my attention and politics isn’t amongst them.
When the political season would roll around I’d look at the field, sure, and see that no matter who won things were going to keep going in a (more-or-less) positive direction. While I didn’t take great comfort in the knowledge that both of the major parties are essentially beholden to the same lobbyists, there was some solace in the idea that at least they were committed to the ideals that America stood for, a liberal democratic example to the world that was seeking equality, opportunity and justice to all its people.
Well, that’s not the case anymore.
It’s not me, it’s you
In the last presidential contest an autocrat was elected with the support of hate groups like white nationalists (read: Aryan Nation sort of white trash… you know, Nazis) and the KKK (you know, the rednecks in the white sheets). Since then, he has surrounded himself with their representatives and is enacting a reign of terror against Muslims, Mexicans, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, the media, academics, artists and people of conscience who speak out against him.
Sadly, you support him, too. Now, to be certain, you likely fall into one of several categories.
Perhaps you are one of the racist xenophobes I mentioned, in which case it should be no surprise to you that good people around you would walk away. Your lack of morals or conscience is repugnant. You would vote for the Antichrist if he was on the ballot with an “(R)” after his name. That kind of unthinking complacency is just as bad as my complacency that everything would be all right no matter who won; however, you are just as culpable as the fascists (I can’t call them the “alt-right,” because let’s just call a fascist a fascist) because you actually supported Orange Nixon. Again, I cannot abide having you in my life in the current political and social climate. Maybe you were just in it for the populism, and want to see a change. That’s almost forgivable because I agree, the system has faults. Here’s the thing, though: you’ve become an apologist for a regime of cleptocratic white supremacists and their billionaire stooges. Cries along the lines of, “we won, get over it,” “liberal tears are delicious,” and “give Trump a chance” don’t change the fact that either you feel that what Trump is doing and stands for is right, or you are actively giving aid and comfort to someone who wants to end the progress we’ve made in the American Experiment and are becoming their (hopefully un-)witting tool.
What the Trump administration is doing is not normal, and it is not acceptable
Any of those categories means that I cannot abide having you in my life in the current socio-political climate. Yes, it is your absolute right to express your opinions, but it most certainly is not your right to have me suffer it. Just as you have freedom of speech to say what you wish, but I have the freedom to associate with whomever I like.
You are trying to normalize the actions of a President with a totalitarian agenda who was likely backed by a foreign enemy. A president who is petty enough to mock the disabled; brazen enough to admit to sexual assault; who admires Russia that is at best a challenger and at worst a mortal enemy; who is so paranoid as to remove the regular seat at the National Security Council table for the Director of National Intelligence and Joint Chief because they are not in his political cadre; ignorant enough to muzzle government scientists for political reasons; who seeks to offend an entire people with a wall and fan the flames of hatred by banning an entire religion from our shores… I could go on and on. Giving an inch is akin to the appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain, and that only emboldens them to reach for more.
You have walked away from Enlightenment values that make a free society possible. Rule of law and not men, deliberation with a basis in (actual, not alternate) facts, respect for science and education, and an impermeable boundary between church and state are the basis of a functioning civil democracies, including our constitutional republic. Such unions beget progress, wealth and acceptance. Without those things America is headed down a dark path, indeed.
You have walked away from democratic values. You give your tacit approval to the tactics and goals of an administration that seeks to destroy the hard-won foundations of peace and progress. Denying refugees and immigrants entry to our country, not engaging the world in partnerships and destroying cooperative alliances such as NATO and the United Nations are not the ways to make America safer, but instead isolate us, reduce our influence across the globe, and leave us exposed and friendless when we ourselves have a time of need.
You have walked away from the United States being the prime example of leadership and unity in the free world, despite her flaws. Don’t tell me about “will of the people;” Trump didn’t get the majority of the vote. In fact, he did everything he and his Russian puppetmasters could to demoralize voters so they wouldn’t turn out to defeat him.
You are saying that bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, fascism and hatred are all acceptable in your mind as long as you “won.” What you’re saying that you believe in the absolute rule of the mob, compassion and caring for other people doesn’t figure into policy and that as long as you get yours nothing else matters. What you don’t realize is that your populistic faith is misplaced when you put it in a billionaire who only cares about eroding the public institutions that protect people like you from people like him. You fell for the siren’s song, plain and simple.
You walked away from the America I was taught about as a child, I have seen firsthand, I believe in and where I stand. I have realized I must rally around that America so that its flame does not flicker and die from the machinations of the misguided indifferent up through the outright malevolent. This is my country and will fight to keep it, but I have realized that you are not someone who stand with me. I don’t have a place for that in my life anymore.
Is this “farewell” or merely “so long?” That’s depends on what you do
Some people have advised (or even emplored) us not to cut ties with Trump supporters or said doing so is counterproductive. However, we seem to live in “interesting times,” and in this case tolerance of fascists and their sympathizers is not an option. They are trying to foist a cultural war upon us, and now is not the time to make well-meaning but misguided attempts at acceptance and understanding. Now is the time for definitive action, and this is among the steps I must take.
Remember, you crawled into the deplorables basket yourself. You may believe in it, you may even revel in it; perhaps you just found yourself there unawares. Regardless, in the end you have to own it and your complicity in what is being architected. This is not a game, this is our nation.
If you ever come back to the vision of the true promise of America, of what can be achieved when we listen to the angels of our better selves and the deeply-held values of our people, well… maybe we can talk and maybe we can mend this rift. Otherwise, I fear the fissure between us is too wide, and words alone cannot repair it.
Signed,
Better Off This Way
#ToATrumpSupporter #NotMyPresident #ResistDoes beauty matter? Well, when it comes to landing page design, it can definitely influence how your offer is perceived. Ultimately, if your landing pages don’t look good—or follow some best-practices—your conversions can suffer.
Landing pages that are well designed often convert better than those that aren’t, and the difference can be dramatic. Done right, design should support the text on your page and work with all other elements to prompt visitors to take action.
But first: What are some design best practices?
Below we’ve rounded up tons of examples of amazing landing page design from Unbounce customers. But before we share them, let’s review some of the characteristics we typically see on great pages:
They’re Super Focused
A good landing page has only one objective: prompting visitors to do the one action you want them to do and convert. This is why many landing pages don’t have menus or a ton of external links—you want your visitor to complete the call to action, not navigate away or get distracted.
They Keep Scrolling to a Minimum
It can be great to include additional information about your offer on a page, but visitors should have everything they need—including the CTA button—without scrolling for days. While long-form landing pages can convert in the case of complex offers, consider using lightboxes to showcase extra info instead of adding tons of page sections.
They Use Relevant, Engaging Visuals
Amazing design requires striking images. No matter how technical your offer (see the Panoply example below), you need something to break up the text. Your images should be engaging, relevant, and consistent with your brand. They should also encourage visitors’ eyes to scan the landing page and settle on the CTA button.
They Maintain Consistent Branding
Your landing page design should be consistent with your overall look so visitors can instantly recognize and associate it with your brand. This typically means using the same color scheme and design elements from your general website. It can be a tough line to walk, though, because landing pages should look different from your overall website—they’re generally simpler and don’t include navigation, for example. Nonetheless, the branding and colors will often remain the same.
They Use F or Z Patterns
Research shows that most people’s eyes move around a website in an F or Z pattern. The best landing page design usually takes these patterns into account. For instance, having a vertical visual on the left with the header on the top right and the CTA button a little lower on the right allows visitors to follow an F pattern—and end up with their eyes right on your CTA.
Not sure if your current design is driving conversions? Try out our Try out our Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer and see how your landing page scores across nine distinct performance categories.
It also goes without saying that beauty is not the only thing to consider when evaluating landing page design. You want pages to look good, but they should also convert. Always combine good looks with some research about how your visitors behave to create especially effective pages.
This is where testing comes in. Depending on your industry, we’ve actually seen incredibly simple and understated pages perform crazy well—no design overhauls necessary.
And with that, let’s check out some beautiful designs!
The Best Landing Page Design Examples
1. Indochino
If you’re creating a good-looking landing page, it helps to have an attractive product, which Indochino has covered. The Unbounce-built page above is an example of how Indochino provides not just tailored suits, but also handsome, tailored landing pages.
Here’s what we think makes this landing page design awesome:
Great visuals : If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. We get to see Indochino’s suits modeled here—and the dynamic pose helps visitors see how suave the product looks in the context of use.
: If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. We get to see Indochino’s suits modeled here—and the dynamic pose helps visitors see how suave the product looks in the context of use. Use of space : Just as importantly, visitors have all the information they need without a ton of scrolling. The CTA button is prominent and focused. This page’s design is simple and understated, but it gets the job done.
: Just as importantly, visitors have all the information they need without a ton of scrolling. The CTA button is prominent and focused. This page’s design is simple and understated, but it gets the job done. On-brand: The header text here is in a font that looks similar to the company logo, which helps create a feeling of brand consistency.
The page we see here is specifically created for men in Calgary—and designed to encourage them to take an offline action. (OK, first to book an appointment online, but then to physically visit the new showroom.) Part of successful landing page design is making offers specific to a certain audience, something that Indochino has mastered.
This landing page is actually so tailored that the fine details don’t really make sense to someone who doesn’t live in Calgary. You might miss that Chinook Centre is a shopping mall, for example, but the page is designed for those who know this already.
2. Zola
If you’re in the wedding industry, like online retailer/gift registry Zola, you know that design matters. The example page above showcases the company’s design savvy by serving up a simple, elegant landing page for brides and grooms-to-be.
Here’s what makes Zola’s page attractive:
Consistent branding : It’s not immediately apparent if you’re a first-time visitor, but Zola’s branding uses shades of bluish-grey (see the hearts in the company logo). The backdrop maintains those colors while also providing excellent contrast for the images—that white wedding cake needs a contrasting background to pop.
: It’s not immediately apparent if you’re a first-time visitor, but Zola’s branding uses shades of bluish-grey (see the hearts in the company logo). The backdrop maintains those colors while also providing excellent contrast for the images—that white wedding cake needs a contrasting background to pop. Simplicity: Zola’s main ecommerce site is pretty busy. If the landing page included any of the standard navigation, visitors might get distracted by clicking around instead of starting their registry, which is the page’s goal. Keeping it simple means more visitors will complete the action instead of wandering aimlessly through the website. This page is perfect for directing their paid ads to as a way to lower cost-per-click.
3. Lujo
This Z-pattern landing page designed for Lujo by the conversion gurus at digital agency KlientBoost manages to provide a ton of context while not being overwhelming. You could argue that there are two CTAs here—shopping the collection and watching the video. Lujo gets away with it because the video is presented so discreetly, as an extension of the product photos. It’s clear that the most important CTA on this page is checking out the collection of loungers.
Here’s what we love about this page:
Stunning (and consistent) visuals : Not only is the product photography excellent, but it supports the Z pattern of landing page design while reinforcing the brand’s messaging. Lujo’s tagline is “put life on pause,” and everything about the visuals in this landing page reinforces that branding—from the sunhat resting on the video box to the deck shoes and the iced tea. Design should work hand-in-hand with messaging so that the text and the images combine to create an overall experience that makes sense. Lujo does that well in this landing page.
: Not only is the product photography excellent, but it supports the Z pattern of landing page design while reinforcing the brand’s messaging. Lujo’s tagline is “put life on pause,” and everything about the visuals in this landing page reinforces that branding—from the sunhat resting on the video box to the deck shoes and the iced tea. Design should work hand-in-hand with messaging so that the text and the images combine to create an overall experience that makes sense. Lujo does that well in this landing page. Obvious USP: Right below the photos, Lujo articulates—with both text and design elements—three unique selling points: free shipping, a five-year warranty, and New Zealand craftsmanship. Finding a way to subtly work those three ideas into the design means the visitor might not need to keep exploring before clicking that CTA button—they see these major benefits and that could seal the deal.
4. Panoply
Unlike some of the other examples, data analytics tool Panoply doesn’t have an especially visually attractive product to show off—I mean, at the end of the day, it’s analytics software and not a snazzy suit. But Panoply’s landing page (designed by Directive Consulting) stands as a gorgeous testament to the fact that design and beauty are important even for technical B2B products and services.
This is what we think makes this a beautiful (and effective) landing page:
Clever visuals : Creatively showing off Panoply’s user interface in a subtle (but clear) way is one of the biggest wins of this landing page. Interesting visuals are always important, even when the product doesn’t lend itself to photography.
: Creatively showing off Panoply’s user interface in a subtle (but clear) way is one of the biggest wins of this landing page. Interesting visuals are always important, even when the product doesn’t lend itself to photography. Social proof: Including industry awards and a testimonial from GoDaddy above the fold—and doing so in a way that matches the overall design—is another great touch. A visitor doesn’t need to go anywhere else on the landing page to know that industry experts trust Panoply.
5. Daily Harvest
Using imagery to evoke a strong emotional reaction might not be easier with any product than food. (People just need one look to tell whether or not they want to put something in their mouths.) Fortunately, Daily Harvest has a great-looking line of healthy snacks, and they’ve made strong design choices to help showcase that on this landing page.
Here’s what we love about this page:
Animated visuals : It would have been easy for Daily Harvest to use a static image of one of their smoothies here, but the brand takes it one step further. This animated hero shot is engaging—the smoothie looks like something I could have right now, if it weren’t for this darn computer screen—and the how-to GIFs help me immediately understand how this service works.
: It would have been easy for Daily Harvest to use a static image of one of their smoothies here, but the brand takes it one step further. This animated hero shot is engaging—the smoothie looks like something I could have right now, if it weren’t for this darn computer screen—and the how-to GIFs help me immediately understand how this service works. Product examples: The rest of the landing page is arranged with loads of lovely product images. It’s one thing to tell me you’ve got a huge catalog of nutritious treats—it’s another to show me actual examples of the meals I can order after I sign up.
Those slick animations are all great, but they could make for nightmarish load times on mobile. Check out Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report and find out how other marketers are weighing page speed vs. beauty.
6. Greats
Fashion is all about social identity, and it’s essential for brands to exhibit attributes that consumers want to ascribe to themselves: things like authenticity, quality, and cool. This landing page for footwear brand Greats (built by Agency Within) does a beautiful job of brand-building through design while still driving visitors to convert.
Here’s why we think this is a (oh no, don’t say it) “great” example of landing page design:
Amazing video: This whole landing page is pretty sleek, but what really knocks it out of the park is the video just below the fold. Not only does the stop animation style look awesome, but it also gives Greats a chance to elaborate on their unique selling proposition—one stitch at a time. Check it out on YouTube below.
Rule of three : Greats applies the rule of three throughout this layout, making the benefit statements both visually striking and easily digestible.
: Greats applies the rule of three throughout this layout, making the benefit statements both visually striking and easily digestible. Mobile-responsive: This landing page looks just as good on mobile as it does on desktop. Considering that mobile is projected to account for 54% of all ecommerce sales by 2021, it’s never been more critical to make on-the-go consumers a priority.
7. Unbounce
If we do say so ourselves, this recent landing page from our brand is great at showing, not telling. We’ve all been to slow websites and navigated away immediately—but what does that mean for marketers? Sure, we could explain with a bunch of text, but the animation on the right side of this page really makes it clear why fast-loading landing pages are a must. This landing page’s design follows an effective F pattern—and it’s hard to take your eyes off the dropping conversion rate in the animation.
Here’s what we think looks great here:
Animation : Landing page load time isn’t the easiest thing to show in a static image (as we found), but it’s obvious once you add in an animation.
: Landing page load time isn’t the easiest thing to show in a static image (as we found), but it’s obvious once you add in an animation. Visual hierarchy : Fitting the most important information in this animation into an overall F layout helps keep visitors reading. The animation—and the visuals it contains—helps make what could otherwise be a pretty boring landing page more dynamic and engaging.
: Fitting the most important information in this animation into an overall F layout helps keep visitors reading. The animation—and the visuals it contains—helps make what could otherwise be a pretty boring landing page more dynamic and engaging. Text features: We jam-packed this landing page with stats to back up our claims about slow loading pages, and we want those numbers to pop so they’re often bolded. When there’s a fair amount of text on your landing page, break it up by using separate paragraphs and putting the essential information in bold. This makes it easier for visitors to scan—and take action.
Don’t think you’ve got the skills to make your pages look this good? Browse our huge collection of Browse our huge collection of landing page templates and see how easy it is to build and publish something beautiful by yourself, no developer required.
At the end of the day, when it comes to creating beautiful, effective landing pages, it’s about combining a sense of design with an understanding of how people behave when browsing the web. When you’re designing your next landing page, get the best of both worlds by watching your CTA placement, sourcing product photos and visuals, balancing header text, and ensuring your design elements both look good and drive conversions.There's a lot of frustration among conservatives over how Barack Obama's radical past seems to be making no impact whatsoever among the American public. His connection to communists in particular, from communist-terrorists like Bill Ayers to the communist agitator-journalist Frank Marshall Davis to fellow travelers like Saul Alinsky, has simply failed to resonate beyond the political right. Quite the contrary, the more information that becomes available on Obama's radical associations, the more he seems to widen his lead over John McCain, a man who was tortured by communists in Vietnam.
I understand these frustrations completely. I'm also not surprised.
I have seen for quite some time that although we won the Cold War -- and defeated the Soviet communist empire -- America is vulnerable to varying degrees of collectivism, wealth redistribution, "creeping socialism" (Ronald Reagan's phrase), class-warfare rhetoric, and generally milder, more palatable (but still dangerous) forms of disguised Marxism. Why? How? The answer is simple: The history and truth about communism is not taught by our educators.
That total failure to remind and understand means that Americans are painfully vulnerable to repeat mistakes that should have been forever tossed onto the ash-heap of history.
Communism and the Cold War has been my area of research for years. I've written books on the subject. I lecture on the subject at Grove City College and around the country. The book I'm currently researching with Peter Schweizer is a Cold War book, which, ironically, inevitably brought us into contact with Marxist characters who allied with and even mentored Barack Obama.
Of all the lectures that I do around the country, none seem to rivet the audience as much as my discourse on the horrors of communism. In these lectures, which are usually connected to my books on Ronald Reagan, I do a 10-15 minute backgrounder on the crimes of communists-from their militant attacks on private property, on members of all religious faiths, and on basic civil liberties, to their total death toll of over 100 million bloodied, emaciated corpses in the 20th century.
As I do these presentations, the young people, especially on college campuses, are locked in, amazed at what they are hearing. I think they are especially struck that I always ground every fact and figure in reliable research and authorities -- books published by Harvard University Press and Yale University Press, quotes from the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel and Alexander Yakovlev, anti-Soviet appraisals from certain Cold War Democrats like Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy and even early liberals like Woodrow Wilson. I rarely use right-wing sources because I don't want the professors of these students to be able to later shoot a single hole in my presentation -- a potential tactic to undermine the overall thesis.
And speaking of those professors, that gets to my point here: As the young people in my audience are fully engaged, hands in the air with question after question -- obviously hearing all of these things for the first time in their lives, from K-12 to college, as they are eager to inform me after my talk -- the professors often stare at me with contempt. In one case, a British professor, who could not stop sighing, squirming, and rolling her eyes as I quoted the most heinous assessments of religion by Marx and Lenin, got up and stormed out of the room.
These professors glare at me as if the ghost of Joe McCarthy has flown into the room and leapt inside of my body. In fact, that's the essence of their criticism: It is not so much that these professors approve of communism as much as they disapprove of -- actually, utterly despise -- anti-communism. They are anti-anti-communist more so than pro-communist. Conservatives need to understand this, so as to avoid broad-brushing and losing credibility. Sure, a lot of professors are Marxists, and many more share the utopian goals of Marxism, but the vast majority are simply leftists.
Being on the left entails many strange contradictions and political pathologies, one of which is this bizarre revulsion toward anti-communists. These leftists -- to their credit -- despise fascism, and will preach anti-fascism until they're blue in the face. They are as appalled by fascism as conservatives are by communism. But while conservatives detest both communism and fascism, liberals only detest one of the two.
For instance, I recently saw that Human Events created a list of the top 10 worst books ever written, which included, as the top two, Marx's Communist Manifesto (#1), followed by Hitler's Mein Kampf (#2). That ranking is easily defended solely on numbers: Hitler killed at least 10 million; communism killed at least 100 million. Either way, kudos to Human Events, a conservative newspaper, for putting both communism and fascism in its top two. Yet, conversely, any liberal version of such a list would not even place the Communist Manifesto in the top 10. I guarantee that liberals who read the Human Events list will snicker at its alleged Neanderthal anti-communism.
The leftist intelligentsia that dominates higher education, and which writes the civics texts used in high schools -- I've read and studied these texts -- and which trains the teachers who teach in high schools, is not in the slightest bit notably anti-communist. These liberals do not teach the lessons of communism.
What's more, aside from failing to instruct their students in the crass facts about communism's unprecedented destruction -- its purges, mass famines, show trials, killing fields, concentration camps -- these educators are negligent in failing to teach the essential, non-emotional, but crucial Econ 101 basics that contrast capitalism and communism and, thus, that get at the heart of how and why command economies simply do not work. Each semester in my Comparative Politics course at Grove City College, it takes no more than 50 minutes to matter-of-factly lay out the rudimentary differences. Whereas capitalist systems are based on the market forces of supply and demand, which dictate prices and production levels and targets, communist systems are based on central planning, by which a government bureau attempts to manage such things. Capitalism is based on private ownership; communism on public ownership. Capitalism thrives on small government and taxes; communism on large government and taxes, typically progressive income-tax rates and estate taxes -- both advocated explicitly by Marx -- and much more.
This stuff isn't rocket science. It is easy to teach, if the professor desires. The problem is that it isn't being taught. Consequently, Americans today do not know why communism is such a devastating ideology, at both the level of plain economic theory and in actual historical practice. It is a remarkably hateful system, based on literal hatred and targeted annihilation of entire classes and groups of people. (Nazism sought genocide based on ethnicity; communism sought genocide based on class.)
Most Americans generally know that the USSR was a bad place and that it was good that the Berlin Wall fell; they lived through that. But they know little beyond that, especially young Americans in college today, born around the time the wall fell -- Obama's biggest supporters. Nowhere in America is Barack Obama worshipped as he is on college campuses, by students and professors alike.
What does it all mean for November 2008? It means that millions of modern Americans, when they hear that Barack Obama has deep roots with communist radicals like Bill Ayers and Frank Marshall Davis, don't care; they don't get it. Moreover, the leftist establishment -- from academia to media to Hollywood -- will not help them get it. To the contrary, the left responds to these accusations by not only downplaying or dismissing them but by ridiculing or even vilifying them, given the left's reflexive anti-anti-communism. The left will create bad guys out of the anti-communists who are legitimately blowing the whistle on the real bad guys.
When the leftists of the ‘60s took over higher education and the media, they really knew what they were doing. This was brilliant, masterful, a tactical slam-dunk, a tremendous coup for them and their worldview, with ripple effects we can scarcely imagine.
Does this mean that the McCain camp, talk radio and conservatives generally shouldn't bother exposing these things? Not at all. The truth is the truth, and needs to be told. Moderates especially need to be informed that Barack Obama is not your typical liberal: he is the most hard-left Democrat that his party has ever nominated for the presidency. It is absolutely not a coincidence that the man with these far-left associations just so happens to be ranked -- quantifiably, objectively, by non-partisan, respected sources like National Journal -- the most far-left member of the U.S. Senate, |
The company of his 26-year-old nephew, “Screen Media”, does not work only in Skopje, but is present in other parts of the country. Taking into consideration the fact that the main business is in the metropolis, billboards in other towns and intercity areas, experts say, are commonly used to improve the offer to the client concerning the capital. However, neither the locations in other major cities in Macedonia are negligible. According to the data by the company itself, published on its website, it has its own locations in Western Macedonia, Gostivar, Tetovo, Kicevo, Struga. Most of these municipalities are currently under local authority of DUI.
In the last local elections in 2013, the Vice President of DUI, Nevzat Bejta became Mayor of Gostivar. As they said from the municipality, more than a month ago “Screen Media” obtained the right to manage the billboards and the obligation to build them itself.
– Five of total 20 billboards have already been built, so there are 15 remaining – they said from the mayor’s office, noting that there had been interest from another company, but it did not go to the end.
Municipality of Tetovo, led by another vice-president of DUI – Teuta Arifi, based on a decision of the council, has contracts for two out of home advertising companies, one of which is “Screen Media.” But they say they were concluded during the previous mayor of DPA, Sadi Bexheti.
– Out of home advertising in the municipality of Tetovo is regulated with a decision by the municipal council regarding the manner, conditions and criteria for setting up billboards in the area of the municipality – they emphasized electronically from this municipality.
After we asked the Mayor of Kicevo, Fatmir Dehari, how this subject is regulated in the municipality, he asked us the question to be sent by email. But then we did not get a response.
Asked whether he sees something contentious and problematic in the fact that this company has contracts with several municipalities, and some of them are led by his party colleagues, the Minister of Education and Secretary General of DUI, Ademi, wrote via text message:
– Almost all contracts the company has with the municipalities are from the period when DUI did not manage these municipalities.
ALSO PRESENT IN STIP, VELES, OHRID…
“Screen Media” is also present in other parts of the country, i.e. municipalities mostly under local authority of the major government partner, VMRO-DPMNE. Some are in Stip, Veles, Ohrid…
– In Stip many companies have their own billboards, there is competition – said the mayor of VMRO-DPMNE, Ilco Zahariev.
“Screen Media” won the tender of Veles municipality for managing billboards in the town in 2010, though, as local media wrote then, other company, that had previously managed dozens of billboards in the town, submitted a lower bid. From this municipality, where in the meantime there is a new mayor, also from VMRO-DPMNE, they said that the contract with “Screen Media” had already expired, so the council decided to soon announce a new public announcement.
– The new concessionaire will be the one that wins the bidding – said the current mayor Slavco Chadiev.
The company also cooperated with the Municipality of Ohrid, at a time when Aleksandar Petreski of SDSM was the mayor, whose second term ended last year.
The Public Procurement Bureau shows that the Municipality of Ohrid in 2011 signed a contract with “Screen Media” worth 2 million denars (over 32,000 Euros). Under the agreement, the municipality acquired three passenger motor vehicles from this company. The criterion for selection was not the lowest, but economically most favorable bid. That is, the price was 50 points, while the remaining 50 points were warranty and technical characteristics of the vehicles and the delivery date. Thus, according to publicly available data, “Screen Media” obtained the public procurement as one of the three bidders submitted lower price for about half million denars.
From the Cabinet of the current Ohrid Mayor Nikola Bakracheski they explain that in the period of his predecessor billboards were set virtually anywhere, without taking proper documentation. Therefore, they point out, the municipal council decided to record all billboards and ordered the companies that had set them to remove them.
– Then, you need to adopt a plan for setting up about 40 billboards in the municipality, but not in the old town. They will need to be standardized and lighted. Then, there will be a public announcement to choose a company that will set up and manage them, and whether it will be one or more, it is not known yet – they say from the municipality.
With regard to public procurement of vehicles worth 2 million denars, they verbally said it was about three “Ford” vehicles, invoiced at 600,000 denars.
– “Screen Media” is suing the municipality claiming 3 million denars. There is no documentation what this amount refers to – explain from the Municipality of Ohrid, adding that once another marketing agency closed the debt to the municipality through compensation, also with motor vehicles, and not even a tender was announced.
In this regard, the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2011 said it filed criminal charges against the manager of “Screen Media” Elmedin Ademi, for usurpation of real estate and grand theft. He, according to the Ministry of Interior, on 15 locations in Ohrid usurped public area by placing billboards without approval of the Municipality and unauthorizedly connected electricity for lighting billboards. We have information that this case is still being prosecuted.
We did not manage to get in touch with ex mayor Petreski.
COOPERATION WITH OTHER COMPANIES
“Screen Media” has not concluded any agreements on public procurement with other state bodies and institutions, but has cooperated with other marketing agency and has made several such contracts, and that is “Genesis Communications”. The former owner of the company, Petar Arsovski, confirms that they have cooperated with “Screen Media” for a campaign it made for the needs of a state organ.
– We particularly cooperated for billboards in Western Macedonia – he says.
Arsovski meanwhile sold the company formed at the end of 2005, which in 2013 was transformed and renamed into “Tag Communications”. Information from official institutions reveal that the owner and manager of the company whose primary business is marketing, but also deals with trade of goods and transportation of people, is Gazmend Ajdini.
Among other things, “Genesis Communications” concluded agreements with several bodies (Secretariat for Implementation of the Framework Agreement; Foreign Investment Agency; Macedonian Post…). But as they point out in “Screen Media”, they cooperated with them just for the campaign of “Macedonian Post”. Data from the Bureau of Public Procurement show that “Genesis Communications” concluded two agreements with “Macedonian Post” in 2011, one of which was for design and implementation of the marketing campaign, worth 33 million denars, or half a million Euros. The second contract for public procurement between “Genesis Communications” and “Macedonian Post” is an annex or extension of an earlier agreement of almost million denars. In 2010, however, “Genesis” and “Post” concluded an agreement, to which the annex refers, for creating and implementing a campaign, worth 14 million denars.
Just for information, in recent years “Macedonian Post” has been led by DUI personnel. Thus, Rafiz Aliti was CEO during the parliamentary elections in 2011 until this year’s elections, when he was elected MP. His predecessor was Eyup Rustemi.
– We are a business company in the field of out of home advertising, and we cooperate with many companies and customers. We are not close to any party. We see the parties only as potential customers and that is why we have cooperated with them. During political campaigns, on our billboards appear listings from all parties we cooperate with on a purely commercial basis. Our business cannot from any aspect be brought in the context of politics. Working with public and state institutions does not take more than 2 to 3 percent of our work – assures the head of “Screen Media”, Ademi.
In his answer via email he highlights that in the last few years since the beginning of the economic crisis it has been quite difficult, especially as in economic crises budgets for advertising are the first to cut.
– Due to the new rules for out of home advertising in the last year or two we had to make additional investments. We have a total of 400 billboards, megalights and bigboards across Macedonia. As we have no financial capacity to mount on facilities in Skopje, we are beneficiaries of a commercial loan from domestic banks, so you cannot speak of any profit – he concludes.
WORK WITH A PARTY DONOR
In addition, he works in the construction business as co-owner of the construction company “Eurovia” along with his father Xhemaledin Ademi, Abdulakim Ademi’s brother. Specifically, father Ademi is the manager of the technical department, while son Ademi is general manager of the company that deals with high-rise, civil engineering and hydro construction.
According to the official information from the Central Registry, the company was founded in 2010. But young Ademi explains that this company “works as a family company with long experience and long tradition in construction, and it does not work for public and state institutions”.
The information that the company itself has published on its web site show that “Eurovia” has participated in projects with the Ministry of Health and Municipality Karpos, renovation of the Hospital in Cair, or the construction of an administrative building in Karpos. The Ministry of Health in 2010 concluded an agreement for construction activities of the maternity hospital in Cair as part of the package for reconstruction of polyclinics “Idadija”, “Bukurest” and “Jane Sandanski” with the Bulgarian company “GBS Blagoevgrad” worth over 150 million denars.
As for the construction of the administrative building in Karpos, in 2010 this municipality concluded a contract with the Tetovo construction company “AK-Invest”, worth nearly 73 million denars. These companies, that had signed other contracts for public procurement, hired “Eurovia” as a subcontractor on both projects, at a time shortly after the establishment of the company in 2010. The subsidiary of the Bulgarian company in the country had already been liquidated. From “AK Invest”, founded in 2005 by Azbi Nuredini, they did not respond to our question sent by email whether they have hired “Eurovia” for some other project, too.
Additionally, “Eurovia” declared that it had constructed a facility of 1,340 square meters for the needs of the private investor from Tetovo Kjatip Fetai. The same person appears in a report of DUI in municipal elections in 2013, submitted to the State Audit Office, as a party donor with 600,000 denars.
So it appears that people’s money did not flow into the budgets of “Screen Media” and “Eurovia”, at least not directly and immediately, but it is worth noting that the company has worked with other companies that cooperated with government authorities. In a country like Macedonia, where politics and business are joined, it always attracts attention when a company will reach the top in a particular business area, especially if the work of the company, whose founder is the manager in close relation with a senior state official, depends on the contracts it signs with municipalities.
The story was financially supported by CIN SCOOP Macedonia within the NED project “Raising Awareness about Corruption through Investigative Reporting”.
The article originally was published in weekly Fokus on August 14, 2014CHENNAI: A day after the Tamil Nadu assembly adopted a bill prohibiting ban of dhotis in recreation clubs, theatres, halls and other public places, the Madras high court on Wednesday closed a public interest litigation ( PIL ) on the issue.A division bench of Justice S Rajeswaran and Justice P N Prakash said since the state assembly on Tuesday passed the Tamil Nadu Entry into Public Places (Removal of Restriction on Dress) Act 2014, there was no need to pass any further orders."Taking note of the fact that a bill was passed in the assembly on August 12, nothing further remains to be considered in the matter," the judges said, disposing of the case filed by S Karthik.The judges said that petitioner himself had furnished a copy of the bill in the court and said it was likely to get the Governor's assent in a couple of days.Dhoti issues kicked up a storm in the state after the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association ( TNCA ) Club turned away a serving judge of the Madras high court, as he was wearing the dhoti. Justice D Hariparanthaman had gone to the club after being invited to attend a book release function organised by a former judge of the court.Two advocates were turned away by the staff of the club on the same day, as they too were wearing the dhoti. The club’s rules said the dhoti was not a formal dress.A 103-year-old Florida golfer has made history, becoming the oldest person to record a hole-in-one.
Gus Andreone achieved his special feat on “Wacky Wednesday” at the Palm Aire Country Club in Sarasota.
His friends watched in disbelief as his drive on the 113-yard 14th hole on the Lakes Course rolled into the cup.
“I always hit the ball short with the driver and it rolls up on the green,” he told MyFox Tampa Bay Friday.
PGA.com said it is likely Andreone is the oldest person to ever sink a hole-in-one. The website said the apparent previous record holder was Elsie McLean who aced a hole in 2007 when she was 102.
Andreone told MyFox Tampa Bay he plays golf three times a week. He recorded his first hole-in-one 75 years ago. He now has done it eight times and looks forward to doing it again.
“I am going to to play golf as long as I can,” he told the station. “As long as I can swing a club, even if I have to play three or four holes, I’m going to play golf.”The C35 was a commemorative model created in celebration of Colnago’s 35th anniversary in 1989. It was one of the first frames to be manufactured using a carbon fibre composite, and was kitted out with a gold-plated Campagnolo Super Record gruppo. It was liveried as stock in rosso corsa or black, but one enthusiastic owner decided to take Italian flamboyance to another level with a custom paint job.
Ferrari began using carbon fiber in their Formula One chassis during the 80s, and collaborated with Colnago on the C35. The Ferrari Engineering badge is seen on the downtube of this C35, and it’s also visible on the legendary, exceptionally comfortable Selle Italia Novus saddle. To stand out from all the other C35s on the road, however, you really need an all-over mural of a Ferrari F50; enjoying a moonlit mountain road on the drive side, and carousing the beach side promenade on the other.
This C35 belongs to the collection of Gregory Softley, you can view more of his amazing machines in his flickr stream.This item has been updated.
The slugfest known as the Virginia governor’s race has managed to get into the holiday spirit. Not Easter. April Fools’ Day.
“Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Terry McAuliffe today announced a major commitment to bringing manufacturing jobs to Virginia,” begins a news release issued Monday from the Democrat’s rival, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R).
The release includes a link to video snippets of of McAuliffe touting plans to bring an electric car company from China to Virginia.
Then comes: “April Fools’! Terry McAuliffe chose to base his electric car company in Mississippi,” it reads. “Then he blamed the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) for refusing to bid on GreenTech’s contract, a statement that was quickly proven false by Politifact. Turns out, McAuliffe never even gave VEDP the necessary information to offer GreenTech a package! The biggest joke today is Terry McAuliffe claiming to put Virginia jobs first.”
McAuliffe’s decision to put his GreenTech plant in Mississippi became an issue in the campaign in December, when he told reporters that he didn't put the plant in Virginia because VEDP “decided they didn’t want to bid on it.”
Soon after, Politifact Virginia analyzed e-mail between GreenTech and VEDP, concluding that the agency had raised concerns about the venture but had not ruled it out. In fact, the messages indicated that VEDP officials were surprised to learn through media reports that GreenTech had decided to go to Mississippi.
McAuliffe said at the time that he disagreed with the “false” rating that Politifact gave his claim, but without explaining why he thought the fact-checkers got it wrong.
McAuliffe’s campaign responded Monday with a sharp-edged April Fool’s message of its own, issuing a news release titled: “Breaking: Cuccinelli Resigns Office over Star Scientific and Transportation Conflicts of Interest.”
The fake missive keyed off recent reports that Cuccinelli had failed to disclose for nearly a year that he owned stock in a company that had filed a tax lawsuit against the state. The release also mocked Cuccinelli’s unwillingness to resign his post to focus on his campaign for governor, as previous Virginia attorneys general have done.
“I have come to realize that my political ambitions are not always compatible with the what’s best for the people of this Commonwealth and that now is the time for me to resign,” Cuccinelli said in the McAuliffe campaign’s imagined statement.
Ben Pershing contributed to this report.WhatsDown can help you find locations of buried environmental hazards, learn about them, then share what you have learned with friends. WhatsDown is not officially launched, contains important disclaimers, and you are using the early alpha release.
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Learn About Nearby Hazards Select a marker to learn about the hazard. WhatsDown will tell you the type of hazard, the chemicals spilled, protective tips, and the environmental agency monitoring the cleanup.
Stay Informed For any hazard, you can ask our team of environmental scientist about the hazards, or choose Test My Air to arrange for a home or office air testing kit.
Share Share any hazard with friends through email or social media. In your neighboorhood, school or at work, help others learn what's down by printing and posting an Environmental Beacon above nearby hazards.
Terradex is pleased to provide WhatsDown for general informational purposes. The data presented on the site was gathered from a variety of government sources. While Terradex has taken care to present the data and information accurately, the data and information provided may include inaccuracies and may be incomplete or out of date. Terradex makes no representations about the suitability of the information contained on this site for any purpose. All information and related graphics are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Terradex hereby disclaims all warranties and conditions with regard to this information, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. In no event shall Terradex be liable for the the use, misuse, accuracy of, or otherwise for information or data available from this site. Location information may not reflect the exact location and should be considered as estimates only. Areas indicating groundwater plumes should be considered as estimates and approximations, and may not reflect the actual location of groundwater plume areas. The data and information provided by WhatsDown was gathered over the course of time and data and information is not necessarily up to date. Terradex makes no warranty or guarantee as to the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of any of the data or information provided, and assumes no legal responsibility for the data or information contained in or depicted on WhatsDown. Any use of WhatsDown with respect to accuracy and precision or otherwise, shall be the sole responsibility of the user. We welcome comments, suggestions, and contributions related to the accuracy or completeness of the data provided so that we can continue to improve WhatsDown. Terradex forbids the resale or other commercial use of the information provided in WhatsDown without our express written consent.
What Are Spill Sites? A spill site is created after a chemical spill is reported to a government agency. WhatsDown currently holds approximately one million spill sites. Spill sites, for example, involve gas stations where fuel tanks leaked, dry cleaners where cleaning solvents spilled, industrial locations where chemical spills occurred in the process, and others. Spill sites can affect small areas or very large properties or groups of properties. Spill sites can also be due to very old spills, even dating back dozens of years or longer, as well as new ones. How Are Spill Sites Shown on the Map? WhatsDown shows points to locate spill sites, but please note that spills always affect an area rather than an actual point. In addition to locating the spill site, WhatsDown shows the cleanup progress as being incomplete or complete. Ordinarily, government agencies oversee cleanup activities which eventually reduce the chemical concentrations in the soil or the groundwater. Cleanup activities, for example, might include excavating the chemicals in the soil, pumping the contaminated groundwater, consolidating and “capping” contaminated soil, or allowing natural decomposition to occur. The complete status divides into cleanup with environmental protections or without. This is because government agency cleanup standards vary ranging from full cleanup that allows for unrestricted future use to more lenient “risk based” standards which allow some contamination to remain in place if environmental protections, including restrictions on the future use, are added to guard against exposure. Cleanup incomplete or not started : The site is considered hazardous and has been identified for cleanup.
: The site is considered hazardous and has been identified for cleanup. Cleanup Complete with Protections : Government cleanup standards have been met, but environmental protections have been instituted to protect the public from residual contamination.
: Government cleanup standards have been met, but environmental protections have been instituted to protect the public from residual contamination. Cleanup complete: Government cleanup standards have been met, and the site is considered safe for all uses. However, residual contamination may remain. What Can I Learn in the Spill Site Information Window? Shows the name of the spill site, the address where available, and a cleanup status icon. You can use the tabs in the information window to learn, share and ask about the spill site. Share Tab: Shows a summary of the hazards, the status of the cleanup, and the government agency overseeing the cleanup. Cleanup status determines the color of the WhatsDown cleanup icon for the site. You can touch the agency logo to read about the agency. Some spill sites have a web page dedicated to the cleanup, and when available we share this link. You can share the spill site information with acquaintances. Perhaps you would share your concerns about health hazards. Sharing includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter.
Shows a summary of the hazards, the status of the cleanup, and the government agency overseeing the cleanup. Cleanup status determines the color of the WhatsDown cleanup icon for the site. You can touch the agency logo to read about the agency. Some spill sites have a web page dedicated to the cleanup, and when available we share this link. You can share the spill site information with acquaintances. Perhaps you would share your concerns about health hazards. Sharing includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter. Chemical Tab: Many chemicals pose health hazards. WhatsDown does not attempt to evaluate health hazards, which may depend on the contaminant concentration and an individual’s exposure. When we know the spilled chemicals, we show links to webpages that describe health risks associated with the chemicals.
Many chemicals pose health hazards. WhatsDown does not attempt to evaluate health hazards, which may depend on the contaminant concentration and an individual’s exposure. When we know the spilled chemicals, we show links to webpages that describe health risks associated with the chemicals. Contact Us Tab: We often find that site locations shared by agencies are incorrect, and we will correct them in WhatsDown based on your feedback. Also, if you have a basic question, we will try to help, so please don’t hesitate to ask. Where Does WhatsDown Get Spill Site Information? Terradex obtains the information for WhatsDown from government agencies. We periodically refresh the data. You can check when we last updated the data, or if we are aware of site lists that we have not yet loaded to WhatsDown.
What Are Groundwater Plumes? Groundwater is any water found beneath the earth’s surface. Groundwater can fill the space between soil grains or rock fractures, and it can exist at varied depths. A groundwater plume contains chemicals that have seeped into the the groundwater at a spill site and then diffused to contaminate a larger area. Groundwater plumes pose health hazards in numerous ways. Some groundwater plumes contain cancer causing chemicals that can vaporize into basements or indoor rooms, much like the process of smoke rising. Chemical plumes can also pollute drinking water that comes from groundwater. How Are Groundwater Plumes Shown on the Map? The extent of a groundwater plume is typically determined by testing where the chemical concentrations diminish to safe levels set by government agencies. The plume boundaries are never precise. Boundaries are interpolated estimates based on discrete monitoring points. How Can You Use the WhatsDown Information Balloon? Touching or clicking a groundwater plume, shown in pink on the map, opens an information balloon. The party that is responsible for the spill’s cleanup appears at the top. You can use the tabs in the information balloon to learn, share and ask about the plume. You can even order a test kit, to test for vaporized contaminants in the air at home or work. Share Tab: Shows a summary of the known hazard risk and a link to more detailed information. For example, a plume might pose a vapor intrusion hazard. When we know groundwater depth, it is listed. You can share the plume information with acquaintances. Perhaps you would share your concerns about health hazards. Sharing includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter. You can overwrite the default message.
Shows a summary of the known hazard risk and a link to more detailed information. For example, a plume might pose a vapor intrusion hazard. When we know groundwater depth, it is listed. You can share the plume information with acquaintances. Perhaps you would share your concerns about health hazards. Sharing includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter. You can overwrite the default message. Chemical Tab: Lists the known chemicals at the site and possible protective measures you can take. Chemical contaminants are the basis for any health hazards. WhatsDown does not evaluate health hazards, which depend on the chemical concentration and an individual’s exposure. When we know the spilled chemicals, we link to webpages that describe health risks associated with the chemicals.
Lists the known chemicals at the site and possible protective measures you can take. Chemical contaminants are the basis for any health hazards. WhatsDown does not evaluate health hazards, which depend on the chemical concentration and an individual’s exposure. When we know the spilled chemicals, we link to webpages that describe health risks associated with the chemicals. Contact Us Tab: We often find that site locations shared by agencies are incorrect, and we will correct them in WhatsDown based on your feedback. Also, if you have a basic question, we will try to help, so please don’t hesitate to ask. Where Does Information on Groundwater Plumes Come From? Terradex uses a variety of approaches to estimate the extent of a groundwater plume. We trace plumes from reports submitted by the polluting parties, we draw a plume shape around a study area, or we obtain a plume map from trusted parties. Plume boundaries change slowly. We welcome input on a plume to improve its location.
What Are Environmental Protections? Environmental Protections are legal or physical controls, sometimes dubbed “institutional controls” by regulatory agencies, that guard people from unsafe exposure to contaminants at spill sites. Environmental Protections are put into place when government agencies allow spill site cleanups to occur under so called “risk based” standards, which allow some contamination to remain in place if environmental protections are added to guard against exposure. Environmental Protections limit activities and future uses that could pose health or environmental hazards. These protections ordinarily last for as long as contamination remains in place, which could be for many many year, even permanently in some cases. WhatsDown shows Environmental Protections in “caution” yellow, indicating proceed with care. Environmental Protections often address a single parcel of land, but also can cover much larger areas when, for example, groundwater or soil contamination spreads across multiple properties. WhatsDown increasingly attempts to map the boundary of the Environmental Protection. Otherwise, WhatsDown shows the Environmental Protections as a point on the map. Government agencies ordinarily require Environmental Protections to be tailored to the hazard. For example, if contaminated groundwater would inadvertently be used for drinking, the protection could be a drinking water restriction. If there were chemicals harmful to children, then protection could restrict use for schools or daycare. The protections are assembled based upon specific risks posed by the spill site. Not all spill sites have protections associated with them, especially those where cleanup has not been completed. How Can the Environmental Protections Information Balloon Help? Environmental protections often carry the name of the party responsible for the spill. When addresses are available, they are shown below the protection. You can use the tabs in the information window to learn, share and ask about the spill site. Share Tab: Protections are often formal documents that are part of the cleanup process, and a link to that document is shown. You can share the protection information with acquaintances. Sharing includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter.
Protections are often formal documents that are part of the cleanup process, and a link to that document is shown. You can share the protection information with acquaintances. Sharing includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Twitter. Protection Tab: Protections are often composed of numerous restrictions. When the restrictions are known, each is displayed as a simple icon with a brief description.
Protections are often composed of numerous restrictions. When the restrictions are known, each is displayed as a simple icon with a brief description. Contact Us Tab: We often find that protections shared by agencies are located incorrectly, and we will correct them in WhatsDown based on your feedback. Also, if you have a basic question, we will try to help, so please don’t hesitate to ask. Where Does WhatsDown Learn About Environmental Protections? These protections are often listed in registries at state or federal websites. When protections are shown as points, Terradex will review the documentation and convert the location to a mapped boundary.Bernie Sanders speaks at an anti-'Trumpcare' rally in Washington, DC on May 4. Alex Wong/Getty Images Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont unveiled an ad pushing his new single-payer healthcare plan on Wednesday, using imagery and quotes from past Democratic presidents to sell the plan.
The video features former Presidents Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Franklin Roosevelt in addition to a handful of the 16 Democratic senators who are cosponsoring the bill.
"So I ask you to work with us at the grassroots level," Sanders says in the nearly three-minute ad. "Speak to your neighbors. Speak to your coworkers. Let us go forward and finally do what this country should have done a long time ago and that is to guarantee health care to all people."
Sanders' proposal would aim to eradicate much of the private insurance industry in favor of a government-ran system.Are your kids ‘pinups’?
(A Courtroom experience.)
“Are your kids ‘pinups’?” the community women’s solicitor asked me.
I stared back blankly thinking of the photogenically endowed.
“Oh. You don’t know do you? Are they PINOPs? That’s a Person In Need Of Protection. Are they named in the AVO?”
“Yes.” I answered, “They are.”
An Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) is a court order that aims to protect a person by restricting or prohibiting another person from doing specified things. AVOs are based on the protected person’s fear of experiencing unwanted conduct from the defendant in the future — conduct such as physical violence, intimidation, stalking, harassment or threats.
The solicitor had this way of looking directly into my eyes that was somewhat calming. She was late thirtyish, good bone structure and the trace of an Irish accent, wearing one of those insipid, dark-greyish suits that female solicitors seem to favour. We were sitting in an office of the court house. The room had a strong musty smell from the recent rains. Something that the building’s modern façade couldn’t hide was its 1880s foundations and their accelerated rising damp given the recent rain.
“How can we put this, then?” she asked. “You want to change the five, but they haven’t put in the five they’ve marked the six. It’s the one, three and six. But you wanted the five.”
I stared back blankly again, thinking now she figured me to be a bit thick.
“Oh. You don’t know, do you? Here, this will explain it.”
She handed me a copy of an AVO “style sheet”. I don’t know what it’s called but it lists types of AVOs and also the actions they contain. It’s a matter of mix and match to any given situation and each action is given a number. For example, a “five” means you can use the terms for contact in an existing court order, but if you put in a “six” then you need to change the terms of contact by a mutual written agreement. I don’t want my ex to come to my house but I do want her to be able to call us, or for us to call her. The agreement needs to be drafted by a solicitor and hence me sitting in front of one.
“Do you have a court order for residence?”, “Yes I do but not with me”, “You see, if you have a court order that will be taken into account if you ask for a five and then you won’t need the six.”, “ I did give the police a copy of the court orders.”, “Well they should have known then.”
She continued, pushing a dark bob behind her ear, “Maybe we can go back and change the six to a five if they haven’t left the court, but maybe it’s a bit late and, oh, let’s just do the six and the letter. Are you sure your ex will agree to it?”, “Yes, I spoke with her last night. I called her because I was worried about where she was. I hadn’t heard from her for a week or so.”
“You know she could go to jail for that.”
“It’s OK, I rang her.”
“No, that doesn’t count. She will have breached the AVO even if she didn’t make the call.”, “Oh, you mean the police could jail her even if I initiated the contact?” She nodded.
“But if we get this letter written we can change the conditions of the AVO and we can also word it so she can’t ring you if she’s drunk or abusive.”, “Sounds fine to me.”, “Do you think she’ll accept it?”, “I can ring and ask her.”, “No you can’t, but I can”.
So she called my ex who agreed to the conditions. Then she typed up the letter.
But let’s just go back to the start of my day in court. It was fortunate that I’d got this far.
When I first arrived, up the steps and into the chamber, I was greeted by the Magistrate’s secretary who asked my business. (A magistrate is a local court judge.)
“I’m sorry you can’t go into the protected person’s room. It’s for women only.” she said.
“That’s OK. I’ll just sit in the court room gallery.”
I was quite happy to do that. I tend not to frequent courts but they are interesting if you are not on their wrong side.
I sat through the DUI’s (Driving Under the Influence), a contract dispute and some other AVOs.
About an hour later when I was starting to feel slightly neglected, a special police officer came into the court and asked those of us in the gallery if there was anyone attending for an AVO. I half raised my hand but he went straight to a scraggy looking fellow who was a defendant in another AVO. The police officer then left the court and I didn’t see him till some time later. I’ll call him “special” because of his defined role in AVO cases.
When my AVO finally came up, well it was actually my ex-wife who was the defendant and there were other charges involved, her “legal aid” solicitor relayed that she was pleading guilty to all charges. She had faxed her plea to the court as her bail condition stated that she could not be within 50km of the town we were in, making it difficult for her to attend without being arrested.
The magistrate then asked if I was in the court and I indicated to her where I was.
It was then I asked if the contact conditions of the AVO could be changed to allow my ex to phone the kids and me.
The special police officer I had seen before beckoned me to the table where the solicitors and prosecutors sat. The police prosecutor turned around to show me the AVO details, and pointed to the “six”. He appeared the kind of bloke who wouldn’t look out of place on a Harley in full “colours”, he was thick set with a kind of goatee and well used suit. I guess you need to look pretty tough to be a police prosecutor. He looked a bit annoyed that I wanted to change the AVO conditions but then the special police officer took me aside and tried to explain to me what I needed to do to achieve it.
The process wasn’t that straightforward and he said I should get a solicitor to draft it up for me. My thoughts immediately went to “lawyer equals money — so forget it” but he said “Look, just wait in the court and I will see if I can get you some help.”
So I went back and sat down. It was a while, and some other AVO cases later, that the Magistrate decided to have a recess. The police officer was off talking to the prosecutor. At that stage I was feeling a bit disheartened about the whole process and figured I should just leave. I didn’t think the system cared about me at all. So I walked out of the court house and down the steps.
“Excuse me!” There was a yell from behind. I turned around and it was the special police officer coming after me. “Come back! I’m sorry. I was attending to another matter and didn’t mean to ignore you”, he apolog |
jobs market mean that many believe that a large number of more straightforward jobs, such as data entry, will soon be replaced by automation.
A 2016 report from the World Economic Forum argued that automation will lead to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies by 2020.
Certain banking roles are already being impacted with the rise of so-called "robo-advisors" which are able to give financial advice to customers without relying on an actual person.
HSBC is one major bank to roll out robo-advice, launching a service in June that "will use data and algorithms to deliver tailored advice and will make personal recommendations based on an individual's unique circumstances."
During the same speak, Cryan said that Frankfurt — the location of Deutsche Bank's headquarters — must invest heavily in infrastructure if it is to take over from London as Europe's financial hub after Brexit.As one of two major rivers in China still unimpeded by dams, the Nu has a fiercely devoted following among environmentalists who have grown despondent over the destruction of many of China’s waterways. The Ministry of Water Resources released a survey in March saying that 23,000 rivers had disappeared entirely and many of the nation’s most storied rivers had become degraded by pollution. The mouth of the Yellow River is little more than an effluent-fouled trickle, and the once-mighty Yangtze has been tamed by the Three Gorges Dam, a $25 billion project that displaced 1.4 million people.
For many advocates, the Nu has become something of a last stand. “Why can’t China have just one river that isn’t destroyed by humans?” asked Wang Yongchen, a well-known environmentalist in Beijing who has visited the area a dozen times in recent years.
Image Four dams are proposed in Yunnan. Work on one in Tibet has begun. Credit The New York Times
Opponents say it is no coincidence that the project was revived shortly before the retirement of Mr. Wen, a populist whose decision to halt construction was hailed as a landmark victory for the nation’s fledgling environmental movement. Although he did not kill the project, Mr. Wen, a trained geologist, vowed it would not proceed without an exhaustive environmental impact assessment.
No such assessment has been released. Given the government’s goal of generating 15 percent of the nation’s electricity from non-fossil fuel by 2020, few expect environmental concerns to slow the project, even if the original plan of 13 dams on the Nu has for now been scaled back to 5. “Building a dam is about managing conflicts between man and nature, but without a scientific understanding of this project, it can only lead to calamity,” said Yang Yong, a geologist and an environmentalist.
Some experts say that China has little choice but to move forward with dams on the Nu, given the nation’s voracious power needs and an overreliance on coal that has contributed to record levels of smog in Beijing and other northern cities. Still, many environmentalists reject the government’s assertion that hydropower is “green energy,” noting that reservoirs created by dams swallow vast amounts of forest and field.
Also overlooked, they say, is the methane gas and carbon dioxide produced by decomposing vegetation, significant contributors to global warming.
“By depicting dams as green, China is seeking to justify its dam-building spree,” said Brahma Chellaney, a water resources expert at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. Mr. Chellaney said that Beijing had also failed to take into account the huge amounts of silt retained by dams that invariably deprive downstream farmers of the seasonal nutrients that have traditionally replenished overworked soil.Canadian firm LGA Architectural Partners has created a neighbourhood within an old Toronto industrial building, to provide accommodation for homeless young people.
Eva's is a nonprofit initiative that provides shelter and educational facilities for homeless youth in the city. For the latest of its three residences, LGA Architectural Partners consulted with Canadian agency ERA Architects to revamp the heritage-designated Phoenix building that was leased from the city.
Originally a 1930s waterworks warehouse, the brick structure was transformed into a fully-enclosed residential complex with white walls, polished concrete pathways and splashes of pastel colours.
The roof was replaced with sloping windows to create a light-filled interior that resembles a greenhouse.
"A portion of the budget was allocated to future-proofing the building, creating a strong foundation that can be altered by the organisation with basic construction strategies to meet changing needs over time," said LGA.
Accommodation is divided up between a series of communal blocks, each designed to look like a typical townhouse. Each house is outfitted with a kitchen, a living area and a bathroom. All together, they provide 50 bedrooms.
"These houses face onto an internal street – which serves as a gathering place for the Eva's community," said the firm. "The layering of spaces builds comfort by giving the youth the choice to decide their own level of integration."
Above the homes, but still under the building's roof, are terraces for relaxing and socialising. Other communal spaces include a demonstration kitchen and a full-service commercial print shop.
"This is a project that's all about doing the right thing – for the kids, the neighbourhood and the city," said LGA co-founder Dean Goodman. "It's architecture that results from will and collaboration – between the Eva's community, the design and construction teams, and also the councillor and the planning department."
Eva's Phoenix won a Design Excellence Award earlier this year from Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) and has become a model for homeless facilities across Canada.
Similar projects elsewhere include The Six in downtown LA, Richard Rogers' prefabricated housing in London and Peter Barber's Victorian-style hostel.
Related story Richard Rogers' prefabricated housing for homeless people opens in south London
Photography is by Ben Rahn/A-Frame.BALTIMORE -- This week I went searching for the birthplace of America -- in a Baltimore Rite Aid. Andy Carroll, a faculty member at Chapman University, is the one who discovered the historical significance of this particular spot of land.
"There's a whole world out there waiting to be found," said Andy. "I mean these sites exist in cities and towns across America."
What Andy does -- for fun -- is research events that have been mostly forgotten and tracks down exactly where those events happened.
Andy Carroll, left, inside a Baltimore Rite Aid with CBS News' Steve Hartman CBS News
There's the California apartment building where the man who invented the electronic television did his first experiments; the Iowa laboratory -- now parking garage -- where the first American car was built; the New York Street corner where the first cell phone call was made.
"I love the idea that people walk past these places everyday having no idea that this extraordinary event took place right in their own neighborhood," said Andy.
His latest discovery centers on nothing less than the Declaration of Independence. There are several versions of the Declaration, but one version -- printed a few months after the original by a woman named Mary Katherine Goddard -- played a crucial role in the war, which we were losing at the time.
"Congress was literally on the run and they wanted to send a message that the country was still united, far from beaten, and so Mary Katherine Goddard distributed this new Declaration of Independence but this time it had all the signers," explained Andy. "I think it helped solidify and really rally the nation at a time when it was desperately needed."
Which brings us back to the makeup aisle at Rite Aid -- the likely site for Mary Goddard's print shop.
Andy Carroll installs a plaque inside a Baltimore Rite Aid where Mary Katherine Goddard printed a version of the Declaration of Independence CBS News
"This is absolutely one of the birthplaces of our nation," said Andy in front of the lipstick and ironically near the Americana display.
So to honor the woman who made our picnics possible, Andy installed a plaque inside the drug store.
But more importantly, Andy hopes her story, this story, reminds people that you don't need to go to the Smithsonian to go back in time -- that there may be a lot of history right under your massaging gel insoles.
To contact On the Road, or to send us a story idea, e-mail us.In a stunning overruling of its own ruling, USATF has disqualified the now former USA Indoors 3000-meter champion Gabe Grunewald of Brooks Running and Team USA Minnesota.Grunewald and fourth-place finisher Jordan Hasay made contact in the bell lap of the championship race. The field official raised the yellow flag indicating contact, Grunewald's agent Paul Doyle says, but the head official decided that it was not grounds for disqualification and awarded Grunewald her first national title.After the race, Nike Oregon Project's Alberto Salazar, coach of Hasay and runner-up Shannon Rowbury, filed a protest. According to Team USA Minnesota coach Dennis Barker and Doyle, that protest was overruled by the same head official that made the initial ruling on the track. The AlSal/Nike camp then appealed the ruling to a three-person USATF committee, which also ruled in Grunewald's favor.And that's where the issue should have remained.
Instead, Barker says, there was "intense pressure" around the officials' table, describing Nike employeesand according to Doyle, 20 minutes later, after the final ruling was made, the ruling was opened again.Barker says that according to USATF rules, once the complaint has been denied and the appeal fails, that's the end of it unless new information is presented. From what he could tell, USATF simply reviewed the same tape it had already seen twice.Grunewald was DQ'd, Barker and Doyle confirm. USATF has not issued a statement, and multiple attempts to contact them have not been answered.Barker filed his appeal on Grunewald's behalf, which failed, and then appealed to the committee (which had just ruled in his favor), which also failed.As it stands, Grunewald has been disqualified, and Barker says Rowbury and Hasay are now being tapped for the national team. This has not been confirmed, and USATF has not yet released the national team names.But meanwhile, there is a veritable shitstorm on Twitter comprised of both fans and athletes as they voice their displeasure for Salazar, Nike, and USATF.In the meantime, Doyle says the next step is to inform USATF that if Grunewald is not reinstated, on Monday he will file a section nine arbitration petition.Meanwhile, Jesse Williams, Brooks Running Sports Marketing Manager, tweeted, "I can tell you this... [Grunewald] will receive her bonus for being Indoor National 3k Champion.""This is a girl that beat cancer twice and has just made her first team, won her first national title, and it's being taken away from her," Doyle says. "We just won't stand for it. It's not the right decision, so we're going to fight it to the end."Jose Mourinho says 'Premier League will be more competitive'
Jose Mourinho says the Premier League will be more competitive this season
Jose Mourinho is predicting that the team which wins the Premier League this season will lose more matches than normal.
The Chelsea manager believes that greater financial power, currently being enjoyed by many other clubs in England's top tier, will make it a tougher league to win.
Mourinho said: "To win the Premier League, we don't need so many points as before.
"I think more defeats, more lost points for the top teams. Crystal Palace buy (Yohan) Cabaye, as an example. I could give you much more examples.
"Welcome this mentality, welcome this economic power, welcome this ambition. If the Premier League was difficult, the Premier League will now be more difficult and I think less points will win the title."
And the 52-year-old Portuguese boss at Stamford Bridge admits his squad requires greater strength in defence.
Branislav Ivanovic, Kurt Zouma, Gary Cahill, Cesar Azpilicueta and John Terry are Chelsea's only first-team defenders.
And Mourinho went on: "Five is not enough. That's obvious.
"We cannot go to the Premier League with five defenders. That's our weakness. The quality is good, the numbers are not.”
But he says they are unlikely to increase their recent offer to Everton to buy John Stones.
He added: "The market sometimes has no rules. We, as Chelsea, we make our own rules.
"To make our own rules is to evaluate the players, and to know the players' value, and to know when we have to stop and turn to another side, and think in another option."This post is important because it will cover Unreal Engine 4 streaming system which is powerful and everyone should learn how to use it.
In this Tutorial I will show you guys how to create in-game loading screen using streaming.
<strong>This Tutorial has been created using Unreal Engine 4.9.2</strong> Make sure you are working on the same version of the engine. 1 2 < strong > This Tutorial has been created using Unreal Engine 4.9.2 < / strong > Make sure you are working on the same version of the engine.
Why use streaming?
I think that streaming was added to Unreal Engine because of the big teams pipeline. Streaming can separate your maps so more people will be able to work on project in the same time.
For example let’s assume that you have one map with 3 rooms. What you can do is:
Map_01_P – Persistent map that have information about other maps,
Room_01_Collisions, – to separate collisions form the meshes,
Room_01_Sounds, – let sound designer work on the ambients,
Room_01_Gameplay, – let gameplay designer work on gameplay in this room,
Room_01_BSP – map for prototyping envrio,
Room_01_Envrio – graphics designers can update BSP with normal meshes – when finished just delete BSP map from persistent,
Room_01_Props – graphics designers can add props in this map,
Room_02_*, – all those above,
Room_03_*, – all those above,
Thanks to this lot of people can work on one level without need to wait for others. As far I can know this is typical for games created in Unreal Engine. Lot of my friends used this method.
Another thing is memory – if you are working with streaming enabled you could unload whole room if not visible for player.
If you are working alone you still should use streaming to learn the pipeline. Then in team you will know what to do 😉
Streaming Enabled
Create new (blank) level named MainMenu_P – “P” here means persistent. So your team mates will know that this is main map.
In the meantime I have created simple MainMenu level. Try to create one too.
So basically I have 3 maps:
MainMenu_P – which is persistent,
MainMenu – just main menu room,
MainMenu_Armory – created earlier armory for upgrading weapons,
Now open MainMenu_P and select Window -> Levels.
In Levels Window click on Levels -> Add Existing.
And add MainMenu and MainMenu_Armory maps.
Make sure all maps have streaming method: Blueprint.
Those steps have enabled streaming enabled pipeline.
Working in Streaming
There is couple of things you need to know when working in Streaming.
First and most important is which is current level? If I place new Actor to which level it will be added?
Open Window -> Levels and double click on level which should be active. It will be marked as blue.
If you open MainMenu_P – persistent level will be current level so always remember to change current level. Another way is to open just MainMenu_Armory level instead of MainMenu_P.
I know that this is easy but I have seen lot of people forgetting about this and placing lot of meshes / actors to persistent level.
Another thing is MainMenu_P – which is persistent – that means it will be always loaded. Don’t put your content there. In this tutorial I will use MainMenu_P for loading screen adding one actor and one particle but don’t try to put whole level in there.
How you will know which actor is in which level? Just use Outliner.
Thanks to this you can select all actors in MainMenu_Armory and move it right to MainMenu. In this example location 0, 0, 0 will be used for loading so rest actors should be away from center world location.
Creating Main Menu Base Classes
In Main menu we will use different GameMode with different settings:
Create new GameMode blueprint named MenuGameMode,
Create new GameState blueprint named MenuGameState.
Create new Character blueprint named MenuCharacter,
Create new HUD blueprint named HUD_MainMenu,
Assign them to MenuGameMode and select MenuGameMode in MainMenu_P settings.
Creating Tip Loading Actor
Create new blueprint extending from Actor named BP_BaseLoadingTip. Open it and add one variable:
Tip (Text, editable), – this will be our tip visible in loading screen,
Create blueprint extending BP_BaseLoadingTip named Loading_Trooper. Open it and add skel mesh component with Trooper Skel Mesh. Add some text to Tip variable.
Create another blueprint extending from BP_BaseLoadingTip named Loading_Rifle.
TODO
Basically just extend from BP_BaseLoadingTip to create new tip for loading.
Loading Loop Preparation
Open MenuGameState and add those dispatchers:
OnLoadingCompleted,
OnPressedAnyKey,
OnTipActorSpawned (one input: BP_BaseLoadingTip actor reference)
Game State will be responsible for the whole loop.
UMG With Tip And Loading
Create new Widget named UI_Loading. Open it and add those widgets:
Text named TextBlock_Tip (IsVariable need to be set),
Text named TextBlock_PressAnyKey (IsVariable need to be set),
CircularThrobber named CircularThrobber_Loading (IsVariable need to be set),
Button named Button_Press.
In this video you can see the settings and hierarchy:
Now open your event graph and add those variables:
Tip (Text), – Tip variable should be binded to TextBlock_Tip!
isWaitingForTap (bool),
And one function: SetTip.
Create new Custom Event named OnLoadingFinished.
This is basically showing Press Any Key text and hiding Throbber.
Construct and bindings from Game State:
This looks complicated because I’m using UnBind functions without them it’s really simple. I have learned that before Removing Widget it’s recommended to unbind all bindings to prevent crashes when opening new levels.
Now in your functions Override OnKeyDown function:
Each time we will use a key this function will popup.
So if we know that loading was completed (isWaitingForTap bool) we can call OnPressed.
USEFUL TIP: Key functions will only trigger when Input Mode is set to UI Only and widget is connected to Widget To Focus. Will show that later in this Tutorial.
Last thing in UMG is to add OnClicked event on Button. Just call OnPressed function.
That’s all in UMG!
Preparing Loading
Open your MainMenu_P and add to the scene:
Camera Actor, (Location: (X=-160.000000,Y=100.000000,Z=90.000000) Named Camera_Loading,
Camera Actor named Camera_MainMenu it should point at your main menu scene,
Note Actor, (Location: (X=0.000000,Y=0.000000,Z=0.000000)) Named Note_SpawnLocation,
Spot Light: (Movable, Location: (X=-220.000000,Y=-40.000000,Z=170.000000) Rotation: (Pitch=-9.999908,Yaw=-19.999998,Roll=0.000000)
Now add new BSP box:
It will be background for loading.
Now in Level Blueprint add one variable:
TipActors (Array, Actor Class),
And add your Loading tips actors into the array. Now create new Custom Event named SpawnTipActor:
This is basically taking random tip actor from TipActors -> spawning it -> let GameState know that Tip Actor was spawned. So UMG will get this dispatcher.
Create another custom event named LoadLevels:
Here should be all of your streaming levels you want to load during loading. After loading we are letting Game State know calling OnLevelCompleted.
Now in Begin Play we need to set view to loading camera and bind event OnPressedKey to change the camera.
And that’s all in Level Blueprint. Make sure your sublevels aren’t changing camera on Begin Play.
The last thing is to create loading widget. We will do this in HUD class. Open your HUD_MainMenu and in begin play create loading widget:
Without Input Mode UIONly and In Widget To Focus – widget won’t get Key events.
That’s all – you have your loading completed!
Final Effect
Creating ShooterTutorial takes a lot of my free time.
If you want you can help me out! I will use your donation to buy better assets packs and you will be added to Credits /Backers page as well. Implementing game is taking time but writing about it is taking much more effort!To find the next generation of K-pop stars, Korea's "BIG3" have come together for an explosive new music audition program! SM Entertainment's Lee Soo Man, YG Entertainment's Yang Hyun Suk, and JYP Entertainment's J.Y. Park will team up for the upcoming SBS show, "Survival Audition Kpop Star", which will air its pilot episode in December. The premise for the program is a competition of talent and survival; Korea's three big management companies will not only travel Korea to find the next star, but also in various locations around the world. This competition will not focus solely on vocals; other skills and talents will also be judged in order to determine who would be the next Hallyu phenomenon. According to SBS, "This is not an audition where you can succeed with only vocal skills. This program is open to anyone who can dance, sing, or have talent. This will be an audition where the people who made Korea's biggest stars will pick the next global star. Simply stating, this is the ultimate audition." The winner of this program will win a prize money of 300,000,000 won for the production of his or her album, as well as the opportunity to release the album globally through the three management companies (SM, YG, JYP). Other prizes include an opportunity to sign a contract with a management company, an offer to star in a drama or become a CF model, a free car, and various other opportunities. The first round of auditions will begin on July 5th at 6:00 PM KST through the ARS or SBS homepage. Source: TV ReportMay 30, 2011
To mark the first anniversary of the arrest of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the alleged whistleblower responsible for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, the Guardian has produced a 19-minute film, "The madness of Bradley Manning?" telling his story, and including elements that have not been reported before. Arrested in Kuwait on May 26, 2010, after computer hacker Adrian Lamo, with whom he had apparently been communicating about his activities downloading confidential material and handing it on to WikiLeaks, reported him to the FBI, Manning was held in solitary confinement in a military brig in Quantico, Virginia, for nine months from July 2010 to April 2011, when he was moved to Fort Leavenworth in Texas, where some social interaction is allowed. The film is available below, as are cross-posts of two Guardian stories published to accompany it, Bradley Manning: the bullied outsider who knew US militarys inner secrets and Bradley Manning: fellow soldier recalls scared, bullied kid. In the film and the articles and of importance, along with new revelations about aspects of Mannings personal life and how he was bullied in the military, and should have been discharged because, as a former colleague explained, he was "a mess of a child" are new details about the lax security in Iraq, where Manning allegedly downloaded the material that he later made available to WikiLeaks in particular, former colleague Jacob Sullivan explaining, "If you saw a laptop with a red network wire going into it, you knew it was on SIPRNet. If you had the password you could access SIPRNet. Everybody would write their password on sticky notes and set it by their computer. There is no wonder something like this transpired." In addition, Peter van Buren, a civilian reconstruction team leader on the base, told the Guardian that there was "a sense of a security free-for-all about SIPRNet" (the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, described by the US military (PDF) as "a system of interconnected computer networks used by the United States Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State to transmit classified information (up to and including information classified SECRET)." With these new revelations, the fears about Mannings mental health while he was detained in Quantico, which sparked outrage in the US and around the world, and which I discussed in my articles, Is Bradley Manning Being Held as Some Sort of "Enemy Combatant"?, Former Quantico Commander Objects to Treatment of Bradley Manning, the Alleged WikiLeaks Whistleblower, On the Torture of Bradley Manning, Obama Ignores Criticism by UN Rapporteur and 300 Legal Experts and US Intelligence Veteran Defends Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks, are even more understandable, as he is clearly not someone of great mental resilience. It remains distressing that he has had to wait so long for a trial, for which, as yet, no date has been announced, although he was initially charged in July 2010, and more charges were added in March this year, including "aiding the enemy," which, theoretically at least, is a capital offense. As Wired reported last week, however, Adrian Lamo "is set to meet with the chief prosecutor on the case for the first time" on June 2, "mark[ing] the first outward sign that Mannings court-martial case is proceeding apace now that a lengthy inquiry into his mental health has concluded." As Wired also noted, a military review board known as a "706 board" "had been requested by Mannings attorney, David Coombs, to determine if his client suffered a severe mental disease or defect" at the time he allegedly downloaded classified information and leaked it. Rather alarmingly, given what the Guardian investigation revealedabout Mannings mental health, "The board concluded late last month that Manning was mentally fit, clearing the way for an Article 32 hearing the military equivalent of a grand jury to determine if a court-martial trial against Manning should proceed." In the meantime, the Bradley Manning Support Network continues to publicize Mannings unjust treatment. A rally will take place at Fort Leavenworth on June 4, and another creative campaigning initiative I Am Bradley Manning has also been launched, with supporters invited to submit messages and photos of themselves holding up cards stating, "I Am Bradley Manning." Bradley Manning: the bullied outsider who knew US militarys inner secrets
By Maggie OKane, Chavala Madlena and Guy Grandjean, The Guardian, May 27, 2011 Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old army private from Oklahoma alleged to have been behind the biggest US government leak of all time, is now in Fort Leavenworth military jail, Kansas. He faces 34 charges, and if convicted could face a prison sentence of up to 52 years. So why did the US army ignore warnings from officers that Manning was unstable? Why did it send him a 5ft 2in gay man with a history of being bullied in the military to one of the most isolated and desolate bases in Iraq? Why was security so lax on the base that passwords for secret military computers were posted on sticky notes nearby? A year after his arrest, a Guardian investigation reveals a trail of ignored warnings, beatings and failed personal relationships that led to Mannings arrest on 29 May 2010. Manning, the son of a former naval intelligence analyst, Brian Manning, and his wife Susan, was brought up in the small town of Crescent, Oklahoma. Neighbours watched the family disintegrate as Susan Manning turned to drink to ease the final years of the marriage. "I never saw her plastered, but Id go by there at two oclock in the morning and the lights would be on. I think she did her drinking when hed go to bed," one neighbour, Bill Cooper, said. In 2001, when Manning was 13, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to her home town of Haverfordwest, in west Wales, where he joined the local school, Tasker Milward comprehensive. Small, geeky and speaking with an Oklahoma accent, Manning was an obvious target for teasing, and he reacted furiously to it, friends recalled. "Bradleys sense of humour was different to the rest of ours, whereby the rest of the school kind of goad and tease each other," said schoolfriend Tom Dyer. "He was far too literal for that, and so would often snap back if he thought the joke had gone too far, which would cause laughter for everyone else." When he was 17, by which time he was openly gay, Manning returned to Crescent to live with his father, who had remarried. The software job his father promised in Tulsa didnt work out and neither did his relationship with his stepmother and her son. "I am nobody now, Mom," he wrote to his mother. In March 2006 his stepmother called the police, saying that he was "out of control". Manning left home, and for the next year slept on friends couches or in his pickup truck in other peoples driveways, earning money in a series of casual jobs in restaurants and coffee shops. Manning was keen to work with computers but quickly realised there would be no job for him without a degree. Joining the US army, he decided, would be his best chance of getting one as they would help pay for it through the GI bills provision for soldiers education. "He joined the army because he wanted to go to university," said Keith Rose, a friend of Mannings from time he spent in Boston.He said the armys attitude towards gay people did not put Manning off. "I asked him that night how he could join, given the armys attitude towards gays. He told me he was a patriot but there were benefits too. He wanted to go to university." In October 2007, Manning joined up. He was far from typical soldier material. He was smart, gay, physically weak and politically astute. "He knew all kinds of things," said Rose. "He was heavily educated in science. He knew math. He knew what was going on in the world." He enlisted in October 2007 and was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for basic training, but in just over a month he was moved to a discharge unit and on the verge of expulsion. One man who befriended Manning in the unit, but who wishes to remain anonymous, explained what being in the discharge unit meant. "He was not bouncing back. Hes going home. You dont just accidentally end up in a discharge unit one day. You just have somebody one day saying, 'You know what, he is no good lets get him out of here. There are a lot of steps to go to before you even hit a discharge unit." Manning was picked on, the friend said, and used to wet himself. "[Once] there were three guys that had him up front and cornered. And they were picking on him and he was yelling and screaming. "We got up there it was me and a couple of the guys and we started breaking it up. We were saying, "Get the hell out of there, back off," and everything and started pulling Manning off. The other guys were taking care of the ones that were picking on him and stuff. I got Manning off to the side there and yeah, he pissed himself. It wasnt the only time he did that, but that was the only time that I remember. It happened a few other times, the other guys will probably tell you the same story. Just a different circumstance." Despite the concerns of his immediate superiors, Manning was "recycled" instead of being discharged. The war in Iraq was in its fourth year and the army was short of recruits. In August 2008, after training as an intelligence analyst, he was stationed at Fort Drum in upstate New York while he awaited deployment to Iraq. Here he was considered a "liability" by superior officers. His weekends at Fort Drum were occupied by visiting his first serious boyfriend, Tyler Watkins, a student at Brandeis University, near Boston. Watkins began taking Bradley to events at his universitys gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender society, Triskelion, and introduced his computer-loving boyfriend to Danny Clark, a student at MIT. Through Clark, the Boston "hacktivist" scene consisting of some of the worlds most prominent and smartest hackers opened up to Manning. Here Manning appeared to have found his place. He appears in photographs looking tanned and happy in Pika House, a clapboard communal student residence in the suburbs of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The pictures appeared in a Facebook album Bradley captioned: "Randomly hung out with some pikans." Bradleys snaps were mostly of the tie-dyed T-shirt wearing Clark. The rest of the pictures are of the jumble of gadgets, electronics and posters that cover the house. The day Manning was posted to Iraq in October 2009, Watkins went to a gay march wearing a placard that read "Army wife". Manning was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer, one of the most isolated US posts in Iraq, in the desert close to the Iranian border. Veterans recalled a desolate place built mainly from freight containers. "There was a fog that would come in almost every morning that was pollution from nearby that smelled sour and nasty, and would just wave through and linger," said Jacob Sullivan, who served alongside Manning at Hammer. Hammers overriding culture was one of boredom and casual bullying, where bored non-commissioned officers picked on juniors. "They had a saying, 'Shit rolls downhill," said Jimmy Rodriguez, 29, an infantry soldier who was stationed at the base with Manning. For entertainment, soldiers would download porn to workstations or access footage from Apache attack helicopters showing civilians being shot at, often through SIPRNet, the classified intelligence network used by the state department and department of defence. It was data downloaded from this network that would later find its way to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. According to Sullivan, security was extremely lax. "If you saw a laptop with a red network wire going into it, you knew it was on SIPRNet. If you had the password you could access SIPRNet. Everybody would write their password on sticky notes and set it by their computer. There is no wonder something like this transpired." According to Peter van Buren, a civilian reconstruction team leader on the base, there was a sense of a security free-for-all about SIPRNet. "Soldiers would call it 'war porn or 'the war channel or just 'war TV. It was hypnotic to watch, even when not much was happening, just this lazy overhead view of the world around you. For many soldiers, it was all they ever saw of Iraq," Van Buren said. "I saw them using the SIPRNet for entertainment. Thats what most of the people did most of the time," said Rodriguez. "They would watch these videos of different things and some of them were videos of helicopters attacking people or drones or whatever the case, or maybe fighter jets. But they were watching military footage." "We were pretty much bored all the time," he recalled. "When you got to Iraq, we got to Baghdad and ended up in Forward Operating Base Hammer. They would [say to] us: 'Heres the videos; heres the internet; heres all the interesting games." In January 2010 Manning went on leave and visited his friends in Boston, including Watkins. It became clear their relationship one of the most significant in his life was near its end. That January, Rose recalled, "Bradley was really down. Tyler was like an anchor for Bradley and the one constant for that entire year. He gave me a two-hour earful about all the things in the relationship that he didnt understand. He had gone in the military and come back and he didnt have his relationship anymore." While his relationship with Watkins was souring, Manning socialised with Clark at the launch party for Builds a hackers playground in Boston Universitys computer science faculty where they would simulate unlocking codes and bypassing online security. Film footage shows him leaning against a table a soldier in his collared shirt, he looks very different from the grungy student hackers at a top university. Nevertheless, he appears comfortable inside this elite circle. Less than a week later, Manning was back at his intelligence analysts computer in Iraq. "I live in a very real world, where deaths and detainments are just statistics; where idealistic calls for 'liberation and 'freedom are utterly meaningless," Manning wrote in a final message to Watkins on Facebook. "I dont have a real place to call home, except for a trailer with a bunk, a laptop, and an alarm clock. Please dont let the LAST PERSON that I trust and care about go away. I havent given up." On 5 May he wrote of being "beyond frustrated with people and society at large", and a day later, on 6 May, he wrote: "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment." On 7 May Manning was found in a foetal position in a storeroom after stabbing a chair with a knife as he tried to carve the words "I want" into the seat. He had punched his commanding officer, a woman, in the face. He was disciplined and demoted and told he was to be finally discharged from the army on grounds of "adjustment disorder". In the space of a few weeks, he had lost his job, his boyfriend and his chance of a university education. During the following fortnight, Manning turned back to his computer and his hacker friends. He began chatting with someone who didnt even know him, hacker Adrian Lamo. In the early hours of 25 May, Manning had his last conversation with Lamo. The following day Lamo reported him to the authorities and he was escorted from his computer room. After three days of questioning he was charged in relation to the biggest intelligence leak in US military history. The US military has refused to make any comment on Mannings mental health record other than to confirm it is being investigated. He is due to be courtmartialled in December. Bradley Manning: fellow soldier recalls scared, bullied kid
The Guardian |
the city. Some troops were in full retreat: A city busload of them careened past on the highway headed west, and purple curtains flapped through windows shot out by gunfire.” (New York Times)
Have you ever heard of a commanding officer asking his men whether they want to fight or not? It’s ludicrous. This is a defeated army, that much is clear. And it’s easy to understand how the average grunt feels, too. The average working guy doesn’t have the stomach for killing his own people. That’s not something he’s going to feel good about. He just wants to see the war end and go home, which is why they’re getting whooped so bad. It’s because their hearts aren’t in it. In contrast, the farmers, shopkeepers and miners who make up the militia are highly-motivated, after all, this isn’t some geopolitical game for them. Most of these people have lived in these cities their entire lives. Now they’re watching neighbors get gunned down in the streets or pulling friends out of the wreckage of bombed out buildings. For these people, the war is real and it’s personal. They’re defending their towns, their families, and their way of life. That tends to build resolve and focus the mind. Here’s more from the NY Times:
“The United States has photographs that show the Russian artillery moved into Ukraine, American officials say. One photo dated last Thursday, shown to a New York Times reporter, shows Russian military units moving self-propelled artillery into Ukraine. Another photo, dated Saturday, shows the artillery in firing positions in Ukraine. Advanced air defenses, including systems not known to be in the Ukrainian arsenal, have also been used to blunt the Ukrainian military’s air power, American officials say. In addition, they said, the Russian military routinely flies drones over Ukraine and shares the intelligence with the separatists.” (Ukraine Reports Russian Invasion on a New Front, New York Times)
Photos? What photos? Gordon doesn’t have any photos. Ah, but he has heard about a New York Times reporter who saw a photo.
This is ridiculous, but, then again, isn’t that what you’d expect from a journalist who helped craft the pretext for invading Iraq?
Here’s how Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to the claims of a Russian invasion. He said:
“It’s not the first time we’ve heard wild guesses, though, so far, the facts have never been presented… There have been reports about satellite imagery exposing Russian troop movements. They turned out to be images from videogames. The latest accusations happen to be much the same quality… We’ll react by persisting in our effort to reduce the bloodshed and to support negotiations about the future of Ukraine, with participation of all Ukrainian regions and political forces, something that was agreed upon back in April in Geneva, but which is now being deliberately avoided by our Western partners.” (RT)
There you have it; there is no Russian invasion anymore than there were WMD, mobile weapons labs, aluminum tubes, Sarin gas etc, etc, etc. It’s all BS concocted by a servile media pursuing the agenda of a warmongering political establishment that wants to escalate the conflagration in east Ukraine at all cost. Even if it leads to a Third World War.
MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.Cathay Williams (September 1844 – 1893) was an American soldier who enlisted in the United States Army under the pseudonym William Cathay. She was the first African-American woman to enlist, and the only documented to serve in the United States Army posing as a man.[1]
Early life [ edit ]
Williams was born in Independence, Missouri, to a free man and a woman in slavery, making her legal status also that of a slave. During her adolescence, Williams worked as a house slave on the Johnson plantation on the outskirts of Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1861 Union forces occupied Jefferson City in the early stages of the Civil War. At that time, captured slaves were officially designated by the Union as "contraband," and many were forced to serve in military support roles such as cooks, laundresses, or nurses. At age seventeen, Williams was pressed into serving the 8th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commanded by Colonel William Plummer Benton.
American Civil War [ edit ]
For the next few years, Williams traveled with the 8th Indiana, accompanying the soldiers on their marches through Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia. Cathay Williams was present at the Battle of Pea Ridge and the Red River Campaign. At one time she was transferred to Little Rock, where she would have seen uniformed African-American men serving as soldiers, which may have inspired her own interest in military service. Later, Williams was transferred to Washington, D.C., where she served with General Philip Sheridan's command. When the war ended, Williams was working at Jefferson Barracks.
U.S. Army service [ edit ]
Despite the prohibition against women serving in the military, Cathay Williams enlisted in the United States Regular Army under the false name of "William Cathay"[2] on November 15, 1866, at St. Louis, Missouri, for a three-year engagement, passing herself off as a man. She was assigned to the 38th United States Infantry Regiment after she passed a cursory medical examination.[2] Only two others are known to have been privy to the deception, her cousin and a friend, both of whom were fellow soldiers in her regiment.
Shortly after her enlistment, Williams contracted smallpox, was hospitalized and rejoined her unit, which by then was posted in New Mexico. Possibly due to the effects of smallpox, the New Mexico heat, or the cumulative effects of years of marching, her body began to show signs of strain. She was frequently hospitalized. The post surgeon finally discovered she was a woman, and informed the post commander. She was discharged from the Army by her commanding officer, Captain Charles E. Clarke, on October 14, 1868.
Post-military service years [ edit ]
Cathay Williams went to work as a cook at Fort Union, New Mexico, and later moved to Pueblo, Colorado. Williams married, but it ended disastrously when her husband stole her money and a team of horses. Williams had him arrested. She next moved to Trinidad, Colorado, where she made her living as a seamstress. She may also have owned a boarding house. It was at this time that Williams' story first became public. A reporter from St. Louis heard rumors of an African-American woman who had served in the army, and came to interview her. Her life and military service narrative was published in The St. Louis Daily Times on 2 January 1876.
U.S. Army Pension records for Cathay Williams
In late 1889 or early 1890, Cathay Williams entered a local hospital where she remained for some time, and in June 1891, applied for a disability pension based on her military service. The nature of her illness and disability are unknown. There was precedent for granting a pension to female soldiers. Deborah Sampson in 1816, Anna Maria Lane, and Mary Hayes McCauley (better known as Molly Pitcher) had been granted pensions for their service in the American Revolutionary War.
Declining health and death [ edit ]
In September 1893, a doctor employed by the U.S. Pension Bureau examined Cathay Williams. Despite the fact that she suffered from neuralgia and diabetes, she had all her toes amputated, and could only walk with a crutch, the doctor decided she did not qualify for disability payments. Her application was rejected.[3][4]
The exact date of Williams' death is unknown, but it is assumed she died shortly after being denied a pension, probably sometime in 1893. Her simple grave marker would have been made of wood and deteriorated long ago. Thus her final resting place is now unknown.
Honors [ edit ]
In 2016, a bronze bust of Cathay Williams, featuring information about her and with a small rose garden around it, was unveiled outside the Richard Allen Cultural Center in Leavenworth, Kansas.[5]
In 2018, the Private Cathay Williams monument bench was unveiled on the Walk of Honor at the National Infantry Museum.[6]
See also [ edit ]When I started the precursor to the curl project, httpget, back in 1996, I wrote my first URL parser. Back then, the universal address was still called URL: Uniform Resource Locators. That spec was published by the IETF in 1994. The term “URL” was then used as source for inspiration when naming the tool and project curl.
The term URL was later effectively changed to become URI, Uniform Resource Identifiers (published in 2005) but the basic point remained: a syntax for a string to specify a resource online and which protocol to use to get it. We claim curl accepts “URLs” as defined by this spec, the RFC 3986. I’ll explain below why it isn’t strictly true.
There was also a companion RFC posted for IRI: Internationalized Resource Identifiers. They are basically URIs but allowing non-ascii characters to be used.
The WHATWG consortium later produced their own URL spec, basically mixing formats and ideas from URIs and IRIs with a (not surprisingly) strong focus on browsers. One of their expressed goals is to “Align RFC 3986 and RFC 3987 with contemporary implementations and obsolete them in the process“. They want to go back and use the term “URL” as they rightfully state, the terms URI and IRI are just confusing and no humans ever really understood them (or often even knew they exist).
The WHATWG spec follows the good old browser mantra of being very liberal in what it accepts and trying to guess what the users mean and bending backwards trying to fulfill. (Even though we all know by now that Postel’s Law is the wrong way to go about this.) It means it’ll handle too many slashes, embedded white space as well as non-ASCII characters.
From my point of view, the spec is also very hard to read and follow due to it not describing the syntax or format very much but focuses far too much on mandating a parsing algorithm. To test my claim: figure out what their spec says about a trailing dot after the host name in a URL.
On top of all these standards and specs, browsers offer an “address bar” (a piece of UI that often goes under other names) that allows users to enter all sorts of fun strings and they get converted over to a URL. If you enter “http://localhost/%41” in the address bar, it’ll convert the percent encoded part to an ‘A’ there for you (since 41 in hex is a capital A in ASCII) but if you type “http://localhost/A A” it’ll actually send “/A%20A” (with a percent encoded space) in the outgoing HTTP GET request. I’m mentioning this since people will often think of what you can enter there as a “URL”.
The above is basically my (skewed) perspective of what specs and standards we have so far to work with. Now we add reality and let’s take a look at what sort of problems we get when my URL isn’t your URL.
So what is a URL?
Or more specifically, how do we write them. What syntax do we use.
I think one of the biggest mistakes the WHATWG spec has made (and why you will find me argue against their spec in its current form with fierce conviction that they are wrong), is that they seem to believe that URLs are theirs to define and work with and they limit their view of URLs for browsers, HTML and their address bars. Sure, they are the big companies behind the browsers almost everyone uses and URLs are widely used by browsers, but URLs are still much bigger than so.
The WHATWG view of a URL is not widely adopted outside of browsers.
colon-slash-slash
If we ask users, ordinary people with no particular protocol or web expertise, what a URL is what would they answer? While it was probably more notable years ago when the browsers displayed it more prominently, the :// (colon-slash-slash) sequence will be high on the list. Seeing that marks the string as a URL.
Heck, going beyond users, there are email clients, terminal emulators, text editors, perl scripts and a bazillion other things out there in the world already that detects URLs for us and allows operations on that. It could be to open that URL in a browser, to convert it to a clickable link in generated HTML and more. A vast amount of said scripts and programs will use the colon-slash-slash sequence as a trigger.
The WHATWG spec says it has to be one slash and that a parser must accept an indefinite amount of slashes. “http:/example.com” and “http:////////////////////////////////////example.com” are both equally fine. RFC 3986 and many others would disagree. Heck, most people I’ve confronted the last few days, even people working with the web, seem to say, think and believe that a URL has two slashes. Just look closer at the google picture search screen shot at the top of this article, which shows the top images for “URL” google gave me.
We just know a URL has two slashes there (and yeah, file: URLs most have three but lets ignore that for now). Not one. Not three. Two. But the WHATWG doesn’t agree.
“Is there really any reason for accepting more than two slashes for non-file: URLs?” (my annoyed question to the WHATWG)
“The fact that all browsers do.”
The spec says so because browsers have implemented the spec.
No better explanation has been provided, not even after I pointed out that the statement is wrong and far from all browsers do. You may find reading that thread educational.
In the curl project, we’ve just recently started debating how to deal with “URLs” having another amount of slashes than two because it turns out there are servers sending back such URLs in Location: headers, and some browsers are happy to oblige. curl is not and neither is a lot of other libraries and command line tools. Who do we stand up for?
Spaces
A space character (the ASCII code 32, 0x20 in hex) cannot be part of a URL. If you want it sent, you percent encode it like you do with any other illegal character you want to be part of the URL. Percent encoding is the byte value in hexadecimal with a percent sign in front of it. %20 thus means space. It also means that a parser that for example scans for URLs in a text knows that it reaches the end of the URL when the parser encounters a character that isn’t allowed. Like space.
Browsers typically show the address in their address bars with all %20 instances converted to space for appearance. If you copy the address there into your clipboard and then paste it again in your text editor you still normally get the spaces as %20 like you want them.
I’m not sure if that is the reason, but browsers also accept spaces as part of URLs when for example receiving a redirect in a HTTP response. That’s passed from a server to a client using a Location: header with the URL in it. The browsers happily allow spaces in that URL, encode them as %20 and send out the next request. This forced curl into accepting spaces in redirected “URLs”.
Non-ASCII
Making URLs support non-ASCII languages is of course important, especially for non-western societies and I’ve understood that the IRI spec was never good enough. I personally am far from an expert on these internationalization (i18n) issues so I just go by what I’ve heard from others. But of course users of non-latin alphabets and typing systems need to be able to write their “internet addresses” to resources and use as links as well.
In an ideal world, we would have the i18n version shown to users and there would be the encoded ASCII based version below, to get sent over the wire.
For international domain names, the name gets converted over to “punycode” so that it can be resolved using the normal system name resolvers that know nothing about non-ascii names. URIs have no IDN names, IRIs do and WHATWG URLs do. curl supports IDN host names.
WHATWG states that URLs are specified as UTF-8 while URIs are just ASCII. curl gets confused by non-ASCII letters in the path part but percent encodes such byte values in the outgoing requests – which causes “interesting” side-effects when the non-ASCII characters are provided in other encodings than UTF-8 which for example is standard on Windows…
Similar to what I’ve written above, this leads to servers passing back non-ASCII byte codes in HTTP headers that browsers gladly accept, and non-browsers need to deal with…
No URL standard
I’ve not tried to write a conclusive list of problems or differences, just a bunch of things I’ve fallen over recently. A “URL” given in one place is certainly not certain to be accepted or understood as a “URL” in another place.
Not even curl follows any published spec very closely these days, as we’re slowly digressing for the sake of “web compatibility”.
There’s no unified URL standard and there’s no work in progress towards that. I don’t count WHATWG’s spec as a real effort either, as it is written by a closed group with no real attempts to get the wider community involved.
My affiliation
I’m employed by Mozilla and Mozilla is a member of WHATWG and I have colleagues working on the WHATWG URL spec and other work items of theirs but it makes absolutely no difference to what I’ve written here. I also participate in the IETF and I consider myself friends with authors of RFC 1738, RFC 3986 and others but that doesn’t matter here either. My opinions are my own and this is my personal blog.Was President Barack Obama born in Hawaii? I find the question so absurd, not to mention possibly racist in its motivation, that when I am confronted with “birthers” who believe otherwise, I find it difficult to even focus on their arguments about the difference between a birth certificate and a certificate of live birth. The reason is because once I formed an opinion on the subject, it became a belief, subject to a host of cognitive biases to ensure its verisimilitude. Am I being irrational? Possibly. In fact, this is how most belief systems work for most of us most of the time.
We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, emotional and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture and society at large. After forming our beliefs, we then defend, justify and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments and rational explanations. Beliefs come first; explanations for beliefs follow. In my new book The Believing Brain (Holt, 2011), I call this process, wherein our perceptions about reality are dependent on the beliefs that we hold about it, belief-dependent realism. Reality exists independent of human minds, but our understanding of it depends on the beliefs we hold at any given time.
I patterned belief-dependent realism after model-dependent realism, presented by physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their book The Grand Design (Bantam Books, 2011). There they argue that because no one model is adequate to explain reality, “one cannot be said to be more real than the other.” When these models are coupled to theories, they form entire worldviews.
Once we form beliefs and make commitments to them, we maintain and reinforce them through a number of powerful cognitive biases that distort our percepts to fit belief concepts. Among them are:
Anchoring Bias. Relying too heavily on one reference anchor or piece of information when making decisions.
Authority Bias. Valuing the opinions of an authority, especially in the evaluation of something we know little about.
Belief Bias. Evaluating the strength of an argument based on the believability of its conclusion.
Confirmation Bias. Seeking and finding confirming evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignoring or reinterpreting disconfirming evidence.
On top of all these biases, there is the in-group bias, in which we place more value on the beliefs of those whom we perceive to be fellow members of our group and less on the beliefs of those from different groups. This is a result of our evolved tribal brains leading us not only to place such value judgment on beliefs but also to demonize and dismiss them as nonsense or evil, or both.
Belief-dependent realism is driven even deeper by a meta-bias called the bias blind spot, or the tendency to recognize the power of cognitive biases in other people but to be blind to their influence on our own beliefs. Even scientists are not immune, subject to experimenter-expectation bias, or the tendency for observers to notice, select and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment and to ignore, discard or disbelieve data that do not.
This dependency on belief and its host of psychological biases is why, in science, we have built-in self-correcting machinery. Strict double-blind controls are required, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know the conditions during data collection. Collaboration with colleagues is vital. Results are vetted at conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Research is replicated in other laboratories. Disconfirming evidence and contradictory interpretations of data are included in the analysis. If you don’t seek data and arguments against your theory, someone else will, usually with great glee and in a public forum. This is why skepticism is a sine qua non of science, the only escape we have from the belief-dependent realism trap created by our believing brains.Will Arnett is having an affair. With Venice, that is. The Toronto-born actor, who played lovable idiot Gob Bluth on Arrested Development and now voices an animated stallion on BoJack Horseman, has lived there on and off since 2000. His infatuation is hard for him to explain—it’s as if he’s trying (and failing) to describe his best friend in only three words. “What I love about Venice,” he says, “is that it’s always had edge.” (One.) “It’s very gritty.” (Two.) “But it’s such a unique place.” (Three.) The Netflix series Flaked (premieres March 11), a seriocomedy cowritten by Arnett and Mark Chappel, is a more comprehensive ode. Arnett plays Chip, a holier-than-thou Venice local crumbling under the weight of carefully crafted pretense: He leads AA-type meetings but nurses a bottle of kombucha, which is actually red wine. The show is rife with deeply site-specific references (Gjelina is simply referred to as “Gj”), though Arnett thinks it will still resonate with non-natives. “Venice is a place where people come to reinvent themselves,” he says. “People who don’t live there will want to spend time there.” Here he ponders kissing Chris Pratt and which dead actor could rock TOMS.
Venice’s unofficial anthem?
“We All Live in a Yellow Submarine.”
Accurate. Do you have a reason?
Everyone in Venice is in agreement that they’re all on this weird trip together. My friend tweeted last year, “What’s the name of that band that everybody in Venice is in?” I sometimes want to say to people, “Hey, man, I really like your costume.” But I love it. Total respect.
Four L.A. bike basket essentials?
Water, a bike lock, sunscreen, and coupons to Bay Cities, so you could ride over and get as many sandwiches as you wanted on Lincoln. That would be rad.
Dead Angeleno most likely to wear TOMS?
Cary Grant. He’d make them look unexpectedly elegant.
L.A.-based comedian who could live on the Venice Boardwalk?
Zack Galifianakis. No hesitation. He’d fit in, and nobody would notice him.
Tony Robbins or Tony Hale?
Tony Hale all day. Picking Tony Robbins over Tony Hale would symbolize a real rift.
If BoJack Horseman were your life coach, what advice would he give you?
First of all, It would be bad advice. His advice would be, “Don’t trust your instincts.”
Three Angelenos you’d recruit for a Venice drum circle?
I have to include a drummer, so Chad, the dude from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Then Dennis Hopper and Jason Bateman. I used to live two doors down from Dennis Hopper for years. That’d be a fun crew.
Marry, Kiss, Kill, costar edition: Michael Cera, Chris Pratt, and David Sullivan.
I’d marry Michael Cera because he’s so easygoing. We’d just get along. To kiss David or Pratt would be a toss-up—I love both those guys. They’re both real handsome. I’d have to say kiss Sully and kill Pratt, because Sullivan is on Flaked and I can’t kill him.
What would your parting words to Chris Pratt be?
“You get it—right, bro?”
What would you name an L.A.-specific strain of marijuana?
Venice the Menace? With a picture of the creepy little face.
Clever! When I came up with this question, the only one I could think of was The 4-0-Fried.
Oh the 4-0-Fried is good. I love that.
What’s scarier: pilot season or piloting a plane?
Well, given that I’m an actor and not a pilot, I’m going to say piloting a plane.
To be fair, sometimes pilot season can be scary for actors.
Sure, but at least during pilot season I’m not going to die.
Arrested Development ’s banana stand or an L.A. fruit cart?
Banana stand, 100 percent.
More money in the banana stand?
Well, there’s always money in the banana stand.The city of Cairo is in a state of deterioration, says city planner Omar Nagati. We’re speaking in his mercifully air-conditioned office after making our way out of the hordes of people and cars competing for space in the 40-degree heat of the streets below.
Like many spaces in Downtown Cairo, Nagati’s headquarters is indistinguishable from the buildings that surround it – its doorway obscured as it blends with the general dilapidation of Sherif Pasha Street. Here, there’s a visible relationship between the formal and the informal.
While street traders occupy the ground floors, side streets and alleyways, boarded up windows and chipped paint on the upper storeys belie formal businesses within. For an organisation of urban planners and social researchers like Nagati’s Cluster, infrastructure like this – sometimes even built by the people themselves – is the status quo.
“Cairo is a city where more than two-thirds is built informally,” says Nagati. “So the informal process here is not the state of exception; it’s the mainstream.”
It’s through the narrow streets and back alleys of Downtown Cairo that Cluster is able to engage with local people and stakeholders to push an agenda of inclusive city planning.
An alley in Downtown Cairo - Image Courtesy of David Evers
In August, we travelled to Egypt and Morocco to find the designers responding to social issues through design in North Africa. After the Arab Spring in 2011 and the political instability that followed, journalists and creatives found a home in Downtown Cairo.
Graffiti lined the walls of the crumbling buildings, and old cafes and bars became the birthing places of revolutionary thinkers – out of sight of a then weakened regime but close enough to the iconic Tahrir Square. As Nagati recalls, they knew this moment of flux would be short-lived. It was up to designers to capitalise on this fleeting opportunity to bring about tangible change.
“The state was very weak and there was a very empowered sense of community, and people were taking to the streets and changing things on the ground. We knew that this is a temporary condition and that the State would eventually come back,” he says. “We wanted to discuss, how can we use this moment of suspension of order, this political vacuum. And what would people do if they were left to organise their streets and their neighbourhoods? And how can we as architects and planners learn from this informality, this informal order?”
One of the first projects to take root was Cairo Downtown Passages, an urban design and art project that reimagines Downtown’s public spaces to promote more diverse, inclusive, and accessible areas. Conceptualised during a collaborative workshop in 2014, two pilot projects were launched: the Kodak Passage and the Philips Passage. The former is a “Green Oasis” which transforms Kodak into a pedestrian park, while the latter is a “Light Oasis” in Philips, which brings marquee lighting and the possibility for film screenings to a previously dark and decaying space.
“The design is fairly simple,” explains Nagati. “We’re using it [passageways] to bring nature back into downtown. So we added a little bit of a green oasis or an urban garden. The idea is to try to mediate the public and private sphere. As you can see in Cairo, there’s a lot of spillover from shops onto the street but also street vendors and informal traffic organisation. So the public and private domain are not very clearly demarcated as they are in Northern Europe for example.”
Ultimately, the project, as evidenced by its small scale, is an attempt to look at the microcosm of the city. The idea, says Nagati, is to question how urban planners can negotiate, through design, the competing interests and competing claims to the city. “As you walk you have to negotiate your right to the street. From a gender perspective, from a class perspective, from a culture perspective, there are different frames of reference for what you can and cannot do – it’s not necessarily what the law says. There are multiple layers of order that govern,” he adds.
The projects are a testing site for Cluster’s Cairo Downtown Passageways: Walking Tour publication which maps Cairo’s passageways, back alleys, side streets and in-between spaces as an alternative framework for the development and revitalisation of the city.
The city needs an alternative because like cities across the world, the revitalisation of an area is very likely to be code for gentrification. According to Nagati, it’s the role of civil society to establish an alternative before classic gentrification led by private enterprises takes hold.
“You need to include in any plan or revision for Downtown or any neighbourhood, the local community, which is not necessarily the case so far,” he says, pointing to two reasons why urban planning has so far excluded the local people.
Firstly, Egypt does not have a mechanism of participatory government in that locals have no local governmental departments through which to lobby for the changes they need. Secondly, plans to restore Downtown were undertaken after the revolution:
“You can see the buildings being painted. And that’s led by the government in partnership with private sector companies,” says Nagati. “Usually, these private sector companies are less concerned about the fine grain and more about the turnover of profit. And that’s their business, I’m not blaming them.”
The next step is to establish an art council that acts as a mediator between local people and the government, adds Nagati: “We want to have a body that represents the interests of civil society and arts and culture relations to talk to the government and say, we are the third leg of this triangle and it’s really actually your advantage that we thrive because we don’t only bring art and culture but we also bring business. Right now, we’re working on a study to assess the economic impact of the creative sector in Downtown and it’s huge.”
Next: Cairo’s underground youth & the gender divide in this growing subcultureBeyoncé has a horsefly named after her. A tarantula has Johnny Cash’s name. And President Barack Obama has nine species, from ancient lizards to coral reef fish, named in his honor.
Now President-elect Donald Trump is joining their ranks with a California moth named Neopalpa donaldtrumpi in recognition of the incoming 45th president.
White and yellow scales on the moth’s head look like Trump’s blond hairdo, researchers said in their report on the newly discovered species Tuesday.
Evolutionary biologist Dr. Vazrick Nazari published an article about the moth in the scientific journal ZooKeys. Nazari discovered the new species while dissecting moths from the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis. He noticed three of the specimens he was studying had a distinct wing pattern and unique DNA profile and realized it was a new species.
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Nazari also named the moth after Trump to gain attention and raise public awareness of fragile habitats that may contain undiscovered species. The moths have been found in Riverside and Imperial counties in Southern California, where the species’s natural habitat is at risk from urban growth, according to the research article.Janusz Ryszard Korwin-Mikke ( Polish: [ˈjanuʂ ˈkɔrvʲin ˈmʲikkɛ]; born 27 October 1942), often referred to by his initials JKM, is a Polish politician, philosopher, writer and the founder of the Congress of the New Right party and the Liberty party. He has been a member of the European Parliament from 2014 until 2018. He was the leader of the Congress of the New Right (KNP),[1] which was formed in 2011 from Liberty and Lawfulness, which he led from its formation in 2009, and the Real Politics Union (UPR – Unia Polityki Realnej), which he led from 1990 to 1997 and from 1999 to 2003. Currently, he is the chairman of the party Liberty, which changed its name from KORWiN.
Biography [ edit ]
Janusz Ryszard Korwin-Mikke was born in German-occupied Warsaw on October 27, 1942. He was the only child of Ryszard Mikke and Maria Rosochacka. His father was the head of an engineering department of the State Aviation Works. After the death of his mother during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, he was under the care of his grandmother and later stepmother. He studied at the Faculty of Mathematics and Faculty of Philosophy of the Warsaw University. For his anti-communist activities, in 1964 he was detained by the communist authorities while studying psychology, law, philosophy and sociology. During the 1968 Polish political crisis, he was again arrested, jailed and expelled from the university for his participation in student protests.[2] Despite his anti-communist activities, JKM was reinstated and allowed to finish his studies with the dean Klemens Szaniawski. He successfully defended his master thesis Metodologiczne aspekty poglądów Stephena Toulmina (eng. Methodological aspects of Stephen Toulmin's views), written under the guide of Henryk Jankowski.[3]
From 1962 to 1982 he was a member of the Democratic Party. In August 1980 he supported the political strike of the Szczecin Shipyard workers, and later he was an adviser of NSZZ Rzemieślników Indywidualnych "Solidarność" (Independent Craftsmen's Union). When he was elected the chairman of a classical liberal political party called Ruch Polityki Realnej (Movement of Real Policy), which in 1989 changed its name to Unia Polityki Realnej (UPR, Union of Real Policy). In 1990 he established a new weekly, Najwyższy Czas! ("It's High Time!"). The paper was named to have published a number of antisemitic articles, some of them by Korwin-Mikke himself, but no exact reference to any particular articles was made.[4] Janusz Korwin-Mikke himself has since then frequently denied being an anti-Semite.[5][6]
Korwin-Mikke met with Milton Friedman when Friedman toured Europe advocating free-market policies. Friedman wrote about Janusz Korwin-Mikke in his memoirs:[7]
Janusz Korwin-Mikke, with whom I corresponded, had been active before liberation as an underground publisher, bringing out a translation of Capitalism and Freedom and Hayek's Road to Serfdom, as well as other libertarian literature. Subsequently, he ran for president on a strict libertarian platform. At the time we were in Warsaw, his Union of Real Policy was housed in a former dwelling that was a literal maze of small offices, all occupied by young people actively working on spreading the libertarian gospel. We had very good, lively discussions with them. — Milton Friedman, Two lucky people: Memoirs by Milton Friedman, Rose. D. Friedman
Korwin-Mikke was a Member of Parliament during the first term of the Sejm of the Third Republic of Poland. He was the originator of the vetting resolution on 28 May 1992, which obliged the Minister of Internal Affairs to disclose the names of all politicians who had been communist secret police agents. The disclosed list contained numerous prominent politicians of most political factions. This led to the government being overthrown by the opposition and the President Lech Walesa.[8]
He was a candidate for the UPR in the Polish presidential election of 1995, obtaining 2.4% of the vote. He was also candidate in 2000 when he got 1.43% of the vote. In the senate by-election in Wrocław in April 2004 he got 18% of the vote, but did not win the seat. In the presidential elections of 2005 he obtained 1.4% of the vote. Running as a candidate of a new party, the self-named "KORWiN", he received 3.3% of the vote and placed fourth in the 2015 presidential election.[9]
Janusz Korwin-Mikke is a libertarian conservative.[10] His economic views are radically libertarian.[11] He frequently refers to such figures as Frédéric Bastiat, Alexis de Tocqueville, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher.[12] Korwin-Mikke is a self-declared monarchist and thinks that democracy is the "stupidest form of government ever conceived"[13] where "two bums from under a beer stand have twice as many votes as a university professor".[14] Because of that his initials (JKM) are usually compared to Polish abbreviation of the phrase "his majesty" – Jego Królewska Mość. He claims that "This leads to idiocy, defraudation and corruption" and "this is how the Athenian democracy ended".[14]
In 2008, his blog was the most popular political blog in Poland.[15]
Janusz Korwin-Mikke is a former professional contract bridge player. He has authored, together with Andrzej Macieszcz |
starting and shortly afterwards KWin should take over. If everything is configured correctly you should see the normal splash screen (seems like my system is not configured correctly).
Once the system is fully started you can just use it. If everything works fine, you should not even notice any difference, though there are still limitations, like only the three mouse buttons of my touchpad are supported 😉 I would post a screenshot but it’s fairly uninteresting as one cannot see a difference.
This blog post was written in a KDE Plasma session running in Wayland.Written by: Cadence
The NSA have once again proved hypocritical. Despite a spokesman writing to The Washington Post last August claiming “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber”, top secret plans have proposed otherwise.
American lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald has released a 2009 memo that clearly defined “technology acquisition by any means” to give American corporations an advantage in global markets. The report was provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowdon.
It has already been revealed that Brazilian oil giant Petrobas, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and international banking systems were all spied on, amongst many others. Even the EU antitrust commissioner investigating Google, Microsoft and Intel was targeted.
In response to the Petrobas revelations, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted collecting “information about economic and financial matters”, but categorically denied more morally questionable purposes. He said: “What we do not do…is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of –or give intelligence we collect to- U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line”.
The report, however, shows exactly plans to do just that. It focused on the possibility if “the United States’ technological and innovative edge slips”, particularly “that the technological capacity of foreign multinational corporations could outstrip that of U.S. corporations”. Energy, medicine, information technology and nanotechnology were all listed as crucial areas where this could happen.
In this case, the report recommended “a multi-pronged, systematic effort to gather open source and proprietary information through overt means, clandestine penetration (through physical and cyber means), and counterintelligence”. Notably, the memo discussed “cyber operations” to penetrate “covert centers of innovation”.
While some may even believe the NSA should have the right to protect the U.S’s financial position globally, the hypocrisy of the situation cannot be ignored. In May, five Chinese government employees were indicted for spying on U.S. companies. Attorney General Eric Holder said this was done “for no reason other than to advantage state-owned companies and other interests in China”, and “this is a tactic that the U.S. government categorically denounces”.
The fascinating 2009 memo also contemplated scenarios the U.S. intelligence community felt they may face in 2025. These included a “China/Russia/India/Iran centred bloc (that) challenges U.S. supremacy”, and even a world where “identity-based groups supplant nation-states”.
_________________________________________________________________________
Sources
http://deepcor.com/news/1208/snowden-reveals-us-plans-to-spy-on-financial-targets
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-economic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/Federal Judge Strikes Down Florida Gay Marriage Ban
When Democratic political operative Christian Ulvert started his career nearly a decade ago, he was in the closet.
Since then, Ulvert — now the Florida Democratic Party’s political director — has come out in the open about his homosexuality, married his partner Carlos Andrade and seen his career skyrocket.
But it was U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle’s ruling Thursday striking down Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage that Ulvert said validated his personal journey.
“It’s a judge recognizing my marriage to my husband in a state where I was born and raised. And it means that a law that discriminated against couples like me and Carlos is unconstitutional,” said Ulvert, who married Andrade last year in Washington, D.C.
Ulvert — who said his journey has morphed his sexuality from a political liability “to pride, joy and positive acceptance”—
and his partner are among nine sets of same-sex couples in two combined federal lawsuits challenging the state’s ban on gay marriage. Hinkle’s ruling is the latest in a string of court victories for same-sex couples and LGBT advocates in Florida but the first statewide ruling. Although gay couples won’t be tying the knot in Florida any time soon because the judge placed a hold on his ruling, Hinkle’s opinion is considered historic in a state where voters just six years ago placed a prohibition against gay marriage in the state constitution.
“The institution of marriage survived when bans on interracial marriage were struck down, and the institution will survive when bans on same-sex marriage are struck down. Liberty, tolerance, and respect are not zero-sum concepts. Those who enter opposite-sex marriages are harmed not at all when others, including these plaintiffs, are given the liberty to choose their own life partners and are shown the respect that comes with formal marriage. Tolerating views with which one disagrees is a hallmark of civilized society,” Hinkle wrote in a 33-page decision.
The lawsuit accuses the Florida prohibition on same-sex marriage of allowing disparate treatment, including in benefits extended to couples such as retirement plans and health insurance. The plaintiffs include Arlene Goldberg who married Carol Goldwasser in New York in 2011 and had been with her mate for 47 years. Goldberg sued because she could not receive Social Security survivor benefits after Goldwasser died earlier this year. Hinkle also ruled Thursday that Goldberg should be listed on her spouse’s death certificate.
While advocates are celebrating the Tallahassee federal judge’s decision, couples across the country like Ulvert and his partner are biding their time until the U.S. Supreme Court, which paved the way for Hinkle’s ruling, renders a final decision on gay marriage.
In the meantime, Hinkle ruled that the ban interferes with couples’ rights to due process and equal protection and likened the prohibition against same-sex unions to laws that prevented blacks and whites from marrying nearly 50 years ago. The U.S. Supreme Court, Hinkle wrote, has “sometimes listed marriage as the very paradigm of a fundamental right.”
Hinkle rejected arguments that same-sex marriages should be banned because gay couples cannot procreate, saying that individuals who are medically unable to have children can marry in Florida and their marriages, if performed elsewhere, are recognized in the state.
“The undeniable truth is that the Florida ban on same-sex marriage stems entirely, or almost entirely, from moral disapproval of the practice,” Hinkle wrote.
Hinkle’s ruling comes after four similar state-court rulings in Florida since a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year in the United States v. Windsor case that overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Courts in 19 other states have since struck down restrictions on same-sex marriages in lawsuits sparked by the Supreme Court decision.
Florida Family Policy Council President John Stemberger, who drafted and pushed the 2008 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, said Thursday he was surprised by Hinkle’s ruling because, in the Windsor decision, the Supreme Court had deferred in part to states to make decisions about gay marriage.
“People ask me, are you on the wrong side of history? To me, this issue will never be on the wrong side of history because it’s rooted in the human experience. A little boy who longs to have a father in the inner city — that will never be on the wrong side of history. The little girl who has two dads and doesn’t have a mom and she wants someone to guide her through the changes that a woman’s body goes through — that’s never going to be on the wrong side of history. And the beauty of how a man and woman come together and life is born and the next generation springs from that, that’s never going to be on the wrong side of history,” Stemberger said.
Like judges in the other Florida cases, Hinkle issued a stay of his ruling pending appeals. A spokesman for Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has represented the state in all of the cases, said her office is reviewing Hinkle’s ruling.
Stemberger, however, said he remains hopeful.
“I’m done being discouraged. I’m done being happy when we win and sad when we lose. I just want to be faithful doing what I think is the right thing in the end,” Stemberger said. “I can’t control history. All I can do is use the influence that I have for the right thing.”
by Dara Kim, The News Service of FloridaSeveral footballers not good enough to play in English Premier League have redeemed themselves at Hyde FC.
Some see it coming, others never forget the rejection, these talented young footballers with genuine hopes of reaching the top.
They grow up as the best footballers in their street, their school, their area. Everyone talks about them. They are spotted by a English Premier League club and progress through the youth ranks. Contracts are signed and football becomes their full-time job. Everyone tells them how great they are, how lucky they are.
They cannot help but think that stardom is imminent. And then they get called to see the manager.
"Steve Bruce told me that he couldn't see me breaking into the first team," says Andrew Pearson, who had been at Wigan Athletic on a professional contract. "He said that I wouldn't be getting a new deal."
And that was that. Goodbye. Close the door behind you.
"I'd been with Bolton since 14 and then Wigan, where I was captain of the reserves," Pearson says. "I trained with the first team. Then I was 21 without a club and without a clue what to do next. It was awful."
Pearson waited for the phone to ring.
"I thought other Football League clubs would be interested," he says, "but the phone didn't ring.
"I lost my fitness and went from playing with top internationals to playing with my mates. My confidence was hammered and I drifted into non-league football. I didn't enjoy it."
Pearson got a job in an air-conditioning company.
Then he ended up at Hyde FC.
Scott Spencer was a teenage wonder kid, for whom Everton paid £220,000 (Dh1.2m) in 2006. He was 17 and had been with third tier Oldham Athletic since 10.
"I was scoring lots of goals in the youth team at Oldham, and there was interest from Spurs and Bolton [Wanderers]," says Spencer, now 22. "Then I went to Everton. The move blew my mind. I was training with top-class players and working under David Moyes. I thought I was going to be a Premier League footballer, but there's a big problem at Premier League clubs – if you're not in the first team then there are not enough games for the other players.
"I went from playing twice a week at Oldham to playing a reserve game every two weeks at Everton. You need to be playing far more than that at 17 and 18. Maybe I needed to be mentally stronger, but you need to be developing and getting game experience. I didn't and suffered.
"I was loaned to Yeovil and Macclesfield. I could see that I wasn't going to be kept on at Everton and one day David Moyes called me into his office. I was half expecting it."
Spencer picked up the phone and called managers. He had trials at Swindon and was about to sign for Hereford when he got offered a deal with Rochdale which was closer to his Manchester home. Unfortunately, that coincided with Rochdale's best season for decades and he could not get in the team. He signed for Southend United and did well, but a change of manager saw his position worsen.
"The manager [Paul Sturrock] wrote me a handwritten letter on two sides of A4 saying why I wasn't good enough," he says. "He only outlined my flaws. How's that for helping your confidence?"
He finished last season at Lincoln City, where Southend refused to pay his release fee, claiming that he had broken a clause in his contract not to talk about the club when he left. Lincoln were relegated and Spencer deactivated his Twitter account, such was the abuse he got from Lincoln fans.
Then he found his way to Hyde FC.
Ryan Crowther started out with his local club Stockport County and made two appearances before moving to Liverpool in 2007 for an undisclosed fee thought to be £400,000. He was hailed as one of the most exciting young players in Britain. After two years he left the club "by mutual consent".
He was later sentenced to four months in prison for a drunken attack on a taxi driver in Watford. He was picked up by Hyde FC where he was paid less than £200 a week like the other players – before moving on recently, back into the world of full-time football with all that entails.
Hyde FC, based in the foothills of the Pennine hills 10 miles east of Manchester, play in England's sixth division. Manchester City use their smart, 4,200-capacity Ewen Fields home for reserve matches. With average gates of just over 300, Hyde United were on the verge of going out of business in 2009 and owed £120,000 to the Britain's tax authorities.
The fans, local businesses and the footballing community contributed to their survival. In 2010, Manchester City got involved. The word 'United' was dropped from their name, their red stadium was painted blue and City paid them around £1,000 a week - not the millions green-eyed rivals suspect. Hyde have spent £17,000 of that money bringing the pitch up to Premier League standard. It's conducive to the football they play.
Hyde only just survived relegation to the seventh tier last season and started this term with the fifth lowest wage bill in the league, their semi-professional players earning around £150 a week. They appointed Gary Lowe, an experienced and ambitious non-league manager, who lives locally, together with assistant Martyn Booty. They have been a revelation.
Relegation favourites, Hyde won their first 10 games of the season, play 4-3-3 attacking football, which belies their level and currently top the league by eight points from local rivals Stalybridge Celtic, who are full-time.
Spencer is the top scorer with 18 goals from 15 league starts, Crowther did so well that he earned a move and full-time contract with big-spending Fleetwood in November, while Andy Pearson is a defensive mainstay. Hyde have caught these still youthful falling stars and let them play football alongside other rejects from professional clubs and hardened non-league stalwarts. All of them are once again loving the game they had learnt to hate.
"These lads don't lose the ability which once attracted the bigger clubs who signed them," Lowe says. "I look at their personality and try and work out their make-up, their level of fitness and desire to succeed. Some of them just need confidence, regular football or a bit of freedom on the pitch.
"They have lost focus, fallen out of love with football or found themselves lost in a club which has 100 professionals. They're angry and bitter with the game and themselves. They're either adrift after time in the wilderness or maybe they've had a moment of madness like Ryan, which has cost them dearly."
Lowe cannot offer riches, "but we can offer very good football on a beautiful pitch", he says.
That is more than enough for the players.
"I'm playing men's football regularly for the first time in my life," Spencer says. "I love it and the team spirit is amazing. Training was cancelled the other night, but the lads got together to arrange our own session. Of course, I want to be full-time again in football, but I'm happy here and it would have to be the right move before I'd consider moving. I'm not going to the other end of the country to sit on a bench."
"I didn't think I could get back into full-time football a year ago, but I do now," Pearson says. "Hyde have given me a big lift."
Not every discarded pro gets back playing. The three-year-old daughter of one such reject should not have opened the letter which was addressed to her father, but she did.
Then she passed it to her mum, who was appalled by the contents.
It was a demand from a debt collection agency. She quickly leaned that her long-term partner was in debt to the tune of £30,000, a huge amount of money which amounted to more than either of them earned in a year. She knew nothing of this.
Paul Mitten had been a footballer. The grandson of the Manchester United legend Charlie Mitten (and a second cousin of this reporter), he started out at Manchester United, a year below David Beckham.
"I joined United at 11 and was kept on at 16 for another two years," he says. "I was a year below the famous class of '92 and players like Beckham, Nicky Butt, the Neville brothers and Paul Scholes. Several of the lads in my year had very good careers and one, Michael Appleton, is now manager of Portsmouth. He's still one of my best mates."
Mitten ruptured his cruciate ligament at 16. Then he damaged his Achilles. He was not surprised to be released from United at 18. He then spent eight months trying his luck at Bury, Crewe, Stoke and Burnley before Premier League Coventry City took him on trial. He impressed sufficiently to earn an 18-month professional contract earning £175 a week.
Eight games into that, he ruptured his right cruciate ligament. He was already low on confidence when manager Ron Atkinson, publicly, in front of the first-team players, said: "Why are you here at this club? You're no use to me injured."
That comment shattered what confidence remained.
Mitten was released and moved to non-league Southport. He got fit, then broke his leg after four games. He went to Stalybridge in England's fifth division, but fell out of football and started gambling heavily because, "I needed the buzz which football had given me. I would bet on anything for that buzz".
He reached his nadir when his little daughter opened the letter. Luckily, his partner stuck with him on the condition that he confronted his problem with professional help.
"I didn't do it through football," he says, "but I've turned my life around and qualified as a fireman three years ago. I'm paying my debts back and life's good again, but it took me 10 years to get over that rejection."
Hyde FC were not an option for him 12 years ago. It is a blessing that they are around now for players such as Pearson, Crowther and Spencer. Professional football sweeps what it calls its "wastage rate" under the carpet, and for thousands of discarded young men whose dreams are shattered, there is little help.
sports@thenational.ae
Follow The National Sport on @SprtNationalUAE & Andy Mitten on @AndyMittenFor more of the latest Islamic State news visit www.dailymail.co.uk/isis
She praised Paris attacks and expressed desire to marry an ISIS fighter
Authorities found ISIS videos and pictures of beheadings on her phone
A Swedish teenager has been sentenced to a year in prison in Austria after being found guilty of trying to join ISIS.
The 17-year-old from Linkoping, Sweden, was arrested in Vienna, Austria, where she claims she was due to meet up with two other Swedish teens to head to the Syrian front.
After going through her phone, police found images of ISIS beheadings, as well as messages where the teenager praised the terrorist attacks in Paris
ISIS fan: The 17-year-old from Linkoping, Sweden, was arrested in Vienna, Austria, in December, after she ran away from home to join ISIS, having read terror group leaflets on how to travel to the Syrian front
The girl was a born in Falun, Dalarna, in north-central Sweden in 1998, but was brought up in Linkoping by her parents, who are Somalian immigrants.
The family has previously told Swedish media how she has been bullied at school and had been taking anti-depressants.
They said had noticed her becoming more radicalised in the months before her arrest, having found ISIS videos on her devices, and became instantly worried when she disappeared.
They reported her disappearance to Swedish police, but it was one of her two younger brothers who managed to track her down using the Find My Iphone app.
The family called Austrian police and sent them a photo of the teenager, which led to her arrest on December 5.
Proof: When examining her phone, Austrian police found images of ISIS beheadings, books on how to join the terrorist group, as well as messages where the teen expressed over the November 13th Paris terror attacks
Regrets: The girl has admitted to planning on going to Syria but that she became scared when she got to Vienna and realised what she had signed up for
Support: The teenager's mother and younger brother are pictured arriving in Landesgericht fuer Strafsachen (Vienna regional court for criminal affairs) in Vienna, Austria on Thursday
Upon her arrest it emerged that she had managed to get to Vienna without a passport, and nothing but her phone, a charger and £55 in cash.
Her defence attorney Wolfgang Blaschitz, used this during his statement in court on Thursday, arguing that the girl was 'naive'.
When police examined the teenager's phone, they found that she had been a member of a WhatsApp chatt group for ISIS supporters where images of beheadings and terrorism had been shared.
One of her messages read: 'But if they cannot be converted, they must be killed', and she also expressed happiness and support for the November 13th Paris terror attacks.
Defence: A lawyer for the defendant, Wolfgang Blaschitz told the court that the girl was 'naive'
The girl has today spoken to Swedish media, admitting to planning on going to Syria but that she became scared when she got to Vienna and realised what she had signed up for.
'I am not a terrorist. I am not a terrorist, I have made a mistake,' she told Expressen.
'I read the books [on how to travel to Syria and join ISIS], but it was months ago.
'I backed ISIS, but not anymore. I got problems and my mum and dad helped me - not ISIS.'
A spokesman for the prosecutor said 'it's clear that she was trying to persuade other young people to join ISIS and that she intended to marry an Isis fighter in Syria,' The Local reports.
A court in Vienna today handed down a one year conditional sentence, and told she would not have to spend any more time in jail, having been incarcerated since her arrest in December.Eric Zuesse
A few days ago, on May 14th, Ms. Ayelet Shaked (pictured here), who has no training in the law, took office as the new Minister of Justice in Israel, after having been appointed to this high post by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 6th.
Among other things, the Ministry of Justice’s responsibilities include legal advice and legislation, the Office of the State Attorney, Civilian Legal Aid, and the Public Defender. The Minister of Justice has considerable discretionary authority, especially because, unlike most nations, Israel has no written constitution. (Orthodox Jews wanted it to be the Torah, so instead there is no constitution at all.)
On 1 July 2014, Ms. Shaked posted an article to facebook, with the following in it, arguing why all Palestinians, including all who live in Israel (she made no distinction as to where a “Palestinian” lives), are members of “the Palestinian people” and that “the Palestinian people” are enemies of the State of Israel, and must therefore be destroyed. In her own words (as Bing autotranslated and accepted by her):
——
[She concurs with, and then she expands upon, the statement by a former Netanyahu official, that] ‘The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we need to fight back.’ … This is a war between the two Nations. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. … All the Palestinian people is the enemy. All war is between two peoples. … It is impossible not to harm the citizens of the enemy. … The war has to be correct in principle, not just politically, [like] what America did in Afghanistan, including bombs of populated localities, including the creation of refugees of hundreds of thousands of people who fled the fighting. … Enemy soldiers are hiding within the population, and only because of the [public’s] support they can fight. … All the enemy fighters and bleeding in the head. It’s also the mothers of the martyrs, that send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They need to follow them [to die], there’s nothing in it. They need to go [be destroyed], and the physical House [in] which they raised the snake. Other small snakes grow more [if the whole family isn’t destroyed]. … The two houses [both generations] need to [be] bomb[ed] from the air, to destroy and to kill. And we have to explain that from now on every home of a martyr [will be destroyed]. There is nothing right and probably not even that useful [achieved by not bombing]. Each bomber should have known he was taking with him both his parents and his home and neighbors. All UM Jihad hero that sends her son to hell needs to know that she’s going with him. Along with the House and all that. The list cannot be focused. That’s war.
——
Subsequently, in interviews after her facebook posting became controversial, she has denied that she meant that every Palestinian is at war against Israel. However, instead of her defending what she had written at that facebook posting, she simply removed it altogether. Fortunately, however, I had directly copied the original before it was removed; and all of that original Hebrew, plus a translation that she provided there along with it, which was an auto-translation by Bing, and which is especially valuable here since there can be no prejudices in an autotranslation. Her accepted translation will be followed by one provided anonymously at a different website, that of GWU law professor Jonathan Turley, and which is a bit clearer at a few points. But first here, the above highlights from the autotranslation have already been given, since this sequence of highlights presents the core of her argument. That was done in order to facilitate the reader’s quicker comprehension of the full versions, which might otherwise appear to be so mush-headed as to seem shocking for the sheer stupidity of her essay. It was almost incoherent. (Some people refer to her as “Israel’s Sarah Palin.”) But she has risen to be Israel’s equivalent of America’s Attorney General. And Israel is ‘America’s ally.’ (Polls do show that Americans overwhelmingly support Israel’s Jews against Palestinians.)
Here, then, is her complete statement, first as it was posted to facebook, in Hebrew (subsequently withdrawn by her because of its having become the focus of controversy); and, then, as it was autotranslated by Bing and accepted by her; and, then, finally, as translated by some anonymous person at the site of GWU professor Jonathan Turley. The passages that were just given, above, of excerpts, are among the portions from the autotranslation that I have highlighted below by boldfacing:
——
http://archive.is/zWrrG originally at
https://www.facebook.com/ayelet.benshaul.shaked/posts/596568183794945
איילת שקד
July 1 2014 at 2:59am ·
מאמר של אורי אליצור ז“ל שנגנז, נכתב לפני 12 שנה :
“העם הפלשתיני הכריז עלינו מלחמה, ואנחנו צריכים להשיב מלחמה.
לא מבצע, ולא מתגלגל, ולא עצימות נמוכה, ולא הסלמה מבוקרת, ולא הריסת תשתיות הטרור, ולא סיכול ממוקד. מספיק להמציא כינויים עמומים. זו מלחמה. יש משמעות למילים. זו מלחמה. ולא מלחמה בטרור, ולא מלחמה בקיצוניים, ואפילו לא מלחמה נגד הרשות הפלשתינית. גם אלה צורות של התחמקות מהמציאות. זו מלחמה בין שני עמים. מי האוייב? העם הפלשתיני. למה? תשאלו אותו, הוא התחיל.
אני לא יודע למה כל כך קשה לנו להגדיר את המציאות במילים הפשוטות שהשפה העמידה לרשותנו. למה צריך להמציא כל שבועיים שם חדש למלחמה הזאת, ורק לא לקרוא לה בשמה. מה כל כך מזעזע בהבנה שהעם הפלשתיני כולו הוא האוייב. כל מלחמה היא בין שני עמים, ובכל מלחמה העם שפתח במלחמה, כולו, הוא האוייב. הכרזת מלחמה איננה פשע מלחמה. בוודאי לא השבת מלחמה. ולא שימוש במילה “מלחמה“, ולא הגדרה ברורה של האוייב. להיפך. מוסר המלחמה (ויש דבר כזה) מבוסס על ההנחה שיש מלחמות בעולם, ומלחמה איננה מצב רגיל, ובמלחמות בדרך כלל האוייב הוא עם שלם, על זקניו ונשיו, עריו וכפריו, רכושו ותשתיותיו.
ומוסר המלחמה יודע שאי אפשר שלא לפגוע באזרחי האוייב. הוא לא מגנה את חיל האוויר הבריטי שהפציץ והרס לחלוטין את דרזדן הגרמנית, ואת מטוסי ארה“ב שהרסו את ערי פולין והחריבו את מחצית בודפשט, מקומות שתושביהם האומללים מעולם לא עשו רעה לאמריקה, אבל צריך היה להרוס אותם כדי לנצח במלחמה נגד הרשע. מוסר המלחמה לא קורא להעמיד לדין את רוסיה שמפציצה והורסת עיירות ושכונות בצ‘צ‘ניה. הוא לא מוקיע את כוחות השלום של האו“ם על הרג של מאות אזרחים באנגולה, ולא את כוח נאט“ו שהפציץ את בלגרד של מילושביץ, עיר מיליון אזרחים, זקנים ותינוקות נשים וילדים. מוסר המלחמה מקבל כנכון עקרונית, ולא רק פוליטית, את מה שעשתה אמריקה באפגניסטן, כולל הפצצות מסיביות של יישובים מאוכלסים, כולל יצירת תנועת פליטים של מאות אלפי בני אדם שנמלטו מאימת המלחמה, ולאלפים מהם לא נשאר בית לשוב אליו.
ובמלחמה שלנו זה נכון שבעתיים, כי חיילי האוייב מסתתרים בתוך האוכלוסיה ורק בגלל תמיכתה הם יכולים להלחם. מאחורי כל מחבל עומדים עשרות אנשים ונשים, שבלעדיהם הוא לא היה יכול לחבל. משתתפים בלחימה המסיתים במסגדים, כותבי תוכניות הלימודים הרצחניות, נותני המחסה, מספקי הרכב, וכל מעניקי הכבוד והתמיכה המורלית. כולם לוחמי האוייב וכולם דמם בראשם. עכשיו זה כבר כולל גם את האמהות של השאהידים, ששולחות אותם לגיהינום בפרחים ונשיקות. הן צריכות ללכת בעקבות בניהן, אין דבר צודק מזה. הן צריכות ללכת, וגם הבית הפיזי שבו הן גידלו את הנחש. אחרת יגדלו שם נחשים קטנים נוספים.
השבוע יש חגיגות אבל וכבוד בשני בתים של שני רוצחים נתעבים. אני מניח שפתחו שם סוכות אבלים, וכל נכבדי העיר באים לתת כבוד לאימא ולאבא שגידלו את השטן. את שני הבתים האלה צריך להפציץ מן האוויר, על מנת להרוס ועל מ |
’t date raped chicks, and thus encourage girls to think that crying rape will hurt their romantic prospects.
Realize that we are fighting a war of disinformation, against an unprincipled enemy that is openly contemptuous of the truth. Nothing could be more tediously unproductive than arguing over facts with an opponent who has chosen to forego them. To win this fight, you have to hit the bitches where it hurts.
And for most chicks, that means attacking their romantic prospects—or, more fundamentally, their attractiveness. Even the most manjawed cunt secretly harbors fantasies of locking down a good man, marrying him, and thereby trebling her disposable income. Chicks will cry rape if it means endless, adoring attention with zero associated cost. But they won’t if they think getting raped renders them unattractive in the eyes of men.
A Brief Guide To Never Dating Raped Chicks
This is not baseless internet bravado. I have already begun testing these techniques in the wild. The effect is immediate, dramatic, and amusing. But it is important that you implement Not Dating Raped Chicks properly, so I leave you with several suggestions and one short, real-world example.
First, don’t seek opportunities to voice your aversion to dating raped chicks. Wait for someone else to bring it up.
Second, explain your position with sympathy for raped chicks, even expressing regret that you couldn’t date one. Never dating raped chicks isn’t retributive. It’s simply something you, as a man, feel compelled to do.
Last, don’t take individual responsibility for never dating raped chicks. Explain that all males feel this way; the testicular fortitude to own your feelings is all that distinguishes you from the mass of men.
In practice, it looks like this:
Vapid Office Chick: Did you hear about that girl who got raped at Columbia? It’s awful. I read that at the end, her attacker pulled out and jizzed the words “Reify patriarchy” across her chest.
Enlightened RoK Reader (head bowed): So true, so unquestionably true. And the worst part is, now she’ll never get married.
Vapid Office Chick: Right— wait, what?
Enlightened RoK Reader (mournfully): Yeah. Most men won’t even date a raped chick. How would she ever get married?
Thirsty White Knight: Um, wow. You don’t know what you’re talking about, dude. (turns to Vapid Office Chick) I don’t care about a girl’s past. I care about who she is now.
Enlightened RoK Reader: Sure, but almost all of your friends are women. And don’t you own Scandal on Blu-ray?
Thirsty White Knight (with rising anger): So?
Enlightened RoK Reader: I mostly socialize with other men, and they all say the same thing: They would never date a raped chick. I’m not endorsing it, necessarily. It’s just how men are.
(fin)
This is a 10-megaton truth bomb, and your interlocutors will likely be angry and confused in its wake. Don’t expect them to agree with you, but don’t argue the point further. Once you’ve planted the seeds, step away and give them time to grow.
This is admittedly a long-term strategy. But if we band together in this effort, then someday, in the not-so-distant future, a 6.5 will find herself in her dorm room, regretfully recalling the night she got pounded out by the captain of her college’s club soccer team… and she’ll idly contemplate crying rape.
But then she’ll remember how much she likes the captain of the club swim team, and she’ll consider the impact crying rape would have on his opinion of her. And she’ll think better of her little lie.
And when she does, it will be because together, we took a stand against ever dating raped chicks.Woman who cried rape after sex in public toilet walks free from court
A woman who accused a student of rape after dragging him into a public toilet for sex was spared jail yesterday.
Bisexual Sarah-Jane Hilliard, 20, seduced Grant Bowers when the two bumped into each other during a night out clubbing.
Yesterday Mr Bowers, also 20, attacked the 'ridiculous' sentence after Hilliard received 12 months in jail, suspended for two years. She had denied perverting the course of justice.
Sarah-Jane Hilliard, pictured last summer, claimed she'd been raped after a night out but a jury found her guilty of perverting the course of justice. Today she was given a 12-month jail sentence suspended for two years Just over a week after making the allegations, Hiliard contacted the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, hoping to be awarded up to £7,500
Student Grant Bowers had to wait a week before police told him he wouldn't be charged with rape
Mr Bowers - who says he is now afraid to speak to women - said: 'It's absolutely ridiculous. That's not even a slap on the wrist. She's been let off and I'm still having to sneak around because there are still people after me who think I did it.'
It was more than a week after his arrest that Mr Bowers discovered he was not to be charged.
But during that time Hilliard, who was in a relationship with a woman, contacted the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in the hope of claiming up to £7,500.
Mr Bowers's father Tony, 48, said: 'My son was facing up to ten years in prison for rape on the strength of her lies. The least I expected was for her to have been given a prison sentence.
'My son is the victim and he has lost his freedom yet she has still got hers.'
Hilliard, from Basildon in Essex, told police she bumped into Mr Bowers at a nightclub called Liquid in the town in July 2008. She claimed to have shared a taxi with him before stopping at the railway station to use the toilet.
The telephone sales worker, who had been drinking, said she went into a cubicle and the next thing she remembered was waking to her underwear and trousers around her ankles.
She claimed to have realised she had been raped only when Mr Bowers sent her a text the following day in which he mentioned they had 'gone all the way'.
Hilliard's lie began to unravel when police were unable to find CCTV footage of the pair leaving the club.
A friend admitted they had been at another nightclub called Colors and detectives found CCTV evidence of Hilliard and Mr Bowers, who was 19 at the time, kissing and holding hands.
Hiliard and Mr Bowers had sex in a toilet cubicle at Basildon station. She told him he 'better be there for the baby' if she fell pregnant
Hilliard was convicted in May last year after Mr Bowers told a jury at Basildon Crown Court he had walked to the station with her and she pulled him into a cubicle for unprotected sex.
Afterwards she warned he had 'better be there for the baby' if she became pregnant.
Her sentencing was delayed for psychiatric reports and yesterday Judge Christopher Mitchell ordered Hilliard to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work and pay £2,000 costs.
After hearing she had 'deeply personal issues' including suffering abuse from a relative, he said: 'False allegations of rape have a terrible knock-on effect.'
Jacqueline Carey, defending, revealed that since her conviction Hilliard had been assaulted by two men, had the word 'bitch' scratched on to her car and lost her partner and friends.
Last year a GP was spared jail by Judge Mitchell despite smacking female patients' bottoms and grilling them about their sex lives.
Married Rajinder Aggarwal, 54, was instead ordered to pay £3,000 and do 80 hours of unpaid work.LAS VEGAS -- A North Las Vegas woman is alive because of the quick actions of her neighbor. Investigators said the woman was targeted in an attempted murder-suicide while her neighbor heard what was going on and went outside with a gun to intervene, Saturday.
The shooting happened around noon. Police say Ronnie Lee Boal, 67, shot his 23-year-old wife in the arm at the home.
Neighbor Tom Currie heard the violent fight spill out into the street.
He went outside saw his neighbor getting shot at and the estranged husband wasn't far behind ready to shoot again.
"I don't think it would end up like it is, he probably would have killed her," Currie said. "I heard a woman's voice, screaming for help and I went to my room and got the pistol that I carry."
Currie managed to get the injured woman around the corner to safety even while they were being shot at by his gun wielding neighbor. He knew his injured neighbor needed help or she wasn't going to make it.
"When I saw her out there, and bleeding so bad, the first thing you do, your mind just goes to helping a person and at the same time you have to look our for your safety because in the back of your head, someone's got a gun," Currie said. "She was starting to go out and I was just trying to talk to her, ‘don't lose it and everything is ok.'"
Currie's daughter Jeanette said she expected nothing less from her dad.
"I'm the one that's always getting on him for doing things like that and you know 'watch out' you got to be careful." Jeanette Currie said.
Currie didn't fire a single shot from his pistol and said police came up to him after ward and told him how courageous he was.Students vandalized a memorial to veterans on the eve of their holiday @campusreform https://t.co/Gh5bLKEDrt — Kassy Dillon (@KassyDillon) November 12, 2016
Some Are Wearing Safety Pins to Show They're a 'Safe Place' After Trump's Win
Classes Canceled to Allow College Students to 'Cope' with Shock of Trump's Win
Students at Brown University tore up and threw away Veterans Day flags that were placed on campus last week to honor those who have served our nation.
Video of the incident was posted to Facebook by a student at the Providence, Rhode Island, campus before an annual Veterans Day ceremony.
Nicholas Strada wrote: "Today was a sad day.... Hundreds of flags were set up on the main green of Brown University by 2 VETERANS in honor of Veterans Day tomorrow, and when i got out of class, people had snapped them, ripped them, and threw them aside (in the video)."
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He said that he spent an hour and a half taping the flags back together and placing them along the walkway. Strada lamented that out of hundreds who walked by during that time, only two people stopped to help him.
The university said in an email to the Washington Post that it's investigating the vandalism.
"We do not condone the activities that led to the flags being removed, and destruction of property is subject to disciplinary review," the statement said.
The Brown Daily Herald reports that the vandalism prompted a sit-in by students who disagree with their classmates' views. But a student who agreed with the flag removal reportedly wrote on Facebook, "How can you support something as stupid as the American flag?"
Meantime, Ivy League and other students are calling for school administrators to make their campuses "sanctuary" areas for undocumented immigrants following the election of Donald Trump.
At Harvard, a petition from "concerned" students and faculty called on the administration to "proclaim Harvard Memorial Church as part of the network of sanctuary churches that provide a refuge for students facing deportation proceedings."
At Brown, students and staff wrote a letter to the school "to request that you investigate the possibility of our campus serving as a sanctuary for our students, our staff members and their family members who face imminent deportation."
Watch more below from America's Newsroom and read more, here.
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'A Terrifying Man': Beck Says Trump Chief Strategist Steve Bannon Is a 'Nightmare'The crossbar resistive memory array, in which the storage elements are two-terminal resistive switches (sometimes termed memristors) forming a passive interconnected network, and hybrid crossbar/CMOS systems have been identified as a leading candidate for future memory and logic applications.(1-11) However, a fundamental problem for such a passive array is that ‘sneak paths,’ which correspond to parasitic current paths that bypass the target storage element, can be formed (Figure S1, Supporting Information) and cause the array to be nonfunctional. To suppress current flowing through sneak paths, a memory cell in the crossbar memory essentially needs two components: a memory switching element which offers data storage and a “select device” which regulates current flow. Several reports have shown that it is possible to scale the switching element down to nanometer scale with excellent performance in terms of speed, retention, and endurance.(12-15) On the other hand, obtaining a suitable select device that can be integrated in a crossbar array has become a significant challenge in resistive memory research, since diodes based on crystalline materials are not suitable for low-temperature fabrication, while those based on low-temperature materials suffer from performance and reliability issues.(16-18) Due to these difficulties, even though a number of approaches have been proposed to address the sneak path problem using diodes as the select device or using novel complementary cell structures,(16-20) the demonstrations have been essentially limited to the single-device level (either from standalone devices or from arrays in which all nonselected devices were kept in the off-state), and actual array-level operations where many cells are written then read out together have remained elusive.
Instead of relying on an external diode as the select device, a more ideal approach is to take advantage of the inherent nonlinear current–voltage (I–V) characteristics obtained in some resistive switches themselves to break the sneak current paths.(21-24) Here we demonstrate that fully operational crossbar arrays that do not require external transistor or diode select devices can indeed be built by employing switching elements with inherently nonlinear I–V characteristics. The transistor- and diode-less crossbar arrays can be readily stacked on top of each other to further maximize the density advantage offered by the nanoscale devices.(4) Furthermore, by eliminating the requirement of having an external select device at each crosspoint, this approach significantly simplifies the array fabrication processes and enables the array to be completed at low temperature and directly integrated on top of underlying CMOS circuits. In this demonstration, the CMOS circuits provide peripheral functionality, such as address decoding, to complement the data storage functionalities of the crossbar array. A new programming scheme is also developed to control the device on-resistance and allow for multilevel storage in the array.
The device structure studied here consists of a W/SiGe stack, an amorphous Si (a-Si) layer, and a Ag layer acting as the bottom electrode, the switching medium, and the top electrode, respectively. The thickness of each layer was carefully designed for arrays of 50 nm half pitch. To prevent CMOS degradation in this back-end-of-line (BEOL) approach, the maximum temperature involved in all the fabrication processes was kept below 425 °C. The final structure shown in Figure 1a has 40 top nanowire electrodes crossed with 40 bottom nanowire electrodes with a switching element formed at every crosspoint. A 50 nm half pitch was achieved through electron beam lithography and yielded an equivalent data storage density of 10 Gbits/cm2 (Figure 1b) when storing one bit per memory cell. A higher data storage density was also achieved by multilevel operation as discussed below. To integrate the crossbar structure directly on top of the CMOS circuit, every row (top electrode, corresponding to the word-line) and column (bottom electrode, corresponding to the bit-line) inside the crossbar array was connected through nanoscale (∼300 nm) vias to the output of a specific CMOS decoder unit underneath, as schematically illustrated in Figure 1c. In this integrated system, a row decoder enables the selection of a row wire (word line) for connection to the data input (DATA A) via CMOS pass transistors based on a row–address code input. Unselected rows (whose addresses do not match the input address code) are connected to a separate data input (DATA B), as schematically illustrated in Figure 1d. A similar configuration exists for the columns (bit lines). With the word- and bit-line combinations selected, the desired programming or read voltage (supplied to DATA A) is applied across the selected cell only. All other cells are biased with predefined protective voltages, grounded, or left floating through DATA B. As a result, the integrated system allows random programming of the 1600 cells inside the 40 × 40 array using only two DATA inputs and five address inputs at each side (20 rows or columns are connected to decoders on each side of the array), instead of having to supply 40 × 2 data inputs simultaneously, as is the case without CMOS decoder circuitry.
Figure 1. (a) SEM image of a crossbar array fabricated on top of a CMOS chip. Scale bar: 5 μm. (b) SEM image of the active crossbar array area showing 50 nm half pitch and 10 Gbits/cm2 density. Scale bar: 500 nm. (c) Schematic of the hybrid integrated system. Insets: schematic highlighting the vertical integration of the crossbar array with the on-chip CMOS circuitry. (d) Schematic of the program/read schemes. Each column or row in the crossbar array is connected to one of the two external signal pads (DATA A for signal applied to the selected column/row, DATA B for signal connected to the unselected column/row) through CMOS decoder circuits controlled by address I/O pads. (e) I–V switching characteristics from 10 different cells in the crossbar array. Insets: I–V switch characteristics plotted in log scale demonstrating current suppression at negative bias in the on-state. (f) Threshold voltage distribution of 256 cells in the fabricated crossbar array. The threshold voltage is defined as the voltage at which the measured current is above 10–6 A.
Figure 1e shows the I–V switching characteristics of the integrated memristor crossbar/CMOS system using the programming method described above. Significantly, the fabrication of the memristor crossbar array in BEOL processing does not affect the CMOS device performance, and all programming and read signals can be passed through the CMOS circuit to the crossbar array as designed. In addition, Figure 1e shows that very similar switching curves can be obtained from devices in the fabricated crossbar array with a narrow threshold voltage distribution. Tight distribution of the switching characteristics is a prerequisite for the operation of resistive memories at large scale to avoid accidental programming/erase events during the application of protective or read voltages. To further illustrate the switching parameter statistics, Figure 1f plots the histogram of the threshold voltages obtained from 256 cells in an array, showing a tight distribution with an average threshold voltage of 2.30 V and a standard deviation of 0.07 V. We note that the devices studied here are strictly speaking memristive devices instead of linear memristors,(25) but these two terms are commonly used interchangeably in the literature and will not be distinguished in this paper.
It is also noteworthy that the cells maintain an intrinsic current-rectifying behavior as shown in Figure 1e (and its inset), such that the current at reverse bias is pronouncedly suppressed compared to the current at forward bias, consistent with earlier reports on similar stand-alone cells.(21) It needs to be noted that even though the current through the device is suppressed at relatively small reverse bias, the device remains in the on-state, and only transitions to the off-state become erased with large (e.g., < −1.5 V) negative voltages. This effect is verified in Figure S2, Supporting Information, which shows that the on-state is not destroyed with reverse biases up to −1 V. The intrinsic current-rectifying characteristic can effectively break the sneak current paths (Figure S1b, Supporting Information) and is a key reason that the array studied here can operate without having an external transistor or diode at each crosspoint.
To test the operation of the integrated crossbar array, a binary bitmap image with 1600 pixels (40 × 40) representing the University of Michigan logo was prepared (Figure 2a, with the black pixels representing data 0, i.e., the ‘off-state’ and white pixels representing data 1, i.e., the ‘on-state’). The image was then programmed into the 40 × 40 integrated array and read out. For writing ‘1’ into a cell inside the array, a 3.5 V, 100 μs pulse was applied across the selected cell through the CMOS decoder circuit using the protocol discussed above, while the other unselected electrodes in the 40 × 40 array were connected to a protective voltage with amplitude equaling half of the programming voltage to minimize disturbance of unselected cells. A similar approach was used for writing ‘0’ using a −1.75 V, 100 μs erase pulse. The programming/erase speed here was mainly limited by the RC delay associated with the setup and can be significantly improved with integrated on-chip programming and sensing circuitry, as much faster intrinsic programming speed has been reported on similar devices.(14, 21) The programming/erasing was carried out based only on the input pattern and ignored the existing state of the memory cells, and a single programming/erase pulse was sufficient for each cell. Once all data were programmed in an array, the information in the array was then read out one cell at a time by applying a 1 V, 500 μs read pulse across the target cell, while grounding all unselected electrodes through the CMOS decoder. To minimize cell wear out, the 40 × 40 array was divided into 25 8 × 8 subarrays, and each subarray was programmed as a whole followed by readout. The 40 × 40 pixel bitmap image was reconstructed by stitching results from the 25 8 × 8 subarrays together. The resulting image in Figure 2b accurately reflected the initial target image and clearly demonstrated that by taking advantage of the intrinsic nonlinear I–V characteristics, the integrated crossbar/CMOS system could function well without added transistor or diodes as select devices at each cell. Operations based on larger subarrays (e.g., 20 × 20) have also been performed, and results are shown in Figure S3, Support Information.
Figure 2. (a) The original black and white 40 × 40 bitmap image representing the University of Michigan logo. (b) The reconstructed bitmap image obtained by storing and retrieving data in the 40 × 40 crossbar array. (c) A second test image, which is complementary to the original, to be stored in the array. (d) The reconstructed image, obtained by storing the image in (c) in the same array. (e,f) Histograms of the on- and off-state resistances for the data in (b) and (d), respectively.
To further illustrate the full functionality of the integrated crossbar array, a complementary image (Figure 2c) of the original was stored into the same array using the same approach. The reconstructed image for the complementary bitmap is presented in Figure 2d, verifying every bit in the crossbar array can be reliably reprogrammed to either the 1 or 0 state. The reliability of the memory array is further illustrated by examining the on- and off-state resistance distribution, as plotted in Figure 2e,f for the two cases. Clear separation between the 1 and 0 states is obtained, with at least 20× difference in resistance between the worst cases, verifying that the integrated crossbar/CMOS system can reliably store data at the array level.
In addition, the large on/off ratio offered by the cells (e.g., Figure 1e) suggests the possibility for multilevel cell (MLC) storage. Storing multiple levels in a single memory element is necessary to satisfy the needs of increased storage density and is also required for many neuromorphic applications for which resistive switches (memristors) are ideally suited.(26) MLC capability has been demonstrated in resistive memories by controlling the current compliance during switching or equivalently by controlling the series resistance the cell sees.(27-29) To verify MLC capability for devices in the integrated system, a single cell in the crossbar array was programmed (with all other cells in the off-state in this case) using different series resistances (0.1, 0.5, 1, and 5 MΩ). The results shown in Figure 3a demonstrated that MLC is indeed possible with the on-state resistance of the cell controlled by the series resistor value. This multilevel storage effect can be explained by the self-limiting filament growth model in which the filament growth rate is roughly an exponential function of the applied voltage across the memory device.(27, 28) As the resistance of the memory device approaches the series resistance value, the voltage across the device is reduced by the voltage divider effect, and filament growth significantly slows down resulting in a device resistance determined by the series resistance.(27, 28) The reproducibility of the MLC operation is verified in Figure 3b, which plots the resistance distribution from 30 different cells, each programmed into four different resistance states.
Figure 3. (a) I–V characteristics of a single cell programmed with four different series resistance values (0.1, 0.5, 1, and 5 MΩ), demonstrating multilevel capability. (b) Histogram of the on-state resistances for the four target values. The data were collected from 30 different cells, each of which was programmed into all four levels. (c) Measurement diagram for the conventional programming scheme. In this case, the effective series resistance seen by the target cell consists of additional current paths through half-selected devices and cannot be predicted beforehand. (d) New measurement diagram that enables multilevel storage in the crossbar array. Parallel current paths through the half-selected devices are blocked due to the external diodes at the outside and the intrinsic current-rectifying characteristics at each crosspoint. Asymmetric protecting voltages V pw and V pb can be applied to the unselected word- and bit-lines, respectively, to minimize disturbances during programming.
However, achieving multilevel storage in crossbar arrays is inherently much more difficult than achieving binary storage, since the series resistance seen by the target cell (or equivalently, the programming current through it) is affected by other cells in the array. As illustrated in Figure 3c, the current flowing through the target cell is not only affected by the external resistor but also by the states of the half-selected cells sharing the same word-line, i.e., the actual series resistance the target cell sees is the combination of the external series resistance and the resistance of the half-selected cells in parallel which cannot be determined beforehand. This effect explains why the resistance distributions obtained in the array shown in Figure 2e,f are larger than those shown in Figure 3b for individual cells and why the distributions are also worse in Figure 2f, which corresponds to a configuration with more cells in the on-state (and hence, more leakage paths) than those in Figure 2e. To address this problem and block the parallel current paths, we developed a new programming scheme. In this approach, schematically illustrated in Figure 3d, external diodes (e.g., P6KE15A, Littelfuse Inc. used in this study) are connected to each unselected bit- and word-line to prevent current flow into the external electrodes and to allow only the applied input voltage signals to path through. Once again, the intrinsic current-rectifying characteristic plays a crucial role in making the approach feasible since it prevents current from flowing backward at the crosspoints to reach the selected bit- or word-line. Combining the intrinsic-rectifying characteristics with external diodes, current flow through the half-selected cells can now be fully prohibited, enabling control over current in the target device during programming for multilevel storage capability. In addition, since no current flows through the half-selected cells, this approach reduces power consumption which is another drawback in conventional crossbar array programming. For comparison, our simulations (Figure S4, Supporting Information) show that without the intrinsic current-rectifying characteristics, programming current through the target cell cannot be controlled even with the application of external diodes at the unselected electrodes.
In the new scheme shown in Figure 3d, since the unselected bottom electrodes are virtually floated due to the reverse-biased diodes, they may be charged up during programming to a potential close to the programming voltage. As a result, the internal voltage on the unselected bit-lines, V ub shown in Figure 3d, may be higher than the externally supplied protective voltage V pb, and during programming the unselected cells can potentially see large negative voltages (<−1 V) across them. To reduce this effect, asymmetric protecting voltages were used for the unselected word- and bit-lines (labeled as V pw and V pb, respectively, in Figure 3d with V pw > V pb ). The exact potential distribution across the entire crossbar array was simulated for the worst case scenario and presented in Figure S5, Supporting Information. By properly selecting the protective voltages, the maximum negative voltage the unselected cells could see was shown to be ∼ –0.8 V (in the worst case) during programming, not sufficient to disturb the state of the unselected cells.
Based on this new programming scheme, a randomly generated color (multilevel) map with 10 different levels (0.025, 0.05, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 5, 7.5, and 10 MΩ) as presented in Figure 4a, was stored into the 40 × 40 array. Each target resistance value was set by a switchable series resistor and programmed using a single 3.5 V, 100 μs voltage pulse. A set of 5 × 5 subarrays were programmed, followed by a retrieval of all bits in the subarrays with 1 V, 500 μs read pulses without series resistor. The process was repeated to complete the 40 × 40 array, and the reconstructed image is presented in Figure 4b. The stored/retrieved image roughly follows the same patterns as the original image; however, some errors are also visible due to the relatively small spacings between the different resistance values used to store the 10 levels. The error, defined as ((R target – R measured )/(R target )), is presented in Figure 4c,d. Overall 75% (1200/1600 cells) of the measured resistance values were within 50% of the target value, i.e., 0.5R target < R measured < 1.5R target. The apparent asymmetry of the histogram plot shown in Figure 4d is mainly due to the way error is calculated here using an asymmetric range from −∞ to 1. For digital information storage, the error reported here is relatively large but may be improved further by using on-chip integrated current compliance setups instead of an off-chip resistor to reduce parasitic effects. On the other hand, this level of error may not be a significant problem for neuromorphic applications as biological systems typically exhibit similar sized or even larger noise.(30)
Figure 4. (a) A color 40 × 40 test image with 10 different target levels to be stored in the array. The resistances are represented by the different colors as defined in the color scale bar on right. (b) The reconstructed data map from the 40 × 40 array obtained by storing and retrieving the image in (a) (same color scale). (c) False-color image of the error for the stored data. The error is defined as (R target – R measured )/(R target ) and represented by different colors in the color scale bar on right. (d) Histogram of the error values for the stored data.
In summary, high-density, vertically integrated, hybrid memristor/CMOS systems have demonstrated and function well by taking advantage of the intrinsic rectifying I–V characteristics of the switching device itself. Binary bitmap images were successfully stored and retrieved with considerable read margin. A new programming scheme was developed to allow the integrated crossbar array to store up to 10 different levels by eliminating the parallel current paths. These demonstrations verify that it is possible to build high-density functional crossbar arrays without having to incorporate external select devices at each crosspoint, and the hybrid crossbar/CMOS systems are well-suited for the proposed future data storage and neuromorphic applications.(1, 7-11)Barack Obama received a lot of criticism for not showing up to the Unity March in Paris that protested the shootings of the employees at Charlie Hebdo. Of course, that also means we can't accuse President Obama of hypocrisy, unlike David Cameron and other European heads of state. The United Kingdom, like France, does not support free speech, imprisons and fines people for what they say on social media or in public, and even criminalized the words of one of its greatest wartime leaders, Sir Winston Churchill.
Of course, this also extends to protecting the British people from hearing unwanted opinions from figures like Geert Wilders or talk show host Michael Savage. (Though the former eventually won on appeal, it may lead to an awkward situation if Wilders ends up becoming the Dutch Prime Minister.)
However, as always, it's about Who? Whom? The Reverend Al Sharpton, who notably described the beginnings of Western Civilization as "White folks was in caves while we was building empires.... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it," is welcomed to the scepter'd isle and will even meet with members of Parliament. [Rev. Al Sharpton to Travel to the United Kingdom for A Two-Day Trip Where He will Meet with Members of Parliament, speak at Oxford University, Speak at Voter Unity Rally & Preach in Brixton, National Action Network]
It's not about free speech or about hate speech. It's about which "activists" and political leaders serve the interests of the ruling System — and which don't. Heck, if you are a prominent enough multicultural mascot like the Rev., you don't even have to pay your taxes. [As Sharpton Rose, So Did His Unpaid Taxes, by Russ Buettner, New York Times, November 18, 2004]"The mobility of the top 1 percent of the income distribution is also important. More than half (57.4 percent) of the top 1 percent of households in 1996 had dropped to a lower income group by 2005 [MP: dropped into the bottom 99%]. This statistic illustrates that the top income groups as measured by a single year of income (i.e., cross-sectional analysis) often include a large share of individuals or households whose income is only temporarily high. Put differently, more than half of the households in the top 1 percent in 2005 were not there nine years earlier. Thus, while the share of income of the top 1 percent is higher than in prior years, it is not a fixed group of households receiving this larger share of income."
MP: The chart above also shows that almost half (45.6%) of the top 5% in 1996 had moved to a lower income group nine years later in 2005, and roughly 39% of the top 10% in 1996 dropped into a lower income group by 2005. Whether it's the top 1%, top 5% or top 10%, those income groups are not static, closed groups, but snapshots in just one year of the national income distribution, which is constantly changing over time. A large majority of today's 1% won't be there in the future, and weren't there in the past, they are just making a temporary stop in that group.
As mentioned before, income mobility is far more important than income inequality. Empirical evidence provided in this Treasury Department report and supported by other studies shows that there is significant income mobility in the U.S. for all income groups. And yet all we hear about are the snapshot comparisons of income differentials for income groups in different years, which contain completely different people and households from snapshot to snapshot. When you do a "time-lapse" analysis of the same people or households over time, what you find is significant income mobility and that finding deserves more attention.Digital Currencies Need Government Intervention Says Bank of Canada
The Bank of Canada has been heavily researching blockchain technology, Bitcoin, and the use of digital currencies. Just recently, a team of central bank researchers published a report called “Canadian Bank Notes and Dominion Notes: Lessons for Digital Currencies” examining issues they believe revolve around private and public cryptocurrencies.
Is Canada’s Central Bank Planning to Issue Its Own Digital Currency?
Canada’s central bank has been rigorously studying digital currencies and has even tested its own prototype called Project Jasper. The bank’s Senior Deputy Governor, Carolyn Wilkins, revealed last summer the project involved a network of Canadian banks and the blockchain consortium R3.
The recent report “Lessons for Digital Currencies” details the history of public and private fiat currencies issued in Canada in relation to virtual currency today. The central bank’s researchers suggest the only way digital currencies will sustain is through regulatory policy.
‘Digital Currencies Will Not Be Safe Without Government Intervention’
The paper describes problems researchers have found with digital currencies such as bitcoin that include counterfeiting and issues with hacking. Furthermore, “Digital currencies will not be safe, although government intervention can help”, exclaims the bank’s researchers. Additionally, these digital currencies “will not be a uniform currency without government intervention”, the authors add.
The issue of counterfeiting “arises” with decentralized currencies not backed by a government. The authors state:
“There is an additional problem, which is similar to counterfeiting, that arises with decentralized digital currencies that are not issued by a government or do not rely on a trusted third party (like bitcoin). This is the “double spending” problem; the possibility that someone can claim that units of the currency belong to them rather than to the person who thought they owned them.”
‘Bitcoin Shows No Attempt At Uniformity’
Moreover, decentralized digital currencies open up a whole new world of cyber criminal activity like hacking exchanges, says the report. The authors use the recent Bitfinex hack as a reference to the reports’ hacking citations.
“There is another problem that arises with decentralized digital currencies that do not |
seen fleeing the scene.Police are still investigating.
Shots were fired near George Cupples Stadium in the South Side on Friday night, officials say.
VIDEO: Watch Kelly Brennan's report
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Pittsburgh police said the incident happened at Ninth and East Carson streets, right before the University Prep-Westinghouse high school football game let out.
The stadium was put on lockdown for a period of time.
According to Pittsburgh Public Safety spokeswoman Emily Schaffer, officers discovered a car had been damaged by gunfire near 9th and McArdles streets.
No injuries were reported and no one was in the vehicle at the time of the shooting.
Schaffer said a silver van was seen fleeing the scene.
Police are still investigating.
AlertMeXiaomi was able to cash in on India's festive sales once again. The Chinese smartphone maker said on Friday that it sold more than one million smartphones in two days in the country as e-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon India attempted to lure customers with massive discounts in their ongoing sales.
To put the numbers in perspective, Xiaomi sold more than 300 smartphones on an average every minute for two days. The company said it saw a significant increase in sales this festive season, compared to the one from last year, where it had taken 18 days to sell one million smartphones.
"This achievement marks an industry first, and is a key milestone for Xiaomi India," the company said. In particular, the company's Redmi Note 4 smartphone continues to sell like hotcakes in India. It was the highest selling smartphone during Flipkart’s Big Billion Day Sale, the company said. Xiaomi said eight of nine selling smartphones with smartphone category on Amazon India were Xiaomi products. Xiaomi was also the number one brand for both Amazon and Flipkart in the mobile category during the period.
"Our careful planning has also ensured that high selling smartphones such as Redmi 4 and Redmi Note 4 are in stock throughout the festive sale. We are extremely thankful to all our Mi Fans for their amazing support, and will continue to work hard to constantly outdo ourselves as we have done on many occasions in the past," Raghu Reddy, Head of Online Sales, Xiaomi India said in a press statement.
The surge in sales comes as Flipkart and Amazon India offer lucrative deals across product categories on their e-commerce website. Both the companies will be aggressively fighting each other in the next one month as Indians prepare to celebrate for Diwali, the festival of lights which has traditionally seen them do a lot of shopping.Find An Event Create Your Event Help Hartford Area Roller Derby Double Header - April 16th, 2016 Nomad's Adventure Quest
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Event Hartford Area Roller Derby Double Header - April 16th, 2016 Hartford Area Roller Derby Double Header - April 16th, 2016
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Beat City Bedrockers vs. Bay State Brawlers (B)
Hartford Wailers vs. Bay State Brawlers (A)
Two games for only $10. Don't miss out on all the excitement!
Doors open @ 5pm, first whistle @ 6pm
TICKETS: $10 in Advance, $12 at the door (CASH ONLY or CHARGE)
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support@brownpapertickets.comJohn's son Julian doesn't agree with legal action
John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono has suddenly decided to sue US singer Lennon Murphy for performing under the name Lennon.
Murphy, who has been performing under the name Lennon for eight years, was named after Ono’s late husband, and former Beatle singer, John Lennon.
According to TMZ.com, Murphy even successfully registered the stagename as a trademark in 2003 – consulting Ono early on in her career about using it to perform under even though, as it’s her legal name, she didn’t need to.
Ono apparently made no objection at the time but is now stating that Murphy “fraudulently” registered the name as a trademark.
She also added that Murphy’s use of late husband John Lennon’s name is “tarnishment” towards the deceased Beatles member.
Julian Lennon, son of the former Beatle and his first wife, has posted a statement from Murphy on hisMySpace stating he doesn’t have a problem with the singer using his father’s name.
Above the posting he states: “She has my full support.”
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The Shockwaves NME Awards 2008 are coming soon – and it’s time to have your say. Vote now by heading to NME.COM/awardsvote and you could win VIP tickets to the ceremony, which takes place in London on February 28.+1 2 12K Shares
On the first day of the DNC Convention in Philadelphia, Democrats broke federal law by showcasing illegal aliens on stage, which is a violation of Section 8 U.S. Code 1324.
During the DNC Convention on Monday night, Democrats aided and abetted several illegal aliens living in the United States – which is a federal crime.
Karla Ortiz appeared on television a few minutes before showing up on stage, telling Hillary Clinton at one of her tour stops in Nevada that she is scared that her mother will be deported after receiving a government issued letter of deportation, something that she is ignoring. Clinton said, “Let me do all the worrying.”
On national television, she fully admitted that her mother is here illegally. Karla Ortiz and her mother, Francesca then appeared on stage together. She also touted for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
A few minutes later, another illegal alien, Astrid Silva appeared on stage, “I came to America illegally with my mother when I was 4-years old. We crossed the river [Rio Grande] on a raft.”
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The DNC, by bringing these illegal aliens to the DNC Convention, is directly violating Section 8 U.S. Code 1324.
The law says,
(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
For violating the law, “for the purpose of commercial advantage,” a person can be imprisoned for up to ten years.
[revad2]Researchers from University College London (UCL) have today (Wednesday 5 July 2017) said in The BMJ that by 2040, there will be over 1.2 million people living with dementia in England and Wales, largely due to increased life expectancy.
Their results show that, although the incidence (number of newly diagnosed cases per thousand people) of dementia is falling, the overall prevalence (number of people living with the condition) is set to increase substantially as people live longer and deaths from other causes, such as heart disease, continue to decline.
They used data from 18,000 men and women from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) - a study which began in 2002 to track the health of a representative sample of the population in England aged 50 and older.
Participants were assessed in six waves from 2002 to 2013. At each wave, tests were carried out to assess memory, verbal fluency and numeracy function, and basic activities of daily living (e.g. getting in or out of bed, dressing and eating). Dementia was identified by these assessments, complemented by interviews with carers, or by diagnosis by a doctor.
After accounting for the effect of dropout from the study, the team found the rate of dementia incidence goes down by 2.7% per year between 2002 and 2013. Despite this decline in incidence, the research shows that overall prevalence of dementia is set to increase substantially - mainly due to increased life expectancy.
Dr James Pickett, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Society said: “With an ageing population and no way to cure, prevent or slow down the condition, dementia is set to be the 21st century’s biggest killer.
“This study shows that the number of people living with dementia is set to increase to 1.2 million in England and Wales over the next 25 years. These latest estimates are yet another wake-up call that the current social care system – already on its knees from decades of underfunding – needs urgent attention from the Government if it’s to cope with the inevitable massive increase in demand. Researchers must unite to achieve breakthroughs in prevention, treatment and care before dementia becomes an even larger health and social care crisis.”
“The study however does show a nugget of good news. In line with other recent studies, it shows that the proportion of people developing dementia at any given age has decreased slightly. This might be due to improved cardiovascular health, or more education and physical activity and shows that dementia doesn’t have to be an inevitable part of ageing.”Another US-friendly regime has folded completely, and after bumbling US foreign intervention in Libya and Egypt made the countries into terrorist breeding grounds where Americans are kidnapped on sight or worse, it is now Yemen's turn: another country in the Middle East whose president until recently was backed by the US government, and which will now be nothing more than civilian casualty fodder for remote-controlled US drones.
YEMENI EMPLOYEES SAY US AMBASSADOR IN YEMEN INFORMS STAFF THE EMBASSY IS CLOSING DOWN COMPLETELY, AMBASSADOR TO LEAVE BY WEDNESDAY
For those Americans who are still on location, fear not: you are in good hands:
US TO ASK TURKEY OR ALGERIA TO LOOK AFTER ITS INTERESTS IN YEMEN WHILE THE EMBASSY IS CLOSED - YEMENI US EMBASSY EMPLOYEES
And now it's time for Obama to discuss just how "isolated" Putin really is.Monday, August 17,2015
AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW) -- The lock-down is over at Savannah River Site after a potential security threat Monday afternoon. For about three hours, no one was able to get through the gates of the SRS except for local law enforcement, including the Richmond county bomb squad.
"About 5 thousand people coming over a three hour window, so we try to stagger it," said Savannah River Site spokesman Jim Guisti. "We had a vendor come up to one of our entry control areas. It was inspected. We got both electronic and canine positives for explosive residue, so we then implemented our emergency response procedures and that started the events from the day."
From there, Guisti says it took them three hours to find out if what appeared to be a regular Coca-Cola truck was a real threat.
We brought in outside law enforcement to decide if there was actual explosive residue, or if there was actual device in the vehicle and, for our sake, it was a false alarm," said Guisti.
The false alarm proved scary to those living close by, but not even three miles away, William Owen and his wife tell News 12 they worried at all. '"Nope not at all. I looked at the gate I was wondering which gate it was," said Owens.
He says that's just life outside the gates of SRS. His family is "just so used to it."
Guisti says in a worse case scenario they make sure their neighbors know what to do.
"We publish a guide every year for the houses that are close to the facility it tells them what to do in case of an emergency," said Guisti.
Even after the lock-down, Owen and his wife have more good memories than bad. He even shared stories of his dad's time working at the site and reminisced about living so close to SRS for decades.
"When we was kids, we used to watch ball games there on the other side," said Owens.
As for Monday's alarm, the facilities affected the most were administrative, so they expect things to be business as usual at the site Tuesday.
Monday, August 17, 2015
AIKEN COUNTY, S.C> (WRDW) -- SRS confirms the lockdown has been lifted. SRS was on lockdown after a possible threat caused emergency response to the site. According to a release from SRS, an offsite law enforcement investigation found no explosive residue or device on inspected truck.
Monday, August 17, 2015
AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. (WRDW) -- News 12 crews on the scene report cars are going back in and out of SRS. News 12 is working to find out if this means SRS is back open.
Monday, August 17, 2015
AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. (WRDW) -- According to Columbia County Sheriff's Office, in Georgia, they were not called to assist SRS during the lockdown. SRS said in a statement, several law enforcement agencies, from both Georgia and South Carolina, were called to help.
Monday, August 17, 2015
AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. (WRDW) -- According to the Savannah River Site's twitter account, the potential security incident was declared after electronic and canine scans of a vendor delivery truck showed a possibility it contained explosive residue.
The post also states law enforcement from both Georgia and South Carolina were called and are on the scene assisting Centerra, the site's security contractor.
Monday, August 17, 2015
WAYNESBORO, Ga. (WRDW) -- Southern Nuclear released a statement saying:
"Southern Nuclear’s top priority remains the safety and health of the public and our employees. Nuclear energy facilities are the most secure civilian industrial facilities in the nation with many layers of security measures in place at each facility, which includes the security checkpoint at the entrance to our plant. We have no plans to make any changes to our current security measures."
Monday, August 17, 2015
AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. (WRDW) -- According to the Savannah River Site, a potential security threat is in progress that has caused emergency response. SRS says site barricades are closed to incoming traffic. According to SRS, there is no indication of any threat outside of the SRS boundaries.
News 12 has a crew on the way and will update you with more information as it comes.
Monday, August 17, 2015
AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. (WRDW) -- Aiken County Sheriff's Office confirms SRS is on lockdown. The Sheriff's Office says no one is allowed in or out of the facility. At this moment, we do not know the reason for the lockdown.
News 12 is sending a crew and will update you as soon as we know more information.By Andrew Porter
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Picture this.
One of the fiercest rivalries in sports—Flyers vs. Penguins—playing outdoors in the second-largest venue in America—Beaver Stadium (capacity over 105,000)—in the heart of Pennsylvania.
Does it get any better?
While rumors and reports have been surfacing for years now, over the weekend the talks resurfaced. The Flyers and Pens are two of the NHL’s original six franchises, starting in 1967. Therefore, the 2017 season would be the 50th anniversary for both teams, the perfect time for this mega-event.
According to BroadStreetHockey.com, Flyers executive Shawn Tilger spoke at a town-hall meeting to season-ticket holders on Thursday putting the wheels in motion.
At the town hall Tilger said flyers/pens at penn state 2016-2017 season. Pitching to league 50th anniversary of 1967 expansion teams — Lauren (@Grossmann_L) March 27, 2015
Here’s to hoping we get to see Flyers vs. Pens at Beaver Stadium one day soon!What default method is
With the release of Java 8 you can modify interfaces adding new methods so that the interface remains compatible with the classes that implement the interface. This is very important in case you develop a library that is going to be used by several programmers from Kiev to New York. Until the dawn of Java 8 if you published an interface in a library you could not add a new method without risking that some application implementing the interface will break with the new version of the interface.
With Java 8 is this fear gone? No.
Adding a default method to an interface may render some class unusable.
Let’s see first the fine points of the default method.
In Java 8 a method can be implemented in an interface. (Static methods can also be implemented in an interface as of Java8, but that is another story.) The method implemented in an interface is called default method and is denoted by the keyword default as a modifier. When a class implements an interface it may, but does not need to implement a method implemented already in the interface. The class inherits the default implementation. This is why you may not need touch a class when an interface it implements changes.
Multiple inheritance?
The things start to get complicated when a concrete class implements more than one (say two) interfaces and the interfaces implement the same default method. Which default method will the class inherit? The answer is none. In such a case the class has to implement the method itself (directly or by inheritance from a higher class).
This is also true when only one of the interfaces implement the default method and the other one only declares it as abstract. Java 8 tries to be disciplined and avoid “implicit” things. If the methods are declared in more than one interfaces then no default implementation is inherited, you get a compile time error.
However you can not get a compile time error if you have your class already compiled. This way Java 8 is not consistent. It has its reason, which I do not want to detail here or get into debate for various reasons (e.g.: the release is out, debate time is long over and was never on this platform).
Say you have two interfaces, and a class implementing the two interfaces.
One of the interfaces implement a default method m().
. You compile all the interfaces and the class.
You change the interface not containing the method m() to declare it as an abstract method.
to declare it as an abstract method. Compile the modified interface only.
Run the class.
In this case the class runs. You can not compile it again with the modified interfaces, but if it was compiled with the older version: it still runs. Now
modify the interface having the abstract method m() and create a default implementation.
and create a default implementation. Compile the modified interface.
Run the class: failure.
When there are two interfaces providing default implementation for the same method the method can not be invoked in the implementing class unless implemented by the class (again: either directly or inherited from another class).
The class is compatible. It can be loaded with the new interface. It can even start execution so long as long there is no invocation to the method having default implementation in both interfaces.
Sample code
To demonstrate the above I created a test directory for the class C.java and three subdirectories for the interfaces in files I1.java and I2.java. The root directory of the test contains the source code for the class C in file C.java. The directory base contains the interface version that is good for execution and compilation. I1 contains the method m() with default implementation. The interface I2 does not contain any method for now.
The class contains a main method so we can execute it in our test. It tests if there is any command line argument so we can easily execute it with and without invoking the method m().
~/github/test$ cat C.java public class C implements I1, I2 { public static void main(String[] args) { C c = new C(); if( args.length == 0 ){ c.m(); } } } ~/github/test$ cat base/I1.java public interface I1 { default void m(){ System.out.println("hello interface 1"); } } ~/github/test$ cat base/I2.java public interface I2 { }
We can compile and run the class using the command lines:
~/github/test$ javac -cp.:base C.java ~/github/test$ java -cp.:base C hello interface 1
The directory compatible contains a version of the interface I2 that declares the method m() abstract, and for technical reasons it contains I1.java unaltered.
~/github/test$ cat compatible/I2.java public interface I2 { void m(); }
This can not be used to compile the class C :
~/github/test$ javac -cp.:compatible C.java C.java:1: error: C is not abstract and does not override abstract method m() in I2 public class C implements I1, I2 { ^ 1 error
The error message is very precise. Even though we have the C.class from the previous compilation and if we compile the interfaces in the directory compatible we will have two interfaces that can still be used to run the class:
~/github/test$ javac compatible/I*.java ~/github/test$ java -cp.:compatible C hello interface 1
The third directory, wrong contains a version of I2 that also defines the method m() :
~/github/test$ cat wrong/I2.java public interface I2 { default void m(){ System.out.println("hello interface 2"); } }
We should not even bother to compile it. Even though the method is double defined the class still can be executed so long as long it does not invoke the method, but it fails as soon as we try to invoke the method m(). This is what we use the command line argument for:
~/github/test$ javac wrong/*.java ~/github/test$ java -cp.:wrong C Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError: Conflicting default methods: I1.m I2.m at C.m(C.java) at C.main(C.java:5) ~/github/test$ java -cp.:wrong C x ~/github/test$
Conclusion
When you start to move your library to Java 8 and you modify your interfaces adding default implementations, you probably will not have problems. At least that is what Java 8 library developers hope adding functional methods to collections. Applications using your library are still relying on Java 7 libraries that do not have default methods. When different libraries are used and modified, there is a slight chance of conflict. What to do to avoid it?
Design your library APIs as before. Do not go easy relying on the possibility of default methods. They are last resort. Choose names wisely to avoid collision with other interfaces. We will learn how Java programming will develop using this feature.
AdvertisementsThe surviving relatives of Yemenite Jewish children that families says were abducted by staff at state-run medical facilities and illicitly sold into adoption protest in Jerusalem. The demonstrators called for the Israeli government to investigate the alleged systematic kidnappings known as the Yemenite Children Affair, June 21, 2017. (Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum and Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org)
Over 2,000 Israeli Yemenite Jews and supporting activists gathered in Jerusalem last Wednesday to mark an annual day of awareness for what families say was a state-sponsored program to abduct Yemenite Jewish infants and other Israeli children born to parents who were recent immigrants from Arab countries.
Known as the Yemenite Children Affair, in the first decade after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, there was a systematic kidnapping of newborn Yemenite children, carried out by Israeli hospitals and government institutions. Mothers, who often were in Israel for a short time and did not speak Hebrew, would enter hospitals or other state facilities to give birth. Once the child was born medical staff told the parents the child died unexpectedly. Yet none of the families were shown bodies or burial documents. Many of the families did not practice any mourning ceremonies because they believed their missing children were still alive.
The babies who went missing, parents claim, were given away to childless Ashkenazi families (Jews of European descent–the dominant ethnic group in Israel at the time), leaving the Yemenite families with no answers regarding their children’s fate. In most cases, the families were told the children died unexpectedly.
There have been a few national state committees tasked with investigating the matter over the decades, but they were previously accused of ignoring real evidence and helping government efforts to cover up the affair. Following recent pressure by the third generation of Jewish Yemenite activists, part of the national archives and state protocols were disclosed to the public.
Last year Benjamin Netanyahu had more than 3,500 government files on the investigation into the disappearance of the children published online. A Knesset committee followed up by confirming earlier this month that Yemenite babies died during the 1950s after state medical institutions conducted experiments on them. Despite the disclosures, the families are still in the dark regarding their relatives, and the matter is still an open wound in the Israeli society.
Seeking more answers, the Israeli nonprofit Amram organized the protest in Jerusalem last week under the title “Recognition, Justice, Healing,” calling on the government to open all of the national archives, which could allow for family reunification. The demonstrators also want the affair recognized as a crime against humanity.
This was the largest protest on the topic in the history of Israel to date.Are you familiar with clipping? It’s a widely used technique that defines a certain region of an element that is visible. Everything around this visible region is clipped and doesn’t get rendered. In simple words: you hide some visual portions of an element and show a certain region that you want.
A little bit about clip-path property
The idea behind clip-path isn’t new, CSS2 already specified the clip property. But it’s limited to rectangular clipping and is working only with absolutely positioned elements. The clip property has some limitations in SVG as well. That’s why clip-path property was added to SVG specifications.
The clip-path can be applied to all HTML and SVG elements. The way it works is quite simple: it provides a series of X and Y values to create a path. These values clip the image and show only the defined area of your element. With this property you can create lot’s of different shapes: from simple triangles or circles to more complex geometric shapes. Your imaginations is the only limit. Here is a simple example:
See the Pen Showing the use of clip-path by designhooks (@designhooks) on CodePen.
To achieve this triangle effect you have to take one element and apply a clip path-to it.
.clipClass {
-webkit-clip-path: polygon(0 100%, 50% 0, 100% 100%);
}
Clip-path support
Clip-path is a part of working draft and is not widely supported by all major browsers. Only webkit based browsers (Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.) are fully supporting it. In any case, you can create awesome effects for these browsers (waiting for Firefox and IE). Here is the compatibility list.
Back to our main story
Drew Minns, a talented UI/UX designer, developer and teacher at drewminns.com got an interesting request from one of his students. He wanted to replicate an effect seen on Squarespace website. Drew decided to help his student and dived into this interesting journey, where he explained how to work with clip-path CSS property and create different cool shapes with it. Let’s see some examples.
Creating shapes
Circles
See the Pen LVpErv by designhooks (@designhooks) on CodePen.
Comic textbox
See the Pen aOvzjQ by designhooks (@designhooks) on CodePen.
Star
See the Pen VLvYBo by designhooks (@designhooks) on CodePen.
Animation
You can use diverse shapes to create stylish effects. Here is one of them:
See the Pen OVyPoX by designhooks (@designhooks) on CodePen.
The bottom line
Although clip-path is not yet supported by all major browsers, you can use it to create really nice effects and animations. You can also combine diverse shapes and create more complex ones, your creativity is the only limit!
Further reading
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/masking/adobe/
http://caniuse.com/#search=clip-path
https://medium.com/@drewisthe/using-making-sense-of-clip-path-cf651676438c
Note: You can also use background-clip: text to clip your background according to different characters (letters, digits, even font icons). This is a handy property that you can use in some cases (for example when you create banners or hero units).
https://css-tricks.com/image-under-text/
http://codepen.io/Jintos/pen/crlxk
http://caniuse.com/#search=background-clipPHIL Gartside has revealed the truth behind Didi Hamann’s infamous short stay as a Bolton Wanderers player.
Speaking on Talksport, the Whites chairman admitted for the first time that paperwork on the German international’s move from Liverpool had not actually been completed before he was sold on less than 24 hours later to Manchester City for £400,000.
Hamann was in the studio as Gartside recalled a deal often jokingly referred to by Sam Allardyce as “the best he has ever done.”
“The full story never actually came out,” Gartside said.
“What happened was Didi signed for us on a free transfer from Liverpool, came in, signed the papers, and then, for whatever reason, decided it wasn’t for you and that you wanted to reconsider.
“We said to you ‘I’m sorry about that, but you’ve signed’ but what you never realised was that we never actually countersigned the papers and just put them in the drawer.
“The next thing we know, you came along and told us you’d got this opportunity to go to Manchester City – so we actually sold you without actually signing you, did you know that?
“We got £400,000 from Manchester City for a player we never actually signed. And that’s the truth.”
Gartside picked out relegation from the Premier League as the lowest point of his near 14-year reign as chairman, with qualifying for Europe under Sam Allardyce in 2005 the highlight.
And he also outlined some of the financial difficulties faced by the club since they dropped out of the top flight and failed to return at the first time of asking.
“Getting relegated from the Premier League, on day one you lose about £30million of revenue,” he explained. “That’s a fact of life and you lose the advantage of the TV money. The problem you have got is that having been in there for 11 years, you build up to a wage structure. You have got to compete, you can’t try not to, and so you build a structure that is Premier League and you can’t dismantle that on day one.
“You can build in some contingencies but we went from a £50m wage bill to a £25m wage bill in one hit when we got relegated. But £25m in today’s Financial Fair Play climate is not low enough.
“Our turnover, excluding TV money, is relatively modest compared to some of the bigger clubs. We haven’t got the massive fan base, so it’s very difficult.”The UCLA Football team find themselves in a very interesting position heading into the Stanford game… as favorites.
It seems like the season just started, but after three quick weekends, the UCLA Football team is already heading into the Pac-12 portion of their 2016 schedule.
That all begins this Saturday in a prime time event at the Rose Bowl as the Bruins take on those pesky foes from the north, the Stanford Cardinal. For those that do not know, UCLA has had a bad time with Stanford in their last eight meetings. Why? Because they have lost all eight of those games.
That could change this year, but we are not holding our breathe. Still, it seems as though many believe UCLA will have a shot to take down the Mighty Cardinal this season.
According to VegasInsider.com, the Bruins open as a one point favorite (-1) over the Cardinal.
I know, right? I had to do a double take on that number as well.
Stanford is the Pac-12 powerhouse as they have won the Pac-12 Championship 3 out of the last four seasons. Interestingly enough, that first championship came at the hands of the UCLA Bruins in Head Coach Jim Mora‘s first season.
What is even more interesting is the fact that the 2012 Pac-12 Championship Game was the closest UCLA has gotten to beating Stanford in their last eight meetings.
UCLA was leading the game 24-17 at the beginning of the 4th quarter, but that did not last long. They were then blanked in the final quarter as Stanford scored 10 unanswered points to pull out the win.
Though this is not a title game, it is a chance for UCLA to pull out an upset. Is this the year? We find out Saturday evening. Go Bruins!The USHL has been churning out talent over the last couple of years as the league gets more and more talent. Some players are even choosing the USHL over the CHL due to the ability to attend to the NCAA. That may have not happened a few years ago, as the competition level was so much lower. But now, players are wanting to go to the USHL as it still challenges them athletically but allows the option of going to college hockey.
One such player is Shane Bowers. Selected fourth overall by the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles in the 2015 QMJHL Entry Draft (and then again at 32nd overall in 2016 by Saint John), Bowers opted to go to the USHL to ply his trade. Now, he is still in the conversation as a first round pick and is committed to Boston University next year.
Coming in as our 35th ranked prospect for the 2017 NHL Entry draft is Halifax, Nova Scotia born Shane Bowers.
Bio:
Age: 17-years-old, 1999-07-30
17-years-old, 1999-07-30 Birthplace: Halifax, NS, CAN
Halifax, NS, CAN Position: C
C Handedness: L
L Height: 6’0″
6’0″ Weight: 170 lbs
170 lbs Draft Year Team: Waterloo Black Hawks – USHL
Stats:
pGPS S pGPS N pGPS % pGPS P/82 pGPS R 34 10 20.7% 31.9 6.6
Read about pGPS here.
Scouts:
NHL (CSS) ISS Future Considerations HockeyProspect McKenzie McKeen’s Pronman Button 16 23 31 20 N/A 27 42 22
From Jeff Marek, Sportsnet:
[Bowers] doesn’t have one thing that stands out about his game, but is good at a number of things. Plays the full rink and brings a strong work ethic to every game.
From Future Considerations:
A solid 200-foot player who works hard…adequate top-end speed that will only improve as he gets stronger…balanced on his skates and when he explodes, he can create breaches in the other team’s defense…shows good initial burst…plays with a lot of gumption and makes life hard for opponents…willing to play in the dirty areas of the ice…a nice ability to read the play…does a good job of using his body to protect the puck…hands are not overly flashy, but he does a good job of using his body to protect the puck…dangerous as he takes a quick step out from the wall to the front of the net or comes from behind the net to get off a quick shot…intelligent decision-maker who moves the puck well and makes the right choices…defensively, he plays with some grit, making life tough on his opponent…patiently lets the play come to him…just a real versatile difference-maker at both ends of the rink.
Our Take:
It’s always interesting to go back and look at the history of a player as they approach they draft. As mentioned above Bowers was selected by Cape Breton with the 4th overall pick in the 2015 QMJHL draft even though he was never going to play there. Ryan Kennedy from The Hockey News, was on the story back in July of 2015, and it was clear then that Bowers was going to go to the USHL:
Cape Breton had been told very explicitly by Bowers’ advisor Pat Brisson that the gifted young center would be keeping his NCAA options open and that selecting him would be pointless, but GM Marc-Andre Dumont decided to gamble. I can understand Dumont’s drive to select the best player available, but there was no reason to believe Bowers’ camp was bluffing.
A story like that is fascinating to see now, as Bowers kept his NCAA options open, has now committed to the esteemed Boston University Terriers and could have his name called in the first round of the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. He is a player that you can point to, showing that the CHL isn’t always the best way to the NHL. As a Canadian, you can still get your college degree, play hockey at a high level and still have a chance as a professional player.
As for Bowers, the hockey player – he doesn’t have any specific skill that stands out, he just does everything well. He is strong on his skates, but can and will add strength there. That will improve his top-end speed and acceleration, both of which are good but he isn’t a speed demon. He is a complete player with a good release who uses his teammates well. As the future considerations scouting report alludes, he is particularly adept at attacking off the wall, whether that is going to the net himself or drawing opponents to him and then moving it.
Bowers did fall into the middle of the pack for point per game (9th amongst draft eligible) and primary points per 60 (10th). But he was second in primary points with 45 of his 51 points being primary points. That 88% was much higher than everyone of the players with higher point per game rates.
When looking at shooting rates, he finished third in that same peer group with an average of 2.7 shots per game:
Bowers only had four games where he didn’t register a shot on goal.
After some digging it became very clear that Bowers’ production was primarily at even strength play, and broke down as |
-gathering mission to the UK in the early 1950s.
He and his colleagues did their work well – so well that Japan is now a leader in virtually every industry that helped define British economic leadership in 1952.
•Eamonn Fingleton is the author of In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, is the Key to Future Prosperity (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999)Brother Martin commits two to tackle St Thomas' big prop
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Pardee
Jesuit Dallas 22-7 Strake & 52-0 Memorial
Westlake 56-0 The Woodlands
Katy
Jesuit Dallas nabs a line out against Memorial at Tully Stadium
Richardson 65-5 Kingwood
St Thomas 75-7 Brother Martin (NOLA)
St Thomas making the tackle against Brother Martin
Allen 31-10 Alliance
Rock Rugby 24-12 CyFair HS
Jesuit Dallas dives for the try with Referee Doug Corrigan in close attendance.
St Pius X 57-12 Brother Martin
Lamar HS
Rugby Texas had all but three conference teams playing some sort of match this weekend. Most impressive on the weekend was Jesuit Dallas on the road to play two full Varsity and JV matches in less than 24 hours. They won both matches handily even with five senior starters staying in Dallas for a mandatory school retreat. The weekend was made more special as the win over Memorial marked the 200th victory notched by Jesuit Dallas Head Coach Anthony Mattachione. Winning big on the road with starters missing prove that Jesuit Dallas is a force to be reckoned with this season. Thus the Rangers move up six positions to fourth! Jesuit hosts Plano on Thursday evening.Both programs graduated many starters last season. Westlake had more depth overall, though. The Woodlands have run several age-grades of rugby for years. At some point that youth needs to grow up, mature in the sport, and make themselves known as a force in Rugby Texas. Westlake is simply kitting up some serious athletes and that is exactly what they did on Saturday. Westlake made a statement against a Woodlands team that is not exactly lacking this year. For that reason, the Chaps maintain the Number One ranking this week, while The Woodlands drops five places to 8th.The Woodlands play a soul-searching derby at St Thomas on Friday night. Westlake hosts a tough Allen team on Saturday.The Katy Barbarian freshmen played a few periods in Granger Stadium against Lamar Varsity and St Thomas' JV. Katy Varsity was originally scheduled to travel to Corpus Christi, but the CC squad was not CIPP'd. Still, Katy's freshmen played well and included some players who have been playing rugby in the Katy system since U8s. That's impressive club rugby. Katy stays put at 2nd this week, but don't have a match until Feb 13th.Pitting two HSAA Props against each other probably made for some great scrummaging in this match. However, Richardson seems to have maintained much of the speed that they displayed at RT State Championships last season. Kingwood just could not make the tries happen on the day and Richardson felt inclined to make up for that inability on the day. Richardson moves up one to 3rd place and Kingwood moves down on to 16th.Richardson next faces a test in Jesuit Dallas in Monday night clash on February 9th. Kingwood is idle next weekend.Brother Martin took a tour of the Bayou City this weekend and limped home to the Crescent City. St Thomas really took advantage of the disorganized visitors. This was a much needed turn-around for the Eagles from last week at Strake. For such a strident win, St Thomas jumps three spots to 5th this week. St Thomas hosts a derby with The Woodlands on Friday night.The first North/Central Conference match of the year resulted in a solid three try spread by Allen. Both programs have strong roots in Oklahoma University Rugby - Coaches Doug Neubauer (Alliance) and Kelly Meeks (Allen) were celebrated standouts many years ago. This was an away match for Allen and a derby day for Alliance at Keller's Bear Creek Park. For such a solid win, Allen receives a 3-spot jolt to 6th and Alliance only drops one spot to 15th. Alliance is idle and Allen travels to Austin on Saturday to face defending state champion, Westlake.Rock Rugby is a combination of players in the Round Rock ISD that plays at Stony Point HS. CyFair is in it's sophomore year of play. Both teams have SOLID coaching staffs, so much is expected at some point. Rock pulled out a solid win in what was described as an intensely defensive battle. This win earns Rock Rugby a spot at 12th and pushes CyFair to 18th.St Pius is the dark horse in the South Conference this year. They've got size. They've got speed. Head Coach Lowell Locke has finally put together the team he has visualized for years. Unlike previous years, South Conference teams cannot take St Pius for granted anymore. Two solid wins in a row in preseason see the Crusaders gain three spots to land in 13th. They're next match hosting new kids on the block, Lamar HS.Lamar finds themselves in 17th this week after single period wins over Katy Freshmen and STHS JV. Lamar has some impressive, but young athletes. Coach Spencer Wheat has a crop of rugby sponges on his hands. Once he gets these kids running straight and attacking the space AROUND their defenders - instead of running laterally or taking on their defenders head-on - these young men will be a force to be reckoned with. Gaps Don't Tackle, gents!Boulder, Colorado, won top billing. Read on to see which other college towns made the cut. Shutterstock/Tang Yan Song
Boulder, Colorado, is the top-ranked college town in the US, according to a new list from the American Institute for Economic Research.
The city of roughly 200,000 (for its metro area population) earned the top spot thanks to its accessibility — more than 20% of commuters take public transportation or cycle around Boulder Creek Corridor — and diverse and educated population. Boulder also has an active bar-and-restaurant scene, with plenty of coffee shops and microbreweries.
AIER compiled its list using nine economic, demographic, and quality-of-life factors. It defines college towns as having fewer than 250,000 residents.
Aside from the overall ranking, we included cities' individual scores for noteworthy metrics including rent, earnings, and bars and restaurants. We chose the one metric that the city scored the highest in out of the nine.
Scroll through to find out the 20 best college towns.This is the third post in the FastMail 2015 Advent Calendar. Stay tuned for another post tomorrow.
A few months ago we happened to be looking at graphs of CPU load on some of our backend mail servers, and we noticed that over time our servers have gotten busier. As you may remember, our servers are optimised for disk throughput over CPU, since most of the time the CPU is waiting for IO to complete. That's still the case, but we noticed that the CPUs were more active than they used to be a few years ago. Not enough to present any kind of problem, but enough to make us wonder why.
With the assistance of Linux's perf utility, we found that most of our CPU time (~10%) was spent in one of the many Cyrus processes, in a function called crc32(). This function computes a checksum (using the common CRC32 algorithm) of some arbitrary chunk of data. The idea is to store the data and the checksum separately and then later, when you read the data, you recompute the checksum and compare with the original. If they're different, then you know that either the data or the checksum have been corrupted and you can take appropriate action. Over the years, we've added checksums all over Cyrus, particularly in its data storage engine (known as twoskip [PDF]), and they've saved us more than once.
At that point it became obvious - we calculate billions of CRC32 checksums, and when you add it all up, that's a lot of CPU time. So we started looking into alternative implementations, because even a small gain will translate into a big win once you run it a few billion times.
The contenders
By default, Cyrus used the CRC32 from the widely-available zlib library. In our case, that was the one that shipped with Debian because we've never had a reason to change it. I spent some time researching alternatives, and came up with the following list:
debian: the stock zlib1g from Debian. On my machine, that's 1:1.2.8.dfsg-2+b1.
zlib: zlib 1.2.8 from upstream. This should always perform roughly the same as the Debian one, but I wanted to include it specifically so I could compile with the same optimisations as the other implementations being tested.
cloudflare: CloudFlare's version of zlib, where they reimplement the CRC32 functions (among other things) using modern CPU instructions (mostly PCLMULQDQ ) (actually, they took it from the Linux kernel).
) (actually, they took it from the Linux kernel). cyrus: the fallback implementation inside Cyrus, used when zlib is not available. It's a very simple algorithm, and very slow.
slice4, slice8, slice16: table-based slice-by-N, all from Stephan Brumme's CRC32 collection. Each increase in N adds more tables and unrolls loops further, relying more and more on a modern CPU's ability to parallelise work.
slice16-prefetch: same as slice16 but with a strategically-placed instruction to force the CPU to bring the next 256 bytes into the cache while it's doing the math.
kernel: crc32-kernel.c. The kernel implements a load of crypto stuff, partly for its internal use (eg crypto filesystems), partly to expose crypto devices to userspace. This is appealing, because it has a PCLMULQDQ implementation of CRC32 (the same one CloudFlare uses) as well as a table-based one. That would be handy for deployment; we have a small number of machines with no CPU support for PCLMULQDQ.
There were also a few non-contenders:
Intel's zlib with SSE4.2/PLCMUL CRC32: Unfortunately they hooked their new CRC32 code into the compression code, rather than doing what CloudFlare did and changing the stock CRC32 implementation. So when you call crc32(), you get the regular zlib version. It's not easily lifted out because it's implemented as a kind of memcpy-with-checksum, which apparently the compression engine needs.
, you get the regular zlib version. It's not easily lifted out because it's implemented as a kind of memcpy-with-checksum, which apparently the compression engine needs. Google's crcutil library: I wanted to try something not based on zlib, but I can't actually follow their code well enough to figure out how to lift out just the important bits.
Anything using Intel's CRC32 CPU instructions. It uses different inputs to the CRC32 algorithm (known as the polynomial) which is apparently more robust, and is used in networks, filesystems, that sort of thing. It gives different results to the "standard" polynomial, typically used in compression.
Test method
For anyone following along at home, the code used in the tests is available on GitHub: crc32-bench.
The actual test method probably has a few more variables than true science would allow, but it didn't take too long to put together and we're only looking for indications and trends anyway. I ran them on my mostly-idle laptop, on AC power with no weird CPU scaling or similar shenanigans in the way. I didn't make any effort to stop the tests being pre-empted, and times reported are wall-clock times.
My laptop is a 8-core Haswell i7 with 16GB RAM. It has more grunt than some of our IMAP servers! It's not particularly important for the test itself because we're looking at relative performance, but I mention it in case you're running this yourself and getting wildly different numbers.
The "large" test is 1000 rounds with a 64MB data buffer. We don't do anything like this in Cyrus, but it was a good test to make sure everything was working properly. The really interesting tests are the ones with small buffers. The buffers we checksum are small, the minimum being 24 bytes (a twoskip header), average perhaps 32 bytes. This is our target case.
All implementations except debian were compliled with GCC 5.4 with -O3 -march=sandybridge -mtune=intel. That's about the nicest "easy" set of optimisations I can get for my laptop, and roughly matches the production hardware too.
Results
Column headers show input buffer size and number of rounds. Results is wall-clock time in seconds (lower is better).
64MB x 1000
256B x 100M
128B x 100M
64B x 100M
32B x 100M
24B x 100M
16B x 100M
debian
60.79
22.76
11.32
5.47
2.71
1.94
1.24
zlib
57.82
21.56
10.19
4.85
2.15
1.49
0.98
cloudflare
6.25
3.02
1.89
4.85
2.22
1.61
1.07
cyrus
166.01
62.55
30.32
14.31
6.34
4.31
2.49
slice4
58.25
22.20
10.69
5.00
2.16
1.49
0.98
slice8
38.94
14.40
6.86
3.24
1.63
1.15
0.78
slice16
18.92
7.11
3.63
1.97
6.56
4.60
2.67
slice16-prefetch
18.65
63.63
30.66
14.75
6.59
4.66
2.78
kernel
9.94
42.61
41.39
37.06
35.80
35.59
35.09
From this we learn that:
zlib and debian mostly match, which tells us that recompiling the Debian package with more optimisations aren't going to help much.
cloudflare is amazing until the input buffer gets under 80 bytes. That's the point where it stops using the optimised implementation and falls back to the regular zlib implementation (slice-by-4). I'm not sure why (no explanatory comments I could find), but it's a showstopper for our uses. A shame :(
cyrus is obviously rubbish, not much to say there :)
slice4/8/16 do pretty much what you'd expect, getting faster each time because the CPU can do more of the work in parallel. I was impressed at how consistent it is on large and particularly small buffers. Once the buffers get very small small, then things degenerate. I don't fully understand why but my suspicion is that whatever optimisations the compiler has done in the checksum loop, something is now having to wait on memory more often than not, slowing everything down. I didn't pursue this further because it intuitively makes sense to me, and there's not much I could have done about it anyway.
slice16-prefetch seems like a waste of time. On the small buffers it makes sense that waiting for the next 256 bytes only to not use them is pointless, though I didn't expect quite this much difference. On the large buffer it made no particular difference. Maybe it makes a lot of difference if you're checksumming enormous data sets?
kernel, oh, how I wanted to like this. Every CRC32 operation consists of a write to and read from a socket. It's all zero-copy, but still two context switches per round, and it shows. On larger buffers that cost is probably acceptable (remember this is the same code that cloudflare used). On small buffers, you lose everything to those switches. The 64B and 32B numbers are interesting because, like the cloudflare version, the kernel switches to an alternative implementation. In the kernel's case, it's a slice-by-8, so it's giving good results apart from the context switching overhead.
Based on this data, I'm pretty sure that the best immediate plan is to have Cyrus use slice16 and slice8, chosen by the size of the input buffer. While not the absolute fastest we can do, it will still be much faster than zlib, and fairly easy to maintain (no assembly).
I did consider trying to extend the kernel/cloudflare code to have good assembly implementations for very small buffers, but my assembly isn't that good, the license isn't friendly (GPL code can't go into Cyrus) and we have some old servers that don't have the PCLMULQDQ instructions so we'd need a fallback there anyway.
We have been considering switching to a different algorithm that does a better job on small buffers. There's a license-friendly assembler implementation of CRC32 that uses the Intel CPU support and has a special codepath for buffers smaller than 256 bytes. That may very well prove to be the fastest of all. Because it produces different results, it would render all our stored checksums invalid, so we'd have to recalculate them all. That's a big job, so we'd need to do a lot of testing first to make sure that it's so much better that it's actually worth the effort.
The replacement
So now it's time to write a replacement CRC32 function for Cyrus. That's actually very simple - it's just bringing the slice16 and slice8 into a single file, with the main entry point selecting one based on the size of the buffer. You can read the whole crc32.c in the Cyrus source, but the only interesting bit in there apart from the CRC32 functions themselves is the entry point function:
static uint32_t crc32(uint32_t prev, const void *data, size_t length) { if (length < 64) return crc32_slice8(prev, data, length); return crc32_slice16(prev, data, length); }
Running our tests against this version, we get (original zlib for comparison):
64MB x 1000
256B x 100M
128B x 100M
64B x 100M
32B x 100M
24B x 100M
16B x 100M
zlib
57.68
21.17
10.24
4.83
2.15
1.48
0.98
combo
18.82
7.00
3.70
2.01
1.36
1.07
1.06
So 16 bytes is slower than the original, which is understandable because we know that slice-by-8 falls over down there, and zlib uses slice-by-4 internally. Since our minimum buffer size is 24 bytes, this should never be a problem. If it ever became one, then we can add a crc32_slice4() as well.
Next, we have to get our optimisation settings right. We compile Cyrus with no optimisations and full debugging because it makes it really easy to work with crash dumps. Lately we've looked at enabling compiler optimisations for specific hot functions via GCC attributes. Because that's convenient, I tried adding #pragma GCC optimize("O3") to the top of crc32.c to cover the whole file. The thing is, it doesn't really cover the whole file, it just makes that the default for each function. Which means cross-function optimisations (ie inlining) don't happen, as we can see from a symbol table dump.
With #pragma GCC optimize("O3") :
00000000000004f8 T crc32 00000000000000cc t crc32_slice16 0000000000000000 t crc32_slice8
With -O3 :
0000000000000000 T crc32
The difference is an extra function call. That's negligible (under 0.1s on the 24-byte test), but it would have bothered me to have done nothing about it. A build system change is the solution.
(Meanwhile, Bron added a pile of tests to make sure all this new stuff actually returned the same checksum values. It did, phew).
The end
Rerunning the profiling on a busy server this morning, it looks like we're down to ~7% CPU spent calculating checksums, so perhaps a 3% gain. It's not huge, but it is faster than before, and in our experience the way to make a really fast service is to make lots of tiny performance improvements across the board. This is just another one of those changes that contribute to a great experience for our users.© AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli In this April 2, 2015, file photo, a visitor leaves the Sacramento Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Rancho Cordova, Calif.
WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs doled out more than $142 million in bonuses to executives and employees for performance in 2014 even as scandals over veterans' health care and other issues racked the agency.
Among the recipients were claims processors in a Philadelphia benefits office that investigators dubbed the worst in the country last year. They received $300 to $900 each. Managers in Tomah, Wis., got $1,000 to $4,000, even though they oversaw the over-prescription of opiates to veterans – one of whom died.
The VA also rewarded executives who managed construction of a facility in Denver, a disastrous project years overdue and more than $1 billion over budget. They took home $4,000 to $8,000 each. And in St. Cloud, Minn., where an internal investigation report last year outlined mismanagement that led to mass resignations of health care providers, the chief of staff cited by investigators received a performance bonus of almost $4,000.
As one of his final acts last year before resigning, then-VA secretary Eric Shinseki announced he was suspending bonuses in the wake of revelations that VA employees falsified wait lists to meet wait-time targets — ostensibly as part of efforts to secure the extra pay. But he only curtailed them for a sliver of VA executives -- those in senior levels of the Veterans Health Administration, which oversees health care.
The agency has continued to pay performance-based bonuses to nearly half of agency employees, including in health administration, according to data provided to USA TODAY by the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. In all, some 156,000 executives, managers and employees received them for 2014 performance.
VA spokesman James Hutton said the vast majority of agency employees are committed to serving veterans.
“VA will continue to review tools and options in order to ensure the department is able to attract and retain the best talent to serve our nation's veterans, while operating as a good steward of taxpayer funds,” Hutton said.
That’s not good enough for Florida Republican Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House VA committee, which has been investigating questionable VA bonuses for years. Miller says the most recent awards reflect a “disturbing trend of rewarding employees who preside over corruption and incompetence.”
He noted the agency paid more than $380,000 in 2013 performance bonuses to top officials at hospitals where veterans faced long delays in receiving treatment, including those under investigation for wait-time manipulation. “Rewarding failure only breeds more failure,” he said Tuesday. “Until VA leaders learn this important lesson and make a commitment to supporting real accountability at the department, efforts to reform VA are doomed to fail.”
Miller spearheaded – and the House passed – a measure last year that would have eliminated bonuses for VA senior executives for five years. But ultimately the House and Senate compromised on legislation that still allows the VA to hand out up to $360 million annually to executives, managers and employees.
Overall, the agency awarded $276 million in incentives in 2014, including retention and relocation payments, rewards for saving money on travel and coming up with inventive ideas, according to committee data.
The cash bonuses of $142.5 million were tied to performance reviews. Employees were eligible to receive the lump-sum payments for ratings of “fully successful” or higher. The payments ranged from $8 to as much as $12,705. Most were more than $500. The average payout was $909.
Here are some of the recipients:
-- In Tomah, Wis., the former chief of staff of the VA medical center there, Dr. David Houlihan — whom veterans nicknamed the “Candy Man” because of his prolific prescribing of narcotics — received a $4,000 bonus in December. That was nine months after an inspector general investigation report concluded he was prescribing alarmingly high amounts of opiates. And it was four months after Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski, 35, died of "mixed-drug toxicity" as an inpatient at Tomah after he was prescribed a fatal cocktail of medications, including opiates. The inpatient pharmacist supervisor also received a $1,050 bonus in December. A spokesman for the Tomah VA declined to comment. The VA moved last month to fire Houlihan. A lawyer who represented him did not respond to a message Tuesday seeking comment.
-- In Colorado, the flawed facility construction project in Denver was overseen in part by several VA officials headquartered in Washington. Among them were Stella Fiotes, executive director of the VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management, who received a $8,985 bonus; Dennis Milsten, an associate director in the same office, who got $8,069; and Chris Kyrgos, former national acquisitions director, who took home $3,800. VA spokesman Hutton did not address those awards beyond his general statement about the VA continually reviewing incentive options.
-- In St. Cloud, Minn., chief of staff Dr. Susan Markstrom got a $3,900 bonus in 2014. She was cited in an internal investigation report in January 2014 that concluded mismanagement led to mass resignations of health care providers at the facility. The report also said she and other leaders oversaw a work environment where employees were scared to report problems. St. Cloud VA spokesman Barry Venable said issues cited in the report were in 2013 and that Markstrom is “an excellent chief of staff" whose "ongoing contributions to patient care and safety are significant.”
-- In Augusta, Ga., VA financial manager Jed Fillingim was awarded a $900 performance bonus. He drew scrutiny from Congress last year after news reports revealed he admitted drinking and driving a government truck to a VA meeting in 2010 and a co-worker fell from the truck and was killed. Fillingim resigned from the VA after the incident but was rehired in March 2011, WRC-TV reported. A spokesman for the VA Medical Center in Augusta, Brian Rothwell, said Fillingim is not employed there.
-- In Arizona, Sandra Flint, now-former director of the Phoenix regional VA benefits office, received a bonus of $8,348. Irate veterans confronted Flint at a public forum in August 2014 over a backlog of about 8,200 pending benefit claims. Included were 3,667 pending longer than 125 days. A spokeswoman at the office could not be reached for comment.
-- In St. Paul, Minn., VA benefits office director Kimberly Graves received a bonus of $8,697 for 2014 performance. A VA inspector general report issued in September this year concluded Graves improperly used her authority to engineer a switch into her current post in October 2014. IG investigators concluded she also improperly received an additional $129,000 related to the move. Graves pleaded the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions at a House VA Committee hearing last week.
Hutton, the national VA spokesman, underscored that no top senior executives in the Veterans Health Administration received bonuses. “The issues raised in your questions focus on challenges VA has faced in the past,” he said. “(T)he department is working diligently to plan a foundation for the future that will modernize VA’s culture, processes, and capabilities to put the needs, expectations and interests of veterans and their families first.”
Miller said the agency, if it hands out bonuses at all, should do more to ensure they don’t reward the wrong behavior. He also wants the agency to take back bonuses deemed inappropriate after they are awarded.
“VA loves to tout its bonus program as a way to attract and retain the best and brightest employees,” he said. “Unfortunately, often times the employees VA rewards with thousands in taxpayer-funded bonuses are not the type of people the department should be interested in attracting or retaining.”Microsoft's much-anticipated Windows 10 operating system will be available from July 29, the company has stated.
Microsoft customers running Windows 7 or 8.1 can upgrade to the new system from free from the end of July, across 190 countries.
Users have one year to take advantage of the free upgrade, and once upgraded to Windows 10 Microsoft will continue to update it throughout the lifetime of the device.
Keen fans can reserve an upgrade through clicking an icon in their system tray in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
Windows 10 will retail for the same price as predecessor Windows 8.1 - $119 for Windows 10 Home, $199 for Windows 10 Professional, and $99 for a Windows 10 Pro Pack. UK pricing is yet to be confirmed.
Clicking the icon in the system tray will reserve you an upgrade spot
Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's head of Mobile, took to Twitter to express his excitement at the announcement.
July 29 is the date! Windows 10 for all! Tell friends & family: RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW to get it on day 1! http://t.co/jGSloJDZkM — joebelfiore (@joebelfiore) June 1, 2015
The news ends months of speculation as to the availability of the system, which will be welcomed as a replacement to the much-maligned Windows 8.
Microsoft has said that this will be the last-ever version of the Windows operating system in its known form, with future upgrades being rolled out like OS X for Mac.
Unlike with previous versions, there will not be a separate Windows Phone 10 operating system. Instead, Windows 10 will be used across all Microsoft devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones – as well as the Xbox games console and HoloLens, Microsoft's new wireless holographic headset. Windows 10 could also enable users to manage devices and appliances across their home.
The Start menu has made a triumphant return
However, Microsoft revealed at their recent Build developer conference that release of Windows 10 would be staggered across other devices, following the PC launch.
There will be a single store to buy software from, with developers only needing to write it once for all devices.
A new feature called Continuum means people using Windows 10 with a mouse and keyboard will see the new system in a classic desktop mode, but switching to a tablet or smartphone will see it transform into touchscreen mode.
Windows 10 sees the return of the Start Menu, which was ditched in Windows 8 in favour of "tiles", in the hope that it would encourage wider adoption on touchscreen devices.
However, the resizable tiles still feature in Windows 10, appearing when users open the Start Menu and signalling new emails and social media messages as well as weather information.
Rather than Internet Explorer, Windows 10 will come with a new web browser called Microsoft Edge, which allows users to annotate webpages or save them to read later.
It will also include Microsoft’s personal assistant tool Cortana – already on Windows Phone – which will pop-up with notifications and act as a search tool.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
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The public will finally get to see “The Search for Michael Rockefeller” Feb. 1 when Netflix releases the documentary on one of the most compelling unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.
The film confirms what The Post reported in 1968: Cannibals devoured the son of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
In 2007, filmmaker Fraser C. Heston (son of Charlton) discovered a lost cache of 16mm film shot by Milt Machlin, the editor of Argosy magazine who coined the phrases “Bermuda Triangle” and “the Abominable Snowman.”
The footage was taken during Machlin’s expedition to New Guinea in 1969 in search of the lost scion, inspired by an eyewitness report that Michael Rockefeller was alive and being held against his will by Stone Age savages.Protesters attend an opposition rally in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Thousands flocked to Egyptian capital’s central square to protest against President Mohamed Morsi’s declaration last week giving him almost unlimited power.
Nov. 27, 2012 Protesters attend an opposition rally in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Thousands flocked to Egyptian capital’s central square to protest against President Mohamed Morsi’s declaration last week giving him almost unlimited power. Khalil Hamra/AP
Supporters of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and the human rights advocates who dedicated themselves to toppling the longtime autocrat never dreamed they would find themselves chanting the same slogans.
But with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s decision on Thursday to assume near-absolute power over his country, at least for now, secularists of all stripes have mobilized in ways unimaginable just a week ago. With Islamists largely backing Morsi, a battle is quickly taking shape over the degree to which religion will play a role in post-revolutionary Egypt’s government.
On Sunday, despite a nascent rebellion among the judiciary, Morsi’s office said he would hold firm to his decisions. He also flexed his newly expanded powers for the first time, changing several labor laws by fiat. In a sign of fear about instability to come, Egypt’s main stock index plunged by almost 10 percent on the first trading day since Morsi’s announcement. It was the steepest drop since the turbulent days immediately after the revolution.
But Morsi also announced he would meet with the Egypt’s judges group on Monday, laying the possibility for concessions.
Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies and his opposition plan to hold dueling demonstrations across the country on Tuesday in a bid to rally support, pro and con, in the biggest test yet of the power of each side to mobilize. With a new constitution set to be approved in the coming months, Tahrir Square — the heart of the revolution that toppled Mubarak — has in recent days become a rallying place for both liberal secularists and those who have scorned them as naive.
Members of the long-
suppressed Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, have been marshalling themselves in front of the very institutions once used against them. With many judges and prosecutors threatening a strike, Egypt has quickly been embroiled in a crisis that may threaten the democratic ideals of the revolution more than any other development in the tumultuous 21 months since Mubarak was deposed.
In a measure of the topsy-turvy nature of the developing anti-Morsi coalition, idealistic liberal groups find themselves fighting the sidelining of a judiciary that in recent months has let many Mubarak-era officials walk away unpunished from charges of corruption and abuses. Meanwhile, law-and-order supporters of Egypt’s military and police force find themselves dodging tear gas, shouting the same anti-government lines once used against Mubarak.
The shifting lines were already on display in the June presidential elections, when Morsi narrowly beat Ahmed Shafiq, an emblem of the old guard, with just 52 percent of the vote. This time the common cause has new urgency, with Morsi removing the final check on his power by saying that courts do not have the right to review his decisions. The legislature was dissolved before he took office.
Few among the opposition expect the coalition to be durable. Whether it will be enough to get Morsi to back down has yet to be seen.
“New people who’ve never been to Tahrir, they went on Friday,” said Hatem Farrag, 42, a businessman and charity operator who said his only other protest since the revolution had been last month to object to Morsi’s first attempt to sack the Mubarak-
appointed prosecutor general, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud. Liberals and Islamists alike have complained that Mahmoud was perverting justice to protect the old Mubarak elite and demanded his ouster. But when Mahmoud lost his job for good as part of the presidential announcement last week, liberal groups joined with protesters such as Farrag to object to the manner in which the prosecutor was pushed out.
The decree “gives Morsi absolute power that Mubarak never dreamed of having,” Farrag said. “In a very short time, he united all the people who you could never believe would give the same statement.”
The military council that ran Egypt until Morsi came to power held to its promises, Farrag said, but not the Muslim Brotherhood. He said he had been part of a moderate political movement before the revolution and joined in the first protests in Tahrir on Jan. 25, 2011, expecting to see reforms, not regime change.
Many liberal politicians and activists, who have until now been plagued by infighting, said their main aim was to redeem the democratic advances they had made since the end of Mubarak’s rule. The Obama administration has also expressed its concern.
The “essential goal is to overthrow the illegitimate constitutional declaration,” said a statement from the National Salvation Front, an alliance of liberal groups and politicians formed Saturday to fight the decrees. The alliance ranges from youthful, well-
educated elites to politicians such as Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa — a former Mubarak official whom many in the youth movement view with suspicion.
“It’s hard for us to compromise on something in the middle,” said Ziad Abdel Tawab, the deputy director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, which has collaborated with other rights groups in protesting the measures. He said that Mubarak sympathizers, liberal politicians and human rights organizations “seem to share some common ideas,” even if they held starkly different visions for the country.
“There is positive energy in that people didn’t lose hope,” Abdel Tawab said. But he said that he and others were suspicious that a deal might be reached between those who miss the old autocracy and Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies.
Compromise to preserve power “is something that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have been very good at,” he said.
Morsi’s office on Sunday said that he would meet with |
was in the news for criticising the Centre on a host of issues ranging from demonetisation to Padmavati, sent a legal notice to BJP MP Pratap Simha on Thursday, seeking an apology for “soiling his image” on Facebook that has “disturbed his personal life”.
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The actor also threatened the BJP with criminal action if he didn’t reply within 10 days. “I have sent a legal notice to Pratap Simha (BJP Mysuru MP), as a citizen of this country for the way he has trolled me which has disturbed my personal life. I am asking him to answer legally and if he doesn’t, I will be taking criminal action against him,” ANI quoted Raj as saying.
The incident relates to October 4, when Simha castigated the actor for questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath’s silence over those “celebrating” the killing of activist and journalist Gauri Lankesh. He even used the death of Raj’s son to criticise the actor over questioning Modi. “Being sad due to your son’s death, having left your wife and you ran behind a dancer…do you, Mr Raj, have any right, legitimacy or worthiness to say anything to Yogi-Modi?” Simha had tweeted.
The BJP MP had also said Raj was mum when 12 members of pro-Hindu organisations were brutally killed and on the Cauvery dispute.
ALSO READ: PM Modi absolutely silent on those celebrating Lankesh murder: Actor Prakash Raj
Alleging that the comments against him had been made with a malafide intent to affect his reputation, family ties and personal life, the actor urged Simha to delete the Facebook posts and tweets about him. According to PTI, Raj said he was thinking of claiming monetary damages too for “hurting” his sentiments.
RELATED REPORT: If instilling fear in name of religion and culture is not terrorising, then what is, asks Prakash Raj
However, the multi-lingual actor said the issue should not be read through a political prism. When asked about his “double standards” in not questioning Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah when RSS and BJP members were killed, Raj said, “Many people were saying this to me that I should have started (questioning) before. Yes, I was late in starting, but better late than never.”
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The actor said he did not support any political ideology but “I am very very clear which political ideology I am against…I am not saffron”.
(With agency inputs)Improve Your Entry-Level Resume
Writing an entry-level resume can be a snap, even when you have only a little work experience under your belt.
The trick is to make a lot out of a little by emphasizing your unique abilities.
These 5 tips will help your entry-level resume stand up to scrutiny and stand out from the pack!
1. Maximize your experience.
It’s effortless and looks streamlined, but listing only your previous employers and job titles on your resume can leave potential employers not only unimpressed, but also wondering what exactly you did.
Add two or three bullet points for each position, detailing a few of your primary (and most impressive) responsibilities in the order that they apply to the position you’re seeking. To make these positions really pop, use strong adjectives like “implemented,” “created” and “maintained” to describe just how instrumental you were in your previous positions.
You can also include volunteer work on your resume if it shows necessary skills. You’ll expand your credentials while also tailoring your experience to fit the job. And if you happened to volunteer abroad, make sure you highlight that fact as future employers are keen to recruit new hires with international backgrounds.
2. Show your range.
Employers know you are more than just the jobs you’ve had.
“Past experiences” on your resume can include more than just previous jobs. Detailing your proficiency in a foreign language from studying abroad or specific computer programs can add a lot of value to your resume.
Even highlighting unrelated but important extracurricular activities can reflect your commitment to a goal — plus, you never know when an employer might bond with you over a shared love of water-skiing!
3. Use their language.
Incorporating words or phrases from a job listing into your resume is a great way to catch prospective employers’ eyes. If they’re looking for a “hard-working team player,” you might mention in your resume that you thrive in “team” environments and throw yourself into “hard work.” You’ll leave your employers musing that they couldn’t have said it better themselves.
4. Provide references – even if you aren’t asked.
For job-seekers with little work experience, references can be a huge asset to any entry-level resume. References can attest to your dedication and drive, even if you haven’t had many chances to prove your abilities in a work environment.
Even if references aren’t required in your application, why leave them out? Consider including two or three references on your resume. It’s an added convenience, and proves you have people ready to vouch for your skills.
5. Sell yourself!
When writing an entry-level resume, you might not have the experience that other positions require, but you don’t have to apologize or sell yourself short. Even if you can list only a couple of past accomplishments, you can describe the skills you’ll bring to future positions.The current generation (or at least the most of it) doesn’t really know PV Narasimha Rao and/or identify his contributions to this great nation of ours. The congress top brass made every possible effort to make sure that this man went down in History as a nobody, a memorial-less nobody. After all PV Narasimha Rao changed the name of the Congress Party from Congress (Indira) to Bhartiya Rashtriya Congress (Indian National Congress) and rejected the candidature of Sonia Gandhi as the Congress President with this golden quote of his “Congress Party should be treated like a train where the compartments have to be attached to an engine belonging to the Nehru-Gandhi family or were there other alternatives?”
In his last few days, a constant threat of imprisonment hung over his head. His colleagues gossiped about his involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. In a speech to mark the 125th anniversary of the Congress, the party president Sonia Gandhi, praised contributions of all Congress prime ministers except PV Narasimha Rao.
When he died, there were no arrangements made to receive the body and place it atop a platform for public darshan. No flowers were provided by the congress government. There was no shamiana, there were no carpets. There was no one to control the mourning crowds. The congress president came for a couple of minutes and vanished.
Revenge is supposed to be a dish best served cold. Congress President demonstrated it. Her vengeance was cold and brutal. This was a treatment meted out to a man who entered the prime minister office amidst an economic turmoil. The Man who scripted the liberalisation of the Indian economy. The man who opened up India to foreign investment, reformed capital markets, deregulated domestic business and revitalized the trade regime. The man who privatized the Public sector and made sure more money was pumped into infrastructure. The man whose efforts ensured total foreign investment in India grow from an infinitesimal US $132 million in 1991–92 to $5.3 billion in 1995–96.
The square platform of black marble called the Raj Ghat marks the spot where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated following his assassination in 1948. The two squared memorial Veer Bhoomi north of Raj Ghat, commemorates Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi arguably the worst Prime Minister India ever had. A little north to the Veer Bhoomi is Shakti Sthal, The sixty tons iron-ore rock memorial of Indira Gandhi, first lady prime minister of India. Then there is Shanti Vana, the memorial of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. Also, in the northmost section of the park is Vijay Ghat which commemorates India’s second Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri.
PV Narasimha Rao was denied a memorial in the national capital despite scripting the economic renaissance of the nation. But, things are changing and changing for good in this nation destroyed by 10 years of misrule.
10 years after his demise, PV Narasimha Rao finally got a memorial. He was denied of what he rightfully deserved by his ungrateful party but the NDA government made sure, he gets a memorial to his name in the national capital. Soon after coming to power, the NDA government had suggested to build a memorial in Rao’s name. Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu took it upon himself to speed up the task.
War of words will begin any moment. Seculars will question the necessity for the memorial as they consider PV Narasimha Rao one of the facilitators of the Babri demolition. Gandhi loyalists will reject Modi government’s effort to memorialize Rao as an attempt to over-write the Nehru-Gandhi legacy of the Congress. But the fact remains, that NDA government has rightfully honoured the saviour of 1.25 billion people, a genius, a legend and arguably the best prime minister of India.Shah Rukh Khan’s “Dilwale” was today declared the worst film while Salman Khan-starrer “Prem Ratan Dhan Payo” earned Sonam Kapoor the worst actress title
at the 8th Golden Kela Awards, which annually recognises the worst in Hindi cinema like Razzies.
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“Dilwale” was declared winner over other Bollywood disappointments “Bombay Velvet”, “Shaandaar”, “Tevar” and Akshay Kumar’s “Singh is Bliing”.
Besides Sonam, the film’s director Sooraj Barjatya took home the worst direction and ‘Bas Kijiye Bahut Ho Gaya award’.
Sonam defeated Shraddha Kapoor’s dancer turn in “ABCD 2”, Amy Jackson’s act in ‘Singh is Bliing’.
Actor Sooraj Pancholi might have bagged best debut honour at various other award functions for his film “Hero” but the Golden Kela Awards recognised him as the worst actor of the year.
The 25-year-old was named over actors like Arjun Rampal (‘Roy’), Arjun Kapoor (‘Tevar’) and Imran Khan (‘Katti Batti’).
The award for the ‘most pointless sequel/remake’ went to “MSG 2” for including over-the-top acting and irritating melodrama. The ‘Baawra Ho Gaya Hai Ke’ Award was earned by director Vikas Behl for his box-office dud “Shaandaar”.
Voters chose “Prem Ratan Dhan Payo” title track, which became a rage online, as the most irritating song of the year, while ‘Birthday Bash’ from “Dilliwaali Zaalim Girlfriend” had the most atrocious lyrics award.
Actor Imran Khan won the ‘Why Are You Still Trying’ award for his Kangana Ranaut-starrer “Katti Batti”.
There were some special awards given out by Golden Kela team, like every year.
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Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s National award-winning film “Bajirao Mastani” won ‘Manoj Kumar Award for Historical Accuracy’, Dara Singh award for worst accent was given to Randeep Hooda for “Main Aur Charles’, Sangh Parivaar award went to the song ‘Gerua’ from “Dilwale”, Shakti Kapoor award for misogyny was bagged by “Pyaar Ka Panchnama 2” and Sonakshi Sinha received ‘What The Hell’ award for her single “Ishqholic”.One of Spain's most controversial sports has been embroiled in a new scandal after it emerged that two of the dogs due to compete in the nation's most important race this weekend had been bred from a stolen champion.
DNA testing has proved that two regional champion dogs who were due to compete in the national trial at the weekend were descended from the famous greyhound Chapapote, who was stolen by a gang of illegal breeders in 2008.
Police recovered Chapapote in 2013 and arrested 29 people involved in the scam that saw him put out to stud for a charge of between €600 to €1,000 each time he mated.
The gang are thought to have earned around half a million euros from the dog after renaming him and replacing his microchip.
But his DNA had been registered with the Spanish Greyhound Federation in a scheme designed to regulate breeding and thwart thieves operating in the profitable greyhound racing world.
Abandoned greyhounds at a dog shelter. Photo: AFP
Under new regulations racing greyhounds are now compulsory tested and if it is found that they are bred from stolen greyhounds, they will be disqualified.
DNA proved that Chapapote was the grandfather of two regional champions due to compete in the national heats to be held in Nava del Rey near the northern city of Valladolid this weekend.
But the owners of the two disqualified dogs argue that they were unaware their dogs were descended from a stolen greyhound and that many other dogs of dubious parentage were also competing on the circuit.
"Other greyhounds with the same circumstances as ours have competed in the different championships in Spain," one of the owners was quoted as saying in sports newspaper Marca.
The matter has been referred to Spain's top sports tribunal, the Administrative Court of Sport, who will on Friday make a decision on whether to call off the entire championship.
Greyhound racing and hunting are big business in Spain where animal rights activists complain that the dogs suffer horrible cruelty.
An estimated 150,000 greyhounds are abandoned in Spain each year and thousands of others suffer cruel deaths when their sporting lives are over.Q: This team needs to trust Goran Dragic in crunch time. You can't just use him in the first half and then defer to Dwyane Wade after. -- Ahmad.
A: You can say all you want about Dragic, about deferring, about staying in his lane, about sacrificing. And none of it makes sense for the reason that this is a player the Heat acquired at the cost of two potential lottery picks, while paying a near-maximum salary. That does not sound like someone you ride hard early and ask to take a back seat later in games. You will never, ever get a straight answer out of the Heat, because they are in no position to offer you one, but the ultimate question is: If you knew this was the way Dragic was going to be utilized, would you have made the same trade, offered the same contract? The Heat, of course, will say yes. They have to. They have no recourse. But considering the cost in terms of draft picks and salary, there had to be more envisioned. Had to. Accepting that, the next question becomes whether it is possible for this staff, this system, this roster to maximize Goran's possibilities. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Q: I love Dwyane Wade and he is the best Miami Heat player ever. But I don't understand, why does he continue taking shots when he clearly knows that he is having a bad night? Why not move the ball or keep passing to guys like Chris Bosh and Goran Dragic who are having good shooting nights? -- Gago, Los Angeles.
A: Because the very confidence that can produce nights like Friday in Phoenix for Wade can also produce nights like Saturday in Utah. That's where a coach has to step in, as one of the most difficult challenges of his job, and get the ball moving in other, more productive directions. Yes, Dwyane is always one shot away from something special, but sometimes there are better, in those moments, options than Dwyane. If he's getting to the basket, that's one thing. But jumpers often can best be left to others.
Q: I'm starting to see more and more that Hassan Whiteside isn't looking as elite as we all thought. Whenever the opposing team has a legit center, especially in these recent games, Whiteside is getting outrebounded and alley-ooped on, etc. I think Whiteside is good, don't get me wrong. But I don't think he may be worth as much as everyone expects when free agency hits -- Earl, Jersey City.
A: And I do not believe the Heat will go to the max with Whiteside for that very reason. I believe there is an envelope tucked away somewhere with a number on it. If Whiteside can get more and chooses to take that more elsewhere, then the Heat move on. But I also wouldn't overstate these recent games. Playing through pain is a lesson all players have to deal with, and one Hassan is working through right now.Carmack: Doom 4 Sports Better Graphics Than Rage; Uses id Tech 5, Lower Frame Rate
The jump in graphical fidelity comes about as Doom 4 is targeted to run at 30 frames per second, whereas Rage will run at 60 frames per second. Carmack claims this allows id to throw "three times as much horsepower" at Doom 4.
Above, id's Rage
"[Doom 4 is] going to be a 30Hz game," he told Maximum PC. "It's going to look like a totally new game engine on there, even though it's going to be built on the four years of effort that we spent developing this generation of technology."
No platform or release details have been revealed for Doom 4, which was unveiled in a surprise announcement earlier this year. However, the id Tech 5-powered Rage will arrive on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Mac, suggesting similar platforms for Doom 4.
On the subject of id Tech 5, Carmack noted that the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 editions of the hardware can all use the exact same build with no issues, whereas the Mac engine requires an extra conversion step.
"We wanted to say OK, here's the build and run the same build on the PC, the 360, and the PS3," he explained. "We still have to go through one extra step to build it on the Mac. But it really does work that way on the other [console] platforms."
More details on Rage, Doom 4 and id Tech 5 are expected at Quakecon, which kicks off at the end of July. In the meantime, scope out our recent interview with John Carmack and the below Rage trailer for more information.Three of the most basic principles of economics are that people are price-sensitive, risk-averse, and that they respond to incentives.
If you raise the price of a good or service people will, in general, tend to buy less (price-sensitive). If you give a person a choice between a certain outcome (“I’ll pay you $50 for nothing”) or a higher payoff on an uncertain outcome (“I’ll pay you $100 or nothing based on a coin-flip”), they’ll generally take the less risky option (risk-averse). And if you give people a way to get a lower price without any risk, they’ll generally prefer that option (response to incentives).
Each of these principles seems intuitive, even obvious. Yet for some reason when you combine them to create a public policy people are shocked to find it can have “unintended consequences.
Take, for example, so-called “family-friendly policies” such as employer-mandated childcare, paid maternity leave, or requirements to allow full-time employees to work part-time work when they have a baby. Here is the opening of a recent New York Times article titled, “When Family-Friendly Policies Backfire.”
In Chile, a law requires employers to provide working mothers with child care. One result? Women are paid less. In Spain, a policy to give parents of young children the right to work part-time has led to a decline in full-time, stable jobs available to all women — even those who are not mothers. Elsewhere in Europe, generous maternity leaves have meant that women are much less likely than men to become managers or achieve other high-powered positions at work.
When you consider that employers are price-sensitive, risk-averse, and incentive-responding, none of this should be surprising. Women are the sex that bears children, so if you create policies that make it more risky and expensive to hire women, businesses will hire fewer women.
We may wish it were otherwise, of course. We may wish we lived in a world where it was possible to have family-friendly policies in which there would be no unintended consequences or adverse affects on mothers. But because we live in a world where resources (especially time and money) are scarce, we shouldn’t be surprised when businesses respond rationally to the incentives they are given.
The Times article attempts to find a solution, though.
Perhaps the most successful way to devise policies that help working families but avoid unintended consequences, people who study the issue say, is to make them gender neutral. In places like Sweden and Quebec, for instance, parental leave policies encourage both men and women to take time off for a new baby. “It has to become something that humans do,” Ms. Glynn, from the Center for American Progress, said, “as opposed to something that women do.”
Can anyone spot the flaw in this reasoning? That’s right: Even in a “gender neutral” world only women can get pregnant.
If you made such policies gender neutral, women would still take advantage of them at a higher rate because they are the ones that must bear the children. Even if a culture divided the child-rearing duties more or less equally, an employer would still have an incentive to hire fewer women since they would, all other things being equal, be more likely to be affected by each additional child.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t encourage employers to adopt more family-friendly policies. Because the family is one the most important institutions in society, every other sphere (including business) should do what it can to aid and preserve the family. But it is foolish to try to mandate that which must be done voluntarily. Mandating such policies only causes women to suffer the consequences. As the Times article notes, “There is no simple way to prevent family-friendly policies from backfiring, researchers say.”
However, we should also not expect business to bear the burden alone. Other institutions—including churches and the extended family—should also voluntarily do more to help families that are in need of assistance (especially when it comes to childcare).
We all benefit from strong families and we all suffer when the family is weak. That is why we need more than “family-friendly” employment policies. We need to create a more family-friendly society.× Teen may have died from drinking racing fuel and Mountain Dew
GREENBRIER, Tenn. -– A Tennessee teenager who died last week may have consumed a mixture of racing fuel and Mountain Dew, according to police. Logan Stephenson, 16, died on Thursday. According to Greenbrier Police Chief K.D. Smith, Stephenson and a friend started drinking the concoction Wednesday.
Stephenson was found unresponsive the next morning, reports WZTV.
“They noticed the color of his skin had changed and he started having a seizure. His hands started drawing up,” Smith told WZTV.
Stephenson’s friend was rushed to an area hospital where he is still in a coma.
Two other teens have admitted to drinking the same mixture of racing fuel and Mountain Dew.
Police are awaiting the results of a report from a medical examiner to learn Stephenson’s exact cause of death.A long-distance swimmer seeking to become the first British man to complete the Ocean's Seven, a group of seven long-distance swims around the world, was protected on his journey by a pod of dolphins who scared off a shark, according to the swimmer's support team.
Adam Walker was swimming the approximately 16-mile long Cook Strait off the New Zealand coast last Tuesday when he spotted a shark in the water below him. Just as his fears began to rise, Walker said he was surrounded by a pod of around 10 dolphins that swam with him for more than an hour.
"I'd like to think they were protecting me and guiding me home," Walker wrote on his Facebook page. "This swim will stay with me forever."
Video of Walker's swim with the dolphins was posted to YouTube the next day, April 23, where it has garnered nearly two million views since.
Walker finished the Cook Strait swim in eight hours and 36 minutes. He has already conquered the English Channel, Gibraltar Straits, Catalina Channel, Molokai Strait and Tsugaru Strait.
With the Cook Strait now under his swim cap, Walker has only the North Channel in the Irish Sea left to swim to complete the Ocean's Seven. He will take that on this August, according to his YouTube page, and, if successful, complete the Ocean's Seven.
In a fitting coincidence, given the animals he encountered in Cook Strait, Walker is swimming to raise money for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, an organization that bills itself as "the leading global charity dedicated to the conservation and protection of whales and dolphins."A former Polk Sheriff's deputy will be sentenced to six months in jail for stealing a $10 DVD from a crime scene in 2014.
BARTOW | A former Polk Sheriff's deputy will be sentenced to six months in jail for stealing a $10 DVD from a crime scene in 2014.
Ernesto McCloud, 29, pleaded guilty to trespassing in a structure, a misdemeanor, before Judge Jalal Harb in circuit court today. He also faces one year of probation and must forfeit his law enforcement credentials. In a plea agreement with the State Attorney's Office, the charges were reduced from armed burglary and petty theft.
He will be sentenced Wednesday by Harb.
McCloud was arrested Nov. 14, eight days after he responded to assist the Davenport Police Department with an alarm call at the Mystic convenience store where a burglary had occurred. Deputies responded about 2:10 a.m. at the store at 304 U.S. 17-92, according to a Sheriff's Office arrest report.
When Davenport police reviewed surveillance film from that night, officers saw McCloud pick up a DVD that had been thrown onto the floor behind the sales counter during the original burglary, the report said.
McCloud was hired as a detention deputy in August 2010 and became a deputy sheriff in May 2013, the Sheriff's Office said.
Davenport police told the Sheriff's Office about McCloud, the report said, and when deputies asked McCloud about the DVD, he admitted to taking the movie "because he had never seen it before."SHANGHAI (AFP) - The world's oldest captive giant panda has died at age 37 - more than 100 years in human years - her handlers in China said on Thursday (Sept 14) as they gave "Basi" an emotional send-off befitting a minor celebrity.
Basi outlived most of her peers by nearly two decades: Pandas in the wild have an average lifespan of about 20 years, but those in captivity generally live longer.
She was something of a beloved star in China and her birthdays were often celebrated with gusto.
State television reported live on Thursday from the zoo where Basi lived in southeastern China, which held a memorial in her honour.
"With a heavy heart, we solemnly announce today that the original model of 'Panpan', the mascot for the first Asian Games (in China, 1990), and an angel of friendship both at home and abroad, giant panda star Basi died at 8.50am on Sept 13, 2017 at the age of 37," the Straits Giant Panda Research and Exchange Center in Fuzhou said.
Basi had lived at the facility since being rescued from the wild after she fell into a river in southwestern China at the age of four or five, it said. She was named after the valley where she was found.
Basi spent some time abroad when she was loaned to the San Diego Zoo for six months in 1987.
Giant pandas have a notoriously low reproductive rate, a key contributor - along with habitat loss - to their status as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.
The black and white bear, which symbolises wildlife protection efforts worldwide, was previously classified as endangered.When I was much younger, maybe in my teens, I adopted “go with the flow” as a motto and as a way of life. For me it didn’t mean just following others or not having any idea what I wanted to do. It meant not having too clear a plan, for example going to the train station knowing that there would be a train reasonably soon, rather than going with a particular itinerary in mind. Or walking around in the right area of town trusting that I would find the place I needed to find, rather than having the location clearly mapped out in my mind.
This may have led to me spending too much time waiting at train stations, or asking perfect strangers for directions more frequently than may be respectable. Less kind observers may also have taken my “go with the flow” attitude for a rationalisation of a certain lack of personal organisation or an overly intellectual excuse for a poor sense of direction. But it did insure me against getting too stressed if stuff didn’t go to plan. (Not having a specific itinerary in mind happened to be particularly useful when I became a user of English trains, rather than Swiss ones.)
Speaking of rationalisations and over-intellectualising things, it’s fair to say that “going with the flow” has pretty much the purest intellectual and philosophical ancestry of any useful concept. Ever since Thales of Miletus, one of the first Greek philosophers, thought that water was the primal substance and Pythagoras believed that souls flow from one incarnation to the next, ideas of flux were in philosophical play. But it was Heraclitus of Ephesus who declared that everything flows. And in a way this idea that beyond our reality, where things seem hard and fast and where we assume a certain amount of stability, there is a world in flow, flux, change, and motion is perhaps the original philosophical stance. It is even possible that Heraclitus taught that if everything is in flux then we – our selves – are also impermanent. We only have fragments of his teachings preserved in the writings of later philosophers, often out of context, misquoted or misunderstood. But his tendency to compare the flux of everything to the flow of a river is clear. He says people can’t step into the same river twice. And when this is quoted, there sometimes is a suggestion that those who step into the river aren’t the same either on the two occasions. If we allow for Heraclitus’ concept of “psyche” to stand for a kind of concept of self, it is clear that Heraclitus regarded it as something we could never fully get a grasp of ourselves.
Heraclitus is credited with this original vision of the fleeting world. But what consequences does flux have for our lives? What does it mean for the way we are, that everything, even our own selves are in flux? Perhaps surprisingly the real masters of flux for me, because they aim to address some of these questions, are the Stoics. It was probably the founder of that philosophical school, Zeno of Citium, who declared that a happy life was one that “flowed smoothly.” (And by the way, while we’re talking about Ancient Greek or “Western” philosophy, Thales’ and Heraclitus’ hometowns of Miletus and Ephesus were in an area called Asia Minor, today Turkey, whereas Zeno’s hometown of Citium is in today’s Cyprus, so far East that it’s more or less equidistant between London and Mumbai.)
The word the Stoics used for the “smooth flow” of life is “eurhoia,” a term that is also used in ancient Greek for water that flows clearly without obstacles, and for speech that flows well with a coherent argument. But what does it mean for a life to flow smoothly? It means arranging our life in such a way that the flow of the self moves with the flow of everything else. For the Stoics the flow of everything was not just a random movement of atoms in a chaotic universe but it was a pre-determined course of events guided by fate. Occasionally they metaphorically describe Zeus, the chief of the Greek gods, as the personification of that destiny, at other times it is a divine sequence of cause and effect, represented by the goddess Heimarmene, or just the nature of things. Bringing our own actions, but also our emotions, into line with that natural flow of things that happen in the world, is key to the good life and virtuous life.
One Stoic philosopher compares the human condition guided by destiny to the situation of a dog pulling a cart. The dog’s master will make the dog pull the cart from A to B. The dog may take the attitude that it doesn’t want to pull the cart from A to B. It may try going elsewhere, or it may try to shake off the cart. Then it will be beaten by the master all the way from A to B. It will be an unpleasant experience but the outcome will be that the dog pulls the cart from A to B. Or it can willingly get on with the task and get from A to B without being beaten, a smooth journey. That sounds a bit unfriendly, but there are other ways of putting it. Here’s Diogenes Laertius, the third century biographer of Greek philosophers summarising the teachings of the Stoic, Chrysippus:
“Again, ‘to live according to virtue’ is equivalent to living according to the experience of events which occur by nature, as Chrysippus says […]. For our natures are parts of the nature of the universe. Therefore, the goal becomes ‘to live consistently with nature,’ i.e., according to one’s own nature and that of the universe, doing nothing which is forbidden by the common law, which is right reason, penetrating all things, being the same as Zeus, who is the leader of the administration of things. And this itself is the virtue of the happy man and a smooth flow of life, whenever all things are done according to the harmony of the daimon in each of us with the will of the administrator of the universe.”
The aspect of this that seems most modern about this is the idea of living in accordance with one’s own nature. “The daimon within us” is not a demon, but the kind of minor divinity of the self who can aim to get along with Zeus, the controller of the universe. And this idea of being true to oneself – living in line with our own nature – is expressed in other, practical ways. Cicero, summarising the teachings of the Stoics for the Romans, gives an example (also alluding to the use of “eurhoia” in rhetorics as smoothly flowing speech which would have been important for him, the master orator) :
If anything at all is fitting, then nothing is more fitting than a smooth flow of life as a whole and of individual actions; and you cannot preserve this if you neglect your own nature and imitate that of other people. For just as we should employ the style of speech that is familiar to us to avoid being quite justifiably ridiculed like certain people who drop in Greek words all over the place, so too we should not admit any inconsistency into our actions and our general way of life…
None of this means that we should lazily submit to the thought that it’s just our fate to have certain things happen to us, or it’s just our nature that we are a certain way. The dog still has to pull the cart. It is doing hard work – happily – to get where the master wants it to go. And the inner “daimon” is managing the flow of the self, as a microcosm of the flow of the universe managed by Zeus. That self isn’t fixed. It is in movement. It just flows more smoothly and pleasantly when it goes with the flow of overall destiny.
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Like this: Like Loading...Introduction
The Roblox engine is written in a combination of C++ and Lua, with the code that performs computationally intensive operations written in optimized C++, while game logic and scripts are written in Lua, for ease of development. For this model to be effective, it requires that the transitions between Lua and C++ be as fast as possible, as any time spent in this no man’s land is essentially just wasted milliseconds.
Over the past couple of months, we’ve been rolling out various improvements to this part of the system. One part specifically—the actual invocation of C++ methods from Lua—was particularly interesting, as it led to considerable speed improvements and required digging around in the guts of Lua to understand how things worked under the hood.
We ended up modifying the Lua VM itself, but before we get to that, we need to lay some groundwork.
Compilers, VM, and bytecode
When Lua source code is compiled, it’s compiled into Lua bytecode, which the Lua VM then runs. Lua bytecode has around 35 instructions in total, for things like reading/writing tables, calling functions, performing binary operations, jumps and conditionals, and so on. The Lua VM is register-based, as opposed to being stack-based like many other VMs, so part of what the compiler does when it generates bytecode is determine which registers each instruction should use.
Each instruction has the form “OP_CODE A B,” or “OP_CODE A B C,” where “OP_CODE” is the opcode (for example, CALL for calling a function) and A/B/C are the opcode arguments. The arguments (or registers) aren’t actual values. Instead, they are indices that point into one of two tables: the constant table (written Kst(..)) or the register table (written R(..)).
Interlude For a detailed description of Lua bytecode, see “A No-Frills introduction to Lua 5.1 VM Instructions.” It’s a lot more exciting than it sounds; I promise!
To give you a feel for what Lua bytecode looks like, we’re going to go over some simple programs first and then progress to some more relevant examples.
Interlude Using the Chunkspy utility, we can disassemble Lua bytecode into Lua assembly and get a listing of the code, as well as the constant table, so we can essentially see what bytecode gets generated for any given Lua source code.
Basic bytecode examples
A simple program like “x = 10” compiles into:
.const "x" ; 0.const 10 ; 1 [1] loadk 0 1 ; 10 [2] setglobal 0 0 ; x
The first two lines show the constant table (with the string value “x” in slot 0 and the integer value 10 in slot 1), and the following two lines are the disassembled opcodes.
[Line 1] Looking up the LOADK opcode in “No Frills,” we see that it has the form “ |
packaged and sold to the American people to make them actually believe their safety is at risk. Who can really say that Jon and Jane were personally threatened when the CIA decided to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 and install a more preferred dictator? Who in America would otherwise have been existentially threatened if Reagan had not helped foment a savage civil war and support massive human rights abuses by proxy to undermine the Sandinistas in Nicaragua?
Consider the Carter Doctrine – literally the cornerstone of US foreign policy in the Middle East, which has not changed fundamentally since its induction in Carter’s State of the Union speech in January 1980. In that speech, Carter uttered the fateful words that would inform Washington’s perception of the Middle East for decades to come: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
Now, is maintaing US “control of the Persian Gulf region” by force and coercion really indispensable for the safety of Jon and Jane? Sure, they need oil and gas to heat their homes and drive to work, but why should the government need to “secure” that particular commodity?
It is not for the sake of Jon and Jane that the United States Government establishes military bases, props up obedient dictatorships, and goes to war in the Middle East. They are not safer and their wallets are emptier because of these policies. It is for the sake of the supremacy of the government – the rulers – that these policies are imposed. Iran, the greatest bogeyman in the establishment’s lexicon, threatens their interests, their dominance in the most strategically important region in the world. Jon and Jane, quite obviously, have nothing to fear from Iran.
“National security interests” are just that: interests of the national security state, not of the people. Just being able to recognize this can change one’s entire understanding of war, politics, elections, and the real threat to their security.'No matter what the weather is like, it always turns out to be exactly the kind of weather we should expect if human activity were causing global temps to rise'
[Updates on global warming blizzard claims here.]
Here we go again. Global warming activists and some warmist scientists are linking the massive blizzard to man-made global warming.
Jersey News Outlet Cries ‘Global Warming’ as Blizzard Approaches
Warmist Brad Johnson tries to make the pending East Coast blizzard about the ocean ‘warming –Fails
Rebuttal: Bob Tisdale shows how ‘Forecast the Facts” Brad Johnson and now Dr. Heidi Cullen are fecklessly factless about ocean warming and the blizzard — Dear Chicken Little: ‘The Sky Is Falling (It’s Snowing) But Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Off New England Are NOT Unusual’
Rebuttal: Global Warming To Bring Colder/Warmer Winters – Analysis by Paul Homewood – ‘It seems that every time we get some snow, another “scientist” is wheeled out to explain that, no matter how cold it gets, it is all down to global warming’
New paper finds warming causes less snow: Paper published in the Journal of Climate — Study ‘finds that warmer temperatures cause less snow, and conversely, colder temperatures cause more snow. According to the authors, ‘Using a simple multivariate model, [increased] temperature is shown to drive these trends by decreasing snowfall almost everywhere.’ The paper refutes the claims of climate alarmists that global warming causes more snow, and every other possible weather event’
UN IPCC 2001: ‘Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms’ — Also, The UN IPCC Draft in 1995: ‘Shrinking snow cover in winter’ — Analysis: ‘In 2010-2011, heavy snow was due to global warming. Then in 2012 the lack of snow in the Eastern US was due to global warming, and now in 2013 heavy snow is again due to global warming’
Settled Science: Global Warming To Bring Colder/Warmer Winters — ‘It seems that every time we get some snow, another ‘scientist’ is wheeled out to explain that, no matter how cold it gets, it is all down to global warming…But let’s, for one moment, remind ourselves of some of the ‘scientists’ who have said the exact opposite’
CNN Anchor Blames Asteroid on Global Warming: Anchor Deb Feyerick asked if an approaching asteroid, which will pass by Earth on Feb. 15, ‘is an example of, perhaps, global warming?’ — CNN Anchor: ‘Every time we see a storm like this lately, the first question to pop into a lot of people’s minds is whether or not global warming is to blame? I’ll talk to Bill Nye, ‘the science guy,’ about devastating storms & climate change’
Meteorologist Ryan Maue: ‘Just imagine Fox News aired a segment so scientifically ignorant asking if ‘asteroids’ were caused by global warming?’
Flashback 2011: ‘Global Warming Alarmists Flip-Flop On Snowfall’
Global Warming Causes Less Snow, Except When It Causes More Snow
Flashback 1977: CRU Director Hubert Lamb of U. of East Anglia: Climate Change Is Natural: ‘Nature doesn’t know what ‘normal’ means’ — Lamb: ‘The idea of normal weather is an unfortunate legacy resulting from the idea that grew up in the early days of this century that the climate was constant. Nature doesn’t know what ‘normal’ means’
New Report: ‘Extreme Weather Report 2012’: ‘Latest peer-reviewed studies, data & analyses undermine claims that current weather is ‘unprecedented’ or a ‘new normal’ — Climate Depot’s New 35-Page Report: ‘Current weather is neither historically unprecedented, nor unusual’ — ‘Extreme weather events are ever present, and there is no evidence of systematic increases’ — Presented at UN Climate Conference in Doha, Qatar on Dec. 6, 2012
Round Up of Snowy Winters & Global Warming Claims – Excerpted from Climate Depot’s Extreme Weather Report
Flashback 2010: Climate Depot’s Morano on Fox News: ‘There is no way anyone can falsify the global warming theory now because any weather event that happens ‘proves’ their case’
Flashback 2010: NYT’s Climate Astrology: ‘Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming’ — ‘Overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes’
Flashback 2010: Watch Now! Climate Depot’s Morano in MSNBC TV Debate — Morano: ‘Now [the warmists] are trying to say global warming causes blizzards, that’s the level of climate astrology — it’s like a daily horoscope — nothing that happens falsifies the [warming] theory’ — ‘He (Weiss) need’s Tarot cards, that is what he needs, he is peddling astrology’
Flashback: Top Democrats Warn Low Snow Levels Prove Global Warming (Video) — ‘Watch Democrats Jay Inslee, Barbara Boxer, Amy Klobuchar, Robert Byrd and Dianne Feinstein express deep concern and alarm during years when winters were mild and snow was light, contending that global warming was the cause.’
Flashback 2011: Gore now claims ‘increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with… man-made global warming’ — But Gore never warned of looming ‘heavy snowfalls’ in his 2006 film — The man who ‘created’ the Internet finds his website (and his science) not up to the task — Climate Depot’s Rebuttal
Gore now claims ‘increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with… man-made global warming’
The New York Times on December 27, 2012, featured an OpEd with the headline : Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming
Watch Now: Flashback: Climate Depot’s Morano on Fox News Mocking ‘Climate Astrology’: ‘This is now akin to the predictions of Nostradamus or the Mayan calendar’ — Morano: ‘There is no way anyone can falsify the global warming theory now because any weather event that happens ‘proves’ their case…Man-made global warming has ceased to be a science, it is now the level of your daily horoscope’ — Gore [in 2006 film] did not warn us of extreme blizzards and record cold winters coming’
Dueling Claims About How Global Warming Affects Winters: ‘The IPCC says global warming makes winter mild with less snow’ — ‘Milder winter temps will decrease heavy snowstorms’ — ‘Settled science also tells us global warming makes winter cold and snowy in the US Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer Mocks Gore: OMG! ANOTHER GLOBAL WARMING SNOWSTORM!! — ‘Gore has caused the spread of more pseudo-scientific incompetence on the subject of global warming than any climate scientist could possibly have ever accomplished…No serious climate researcher — including the ones I disagree with — believes global warming can cause colder weather. Unless they have become delusional as a result of some sort of mental illness’
Meteorologist Anthony Watts: ‘Apparently, Gore has never noted that climate scientists once thought snowfall would disappear.But wait, there’s more. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Viner said.
‘Incorrect’: Climatologist Pielke Sr. Slaps Down NYT For Global Warming Blizzard Claims! — ‘The oceans have not been warming in recent years’ — ‘ALL seasonal and longer time scale model predictions have failed to skillfully predict these extreme cold events’
Flashback 2008: ‘Why Winter No Longer Exists’ — ‘Winter has gone for ever…Climate change has wiped out the season of traditionally long, hard frosts’
Climate Astrology: ‘No matter what the weather is like, it always turns out to be exactly the kind of weather we should expect if human activity were causing global temps to rise’ — ‘The natural sciences have terms for that kind of hypothesis. ‘Unfalsifiable’ is one of them. ‘Unscientific’ is another. An idea may be true, but if it is incapable of being ‘falsified’ or proven wrong, then whatever else that idea is, it certainly isn’t science.’
Doh! NASA’s James Hansen in 2008: Warm UK winters ‘are a clear sign that the climate is changing’
Climatologist Pielke Sr. counters claim of ‘more moisture’ causing more extreme weather: ‘Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after year 2000’
Oops. UK Met Office in 2006: ‘We are expecting milder winters’ — Head of predictions, Dr. Geoff Jenkins, the ‘believes the mild, wet winter is almost certainly a sign of global warming’
Declining Snow Cover Causes Record Snow Cover: ‘This winter (December-February) will almost certainly be in the top two snow cover years for the northern hemisphere. Right now it is positioned as the snowiest winter on record. As our top climate scientists explain it, the shortage of snow cover is the cause of the record snow cover.’
‘So is there any weather pattern that would disprove global warming?’
Warmists propose that colder Northern Hemisphere winters since 1988 are due to global warming
‘We used to call them snake oil salesmen, now we call them climate scientists’ — ‘Ten years ago climate scientists forecast warm winters and lack of snow, because we were having warm winters and a lack of snow. Now they forecast cold winters and lots of snow, because that is what is occurring’
‘Full panic mode’: Climate Institute Now Says To Expect ‘Warmer Colder’ Winters! — ‘They can no longer get their stories straight’ ‘Propaganda machinery switched into high gear’
How Do You Differentiate Between CO2 Cold And Non-CO2 Cold?’ — ‘Given the incontrovertible evidence that evil humans made the weather cold (by making the earth hot) I was wondering how you tell the difference between -20C caused by CO2 and -20C caused by a lack of CO2. Do they make a thermometer which can tell the difference?’
Paper: ‘No matter what the weather, it’s all due to warming. This isn’t science; it’s a kind of faith’
Climatologist Dr. Pielke Sr. dismisses warming causes cold claims: ‘They continue to miss the significance that it is the regional circulations that matter, not a global average anomaly’ — ‘Until and unless they can skillfully predict observationally documented CHANGES in the statistics (probabilities) of the different major circulation patterns, their explanations are necessarily flawed’
Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels Mocks Heat Causing Cold Claims: ‘It is the core problem of climatology — attempting to explain everything even when everything becomes contradictory’
‘Propaganda Mill Marches On’: ‘These unusually harsh winters usually are the result of heating somewhere else, most likely in areas of the world that are already hot’
Counter: ‘Unbearable Heat During The Ice Age’: ‘Now that we know that heat causes harsh winters, one can only imagine how hot the last ice age must have been’
Environment Magazine: ‘Back When it Snowed’: ‘Losing Winter: As Climate Change Takes Hold, Our Coldest Season is the first Casualty’
Must See Video: ‘Global warming panic explained’ — ‘How can you disprove global warming? You can’t, that’s how you know it’s true.’
‘Non-falsifiable Hypothesis’: AGW ‘looks like its own self-contained and self-referential lunatic asylum…finding positive proof of climate change in every weather surprise’
UN IPCC’s Michael Oppenheimer on his unused sled in 2000: ‘Oppenheimer even had a tear-jerking personal angle on the ‘absence of snow’ in modern winters [email protected] — NYT quoted ‘Oppenheimer on the pathetic spectacle of the unused sled in his stairwell, symbol of a warming world: ‘I bought a sled in ’96 for my daughter,’ said Oppenheimer, a scientist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. ‘It’s been sitting in the stairwell, and hasn’t been used. I used to go sledding all the time. It’s one of my most vivid and pleasant memories as a kid, hauling the sled out to Cunningham Park in Queens.’
NASA’s James Hansen claims extreme weather events would not have happened if CO2 had remained at its pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million
New York Times in 2000: ‘Sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling’ — NYT in 2000: ‘But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.’
NASA in 1999: ‘Winter in the Northern Hemisphere will continue to warm’ Warmists in 2010: ‘Global warming means colder and snowier winters in Europe and North America’ — Nostradamus Science: Warmist predict anything could potentially happen — then any climate event is conveniently ‘consistent’ with their global warming theory!
Hansen’s claims challenged: See Hansen takedown & ‘The ten worst floods in history’
‘Climate Astrology’ Takes Hold: Japanese scientist Kanya Kusano, a Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology, has publicly declared that man-made climate fear promotion is now akin to “ancient astrology.”
Mathematical physicist Dr. Frank J. Tipler, Prof. of Mathematical Physics, astrophysics, at Tulane University: “Whether the ice caps melt, or expand — whatever happens — the AGW theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology. It is obvious that anthropogenic global warming is not science at all.”
New York Times: Remember when we told you that global warming causes warmer winters? We should have said that global warming causes ‘colder’ winters
ABC News Blames Global Warming for Extreme Cold Temps: Global warming ‘means winters with more snow’ Brutal cold & snow ‘could be the new normal’
Climate Depot Response to ABC News: It is much more likely that witches have caused the record cold than man-made global warming. See: Salem Witch Trials during ‘Little Ice Age’: ‘Women suspected of being witches– were often accused of changing the weather’
UK Guardian Says Global Warming Induced Cold Is The New Normal: ‘That is the great thing about man-made CO2 – all natural phenomenon can be blamed on it’ — ‘And alarmists are allowed to change their mind about the symptoms as many times as they like. Cold wet summers are the future of global warming…8 years ago, team climate was saying that hot, dry summers were the future of global warming’
Global Warming Causing Winters To Simultaneously Get Colder And Warmer — Which is it?! ‘We conclude that the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters’ Or ‘As winters growwarmer and summers drier, the West’s evergreen forests are being eaten alive’Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A Belfast woman who posted a series of menacing messages on a website, including a comment which suggested all Muslims should be sent to the gas chambers, is to be sentenced for the offences next month.
Anne Bothwell appeared at Belfast Magistrate’s Court today to contest a total of seven charges against her. Whilst she was convicted of six charges, the seventh was dismissed.
The 53-year old, from Ashmore Street, posted a series of comments on the Protestant Coalition’s Facebook page concerning both Muslims and Dr Raied Al-Wazzan - a senior figure within the Muslim community in Northern Ireland.
Giving evidence during today’s trial, Dr Al-Wazzan said the content of some of the messages posted by Bothwell on the Facebook page caused him to fear for his life and for his family’s safety.
Bothwell denied her messages were harmful, said she wrote them in humour and even told the court, “I have Muslim friends, but I also have experience of Muslim people living in England and they don’t have the same sort of humour we do.”
She also claimed that as Dr Al-Wazzan was the person who complained to police about a sermon given by Pastor McConnell - which resulted in the Pastor being taken to court - she made the comments as she was “upset” by what happened.
Bothwell was charged with seven counts of improper use of a public electronic communications network. Six of the charges were sending a menacing message, whilst the seventh was sending a message that was grossly offensive.
All the charge arose from messages Bothwell posted on the Protestant Coalition’s Facebook page between January 14 and 16 this year.
Dr Al-Wazzan - who has lived in Northern Ireland for 26 years - said he became aware that a picture of him had been posted on the group’s Facebook page after the group organised an anti-refugee rally, and he attended a demonstration in support of refugees.
He said that after seeing an image of himself on the Facebook page, he was “curious to see the comments underneath”. He also said that after reading some of the “unpleasant” comments, he reported the matter to the police.
Dr Al-Wazzan said that despite not knowing Anne Bothwell, there were several comments from her which suggested he should be shot, and that Muslims should be sent to the gas chamber.
She also referred to him as Wizzy-Wazzy, accused him of practising witchcraft, said Muslim women “are all over Belfast on their broomsticks and should be burnt at the stake”, and when another poster asked what could be done about Dr Al-Wazzan, Bothwell commented “where are the guns, that would end the problem".
Dr Al-Wazzan said that as a result of the online comments, it put his life “under threat”. He also said as a result, he had to check he was not being followed.
Regarding the post about guns, Dr Al-Wazzan told the court he felt the comment “could encourage other people to use violence". He also said there was a “line between offensive comments and life-threatening comments” and that some comments can “incite hatred".
When he was asked about a comment posted by Bothwell which stated “It won’t be long before Wizzy-Wazzy be crying Allah help me I think I’m going to be shot”, Dr Al-Wazzan said he felt was a direct threat.
When she was called to give evidence, Bothwell denied the messages she posted were threatening or menacing. Instead, she said some of the comments were taken in the wrong context, and also said that due to some comments before hers being “nasty”, she “tried to make humour of it".
Bothwell also claimed she made the comments because she was “upset for Pastor McConnell, for what he had been through”, adding: “I don’t think there was any need for him (Dr Al-Wazzan) to report it to the police.”
She also claimed Muslims “don’t have the same sort of humour we do". When a Crown prosecutor read out some of the comments and asked her “would you accept a Muslim wouldn’t find this a joke?”, Bothwell replied: “I have Muslim friends who laugh at my humour. They know the person I am and would just laugh about it.”
Bothwell said that if Dr Al-Wazzan had asked her to remove her comments, she would have done so. She then told the court it was her belief that Dr Al-Wazzan “logged on to see who he could get in to trouble".
After listening to all the evidence, District Judge Ken Nixon convicted Bothwell of the six charges related to a menacing message, and dismissed the charge linked to the grossly offensive post.
Mr Nixon ordered the preparation of pre-sentence reports, and listed the case for sentencing on August 11.Obama has stated that the “most frustrating part” of his presidency has been his inability to pass gun control legislation, and progressives are not going to give up on their gun grabbing goal any time soon.
The Washington Post has published an article by E. J. Dionne entitled “How American can free itself from guns.” Dionne argues, much as Eric Holder did, that the key is to change the American mind about guns.
Watch Eric Holder explain how we need to “brainwash” people against guns:
Dionne doesn’t use the word “brainwashing,” but he makes the same comparison to public service messages about cigarettes. He writes:
That’s why the nation needs a public service offensive on behalf of the health and safety of us all. It could build on Sandy Hook Promise and other civic endeavors. If you doubt it could succeed, consider how quickly opinion changed on the Confederate battle flag. My friend Guy Molyneux, a progressive pollster, laid out how it could happen. “We need to build a social movement devoted to the simple proposition that owning handguns makes us less safe, not more,” he told me. “The evidence is overwhelming that having a gun in your home increases the risks of suicide, domestic violence and fatal accidents, and yet the number one reason given for gun purchases is ‘personal safety.’ We need a public health campaign on the dangers of gun ownership, similar to the successful efforts against smoking and drunk driving.”
Continuing on in this vein, the focus shifts from public services messages that change American attitudes to the creation of yet another new “right”:
“The best way to disarm the NRA rhetorically is to make the Second Amendment issue moot,” Molyneux said. “This is not about the government saying you cannot own a handgun. This is about society saying you should not have a gun, especially in a home with children.” Molyneux said his approach “does not imply giving up on gun control legislation.” On the contrary, the best path to better laws is to foster a revolution in popular attitudes. And this approach would finally put the rights of non-gun owners at the center of the discussion.
Non-gun owners should have the “right” to live in a country that doesn’t include the Constitutional right to bear arms. You know, that pesky Second Amendment.
Instead, progressives will be pushing for a new “right”:
The nation could ring out with the new slogans of liberty: “Not in my house.” “Not in our school.” “Not in my bar.” “Not in our church.” We’d be defending one of our most sacred rights: The right not to bear arms.
They already have that right, of course. No one is forcing anyone to bear arms; they just want to force us not to.
Jonathan Keiler writes:For the video game franchise, see Brain Age (series)
Brain training (also called cognitive training) is a program of regular mental activities purported to maintain or improve one's cognitive abilities. It reflects a hypothesis that cognitive abilities can be maintained or improved by exercising the brain, analogous to the way physical fitness is improved by exercising the body.[1]
Although there is strong evidence that aspects of brain structure remain "plastic" throughout life and that high levels of mental activity are associated with reduced risks of age-related dementia, scientific support for the concept of "brain fitness" is limited.[2][3] The term is infrequently used in academic literature, but is commonly used in the context of self-help books and commercial products.[1][4]
Overview [ edit ]
Cognitive reserve is the capacity of a person to meet the various cognitive demands of life and is evident in an ability to assimilate information, comprehend relationships, and develop reasonable conclusions and plans. Cognitive training is a hypothesis that certain activities, done regularly, might help maintain or improve cognitive reserve.[5]
As of 2016, companies offering products and services for cognitive training have marketed them as improving educational outcomes for children, and for adults as improving memory, processing speed, and problem-solving, and even as preventing dementia or Alzheimers.[6] They often support their marketing with discussion about the educational or professional background of their founders, some discuss neuroscience that supports their approach—especially concepts of neuroplasticity and transfer of learning, and some cite evidence from clinical trials.[1] The key claim made by these companies is that the specific training that they offer generalizes to other fields—academic or professional performance generally or everyday life.[1]
As of 2016, there was some evidence that some of these programs improved performance on tasks in which users were trained, less evidence that improvements in performance generalize to related tasks, and almost no evidence that "brain training" generalizes to everyday cognitive performance; in addition most clinical studies were flawed.[1]
Commercial programs [ edit ]
Cogmed was founded in 2001, Posit Science in 2002, and Brain Age was first released in 2005,[7][8] all capitalizing on the growing interest within the public in neuroscience, along with heightened worries by parents about ADHD and other learning disabilities in their children, and concern about their own cognitive health as they aged.[9]
The launch of Brain Age in 2005 marked a change in the field, as prior to this products or services were marketed to fairly narrow populations (for example, students with learning problems), but Brain Age was marketed to everyone, with a significant media budget.[1] In 2005, consumers in the US spent $2 million on cognitive training products; in 2007 they spent about $80 million.[10]
By 2012, "brain training" was a $1 billion industry.[7] In 2013 the market was $1.3 billion, and software products made up about 55% of those sales.[1] By that time neuroscientists and others had a growing concern about the general trend toward what they called "neurofication", "neurohype", "neuromania", neuromyths.[9]
Effectiveness [ edit ]
To address growing public concerns with regard to aggressive online marketing of brain games to older population, a group of neuroscientists published a letter in 2008 warning the general public that there is a lack of research showing effectiveness of brain games in elderly.[11]
In 2010, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that there was insufficient evidence to recommend any method of preventing age-related memory deficits or Alzheimer's.[12]
In 2014 another group of scientists published a similar warning.[11][13] Later that year, another group of scientists made a counter statement,[1] organized and maintained by the Chief Scientific Officer of Posit.[14]
Regulation and lawsuits [ edit ]
Starting in January 2015, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued companies selling "brain training" programs or other products marketed as improving cognitive function, including WordSmart Corporation, the company that makes Lumosity, and Brain Research Labs (which sold dietary supplements) for deceptive advertising;[15] later that year the FTC also sued LearningRx.[16]
The FTC found that Lumosity's marketing "preyed on consumers' fears about age-related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer's disease", without providing any scientific evidence to back its claims. The company was ordered not to make any claims that its products can "[improve] performance in school, at work, or in athletics" or "[delay or protect] against age-related decline in memory or other cognitive function, including mild cognitive impairment, dementia, or Alzheimer's disease", or "[reduce] cognitive impairment caused by health conditions, including Turner syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke, or side effects of chemotherapy", without "competent and reliable scientific evidence", and agreed to pay a $50 million settlement (reduced to $2 million).[17][18]
In its lawsuit against LearningRx, the FTC said LearningRx had been "deceptively claim[ing] their programs were clinically proven to permanently improve serious health conditions like ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), autism, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, strokes, and concussions".[19] In 2016, LearningRx settled with the FTC by agreeing not to make the disputed assertions unless they had "competent and reliable scientific evidence" which was defined as randomized controlled trials done by competent scientists." For the judgment's monetary component, LearningRx agreed to pay $200,000 of a $4 million settlement.[20]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Seth Gordon is in negotiations to direct Dwayne Johnson in Paramount’s bigscreen adaptation of the TV series “Baywatch.”
Johnson is attached to star and will produce along with his partner Dany Garcia through their Seven Bucks Productions banner along with Montecito Pictures producing along with Beau Flynn.
Michael Berk, Douglas Schwartz, Greg Bonnan will exec produce.
While plot details are currently vague, sources close to the project have said the studio wants to go the comedic route for the project.
Paramount has been trying to get the right ingredients in place in order to move forward with the film, and Gordon is the sort of director the studio has been looking to over the years. Gordon’s hit vulgar comedies like “Horrible Bosses” and “Identity Theft” have made him a popular director at the studios amid moviegoers’ craving for R-rated comedies. Paramount would hope for similar results.
Damian Shannon & Mark Swift wrote the latest draft of the script.
Gordon had been attached to Sony’s “Uncharted” but recently left the project. He is repped by WME, Brillstein Entertainment and Sloane Offer.Image caption The Sikh community has launched an online petition against Jay Leno
A lawsuit has been filed in California suing US comedian Jay Leno for what it calls "racist" comments on the Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple of Amritsar.
Indian-American Randeep Dhillon says Leno "hurt the sentiments of all Sikh people in addition to the plaintiff".
A recent Leno skit showed the shrine as the summer home of Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
Mr Romney has faced questions over his wealth and Sikhs are angry the temple was shown as a place for the rich.
An Indian minister called Leno's comments "objectionable" and said "freedom does not mean hurting the sentiments of others".
But US state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the US Constitution strictly protected freedom of speech.
'Exposed to ridicule'
Mr Dhillon filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, seeking unspecified damages.
Image caption The Golden Temple is the holiest Sikh shrine
Leno's joke "clearly exposes plaintiff, other Sikhs and their religion to hatred, contempt, ridicule and obloquy because it falsely portrays the holiest place in the Sikh religion as a vacation resort owned by a non-Sikh", Mr Dhillon said in his petition.
Earlier, a US Sikh group launched an online petition over Leno's comment, also accusing the comedian of making previous derogatory remarks about Sikhs.
Some Sikhs also demanded action against the NBC channel for airing the "racist and derogatory" depiction of the Golden Temple.
Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi joined the protest, saying: "It is quite unfortunate and quite objectionable that such a comment has been made after showing the Golden Temple."
But Ms Nuland said: "I hope [Leno will] be appreciative if we make the point that his comments are constitutionally protected in the United States under free speech and, frankly, they appeared to be satirical in nature."
She said the US had "absolute respect" for all Indians, including Sikhs, and that President Barack Obama was the first president to celebrate the birthday of the religion's founder, Guru Nanak, at the White House."
Jay Leno has not yet commented on the matter.While speaking to students in London on Saturday, President Obama took a shot at America's race relations. "There’s still discrimination in aspects of American life, even with a black president," Obama told Brits, pointing specifically to the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson as proof.
“...saying I’m most familiar with American civil rights movement. You had abolitionist in the 1700s who were fighting against slavery and for a hundred years build a movement that eventually will led to a civil war and be amendments to our Constitution that ended slavery and called for equal protection under the law. It then took another hundred years for those rights that has been tried in the constitution to actually be affirmed to the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1964.
And then, it’s taken another 50 years to try to make sure that those rights are realized. And — and they’re still not fully realized. There’s still discrimination in aspects of American life, even with a black president. And in fact, one of the dangers has been that by electing a black president people have then said, ‘Well there must be no problems at all.’ And obviously, you see Ferguson and some of the issues that we’ve seen in the criminal justice system indicating the degree to which that was always false.
So, does that mean that all the work that was done along the way was worthless? No, of course not. But it does mean that — if — if any of you begin to work on an issue that you care deeply about don’t be disappointed if in a year out things haven’t been completely solved. Don’t give up and succumb to cynicism if after five years poverty has not been eradicated and prejudice is still out there somewhere and we haven’t resolved all of the steps we need to take to the reverse climate change. It’s ok.
Dr. King said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ And — and it doesn’t bend on its own it bends because we pull it in that direction, but it — it requires a series of — of generations, working, building off of what the previous one has done. And so as president, I think about in those ways.
I — I consider myself a runner, and I run my leg of the race, but then I’ve got a baton and I’m passing it on to the next person and hopefully they’re running in the right direction, as opposed to the wrong direction and hopefully they don’t drop the baton and — and then they go and then they pass it on to somebody else. And that’s why I think you’ve got to think about change generally. OK. All right. It is a young woman’s turn.”NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Already without Justin Hunter, out for the year with a lacerated spleen, the Titans are now dealing with an injury to Kendall Wright.
The team’s top wide receiver suffered a hand injury when he slipped at practice Wednesday and did not practice Thursday.
Wright is coming off his best game of the year with seven catches for 132 yards and a touchdown.
“He finished practice [Wednesday] and today he came in and it was sore and we just gave him the day off because I didn’t want him trying to catch a ball and aggravating it,” coach Ken Whisenhunt said. “It’s going to depend on how much better it gets tomorrow.”
Whisenhunt didn’t know if Wright had his X-ray yet.
Wright was not in the locker room when it was open to the media.
He has a team-high 51 catches and five touchdowns.Submitted by cpowell on Fri, 2008-09-26 02:20.
Fed Keeps Banks Afloat as Money Market Crisis Deepens
By John Parry and Jamie McGeeever
Reuters
Thursday, September 25, 2008
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE48O9B920080925
U.S. banks and money managers borrowed a record amount from the Federal Reserve in the latest week, nearly $188 billion a day on average, showing the central bank went to extremes to keep the banking system afloat amid the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The data on borrowing from the Fed closed out another day of high anxiety in global money markets. Key measures of funding stress hit record levels on both sides of the Atlantic as nervous market participants awaited developments from Washington on a $700 billion U.S. financial bailout plan.
Federal Reserve data showed on Thursday the total amount banks borrowed nearly quadrupled the previous record of $47.97 billion per day notched just the week before.
"This looks like the balance sheet of a central bank that is keeping the financial system on life support," said Michael Feroli, U.S. economist with JPMorgan in New York.
Borrowings by primary dealers via the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, and through another facility created on Sunday for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch and their London-based subsidiaries, totaled $ |
the refutation of erroneous ideas about social, political and economic problems and for the dissemination of a correct grasp of the operation of the market economy. They must start by familiarizing themselves with all the issues involved in order to teach those who are blinded by ignorance and emotions. They must learn in order to acquire the ability to enlighten the misguided many. It is a fateful error on the part of our most valuable contemporaries to believe that economics can be left to specialists in the same way in which various fields of technology can be safely left to those who have chosen to make any one of them their vocation. The issues of society's economic organization are every citizen's business. To master them to the best of one's ability is the duty of everyone. Now such a book as Man, Economy, and State offers to every intelligent man an opportunity to obtain reliable information concerning the great controversies and conflicts of our age. It is certainly not easy reading and asks for the utmost exertion of one's attention. But there are no shortcuts to wisdom.
Mises clearly recommended that his disciples avoid what became the career strategy of Lachmann's disciples: to regard academia as important in the struggle for liberty. Rothbard took this advice. He never again published in an academic journal after 1962. He wrote newsletters and readable books instead. This strategy has paid off in a spectacular way because of the Web.
In stark contrast, Lachmann's disciples are unknown to the Web surfers who have come across Mises.org and LewRockwell.com. The Mises Institute has at least six times the traffic of the website of the American Economic Review, the senior academic publication in the field. The only influence that these professors can plausibly pretend to have is inside the halls of ivy. But the economists who dwell in these halls are far more committed today to central banking and federal deficits than they were in 1962. In short, the Lachmannites have no influence. They have never had any influence.
Rothbard's influence is growing. Even inside the fringes of academia, his influence is growing far more rapidly than the reputations of the Lachmannites. He wrote clearly and persuasively. He wrote in English. He wrote on a wide variety of subjects of major relevance. He did not write for the tenure-granters. He wrote for the audience that Mises said economists should write for: intelligent voters.
Meanwhile, the Lachmannites sit quietly, staring into their kaleidescopes, twirling, twirling in the hope of coming up with just one important idea that re-shapes academia. So far, nothing.
But the pay is good.
CONCLUSION
The battle for the minds of men will not be won in the tenured halls of ivy. The tenure-seeking younger professors will stick their fingers in the academic wind and decide which way to move next.
This will not be in the direction of Ludwig Lachmann, the little-known philosopher of kaleidic directionlessness as the random pathway of creative perception.
The battle will be won or lost off campus.In the runup to the inauguration of its first president, the republic of the United States was engaged in an earnest debate over how to address its new leader. After a month the joint congressional committee on titles came up with: "His High Mightiness, the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties." By some accounts George Washington was more than happy, but others feared that it smacked too much of the deferent, monarchical culture they had just deposed. After much discussion they agreed on "Mr President" – ensuring that for all the trappings of office and power enshrined in the constitution nobody in the country enjoyed a higher title than Mr.
More than two centuries later the basic tensions highlighted by those deliberations still inform the contradictory characteristics Americans seek in a president. On the one hand they want him (and so far it has always been a him) to be just like them. Frustrating though it may be to those who follow policies and platforms, the polling questions about whom voters would most like to have a beer or carpool with matter. They suggest a human connection, even if it is only imagined, that is neither irrational nor entirely shallow. People want to know that the person they are electing can relate to them and their daily lives. When George Bush Sr announced himself "amazed" at the sight of an electronic scanner in 1992 it helped frame him as out of touch as the nation emerged from recession.
On the other hand there is a desire for the president to exude the gravitas of the office. Indeed, there is a reverence for the post that verges on the indecent in a democracy. So when people refer to "presidential" qualities they are not talking about human attributes but traits that might emerge almost magically from the seal itself. It's as though the occupant of the West Wing must have singularly impressive and uncommon abilities and judgment worthy of heading a nation many refer to as "God's own country".
Needless to say this navigation between the ordinary and the extraordinary is little more than a mediated performance. The fact that George W Bush clears brush, Barack Obama plays basketball or Bill Clinton eats fast food is unremarkable. The fact that they are seen doing it is what is significant. In a controlled media environment what you are allowed to see them doing matters.
Obama performs the presidency badly. Over the past two years he has managed to come across as aloof, detached and occasionally dithering. On a human level his professorial demeanour makes him look like a leader who understands but does not necessarily feel. On a presidential level it makes him look like a leader who prefers to think than to act.
This dislocation is particularly acute because his candidacy – rooted in the promise of change – endowed his presidency with expectations of transformation both symbolic and substantial that no individual could possibly meet.
This became painfully apparent last week during a televised town hall meeting when Velma Hart, a black woman – the demographic bedrock of Obama's base – expressed her frustration with his presidency. "I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now."
Obama acknowledged hard times but went on to answer with a laundry list of achievements. His answer was competent but at no time did it emotionally connect with her or anyone else. Afterwards, Hart told the Washington Post: "I think he has made progress. I just thought by now the progress would be more evident for the man-on-the-street level. I thought there was something special and secret he knew that would make things operate differently."
Asked if she thought her expectations had been unrealistic, she said: "Absolutely. It took decades to get here. He's only been in office for two years. But I guess I started to believe, on some small level, that he had a magic wand."
In the absence of a magic wand Obama's task is to funnel that utopian energy he unleashed into the incremental realities and institutional limits of his office. He campaigned in the big picture; now he must govern in detail. In a practical sense this is not a problem: he is clearly more comfortable in shades of grey than in black or white. For example, in Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars, he says he doesn't think about the Afghan war in "classic" terms of winning or losing: "I think about it more in terms of: do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?"
This cerebral trait was once regarded as an asset. Whereas his predecessor was impetuous, Obama was praised for being contemplative and unflappable. Bush had a gut; Obama had a brain. Bush was the "decider"; Obama was the thinker. After eight years of a president who mastered a performance that did not square with reality and had no patience for policy, the country was ready for more substance.
But performatively, it is insufficient. It turns out that there are moments when flappable beats stoic in public perception. His slow-burn approach to problem-solving conveys to many not deliberation but detachment. He has proved, at times, unable or unwilling to reflect the public mood. During the Louisiana oil spill he came off as insufficiently angry and urgent.
Whether one thinks these impressions should matter or not is an entirely different issue to whether they do. Take the economy. Throughout the recession Obama has appeared insufficiently impatient and distraught at the pace of improvement and the toll it is taking on ordinary families. Perceptions of his lack of urgency relate to the slow rate of progress his policies are having on the economy and the fact that most of his signature achievements – the stimulus bill and healthcare reform – have not been experienced by most as having improved their lot.
When he took office 72% of voters believed he understood "the problems of people like you" – that figure is now down to 50%. Many Democrats are desperate for him to feel somebody's pain.
'I would like to see him be a lot less cerebral and a little more emotional," Jim Moran, a Democratic congressman from Virginia, told the New York Times. Others just want him to come across as more accessible. "He needs more Ray's Hell Burgers and less candlelight dinners," said Kenneth Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's former chief of staff (who supported Obama in 2008).
Last week Bill Clinton, the performer- in-chief, gave his advice: "Embrace people's anger, including their disappointment at you," he told politico.com. "And just ask 'em to not let the anger cloud their judgment. Let it concentrate their judgment. And then make your case."
Obama does have a case. But his tepid economic policies mean it's not as good as it might be and his poor performance means he doesn't make it as well as he might do. The next time he meets someone like Hart he not only needs something more impressive to say to her, he needs to find a more impressive way of saying it.Ensuring that a device runs only authorized and trusted software is crucial to end users, device manufacturers (OEMs), and carriers alike. OEMs may want to protect their devices from running unauthorized software. Software that is not authentic could degrade carrier network or device performance. Malicious software can potentially compromise anything from a user’s private or financial data to irreparably damaging the physical device itself. There are many risks and potential consequences in executing untrusted software — more than we can enumerate here.
Consider an attacker who attempts maliciously inject or modify the software images in storage. The earlier in the chain of loaded software that an attacker can compromise an image, the more control they gain. Device software is usually loaded in stages where each software image is often configured to have less authority and control than the previous image in the chain. Specifically, the first software image which is loaded has nearly complete control of the device. These first images to be loaded are called bootloader images.
If an attacker can replace the first software image to execute with their own malicious image, then they control the rest of the device’s execution. This makes the integrity of the boot chain critical. Replacing a bootloader image in storage with a malicious image could result in a persistent exploit that would control execution in that software image and any image to be run after it.
Implementing a “secure boot” chain is designed to ensure that each of these images are unmodified, and is one way of deterring malicious or dangerous software from executing. Qualcomm Technologies products offer a secure boot implementation and have for many years.
Secure boot is defined as a boot sequence in which each executable software image is authenticated by previously verified software. This sequence is engineered to prevent unauthorized or modified code from running. We build our chain of trust according to this definition, starting with the first piece of immutable software running out of read-only-memory (ROM). This first ROM bootloader cryptographically verifies the signature of the next bootloader in the chain, then that bootloader cryptographically verifies the signature of the next software image or images, and so on.A woman reacts outside Parsons Green tube station (Picture: Reuters)
It’s believed that the explosives planted on the Tube at Parsons Green failed to properly detonate.
Witnesses have described how tall flames exploded from a white container before smoke engulfed a District line train in south west London.
It’s believed that the device malfunctioned and did not detonate properly, meaning the resulting blast was not as damaging as intended.
Brave mum opens up about finding out she had HIV when she was five and abuse she suffered
A bomb expert who served in the British Army says it looks likely that the device ‘failed to detonate’ and simply ‘burned instead’.
Major Chris Hunter, an explosives expert who served in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost 20 years, said that the home-made device showed similarities with the bombs used in the devastating 7/7 attack.
While Peter R. Neumann, a King’s College London professor who works with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence said the Parsons Green incident ‘has all the hallmarks of an amateur attack gone wrong’.
A woman is escorted by the emergency services away from Parsons Green Underground Station (Picture: EPA)
The Parsons Green device The bucket was placed by the doors on the District line Tube carriage (Picture: Twitter) This is the bucket that exploded causing mass panic at Parsons Green Tube this morning. Multiple passengers were injured when the white container detonated on a District Line carriage. Royal Navy denies they're widening escape hatches for fat people Wires can be seen protruding from the bucket, and what looks to be a towel has been placed on top. The bucket, which was hidden in a Lidl freezer bag, is seen placed by the doors of the Tube carriage. A large flame erupted from the white bucket, with witnesses claiming they heard a loud ‘whoosh’ before the rear of the train filled with smoke.
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Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley confirmed that the Parsons Green explosion was caused by the detonation of an improvised explosive device.
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Multiple people were injured in the explosion and a major incident has been declared at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington in response.
A bomb disposal unit was mobilised and armed police rushed to investigate the incident, which is now being investigated as a terror attack.
A bomb expert said that the device ‘failed to detonate properly and just burned’ (Picture: @RRigs)
Members of the emergency services work near Parsons Green (Picture: Getty)
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Images from the scene show an unsophisticated device in a white container.
Wires and material that appears to be a towel can be seen protruding from the bucket, which was hidden in a Lidl bag which was dumped by the carriage doors.
Fear and mass panic led to a stampede as people rushed to evacuate Parsons Green station, onlookers said.
What we know so far about the Parsons Green explosion Emergency services outside Parsons Green station in west London after Scotland Yard declared a terrorist incident (Picture: PA)
Emergency services including police, fire and ambulance were called to the scene at around 8.20am after an improvised explosive device detonated in a carriage.
The District line train, bound for central London, had just stopped at Parsons Green station in the west of the city when the explosion happened.
Twenty-two people have been injured, most of whom police said suffered 'flash burns'. Casualties were taken to trusts across London including Imperial, Chelsea and Westminster and Guy's and St Thomas'. St Mary's Hospital in Paddington declared a major incident but has since been stood down.
Around two hours after the explosion, the Metropolitan Police confirmed they were treating it as a terrorist incident.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan told LBC radio 'there is a manhunt under way as we speak'. There have been no arrests.
US President Donald Trump denounced the attack by'sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard'. The Met declined to comment.
Witnesses said they saw a white 'builder's bucket' in a supermarket bag, and pictures online appeared to show a flaming bucket with wires protruding from it inside a plastic carrier bag on the floor of a carriage. Reports suggested the device had a timer.
People reported seeing a 'fireball' and a 'wall of flame' in the train and people 'covered in blood'.
The public has been warned to expect an "enhanced police presence", particularly across the transport system, on Friday.As cases of H7N9 continue to grow in China, one Chinese Air Force officer is blaming the outbreak not on genetic mutations – but on the United States government.
In a post on his blog Saturday, People’s Liberation Army Sr. Col. Dai Xu accused the United States of causing the recent bird flu outbreak by releasing the H7N9 virus in China as an act of biological warfare, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Jason Rebholz, a spokesman for the State Department, told the Washington Free Beacon that “there is absolutely no truth to these allegations.”
Dai wrote his allegations on the site Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like Chinese microblogging site. He claimed that the bird flu strain was created as a biological weapon.
Dai also claimed that severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was created by the U.S. as a bio-weapon in 2003.
“At that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity to take other actions,” Dai wrote. “This is why they used bio-psychological weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil, and that was exactly what the United States wanted. Now, the United States is using the same old trick. China should have learned its lesson and should calmly deal with the problem.”
Dai has had a history of trying to spark conflict between China and the United States.
Thus far, the H7N9 virus has infected 31 people, leading to a total of nine deaths. The cases have occurred in six provinces, including Shaanxi, Guizhou, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Fujian.
Chinese officials and scientists have said they have not found evidence yet that this virus strain is capable of spreading from human to human. However, the exact source of the infection remains unknown. A vaccine for H7N9 has been authorized by China Food and Drug Administration and will hopefully be on the market within the next couple of months.
The State Department was notified by Chinese officials about the first H7N9 case on March 31, 20 days after the initial infection.
Click for more from the Washington Free Beacon.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Coca Cola stressed this was an isolated incident that did not affect any products currently for sale
Police have begun an investigation after what appeared to be human waste was found in drinks cans delivered to a Coca Cola factory in Northern Ireland.
The night shift at the Lisburn factory was disrupted last week when machines became clogged; Coca Cola said it had impounded all affected cans.
The company stressed this was an isolated incident that did not affect any products currently for sale.
Police are investigating reports that a consignment may have been contaminated.
As reported in the Belfast Telegraph, the cans arrive at the plant without tops on and are then filled with the drink before being sealed and sold across Northern Ireland.
"Detectives are investigating an incident at commercial premises in the Lisburn area following reports that a consignment of containers delivered to the premises had been contaminated," said a spokesman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
'Beggars belief'
A spokesperson for Coca-Cola said the company was aware of an incident involving empty cans at the Knockmore Hill plant.
"We are treating this matter extremely seriously and are conducting a thorough investigation in cooperation with the PSNI," said the spokesperson.
Image copyright Albert Bridge Image caption The bottling plant is at Knockmore, Lisburn
"The problem was identified immediately through our robust quality procedures and all of the product from the affected batch was immediately impounded and will not be sold.
"This is an isolated incident and does not affect any products currently on sale."
The Food Standards Agency said: "The FSA in Northern Ireland is aware of a physical contamination incident at Coca-Cola Hellenic in Lisburn. There is no evidence to suggest that any affected product has reached the market.
"The incident is subject to an investigation by the PSNI and the environmental health unit of Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council."
Pat Catney, SDLP MLA for Lagan Valley, said the incident "beggars belief".
"I am not sure how contamination could have come about," he said. "They are sticklers for hygiene, cleanliness and about contamination.
"We shall have to wait for the police investigation. But it is a state-of-the art factory. I have been around it and this is one of the most professional set-ups I have ever seen."Up to 36 Asian black bears have been at large in Luchegorsk, close to the Chinese border, for a month, having attacked locals and reportedly even killed one man, the Siberian Times has reported.
The bears, eight of which are believed to have been killed by police using their handguns, are circling the town in search of food due to problems with acorn and nut supplies in the surrounding forests.
The population of bears has reportedly increased significantly in the region in the last five years, meaning there is not enough food to go around.
One resident likened the bears to “army units”.
“Our hunters say that they looked at the area from a helicopter – there are crowds of these bears, like army units,” the witness told the newspaper.
Loudspeaker messages are warning people “not to leave your houses for your own safety”.
Attacks on people have included a man’s arm being savaged while he was out walking his dog.
Although the police are shooting the bears, using their car sirens to scare them away, and the fire brigade are using their hoses to force the bears away, residents have claimed that the authorities have been slow to respond.
The Asian black bear – whose Latin name is Ursus thibetanus – is a medium-sized mammal commonly found in the Himalayas, northern India, Korea, north-eastern China, and in the far east of Russia where Luchegorsk is situated.
Although mainly herbivores, the bears can be very aggressive towards humans and are known to trap and kill them.
Author Rudyard Kipling described them as “the most bizarre of the ursine species”.Hitchens writes on the difference between the evils of atheism and the evils of religion: "Humanism has many crimes for which to apologise. But it can apologise for them, and also correct them, in its own terms and without having to shake or challenge the basis of any unalterable system of belief. Totalitarian systems, whatever outward form they may take, are fundamentalist and, as we would now say, 'faith-based'." He also invites us to consider the responses of religious organisations to the totalitarian regimes of the last century, pointing to the Catholic Church's support of Mussolini and its apparently passive stance in regard to the Nazi regime's persecution of the Jewish people.
While Stalin was indisputably an atheist (though at the behest of his mother he trained for the priesthood at a Russian Orthodox seminary), there is some room for debate about Hitler's beliefs. Both were indisputably evil men. The important question is: were they evil because of their atheism? As Dawkins points out, there is not the smallest evidence that atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. And if we want to compare degrees of evil, it is important to distinguish evil intent from the means available to bring that intent to fruition. Science and technology are, of themselves, morally neutral tools that can be double-edged swords. Modern biology has given us biological weapons, but it has also given us modern medicine. The impact of Hitler's evil was made all the worse by his control over the technological apparatus of a modern industrialised state.
Abramovich is clearly worried that the new atheists may not share the supposedly high moral standards of religious people. He refers to the 20th century as an "experiment in secularism... responsible for the unprecedented murder of more than 100 million", citing Hitler and Stalin as examples of the worst that atheism and secularism have produced. In another shot across Dawkins' bows, he accuses Dawkins of being'mute on the terrors unleashed by science and technology", such as nuclear and biological weapons.
Obviously, not everybody is religious. If we do have a predisposition towards religious belief, then it seems it is possible to overcome it by learning to think critically. It is no accident that a large percentage of the highest-achieving scientists are either atheists or claim a belief in Einstein's remote kind of God. The way that science is taught and practised emphasises a particular form of critical thinking, in an atmosphere where all claims are judged on the strength of the available evidence.
If religion is false, why do so many people follow it? Scientists such as Dawkins have a few ideas about that. The human brain has evolved over millions of years to be well adapted for dealing with and surviving the challenges thrown up by the kinds of environments in which human beings live. It has been suggested that the same adaptations that have contributed to humanity's success as a species have also, as a side effect, predisposed us towards accepting certain kinds of mystical and religious beliefs. Our brains may well be "hard-wired' for religion. Add some cultural nurture to our evolved nature and we have the beginnings of an explanation for why so many people follow some form of religion. When it comes to choosing one particular religion over another, it seems to be largely a matter of indoctrination; the best predictor of a person's religious beliefs is the beliefs held by his or her parents.
Abramovich turns to the benefits of religion, pointing out that there are "millions who every day selflessly dedicate their lives to helping others all in the name of religious belief". There are, of course, many secular organisations whose members also dedicate their lives to helping others, and many individual atheists who do so independently, not in the name of religious belief, but simply because they believe it is the morally right thing to do. The argument that morality requires religion or even the existence of God has been discussed extensively by philosophers from Plato onward; there is too little space to discuss the issue here. Suffice it to say that secular humanism is a well-developed and self-consistent moral system that makes no reference to God or religion, while duplicating many of the more admirable moral precepts of established religions and improving on the less admirable ones. Our Australian system of government and the laws of the land owe as much (or more) to this secular system of morality as they do to the Christian religion.
Moderate religious people, in contrast to the fundamentalists, tell us that the foundational texts of the great monotheistic faiths should not always be taken literally; they must be appropriately interpreted. But how are we are to decide which parts of the Torah or the Bible or the Koran are to be taken as the inflexible Word of God and which parts can safely be ignored or reinterpreted? In matters of morality – take intolerance of homosexuality, for example – people nominally of the same religion often bitterly disagree about the "right" way to interpret God's word. Many Westerners today hold idiosyncratic and not-always-internally-consistent sets of beliefs made up of a hodge-podge of elements borrowed from many disparate religious traditions, often with a few "new-age" ideas thrown in. Secular humanists argue that it is better to base decisions about moral principles on reasoned arguments rather than on appeals to perceived authorities or accepted dogma or particular interpretations of the word of God. Texts such as the Bible are not primarily concerned with moral teachings anyway. The most important message of the Bible, judging from the number of words devoted to it, is that it is vitally important to believe in the correct God.
Abramovich hails religion for inspiring great works of art such as Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine Chapel. One response to this is to point to all the great works of art that do not have religious themes. Another is simply to wonder what might have been: what works of art might a Michelangelo or a Bach have produced had they been inspired by and commissioned to explore themes other than religious ones? There's no reason to suppose that their oeuvres would have been any the less impressive.
Abramovich seems to believe that without religion there can be no sense of wonder or the numinous, such as might inspire an artist like Michelangelo. He writes that mere "atoms in motion" can't explain the "dignity of the human spirit, sorrow, beauty, love" and so on. This is the "god of the gaps" argument again. A prosaic response is to point out that the sciences, such as evolutionary psychology, are in fact making some progress in explaining things like love and the dignity of the human spirit. This is another instance where science does not yet have all the answers, but that's all right. Scientists are comfortable with uncertainty – even excited by it, since it holds the promise of discovery and new understanding. A more emotional response is to point out that human feelings such as belonging, loving and being loved, being part of something bigger than oneself, can and do exist in the absence of any belief in God or religion. Atheists report those feelings and perceptions in much the same way that religious people do. The only difference is that where a devoutly religious person may feel to the core of his being that he is part of God's creation, an atheist may feel equally intensely that he is part of a complex universe entirely explainable by natural laws.
Dawkins remarks that the human brain is a "design nightmare". His point, apparently missed by Abramovich, is that the brain wasn't purposefully designed at all. No intelligent designer would have designed it the way it is. We have a beautiful and powerful explanation for why the brain is the way it is: the theory of evolution. The human brain evolved over millions of years, by the sometimes-haphazard process of random variation acted on by the emphatically non-random process of natural selection. A deep understanding of the surprising and amazingly-unlikely series of steps that led to the emergence of human brains and the humans that came along with them, inspires in the educated atheist a sense of awe similar to that which religious people must feel when they contemplate God.Theresa May will put herself on a collision course with Dublin this week by insisting on a post-Brexit trading border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
A crucial “position paper” is expected to stick to Britain’s current plan to use smart technology and spot checks to police the flow of goods between the two countries after 2019.
The stance will anger the Irish Government, which fears the impact on the peace process in the North and has pushed for the Irish Sea to become the post-Brexit border with the UK instead.
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Alternatively, said the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, Ms May should abandon her hard Brexit policy of leaving the EU customs union, which will make a border necessary.
In recent weeks, the Taoiseach has made plain his growing frustration with Britain’s failure to come up with workable proposals in the 14 months since last year’s EU referendum.
A failure to reach agreement on the Irish border will also throw into jeopardy the Prime Minister’s hopes of an autumn start to talks on post-Brexit trade with the EU.
Brussels has insisted sufficient progress must be made on Northern Ireland, citizens’ rights and the so-called “divorce bill” before the negotiations can move forward.
Nevertheless, the formal position paper is not expected to give ground and will also play for time by arguing the border issue can only be resolved once the shape of a future trading deal is known.
At least three documents will be published this week, as ministers seek to rebut widespread criticism that Britain’s aims for the negotiations are a muddle.
Another paper will set out how to ensure “continuity in the availability of goods”, addressing the vexed issue of future customs arrangements.
And a third will explore “confidentiality and access to official documents following the UK’s withdrawal”, the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) said.
The publications will show that “intense work is underway to prepare for formal talks on the future, deep and special partnership the UK wants to strike with the EU”, a source at the department argued.
Brexit Secretary David Davis, said: “Over the last year, the Government has been working with British businesses and the British people to establish exactly how our new relationship with the EU should look and feel.
“And over the coming weeks we'll advance that thinking with a swathe of new future partnership papers.
"I've launched this process because with time of the essence, we need to get on with negotiating the bigger issues around our future partnership to ensure we get a deal that delivers a strong UK and a strong EU.”
The Government will hope the position papers will convince the EU Commission that it does have a coherent plan, when the exit talks resume at the end of this month.
After the last round of negotiations, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, was highly critical of Britain’s lack of preparedness, as he announced there had been no breakthrough.
The Cabinet has been accused of “negotiating with itself”, reflecting stark divisions over whether to pursue a lengthy transition period to avert the economic damage of crashing out of the EU with no agreement.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe now.At 6:45AM on Sunday, August 18, 2013, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark along with 2,600 professional and age-groupers triathletes from around Europe and several from abroad waited patiently on the beach at Amager Strandpark in Copenhagen mentally preparing themselves for a race they will never forget: the KMD Ironman Copenhagen. First in the water, at 7AM, were the pros then the age-groupers.
Pros and age-groupers — hence amateurs — had until 11PM to complete the 3.8 km swim, 180 km of cycling, and 42.2 km run to the finish line at Christensborg Slot. It was going to be a long, long day.
Classified as a Pro, and wearing bib #45, Crown Prince Frederik completed the 3.8 kilometer swim in 1 hour, 10 minutes and 16 seconds. Excellent. Then he made a mad dash to the bike racks and he was off to begin a tough 180 kilometers of cycling through downtown Copenhagen to north Zealand and back to Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen. He completed the bike portion of the race at 5 hours, 25 minutes and 19 seconds.
Once he handed his bike to one of the many volunteers he put on his shoes in the holding tent, then ran out to begin the last portion of the race: the 42.2 kilometer run. As he huffed and puffed running past the Operan along the harbor — perhaps feeling like he was going to die — Crown Prince Frederik kept on going. And, going. And, going. And, going until he made it to the finish line at Christiansborg Slot. His run time: 3 hours, 58 minutes and 47 seconds. Awesome.
Combining his overall time Crown Prince Frederik completed the KMD Ironman Copenhagen race in 10 hours, 45 minutes and 32 seconds just 2:32:51 behind the Men’s winner of the race, Mr. Jens Petersen-Bach. Congrats and well done, Frederik, you are an Ironman! 🙂
So now the question is, will the future king of Denmark participate in the prestigious and the most grueling triathlon in the world known as the Ironman World Championships in Kailua-Kona, Hawai’i on October 12? Perhaps.
He has proven that he has what it takes to compete against the best of the best professional triathletes and amateurs. There is a chance that either he will be chosen via a lottery or personally asked (which is rare) to participate in the 2013 Ironman World Championships race.
Click the links below to watch videos as well as to view photos:
Photos, VIDEOS, VIDEOS, VIDEO, VIDEO
For those who never watched the famous Ironman World Championships you might enjoy the video above. 🙂 The video is inspiring to say the least.
AdvertisementsBRISTOL, England, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Caffeinated coffee at work boosts the performance of women in stressful situations but hurts the performance of men, British psychologists say.
Lindsay St. Claire and Peter J. Rogers, both of the University of Bristol in England, tested whether increased caffeine consumption exacerbates stress and disrupts team performance.
The researchers gave 64 men and women in same-sex pairs a range of tasks to complete, including carrying out negotiations, completing puzzles, memory tasks and high-pressure meetings. To add to the stress, each was told to deliver a public presentation.
The researchers gave decaffeinated coffees, half of which contained added caffeine, to the coffee drinkers.
The researchers measured individual cognitive appraisals, emotional feelings, bodily symptoms, coping, performance, memory, psychomotor performance, and negotiation skills under higher or lower stress conditions.
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, found women performed better and faster under stress, provided caffeine had been consumed, but the men were greatly impaired if they consumed the caffeinated coffee.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks to employees of the EPA in Washington earlier this year. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)
By TIM TALLEY, Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Bar Association has opened an investigation into an ethics complaint against former state Attorney General Scott Pruitt, now administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a letter from the association's general counsel.
The complaint, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization that works to protect endangered species, and associate professor Kristen van de Biezenbos of the University of Oklahoma College of Law, says Pruitt may have violated the Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct when he told a U.S. Senate committee at his confirmation hearings in January that he only used his attorney general's email address to conduct official business.
TAKE A LOOK: Donald Trump's Cabinet Picks ]
The complaint, dated March 21, says documents released by the attorney general's office through an Open Records Act lawsuit in Oklahoma seem to contradict Pruitt's sworn testimony and indicate Pruitt also used a personal email address to conduct official business.
"It appears that Mr. Pruitt misrepresented material facts that bore on the Senate committee's analysis of Mr. Pruitt's fitness to serve as EPA Administrator," the complaint states.
Emails and other documents released by the attorney general's office indicate Pruitt coordinated closely with fossil-fuel |
who had been planning to seek the Liberal nomination for the Toronto-area riding of Trinity-Spadina. It was recently vacated by NDP MP Olivia Chow.
Party officials have said they blocked Innes’s candidacy because her campaign was trying to bully and intimidate local Liberals into supporting her.
“Derogatory remarks were made to several young, enthusiastic Liberals about one of our leading MPs. Suggestions were made to volunteers that their future in the Liberal party would be in jeopardy if they were on the ’wrong side’ in a nomination battle,” Liberal national election readiness chief David MacNaughton said in an email to Innes.
But in a separate letter sent to Innes by MacNaughton and obtained by the CBC has suggested the move may have been driven by a desire to protect one of Trudeau’s star candidates, Chrystia Freeland.
According to the letter, MacNaughton said the party would have supported Innes’s nomination if Innes agreed not to run in the same riding as Freeland in 2015, when ridings are due to be reorganized.
The letter says Innes rejected the proposal “out of hand.”
Innes called the allegations against her “totally baseless and without merit,” and said the Liberal Party had not raised the issue with her.
So this happened yesterday. Celebrating #TeamCanada‘s win over USA w/ @spaikin + @JustinTrudeau! #lib14 #WeAreWinter pic.twitter.com/hY5k5mLnNX — Zach Paikin (@zpaikin) February 23, 2014
“I am now incredibly saddened that those same people have now not only manufactured allegations of apparent ‘intimidation and bullying on young volunteers’ by my team, but made them public,” she said.
Paikin said it was always known that Trudeau had identified preferred candidates in some ridings, “and if he wanted to campaign for some of those favourites, that would be his prerogative.”
“But once you start blocking candidacies, you go down a slippery slope,” Paikin said.
In his letter, Paikin drew a parallel between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Liberal party’s rejection of Innes’s candidacy, writing: “Stephen Harper is ‘Exhibit A’ of what happens when a leader compromises on his democratic principles in order to win power.”
Paikin said that Innes was a “good friend,” but said his decision to speak out and withdraw his own candidacy for the Ontario riding of Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas was driven by principles.
Paikin is the son of broadcaster Steve Paikin, host of TV Ontario’s political show The Agenda. At the age of 20, Paikin ran to be the federal Liberal Party policy chair, losing to Maryanne Kampouris.
Trudeau initially promised to hold open nomination meetings in every riding across the country, including his own, during his leadership campaign last year.
But his clear preference for certain candidates such as Freeland, retired general Andrew Leslie and Manitoba businessman Jim Carr had prompted grumbles even before Innes’s candidacy was rejected.
Would-be contestants must also first win the approval of the party’s “green light committee,” which has the power to block those who don’t meet certain standards.
For instance, prospective nominees who have yet to pay off past leadership campaign debts, such as David Bertschi and George Tkach, have been warned they’ll be blocked unless they can demonstrate a credible plan to retire their debts.
With files from The Canadian PressSeptember's Lowdown
Here's a political storyline that might seem familiar to you: With economic pain and political discord ripping across the land, he appeared to have the ideal resume to become the Republican contender for the top job. Not just another career politico from the dysfunctional Congress, he was a son of heartland Michigan who had founded his own venture capital firm. He looked like the image-perfect "job creator," and he'd achieved notable financial success in the no-nonsense corporate world. That success, he figured, would now catapult him to electoral victory, for it demonstrates that he's a can-do fellow with the know-how to run government like a business and fix the economy.
Mitt Romney? Yes, but before him, Rick Snyder played the lead role in this made-for-TV political drama--and it hasn't worked out well at all for the people of Michigan. Two years ago, this former corporate chieftain and founder of two venture capital outfits stepped into Michigan's political arena, snatching the GOP gubernatorial nomination from the grasp of a congressman, the state attorney general, and a couple of other experienced pols. The times were right for a Mr. Fix-it--with Michigan's key auto industry in the ditch and middle-class wages decimated, working families were struggling, poverty was on the rise, and whole cities were on the brink of broke.
Backed by bales of corporate cash, Snyder won the general election by ceaselessly running a series of "job creator" ads (never mind that he had been a top executive and director of a computer corporation that relentlessly shipped thousands of American jobs out of the country until 2007, when the corporation itself was shipped to Taiwanese owners). Snyder said he had a plan to "reinvent Michigan," the essence of which he expressed in one of his campaign ads: "Eliminate Michigan business tax. Cut taxes on job creators $1.5 billion. Slash needless regulations. Help small business."
That's not a plan, it's a scam--essentially the same ol' Republican same ol', now being regurgitated by the Romney-Ryan duo. However, Michiganders were desperate enough for a way out of the state's economic doldrums that 58 percent of voters cast their ballots that November for the "Businessman with a Plan."
What they didn't know--because the campaign never hinted at it, much less spoke of it out loud--was that a cabal of corporate-funded, far-right extremists behind Snyder would soon spring a secret plan on them. It was to be a horrific "Spring Surprise" that literally would reinvent Michigan--along with negating the very idea that the American people have a democratic right to be self-governing.
Michigan goes berserk
Michigan's story keeps getting bigger, and I think, more unsettling. Michigan is wrangling with a deeply, deeply radical contention that we should not necessarily govern in America using a system called democracy anymore. ----Rachel Maddow, April 30, talking on her TV show about the shocking state program to overthrow democracy in Michigan cities.
One of our nation's finest political satirists, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, has created a buffoonish character named Trff Bmzklfrpz for his "Doonesbury" comic strip. A caricature of despotic thugs everywhere, Bmzklfrpz is presented by Trudeau as the ruler of the aptly named Greater Berzerkistan.
Rick Snyder must've studied there, for he had barely taken his oath of office before suddenly teaming with leaders of the Republican-controlled statehouse and senate to ram into law an astonishing measure of despotic rule. It only took two weeks in March of 2011 for the ponderously titled "Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act" to be rushed through both houses of the legislature and signed by Snyder. Before the public knew it--BAM! --the governor was authorized to establish his own autocratic republic: Michiganistan.
At bottom, the LGSDFA Act is a doozy of autocratic mischief-making. It lets the governor seize control of any local government he deems to be in fiscal trouble, suspend the people's democratic authority, impose a corporatized version of martial law, and install his own "emergency financial manager" to govern by diktat (like some hybrid of Soviet czar and tinhorn potentate--a Bmzklfrpz, in other words).
The Rachel alternative "Michiganistan" is a huge national story with profound consequences for America's historic ideal of being a self-governing people, the very essence of our nation's governing ethic.... [read more]
The official rationale is that many Michigan cities and school districts are in dire financial straits, requiring extraordinary intervention to "save" them from their own people and elected officials. "It's about helping communities," Snyder dissembled, as he began installing EFMs.
Helping? This is the kind of "help" a fox brings to the henhouse:
Emergency managers begin by usurping the power of all elected officials or simply "firing" them.
begin by usurping the power of all elected officials or simply "firing" them. They can then rewrite the public budget without any public participation, unilaterally eliminate various services, cancel contracts, seize and sell off public assets, privatize government functions, and dictate new laws.
the public budget without any public participation, unilaterally eliminate various services, cancel contracts, seize and sell off public assets, privatize government functions, and dictate new laws. They can even dissolve a city's charter.
This isn't merely un-democratic--it's aggressively anti-democratic.
Yes, there are some severe fiscal messes in Michigan's local governments, but the big debts that have piled up are not caused by too much democracy, bloated bureaucracies, or reckless spending by hometown officials. That's just mendacious political claptrap spewed by those wanting an excuse to impose their anti-union, government-shriveling, privatizing, partisan agenda on vulnerable people. It's no accident that the cities presently under state siege (including Benton Harbor, Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac) are heavily populated with low-income, union, African American, Democratic-voting households. While it's true that these places are in deep budgetary holes, there are real reasons for their fiscal woes, including:
The implosion of the auto industry that's central to these local economies, resulting in massive joblessness and drastically downsized family incomes.
that's central to these local economies, resulting in massive joblessness and drastically downsized family incomes. The tanking of housing values, destroying the one source of wealth that working people had, creating a sudden plummeting of property tax collections that finance schools and city services.
destroying the one source of wealth that working people had, creating a sudden plummeting of property tax collections that finance schools and city services. The grim (and largely successful) corporate campaign to crush unions and bust middle-class wages.
corporate campaign to crush unions and bust middle-class wages. US trade policies and tax subsidies that encouraged Michigan corporations to move manufacturing offshore, eliminating good jobs and forcing a large number of former taxpayers to leave their cities in search of work.
Oh, let's not forget another major cause that Snyder & Company don't want discussed: His $1 billion cut in corporate taxes. This increased the state's budget hole, which he helped fill by slashing or eliminating state funds and tax credits that went to local school districts, low-income workers, and seniors.
The LGSDFA coup against local democracy does absolutely nothing to address--much less fix--these actual causes of the financial crises that mayors and other elected officials face. And by the way, since when did self-styled, small-government "conservatives" become such gleeful champions of using centralized governmental power to whack the once-hallowed Republican tenet of local control? Indeed, to see the irony of their governor trampling their democratic rights, Michigan citizens need look no further than the website of the state Republican Party. Right up front, it proudly posts a list of nine inviolate GOP principles, including this gem: "The most effective, responsible, and responsive government is government closest to the people."
Spawn of the Kochs
While corporate plutocrats rant about out-of-control government regulators, they do not really hate big, invasive, authoritarian government--as long as they can own it and use it for their own needs. This is why such multibillionaire corporatists as Charles and David Koch have been pumping truckloads of money into dozens of front groups like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan. Set up 25 years ago and linked to a network of Koch-headed centers in nearly every state, Mackinac is an idea factory and advocate for shrinking people power and enhancing corporate control.
While it refuses to name its super-wealthy individual backers on the absurd grounds that disclosure "would be a tremendous diversion," the Center does have to report donations from "charitable funds," which includes money from a host of corporate foundations tied to the Koch brothers, Domino's Pizza, Amway, Coors, GM, ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and Walmart, among others.
In 2005, one of Mackinac's grand ideas was put forth in an essay written by a privatizing enthusiast named Louis Schimmel, who was the Center's director of municipal finance. Noting that Michigan already had a limited program for sending state managers to aid cities engulfed in a fiscal crisis, he argued that the law should be radically expanded to create an emergency financial manager with autocratic power to take control of Detroit's troubled budget. Specifically, Schimmel's Mackinac proposal called for four fundamental changes: (1) the financial overseer would "replace and take on the powers of the governing body"; (2) have sole discretion to alter the governing charter; (3) be immune from lawsuits; and (4) have the power to alter and ultimately abolish union contracts.
After Snyder won and the GOP gained big majorities in both legislative chambers in November 2010, the Mackinac Center moved quickly to reprint and circulate Schimmel's paper. Lo and behold, the governor's LGSDFA proposal, which seemed to come out of the blue three months later, actually came out of the Koch boys' Mackinac machine. Snyder's bill included all four of Schimmel's democracy-usurping components, as well as other authoritarian add-ons presumably drafted by the Center.
With a solid, lock-step majority in both the state senate and house, Snyder and Republican legislative leaders were able to railroad the full extremist pack-age into law. The GOP slapped down even the most token gestures to local governance--for example, a little amendment that merely would've required EFMs to hold monthly public meetings--so locals could be told what changes their czar was making-- got crushed in the senate.
Respect the rule of law? Ha! For half a century, Michigan has had a constitutional rule that a new law doesn't take effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends--thus giving affected citizens time to adjust or try to repeal it. By a two-thirds vote in each house, however, a law can be declared an emergency and allowed to take effect immediately.
With a supermajority in the senate, GOP members easily rushed their EFM measure into effect, but in the house, the party is 10 votes short of the necessary two-thirds tally. No problem--they simply cheated by pulling a quick count and lying about the result. The presiding officer of the house barked out the following in one breathless, three-second sentence: "Themajorityleaderhasrequestedimmediateeffect AllthoseinfavorpleaseriseImmediateeffectisordered."
We're to believe that in only three seconds, he called for a vote, the members got to their feet, he was able to count two-thirds of them standing in favor, and he gaveled the law into effect. Magical!
Plutocrats in action
Let's go to Pontiac, a once proud city boasting that one of America's iconic cars was named after it and made there, employing 23,000 auto workers in the General Motors factory. Today, though, those jobs have been moved out-of-state or eliminated, the Pontiac brand itself has been jettisoned by GM, the city's population has dropped, property values have plummeted, and the city government has been left in a fiscal wreck. To add to its miseries, Gov. Snyder's cutbacks in revenue sharing mean that Pontiac's funds have been slashed by a third.
The governor did give something to the people of Pontiac, though: An emergency manager. Appointed last September for an indefinite period (he's still there), he promptly relieved the city council of their powers and salaries. Then he fired the city attorney, clerk, and director of public works before acting on his own to outsource the work of various departments. Next, he offered up about half of the people's property in a fire sale of assets--including city hall, police and fire stations, the library, water-pumping stations, a golf course, and two cemeteries. More recently, he has issued five edicts undermining contracts with union workers and retirees.
Who is this guy? Louis Schimmel, the privatizer man from Mackinac!
Asked last year if the EFM law made him a dictator, Schimmel conceded with a sigh: "I guess I'm the tyrant in Pontiac."
On to Benton Harbor, the home of Whirlpool Corporation and once the major producer of that giant's appliances. Whirlpool's executives, market analysts, and other top-paid employees still are based in Benton Harbor, ensconced in the corporation's brand-new, gleaming, tax-subsidized $68 million corporate campus in this town on the shores of Lake Michigan. But, beginning in the 1980s, the bosses have steadily emptied out all of their local factories, moving Benton Harbor's manufacturing jobs abroad to cut labor costs.
This has decimated the local economy, cutting the town's 20,000 population in half, destroying its tax base, and leaving it with chronic unemployment. Benton Harbor is now the poorest city in Michigan, with a per capita income of about $10,000.
The town's major asset, a public park overlooking the lake, is being absorbed into "Harbor Shores," a $500 million Whirlpool-backed resort project that includes a sprawling, Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. Of course, impoverished locals can't live or golf there, but the developers (who got government subsidies for the project) are hoping that Chicago weekenders will make the two-hour trek to the place.
These people are losing their park, but worse, a fellow named Joe Harris has taken a more valuable asset from them: Their democracy.
Harris is Snyder's EFM and literally the Dictator of Benton Harbor. A former Detroit auditor, he began by summarily stripping all power from elected officials, decreeing that city commissioners can meet, but the only action they can take is to approve minutes of their last meeting and then adjourn. When commissioners made a mild (but clever) protest by proclaiming this past spring that the city would observe Constitution Week, Harris monocratically nullified their action. What perfect symbolism! He then expressed surprise that this had upset townspeople: "All I told them was, 'Hey, guys, you have no authority.'"
With unfettered control, Harris has kicked elected officials out of their city hall offices, fired the city manager and other administrators, dismissed the planning commission and installed his own loyalists, merged the police and fire departments, and sold the com-munity's public radio station (which had criticized him). He also intends to privatize the water system (after raising residents' water rates by up to 40 percent) and has jacked up annual garbage fees by about $300 per home.
Harris is proud and happy to be a commissar for the Koch-Mackinac vision of a privatized America with a neutered democracy, and he definitely likes being in charge with no fussy checks and balances on his decisions: "I don't have to worry about whether the politicians or union leaders like what I'm doing. I love this job. I am the mayor and the commission, and I don't need them."
Meanwhile, Benton Harbor is still deep in debt--and absolutely nothing has been done to address its real problems of joblessness, poverty, inadequate education, inequality, and civic depression. As for an actual plan to boost the economy, Harris points excitedly to his idea of economic development: Selling "I <3 Benton Harbor" bumperstickers, t-shirts, and souvenirs to tourists.
Rebellion
City after city in Michigan--including Flint, Highland Park, and even Detroit--are presently under assault by this mind-numbing, right-wing, ideological stupidity. Dangerous stupidity--Detroit Mayor Dave Bing had to surrender control of his city's finances this year to a Snyder austerity czar, who has sought to increase the number of students in each classroom to 61, and the czar's budget cuts are so severe that the fire chief says if empty buildings catch fire, he'd have to let them burn down.
Is this America? It no longer will be if these social-engineering autocrats prevail. But, good news: Michiganders are in full rebellion! As always, though, battling the bastards is never easy, because... well, they're bastards. And they're very well-funded. And sneaky. Yet the people keep pushing, as we see in this chronicle of the 2012 Michigan Rebellion:
Feb. 29 --A broad grassroots coalition (ranging from union workers to tea party members) that was organized under the umbrella of "Michigan Forward" filed more than enough citizen petitions to put the repeal of Snyder's EFM nonsense on the ballot for this November's election.
--A broad grassroots coalition (ranging from union workers to tea party members) that was organized under the umbrella of "Michigan Forward" filed more than enough citizen petitions to put the repeal of Snyder's EFM nonsense on the ballot for this November's election. April 19 --At the last minute, just before the repeal question would have been certified for the ballot by the state board of canvassers, a complaint by Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility is filed to stop certification. Reason? " The font size of the [petition's] heading " is claimed to be too small to comply with state law. Font size!
--At the last minute, just before the repeal question would have been certified for the ballot by the state board of canvassers, a complaint by Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility is filed to stop certification. Reason? " " is claimed to be too small to comply with state law. Font size! April 9-25 --Legal jockeying takes place, and digging by journalists and coalition members reveals that (1) CFR is not a real group, but a creature of the Sterling Corporation, a GOP political consulting firm--same address, phone number, and staff; and (2) a Sterling partner, Jeff Timmer, was a chief executive of the Michigan Republican Party and now happens to be one of the four voting members of the state board of canvassers. There are widespread calls for Timmer to recuse himself from the board's petition decision, but the secretary of state (a Republican) says no one can force him to do that.
--Legal jockeying takes place, and digging by journalists and coalition members reveals that (1) CFR is not a real group, but a creature of the Sterling Corporation, a GOP political consulting firm--same address, phone number, and staff; and (2) a Sterling partner, Jeff Timmer, was a chief executive of the Michigan Republican Party and now happens to be one of the four voting members of the state board of canvassers. There are widespread calls for Timmer to recuse himself from the board's petition decision, but the secretary of state (a Republican) says no one can force him to do that. April 26 --Decision day for the board. Timmer does not withdraw, so the board deadlocks two-to-two, which kills the repeal referendum.
--Decision day for the board. Timmer does not withdraw, so the board deadlocks two-to-two, which kills the repeal referendum. June 18 --Timmer resigns from the board.
--Timmer resigns from the board. June 29 --Citizens coalition appeals the board's rejection to Michigan's Supreme Court.
--Citizens coalition appeals the board's rejection to Michigan's Supreme Court. Aug. 3--In a four-to-three decision, the court majority (including one Republican) rules that the font size does not disqualify the petition, so the board must put the repeal question on the ballot.
This victory means that American democracy literally will be up for a vote in Michigan on Nov. 6! The Republican and Koch political networks are going all out to win--and if they do, your state/city could well be next on their Berzerkistan anti-democracy agenda.Until a few years ago, both of the meatpacking plants in the industrial town of Florencio Varela, on the outskirts of Argentina’s cattle belt, hummed with activity.
One served the domestic beef market. The other, Latigo S.A., butchered cows for export. Today, Latigo’s facility is a pile of rubble, its kosher salt baths, one of the few rooms still partially intact, hanging precariously over cratered concrete and rebar.
"It makes me sad and nostalgic,” says Emiliano Gamallo, the plant’s purchasing manager for six years before it closed down, with the loss of 500 jobs. “It also makes me angry,” he says, kicking at the debris where his office used to be.
In the 1930s, Argentina was the world’s top exporter of beef. It lost that crown in the 1950s, but until 10 years ago it still ranked third. Today it has fallen to 13th, largely as a result of government meddling in the industry. In 2006, Argentina tripled export tariffs on beef to 15 percent, and in a separate move that same year suspended all beef exports for about six months.
Unsurprisingly, thousands of cattle producers have quit over the past decade, cutting down herds and shuttering slaughterhouses big and small.
Argentina’s shrunken beef industry speaks to a wider malaise in a country that has for decades squandered much of its natural advantages through shortsighted policies. At the turn of the last century, Argentina appeared destined for success. It was one of the wealthiest countries in the world, blessed with natural resources and a well-educated population. Instead it became a byword for economic mismanagement and political crises. In 2001, it defaulted on $82 billion in bonds, the biggest sovereign default in history, and then stiffed foreign bondholders again in 2014. From the expropriation of pension funds to runaway inflation, the nation continually belies the potential it once seemed to have.
For much of this period, Argentina has swung between democracy and dictatorship. In October, voters will go to the polls again. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is constitutionally barred from standing for reelection. And given her unpopularity in the wake of a scandal surrounding the death of a public prosecutor here, her successor is likely to forge a different path. Some prospective candidates are already touting pro-business platforms, in contrast to Ms. Kirchner’s protectionist approach. Still, they face the tough challenge of winning over foreign creditors, tackling choking inflation, and restoring faith in the judiciary.
"No country is condemned to success or failure,” says Rosendo Fraga, a political analyst in Buenos Aires. Yet, since World War II, Argentina’s political leaders have consistently failed to convert opportunities into sustained economic success.
Marred by a blockbuster scandal
Kirchner’s final year in office has been marred by a scandal that, even by Argentine standards, is a blockbuster.
On Jan. 18, public prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his apartment with a point-blank gunshot wound to his head. The next day he was to present evidence of an alleged conspiracy by Kirchner and her associates to cover up Iran’s alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center here.
At first his death was deemed a suicide, but many Argentines cried foul.
The incident has highlighted deep-seated distrust in political elites accustomed to riding roughshod over legal niceties.
"The underbelly of Argentina has been revealed,” says Maria Esperanza Casullo, a political science professor at Argentina’s National University of Río Negro.
The scandal has shined a light on divisions within the Intelligence Secretariat (SI), a spy agency founded in 1946. Kirchner blames rogue SI officials for giving Mr. Nisman false information that led to his death, and has proposed an overhaul of the agency.
"This story is even too complicated for a Hollywood movie,” says Dario, who gave only his first name and was buying a bottle of water outside the city zoo. He says reforming the SI is important but that it misses the larger point of justice. Reforms “won’t tell us why Nisman’s dead,” he says.
Nisman’s death highlights a list of unresolved scandals, perhaps the most glaring of which is the bombing itself, the worst terror attack in Argentine history. The case languished in the 1990s, and the first judge to investigate the bombing was impeached in 2003 for bribing a witness.
For Sofia Guterman, whose daughter Andrea was one of 85 victims of the 1994 bombing, Nisman’s death was a kick in the gut.
"We’ve lost any chance of justice,” she says.
Her living room brims with photos of Andrea, a kindergarten teacher who died when she was 28 years old. Ms. Guterman has tried to hold on to Andrea’s memory in any way she can. She has self-published five books about Andrea since the attack; one is full of her childhood drawings.
Argentina’s courts offer limited recourse to citizens. The Supreme Court was established in the 1860s, and for the first 8-1/2 decades always had five members, says Mr. Fraga, the political analyst. Judges were never removed. But since 1947, politicians and dictators have either packed the court or eliminated it altogether 10 times, robbing it of judicial autonomy.
In late February some 300,000 people marched silently against the nation’s damaged justice system. It was meant to be a nonpartisan march – no political banners and speeches – organized by public prosecutors calling for a full investigation into Nisman’s death. But it exposed the growing rift between Kirchner and the judiciary.
Corruption plagues Argentina: In addition to the alleged Iran conspiracy, Kirchner is under investigation for alleged money laundering at her family-owned hotel chain (she hasn’t commented publicly on the allegations). The sitting vice president was charged last summer for using his influence as economy minister to ensure government contracts went to a company he allegedly controlled. Last year Argentina ranked 107th in global corruption rankings by Transparency International, tying with Djibouti and Indonesia.
Kirchner clashes with opponents
Kirchner and her predecessor and husband, Néstor Kirchner, who died in 2010, have governed Argentina since 2003 with a history of interventionist economic policies. Imports and exports have been restricted or heavily taxed in an effort to keep prices low at home and to shore up foreign reserves.
Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Kirchner has regularly thumbed her nose at the “enemy,” which includes anyone from her political opponents to the International Monetary Fund and the United States. She’s also clashed with elements of the media, as well as the agriculture and beef industries, which have bristled at her meddling.
"Imagine, in the last 12 years we’ve been bombarded with tales about how great our country is. We are told problems are caused by other people, not Argentina,” says Eduardo Diez, executive director of the Argentine American Dialogue Foundation. “The government doesn’t have any problems, and they aren’t responsible for anything. For some, that’s all they hear. And so they believe it.”
At another slaughterhouse outside the capital, workers dressed in white uniforms and matching hats throw animal waste into a giant dumpster. Even here, where cuts of beef are destined for the national market, the slaughterhouse often closes for days at a time because of a lack of cattle. Some 30,000 cattle producers have left the livestock industry over the past decade, with many ranches converting to more-profitable crops like soybeans, of which China is the biggest buyer.
Mr. Gamallo, the slaughterhouse administrator, says that Kirchner’s export taxes didn’t work because beef prices continued to rise at home, along with the price of other foodstuffs.
Inflation is running above 20 percent, according to government figures, and as high as 30 or 40 percent, based on private estimates. The government has kept interest rates low and printed money to bankroll social programs, while trying to prevent capital flight via stringent controls. Still, Argentina’s foreign reserves are dwindling and its borrowing options are limited, given last year’s default.
Faced with ever-rising prices, Argentines have little incentive to save. Instead they buy durable goods like cars or TVs. In 2014, less than half of Argentines said their salary was enough to cover household expenses, according to Vanderbilt University’s AmericasBarometer poll.
It also means industries that have been affected by Kirchnerism, as the Kirchners’ philosophy is called, will need time to recover if the next administration changes tack and promotes freer trade.
Miguel Schiariti, president of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Meats and Derivatives, says the government’s policies have been shortsighted. “They speak of defense of the table, but they’re just taking advantage,” Mr. Schiariti says, referring to the government’s rhetoric on protecting families and helping the poor. “If the policies do change, it will be a long process to recuperate what we’ve lost. It’s not like a factory where you can turn the lights back on and start producing.”
For the beef industry, he estimates between five and 10 years would be needed to raise new cattle stock and fatten existing cows before sending them to be slaughtered. He also wants to see fewer export restrictions. “Most in the industry are just hoping they stay above water until Dec. 10,” when the next administration takes office, he says.
Staying in power indefinitely
Imagine if US Democrats and Republicans merged into a single party, and stayed in power indefinitely. That’s more or less the case in Argentina. Since the restoration of democracy in 1983, the Peronist party has been in power for the last 23 out of 32 years – a far cry from a robust two-party system.
And from one Peronist presidency to another, policies have swung from neoliberalism in the 1990s to the interventionist approach of the Kirchner era.
Far from ending Peronist presidential hopefuls’ chances, Kirchner’s low ratings allow other party members to distance themselves from her faction.
The poor economic performance won’t affect all Peronists, says Ernesto Calvo, an associate professor of government at the University of Maryland. “It’s a flexible brand name. Many in Argentina think [Carlos] Menem was a lousy president [1989-99] and don’t think he has anything to do with Kirchner, despite both being Peronists.”
Argentina’s opposition remains weak and poorly organized. Its governing record is shaky: The past two non-Peronist presidents failed to finish their terms after presiding over equally dire economic hardships.
We don’t have a consensus inside our society of where we want to go and how to reach that point,” says Mr. Diez. “We’re very reactionary.”
Selling hand-wrapped cookies outside her squat, concrete home, Marina Palacios says she plans to vote for Kirchner again this year, seemingly unaware that the president’s name won’t be on the ballot.
High commodity prices in the latter half of Kirchner’s first term allowed her to invest more heavily in subsidies such as transportation and energy, and cash transfer programs to poor families, a program from which Ms. Palacios benefits. It’s not a lot of money – Palacios collects about 600 pesos ($70) a month – but it dulls the pain of inflation.
The Peronist base of mostly poor, working class, or immigrant voters makes up roughly 20 percent of the electorate. That alone is more than the runner-up to Kirchner got in the 2011 election. Many point to the power of incumbents in Latin America – no sitting president has lost in the past decade – for the Kirchner streak, even if one transition was from husband to wife.
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Kirchner supporters have referred to the past 10 years as Argentina’s “winning decade.” The opposition sees it as a loss.
"Both of them are probably right,” says Bernardo Martín, standing next to one of the capital’s wide boulevards, flanked by dazzling belle epoque architecture. “Maybe everything’s just been wasted.”So you’re a virgin (defined here as someone who has never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show in an audience before) and you’d like to “lose it” in style. You’ve come to the right place. The following is meant to be a quick guide to help newcomers enjoy the unfettered weirdness that is The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
First, some background. I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show was released in 1975 and was not well-received by audiences or critics. However, it was soon embraced by people as a “midnight movie,” with audience members dressing as their favorite characters, shouting out lines, and throwing props at key points during the story.
This past Friday night, BU Central hosted a viewing of the cult classic film, which brought out many “experienced” fans, along with first timers.
Andre Orlando (CAS ’17) said of the screening, “It is not designed for people to just sit down, shut up, and watch a movie. The movie is supposed to become interactive.”
But have no fear, young virgin! You are not expected to come prepared to your first viewing, as part of the fun is simply sitting back and observing the chaos that will undoubtedly ensue around you. And while Rocky Horror is an extraordinary experience alone, like most things in life, it’s more fun among friends….or sane persons!
Now, I see you shiver with antici…..(SAY IT)…pation, so on to the fun part: props! At the showing in BU Central, students were given small goodie bags free of charge, however in most theaters you will have to bring your own items. These usually consist of rice (banned at some theaters so be sure to check beforehand), newspaper, toilet paper, some cards, a piece of toast, a birthday hat, and a noisemaker. You’ll know when it’s time to use each item by watching the people around you, but just in case, there is a diagram on the official website here.
Another trademark of Rocky Horror are the callback lines. I hope you’re adaptable because during the entirety of the film audience members shout obscenities and jokes at the characters onscreen. While some truly devoted fans have all of these responses memorized, most viewers will either bring a callback script or use this nifty app to keep involved. If you think of your own witty line, feel free to shout it out! A key part of keeping Rocky Horror relevant is adding new, topical jokes with every viewing.
“Twerk it!” one audience member shouted during a dance scene drawing major laughs from the crowd and proving how the film remains fresh years after its release.
Sabrina Rodriguez (CAS ‘17) said of her first Rocky |
worked very, very well with us," both sides could do more to tell consumers why they need Windows 8. Touch, for example, will be extremely important for Sony.
Touch-focused messaging, however, could be a problem because there aren't a lot of affordable Windows 8 touch devices. NPD Group analyst Stephen Baker says OEMs and Microsoft must consider the wisdom of aggressively touting the value of Windows 8 features for which there are few if any products or, worse, products they can't afford.
That said, Baker says the blame for slow Windows 8 device sales does not rest solely with OEMs. An NPD report released Thursday found Windows device sales have fallen 21 percent compared to the same period last year. Windows 8 sales account for 58 percent of device sales compared to the 83 percent Windows 7 device sales made up in the same launch period. Everyone – OEMs, Microsoft, retail channels and the supply chain – is responsible for that, he said.
"I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong or broken with Windows 8," he said. "There's something wrong and fundamentally broken with the computing device market. The problem for retailers and OEMs is that many of them are concentrated in the traditional PC market and that isn't a growth part of the computing device market... The supply chain still isn't set up to provide what the value proposition Windows 8 brings to the market."
Toshiba, Dell and Sony agree that slow initial sales are due to a number of factors beyond the quality of their devices.
"Both parties need to work together," McFarland says. "It's one without the other, you don't have the hardware, the software can't be there, and vice versa. Both groups shouldn't be blaming each other, both groups should be closer. If it's not doing well, we should figure out how we can all better figure this out and see why."* Citi says Nasdaq should be liable for Facebook IPO losses
* Says Nasdaq made decision to move forward with IPO in haste
By John McCrank
NEW YORK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Citigroup slammed Nasdaq OMX Group Inc’s plan to compensate firms harmed by Facebook’s botched market debut to the tune of $62 million, saying in a regulatory filing the exchange should be liable for hundreds of millions more, according to two people who have read the letter.
Citi said Nasdaq’s actions in the May 18 initial public offering amounted to “gross negligence,” according to the people, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the 12-page letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which had not yet been made public.
Citi’s market-making arm, Automated Trading Desk, lost around $20 million in the May 18 IPO, a source told Reuters in May. That is just a sliver of the upwards of $500 million that market-making firms - which facilitate trades, backing them with their own capital - and brokers lost in the $16 billion IPO.
Liabilities at U.S. exchanges, which have some regulatory duties, are capped in most instances. Nasdaq’s cap in most instances is $3 million a month.
But the New York-based exchange should be fully liable for all of the IPO losses, Citi argued, because it was operating in the capacity of a for-profit company during the IPO, and as such it should not have regulatory immunity.
DECISION TO MOVE FORWARD
Facebook’s eagerly anticipated IPO was initially delayed by 30 minutes due to a technical glitch.
Nasdaq then made the decision to put through a fix to the systems problem and get the stock trading by way of a secondary matching engine that led new orders and changes in orders that came in later to not show up in the opening price. A matching engine pairs bids and offers to complete trades.
Eric Noll, Nasdaq’s head of transaction services, later said in a statement earlier that the fix instead led to 2-1/2 hours of uncertainty during which brokers were unable to see the results of their trades.
Citi said in its letter that the decision to move forward with the IPO was a business decision made in haste. Further, it said trading should not have been allowed to continue during the confusion that followed.This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show with Doug Hughes, the U.S. mailman who made national headlines last week when he flew a tiny personal aircraft known as the gyrocopter onto the lawn of the U.S. Capitol in an act of civil disobedience. Hughes was carrying letters to every member of Congress urging them to address corruption and to pass campaign finance reform. The letter began with a quote from John Kerry’s farewell speech to the Senate: “The unending chase for money I believe threatens to steal our democracy itself.”
Doug Hughes flew about an hour from Maryland into restricted airspace and onto the Capitol’s West Lawn, stunning authorities and bystanders. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Hughes literally flew below the radar, going undetected, before landing on the Capitol lawn. Before taking off, Hughes had spoken about his plans to the Tampa Bay Times.
DOUG HUGHES: I’m going to violate the no-fly zone nonviolently. I intend for nobody to get hurt. And I’m going to land on the Capitol Mall in front of the Capitol building. I’m going to have 535 letters strapped to the landing gear in boxes, and those letters are going to be addressed to every member of Congress. I don’t believe that the authorities are going to shoot down a 60-year-old mailman in a flying bicycle.
AMY GOODMAN: After landing on the Capitol Mall, Doug Hughes was arrested and could now face up to four years in prison on charges of violating national defense airspace and operating an unregistered aircraft. Despite being under house arrest and forced to wear a GPS monitoring device, Doug Hughes has decided to keep speaking out about the need for campaign finance reform. He joins us now from his home in Ruskin, Florida, under house arrest.
Doug Hughes, welcome to Democracy Now!
DOUG HUGHES: Good morning. Thank you for inviting me.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good to have you with us. We’re just going to try to bring up the sound of your microphone, because we can hardly hear you. But can you describe what exactly you did?
DOUG HUGHES: Well, this [inaudible] for quite a while. A key part of my plan was—
AMY GOODMAN: It looks like we just lost Doug Hughes. Now we’re getting him back on. You have to understand, we have a truck at his house, because he is under house arrest inside, as he sits inside in front of his piano. Let’s go to the congressmember, Walter Jones of North Carolina, who took to the House floor and talked about the gyrocopter protest and the need for campaign finance reform.
REP. WALTER JONES JR.: … onto the Capitol lawn to make a point about influence of money in politics. While I don’t condone violating restricted airspace and putting innocent people at risk by flying a gyrocopter on the Capitol lawn, Mr. Hughes does have a point about the pervasive influence of money in politics. I’ve seen it get worse and worse in my 20 years in Congress. The Citizens United decision by the United States Supreme Court in 2010 created super PACs and multimillionaires that buy candidates.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Republican Congressmember Walter Jones speaking on the floor of the House. One day after Doug Hughes landed his gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, we spoke with Congressmember Alan Grayson about money in politics. Grayson is a Democrat representing Florida’s 9th Congressional District.
REP. ALAN GRAYSON: I’m the only member of the House of Representatives who raised most of his campaign funds in the last election from small contributions of less than $200. Thousands of people came to our website, CongressmanWithGuts.com, and made contributions. I am one—one—out of 435. On the other side of the building, over at the U.S. Senate, there’s only one member of the U.S. Senate who raised most of his campaign from some small contributions. That’s Bernie Sanders, who you heard earlier in this broadcast. That tells you something. In fact, to a large degree, in both parties, because of the absence of campaign finance reform, the place is bought and paid for. And the only question is: Do the members stay bought? That’s what the corporate lobbyists stay up late at night wondering about: Is that member going to stay bought?
Now, I was actually in the courtroom when this disastrous Citizens United decision was decided five years ago. Mitch McConnell was two seats to my left. We were the only public officials who were in the courtroom. Mitch McConnell was the happiest I have ever seen him that day. He was literally chortling when the decision was rendered. And I said on MSNBC that night five years ago that if we do nothing, you can kiss this country goodbye. Well, pucker up, because right now the millionaires and the billionaires and the multinational corporations are calling the shots with whatever they want in TPP, whatever they want in fast track—more generally, whatever they want. They get the bailouts. They get the tax breaks. They get the so-called deregulation. They get what they want here because they get what they pay for.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Congressman Alan Grayson talking about campaign finance reform. Doug Hughes is the mailman from Florida who landed a personal aircraft known as a gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol last week, and we have him back in the feed. I wanted to ask you, Doug, were you surprised that you were able to get as far as you did onto the Capitol Mall?
DOUG HUGHES: Well, my expectation was that my letter would get through, they’d find out who I was, and the decision would be made that it’s less dangerous to let me land, since I had already been vetted by the Secret Service and they knew I wasn’t carrying a bomb. That didn’t work. And it turned out I was able to land safely anyway.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, you did everything possible to warn folks ahead of time that you were doing this protest?
DOUG HUGHES: Yeah. I sent an email, which some people have said was inadequate, but the email gave the reasons why they didn’t need to shoot me down. And I had a website, and on the website I asked people to call the White House to tell them to read the email, what address it went to and who it was from. And the Tampa Bay Times called in to the White House to tell them that I was coming in. So, every effort was made to give the Homeland Security advance warning of my arrival and who I was and that I wasn’t a threat.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you fly under the radar, Doug Hughes, in this kind of flying bicycle contraption, a gyrocopter, and you land on the West Lawn of the Capitol. You could have been blown out of the sky. Was [campaign] finance reform that important to you?
DOUG HUGHES: Yes. I’m a father, I’m a grandfather, and I can see the change over the decades as we slide from a democracy to a plutocracy. Just like Alan Grayson said, the fat cats are calling the shots. They’re getting everything they want. And the voters know it. Across the political spectrum—center, left and right—they know that this Congress isn’t representing the people. And yes, it was worth risking my life, it was worth risking my freedom, to get reform so that Congress works for the people.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re a letter carrier. You’re a postal carrier, a mailman. How many letters were you carrying in your gyrocopter to deliver to Congress?
DOUG HUGHES: I believe the count was 535, but I never actually counted them. I handle a lot of them in the process of printing them, signing them, stamping them. There was a lot of hours that went into getting the letters done.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you planning to hand-deliver them individually to each member of Congress?
DOUG HUGHES: No, no. At no time did I expect that was going to happen. The plan was to get the letters there in such a way that—let me step back. Congress knows what’s going on. I wasn’t telling Congress anything that they’re not aware of. I was telling them something they don’t want the people to be aware of. And I was telling the people that there are solutions in place. They know there’s a problem. I’m telling people something they don’t know: There are solutions that have already been designed; they only have to be implemented. And it’s in our power to implement them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about some of those solutions and what your letter actually said?
DOUG HUGHES: What my letter actually said to the Congress critters was they’ve got to decide whether they’re going to deny that corruption exists, or they’re going to pretend that they’re doing something about it, or they’re going to really roll up their sleeves and be a part of reform. But I’m looking to the local media, particularly the print media, OK, at the local level, to hold the candidates’ feet to the fire and force them to take a stand on real reform and whether or not they’re going to vote for it or whether or not they’re going to try and take a halfway, mealy-mouthed stand on it, which means they’re going to try and preserve the status quo. The idea is, the voters can decide well if they’re informed. The national media can’t and won’t inform the voters about where the candidates stand. But the local media, which has been, you know, very weak and impotent in the political process, can really take the ball, and they can be the moving force in informing the voters.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your own evolution of your thinking. You were formerly in the U.S. Navy, served on the USS Enterprise. Talk about the evolution of your thinking on this issue.
DOUG HUGHES: Well, I wound up hanging out with a friend of mine, Mike Shanahan, and over a bunch of beers in his backyard, we came up with a written action plan, which we weren’t able to take anywhere. That was called The Civilist Papers. But Mike came up with the idea that what we needed to do is take our written plan and send certified copies of it to every member of Congress, and that was the nucleus of the idea. But we observed that it wouldn’t work, because Congress already knows; what we really need to do is get that letter to the public. They need to be aware. And during the time that we were working on this, we discovered the existence of other groups and other very sophisticated plans that had been written by people a lot smarter than me. But we also observed these groups weren’t getting any traction. They had managed to get through to the people who were sympathetic to the idea, but it wasn’t going a lot further than that, nor could they get any attention in the media about what they wanted to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, Hillary Rodham Clinton kicked off her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination with her first formal campaigning in Iowa, and she talked about this issue, as she has for a few days now, campaign finance reform.
HILLARY CLINTON: We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment.
AMY GOODMAN: Is that what you’re calling for, Doug Hughes? Does that hearten you?
DOUG HUGHES: Yes, I’m glad to hear the candidates are talking about this. Cenk Ungar [sic], who’s a liberal media figure—
AMY GOODMAN: Cenk Uygur.
DOUG HUGHES: —has been working on an Article V—say again?
AMY GOODMAN: Cenk Uygur.
DOUG HUGHES: He’s been working on an Article V convention, and this does an entire end-around on Congress, so that Congress doesn’t ever even vote on the amendment. It can be done completely through the states through an Article V convention that would be called. The amendment would be designed, then it goes back to the states, and three-quarters of the states have to ratify that constitutional amendment. At that point it becomes law, without the House or the Senate ever voting on it. So the states can put limits on the Congress, OK, and fix this problem so that there’s no backsliding that would ever happen. The constitutional amendment can protect legislation from it being struck down by the courts. So, this whole thing can happen, and it can stay.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Doug Hughes, are you encouraging other like-minded Americans who feel this way about campaign finance reform to come up with other creative ways to get the issue before the American public?
DOUG HUGHES: I’m absolutely sympathetic to other people getting involved with whatever their view on it is. I think we’re going to see a lot of Trojan horse legislation and groups come up that are intended to misdirect people into solutions that have no power. OK. I’ve pretty much signed on to the Anti-Corruption Act. And I will look at other ideas that are out there, but the Anti-Corruption Act, which stands no chance of getting out of committee, as we are right now, was written by a former head of the Federal Election [Commission], FEC. This guy is as far to the conservative end as Cenk [Uygur] is liberal, OK? That’s why I say this thing completely goes across the political spectrum. But what this guy wrote will work, if it’s passed without any amendments. That’s got to be a key part of this, is that they can’t take this act, that will work, cut out the key parts so that it has no teeth, and then say they passed reform.
AMY GOODMAN: Doug, one last question. Your son committed suicide last year. Did losing him—in 2012. Did losing him affect what you decided to do this year?
DOUG HUGHES: Yes. No, I wasn’t trying to commit suicide, but his death was pointless. It was a waste. And he had so much potential. I looked at what I had done and accomplished and contributed, and I looked at how we’re going to leave this country and this world if things go on the way they are. I’ve got kids. I’ve got two adult children, and I’ve got an 11-year-old daughter. I want to hand them a real democracy, so that they have the power to control their destiny and their children’s destiny. And right now they’re losing that. We’re losing that. And it’s in our power to restore democracy, and we can find the solutions to the problems that we have, if the people have control.
AMY GOODMAN: Doug, we want to thank you for being with us. Doug Hughes is a postal carrier from Florida who landed a tiny personal aircraft known as a gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol last week in a protest to demand campaign finance reform. He was carrying letters to every member of Congress, calling for them to address corruption. Hughes flew about an hour from Maryland into restricted airspace onto the Capitol’s West Lawn, stunning authorities and bystanders. He is under house arrest. We’re speaking to him at his home in Florida. He faces four years in prison. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute. Today is Earth Day.How fast? We calculate the speed of Bradley Johnson’s stunning derby day strike
Norwich City's Bradley Johnson celebrates his goal against Ipswich Town during the Sky Bet Championship match at Carrow Road. Photo: PA PA Wire
It’s been one of the big talking points of Norwich City’s derby day victory.
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Most Canaries fans agree they have never seen a goal struck at greater speed – and we today estimate that Bradley Johnson’s thunderbolt strike in Sunday’s derby victory was hit at an amazing 82mph.
We haven’t got resident mathematicians but we’ve calculated that the 27-year-old midfielder was 16 yards out when he hit the ball and it took 0.4 seconds to go over the line from the moment it left his foot.
The Football Association does not keep official records, but Johnson could now be up there with the hardest-hitting scorers of all time.
David Beckham was estimated at scoring at 97.9mph for Manchester United against Chelsea in 1996.
Other thunderbolts include David Trezeguet for AS Monaco against Manchester United (96mph, 1998), Richie Humphreys for Sheffield Wednesday against Aston Villa (95.9mph in 1996), Zlatan Ibrahimovic for Paris Saint Germain against Anderlecht (93mph in 2013) and Matt Le Tissier for Southampton against Newcastle (86.8mph in 1997).
The speed of Johnson’s strike, however, is slightly dwarfed when compared with other sports.
In tennis, the likes of Ivo Karlovic and Andy Roddick have been recorded serving at over 150mph, and golfer Rory McIlroy’s average swing speed is 119.69mph.Setup and Turn Sequence
Reveal outfits Players reveal their starting outfits simultaneously.
Choose starting posses Players choose and reveal their starting cards simultaneously.
Shuffle decks Players completely shuffle their decks. Each Player presents his/her deck to his/her opponent for additional shuffling and/or a cut.
Draw starting hands Players draw starting play hands (normally five cards, NOT up to maximum hand size).
Use Grifter abilities Players choose whether they are going to use a Grifter ability. Order of activation is decided by a coin toss. (More details)
Match begins Grifter abilities are performed before time for the match has officially begun.
Ante up 1 ghost rock If you have no money at the start of turn, borrow 1 ghost rock from the bank.
Draw and reveal hands Players set aside their play hands and draw a five-card lowball draw hand from the top of their decks, then reveal them simultaneously.
If you use 108 Worldly Desires or The Extra Bet, replace a card after lowball hands are drawn but before they're revealed.
Traits on cards in play that refer to draw hands being revealed can be triggered now (e.g. Philip Swinford, Drew Beauman).
Play Cheatin' Resolutions If another player cheats, you can play a Cheatin' Resolution action card from your play hand (not your lowball hand!), or use a Cheatin' Resolution ability printed on one of your cards in play.
The previous day's Winner of lowball gets the first opportunity to play a Cheatin' Resolution.
If it is the first turn of the game, pull for low value to determine who gets to act first, then shuffle the pulled card back into the deck.
Each player can only have one Cheatin' Resolution used against them per Gamblin' phase.
You cannot play Cheatin' Resolutions if you yourself are cheatin', but other players do not.
Regular (non-Cheatin') Resolutions cannot be played on lowball.
If your opponent cheats, you can play Cheatin' Varmint or It's Not What You Know... to lower your own hand rank.
If both you and your opponent cheat, but you have the first opportunity to play, you can use a Pair of Six-Shooters to make your hand legal, and immune to your opponent's Cheatin' Resolutions.
At the end of this step, hand ranks are locked.
If you used the spell Fetch, put a card from your draw hand into your play hand.
Compare hands During lowball, the player with the lowest hand rank wins. If players have hands of the same rank, compare values (A-A-A-K-K beats 2-2-2-3-3 in lowball).
If several players are exactly tied for the win, they discard thier lowball hands and draw new ones to break the tie. Traits trigger on reveal once again, and Cheatin' Resolutions can be played.
Award the Winner The Winner takes all the ghost rock from the ante.
The Winner goes first during each phase of the day, and wins ties whenever players want to do something at the same time.
The Winner keeps that title until a new Winner is determined in the end of the next Gamblin' phase.
Discard lowball hands Finally, players discard their lowball hands and retrieve their play hands.
Collect income All players simultaneously receive production from each deed they both own and control, as well as their home and any other non-deed cards they control.
Repay the bank All players that borrowed ghost rock for Lowball now return it to the bank.
If unable to repay, do so during next turn's upkeep.
Pay upkeep Players pay upkeep for any cards that they control and wish to keep in play, in turn order, beginning with the player to the left of the Winner.
Dudes belonging to an outfit that does not match your home have their upkeep increased by their influence.
A player cannot refuse to pay 0 upkeep.
Discard unpaid dudes After players have paid upkeep, all card whose upkeep was not paid are discarded simultaneously, along with any attached cards.
Starting with the Winner and going clockwise, players take turns to make any of the following plays:
Actin' Use a Noon ability on an action card in your play hand, or printed on one of your cards in play.
Text in bold before the colon is the cost of the ability. If it says Boot, you must boot that card; unless it's a Job, in which case you must boot the Leader that you choose for that job.
Cost are also sometimes present after the colon, in the "do X to do Y" format. If you cannot do X, then you will not get to do Y.
In order to use an ability, you must be able to fully resolve the first sentence after the colon (called a requirement).
Each ability on a card in play can only be used once per day, regardless of whether it boots that card or not. If a Spell has more than one ability, you can only use one of them per day. Repeat abilites can be used any number of times per day.
Abilities on deeds can only be used by that deed's current controller, whether or not the controller is also the owner.
Effects of Noon abilities typically last through the end of the Sundown phase.
Action cards that initiate shootouts or jobs do not go into the discard pile immediately, instead they stay on the board until the shootout or job ends, and it is another player's turn to make a play.
Movin' As a Noon play, you can move one of your unbooted dudes to another location.
A dude can move without booting:
From home to an adjacent location (town square or an adjacent deed)
From town square to an in-town deed or to another player's home
A dude has to boot to move:
From home to a non-adjacent location
From town square to an out-of-town deed or to your home
From any deed to anywhere
From another player's home to anywhere
Card effects that move dudes do so without booting them, and they can move booted dudes.
Card effects that move dudes must actually make them change location. The only exeption is "move into posse" effects, these actually mean "join a posse"; if a dude can join a posse without changing location, these effects still work.
Callin' Out As a Noon play, you can make one of your unbooted dudes call out an opposing dude at the same location.
Dudes staying at their home cannot be called out normally.
Card effects that initiate callouts can be used by booted dudes, and against dudes at their home.
Unbooted dudes can refuse a callout by moving home booted, even if already at home.
Booted dudes cannot refuse a callout.
Accepting a callout is different from opposing a job.
After a callout is accepted, you can play a React ability like Rope and Ride or Tail Between Yer Legs. You can play several of these in succession, but technically you must give your opponent(s) a chance to React as well after each play.
Shoppin' As a Noon play, you can bring a dude, deed, spell, or goods card into play from your play hand.
Choose the card that you want to play, then pay all costs, then the chosen card enters play.
Dudes enter play at your home by default.
Deeds: In-town deeds enter play at either end of your street, as the last card in that direction (new deeds can't be placed between existing locations). Out-of-town deeds are placed off to one side.
Goods and Spells enter play attached to dudes (and sometimes deeds).
Only unbooted dudes in locations you control can attach goods and spells normally.
Card effects can attach goods and spells to booted dudes, and in locations you don't control.
Dudes can have no more than one Weapon and one Horse attached. If you attach another one, discard the old one.
and one attached. If you attach another one, discard the old one. Spells can only be attached to dudes with the corresponding skill (Hexes to Hucksters, Miracles to Blessed, Spirits to Shamans).
can only be attached to dudes with the corresponding skill (Hexes to Hucksters, Miracles to Blessed, Spirits to Shamans). Totems can only be attached to locations that you control where you have an unbooted Shaman.
can only be attached to locations that you control where you have an unbooted Shaman. Gadgets are invented by booting an unbooted Mad Scientist in a location you control.
Tradin' As a Noon play, you can transfer goods between your dudes in a location you control.
Only unbooted dudes can receive goods. Booted dudes can give them away, but cannot receive any.
Any number of goods may be traded between any number of dudes as one play.
Each goods can only be traded once per day.
If a dude ends up with several Weapons and/or Horses attached, choose one of each to keep and discard the rest.
Spells cannot be traded.
Card effects that transfer goods between dudes allow tradin' to booted dudes, and in locations you don't control.
Upgradin' As a Noon play, you can replace your dude card in play with a different version of that dude from your hand. The new card replaces the old, keeping all goods, spells, tokens, and markers, and remains under any game effects. The card that was replaced goes to the discard pile of its owner.
You can replace a dude card with another dude card whose experience level is no more than one greater or lower (non-experienced dudes are considered experience level 0). Thus you can replace a non‑experienced dude with the Experienced 1 version, and vice versa.
You can replace a given dude no more than once per turn.
Overlaying a dude with its experienced version is different from playing a dude. It does not trigger "enters play", "leaves play", or "when discarded" effects, and you cannot do this when a card instructs you to 'play a dude' or 'put a dude into play' (e.g. Recruitment Drive).
If you use Puppet to take control of an opposing dude, then overlay him with an experienced version, you now own and control that dude, and you get to keep him after Sundown.
Passin' If you cannot or do not want to make any other plays, pass.
After both players pass consecutively, the High Noon phase ends, and the Sundown phase starts.
If one player announces Pass and then their opponent can also pass to win the game, that opponent must announce "Check" and let that player make another play instead.
Check for Victory
Optionally discard one card
Refill your play hand
Unboot all cards in play Effects that apply continuously during Sundown start (e.g. Jake Smiley) Check for victory conditions (game possibly ends) Effects that require a check or game state change during Sundown are resolved (e.g. The Sloane Gang outfit) All players may choose to discard one card from their play hand (lowball winner goes first) All players refill their hand to their maximum hand size (normally 5 cards) Unboot all cards Effects that apply continuously during Sundown end Effects that apply until the end of turn end (most Noon abilities) Turn ends, start a new turn
Callout accepted A shootout starts when a dude accepts a call-out, or when a played decides to oppose a job.
Both the player and dude doing the callin' out are known as the Leader, while the player and dude being called out are known as the Mark.
The shootout takes place at the location of the mark, and does not change for the duration of the shootout.
Rope and Ride is played before the final location of the shootout is determined.
Formin' Posses The leader declares their entire posse first. Then, the mark does the same.
Dudes already in the location of the shootout can join even if booted. Only unbooted dudes can join from an adjacent location.
A dude can't join a posse if there are restrictions that prevent them from moving to the location of the shootout (e.g. Smiling Tom).
Once both players have declared their posses, all dudes join simultaneously. Dudes that are not yet in the location of the shootout must boot to move to that location (unless prevented by card effects, e.g. Roan, Mechanical Horse, Clown Carriage, Sloane).
Traits and abilities that refer to dudes joining a posse (e.g. Irving Patterson, Ramiro Mendoza, James Ghetty, Lillian Morgan, Jacqueline Isham) trigger now, as well as when dudes join due to Shootout or Resolution plays. The leader is also considered to be joining a posse.
Players can never have dudes they control in both posses.
Jobs During Jobs, things work in a somewhat different order.
Choose one of your unbooted dudes to be the leader of the job.
If the job was started by a dude or one of their attached cards (goods or spell), that dude must be selected as the job's leader.
Boot the leader only if the job requires booting as a part of the cost (e.g. "Noon Job, Boot:").
Choose the mark.
The mark can be anywhere, not necessarily close to the leader.
You can declare your own cards to be the mark of a job, but in this case you can't defend against the job.
The leader forms a posse.
Dudes that are already in the mark's location can join the posse without booting, and even if booted.
Dudes in the leader's location, or in any location adjacent to the location of either the leader or the mark, must boot to join the posse (unless prevented by card effects).
All dudes join simultaneously, but they do not move at this point.
Check if the job imposes additional requirements on a posse (e.g. Kidnappin'). If those requirements aren't met after the posse is formed, then it is considered to be an illegal posse, and the job immediately fails (all dudes that joined a posse move home booted).
The mark's controller decides whether to oppose the job or not. If they choose to oppose, they must form a posse following the same rules (boot to join from locations adjacent to the mark's location, but do not move there yet).
Note that the dude marked for the job does not necessarily have to join the posse.
If the mark's controller does not form a posse, then the mark's owner (if different from its controller) can form a posse. If they do not, then any player (starting with the player to the left of the leader) can form a posse to oppose the job.
If no one forms a posse to oppose the job, the job automatically succeeds.
Once both posses are formed, all dudes move to the mark's location simultaneously (without booting), and a shootout starts.
Since actually moving to the job mark's location does not boot anyone, even dudes equipped with Buffalo Rifle will have to move there.
If the leader's posse wins the shootout, or no player forms a defending posse, the job succeeds. Otherwise, the job fails.
After the shootout is over, regardless of the outcome, survivors in the leader's posse move home booted.
If the job is successful, resolve its effect. If the mark is no longer in play, it is unaffected.
Finally, the remaining posses are dissolved and the job ends.
Breakin' and Enterin' If a shootout takes place at a private location, regardless of who started it, all dudes in the shootout that are not controlled by the owner of that location have their bounty increased by 1.
A deed's keywords will tell you whether it's public or private. A player's home is always private, and the town square is always public.
If a Shootout or Resolution play brings a dude into the shootout at another player's private location, that dude gets 1 bounty, even if they already got bounty for this same shootout.
This works the same way with jobs that raise the bounty of participating dudes (e.g. Ambush, Kidnappin').
Step 1. Shootout Plays Shootout plays include using Shootout abilities, passing, or doing something 'as a Shootout play' (see Auto-Revolver, Concealed Weapons, Prayer).
Shootout abilities must come from either an action card in your play hand, a deed or outfit in play, or a card in your posse (a dude or one of their attached cards).
Shootout abilities that bring dudes that are currently in play into a posse can be used even if they originate from a card that is currently outside a posse.
Shootout abilities that bring dudes into play (Raising Hell, Clown Carriage, Spirit Dance, The Pack Awakens) cannot originate from outside a posse.
Shootout abilities can only affect dudes or their attached cards if they are in a posse (unless that ability would bring a card into the posse).
Effects of Shootout abilities typically last until the end of the shootout.
If a Shootout ability causes one posse to become empty, the shootout ends immediately; skip to step 7.
Step 2. Pick Yer Shooter Choose any dude in your posse to be the main shooter for this round of the shootout. That dude contributes his/her full bullet rating to your draw hand.
Step 3. Draw! Set aside your play hand and draw cards into your draw hand equal to 5 plus your posse's stud bonus. Your stud bonus equals the full stud rating of your shooter (if they have one), plus one extra for each other stud dude in your posse.
You may redraw a number of cards in your draw hand up to your draw bonus. Your draw bonus equals |
’s approach was that he didn’t know how to ‘cure’ me exactly, but he knew God would come to help. He wasn’t even a licenced therapist, but he believed in the healing power of Jesus Christ – for $30 a session. We met weekly in a local pizza joint, and at the end of our talk we would pray in public together. Sometimes we met in his office, and Melvin would put his hand on my shoulder and speak to God.
He was very animated in his prayers, he’d ask God to “lead him to your truth”, “heal him of his wounds”, “heal his brokenness”. There was something therapeutic about being able to speak openly and share my struggles honestly. For another human being to affirm me like that. But within a year I became very frustrated because nothing was changing.
5. Why did you persist with gay conversion, even when it wasn’t working?
I stopped seeing Melvin when I was 27 – I concluded that after three years he did not have to the keys to heterosexuality, and I was disillusioned. I was still having feelings for so many guys, I hadn’t changed one iota.
I vowed that I needed to see a real ex-gay therapist. That’s when I sought out Joe Dallas, a former leader of Exodus (the ex-gay ministry group that disbanded in 2012). My Bible study leader had sent me his book – Desire from Conquer – in 1994. It became my Bible. He was once ‘active in the homosexual lifestyle’, as he put it, but then he was ‘cured’. He got married and had kids. I thought if this guy can change, I can too.
He had a ministry in Orange County, California, that sought to heal broken people of their affliction. I began to see him every week for the next year. At first, I just thought ‘Oh wow, there’s hope.’ I was so convinced that whatever was broken, he would be able to find it and fix it. I’d spent three-and-a-half years with Melvin, and three-and-a-half before that with a psychotherapist. They hadn’t found the heterosexual switch. Maybe Joe would. I went to Joe full of optimism and hope.
It was like a psychotherapy session, we would sit across his office from each other at the Christian ministry clinic. I paid him $35 for an hour-long session. We would delve into my history, childhood, everything. ‘This is who I am and this is what I’ve been.’ He treated it as a disease, like alcoholism, and he was my sponsor.
6. Do you think gay conversion therapy ever worked? Even a little bit?
No. I became very disillusioned. Seeing Joe was sort of like the Wizard of Oz. I had been following the Yellow Brick Road of ex-gay conversion. When I finally saw the Wizard behind it all, it wasn’t so magical.
Joe was just a human, and he was still struggling. He had this persona of being the leader of an Exodus. He’s still going strong today, though in California they recently outlawed conversion therapy for minors.
7. Did you continue hooking up with guys while undergoing “gay cure” therapy?
Most of the time, yes. In my 20s – around the time I was having therapy with Melvin – I was seeing a college basketball player called Doug. We struck up a friendship, and it became romantic. But it got to the point where I was too afflicted, and eventually, I broke it off. I was trying to heal myself.
And there was another guy I met while a member of the Evangelical Promise Keeper’s Men’s Movement. We were supposed to be keeping each other accountable for not masturbating, and I had gone through a miraculous eight months without it. But then, at the UCLA swimming pool showers – very cliched, I know – I met one guy, and I’d built up so much sexual energy … because I’d basically denied that I was a sexual being.
8. How were your relationships with women after your “gay cure” therapy?
Shortly after giving up on my therapy with Joe, I met a woman called Ashley, and we hit it off right away. I felt like we were in tune to the same channel. I felt like God was pulling a rabbit out of the hat – ‘Wow, maybe she’s the one who’s coming to save me, maybe she’s the wife I’ve been praying for all these years.’
Even after I cheated on her one night in New York (with a male waiter), she stayed with me. The sex was difficult – I’d had sex with women before in college, but it was always as a fraternity boy when drunk. I ordered some guidance videotapes, which told you how to bring a woman to climax. Unbeknownst to her, I was always visualising the dudes in the video when we did it.
Me and Ashley finished when I found my boss, Charles. We got together after a work party, and we’ve been together ever since – that was around ten years ago. The plot thickened, of course, when Ashley herself came out as a lesbian. She’s now married with a child. I saw photos of her wedding day – they were both in beautiful wedding dresses.
9. Have you discussed your gay conversion therapy experience?
Yes. I started writing a book in my late 30s. I’m now 47, and it’s just been published. It was very hard to write, of course: I had to relive all the Evangelical voices of condemnation, all the shame. I wanted my family to know the whole story, from the beginning. I wanted them to understand more fully that I didn’t choose to be gay. The only choice I really had was to live openly and honestly, or continue to live in shame and secrecy. Ashley’s read my book too – she was very supportive.
10. Do you think gay conversion therapy should be outlawed?
Yes, my book has a political message. As I began to finish it, around 2012, we saw the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, we saw marriage equality. I thought maybe my story could deter somebody from entering conversion, or sending their kid there. It scares me that our new Vice President, Mike Pence, has supported it in the past. I know that world, and I know he truly believes all that. I’ve already sent him a copy of my book, maybe he’ll have a compassionate approach. Conversion therapy is making too many kids kill themselves.Right to Privacy is a fundamental right rules Supreme Court
India
oi-Vicky
By Vicky
The Supreme Court on Thursday held that Right to Privacy is a fundamental right. The verdict was delivered by a nine judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice of India, J S Khehar. The Bench in a unanimous decision held that right to privacy is a fundamental right.
Right to Privacy is a Fundamental Right, says Supreme Court of India | Oneindia News
The Chief Justice of India J S Khehar who headed the nine judge Constitution Bench said in his order that privacy is protected under Article 21 and para 3.
"All judgments that proceeded on the basis that privacy is a Fundamental Right are correct. Privacy is a guaranteed Fundamental Right," the Bench held.
The 9 judge Bench overruled a 8 judge Bench judgment and a 6 judge Bench judgment in Kharak Singh. Both had said privacy not a fundamental right. The court said that right to privacy is intrinsic to right to life.
The Bench also held that right to privacy is also intrinsic to the entire fundamental right chapter of Constitution.
The court held that the 8 judge Bench judgment of 1954 in the M P Sharma case ruling that privacy is not a fundamental right" is not correct law. The unanimous order said privacy is a fundamental right and part of Article 21 which guarantees life and liberty of an individual. "Right to Privacy is an integral part of Right to Life and Personal Liberty guaranteed in Article 21 of the Constitution," the Bench also observed.
The verdict of the Supreme Court will have an impact on several other cases.
Aadhaar: Government's decision to introduce the biometric data-enabled Aadhaar ID for citizens.
Government's decision to introduce the biometric data-enabled Aadhaar ID for citizens. Section 377: Homosexuality, oral sex are a criminal offence.
Homosexuality, oral sex are a criminal offence. Section 66A of the IT Act Verdict: State can take action against an individual for sharing his thoughts on a social platform.
State can take action against an individual for sharing his thoughts on a social platform. DNA Profiling Bill, 2017: Bodily right such as the DNA of an individual can be profiled without his consent.
The government had argued that the Constitution does not guarantee individual privacy as an inalienable fundamental right. The matter came during a hearing on the Aadhaar case where the petitioners alleged that Right to Privacy is a Fundamental Right as enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.
The government pointed out that Right to Privacy is not explicitly set out in the Constitution. The government further contended that Aadhaar is essential for all services including tax returns, opening bank accounts and securing loans, pensions and cash transfers for those entitled to welfare schemes. It has rejected suggestions that the Aadhaar programme possesses a threat to civil liberties.
Senior advocate, Gopal Subramanium while arguing for the petitioners contended that liberty existed even before the Constitution was drafted and it includes privacy. There cannot be a question of diminution but expansion of a right. Right to liberty includes freedom from encroachment on his or her privacy, he also said.
OneIndia NewsSWSN Council officers have removed a fun tunnel
A demolition crew moved onto the play area unannounced on yesterday morning to destroy a tunnel that had been enjoyed for years, but has now been deemed too dangerous. Tandridge District Council has confirmed the tunnel was "condemned" and had been removed to "protect" local children following a safety inspection. A section of the Mint Walk Recreation Ground in Warlingham, Surrey, has been shut off, denying the village's kids a space to play and exercise during the end of the school holidays. A feature of the play site was a concrete tunnel, tall enough for a toddler to stand up in.
According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, playgrounds must abide by Health and Safety Act etc 1974 and British Standards to ensure the safety of children on play equipment around the country. A Spokesperson for Tandridge District Council said: "The council has removed the tunnel equipment in the playground at Mint Walk recreation ground in Warlingham to protect local children. "Following a safety inspection the equipment was condemned and as a result the council took action to remove it. "As a result an area of the park is currently cordoned off while the removal takes place, but this is not expected to take more than two days and it is anticipated the park will be open as normal at the weekend. "It is the only piece of equipment that has been removed from the playground and plans are currently being finalised to put a new piece of equipment in its place and the Council will share an update about this soon.
SWNS A demolition crew moved onto the play area unannounced on yesterday morning
There is no way anybody could get stuck in that tunnel Father-of-two Mark Spearing
"We apologise for any inconvenience the removal will cause but the Council's first priority is to ensure the safety of its residents." Locals reacted angrily to the removal of the fun tunnel by the council - which one dubbed "playground blitzkrieg." Father-of-two Mark Spearing, 37, is furious with the council's lack of consultation and fears the fun tunnel will never be replaced. The Airfield Engineer at Gatwick Airport said: "I literally can't believe this, this is the best play park in the area and my kids love it. "My six-year-old son has learning difficulties and is accident prone, and he has never hurt himself. "The tunnel was integral to the structure of the park, it formed a ramp above it for bikes and there were slides and rocks the kids would play on.
SWNS Tandridge District Council have confirmed the tunnel was 'condemned'
SWNS The main feature of the play site was a concrete tunnel, tall enough for a toddler to stand up in
"There is no way anybody could get stuck in that tunnel - they would have to be absolutely massive. "You have to wonder if someone has had an accident as there was no consultation and they just rolled in and ripped half the park out, it's only around ten years old so it's not ancient. "It's the main park that everyone goes to, if they don't replace the tunnel it will be a great loss. "We're getting fed up with the council, taxes go up and up but facilities get worse." Other outraged parents took to local Facebook groups to vent their anger at the council's "crazy" decision. Carolyn Jones said: "Gutted - we saw the diggers come past at 8am and went to investigate. "Our little boy loved zooming down the ramp on his bike, I only hope they replace it with other play equipment and don't just leave it, it's a lovely little park."Let’s say your daughter is going to the bathroom at a local grocery store; you, as her doting dad, are waiting outside for her. Then you see a husky gentleman in a dress saunter on in. So, trying to abide by the rules of civilized society, you summon a female security person to take care of it. That female security person informs the husky begowned dude that he ought to use the bathroom to which his appendages are most usually assigned.
What happens next?
The police charge the security guard with assault.
At least that’s how it went down in Washington D.C., after a female security guard noticed Ebony Belcher, 32, bopping on down to the ladies room at a Giant grocery. According to Belcher, “She opened the door and came in and started calling me derogatory names.” Belcher said that the security guard “grabbed her and pushed her out of the store,” according to NBC. Belcher stated that the guard said, “You guys cannot keep coming in here and using our women’s restroom. They did not pass the law yet.”
The security guard has not yet spoken to the press.
Leftists have been claiming for weeks that the chances of sexual assault by a man dressed as a woman are nil – after all, they say, we haven’t seen anything like that before! That, of course, is untrue. But it’s also beside the point: allowing men into women’s restrooms and threatening prosecution of security guards for attempting to remove them, as well as social stigma attached to any person who objects, is a recipe for exploitation. One of the nice things about separate bathrooms for men and women is that anybody can identify from the outset who is the most likely potential threat to a woman in a restroom: a man trying to enter it. Now, we’re supposed to assume that the man is actually just a harmless woman – and more, we’re supposed to buy into the deeply flawed notion that a mentally ill man in a dress is somehow safer for women in a women’s room than a man who isn’t mentally ill.
This logic seems flawed.
But logic has nothing to do with it. Check out this tweet from Zack Ford of ThinkProgress:
.@seanmdav I'm pretty sure some men DO menstruate. And get pregnant.
Y'all just reject that they're men. — Zack Ford (@ZackFord) May 19, 2016
Um, wut?
Certainly the best solution here seems to be to allow science deniers like Zack Ford full charge over the safety of ladies in women’s rooms; obviously, women need someone to mansplain discomfort in the restroom to them.
But at least President Obama says the federal government is on it.
To back Zack Ford’s play.
Women who get hurt will just be the eggs that need to be broken for this social engineering omelette to be properly prepared.We have now just left the Season of Giving, a time of goodwill that is recognized the world over. While a lot of us seek willy-nilly for the perfect gift for a friend or loved one, thousands of people around the world pray that their loved one will receive the “Gift of Life”. In this day of modern science and medical expertise, many previously deadly conditions can be cured through the donation of organs and tissues by another caring individual. Through a donor’s selfless gift, quality of life can be improved, and the afflicted can be well. This list covers 10 different facets of donation and are presented in no particular order.
10 Blood Donations
To date there is no suitable, long term, synthetic replacement for whole human blood, making donations of whole blood or platelets (apheresis) a necessity. Administered in the proper setting the procedure is very quick, taking only 10 minutes or so, but as pre-screening of each donor is required, the entire process usually takes about an hour. In the U.S., blood products are administered on the average of 38,000 units daily, and the need is expected to increase by about 6% annually, with larger demands in cases of war or disaster. Blood has a limited shelf life. The different components of blood, (whole blood, red blood cells, platelets and plasma) can last from 5 days to a year or more.
Interesting sidenote: Blood acquired in the U.S. from PAID donors cannot by law be used for the purposes of transfusion. Chances are, if you have been paid for a blood harvest, it was used by the pharmaceutical industry for the production of medications.
9 Consent vs. Dissent
Nobody can benefit from the gift of life until permissions and releases are legally tendered. These legalities are different from country to country. In the U.S. it is considered customary for a person to verify that they wish to participate (or consent) to organ sharing, often with a DONOR sticker on the back of their driver’s license, or by preparing a “living will”. In other words, we must let someone know that we wish to share. But the norm throughout most of the world relies upon dissent, a legal understanding stating that unless an individual during their lifetime specifically denied permission to harvest, they are considered an active participant in organ acquisition. This is the norm in Spain, and some believe it is why that country is proven to be the most generous in regards to donor ratio–34 donors/million population. The U.S. comes in at the median with 26 donors/million, and Austria comes in very low at 10 donors/million.
8 The Big Six
Kidneys, heart, liver, pancreas, lungs, and intestines—These are the primary organs that most of us think of when the subject of organ donation is brought up. And rightly so, these are the organs that represent the greatest need in the waiting lists around the world. These organs must be transplanted within hours, there is no way to store these organs for viable use later. Not so, when it come to tissue donation. According to OrganDonor.gov “Corneas, the middle ear, skin, heart valves, bone, veins, cartilage, tendons, and ligaments can be stored in tissue banks and used to restore sight, cover burns, repair hearts, replace veins, and mend damaged connective tissue and cartilage in recipients.” With the proper preparation and foresight, one death can help over 50 others to begin their return to health.
7 Stem Cells
Two simple words, yet when used together, they seem to garner a hailstorm of controversy. A huge portion of research is being devoted to these microscopic building blocks of life, and the major contributions they can add to the medical field’s repertoire. Medical researchers anticipate stem cells to play an important role in the future treatment of stroke, diabetes, spinal cord injury, blindness, deafness, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis and cancer. Contrary to common belief, primary harvest of stem cells does not occur from fetal tissue, but from other sources like the blood in umbilical cords. Stem cells can be harvested from whole blood by being coaxed from bone marrow through daily injections of a drug called Filgrastim.
Bone marrow transplants themselves are a stem cell transplant, yet many people who oppose stem cell research support this type of therapy in the treatment of leukemia and other conditions. Healthy adults between the ages of 18-60 can donate blood stem cells, and there are organizations world wide devoted solely to the screening and matching of such donations.
6 Live Donations
Not all donations of life giving proportions come from the dead. Easily recognized in this catagory are donations of blood, bone marrow and blood stem cells. Most of us know that we have two kidneys and can easily survive if we give up one of them. Not so many people know that you can give one or two lobes of your liver, and this miraculous organ will regenerate itself to almost full size in both the donor and recipient in a very short time. A donor can give a whole, or part of a lung, part of their pancreas or part of their intestines, and although these will not regenerate in either patient, they are fully functioning. And many a parent has given thanks to those who chose to donate their sperm or ova, one of the few types of live donation where monetary compensation for the donor is not generally considered out of line or immoral.
Interesting sidenote: From OrganDonor.gov– “Surprisingly, it is also possible for a living person to donate a heart, but only if he or she is receiving a replacement heart. This occurs only when it is determined that someone with severe lung disease and a normally functioning heart would have a greater chance of survival if he or she received a combined heart and lung transplant. As a result, the heart-lung recipient’s own heart, if it’s in good condition, is then donated to an individual who needs only a heart transplant.” Currently there are 82 heart/lung recipients on the U.S. waiting list.
5 Ethnicity
In our modern and brave new world we are all coming to recognize that “all men are created equal”, but in the field of organ donation this is not always the case. Sadly, when it comes to the matter of disease and related organ failure, ethnicity plays a role in the statistics. According to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services–“Native Americans are four times more likely than Whites to suffer from diabetes. African Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics are three times more likely than Whites to suffer from kidney disease. Many African Americans have high blood pressure (hypertension) which can lead to kidney failure.”
Because of these facts, ethnicity becomes one of the criteria when matching potential donors to recipients, as an ethnic match often times becomes key in the ultimate healing process and helps alleviate rejection problems. Yet oftentimes, cultural beliefs and religious restrictions make it hard for members of minorities to choose to become donors, to the detriment to those others who are fighting a life threatening illness.
4 Suicides
Although society as a whole recognizes suicide as a selfish and misguided solution to one’s problems, sometimes there is an unforeseen benefit from this final act. In the cases where brain death has occurred during suicide, (about 3.8%), these troubled souls have made themselves potential donors. Their families grant donation rights more often in these cases, rather than in other causes of death, but research on the subject has not revealed exactly why. The majority of these cases occur in young men with an average age of 26, with relatively healthy organs.
On the other hand, legislature is currently being rewritten to try to discourage those who have a desire to give the ultimate gift to others through the act of suicide. One example of this type of suicide based donation was brought into the limelight in the recent movie, Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith. (It was this movie that inspired my research and subsequently, this list.)
3 Waiting Lists
We’ve all had to wait in a line at one time or another, sometimes trying our patience to the breaking point. But no line at the supermarket or post office could be as stressful or deadly as the waiting lists for transplant. At the website United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a tally of people awaiting their surgery is updated daily. As of the writing of this list the number was 104,945, with 80% of that number being those in need of kidneys. Since need far outweighs supply, waiting times can be long, from an average of three weeks for a heart to 476 days for a kidney. Lung replacement has the longest waiting time dependent upon whether one lung or two is needed. The average wait for a lung can be as long as 1068 days, just a few days shy of three years. Although the U.S. averages about 74 transplants daily, about 17 people die each day, waiting.
2 Rejection
No lives could be saved by any of these gifts until the scientific community examined the mysteries of rejection. Since the discovery of blood groups by Professor Karl Landsteiner in 1900 scientists have continued to make monumental strides in the understanding of the human immune system. Transplant rejection has come to be recognized as the body’s attempt to repel foreign tissue, much the same way it would attack an unwelcome virus or bacteria. But since an organ is not an unwanted invader, steps are taken to insure compatibility.
Before organ donation proceeds, potential organ donors are rigorously screened on a case by case basis to ensure that risks of infection, disease, complications or donated organs being in a sub-optimal state are minimized or eliminated. Hyper acute rejection, usually the result of mismatched blood type, will occur within minutes of the surgery and the only solution is the removal of the organ. Acute rejection often occurs within one week to three months of the surgery, and is usually treated with a short course of strong corticosteroids that suppress the immune system. A bone marrow transplant can also decrease rejection, but only if the marrow comes from the same donor as the transplanted organ. Chronic rejection is a longterm failure of the organ, it is irreversible and cannot be treated effectively.
1 Organ Tourism
We watch in dread and horror, at movies like “Turistas” and TV shows that are more and more often featuring black market organ harvesting as part of their plotline. But these scary scenarios are only reflecting a new, gory trend that is becoming increasingly common due to the high demand for transplantable organs. The term for this trend in locating and acquiring an organ is being coined “organ tourism”, “transplant tourism” and “organlegging”. (Like bootlegging, but for organs.) Prevalent in under-developed countries, selling off “extra” organs for many may be the only way to earn an income in overcrowded, economically backward regions. Unfortunately these backdoor surgeries are often performed in unhygienic conditions, with improper, non-sterile equipment, and after care is focused upon getting the excised organ to it’s new owner, not on the recovery of the patient. If a “donor” does survive their procedure, they are often stiffed on the cheap payment ($500- $5000) they were promised.
Legislature to establish policy on the right of the individual to sell their organs is an ongoing battle and can only be established on a country by country basis. Advocates of a policy of payment, argue that legal monetary compensation will compel more people to donate. But those opposed, fear that paying donors for their organs will make transplantation available only to the wealthy. Regardless, the trade in organs continues and there will be no way to regulate the safety of everybody involved until these legal and moral questions can be resolved.
Follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter so you don't miss out on our latest lists.U.S. President Donald Trump smiles a as he holds a "Make America Great Again" rally at Orlando Melbourne International Airport in Melbourne, Florida, U.S. February 18, 2017.
This article was originally published on February 21, 2017 and re-posted after U.S. President Donald Trump told Mike Huckabee in a Saturday, October 7th interview that "fake news" is "one of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with."
President Donald Trump’s go-to argument that unwelcome reports are “fake news” spread over the weekend to key figures in the Republican establishment, and as the vitriol ramped up, major media outlets hit back. On Friday, CNN anchor Don Lemon cut off pro-Trump guest Paris Dennard live on air, and not long after Trump tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Come Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus got into a heated debate with Chris Wallace on Fox News, of all venues.
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The sense of panic and anger in the mainstream media, the conservative Fox News included, is reasonable. The accusation of “fake news” or “lying press” has an ominous precedent, tracing back to the history of the German phrase “Lügenpresse.” (At a campaign rally in October 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio, the Atlantic’s Rosie Grey even caught two Trump supporters on tape using the original German word. “Lügenpresse! That’s what you are,” one white man shouts, coaching another on how to say the term, and elaborates: “You’re all in bed with the Clintons. You’re all bought and paid for, every one of you.”)
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Friendly interaction outside the press pen. "Lugenpresse!" pic.twitter.com/MWUZynJ8jx — Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) October 23, 2016
Originally coined by the German author Reinhold Anton in 1914, the term Lügenpresse was used during World War I to refer to “enemy propaganda.” Some 30 years later Hitler and the Nazis appropriated the term to weaken opposition to the regime, primarily “accusing” Jewish, communist, and later the foreign press of disseminating fake news.
The phrase made a comeback in Germany in 2014, when the anti-immigrant PEGIDA movement accused the media of “not telling the truth” about crimes committed by refugees and immigrants, primarily those displaced by ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In January 2015, some 25,000 protesters attended a PEGIDA march in Dresden, chanting “Luegenpresse, halt die Fresse" (“shut up, lying press”).
"Luegenpresse" subsequently earned the notorious "Unwort des Jahres" (Non-Word of the Year) dishonor given out annually by a German linguists' panel of experts.
According to Reuters, previous non-words of the year include 2011’s "Doener-Morde" (Doener killings), referring to a string of neo-Nazi killings of people of Turkish origin.
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War on the media
Trump had waged war on the press throughout his presidential campaign, featuring multiple high-profile feuds including with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and CNN, which he dubbed the “Clinton News Network.” But critics and many supporters too were dismayed when he didn’t change tune once in office. In fact, the administration doubled down on much of Trump’s anti-media rhetoric.
“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” Steve Bannon told the New York Times in late January. “The media here is the opposition party.”
Trump’s recent rally in Melbourne, Florida primarily focused on attacking the media, after a particularly tough week which saw the resignation of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
“I also want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news,” Trump began. “The dishonest media which has published one false story after another with no sources, even though they pretend they have them, they make them up in many cases.”
Priebus, on ‘Fox News Sunday’ with Chris Wallace, repeated this claim, calling media reports “Total garbage. Unsourced stuff, " and suggesting that the media doesn’t choose the right stories to cover. "I think you should be concerned about mainstream news outlets that are acting like Washington daily gossip magazines," continued Priebus, who had been viewed as the Republican establishment’s representative in the Trump administration, a relative voice of reason. "But you don't get to tell us what to do, Reince," Wallace shot back.
CNN anchor Don Lemon too had enough of it over the weekend, telling his guest Paris Dennard, a former George W. Bush official, “Please stop it with that stupid talking point, that it is a fake news story. If you don’t want to participate in the news stories on this network, then don’t come on and participate. But don’t call them fake because you don’t agree with them. Go on.”
When Dennard doubled down, insisting that "this is a fake news story," Lemon cut him off and abruptly ended the segment.
“OK, Paris, thank you very much everyone,” Lemon said. “Thanks everyone, thanks for watching. Have a great weekend. Goodnight, all.”Could this be any more Clintony?
(From Zerohedge)
Earlier today Hillary Clinton offered up what some have described as one of the most delusional interviews of all time at Recode’s CodeCon conference, in which she blamed everything and everyone, including but certainly not limited to: FBI Director Comey, “1,000s of Russian agents”, right-wing media outlets, Russia, sexism, WikiLeaks, Russia, a funding deficit at the DNC, the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, the New York Times (yes, the NYT) …oh, and Russia, for her 2016 election loss. And while she certainly “takes responsibility” for every decision she made, Hillary desperately wants you to understand that’s not why she lost…because, you know, Russia.
“I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that’s not why I lost.”
Of course, in all of her rambling, Hillary never offered up a viable conclusion on why “Russian hackers” were only able to sway voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania but not in places like Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, states where anti-Russian tinfoil must be impervious.A woman views the Chinese social media website Weibo at a cafe in Beijing on April 2, 2012. Getty Images
(CBS News) There are estimated to be more Chinese people using the Internet right now than there are inhabitants of the North American continent, so the possibilities for cybercriminals in the country are profuse. Additionally, in China, there is almost certainly a longer-than-average list of online activities considered to be criminal, as the Communist government there considers speech against it to be a serious, punishable crime.
So when state media reports, as it did Wednesday, that 10,000 alleged cybercriminals have been arrested, the reasons for which they have been arrested must be taken with a grain of salt.
The Xinhua news agency wrote: "Chinese police have busted more than 600 criminal gangs for Internet-based crimes such as spreading lewd content, arms dealing and illegally collecting citizens' personal information since a special campaign was launched in March."
In addition to the detained suspects and busted gangs, Xinhua wrote: "3.2 million 'harmful' online messages had been deleted."
For its part, the government admitted in a statement that there was only so much they could do against the problem: "Although illegal and harmful information on the Internet has been reduced sharply through intensified crackdowns, fraudulent messages are still seen occasionally... and some telecom service providers are not strict enough when managing websites."
The state media report on the crackdown dovetails with local reports of Internet crackdowns. The BBC reports 5,007 people suspected cybercriminals were arrested in Beijing recently, and 263 internet cafes were closed as part of the city's efforts to "protect the physical and mental health of young people."
The chief of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, Fu Zhenghua, said users faced being severely punished if they "attacked" the country's leaders online, the BBC reports.
"It's increasingly difficult for the authorities to control what people are saying bearing in mind the rise of 'netizens' - individuals sharing their opinions over the internet," Oliver Barron, from the investment bank NSBO, told the BBC. "People have felt that they could speak out because of the anonymity the net offered, which is why the government is now cracking down on this, demanding that people register their accounts with their real names."A new interactive map that was launched earlier this year shows the history of lynching in America from the 1830s to the late 1960s.
The map was made possible through the work of African-American sociologist Monroe Nathan Work who worked tirelessly to document every known lynching that occurred in the US starting in 1908 to the late 1930s until his death in 1945.
Work built a Department of Records while in his tenure at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) that collected research, according to the Monroe Work Today project.
A new interactive map that was launched earlier this year shows the history of lynching in America from the 1830s to the late 1960s
The map was made possible through the work of African-American sociologist Monroe Nathan Work who worked tirelessly to document every known lynching (pictured from the map) that occurred in the US starting in 1908 to the late 1930s until his death in 1945
The map allows users to discover the nearly 5,000 lynchings of not only African-Americans in the US, but also Chinese, Italians, Native Americans (pictured lynching information) and Latinos
The map allows users to discover the nearly 5,000 lynchings of not only African-Americans in the US, but also Chinese, Italians, Native Americans and Latinos.
Each colored point on the map gives users information about each lynching, including their recorded name, date, location and why they were lynched.
According to the website, 'it was impossible to search the web and find an accurate scope of the history of American lynching', before the research was published.
'The names have always been kept safe, but distant, in old archives and scholarly books and dissertations. This site leaves the record open for all Americans, especially high school students who want to learn more than what their textbook has to say,' according to the site.
Lynching began in the 1800s as a form of justice without evidence in local communities. It later became adopted as a terrorist tactic by white supremacists.
The map has confirmed one thing that most people have speculated: black men were the most lynched group of people among the victims.
These merciless lynchings usually were due to mob violence that came after criminal accusations.
The research has also revealed some identities and circumstances under which |
osophical anarchism,” neutered, indisposed to action, and bourgeois in its class character. It was the communist publisher and editor Burnette G. Haskell who first labeled Greene’s circle the “Boston Anarchists” in his periodical Truth, intending to distinguish it from real anarchism, opposed to free market exchange and private property.
Though Greene’s practical mutualist ideas never attained widespread popularity, even among radicals, they became a key ingredient of later individualist anarchism and provided an entire generation with its introduction to the thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Given the continued important of free banking within the current libertarian conversation, Greene’s pioneering works on mutual banking remain relevant; Benjamin Tucker deemed his Mutual Banking “one of the most important works on finance in the English language.” Greene was a champion of libertarian ideas at their best. He understood that while individuality and independence are essential to a free and vital society, so too are community and cooperation—even better still, he understood that these values are not irreconcilable with each other, but always and everywhere indivisible. Pastor, theorist, author, and soldier, William Batchelder Greene deserves a place among the great libertarians of the nineteenth century, using his resources and his extraordinary talents to challenge the status quo and advance liberty.He's standing outside the station all week as punishment for drunken 911 calls.
Richard Dameron holds an "idiot" sign Sept. 2, 2013, apologizing for threatening to kill police during 911 calls. (Photo11: WKYC-TV)
CLOSE A man who threatened officers in Cleveland is making a court-ordered public apology by standing near a police station with a sign describing himself as an idiot. (Sept. 3) AP
A Cleveland man admits he was an "idiot" for calling 911 and threatening to kill police, and he has the court-ordered sign to prove it.
Richard Dameron, 58, is standing outside a police station for three hours a day this week displaying his handmade mea culpa as punishment for his conviction.
"I apologize for everything I've done, you know. I do feel bad about it 'cause the man has never done nothing to me," Dameron told WKYC-TV on Monday as he stood outside the 2nd District police station on the first day of his public shaming.
"I was under the influence of alcohol," he explained. "We were very deeply into it and we just started rambling off, acting like fools with a couple of officers."
Dameron's sign apologizes to a particular officer and "all police officers" for "being an idiot," and he pledges "it will never happen again."
It's not the first time Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr has used the unusual sentencing tactic, the Associated Press notes. Carr ordered a woman convicted of passing a stopped school bus to wear a similar sign.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1dE9dXeKen Roh moved to the United States from South Korea 43 years ago. Now, he’s running a pro–North Korea website, the most visible of a small group of Pyongyang’s devotees in the U.S.
LOS ANGELES — The heart of Koreatown was still hot as night fell in early June. Inside a ballroom on the second floor of a three-star hotel, a white banner with Korean words revealed the night’s theme: “Discussion between fellow countrymen in the U.S. on peace and unification.” Ken Roh, 72, was wearing an old, dark-striped suit and a bright scarlet-colored tie, and stood greeting the three dozen people who drove from all over the city to see him, a veteran reporter who built his career defending one of the most secretive countries in the world: North Korea. The audience sat straight up, focused, eager to hear about what Roh had seen and heard during a recent four-month-long trip to the country and its neighboring areas in China — his 69th visit to the country officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It’s become a tradition over the past decade — two to three times each year, the same group of Korean-American fans gather, eat Korean food, chat, and wait for the good news brought back firsthand from what they believe is the ideal society. On that June night, Roh started off by triumphantly displaying on a TV screen a Washington Post article that told the story of the two Pyongyang-born sons of a former American GI who defected to North Korea in 1962. The article, which detailed their continued loyalty to North Korea, relied on a video of an interview that Roh had done with the two men while in North Korea and had uploaded to the YouTube channel of the news site he founded over a decade ago, Minjok Tongshin. Roh appeared in the video himself, and it has since garnered around 20,000 views, making it his most watched video ever. He shared his pride with the crowd twice, once in Korean, and another in his less-than-perfect English, telling them he regarded the interview and its subsequent appearance in a huge national newspaper as his “number one good job” during the visit. The audience applauded. “It was a moving interview,” Roh said, as someone stood on a chair and took a photo of the room. While everyone else in the world sees North Korea as the home of gulags, starvation, and aggressive missile tests, the South Korean émigrés gathered in the ballroom see the country as a peace-loving, self-independent motherland, even if, technically, it’s still at war with South Korea despite an armistice signed in 1953. This is the pro–North Korea community in the U.S., whose interests are at odds with the country they’ve made their home — on Wednesday, July 6, for the first time, the U.S. sanctioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses. From the outside, everything about the community, from how it emerged, to how far it is willing to carry its commitment to North Korea, is puzzling. Roh and his followers, listening intently to the gospel delivered straight from Pyongyang, offer a window into how North Korea’s ideology spreads under the radar on U.S. soil, and, ultimately, just how people decide what to believe in.
Ed Jones / AFP / Getty Images A general view shows the Grand People's Study House and the Pyongyang city skyline from the Yanggakdo International Hotel on May 8, 2016.
Roh’s house sits along a main road in Glendale, surrounded by vibrant flowers like daylilies and blue jacarandas with an open view of the low-lying Verdugo Mountains. It’s nearly 6,000 miles away from Gangneung, the northeastern coastal city in South Korea where Roh was born in 1944, when the Korean Peninsula was in its last years of Japanese colonial rule. The split that divided the two into a Soviet-backed north and U.S.-backed south was never meant to be permanent; both countries on the Korean Peninsula want to see an end to the status quo, and talks about reunification has been on top of the agenda for decades. The horror of the Korean War — and the inability of North and South to decide what a rejoined government would look like — set the divide firmly into place. These days, the biggest obstacle the tens of thousands of divided families face, according to the Brookings Institute, is “North Korea itself.” When Roh was young, though, the Cold War was still in full swing and neither side was particularly admirable. “As soon as I graduated [from South Korea’s elite Yonsei University], I was trying to find a way to run away from the South Korean territory to pursue the freedom of expression,” Roh said, describing how publicly criticizing the government could lead to jailing under then-President Park Chung Hee. When Roh was still at school, however, he couldn’t stay away from politics — as the editor-in-chief of the campus English-language newspaper, he once surveyed his classmates on how they felt about the government. (Eighty-five percent responded negatively; he said the school cut his scholarship afterward.) He became a student activist against the Park dictatorship, but saw no hope for democratization in South Korea and, after a few years saving up money, decided to come to the United States. It was 1973. “At that time I thought that United States was number one democratic country, number one social justice–oriented country,” Roh said. But during his years at the University of Texas as an urban sociology student, he changed his mind. "I started to know what is jingoism, what is the civil rights movement in the U.S.A.," he said in his somewhat stilted English, pointing to the struggle of black Americans and racist laws targeting Chinese immigrants in the 18th century. "I didn’t know before I came here. I started to open my consciousness [and] become critical," he said. Even with the constant threat of renewed conflict, for a long time, Roh gave North Korea no thought, maintaining his focus on democratization in South Korea, where oppressive governments remained in power until the late 1980s through U.S. support as a counter to Pyongyang and communist China. “Just once in awhile [I thought to myself], Why divided?” he recalled. Upon completing his degree, he moved to L.A. and worked for a few local Korean community newspapers. After seeing his articles being thrown out, he says, he quit. North Korea caught Roh’s attention for the first time in 1989, when he heard news that several high-profile South Korean dissidents had taken unauthorized trips to Pyongyang as an unofficial way to promote reunification. The trips sparked a new wave of national turmoil in South Korea — the country was dealing with the aftermath of its drastic social transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy. For Roh, the idea of entering North Korea at all seemed like a revelation. The next year, he traveled to North Korea for the first time as an organizing member of a “pan-national rally for reunification,” the first free border crossing agreed to by the two governments since their division in 1945. Until then, Roh said, he was under the influence of a “Western way of thinking” and thought Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first leader, was a dictator. But the visit, he said, changed everything. After the rally in Panmunjom, a village north of the 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two countries and where the armistice that paused the Korean War was signed, 15 participants, including Roh and three other Korean émigrés, were unexpectedly whisked away and driven to a beautiful villa. Kim Il Sung walked out and greeted them personally; they had been chosen to share a meal with the Great Leader. Roh remembered Kim’s secretary saying, “This is the first time he came out in front of the house. Usually [he’s] inside — this is unusual.” “I was scared,” Roh said, “but he made us very comfortable.” Roh recalled the moment when he began to sympathize with Kim, as the North Korean leader described how hard it was to establish the country, counting only “seven to eight intellectuals” among his leadership's ranks. By the end of the banquet, when a symbolic course of “black, rotten potatoes” like those that were the only thing available during World War II and the Korean War were served, Kim had won Roh over. “My feeling is [that] he’s like a grandfather,” Roh said. “My grandfather.” Roh’s interest in North Korea continued once he got back to the U.S. Over the years, he collected the eight volumes of the elder Kim’s memoir, With the Century, and memorized them by heart. He’s a big believer in North Korea’s official ideology, juche, Korean for “self-reliance,” also known as Kimilsungism. And he took a more active role promoting reunification the way he knew best, by writing. But this time he wanted his own publication. He couldn’t afford to print a newspaper, but the younger brother of a friend, who was working as an internet developer at the time, offered him something he’d never thought of: a website. “Mr. Roh, why don’t you operate internet news?” Roh said the young man asked him one day in 1998, when the internet wasn’t yet a popular primary news source (the websites of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times had launched just three years earlier). Minjok Tongshin, Korean for “National Communication,” debuted on Nov. 11, 1999.
Jessica Chou for BuzzFeed News Ken Roh at his home in Los Angeles.
Today, Roh updates the site daily and manages nine other members of the editorial staff, all of whom are volunteers who get only symbolic salaries — no more than $100 a month each, former editorial staff member Rev. Joseph Paik confirmed in a phone interview. Roh says that the operating funds for the website all come from small offline donations from Korean-Americans throughout the country: Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, D.C., and New York. People in South Korea sometimes send him money too, he said. “Of course many times [we have had a] shortage,” Roh said, but money, he says, has never been his top concern. Roh has maintained a series of side jobs, including selling encyclopedias, in which he brought his substantial persuasive abilities to bear, earning enough to buy property in Koreatown. The website’s angle hits you right in the face — the U.S. is referred to as “imperialist America,” and calls South Korean President Park Geun Hye's government "oppressive." (Her father is Park Chung Hee, the former military dictator whose policies Roh spent the early part of his life protesting.) Meanwhile, it dwells on the good deeds of the “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un and cites articles from the Korean Central News Agency and other North Korean state-controlled media. South Korea blocked Minjok Tongshin in 2004. Roh considers it a success, claiming a monthly readership of 2 to 3 million, though a typical article gets only a few hundred views. (A review of traffic analytics websites shows that, in reality, Minjok Tongshin gets an average of about 20,000 visits per month, whereas Korean-American community newspaper Korea Times gets about 1,600,000. After confronting Roh with the number, he insisted a conservative number of 1 million was accurate, if including social media and email subscribers — but the site has only about 1,000 Twitter followers and 600 YouTube subscribers.) After that first visit, Roh continued to travel to Pyongyang every year, soon becoming a trustworthy comrade of the North Korean regime, gaining rare access to the country. He once shook hands with the country’s current president Kim Jong Un, offering condolences for the death of Kim Jong Il, Kim’s father and predecessor. He also claims that the Foreign Ministry is at his disposal to set up interviews upon request, as long as he submits a list of questions they deem appropriate. That’s how he was able to reach the sons of the American who defected to North Korea, for the interview that landed him in the Post. He met their father, James Joseph Dresnok, years ago through an exchange of cigarettes, when the two English speakers were both hospitalized in Pyongyang Friendship Hospital. Roh wanted to meet with him during his latest visit, but officials told him Dresnok was too sick. Undeterred, he suggested to officials that he could at least catch up with his friend’s sons. The government granted his request after reviewing the required list of questions. Roh’s work on Minjok has won the heart of the North Korean government: In 2008, he got a Ph.D. in political science from Kim Il Sung University. In 2014, the government awarded him the Kim Il Sung Prize, which is “a very significant award to get from the DPRK,” Michael Madden, a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute, told BuzzFeed News. “Obviously something has been done to the attention to the supreme leadership of North Korea who usually signs off on the document authorizing the prize.” The government treated Roh with a reception for the prize, which comes with a certificate and a pure-gold medallion. In the official certificate, he was addressed somewhat awkwardly as the “Representative of Korean American Internet Newspaper.” Roh, who was in North Korea for one of his reporting trips, claimed he had no idea the award was coming: “They didn’t tell me in advance and I only knew as a surprise.” Roh’s deep involvement and access has obviously raised some eyebrows. “I think he’s funded and supported by North Korean government,” said Seoungmin Lee, a defector who is currently enrolled at Columbia University. “Just look at it, he’s supporting North Korea and delivering the messages to the outside world — otherwise why would he do that.” Roh admits that Minjok Tongshin is a pro–North Korea organization, but denies that he’s controlled by the North Korean government. “One hundred percent [of our funds come] from overseas Korean-Americans, [including] even a small percent of funds from South Korea,” he said. Minjok Tongshin, however, is not the only organization in the United States that sympathetic toward North Korea. According to a list pulled together by Lawrence Peck, a researcher specializing in the U.S.-based pro–North Korea movement, there could be as many as 70 to 80 such groups, although many are composed of just one person. The major ones include New York–based Nodutdol and Korean American National Coordinating Committee (KANCC), which organizes “reunion” tourist groups to North Korea and offers so-called orientations before the groups set off. “We tell them what we expect from them,” said Moon J. Pak, vice president of KANCC, who is in close contact with Roh and has written articles reposted on Minjok Tongshin. “Most Korean Americans think [North Korea] it’s a dictator’s country, that’s not true, [we tell them] ‘you can take pictures with people on the street freely,’ to assure them [that] they are not going to a dangerous place.” The group also has its controversies: Last year, KANCC was forced to deny an accusation of U.S. tax violations published in state-controlled South Korean media. Moon denounced the accusation as an attempt to undermine his work, telling BuzzFeed News the office had never been investigated. Peck splits pro-DPRK groups into two categories: “front groups” and “open groups.” The former appear neutral and address mainstream society — he listed Women Cross DMZ, the group of feminist activists who walked across the demilitarized zone intending to demonstrate peace last year, as an example. (The group has denied accusations that they were bolstering the Kim regime, including during a visit to Capitol Hill.) The latter set, like Minjok Tongshin, shows open support for Pyongyang. Peck monitors Roh’s website and social media accounts closely. He often emails fellow anti-North Korea activists about Roh’s activities, and, “in some rare cases,” goes to monitor Roh’s events from a distance to discover hidden members of front groups. Minjok Tongshin’s community is well aware of him, he said, pointing to articles that have called him “pathetic.” (During a follow-up phone call, Roh angrily said he didn’t want to talk about Peck and his accusations at all.) Members of these organizations are passionate, but it’s unclear how far North Korean influence actually reaches. “I don’t even know if there are such groups in our community,” said Chris Lee, the director of the dispute resolution center at Korean American Coalition (KAC), an organization based in L.A. “I know there are a lot of people supporting North Korea in LA, but we don’t interact with them; they have their own [opinion]. We don’t have any relationship, period.” In truth, the reunified Korea that Roh and his admirers are praying for ultimately is a double-sized regime for Kim. Roh and his ilk’s methods are nothing new: When the international community condemns North Korea for its human rights issues, North Korea points back at South Korea and the U.S. for their own human rights abuses. That Roh’s video wound up in the Washington Post is a “brilliant North Korea propaganda piece,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, the executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. The video, he said, neglected an important basic fact: The mother of the two sons, reportedly, was an abductee from Romania who eventually “died in North Korea, unable to return to her country.” (A BBC documentary called Crossing the Line detailed the true story.) “The propaganda news [on Minjok Tongshin] is not 100% true, and those great things that happened did not happen to 99% of the North Korean population. A very big amount [of the population] is suffering,” said Grace Jo, a North Korean defector turned activist who goes to school in Maryland. Jo lost four of her family members to starvation and prison torture during the 1990s famine that killed as many as 3 million people by some estimates, before she escaped and spent her teenage years in China with her mother and her elder sister. “If a naïve student gets exposed to these articles [posted on Roh’s website], they will consider North Korea to be good and praise the system,” said Jo. Roh has denied all accusations of propaganda and maintained that he only wrote about “truth” when confronted with his critics’ views.
Jessica Chou for BuzzFeed News The Kim Il Sung Prize, given to Ken Roh by the North Korean government.As President Donald Trump welcomed more than half the Senate to the White House on Tuesday night in one of his first big splashes on the Washington social scene, he gave a shout to a recognizable Democratic face in the crowd.
“Chuck? I see Chuck,” Trump said. “Hello, Chuck."
Story Continued Below
The six words were the first the president had directed at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in person in more than two months.
The Trump-Schumer relationship was supposed to have been one of Washington’s most intriguing this year. Instead, the two men have had virtually no relationship at all, with zero one-on-one meetings or even private conversations on the phone since Trump took the oath of office.
“Right now, there’s not much to talk about, OK?” Schumer told POLITICO in an interview last week.
“Schumer’s name has not come up,” a top White House official said of conversations with the president. “He really hasn’t mentioned him in a long time. That’s really telling in and of itself.”
After Trump’s spectacular failure to advance health care legislation last week among his fellow Republicans, the president has suggested that he’s open to rekindling his relationship with congressional Democrats. But lawmakers and strategists wonder whether Trump missed his best shot at a productive relationship, particularly with Schumer, as freshly emboldened Democrats push to define Trump as a failed president.
“Any type of cooperation with Trump is looked upon as treason now,” said Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican who knows both men.
The silence is an abrupt turnabout from their regular banter last November and December when the two outer-borough deal-makers — both of whom had perfected the art of self-promotion in New York’s tabloids — spoke roughly a half-dozen times and engaged in happy talk of working together.
Then, Trump tweeted favorably about Schumer’s smarts. Now, the president calls his home-state senator the “head clown” of the Democrats.
How Trump and Schumer went from phone friends to silent strangers in a matter of weeks was described by a dozen advisers and friends of both men, who said the fissures date to almost the moment the calendar turned to 2017.
From Trump’s perspective, there was Schumer’s rude prebuttal of his inaugural address, anger about Schumer labeling the GOP health care plan “Make America Sick Again,” and deepening frustration with his procedural stalling tactics over confirming Cabinet picks as well as, Neil Gorsuch Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. From Schumer’s vantage, Trump bypassed even the patina of bipartisanship as he forced one controversial executive order after another and pushed a Republican-only repeal of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
“He moved. He, not me,” Schumer told POLITICO. “He moved so far over to the right that it’s virtually impossible to work with him.”
But if Schumer believes Trump has been captured by the hard right, then Trump believes Schumer has been captive of the far left.
“Chuck, I'm very disappointed, because he's a guy that should make deals for the people,” Trump said recently on Fox News. “Instead, he's just an obstructionist.”
At the White House, Schumer has been mostly an afterthought. “By the time we got to the inauguration, any hope that Schumer wanted to actually work together to find any common ground was clearly gone,” said a second senior administration official.
As with so much else about Trump’s presidency, the evolution of the relationship can be tracked in 140-character updates on Twitter.
Back in November, Trump tweeted about their “good relationship” and the chance to “get things done” together. Jared Kushner, Trump’s influential son-in-law, said in a closed-door speech that Trump and Schumer were closer policywise on infrastructure than were Trump and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. And in one phone call that leaked, Trump told Schumer that he personally liked him better than either McConnell or Speaker Paul Ryan.
“Trump probably thought Schumer was as shallow as he is and could be won over with idle flattery,” said former top Schumer aide and Hillary Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. “Schumer is too savvy for that.” Fallon added that talk of a Trump-Schumer relationship was always “exaggerated.”
Schumer: Trump 'chose petulance over presidential leadership' poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201703/2797/1155968404_5378052097001_5377978778001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true
By the first week of January, Schumer rolled out the “Make America Sick Again” slogan in POLITICO. Within hours Trump, who was annoyed by it according to two people close to him, went on Twitter and called Schumer — to whom he had given thousands of dollars in political donations over the years — a “clown.”
Chris Ruddy, a friend of Trump’s and the CEO of Newsmax, said that as far as Trump insults go, that’s mild. “In Donald Trump’s lexicon, it’s not too bad to be called a ‘clown,’” he said. “It’s not an enemy of the state.”
The relationship turned even frostier two weeks later, after Schumer took the stage at Trump’s inaugural and delivered a speech that a third top White House official went so far as to call “anti-Trump.” Schumer praised all Americans “whatever our race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity; whether we are immigrants or native-born; whether we live with disabilities or do not.” Some in the crowd booed him.
“They booed when I said rule of law. Who does that say more about, OK? I was proud of it. I expected I’d get some flak,” Schumer told POLITICO.
Then, at the inaugural luncheon afterward, Trump tried to buttonhole Schumer about confirming his Cabinet members. Schumer responded by criticizing Trump’s picks as too conservative to the president’s face.
The pair spoke at the White House on Jan. 23 during a gathering for legislative leaders. After the gathering, Sen. Mitch McConnell dryly remarked about listening to “the President and Senator Schumer talking about all the people they knew in New York.” But it would be one of the last times Schumer and President Trump engaged. They met once more the next day, along with the Judiciary Committee leaders.
They haven’t talked since, Schumer said.
The closest they’ve come to direct interaction is on Twitter, when Trump called for Schumer to be investigated for ties to Russia and Schumer replied he’d “happily” speak “under oath.” “Would you &your team?” Schumer retorted.
Two White House officials said Schumer’s private sit-down with Gorsuch was the most hostile of the Supreme Court nominee’s Senate meetings. Then, in mid-March, Trump fired almost all the sitting U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, a former Schumer aide whom Trump had previously, according to Bharara, promised to retain.
White House officials said Trump had little reason to keep him, given they were no longer on speaking terms with Schumer.
Those in Schumer’s orbit, and even some Republicans, said Trump’s pursuit of a partisan health care repeal before, say, an infrastructure package that could have drawn Democratic support doomed any chance of rapport between the two men. Schumer and Trump also agree on some trade issues.
“This is not Monday morning quarterbacking, but if they had maybe led off with the infrastructure bill,” King, the GOP congressman, said of the White House, “that may have been more grounds they would have had” for deal making.
“It’s not complicated,” said Phil Singer, a former Schumer adviser. “Trump has pursued an agenda that is antithetical to everything Schumer and the Democrats have worked on for years.”
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Sen. Joe Manchin, the moderate West Virginia Democrat, said of Trump and Schumer, “The president knows that Chuck is not going to be rolled over or bowled over or pushed over. And the other thing is Chuck is very personable, and when they can work together they can.”
But Trump’s team believes Schumer was boxed in by the liberal activists who showed up by the thousands to protest the day after the inauguration.
“He’s a much more transactional pragmatist, but he’s forced into a spot where he’s not allowed to work with Trump,” said one of the White House officials.
Fallon said Trump’s plummeting approval ratings — he sank to 36 percent in a recent Gallup survey — give Schumer the upper hand in setting the terms of discussions, should they happen in the future.
“To the extent Schumer was ever going to feel pressure to show openness to Trump, it was going have to come from the red-state members who were in cycle,” Fallon went on. “But those members are feeling less and less pressure to go along with Trump. And that gives Schumer added freedom.”
As for the White House soiree on Tuesday night, Trump and Schumer did not speak after the shout-out in front of the full crowd.Translation of Issue #19
So here is the translation of issue #19.
Pleeeeeeeease read the comic before you read the rest of this. The idea of this particular issue is that you don't understand everything. Some things are explicitly signed (in the boxes without faces), others are actually part of a regular image.
I’ve listed the page number and what the sentence is, not each individual sign. If you want the individual signs, let me know. But it would be really clunky since signing doesn’t use functional words often, so your brain just kinda has to put the function words in there on its own.
Intro blurb
Fingerspelling: Hawkeye
Page 4 (DEAF at the top, grown up Clint)
Barney: Stupid.
(Fingerspelled word: Clint)
Page 6 (Barney talking in the cab)
Barney: Now what?
Barney: You remember..
Page 8 (Clint drinking milk)
Barney: Will you take a shower today, maybe? You stink. Change your clothes.
Page 11 (Clint is saying ’…’)
Barney: What?
Clint: “Uncle Barney?”
Barney: You can sign!
Page 12 (On the roof)
Fingerspelling: WTF [what the fuck]
Page 13
Clint: Dad? (Barney responds: That…son of a bench)
Clint: I want some of that.
Barney: Only if you spit it out.
Page 14
Clint: No, I don’t want to stand.
Page 15
Clint: Dad’s too tall, I can’t stop him.
Page 16
Barney: You can get them back.
Page 17
Clint: Wear something nice. Everyone’s going up to the roof in 5 minutes.
Page 18
Clint: They’re never going to stop. But I willstop them. Ok?
Page 19
Clint: We.
Clint: Anything else?Zika Virus: An Emerging Health Threat
Posted on January 26th, 2016 by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Kraemer et al. eLife 2015;4:e08347
For decades, the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus was mainly seen in equatorial regions of Africa and Asia, where it caused a mild, flu-like illness and rash in some people. About 10 years ago, the picture began to expand with the appearance of Zika outbreaks in the Pacific islands. Then, last spring, Zika popped up in South America, where it has so far infected more than 1 million Brazilians and been tentatively linked to a steep increase in the number of babies born with microcephaly, a very serious condition characterized by a small head and brain [1]. And Zika’s disturbing march may not stop there.
In a new study in the journal The Lancet, infectious disease modelers calculate that Zika virus has the potential to spread across warmer and wetter parts of the Western Hemisphere as local mosquitoes pick up the virus from infected travelers and then spread the virus to other people [2]. The study suggests that Zika virus could eventually reach regions of the United States in which 60 percent of our population lives. This highlights the need for NIH and its partners in the public and private sectors to intensify research on Zika virus and to look for new ways to treat the disease and prevent its spread.
Zika virus infection can be spread by yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti), and experimental evidence suggests the virus also can be transmitted by Asian tiger mosquitoes (Aedes albopictus). Aedes mosquitoes—already known for transmitting other viral illnesses, such as dengue and chikungunya—have a wide and expanding global distribution, including in the United States [3]. To predict places around the world where Zika virus might spread as people infected in the Brazilian outbreak come into contact with biting Aedes mosquitoes, the NIH-supported research team, led by Kamran Khan of St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, first mapped the global distribution of Aedes mosquitoes along with the climate conditions the researchers deemed favorable to the spread of Zika virus. They then layered onto this map the final destinations of travellers who might have been exposed to Zika virus before departing Brazil from September 2014 to August 2015.
During the year, 9.9 million travelers left 146 Brazilian airports near areas known to be conducive to Zika virus transmission for destinations around the world. North and South American countries were the most-popular destinations (representing 65 percent of travelers) followed by those in Europe (27 percent) and Asia (5 percent). The most-popular travel spot was the United States, with more than 2.7 million people making the trip.
According to the researchers’ calculations, about 200 million Americans—more than 60 percent of the population—reside in areas of the United States that might be conducive to the spread of Zika virus during warmer months through biting mosquitoes, including areas along the East and West Coasts and much of the Midwest. In addition, another 22.7 million people live in humid, subtropical parts of the country that might support the spread of Zika virus all year round, including southern Texas and Florida. Already, there are reports of local spread of the virus within Puerto Rico and of travelers returning to the U.S. with the Zika infection.
With all this in mind, it is now critically important to confirm, through careful epidemiological and animal studies, whether or not a causal link exists between Zika virus infections in pregnant women and microcephaly in their newborn babies. Brazilian health authorities made the initial connection between the virus and birth defects, primarily because the increase in microcephaly seemed to emerge a few months after the introduction of Zika virus into Brazil. Thousands of cases of microcephaly have now been reported and the Brazilian health ministry has confirmed the presence of Zika virus in tissue samples and amniotic fluid collected from a small number of affected children or their mothers [1]. While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has obtained similar findings, it remains unclear what other factors might increase risks to the developing fetus [4].
In November, health authorities in French Polynesia also reported an unusual increase of central nervous system malformations in fetuses and infants that seemed to coincide with the Zika outbreak there. And, last week, came news reports of the first child born in the U.S. with microcephaly possibly linked to Zika. The child’s mother had lived in Brazil during her pregnancy before moving to Oahu, Hawaii [5]. As an additional concern, there are reports in French Polynesia and Brazil of a possible connection between Zika infection and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a mysterious condition in which the immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system [1].
With no vaccine or treatment currently available to prevent or treat Zika infection, the best way for individuals—and pregnant women in particular—to protect themselves is to avoid traveling to places where Zika is known to be spreading. If an individual has to live or work in such a region, CDC recommends strict precautions to avoid mosquito bites, including wearing protective clothing, using insect repellants, and sleeping in rooms with window screens or air conditioning. Though still unproven, the link between Zika infection and microcephaly has also prompted CDC to issue interim guidelines recommending that women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant consider postponing travel to areas where Zika virus has spread. This frequently updated list currently includes Puerto Rico, Mexico, and 20 other countries in South America, Central America, the Caribbean, the Pacific islands, and Africa [6].
Many important questions remain about Zika. But, as Anthony Fauci, director of NIH’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted in his recent New England Journal of Medicine essay, one thing is very clear: far more research into Zika virus and its interactions with its mosquito, human, and non-human primate hosts is urgently needed [7]. For instance, it will be important to determine how readily Asian tiger mosquitoes, which can tolerate relatively cold temperatures, spread Zika virus.
The scientific community must also step up its efforts to develop innovative approaches against the virus, and that’s certainly happening at NIH. With NIAID taking the lead, research is underway to understand better Zika’s effects on the body, to develop diagnostic tests to identify the virus rapidly in people, and to ramp up testing of therapeutics that might be effective. Importantly, NIAID researchers already are working on vaccine candidates to prevent Zika virus from infecting people. All of this work is a compelling example of NIH mobilizing swiftly in the face of a rapidly emerging infectious disease, and seeking the research answers that Americans |
aid spending will continue to provide support and expert advice to help break down barriers to trade and promote investment so that developing countries can take better advantage of these trade arrangements. This work will consider labour protections, the environment, human rights and other factors which support sustainable development. The Department for International Trade will continue to work closely with the Department for International Development on our future trade and development policy.
5. Ensuring a level playing field
Ensuring a level playing field – a UK approach to trade remedies and trade disputes
Free trade does not mean trade without rules. To operate an independent trade policy, we will need to put in place a trade remedies framework. As an important part of a rounded trade policy, a trade remedies framework is designed to protect domestic industry against unfair and injurious trade practices, or unexpected surges in imports by allowing for measures (usually a duty) to be placed on imports of specific products. Consistent with our WTO obligations, the UK’s framework will be implemented by a new mechanism to investigate cases and propose measures that offer proportionate protections for our producers. In preparation for this, we also need to identify existing EU measures that are essential to UK business and will need to be carried forward. We will shortly be issuing a call for evidence as a first step towards identifying which existing trade remedies measures have a UK interest.
In addition, the WTO ’s existing trade dispute settlement mechanism aims to resolve trade conflicts between countries and, by underscoring the rule of law, makes the international trading system more predictable and secure. The European Commission currently manages trade disputes on our and other member states’ behalf. By the time we leave the EU, we will ensure we are ready to act independently to protect UK interests should our trading partners fail to meet their international obligations and to defend any disputes brought against the UK.
5.1 Trade remedies
The UK is a strong supporter of free and fair trade. However, if a particular domestic industry suffers harm as a result of distortions of international trade (including through state-assisted subsidies and dumping), trade remedy measures can be used as a safety valve to ensure fair trade. Trade remedy measures form an important part of a rounded trade policy and as a result many WTO members have a trade remedies framework. The 3 types of trade remedies are set out in WTO agreements and are known as anti-dumping, anti-subsidy (or countervailing) measures and safeguards.
The overall economic case for trade remedies needs to be considered objectively on a case by case basis. Trade remedy measures can increase the cost of affected products for user industries, and consumers, as well as the competitiveness of both user and producer industries. Therefore, it is important that measures are used judiciously and proportionately to tackle unfair trade, ensuring fair competition and addressing the injury caused to domestic producers, whilst also taking appropriate account of impacts on users and consumers and the wider trade agenda.
Trade remedies are currently an EU competence. Investigations, decisions and monitoring of trade remedy measures are performed by the European Commission on behalf of all EU member states. As the UK leaves the EU, we will need to put in place an independent UK trade remedy framework to be implemented by a new mechanism to investigate cases and propose measures. This trade remedies framework must continue to be compatible with the clear standards and requirements set out by the WTO and support our approach to trade liberalisation.
The UK’s trade remedies framework will be designed on the following principles:
Impartiality – we will develop a UK trade remedies framework that will earn the respect of our trading partners and domestic stakeholders by being impartial and objective. We will achieve this through:
creating a new, independent, trade remedies investigating authority as a new arm’s length body that will investigate trade remedies cases and make recommendations on the basis of clear economic criteria. The new UK trade remedies investigating function will need to be operational by the time we leave the EU. This will enable it to take on new investigations and reviews of existing cases.
. This will enable it to take on new investigations and reviews of existing cases. ensuring that the investigation process is as transparent, objective and efficient as possible
providing a route for interested parties to appeal decisions made by the investigating authority
Proportionality – we will ensure that the UK’s trade remedies framework is used judiciously and proportionately. Decisions will be based on clear evidence, targeted at addressing the injury caused, and take into account the interests of domestic producers and regional impacts, as well as those of other interested parties, such as user industries and consumers. We will achieve this through:
Applying an economic interest test as part of the trade remedies investigation, prior to the application of provisional or definitive measures. The detail of how this test works in practice will be informed by internal and external analysis and finalised later in the year when it will be set out in secondary legislation or guidance. We have been engaging with stakeholders to get their views and are committed to continuing that process.
Applying a UK-specific threshold for initiating cases in addition to the basic WTO threshold which specifies the minimum market share required for the domestic industry to bring an investigation. Other countries’ trade remedy regimes often have a method of filtering cases at the initiation stage to avoid investing resources in investigations which are very unlikely to result in measures. Not all systems are clear about the filtering process but the UK would like to clarify this approach in secondary legislation so the system is more transparent and more predictable for business. We are in the process of conducting further work on the detail of this proposal, including what the threshold should be, and have been engaging with stakeholders to get their views on this, and are committed to continuing that process.
threshold which specifies the minimum market share required for the domestic industry to bring an investigation. Other countries’ trade remedy regimes often have a method of filtering cases at the initiation stage to avoid investing resources in investigations which are very unlikely to result in measures. Not all systems are clear about the filtering process but the UK would like to clarify this approach in secondary legislation so the system is more transparent and more predictable for business. We are in the process of conducting further work on the detail of this proposal, including what the threshold should be, and have been engaging with stakeholders to get their views on this, and are committed to continuing that process. Applying duties based on the level of injury caused by the dumping or subsidy, as identified during the investigation process. The methodology for calculating injury will be informed by internal and external analysis and we have been sharing our thinking with stakeholders as the work develops, and are committed to continuing that process.
Efficiency – we will ensure that cases are investigated swiftly and effectively, avoiding unnecessary burdens on complainants as well as the subjects of the complaint, and we will ensure the effectiveness of trade remedy measures. We will achieve this through:
applying provisional measures according to WTO rules when they are needed to protect the domestic industry during an investigation, so that measures can be in place as quickly as possible
rules when they are needed to protect the domestic industry during an investigation, so that measures can be in place as quickly as possible developing a digital service to support the investigations process
introducing measures to tackle attempts to circumvent or absorb trade remedies through specific review processes
legislating to allow the use of undertakings but carefully examining the circumstances in which undertakings should be sought and accepted in lieu of duties
Transparency – balancing the need to protect commercially confidential data whilst ensuring that relevant information about cases is accessible to interested parties, and that there is accountability for decision-making. We will achieve this through:
making the system and the process as transparent as possible, within the boundaries set in the WTO agreements to protect commercial confidentiality, so that parties to investigations are able to make their case effectively
agreements to protect commercial confidentiality, so that parties to investigations are able to make their case effectively ensuring that transparency arrangements do not create an unreasonable burden on the businesses that take part in the process
Engaging our stakeholders
Many industrial sectors are not well versed in trade remedies policy, but there are a small number of sectors that have been impacted by dumped or subsidised imports that have a high level of expertise in the area. We know from the stakeholder engagement we have already conducted that, when it comes to the future of the trade remedies framework, UK companies are looking for certainty, continuity and as much notice as possible for any significant changes that might directly impact them.
The Department for International Trade has an ongoing programme of engagement with all relevant stakeholders including representatives from producer and user industries, as well as consumer and retail groups, to understand their specific concerns and to provide an opportunity for them to feed in to the detailed design of the system as we develop secondary legislation. This engagement takes the form of a series of roundtables and bilateral meetings. We are interested in comments and views on all aspects of the trade remedy framework.
The department invites any stakeholders who have an interest in trade remedies and are not yet involved in this work to contact us at stakeholder.engagement@trade.gov.uk for further details.
Transferring existing EU trade remedy measures
The EU currently has over 100 measures in place on imported goods originating from 25 different non- EU countries. Based on European Commission estimates, this represents only around 0.5% of all imports into the EU, but from the point of view of the domestic producers of those products these measures are vital and ensure fair competition.
Once the UK has left the EU, and taking into account any time-limited implementation period, UK businesses will no longer be able to make a request to the European Commission to investigate claims of dumping or subsidy in the UK. If no action is taken to transition existing trade remedy measures they will, with immediate effect, no longer apply to products arriving into the UK.
Without action, this could have serious effects on certain UK industries including those in the steel, ceramics and chemicals sectors. In order to provide certainty to business and ensure continuity, we will seek to effectively continue the existing trade remedies measures which matter to UK business, and which meet WTO requirements around the level of domestic production. We will review them to ensure that they are tailored to the needs of the UK economy.
As a first step in this process we will shortly be issuing a call for evidence in order to identify which existing EU trade remedy measures are relevant to UK companies. Once we have this information we will be able to assess those measures. We will set out our approach for transitioning existing measures in more detail in the Call for Evidence and, recognising that participating in trade remedy processes can be resource intensive for business, we will ensure that we allow adequate notice and time to collect any further information that we may require.
5.2 Conducting trade disputes
The WTO has a dispute settlement mechanism for resolving trade conflicts between member governments. The purpose is to ensure that the multilateral rules-based system governing international trade is effective by providing member governments with a means of enforcement when another member breaches its obligations. By underscoring the rule of law, dispute settlement makes the trading system more predictable and secure. In addition, as the UK agrees new preferential trade agreements with specific trading partners, it will need to be prepared to enforce the obligations of those agreements by way of dispute settlement, including by using the dispute mechanisms provided for in those agreements.
Trade dispute mechanisms can be a highly effective means of protecting and thereby opening up trading opportunities for UK firms. Some disputes can be worth billions of pounds to the UK economy. The European Commission currently manages trade disputes on behalf of the EU and its member states. When the UK leaves the EU, we will ensure we are ready to act independently to protect UK interests when our trading partners fail to meet their international obligations and to defend any disputes brought against the UK after day one of exit.
We will develop the capability to participate fully in every stage of a trade dispute. This will include being able to identify potential market access issues, the pursuit of a negotiated solution in the pre-dispute phase, conducting the substantive dispute from launch to final resolution, and if necessary imposing justified and proportionate retaliatory measures against states who fail to meet their international trade law obligations.
Next steps
As we continue our work to develop and deliver a UK trade policy that benefits business, workers and consumers across the whole of the UK, we will engage regularly with stakeholders through both formal and informal consultation mechanisms. Through this paper we are seeking views on all aspects of our developing approach. In particular, we invite feedback on the following elements, as part of our engagement on the legislation (including a trade bill and a customs bill) which the government intends to introduce in this session:
Feedback should be sent to stakeholder.engagement@trade.gov.uk by 6 November.
© Crown copyright 2017
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at www.gov.uk/government/publications
Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to us at stakeholder.engagement@trade.gov.uk
The UK’s Department for International Trade ( DIT ) has overall responsibility for promoting UK trade across the world and attracting foreign investment to our economy. We are a specialised government body with responsibility for negotiating international trade policy, supporting business, as well as delivering an outward-looking trade diplomacy strategy.
Legal disclaimer
Whereas every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this document is accurate the Department for International Trade does not accept liability for any errors, omissions or misleading statements, and no warranty is given or responsibility accepted as to the standing of any individual, firm, company or other organisation mentioned.Google has just announced that it's making the Chrome Web Store available to the "entire userbase of Chrome" -- all 160 million, according to the company's latest numbers -- and in 41 different languages no less, although those outside the current markets will apparently only have access to free apps initially. What's more, it's also now added in-app purchases to the mix -- which it notes developers can add to their apps with "literally one line of code" -- and it's announced that it plans to "keep it simple" by simply charging developers a flat five percent fee instead of opting for some of the more complicated fee structures out there. As for how the Web Store has been doing so far, Google revealed that there has been 17 million app installs to date, although it provided few details beyond that.A woman’s $100 million lawsuit in California federal court accusing Donald Trump of raping her three times when she was a teenager has been dismissed by a federal judge.
Katie Johnson claimed in court documents that the New York billionaire forced her to “engage in various perverted and depraved sex acts by threatening physical harm to (Johnson) and her family.”
The case, filed in April, was thrown out by U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Stevenson in May, according to court documents. Stevenson ruled that Johnson “failed to state a civil rights claim” in her lawsuit.
UPDATE: The lawsuit has been refiled in Manhattan federal court, this time with by an attorney for the accuer. Read about the new lawsuit here.
Trump strenuously denied the claims.
“The allegations are not only categorically false, but disgusting at the highest level and clearly framed to solicit media attention or, perhaps, are simply politically motivated,” Trump told the tabloid website Radar Online, the first publication to report on the lawsuit. “There is absolutely no merit to these allegations. Period.”
Jeffrey Epstein, a former banker and convicted sex offender, is also named in the lawsuit, which was filed April 26 in the Central District of California. She claims the sexual assaults occurred at a home owned by Epstein, who hosted “sex parties” attended by Trump. Johnson additionally claims a former employee of Epstein, named as Tiffany Doe, was a witness and can confirm her claims.
Johnson claims she and other juveniles were used by Trump as “sex slaves” and that the sexual assaults occurred from June to September 2004 when she was 13. She said she was enticed by a potential modeling career and cash. She graphically describes the sexual assaults in the civil complaint, which you can read in full below:
Johnson filed the lawsuit pro se, meaning she is representing herself. No attorney is listed in the court documents. The phone number she lists in the filing is disconnected. It was previously listed as a cell phone number for a California dentist, who could not be reached.
Her listed address is a house in Twentynine Palms, California, that has been foreclosed and is vacant, neighbors told Radar Online. Court documents show that mail sent by the court to Johnson was returned to the sender.
Johnson says in another document that “in 2008 I worked as a free-lance model and earned an average of $200-$300 a month.” No other information about Johnson could be found.
In that document, which you can read below, Johnson claims she is unemployed and has $276 in cash on hand:
Epstein, a disgraced investment banker, has previously been accused of running a “sexual abuse ring” involving underage girls provided to high-powered clients, including businessmen and politicians, according to The Guardian. Epstein was a friend of President Bill Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, a topic often mentioned by conservatives:
Bill Clinton and Best Friend Jeffrey Epstein pic.twitter.com/mwKyjZW2l5 — Jeff Spicoli (@kawasaki61fld) November 8, 2015
He was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and was sentenced to 13 months in prison.
Trump also has connections to Epstein, according to Buzzfeed.
Trump is not the first Republican presidential candidate to become the topic of tabloid fodder during this election season. The National Enquirer reported that a private investigator is looking into claims Texas Senator Ted Cruz has affairs with five women.
The story spawned #CruzSexScandal, which trended on Twitter for an entire weekend.
Cruz denied the allegations:
Cruz on Enquirer piece: "It is garbage, complete & utter lies. It is a tabloid smear and it has come from Donald Trump and his henchmen." — Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) March 25, 2016
The Enquirer story did not name names, and only ran pixelated photos, but rumors quickly spread on social media that the photos included a former staffer for his now-running mate Carly Fiorina, a former member of his own staff and a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign.He said that Erdogan's strident style "had apparently led some to feel motivated to try to threaten and harass my wife," in comments broadcast Tuesday by news channel NTV.
"Of course, this is a terrible outcome," he said without giving further details, at a time when relations between the NATO allies have plunged to their lowest point in years.
On Saturday, Erdogan launched a bitter personal attack on Gabriel, who has frequently criticised the president's leadership and his treatment of opponents and critics.
"Who are you to talk to the president of Turkey?" Erdogan said in a televised speech. "Know your limits. He is trying to teach us a lesson... How long have you been in politics? How old are you?"
Relations between Turkey and Germany, home to three million ethnic Turks, have deteriorated sharply, particularly since a failed coup against Erdogan over a year ago and a subsequent mass crackdown on its alleged plotters.
Among the alleged state enemies and terrorist supporters behind bars in Turkey are several German or dual Turkish-German citizens, including journalists and rights workers.
Erdogan has charged that Germany is sheltering Kurdish militants, coup plotters and terrorists.
In recent days he has angered Berlin by urging ethnic Turks in Germany to vote in September 24th elections against Merkel's conservatives, as well as Gabriel's Social Democrats and the Green Party. Erdogan labelled the three parties "enemies of Turkey".Story:
Merging Oceans: Where two oceans meet… but do not mix! Incredible and Simply Mind-Blowing!!!
These two bodies of water were merging in the middle of The Gulf of Alaska and there was a foam developing only at their junction. It is a result of the melting glaciers being composed of fresh water and the ocean has a higher percentage of salt causing the two ocean bodies of water to have different densities and therefore makes it more difficult to mix.
Facts Analysis:
The picture shown in the story is a genuine one, and the message that comes with it is also a fact. The picture shows two different ocean water bodies meeting in the middle of Alaskan Gulf, where a foam is formed at the merging junction. Shown in the video is a glimpse of the Alaskan location where two oceans meet but do not mix.
This happens when glaciers of fresh water start melting and flow to join the ocean water which is more salty. Because of the difference in the salinity and densities of these two meeting ocean water bodies, a surface tension is developed between them that acts like a thin wall and does not allow them to mix. But given enough time, they will eventually mix together.
This picture of two oceans meeting, but not mixing was caught by a photographer on Alaskan Cruise and shared it on Flickr which went viral, spreading on many other social networking platforms. You can find few other similar pictures caught by the same photographer in reference section.
Hoax or Fact:
Fact.
References:
Surface Tension
Merging Oceans Pictures(TNS) -- Cord cutting has taken a bite out of the number of pay TV subscribers for cable and telecommunications companies.
But it hasn’t significantly reduced high-speed internet subscribers – in part because there aren’t many alternatives for over-the-top streamers.
Webpass, now owned by Google, wants to be that alternative – even though today it’s a niche Internet Service Provider with a small footprint that is limited to apartments, condos and a few commercial buildings.
The San Francisco company is trying to elbow its way into the broadband business where others – from Google Fiber to Verizon FiOS – have had mixed results luring away customers from established cable and telephone company providers.
But unlike these wireline, fiber optic deployments, Webpass delivers broadband wirelessly.
Founded in 2003, the company uses a daisy chain of point-to-point wireless radios on the roof tops of apartment and condo buildings to serve up bandwidth. It also can tap into fiber optic lines coming into the building from the street.
From there, Webpass taps copper Ethernet cabling behind the walls to deliver speeds ranging from 100 megabits per second to a 1 gigabit per second to customers. The cost is $60 a month.
Speeds depend on the building infrastructure. There’s no modem or other equipment needed. Just an Ethernet jack in the wall. Customers can plug in their TV, router, laptop, game console or other device directly into the jack and have connectivity.
“Regardless of what speeds you’re getting, it is the same price because we are giving you the fastest speeds your building will accommodate,” said Charles Barr, founder and president of Webpass.
Webpass is only available in multi-tenant condos and apartments. It requires what’s known as Cat. 5 or better Ethernet wiring in the building, which are commonly referred to as Ethernet cables.
“We try to make everything as simple as possible,” said Barr. “So the delivery method to the customer is copper cable. Anything can connect to it. You don’t need any specialized equipment. You just plug in and go.”
Webpass operates in San Francisco/Oakland, Miami, Denver, Boston, Chicago and San Diego. It serves more than 800 buildings nationwide. The company targets complexes with 10 units or more.
Webpass expanded into San Diego in 2013 and is now deployed in 175 multi-tenant buildings. Most are downtown. But Webpass also is in some complexes in Mission Valley, North Park, Coronado, National City, Pacific Beach, Normal Heights and other neighborhoods. It recently expanded into University City.
A roadblock for Webpass is having to convince apartment and condo landlords to allow it to offer service in their buildings, which often already have cable or telephone company internet.
“Webpass has to make the case as to why they are better, and of course many building owners are going to want a piece of the action,” said Erik Keith, principal broadband infrastructure analyst for industry research firm GlobalData.
Webpass must ask permission from the landlord to come on their property. It then must negotiate a contract to offer service.
“AT&T doesn’t have to ask permission,” said Barr. “I am immensely proud of having 175 buildings in San Diego. I could have 1,000 if I didn’t have this requirement.”
Briar Belair, a Webpass user, said one of the biggest benefits is no long-term contracts. Customers pay month to month.
After moving to a new building recently, she had to pay a six-month termination fee, even though her pay TV/internet provider didn’t offer service at her new building.
“I couldn’t get service but still had to pay for it anyway, which is really frustrating from a consumer standpoint,” she said. “Webpass just ensures that won’t be happening.”
Matt Brand, a cord cutter, has never used Webpass but is looking forward to getting it at the Vue on 5th, a 45-unit complex that opened last fall in Bankers Hill.
Brand said he’s fed up with the sales tactics of cable and telecommunications outfits.
“They say, we’ll do this deal for you for $100, and a year later I’m asking why am I paying $250 for this?” he said. “I call and say cancel it all. And they’re like how about we do it for $150?”
Brand must wait a bit for Webpass, however. The general contractor that constructed Vue on 5th didn’t wire the building with copper Ethernet cable from the central connectivity point to individual units.
The building owner, ColRich, has pledged to fix the problem. It’s working with the general contractor to add the wiring, the company said.
Barr, the Webpass president, said there has been an uptick in the past year of new San Diego multi-tenant complexes excluding Ethernet wiring.
He believes cable and telephone company providers are offering deals to builders to install fiber optic or coaxial cable wiring only behind the walls to keep Webpass out.
“This is where the dirtiness of the internet industry becomes apparent,” he said. “That last step from the telecom closet to the customer’s unit is where the game is played right now.”
Without Ethernet, Webpass either has to run new wires to the unit itself or pass on the business.
“The worst market is Miami for this practice,” said Barr. “San Diego never used to do it, but in the past year it has picked up.”
He continued, “I would say it is a construction defect if you don’t have the building wired for competition.”
There are reasons for new buildings to drop Ethernet cables in favor of other options, particularly fiber optics, said Keith, the GlobalData analyst. They include reduced size and weight, lower power consumption and greater bandwidth capacity, which future-proofs the building’s connectivity infrastructure.
“Fiber can go up to 10 gigabits,” he said. “Cat. 5, I don’t thinks so. Instead of a bundle of Cat 5, you have a single fiber or two fibers that weigh next to nothing.”
Even so, Webpass argues that copper Ethernet is better than fiber for delivering high-speed broadband to each unit in an apartment or condo complex.
“The hard part from a Webpass perspective is customers perceive fiber is correct and copper is wrong, and it is actually the other way around,” said Barr of Webpass. “Fiber is an excellent choice as the backbone of the internet. It is not an excellent choice to deliver to the end user.”
Ironically, Webpass’ parent company tried to do just that with Google Fiber. But last year Google announced that it would “pause” plans to launch 1 gigabit fiber internet in nine new cities as it struggled with the costs of deploying fiber.
Google’s purchase of Webpass last year has led to speculation that it might be considering wireless as a less expensive way to deliver bandwidth.
“It is a viable alternative, in part because it reduces the monopolistic congestion at certain points of (wired/fiber) construction where conduit/power pole landlords make life hard or practically impossible to build out in a cost effective and timely manner,” said Cameron Camp, a security researcher at ESET who built point to point a wireless network in rural Southern Oregon.
For traditional video/internet providers, cord cutting has been a growing drag on their subscribers. Bloomberg estimates that major pay TV operators lost 1.4 million video subscribers last year nationwide.
But these cable and telecommunications outfits show few signs of losing their internet customers. They have been upgrading their networks to boost speeds to accommodate over the top streaming on Netflix, Hulu and other services.
Cox Communications, San Diego’s largest cable provider, now offers 300 megabits per second service to every household in its footprint. It also is growing its deployment of Gigablast fiber to the home offering.
“We hear a lot about cord cutting in the media, but every household is different,” said Suzanne Schlundt, vice president of global marketing for Cox. “What the numbers show is a majority of households are still choosing a paid video service. Our customers continue to see the value of bundling their video service with their internet service, their phone and now we have home automation and security.”
Webpass eventually wants to expand its service not only to additional cities but also to single family homes, said Barr. But regulations need to change and technology needs to advance before that will be possible.
“I would love to serve single family homes,” said Barr. “It’s a matter of technology and business processes that have to come together for us to be able to do it. But we are very focused on it.”
©2017 The San Diego Union-Tribune Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Every month thousands of people are sued for allegedly sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent. Many of the accused claim to be innocent, and point their finger at someone else who may have used their Internet connection to share the file. But does this mean they're off the hook? Lawyer Nicholas Ranallo believes so.
Today we publish two opinion pieces from copyright lawyers who are familiar with the mass-lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent users in the U.S.
Both lawyers discuss whether someone can be held liable for the copyright infringements committed by others on their Internet connection.
The opinion below comes from Nicholas Ranallo, who is a licensed attorney in California and New York. He currently resides in Boulder Creek, California and is building a solo practice handling emerging issues in Intellectual Property, Internet law and e-commerce.
Ranallo’s opinion focuses on the question of whether people are liable for the copyright infringements of others, which may occur when they operate an open WiFi network or when they share their internet access with roommates or employees.
The other post in this series, which argues the opposite of Ranallo (but focusing on the open WiFi angle only), can be found here. We thank both Ranallo and Randazza for their contribution.
—
Liability for 3rd Party Copyright Infringement: A Lawyer’s Take on Misleading Legal Claims by Pre-Settlement Trolls
The continuing adventures of the copyright trolls have been covered widely on this blog and others, so I will limit my thoughts today to one particular aspect of the scheme: Copyright trolls’ claims regarding your responsibility for someone else’s infringement of copyrighted works.
Or in other words, are you liable for the infringements of other people when you choose to leave (parts of) your wiFi network open to friends, family or even complete strangers. In the press many of the attorneys representing copyright holders claim you are. Some even have a dedicated section on the topic included in with their settlement letters.
Lawyer John Steele for example, uses the following description, which he has ironically enough pirated from a FAQ that competitor copyrightsettlements.com hosts on its website.
“If you are unfamiliar with the copyright protected file or content, we normally find that the infringement was the result of a spouse, child, roommate, employee, or business associate uploading, downloading or otherwise sharing or displaying the copyright protected material over your Internet connection. Infringements can also result from an unsecured wireless network. In any of these scenarios the Internet Service Provider (ISP) account holder is still legally responsible for the infringement(s) and settlement(s) fees.”
This statement needs to be deconstructed and examined. There is a lot of (mis)information in there, with many startling claims about copyright liability.
As a whole, the trolls’ statement of your potential defenses reminds me a lot of the mob’s policy on similar issues in Goodfellas : Your roommate downloaded this? F__k you, pay me. Your child downloaded this? F__k you, pay me. Your ‘business associate’ or someone you’ve never met downloaded this? You get the idea.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the flow chart at copyrightsettlements.com always ends up at “you are guilty,” however THIS IS NOT THE LAW. In fact, their claims are legally incorrect in a fun assortment of ways. I’m going to focus only on the ways that it’s incorrect under existing copyright law in this article.
Third-Party Liability for Infringement under Existing (Real) Copyright Law
It’s important to focus on the concept of third-party liability under copyright law because the copyright trolls’ entire scheme is built on one particular aspect of copyright law – statutory damages. Normally, a plaintiff’s recovery is limited to actual damages, or the monetary measure of the actual harm done. The copyright law, however, imposes statutory minimum and maximum penalties that are grossly disproportionate to the value of an actual work (i.e. one copy of a song or video), up to $150,000 for the most egregious infringements. Perhaps not surprisingly, this $150,000 figure gets cited a lot by copyright trolls as the amount to which they will be entitled if they sue you.
Courts have articulated three basic ways that a person can be held liable for infringing another’s copyright: direct liability, contributory liability, and vicarious liability. Direct liability means, quite simply, that you infringed the copyright yourself. This is first-party liability and is probably not surprising to anyone. The other two are the focus of this article, and the ultimate rebuttal to the misstatements in the FAQ.
A. Contributory Infringement
In MGM v. Grokster 545 U.S. 913, 930 (2005) the United States Supreme Court (USSC) described liability under the doctrine of contributory infringement as follows: “One infringes contributorily by intentionally inducing or encouraging direct infringement.” The USSC approvingly cites Gershwin Publishing Corp. v. Columbia Artists Mgmt., Inc., the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the following test for contributory infringement.
“One who, with knowledge of the infringing activity, induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing conduct of another, may also be held liable for the infringement. 443 F2d 1159, 1162 (2nd Circuit 1971).
The Gershwin test has been widely adopted by courts, including in the 9th Circuit, home to copyrightsettlements.com. As you can see, this test is far narrower than the F__k you, pay me test adopted by copyrightsettlements.com. The Gershwin test specifically requires:
1) Knowledge of the infringing activity
2) Intent
3) Inducing, causing, or materially contributing to the infringing conduct of another.
The 9th Circuit had a chance to revisit the issue of contributory infringement in the wake of the USSC ruling in Grokster, described above, and elaborated further on the requirements for contributory infringement in the digital realm in Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F. 3d 1146(9th Circuit, 2007). Perfect 10 held that:
“a computer system operator can be held contributorily liable if it ‘has actual knowledge that specific infringing material is available using its system and can “take simple measures to prevent further damage’ to copyrighted works, yet continues to provide access to infringing works.”
Notably, the italics in this sentence were the court’s own, and emphasized ACTUAL knowledge of SPECIFIC infringing material. This is certainly not the test described by CEG.
B. Vicarious Infringement
The USSC also described vicarious infringement in MGM. The Court stated that one “infringes vicariously by profiting from direct infringement while declining to exercise a right to stop or limit it.” Grokster, 545 U.S. at 930, 125 S.Ct. 2764.
Like contributory liability, above, this definition has multiple elements, BOTH of which need to be shown to before imposing liability.
1) Profit from direct infringement
2) A right (and ability) to stop or limit the infringement
This test has two distinct elements, BOTH of which need to be shown to impose liability. I cannot think of a good faith argument that any of the parties described by the core claim actually profit from infringing activities, especially when the work that is claimed to be infringed is porn. An employer profits from an employee downloading porn? Really? You profit when someone downloads porn via your unsecured connection? Profit? This stretches all bounds of credulity.
It almost seems unnecessary to go into the second element, the right and ability to control, when the first element cannot reasonably be shown. But this prong also raises a host of issues, especially in cases involving spouses, “business associates”, or roommates. I need only recall the look of my college kitchen to conclude that we never really had sufficient right or ability to control each others’ activities in any way.
C: Inducement?
The USSC discussed a third potential avenue for third-party liability in MGM under the broader rubric of contributory liability, but this route is equally unhelpful for the core claim. In MGM the Court recognized that one could be liable if they “induced” the infringement of another. The Court held that “one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.” MGM at 936-37.
Although this could conceivably apply to an unsecured router, the court is quick to extinguish this possibility for the situations described in the core claim. The court specifically states that:
“Accordingly, just as Sony did not find intentional inducement despite the knowledge of the VCR manufacturer that its device could be used to infringe, 464 U. S., at 439, n. 19, mere knowledge of infringing potential or of actual infringing uses would not be enough here to subject a distributor to liability… The inducement rule, instead, premises liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct…”.
Notably, the FAQ page emphasizes repeatedly that purposeful, culpable expression and conduct is not at all necessary. It does emphasize, however, that you are still liable.
The Takeaway
The copyright troll’s core claim regarding third-party liability is extremely misleading regarding the present state of third-party liability under copyright law. As each misstatement works to the benefit of the trolls, I can only assume that this misrepresentation is intentional. One can only wonder whether they will face claims of fraud and misrepresentation |
Gibson told Ms Gibbs that a jealous friend had "turned on her".
Penguin's files show Ms Gibbs understood that to mean allegations were being made to the effect that "Gibson had fabricated part or all of her illness". In late October, Penguin's PR agency went as far as to prepare a "contingency" communications document in preparation for such a scandal. By then, the The Whole Pantry had already been in bookshops for a week. Going back even earlier, to May 2014, a senior editor emailed Ms Gibbs about concerns over the book's draft spanning Ms Gibson's personal story, employment and medical history. "Julie - I think the main thing to warn Belle about is that there are a few 'gaps' which journalists might probe," she cautioned.
Just before the book's release, Penguin questioned Ms Gibson on camera for 90 minutes about the disparities in her story in a bid to manage questions from media. Penguin has since admitted it did not fact-check Ms Gibson's book, in which she lies about about her medical status and philanthropy, including to have cured herself of terminal brain cancer with a healthy lifestyle. The publisher was ordered to pay $30,000 over its part in the deception, which is still playing out before the courts in action led by Consumer Affairs Victoria. The documents show that on the Friday before the Monday that the book was finally pulled from shelves, Penguin's communications manager emailed the team: "The story has taken a turn towards investigating Belle's 'friends' and past, meaning that we are not under the same scrutiny we were 24 hours ago. "We would like to avoid inserting ourselves into the ongoing conversation, particularly as we enter the weekend where increased coverage is likely."
Loading But the company's attempt to protect itself from media scrutiny failed. Asked last week to explain its vetting process and respond to calls to donate money from sales of The Whole Pantry to cancer research, a Penguin spokeswoman said: "I'm afraid we're not commenting further on the Belle Gibson case."Alexis Tsipras’s renewed mandate will allow him to push for more debt relief and an easing of austerity conditions
What a difference eight months can make. When Syriza came to power in Greece in January it did so on a wave of voter enthusiasm. There was talk of an austerity party breaking the mould of post “great recession” politics. Europe’s political establishment looked on in horror. The financial markets trembled.
Greek election live: Syriza on course for 'clear victory' as New Democracy concedes Read more
All the euphoria and most of the apprehension had disappeared by the time Greeks voted today. Alexis Tsipras has won but the turnout was low and the mood sullen. The financial markets are no longer concerned that Syriza will be the template for a pan-European political backlash against budget cuts or that it could start the breakup of monetary union by leaving the single currency.
In reality, there is no reason for the markets to worry about Greece, at least for now. Tsipras quickly discovered once he had swept to victory in January that he could not deliver on a mutually incompatible trio of election pledges: to end austerity, to put the economy on the road to recovery and to stay in the euro. He has achieved just one of these objectives – remaining in the euro – but at a high price.
The fresh dose of deflationary measures in Greece’s new €86bn (£62bn) bailout programme, agreed in July after Tsipras folded under pressure from creditors, will deepen a depression similar in its severity to those that afflicted Germany and the United States in the 1930s. The Greek economy has contracted by 29% since 2009 and is still shrinking after months of financial turmoil. Yet Greece remains part of a single currency that has emerged bloodied but intact. All the main parties contending the election were committed to continuing with the bailout that Tsipras negotiated in the summer.
Even so, the election will have consequences. Syriza has done well enough to form a workable coalition, thereby avoiding the need for another election and removing one of the hurdles before Greece has the first review of its bailout some time before the end of the year.
Tsipras is confident that a successful review will mean European money is handed over to recapitalise the fragile Greek banking system, enable the European Central Bank (ECB) to buy Greek bonds as part of its quantitative easing programme and pave the way for debt relief.
The International Monetary Fund says Greece is unlikely to make a full economic recovery without a significant reduction in its debt burden and has said it will not contribute to the €86bn support package unless Europe offers Athens more generous terms.
Tsipras will step up the pressure for debt relief now that he has his new mandate, and hopes that Greece can at last start to regain some of the ground lost in the past six years. He will argue that less onerous austerity measures would speed this process, a line that is likely to find little support at the European Commission, the ECB or in Germany.
The ratings agency S&P is still concerned about Greece’s economic prospects, noting that it remained to be seen whether Greece could emulate Ireland, Portugal and Spain in attracting investment from abroad.
Tsipras will step up the pressure for debt relief now that he has his new mandate
The S&P report said debt relief was one way to put the “spectre” of Greece defaulting on its debts to rest, but added that this would be a difficult and potentially politically costly decision for European governments to make.
“One thing seems certain to us. Without greater confidence in a future for Greece within a currency union, co-existing with enough pro-growth policies to support better employment opportunities, the odds of failure remain as real as the possibility of success,” said Frank Gill, Standard & Poor’s credit analyst.
The danger is that the austerity conditions remain fully in force and debt relief is much less generous than Tsipras is hoping for. It will require an improbably strong and rapid recovery for Greece to meet the optimistic growth and deficit reduction targets contained in its current bailout deal. As a result, the likelihood is that they will be missed, leading to pressure for further budget cuts.
What does that mean? It means that Greece will be back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons before too long. There will be talk of the need for a fourth bailout and of possible default if Greece doesn’t get one. The election is over; the economic crisis is not.Image caption Roy Hodgson was appointed England manager on a four year contract
The Football Association has said a front page headline in The Sun about new England manager Roy Hodgson's manner of speech was "unacceptable".
The story, referencing Mr Hodgson's pronunciation of the letter R, has led to more than 100 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission.
News International has not made any comment.
Hodgson, 64, was appointed England manager on a four-year contract on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) said: "I can confirm we have had over a hundred complaints."
The FA said it had also received a "large number of objections" to the story about the current West Bromwich Albion manager.
FA chairman David Bernstein said: "We are delighted at the media response to Roy's appointment but are disappointed with the headline in The Sun, which we consider is in poor taste and disrespectful."
The game's governing body will not be making an official complaint to the PCC but said it had raised the issue with the newspaper and "made it clear" the organisation found the front page unacceptable.ESPN announcer Dan Dakich reads "not so mean tweets" about himself during the broadcast of KU's win over Omaha. (Screenshot via WatchESPN.com) by Scott Chasen
Normally, the conversation between a fan and announcer is one-sided.
Fans can bark at their TVs, but the announcers will never hear them. Announcers can talk on the broadcast waves, but the fans can’t really respond.
Thanks to Twitter, we now know what at least one announcer would say if he could hear what was being said.
ESPN announcer and personality Dan Dakich was on the call for the recent KU drubbing over Omaha. Almost instantly, fans erupted on social media with tweets and posts voicing their displeasure. The tweets became so plentiful, in fact, that they were addressed on air in a segment called, “Not so mean tweets.”
Here are some of the actual tweets they used in the segment:
@TheFoyeEffect: Dan Dakich is impressively stupid
@BallmanMcG: I hope Dan Dakich never announces another basketball game ever again.
@BradLoganCOTE: Who is Dan Dakich? I’m dead serious.
Dakich responded on air, joking back and forth with the users. Then he took it a step further, retweeting and responding to several users on Tuesday.
That just so happened to be the perfect opportunity for one radio host.
Joshua Brisco, host of (Almost) Entirely Sports on ESPN Kansas City, was spending his Tuesday broadcast discussing the Kansas City Chiefs when one of his friends told him another was “Twitter sparring” with Dakich.
Brisco then took to Twitter and engaged with Dakich, ultimately leaving the phone number to his show as an open invitation.
This is the part I didn't know! I didn't know this was that common! If you ever want to come talk to Kansas City, just DM me and we'll make time on @KansasCityESPN. 4-6 PM Central. You can call right now if you'd like! 913-491-8255. https://t.co/T9H4S4SoPr — Joshua Brisco (@jbbrisco) December 19, 2017 None by Joshua Brisco
“I didn’t expect him to call, but I thought there was a chance,” Brisco told the Journal-World. “There was another national broadcaster — who shall remain nameless — who declined an offer to come on the show in a similar circumstance, so I figured that Dan would do the same thing just to avoid a potential ambush. He had no idea who I was or what my agenda was.”
The ensuing segment was filled with plenty fireworks.
You can listen to it in full by clicking here.
Dakich didn’t back down from any of his comments on the broadcast — more on that in a second — but he did say he expected some of the heat he got from KU fans.
“I catch hell every time I do a game,” Dakich said on the show. "And everybody knows, like everybody in the world knows, that, with all due respect, very few fan bases whine more than Kansas.”
Dakich referred to a conversation he had with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski on Tuesday about how fans tend to hear only what they want.
"I must have said 8,000 glowing things about Kansas, because I really like Kansas basketball,” Dakich said. "Like I really like Bill (Self).”
Still, it was another comment about the coach that stuck in the minds of KU fans.
After praising Self and KU’s streak of 13-conseuctive Big 12 championships, Dakich took exception to a no-call on a drive by an Omaha player.
Specifically, Dakich said “there’s nothing more disgusting” than the disparity in officiating between big and small schools, adding that the referees are paid differently depending on the game, and thus they want to keep coaches like Self happy.
Some KU fans were upset by that comment.
Rewatching the game now. Dan Dakich is atrocious. The refs are “paid to make Bill Self happy”? You kidding me? How did that guy survive 100+ rounds of ESPN layoffs? — Rock Chalk Blog (@RockChalkBlog) December 19, 2017 None by Rock Chalk Blog
I'm sorry @dandakich, but I never heard of you as a player or a coach, so maybe those refs were just good at their jobs, unlike you apparently. Literally no one cares. #kubball #mutebuttonplease #shutup — Maggie Holcomb (@Maggie_Mae930) December 19, 2017 None by Maggie Holcomb
@dandakich so you can make outrageous accusations intimating that the refs of tonights game are somehow in Bill Selfs pocket? If a player were to make such an asinine accusation theyd be suspended. Classless. #firedakich — Mandi Doss (@jhwkprincess) December 19, 2017 None by Mandi Doss
"That’s all I’ve heard today is, 'You can’t say they’re in Self’s pocket,' ” Dakich told Brisco. "I can say it, I’ve said it and I’ll keep saying it because they’re in (Tom) Izzo’s too. They were in (Bob) Knight’s too when I was there. It’s just the way the world works.”
The basis of that statement appears to be accurate. In 2012, Syracuse.com’s Mike Waters wrote a story about the wear and tear on officials.
In it, he noted an official can earn “roughly $3,000 for working a Big East or Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)” game, compared to smaller conferences like the MAAC, in which that total might drop to about $1,500.
"I did say, and this is a fact — this is every coach that coaches at a mid major — when you play at a Kansas, you know you’re going to get screwed,” Dakich said. "I was an assistant at Indiana for Bob Knight I used to tell him, like if we’re playing Central Michigan, 'Coach, you’ve got to stand up and change the game.’
“Look, officials make about $2,000 doing a Kansas game and about $750 doing an Omaha game. So who the hell you think they’re going to try to keep happy? It’s human nature.”
Dakich's comments didn’t stop there.
Aside from defending his own words, Dakich picked a fight with quite a few KU fans.
One user tweeted at Dakich to tell him “Malik (Newman) and Svi (Mykhailiuk) probably have more talent in their pinkies than you ever did.”
Then Dakich responded, calling out the user and comparing her hair to “lettuce."
Probably or probably not..why are you all so incredibly insecure and overly sensitive? Seems like a hateful person like yourself would have bigger people to spew ur hate at! But if not fire away and I know a stylist that can help w ur lettuce — Dan Dakich (@dandakich) December 19, 2017 None by Dan Dakich
“You guys are so, like, uptight and insecure and nuts, so I wanted crazy lady to know that I was just kind of joking around,” Dakich told Brisco. “I would imagine (that my reasoning) escaped her. That’s why I did that, because she seemed to be a very hateful person.”
Dakich also called out several people who didn’t even tag him on the platform.
He said he got into the habit of searching for his own name because former NFL punter Pat McAfee warned him to do so. Dakich noted that he has now caught someone trying to falsely use his name for publicity on four separate occasions.
Dude..every person you dream of being searches their name! It’s smar business..Merry Christmas — Dan Dakich (@dandakich) December 19, 2017 None by Dan Dakich
“I was one of those 6 a.m. to midnight guys,” Dakich said. “Now I work three hours a day so hell, I’ve got to fill my time. And what the hell? It’s what I do.
“I love getting people to the point where they’ve got to swear at me. And then I kind of laugh and go about my business."
As for some other highlights of the conversation, Dakich called out one Twitter user on air who responded to Brisco’s initial post to announce the interview.
“You better be careful because — let me see here, hold on a second — some (jerk) named Joe Davis says, 'No, No Josh,’ " Dakich said. "He (doesn’t) want to listen when I’m on. So you might have just lost a listener for some dude named Joe Davis. That might come back to crush you.
“Hey Joe Davis, you’re going to miss a hell of a segment if you don’t want to listen to me and Josh, brother. Cause this is — ha, I almost swore right there — this is going to get good Joe Davis.”
Brisco, on the other hand, took it all in stride.
“I so respect him for (calling in). I loved every minute of it,” Brisco said. “He’s opinionated and confrontational and he has his own personality that reaches far beyond a KU-Omaha blowout.
“And that’s why many KU fans didn’t like him on that game. I saw people say that, ‘He made it about himself.’ … I just wish basketball fans had a little bit of a stronger stomach for that kind of personality.”
Really, Brisco was just concerned about getting the name of his impromptu guest right.
“I realized that, moments before he called in, that I wasn’t 100 percent confident I had been pronouncing Dakich correctly,” Brisco said. “So I was thrilled when he said his own name in the third-person a few minutes into our conversation."Flight cancelled? Had to stay the night in an airport? Your dog stuck in a kennel for an extra day?
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is on your side. Thanks to a new ECJ ruling on Thursday, airline compensation costs for flight cancellations may get heftier as a result of a ruling involving Air France.
The ruling referred to a case in a Spanish court in which seven Spaniards sued Air France after their flight from Paris to the northeastern Spanish city of Vigo in September 2008 had to turn back because of a technical malfunction.
The passengers were delayed by a day as a result of the enforced return to Charles de Gaulle airport. The seven plaintiffs have since demanded compensation for taxi fares and meal costs, as well as non-material damages, including an extra night that a pet dog had to spend in a kennel.
The ECJ's new ruling means, firstly, that a flight counts as cancelled if it takes off but fails to reach its destination and, secondly, passengers can theoretically claim compensation for extra losses incurred by the cancellation.
Measureable loss
The European Court of Justice upheld the Spanish complaints
The decision takes the possibility of compensation substantially further than current EU law, whereby passengers are entitled to receive between 125 and 600 euros ($172 - $825 dollars) when their flight is cancelled.
“It's very welcome that that the court has clarified these particular issues in a consumer-friendly way by allowing ‘non-material' damage to be compensated after cancellations," Monique Goyens, director general of the European Consumers' Organization (BEUC), said in statement. "The review of the relevant regulation 261 in the coming months should codify this."
BEUC spokesman John Phelan pointed out that the eruption of last year's Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, which resulted in the cancellation of thousands of flights, has highlighted the need for more clarity in air passenger rights.
"We've seen through things like the ash-cloud crisis that passengers need to have a kind of safety net for whenever they're really at a loss, like being stranded at an airport without basic facilities," he told Deutsche Welle. "The recommendation guarantees the provision of food and accommodation. So it's really just a case of making sure that those are respected."
Kerstin Heidt, legal adviser to the European Consumer Center (EVZ), told Deutsche Welle: "If the passenger can prove that he has suffered a measurable loss - for example, the loss of earnings - then he or she can demand compensation."
Airlines complain
But even before Thursday's ruling, airlines have been complaining that EU passenger protection rules are too onerous.
Their complaints grew louder after last year's ash-cloud caused a spike in compensation claims. Low-cost airline Ryanair even started charging passengers two extra euros extra per ticket as a result, claiming fee was necessary to cover the costs of EU regulation.
Eyjafjallajokull caused a headaches for Ryanair
The Association of European Airlines (AEA) declined to comment on Thursday's ruling, but said that the current EU legislation is flawed, so any clarification was welcome. "We welcome the fact that it is being reviewed at the moment," AEA spokesman David Henderson told Deutsche Welle.
"We're certainly seeing an argument from the airline industry that the ash-cloud crisis should be a reason for revising and drawing down passenger rights, and that's something that we would very much resist," Phelan said. "We think that shouldn't be an excuse."
The BEUC hopes the court ruling will bolster passenger rights against recent pressure from airlines. "It's key that the European Commission takes account of the court's rulings when revising the legislation and sets them in stone,” Goyens said.
Extra damages
It will take some time for airlines, lawyers and consumer groups to digest the implications of Thursday's judgement. While they agree that it provides more clarity, it's still uncertain exactly what damages can and can't be claimed for.
"The judgment is just out and we would have to analyze it in depth," Phelan said. "We can only really say in this particular casewhat actually qualifies as non-material damage. It certainly will be an interesting phase."
Spanish judges will now be tasked with delivering a final judgment on the case of the original Paris to Vigo flight, but is interesting to note that the verdict will also apply to flights to countries that came to and from outside the EU.
Author: Ben Knight
Editor: John BlauInterest rates are at their lowest in the ECB's 10-year history The European Central Bank (ECB) has cut interest rates in the eurozone to a record low of 1%, down from 1.25%. The central bank also agreed a plan to pump about 60bn euros (£53.5bn; $80.6bn) into the eurozone economy by buying up debt. The ECB's UK and US counterparts have taken similar unconventional monetary policy measures to boost growth. It is the seventh time the ECB has lowered its key rate since October 2008, when it stood at 4.25%. ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet said the ECB had decided in principle to buy euro-denominated covered bonds, a safer type of corporate debt, and such purchases would total about 60bn euros. Clearly this 'credit easing' could start to open the door for fully fledged quantitative easing from the summer
Julian Callow, European economist
Barclays Mr Trichet said more details would be given when the central bank next meets on 4 June. "It's a significant departure from previous ECB policy," Gilles Moec, senior economist at Bank of America - Merrill Lynch, told Bloomberg News. "But other central banks have been a lot more aggressive." Mr Trichet was not clear on how the bond purchases would be funded, but analysts said that the move could pave the way for quantitative easing, which has the same effect as printing money. "Clearly this 'credit easing' could start to open the door for fully fledged quantitative easing from the summer," said Julian Callow, chief European economist at Barclays capital. See graph of eurozone interest rates Further steps He also said that the ECB would provide banks with longer-term refinancing and did not rule out lowering rates further. Mark Gregory, Europe Business Reporter, BBC News, Brussels With interest rates already at very low levels the ECB was under intense pressure to come up with some bolder measures to tackle Europe's economic crisis.
It has but its policies are still more cautious than those of other major central banks.
It is probable the bank intends to start "printing money" to finance the purchase of bonds. But even this is unclear.
The ECB hasn't confirmed how it will finance the extra stimulus it giving to the financial system.
That will only become known when the ECB announces details of its scheme next month.
It has taken a step along the road of quantitative easing pioneered by other central banks, but only a tentative one. "We have not decided today that the new level of our policy rates was the lowest level," Mr Trichet said. But he added that rates were at an appropriate level for now. The ECB said it would lend banks unlimited funds for up to 12 months, up from six months. The ECB's plans bolstered the euro, which rose to a one-month high against the dollar of $1.3420. Mr Trichet also said that the European Investment Bank, the EUs long-term lending bank, would be allowed to gain access to ECB funding by taking part in the central bank's money market operations. The ECB's decision followed the Bank of England's announcement that it would keep interest rates unchanged at 0.5%. The Bank of England also said it would pump an extra £50bn ($75.5bn; 56.5bn euros) into the UK economy by buying government and corporate debt, extending its planned spending to £125bn. Unlike the US and the UK, the ECB cannot buy European government debt because it would have implications for the deficits of individual countries and thus go against the ECB constitution. Central banks around the world are using more unconventional monetary policy methods to support their economies, with interest rates at record low levels. Several other central banks decided to cut rates on Thursday. Iceland's central cut rates from 15.5% to 13% in its third cut this year. Denmark cut rates from 2% to 1.65% and the Czech central bank cut rates from 1.75% to 1.5%, which was the lowest level since the country was formed by the division of Czechoslovakia in 1993.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionI’m watching a TEDx talk by Christof Koch ‘The Scientific Pursuit of Consciousness’. Christof Koch is a prominent Neuroscientist and says that since he was a child he had always thought that dogs have consciousness as they seem to display emotions such as hunger, anger, and anxiousness. Appalled by the Christian view that only humans have souls and go to the afterlife, he always thought there must be some place for dogs too. Tackling with these issues, he came across the ancient concept of panpsychism which he feels answers the question of consciousness.
While watching I found myself doing a running criticism in my head and thought I’d put it on paper to see if there’s anything I’m missing: (I have presented my criticism chronologically to his speech below)
He claims there are three strong arguments in favor of panpsychism:
Biological
Metaphysical
Aesthetic
Biological Argument for Panpsychism
Starting with the biological argument. He says that as we all have a similar brain and language ability we generally agree that each of us has consciousness. Although none of us has the ability to know the subjective experience of anyone else. Extrapolating from that we extend this to human children and Infants.
We can even extend this to some animals such as Apes, elephant, and dolphins. He argues that a lot of these animals perform certain tasks which if a human was doing we would assume consciousness.
#1. Criticism: Although generally, we can assume other humans have consciousness, it is true to say we can only truly be sure of our own consciousness. Given this paradigm, it becomes more difficult to extrapolate this to less similar organisms. We cannot easily claim that neonates have consciousness (taking the strict experience of consciousness that we feel), it would be up for debate. To extrapolate that onto animals, even smart ones is a big leap.
Describing the human brain Christof Koch says that there isn’t a significant difference in any of its constituents from that of other animals. That as far as size goes we are not unique, the size of an elephant’s or dolphin’s brain is much larger. Anatomically there isn’t a big difference either and that only an expert neuroscientist under a microscope can differentiate a human brain cell from a monkey’s brain cell etc. In fact, he states:
” Neuroscientists have been unable to identify anything singular exceptional about the human brain”
#2. Criticism: Given he is a neuroscientist I found this statement to be very shocking. A big difference is the, brain : body ratio, which is far higher in humans than any other animal. It is generally quoted as a measure of intelligence! but I’m not taking that line of argument (What difference should it make if an animal’s body is big as long as their brain is similar?).
Another area to consider is the neocortex (the latest part to evolve) which is significantly larger in humans (but also in certain dolphins, in fact even larger than humans!). The problem here is that this line of reasoning does not lend support to Panpsychism whatsoever.
To say the human brain isn’t unique hence consciousness must be more prevalent is very ambiguous. The brain is certainly unique in that it is a human brain and not that of another species. This is due to an accumulation of some unique and rare feature plus a lot of much more prevalent feature. But this exact configuration is only human.
Focusing on the forebrain, for example, not many animals have this area significantly developed. And if it were to be considered a marker for consciousness then perhaps we could argue certain animals with large forebrains are conscious. But we cannot claim consciousness is hence universal. All we have done is included a few more to the conscious group.
He also argues that language is often used as an argument for consciousness. He sees this as inherently biased because as he states:
” Interestingly this excludes all other species from possessing consciousness except us.. In fact, it was meant to do that. A species has a radical desire to come on top of any ranking” (the crowd giggles to this)
#3. Criticism: This one is the hardest to digest. He kind of makes fun of this and just brushes it under the rug. My opinion is that language has a big role to play in consciousness and it is worth addressing at least. To say that it was meant to exclude other animals doesn’t answer or add anything. I for one am not a ‘speciesist’ and don’t have any beef against other animals. What I’m interested in is consciousness and if language plays a part in it or not. After all, it is a uniquely human ability and we know for certain humans are conscious.
I also take contention with claiming consciousness is the ‘top’ of some ranking. Why is it the top? (stating such things is speciesism as far as I’m concerned).
I’ve had a good discussion about the role of language in the comments section of Selfawarepatterns.com blog post: https://selfawarepatterns.com/2017/07/08/layers-of-self-awareness-and-animal-cognition/
In summary: Using language we can define things in the outside and inside world. What is in the ‘real’ can only be experienced, but in order to be aware of it/ think about it/ or talk about it, we need to be able to describe it. This description is the function of language. Without the use of language, what is the difference or similarity between a tree, a stone, a bird or anything else? (all of these are words of language).
Going on he states that there is no demarcation between us and any other animals (from worms to Apes). Hence it is ludicrous to suppose that we are exceptional in consciousness.
#4. Criticism: Except none has language. Apes have a smaller forebrain. Worms don’t even have a proper brain. So it’s not ludicrous at all. (On the other hand, it does seem ludicrous to state that the internet or an electron is conscious)
Metaphysical Argument for Panpsychism
Siding with Buddhist philosophy Christof suggests it is much more rational to assume that we are all children of nature, that all multicellular organism possess some degree of consciousness.
He sees panpsychism as a very clear and coherent intellectual framework. Starting from Descartes ” I think therefore I am” Christof asks how do we get this subjective experience?
If a larger brain such as ourselves has the feeling of a throbbing headache where did this come from if it wasn’t already present in more simpler and smaller brains.
Building from this he proposes his panpsychism view:
” All complex systems have consciousness” ” All complex systems have two surfaces. An exterior surface which is accessible to everyone and an interior surface which is subjective.”
So consciousness is imminent in the universe such that any highly organized matter will bring with it the experience of consciousness. And as per the pan-psychist view consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. Similar to energy, time, matter etc. And in that, no further reductionism can be done.
#5. Criticism: If Buddhism says we are all children of nature, I may agree, but does that say anything about consciousness? I doubt it does.
Christof Koch differs slightly here in saying that consciousness only comes with highly organized matter (in other words it is not pervasive). I still fail to see how this answers anything, it feels more like a cop out for material science.
Does he feel there is some type of matter which is NOT conscious? (which is a bit contrary to Panpsychism). If so where is the demarcation between conscious and non-conscious matter? This is a self-defeating view to have.
Why should all complex systems have consciousness? What do we mean by complex? Where is the evidence that they possess consciousness? What can we exclude as being a complex system?
An exterior and interior surface, huh? That’s saying the same thing in different words, it doesn’t explain anything further. It’s the same as saying complex systems have subjective experience. The glaring question remains – Why?? and what’s the evidence??
The aesthetic argument for Panpsychism
He states that these theories of Panpsychism can be very precisely explained in the language of mathematics. Using Tononi’s Integrated Consciousness Theory. Which, in summary, states that any integrated system has a degree of consciousness and this can be calculated as ‘Phi’.
We cannot see something apart from it being as an integrated whole, for example, you cannot be conscious of a cat without the integration of its colors and shapes. That is you cannot see it in black and white no matter how much you may try. This is related at the neural level via a complex process of association between many neurons. And if this integration at the neuronal level disappears for example in a seizure or during deep sleep the conscious experience disappears as well.
#6. Criticism: I agree that we only perceive things as an integrated whole and integration as we understand it does take place in the brain. I find this to be interesting and feel it may teach us something about consciousness. But does it fully account for consciousness?
The stance here is to find a generalizing principle (integration). But what of the specific configuration of the human brain areas. What about our unique ability to use language (as discussed above). What about unconsciousness, there are many integrated processes happening within our brain that we are not conscious of.
So why should integration equate to consciousness?
Taking an analogy: If we take away the bonds between carbon atoms we cannot have a diamond and it is only through having bonds between carbon atoms that we can get a diamond. So is what makes a diamond, the carbon bonds only? Because carbon bonds can also form graphite and graphene. It is rather the specific configuration that makes it a diamond.
Using the theory he attempts to tackle Qualia. For example colors, Christof says that according to the integrated Theory:
every color (or any other qualia) is associated with a specific geometry in a ‘hyper dimensional qualia space’. It is this geometry itself which is the experience of consciousness. We don’t Experience the outside world but only states of our brain (this geometry is that state).
He lends further support to this theory by taking the example of the cerebellum. The cerebellum has 2/3rds of the total brain neurons but even if it was to be destroyed it would not affect consciousness at all. This he postulates is because the anatomy of the cerebellum is very simple compared to rest of the brain. In the rest of the brain, the connections are much more complex and integrated.
Furthermore, this theory is being used clinically to assess the level of consciousness for Comatose patients!.
#7. Citisicim: Here again I see another baseless claim. The geometry triggered in hyperdimensional ‘Qualia space’ is what we perceive as the perception? Other than being a statement with no backing I don’t see any value in it. When one uses the same word (Qualia) to describe itself, you know we are getting nowhere:
Q: What is a flower? Ans: “it is a flower in a field of flowers”.
The cerebellum argument, in fact, goes against the original claim of integration being integral to consciousness. Because, although minor, there is still a significant amount of integration that happens in the cerebellum (yet apparently no consciousness).
The notion that this is being used clinically is alarming as well because potentially very significant decisions can be based on this theory. The theory itself I feel is unsubstantiated. I have mixed feelings to the extent that it can serve the purpose of reducing anxiety and aiding decision making which in itself is something to consider. The soundness of these decisions is another issue.
There is no distinction whether the integration takes place in brains or Silicon circuits. Any other integrated matter such as computers and more importantly the Internet which has in total to the order of 10∧19 transistors (much more than the synapses in a human brain), could be conscious and it is interesting to think about this.
#8. Criticism: This notion is similar to the global brain hypothesis which I touched upon in my post on Cybernetic Epistemology. Following on from my above criticisms this claim is another extrapolation from a baseless theory. It, in fact, serves as evidence against the theory because as far as we know the internet is NOT conscious and we are. Even though we can only truly know our own consciousness we all still agree other humans are conscious, this is based on our own evidence. But what evidence do we have for the internet being conscious? None.
This in a way shows what happens when we try to cop out material sciences. We should, in fact, conclude that as the internet is an integrated system and it is not conscious, integration alone cannot in itself explain consciousness.
Do share your thoughts in the comments section below 🙂
Like this: Like Loading...Barack Obama's October Surprises
In October 1972, and twelve days before the presidential election, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger made a surprise announcement of a peace agreement ending the war in Vietnam, thus giving birth to the term "October Surprise." In nearly every election cycle since, one party or the other has attempted to spring some last minute opposition research or policy announcement in the immediate weeks prior to an election. However |
. “Anything less is an insult not only to the individual worker but for entire communities.”
Eight Delta Western employees submitted complaints with the federal government last week which state that, among other violations of federal law, managers illegally discriminated on the basis of race, national origin and age when they:
► Harassed and fired Manolito “Mo” Reyes over a trumped-up safety issue;
► Offered better working conditions to white employees commuting from Anchorage to Dutch Harbor than for Filipino-American and Asian-Pacific Islander American employees living and working locally; and
► Ordered employees to stop speaking Tagalog to each other on the job and to speak only English.
“For cleaning equipment the way employees and managers usually do, managers told me I was terminated,” stated Mo Reyes. “Instead of sitting down together to look hard at safety practices on the job and bargain any potential discipline, managers broke the law and fired me instead.”
“All that should matter to Delta Western and Saltchuk is that the best people for the job are hired and working well together,” said Erwin Riodil, another employee. “To harass, discipline, fire and try to prevent us from speaking casually shows an unacceptable practice of treating us as less valuable employees.”
The EEOC charges come just as the National Labor Relations Board informed workers it would prosecute Delta Western for violating federal law in discriminating against Mo Reyes and Leo Dacio.
“The federal government is prosecuting Delta Western because managers illegally reduced my position and slashed my pay in retaliation for my union activity,” added Dacio. “And these company violations fit the larger pattern of discrimination affecting us all.”
”I’m glad to hear the government will prosecute the company because managers gave me a written warning retaliating against me for being a union supporter,” said Reyes.
Delta Western workers in Dutch Harbor last year successfully formed a new labor union through the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific and went on strike three times in the last year over federal charges they filed against the company. Currently, employees are bargaining a contract with managers.
“Unfortunately, Delta Western managers violate federal law and our rights at the bargaining table and on the job, while Saltchuk Resources, Inc. refuses to take responsibility,” said Kevin Agbayani, who also works at the company. “We expected more from Saltchuk, a company that won a ‘World’s Most Ethical Company” award last year.”
Keoki Andrews, another fuel dock worker, added “we’ve worked hard for fairness at Delta Western — it’s time Saltchuk step in and ensure all workers at this company are respected.”Drac Von Stoller Portrait of a self-published author: Drac Von Stoller's invisible literary empire He has 155 e-books to his name and is at war with Amazon. But his is the kind of story the media never tells
I first stumbled across the work of Drac Von Stoller while browsing the new releases on Audible.com last year. Suddenly, the list had filled up with audiobooks bearing lurid titles like "Cannibal Lake," "The Night It Rained Hell" and "Nazi Zombies," all by the same guy and each emblazoned with a garish, inexpertly Photoshopped cover image featuring leering, demonic or half-eaten faces. None of these recordings was more than 10 minutes long or cost more than Audible's rock-bottom price of $2.76; cheap, but with such short books, still a pretty small bang for the reader's buck.
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A search on Von Stoller's name revealed dozens and dozens of these titles, all with professional narrators and many tagged with one- and two-star reader reviews. Over at Amazon, where the Stoller e-books on offer currently number 155, most clock in at no more that a handful of pages in length and quite a few are free. (In the iBooks bookstore, nearly all of Von Stoller's works will cost you nothing.) Most of the reviews there are just as harsh. "This is probably the worst written short story that I have ever had the displeasure of reading," one reader wrote of "Rise of the Zombies." "I read this in under five minutes," wrote another. "A child could have done it. In fact I think a child did do it."
Here was a conundrum. Von Stoller's 150-plus e-books can be obtained from at least 12 online retailers, each with its own particular and often demanding formatting and distribution arrangement, and the audiobook adaptations (most of which feature sound effects embellishing the narrator's performance) must have been time-consuming and expensive to produce. Even a crude cover design -- let alone 155 cover designs -- takes some effort to create. The establishment of the self-publishing empire of Drac Von Stoller gives every appearance of having been a gargantuan effort. Yet the author himself couldn't be making any money from it, not with so many of his titles priced at zip. As for public renown and recognition, the laurels have not been exactly forthcoming; although he has some fans, the vast majority of Von Stoller's books bear an average Amazon rating of one and a half stars.
Google von Stoller’s name, and you’ll be taken to photos of a baby-faced middle-aged man standing in a murky graveyard and wearing a high-collared movie-vampire cape, the images bathed in colored digital filters. Drac Von Stoller is on Twitter and Tumblr and Goodreads and Pinterest and Reddit and BuzzFeed Community, none of which offer much personal information amid their bewildering collections of highly specialized stats: “Drac Von Stoller has now been viewed and downloaded in ’92′ Countries around the world”; “Drac von Stoller was the only author that had 5 Audio Books featured in ‘Audible.com 2012 Halloween Promotion; and ranked 4th in sales out of 30 Authors featured in the ’2012 Halloween Promotion.’”
And so on. He's not one of the handful of exceptional authors whose stories of selling millions of self-published e-books have so captivated the media, but he's also not one of those woebegone literary novelists who sat back after booting a homeless manuscript into the Kindle store, then bemoaned sales in the low two figures. He was clearly determined to work the system for all it's worth. We seldom hear about writers like Drac Von Stoller, the countless ones who fall somewhere in the middle, cranking out quickie books that sell for at most a few dollars a pop. He's a new kind of author, one that could not have existed before the dream-bedazzled revolution of digital self-publishing and the gold-rush atmosphere it has engendered. I wanted to know who this guy was, so I tracked him down.
His given name is not, of course, Drac. When he first decided to write horror fiction, he told me in a telephone conversation, he resolved that his real name, Kevin Stoller, would not do. "Nobody would buy that book. So then I went around three or four different names and came up with Drac Von Stoller, which is a vampire, a character." Despite an official author bio portraying him as a lifelong horror buff since the days when he was "a little boy watching his favorite actors such as Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi on his little black and white television alone in his dark room," Stoller's ambition to become a horror writer was late in coming. It's the most recent in a string of big plans and hopeful dreams. And Stoller is more typical than you might think. What motivates him is less a burning desire to write than a burning desire to be a writer -- and, eventually, so much more.
Kevin Stoller lives in Gallatin, Tennessee, and has the accent to prove it. He works as a pharmacy technician. He's been married for 32 years and has three daughters. "I wasn't happy with my jobs," Stoller explained when I asked him what prompted him to try self-publishing. (He currently works two jobs, 80 to 100 hours per week.) First, years ago, he attempted the music business, writing songs. "I wrote like 10 songs and got some cuts off of it, but the guy, when he edited it? He took just about everything I wrote out of there." Then he tried to capitalize on his idea for a board game, but pursuing that would have required a $10,000 upfront investment, a non-starter, so "I got depressed about that."
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Then he patented an oral liquid adapter (a device for use in healthcare), but this plan, too, "didn't go nowhere. I've always got stuff going through my mind. The wheels don't stop turning.... So then it was, 'OK, I'll just try writing, see what happens with that.' Then I had to pick a genre." This was 2010, three years after the launch of Amazon's Kindle and around the time that self-published authors like Amanda Hocking and John Locke were starting to make headlines by selling hundreds of thousands of e-books. Stoller looked at his home video collection and realized that most of the titles he owned were horror films, so horror fiction it would be.
I asked Stoller the question that had perplexed me from the first time I'd noticed his diminutive offerings on Audible's website: Why are his stories so short? "Because my attention span isn't long enough," he laughed. "I've got a Harry Potter book in the attic that I'll never read. I'm so damn busy. I don't have time to sit down and read a novel at all. And the majority of people out there do not either. There's a lot of people out there who do read novels. I understand that, and I see people at work that'll read on their Kindles, or they'll have a paperback book and read a chapter or two. It'll take them I don't know how long to read that book. But most of us people are too dang busy nowadays. We don't have time to just be sitting at home like Mom and Pop on 'Leave It to Beaver' and reading a book. My point was to give someone a quick read, and that's it." So does he read short stories himself? "No, not really."
This surely goes a long way in explaining one of the persistent objections raised to Stoller's e-books: Their abundance of spelling and grammatical errors. One Amazon reader offered an extensive critique of "Its Dead Leave It Alone," whose defiantly unpunctuated title gives a pretty good sense of what lies in store over the next four pages. "It is said that if something is dead it might just be a good idea to leave it alone especially if it is evil," reads the first sentence. Stoller then goes on to relate the misadventures of a hubristic fellow named Luther who foolishly accepts a friend's dare "to dance and desiccate the grave of a man that legend has it was a real werewolf." Like virtually all of Drac Von Stoller's characters, Luther ends up torn to bloody bits.
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"The thing that people miss," Stoller said when I asked him about the complaints, "is, like Rod Serling said, they look at the grammar too much. You need to read the story. Quit worrying about did I put a dot there, I should have put an apostrophe there. I see this all the time on the Web. I'll read articles and I'll see punctuation errors. I don't call them up or make a comment to say, 'Oh, you forgot to put a dash there.' That doesn't make sense."
I asked Stoller if he'd ever consider hiring a professional editor, and he said he'd thought about it, but he remembered that guy who once edited his songs and how much he'd changed them. He also tried collaborating once with an audiobook narrator. "That ain't never going to happen again. They either like me or they don't. It's my writing. I wrote it. If you don't like it, you don't have to download it." And, as he pointed out to me, "thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of downloads are coming in. I'm up to something like 18,000 downloads per month from all the retailers."
It's the download count that really matters to Stoller, not the income from book sales. He said he'd be "starving" if he counted on his books to generate cash. Bumping up the download count is why most of his books are free. When he first started, he'd priced them from $1 to $5, until a co-worker suggested giving them away. He thought she was crazy, but it worked. Right now, he's been fighting with Amazon for over two years because the retailer refuses to let him give more than 17 stories away. That's been tough. "They wouldn't even answer my email when I sent them a screenshot from the UK [demonstrating how many more copies he'd moved of a book once it was free]. They cost me about 100,000 downloads in a month! It's like your first love. They're the first ones that gave you the opportunity to be on there and they're the hardest of them all. And it's all about money."
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I was particularly curious about Stoller's hundreds of audiobooks on Audible, an Amazon-owned company. Surely the professional narrators he uses don't come cheap? "Oh, up to $200 an hour," Stoller said. "There's no way I could have done that." Instead, his audiobooks were created through Audiobook Creative Exchange (ACX), a platform that connects authors and narrators in a revenue-sharing arrangement. "ACX gets 50 percent of my money," he said, "the narrator gets the other 25 percent and I get 25 percent. You can lose a lot of money doing that."
But if Stoller is willing to work so hard -- handling every aspect of the writing, editing, design, publishing and marketing himself, a process he characterizes as "going through the back door through razor blades trying to get where I need to go," and he's not doing it for the money, what is he doing it for? The exposure, of course. "They're going to know my name. It's going to be out there, and once my films get released, it's gonna probably be all over by then."
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Yes, films: A B-movie actor/director/producer named David Heavener (also "a martial artist" and "a composer and performer of Christian music," according to IMDB) has been making short films of Stoller's stories, beginning with "Bloody Mary" and "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs." (If these titles sound familiar, many of Stoller's stories are based on familiar horror-movie tropes and urban legends he looked up on the Web. Personally, my favorite Von Stoller title is "Thump! Thump! Drag!") Stoller talks about this project, which he says will ultimately be released as an anthology DVD next Halloween, in a way that makes his own role unclear. Has he been involved in the production? "Little bit here and there. I OK the script and stuff, read it over really well and make sure it's all right. And I've seen the films. So far I've got two done and am working on the third right now."
Although there are no plans for Stoller to appear in any of the films in his Drac Von Stoller persona, he believes the anthology could culminate in his ultimate ambition to be "the host of a TV series. Anybody can write stories with words blah blah blah. I want to step further. You've got Stephen King, who wrote the books. He had 'Creep Show' [a feature-length horror anthology film]. And then there's Rod Serling, 'The Twilight Zone.' I'm kind of like both of them mixed together." He added: "There's marketing that's unbelievable with my character. It's a vampire. There could be trading cards, comic books. You could have a theme park attraction at Disneyworld."
So Drac Von Stoller's own story isn't a horror story. Instead, it's the oldest American story, the one where a single brainstorm and a ton of hard work can rocket an average guy into a whole new life as a famous and prosperous vampire impresario. "I've just got a drive inside of me," Stoller explained. "That's just me. I've got the will to survive. I can envision. A couple of years ago, if you'd asked me about Drac Von Stoller, vampires, a TV series and all that stuff I would have probably laughed at you. But the more the years go by, it's just not stopping. It's getting better." Whether anyone will end up torn to bloody pieces at the end remains to be seen.About Chris Clark Chris is a writer, a keen fencer and in his spare time a turbo-charged petrol head who enjoys track days, car shows and reading about cars he'll probably never own. He also drove a reasonably priced car around the Top Gear test track in a respectable 1:49.0 More posts by Chris Clark
Hydrogen fuel cell technology has come far in recent decades, from its early years launching rockets into space, to finally arriving on our roads as part of the energy revolution. While still a relatively young technology, hydrogen offers a real alternative to the polluting engines that have plagued the planet for the last century. Critics argue that hydrogen fuel cell engines are not as efficient as alternatives, and they are not 100% green due to the release of methane during hydrogen extraction. Nonetheless, we felt it was important to demonstrate how the hydrogen fuel cell works, and what is involved in making the wheels turn as we step ever so closer to a greener future.
How A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Engine Works – Transcript
The days of the petrol driven car are numbered. With an ever-increasing need to clean up our carbon footprint, so does the need grow for an alternative to the CO2 emitting engines that populate our roads. Luckily, alternative fuel sources are emerging, and the hydrogen fuel cell is becoming a big player on the market.
How the Fuel Cell Works
Fuel cell stacks: Fuel cells generate electricity thorough a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Since one cell can only yield less than one volt, several hundred cells are connected in a series to increase the voltage. This combined body of cells is called a fuel cell stack.
How electricity is generated from hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell
1. Hydrogen is supplied to the anode side of the cell.
2. Hydrogen molecules activated by the anode catalyst release their electrons.
3. The released electrons travel from the anode to the cathode, creating an electrical current.
4. The hydrogen molecules that release electrons become hydrogen ions and move through the polymer electrolyte membrane to the cathode side.
5. The hydrogen ions bond with airborne oxygen and electrons on the cathode catalyst to form water.
FC boost converter: A Fuel Cell booster increases the voltage of the drive motor, reducing the number of required fuel cells while also reduce the weight and size of the whole system.
Drive battery: A rechargeable battery which stores energy during deceleration and adds this energy to the output of the fuel cells during acceleration.
Motor: Fuel Cell engines typically use an AC synchronous motor/generator.
Power Control Unit: This converts direct current (DC) into alternating current (AC) to power the motor, and a DC/DC converter that draws current from and then recharges the drive battery.
High-pressure hydrogen tanks: Each tank has three layers. The inner-most layer is a plastic tank holding the pressurized hydrogen at 70 Mpa. Then a carbon fibre reinforced plastic layer followed by a glass fiber reinforced plastic layer give the tank added strength and protection.
How does it work?
Hydrogen supplied to the cell have their electrons removed at the catalyst layer and become protons. Oxygen molecules taken from the air bond with the electrons and protons while transferring through the electrolyte membrane to produce water. The flow of electrons released from this reaction becomes the electricity that drives the motor.
How A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Engine Works Courtesy of: Rybrook Driver's Life
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commentsWhen we told our wedding guests that twenty-five children would be attending our wedding, most of them were incredulous (to put it politely). That’s right: A quarter of our guests were under the age of five. Considering our wedding was already a little out of the ordinary (we hosted a four-day celebration at a mountain hotel in the Swiss Alps), we knew our single and child-free friends sighed and our parent friends gulped, all at the same time. Funnily enough, our friends who are parents rejected our kid-friendly wedding most robustly: did we know what we were getting ourselves into?
The truth is, I really wanted those kids to be there. This was a family affair, after all. But more importantly, I wanted to make a statement of sorts. My husband and I will never have children. He chose to have a vasectomy at the age of twenty-five, and told me straight away when we met four years later. We hadn’t started dating yet, but I had already fallen for him. I was twenty-three, and at the time, kids weren’t on my mind.
whose feelings matter here, anyway?
Over the last few years, I’ve had a number of reactions after sharing that he and I would not have kids. Ever. One of the most enthusiastic responses came from my gynecologist, who exclaimed: “Fantastic! You don’t have to worry yourself with contraception or the chemical consequences thereof—enjoy it!”
Most times, however, I find myself dealing with more negative reactions. My mother was stunned, and cried when I finally told her. He and I were dating seriously at that point, but we were still finding ourselves as a couple and nowhere near marriage. A slew of questions and reprimands ensued, from her and the rest of my family. Friends questioned me as well. The most common misconception was that since my boyfriend didn’t want to become a father, he didn’t like children. He does—and he’s actually great with kids. He is a favorite with his nieces and nephews.
The second most common misconception I encountered was that people somehow expected me to be completely on board with this decision. And here is where the tricky part begins. It goes something like this joke:
Q: How do you embrace a porcupine? A: Very carefully.
you don’t always make every decision together
I love kids. They are generally kind, unpretentious, and hilarious people to be around. Growing up, I played house with dolls, bathing and clothing them. Later, I was often the designated babysitter for family friends, and at conferences to which my parents had been invited as speakers. I spent my teenage summers as a camp counselor. I grew up thinking I’d have a family of my own one day.
That said, I fully respect my husband’s choice. If I didn’t, I shouldn’t be here, eight years later, married to him. However, it doesn’t change the fact that this decision to remain childless is his choice, and it was a selfish decision. I believe two people should decide together if they want to have children. He took that choice away from me, and that was a dick move on his part. And yet.
There are all kind of scenarios in which this perfect-world scenario of “a couple decides these things together” just doesn’t happen. Be it because the couple can’t conceive, or it’s a same-sex couple and adoption isn’t an option, or because one person in the relationship feels more strongly about this issue than the other person. (As friends have moved from the “having a baby” phase to “having a second baby” phase, I’ve learned that this issue not only comes up in regards to having kids generally, but also in regards to the question of how many.)
i choose my choice
For a while, I did not know how we would be able to handle this down the road—especially when I hit my early forties, and know my last chance at a biological child is slipping away. Where will that leave us, as a couple, together? How can I build a life together with this man, when I expect I’ll be throwing plates at his head in desperation in in a few years’ time? To be clear, I could have backed out at any point. I could have chosen any time to say: “Listen, I respect your decision. I do. But having kids is too important to me to set aside for a life together with you.” I could have said that and walked away. I didn’t do that—I chose not to walk away. Instead, I grew more excited about the life we are shaping together.
My father handed me the key to ending this construed dilemma when he pointed out that quite likely, this will not be the only rough patch we will encounter in our relationship. Rather than focusing on that bump ahead of us, I should be asking myself if I feel comfortable facing those difficulties together with this guy, and if I believe we can support each other through rough times.
Amazingly, that shift in perspective helped me. A lot.
We’ve chosen to live in community with friends, and are currently sharing a home with eight grownups and three children. There are babies to cuddle and snooty noses to be avoided. I love coming home to a room full of people of various ages sharing dinner together. Last year, very good friends asked me to be the godmother to their son, and I can’t wait to develop a relationship with him and do cool godparent stuff. And yet I feel strangely relieved that it is our friends having the babies and not us. It is unburdening to know I can go about my life without having to calculate the perfect time to start a family.
I have not only come to accept my husband’s decision, but have felt—at times—strangely grateful for it, as well. I can point to his vasectomy without having to answer to critical voices demanding to know why a perfectly healthy young woman would not want to start a family.
While it was maddening at times, I see now how important it was to have friends and family asking me difficult questions about his decision. If anything, we should be able to speak honestly about these things with the people we feel close to, even if we can’t really explain our feelings. Through the years, those conversations have helped me better understand the choices I’ve made.
lavender instead of rice
As we had planned, we celebrated our wedding surrounded by one hundred people. Family and friends came to spend time with us and each other. There were twenty-five children at the wedding. All the kids threw dried lavender on us when we were leaving the ceremony. The dried florets, crushed underfoot, instantly gave off an intoxicating fragrance.
Traditionally, rice is thrown at the end of a wedding, to signify wishes of fertility for the couple. I’m not sure if lavender has any such symbolic meaning, but whatever our version of fertility may be, I know we’ll do just fine.NAPERVILLE, IL — Naperville police allowed a woman to kiss and touch a 13-year-old boy in the backseat of a police cruiser, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the boy. The lawsuit against the police department was filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago on April 19, the Naperville Sun reported. According to the lawsuit, the incident occurred on Halloween 2014 near the 200 block of Westbrook Circle in Naperville.
The suit states that police ordered the boy into the police car while he was with other children, and then the woman in question was placed in the back of the same vehicle.
The woman then "undertook sexually suggestive and aggressive actions," on the boy, which included kissing his face and neck, "touching and rubbing him upon his inner thigh and genital area, and taking'selfie' photographs of herself" and the boy, according to the suit. It says the woman was given an opportunity to act in a "wholly inappropriate and harmful way."
The lawsuit also claims there were police in the vicinity of the vehicle while the incident occurred but failed to protect the minor. Additionally, as reported by the Naperville Sun, the suit asserts that the young boy was the only African-American in the group of children and was the only one ordered into a police vehicle.
Ed Fox, the lawyer who filed the suit of the boy's behalf, wrote in the suit that "'reasonable suspicion' and/or legal cause to detain" the boy was absent. He also said a video was taken during the incident and wants a judge to force the city to release the video.
Naperville police were not available for comment. This article will be updated as more information becomes available.
Article image via ShutterstockYear: 1995 Make: Ford Model: Econoline Mileage: 169,596 VIN: 1FBHS31H8SHB77990 Running Condition: Starts w/boost Engine: 5.8L 8V Transmission: Automatic 3 Dr XL Club Wagon Passenger Van Extended.
Vehicle Condition:
Interior condition consistent with active use and age of vehicle. Missing some seats. Inside has been modified. Some holes due to removal of emergency equipment.
Exterior condition consistent with active use and age of vehicle. Front grill has some damage.
All items are sold "as-is". All conditions or issues are best approximations. We are not responsible for any errors or omissions on our part. Absence of any mention of defects does not mean there are none. We encourage you to inspect the vehicle before you bid. Please call the contact below to schedule an appointment to inspect the vehicle.
All communications, questions and answers, must be posted to the Questions Section located in the top right of this page so the information can be shared by all potential bidders of this site.
Condition: FAIR Note: Click on pictures below to view larger image
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Pick-up hours by appointment only.
The successful bidder will be responsible for packing, and/or loading any item(s) at pick-up, if necessary.Forget Benghazi and email servers- the British tabloid the Daily Mail has published this photo of presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, apparently using a US Postal Service flat tub for private use!
The tabloid did a little digging, and concluded that Clinton could be guilty of a crime!
From the Daily Mail story:
Pictures show the boxes are clearly marked ‘not for private use’ and are marked United States Postal Service along the side. While it is not known how Clinton came by the boxes, the U.S. Code states that theft of property used by the Postal Service is punishable by a fine and up to a year in jail. The code states: ‘Whoever steals, purloins, or embezzles any property used by the Postal Service, or appropriates any such property to his own or any other than its proper use, or conveys away any such property to the hindrance or detriment of the public service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; but if the value of such property does not exceed $1,000, he shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.’
No word yet on how this may change Bernie Sanders’ alleged plan to endorse Clinton on Tuesday!!! Also no mention of the incident yet on Donald Trump’s twitter feed.
Read the original story, which has photos of cute little dogs, and Bill Clinton wearing blue suede shoes, at the Daily MailBARCELONA, Spain--AT&T Mobility (NYSE:T) thinks T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) should stop complaining about the results of the AWS-3 spectrum auction and that companies like AT&T that walked away with large spectrum holdings bid market prices for them--more than T-Mobile was willing to spend.
Joan Marsh, AT&T's vice president of federal regulatory, responded to a blog post last month from T-Mobile CEO John Legere, who wrote that while the AWS-3 auction was a record-setting financial success for the U.S. Treasury it was a "disaster for American wireless consumers" because, he said, AT&T and Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) won the lion's share of the spectrum (Dish Network's (NASDAQ: DISH) bidding partners also won a major chunk of AWS-3 spectrum).
T-Mobile paid $1.77 billion for 151 licenses in the AWS-3 auction to fill out its mid-band spectrum portfolio. AT&T spent $18.2 billion for 251 AWS-3 licenses it says cover 96 percent of the U.S. population. Verizon spent $10.4 billion for 181 AWS-3 licenses in markets covering 192 million POPs, or 61 percent of the United States. Dish's bidding entities paid $13.3 billion for 702 licenses, winning 25 MHz of spectrum in total including 13 MHz of paired spectrum. However, Dish's designated entities also qualified for around $3.3 billion in bidding discounts, taking the total cost down to $10 billion.
Marsh wrote that the auction reallocated 50 MHz of "valuable paired spectrum to the wireless industry--an allocation that T-Mobile itself has long advocated for." She also wrote that the spectrum is internationally harmonized and is already being standardized "so it can be efficiently deployed to bring substantial additional data capacity to U.S. wireless consumers." And, she wrote, the auction proceeds "will fully fund FirstNet, so the country will finally realize the promise of an interoperable public safety broadband network. These are all wins for the FCC, the wireless industry and the American public."
Marsh noted an analysis of the bidding results shows the in some of the early rounds, T-Mobile had as much as $3.5 billion in capital "on the table" and that "from a strategic perspective, one can surmise that T-Mobile came to the auction with a $3.5 [billion] budget but, as valuations rose, decided to take some of its capital off the table, which was certainly its prerogative to do. But you can't withdraw capital from the auction then complain that you didn't win."
"Spectrum auctions are capital intensive. Period. You can't win if you don't bring capital and stand prepared to use it," she noted. "The fact is that the Dish designated entities (DEs) outbid T-Mobile over 6 to 1 in the auction (5 to 1 if you factor in the DE subsidies). And T-Mobile took close to $2B off the auction table."
The AWS-3 auction had 70 qualified bidders all vying for 65 MHz of spectrum, Marsh noted, and it delivered gross provisional winning bids of $44.9 billion and net proceeds of $41.329 billion. "Even setting aside Dish's unusual bidding construct, auction competition was going to be fierce anyway you cut it," Marsh wrote. "T-Mobile is a big proponent of competition unless they are facing it in an auction--there they prefer protection."
"Ignoring the competitive dynamics in the auction, T-Mobile alleges in its blog that AT&T and Verizon showed that they will 'dig into their deep pockets' to buy spectrum 'at nearly any cost,'" she wrote. "But we didn't set the prices at auction--the auction competition did. And we paid for the [10x10] MHz footprint we acquired exactly what the auction competition required us to pay--no more and no less."
In fact, Marsh wrote, Dish's designated entities, Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless, were T-Mobile's biggest competitors in the auction. She wrote that bidding patterns in the auction suggest that T-Mobile was primarily interested in the 5x5 MHz G Block, and the carrier bid aggressively for it in major markets like Chicago, Seattle and Denver. "But, in the end, they lost those blocks and the majority of the G Block in the top 100 CMAs to the Dish Des," she wrote. "This is probably the lesson T-Mobile most wants to avoid. Indeed, it couldn't even bring itself to identify Dish by name in its blog."
Marsh wrote that AT&T conducted an analysis of winning bids and who the winning bidder bid off to take the license, which showed that Dish outbid T-Mobile on 132 licenses to win the license. (AT&T outbid T-Mobile on 26 licenses and Verizon did so 16, Marsh wrote.) "Even of the 151 licenses T-Mobile won, T-Mobile had to outbid Dish on 69 of those licenses to succeed (compared to AT&T on 12 and Verizon on 32)," she added. "AT&T and Verizon weren't T-Mobile's competitive nemesis in the auction--Dish was. And the 600 MHz reserve won't protect T-Mobile from Dish, or Sprint (NYSE: S) or Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), or any other player not named AT&T or Verizon that comes with capital to win spectrum."
"In the end, Dish--a company with less revenue than T-Mobile and no wireless subs--showed up with a $10B budget (which it turned into $13B in spending power with the taxpayer's help) and simply ran T-Mobile out of much of what it wanted," she wrote. "And you can't blame that on us."
Marsh also wrote that the FCC should rethink its policies on designated entities and design them to help actual small carriers like Bluegrass Wireless and not "DE-centric shell corporations formed in the months leading up to the auction," like a reference to Dish's designate entities partners. Marsh wrote that in the auction, these types of small non-DE bidders won 74 licenses, but that to win "they primarily had to outbid other DEs (Dish DEs 28 times; other DEs 22). Dish or another DE outbid these entities to win licenses 72 times (Dish 42; other DEs 30). Given these results, perhaps we need to not only revisit who the DE rules really benefitted in this auction, but also take a look at how the DE rules may have hampered small facilities-based competitors."
T-Mobile said AT&T and Verizon used the auction to shore up their spectrum position and that the results should push the FCC to set aside |
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Having the tunnel end on the south would mean the tracks coming out on top of a walking and bicycling trail. Either option would mean having to cross Mimico Creek, the 427 and the East Mall and then traverse a residential neighbourhood.
Pushing the tunnel exit further along would mean having to drop it down under Mimico Creek. Coming up in the next open space along the route would add nearly two more kilometres of tunnelling. Mr. Tory says that they have budgeted for the required tunnels but won't reveal a breakdown of the costing. Not only is tunnelling disruptive to the neighbourhood while under way, it's hugely expensive.
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The size of the trains on this line means that the boring machines used on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT are too small and cannot be re-used. And finding space for the big launch shaft required to begin tunnelling could prove challenging.
Ridership
Another issue is the size of the trains that would run on this line.
The Tory camp predicts it will carry 200,000 passengers a day. They say about one-third is expected to come by persuading people to switch to transit, which would require the neighbourhoods served by the line to rise to the city-wide average for transit use.
The rest is projected to come by diverting current transit users to the line, with the campaign saying its figure is based on data from other cities and on "common sense."
Should those projections come true, it would pose difficulties.
If the ridership were spread evenly around the clock, that would mean more than 8,000 passengers per hour. With 15-minute service, that would require four 14-car trains every hour, whereas the longest GO now runs is 12 cars. Such trains could not fit at current Toronto GO stations, which are limited to 12 cars.
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And if the ridership is distributed unevenly, according to standard transit demand patterns, the peak hour total would be around 12,500.
This would require four trains stretching 21 cars each, meaning stations would have to be enormous.
In a technical briefing, the Tory camp repeatedly promised 15-minute service, never suggesting the trains could run more often. In any event, trying to reduce train size by having more of them would push up costs and create new problems of capacity in what will be crowded rail corridors already. An eventual switch that the province has planned to electric multiple units (EMUs) is not expected to result in trains with greater capacity.
As the front-runner, Mr. Tory has tended to deflect pointed questions about his plan by saying simply that he's sure it can work. He likes to cite engineering challenges during the digging of the Yonge subway as evidence that problems can be surmounted. And he has dismissed critics as people who always find a way to say 'no' to something.
"I'm just confident that the plan is sound, the partnerships will come about, the financing will work for this project," Mr. Tory said this week. "It's going to work and I'm going to make it work. I have the determination to get this done."
The three leading candidates for mayor have different, and controversial, visions, about how we'll get around. Here's where they stand on the most contentious pointsMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Louis Le Prince's Roundhay Garden Scene and Leeds Bridge
Who made the first film? The Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison are usually credited with pioneering the moving image. However a new documentary argues that the first film was actually shot in Leeds in 1888 - but that its maker disappeared before he could claim his place in cinema history.
When film producer and distributor David Wilkinson visits Hollywood or New York or Cannes, he tells his movie business contacts that he comes from the city "where film was invented".
His puzzled acquaintances figure that he does not have an American accent, so cannot come from the birthplace of Thomas Edison, and is clearly not from France, the land of the Lumieres.
He then informs them he is, in fact, from Leeds, England.
During his 33 years in the film business, Wilkinson says only a few people have known what he was talking about, and why Leeds can claim to be the birthplace of film.
The claim dates back more than 125 years, to 14 October 1888, when a family gathered in the garden in the Leeds suburb of Roundhay.
Among the group was Louis Le Prince, who had with him a curious mahogany box. He asked the others in attendance - his son, parents-in-law and a friend - to stand in front of the box and walk in a circle.
Image copyright Le Prince Image caption Louis Le Prince shot snippets of film, but disappeared before he was able to project them
The groundbreaking camera
The box was Le Prince's camera, and we can still watch the very short, silent film it captured. The film was made several years before Edison and the Lumieres came onto the scene.
Now, fed up with getting disbelieving looks when telling people Leeds was the birthplace of film, Wilkinson has made a documentary titled The First Film, which sets out the case for Le Prince as the father of the moving image.
"There is a very strong argument for that, absolutely," says Toni Booth, associate curator at the National Media Museum in Bradford, where Le Prince's historic camera and footage are kept.
"If you look at the mechanism that camera is using, it's a very similar mechanism to all the subsequent moving image cameras that came after that," she says.
"It is a single roll of film moving from one spool to another through a shutter and taking sequential images, which then were designed to be projected to reproduce that movement.
"As a piece of moving image recording live action - yes I would say he was the first one to do that," she adds.
Image copyright National Media Museum Image caption Le Prince first made a 16-lens camera (left) before moving on to the single-lens camera (right)
The race to invent
Le Prince was born in Metz, north-east France. He studied chemistry and physics at university, then worked as a photographer and painter before being offered a job at John Whitley's engineering firm in Leeds.
Three years after moving to the city, he married Elizabeth Whitley, his boss's daughter. At the same time, photography was beginning to take hold, and Le Prince started experimenting with the idea of moving photographs.
By the 1880s, he was one of many inventors trying to master the technology for what would become film.
Others included William Friese Greene and Wordsworth Donisthorpe in Britain, Eadweard Muybridge in the US, Etienne-Jules Marey in France, and the Skladanowsky brothers in Germany.
"You will find people making cases for particular individuals," Toni Booth says. "There is still some debate, and I think it comes down to definition. The definition of film and the definition of cinema."
What is the difference, for example, between a series of still photographs taken in quick succession and a bona fide film?
In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge arranged 12 cameras in a row to photograph a racehorse in motion. He later copied the photos on a rotating disc and invented a device to make it look to a viewer as if the horse was moving.
"He's getting a feeling of movement, but he's not really capturing the movement like film cameras do," David Wilkinson says.
Image copyright Geurilla Films Image caption David Wilkinson, pictured with a replica of Le Prince's camera, said he was 'obsessed' with the story
Le Prince's first camera had 16 lenses, which took what Wilkinson also dismisses as "sequential photographs". Wilkinson defines film as being shot from a single point of view - as with Le Prince's next invention, the single-lens camera.
As well as the Roundhay Garden Scene, Le Prince used the single-lens camera to film short sequence of people and carriages on Leeds Bridge, and his son Adolphe playing the accordion.
He successfully captured the action, but Le Prince's invention was of little use if no-one could watch the films afterwards.
He experimented with projection techniques and was due to hold his first public screening in New York in 1890.
But he never got there. While visiting his brother Albert in France with two friends, the Wilsons, Le Prince was said to have boarded a train from Dijon to Paris in September 1890. He was never seen again.
The mysterious ending
There are many theories for his disappearance. His widow Lizzie believed Edison had him killed to get his rival out of the way.
Others think Le Prince committed suicide because he was on the verge of bankruptcy, or disappeared and started a new life, or that his brother Albert killed him in a row over their mother's will.
Some have even suggested his family ordered him to move away because they discovered he was gay.
"If he hadn't disappeared then it [his film] would have been shown in New York," David Wilkinson says.
"I am absolutely convinced that he would have raised money from a very distinguished audience so then he could start manufacturing on quite a big scale.
"He would have done what Edison and then the Lumieres did, but before them. He would have been known," Wilkinson adds.
But as it was, the Lumieres and Edison succeeded in playing films for a paying public and Le Prince was written out of history.
"He technically succeeded but he didn't commercially, publicly succeed," Toni Booth says.
"Had things been different, he may be considered alongside Edison and Lumiere, indeed even above them. It's distinctly possible - but we'll just never know."
What happened to Louis Le Prince?
Laurie Snyder, Le Prince's great-great-granddaughter
My family has several theories. Some believe that Edison had something to do with it, others believe that he engineered his own disappearance.
My personal theory is pretty mundane. Since Louis took a later train, the Wilsons, who were to meet him in Paris, went ahead and left for England when Louis didn't disembark when they expected him to.
According to Lizzie's memoirs, the train Louis took would have arrived in Paris at about 23:00. Being so late, he probably hailed a hansom cab to take him to his workshop.
I think the driver, taking advantage of the hour and the darkness, took him to a remote location near the Seine, hit him over the head and threw him in the Seine. There were two articles from this time that suggest that thieves were targeting lone travellers and Le Prince was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I simply can't believe that a man who loved his family as much as he did, as evidenced by his letters, would either commit suicide or disappear on his own.
The idea that his brother murdered him is ludicrous. He came from a very close, loving family, as evidenced from Lizzie's memoirs. Edison, although he was certainly ruthless, probably had better things to do than to order a hit on a competitor.
Finally, the theory that his family ordered his disappearance due his being a homosexual is crazy since the family spent a lot of time and money trying to find him.
Laurie Snyder is donating the family's Louis Le Prince archive to the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society in July.
The First Film will have its premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Tuesday. It will have screenings in Leeds on 1 July and Bradford on 2 July before going on general release on 3 July.Hello Kickstarters!
A huge thank you again to everyone that helped us reach our goal. On Friday we took a big, collective exhale once the project completed and our goals were set. Today, we’re taking a giant inhale as we start to focus sharply and dive deep into design and production.
Simultaneously, we are working out all the logistics to deliver your rewards. First, it’s going to take approximately 10 more days for all of the Kickstarter transactions to clear. Once this happens, everyone is going to get an email with a link to our fulfillment web site. This site will allow you to pick all of your final rewards, give us your shipping information, and make any final adjustments.
IMPORTANT: We are leaving the PayPal links up until this process is complete! That means you have 10 more days to get in on the current deals.
Q: When do I get my stuff?
A: The first order of business is to get all of the details from you about what stuff you are getting. That will happen in about 10 days or so when we launch our fulfillment website. The shipping schedule has not be finalized yet and things may come over time depending on the item.
Q: When is Alpha / Beta / Launch?
A: We don’t currently have locked down dates for Alpha/Beta. These will happen months before the product launch so you can work backwards for an approximate timeline. Once we know, you’ll know.
Q: Can you send my stuff to a different address?
A: Yes. You will be able to select your shipping address on our fulfillment site.
Q: I pledged multiple times, can they be combined?
A: PayPal pledges will automatically be combined. A pledge within Kickstarter is automatically combined. Everyone will be getting an email with all of their pledge details when our fulfillment site goes live in about 10 days or so.
Q: I forgot to add international shipping. Now what?
A: We will handle this through our website when calculating a final total. At that point you will be able to pay for shipping or any other changes.
Q: Can I donate more?
A: At any point you can use the PayPal to donate more or buy other things. All of this will be handled through the same fulfillment site.
Q: How do I specify the details of my pledge? Extra keys, t-shirt size, etc?
A: This will happen through our fulfillment site in about 10 days.
We can’t reiterate enough the thank yous to everyone that has supported us. We are working hard to make the rewards process and your experience as smooth as possible, and will need a bit more of your patience. We’ll also do our best to keep you informed in general as we continue the drive forward to the development and release of an awesome game!
- The Uber TeamIt just seems wrong. To take a landmark civic monument like Old City Hall, which has served the people of Toronto as a place to conduct official government business pretty much continuously since 1899, first as the seat of municipal government and then as the home of the provincial courts, and turn it into a mall. Or, as the staff proposal the city’s Government Management Committee will consider next week puts it, “a retail centre that contains a mix of food service, leisure, event and civic uses.”
The building we call Old City Hall (Toronto’s fourth municipal headquarters), however, has always served as a different kind of monument — one to Toronto’s growth and ambition as a city, writes ( CHRIS SO / TORONTO STAR )
At first blush, standing at the corner there of Bay and Queen, it’s hard to see why anyone would say that “the highest and best use” of the building would be more retail space — at least not if the needs and wants of the people of the city are a criteria. I mean, directly next door to the building is the Eaton Centre, the largest and busiest mall in the city. The space is above the underground PATH system, the world’s largest underground shopping complex. A few blocks west along Queen you have one of the most famous shopping and entertainment strips in the city. In other words, if you’re at Queen and Bay today and you’re in the mood to put your credit card to use, you don’t lack options. And the neighbourhood doesn’t lack public celebrations of commerce, either. Just to the northeast is Yonge and Dundas Square, a public space that has been consciously transformed over the past decade and a half into a civic monument to unapologetically crass commercialism. So we’ve already got that covered.
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The building we call Old City Hall (Toronto’s fourth municipal headquarters), however, has always served as a different kind of monument — one to Toronto’s growth and ambition as a city. When it was built in 1899 (after three years of design by E.J. Lennox and 11 years of construction), it was the largest building in Toronto and the largest municipal building in North America. Its grandeur extended even to the details: The tiled mosaic floors and the doorknobs embossed with the city’s coat of arms, and were built to serve a city whose population was about 200,000, but one that had been growing fast and was expected to grow even faster (as it did—the population had doubled by 1911). It was a physical representation of the seriousness of our civic purpose, and the extent of our civic ambition. (It is one of those fun blips of history that seem symbolically important that R.C. Harris, the great city-building works commissioner who built the Bloor viaduct and much of Toronto’s sewer and transportation infrastructure, once lived with his wife and children in an apartment in the city hall building as a young man.) Today, its clock still looking out onto the square in front of our current city hall, Lennox’s ornate Romanesque Revival building continues to serve its grand purpose. And now that the Ontario Court system has made it clear they need to find a newer home for their justice pursuits, the city will need to find a new use for the grand old building. But somehow a mall doesn’t feel like an appropriate evolution of the building’s tradition. I suppose, on the other hand, that one virtue of malls is that people actually visit them. The place would continue to be used and open to the people of the city. It’s a better idea than a corporate office building or (God forbid) a condo conversion. Heck, they took Maple Leaf Gardens, the hockey shrine that connected the pitiful team of recent decades to the legitimate glory of the past, and turned it into a grocery store. And as grocery stores go, it is nice. There’s a marking on the floor where centre ice used to be, that you can visit while you’re picking up a jar of pickles. It is less terrible than many nostalgic Leafs fans thought it might be.
But is it too much to ask that we consider aiming for something more reverent? The long-discussed plan to situate a city museum in Old City Hall, which is still included in the mall plan in an apparently scaled-back way, seems appropriate. Such a museum could be the dominant feature of the main floor public areas. And one imagines that there must be a municipal use for the office and meeting space sitting there adjacent to the current City Hall — it may be less modern than the city’s office space at Metro Hall, but it is closer to HQ and comes with a sense of history and gravitas that it’s hard to replace. Putting the place back to work as a city municipal building wouldn’t draw the kind of revenue renting a portion of it to Wal-Mart or Banana Republic would — an estimated $9.5 million a year. But how much is a civic landmark of Old City Hall’s stature worth, to us, as a space of our own, that tells us something about who we are, and how we got here? And perhaps, as we adapt it, tells us where we are going?Volunteers working with the Israeli chapter of Republicans Abroad made phone calls to U.S. citizens living in Israel and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank on Sept. 5. (William Booth/The Washington Post)
The rabbi hadn’t voted in a U.S. election in 25 years. “Didn’t see the point,” he said. Now Chaim Spring said he was all in for Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The 80-year-old, whose sunny villa in a Jewish settlement was lined with religious tomes, described himself to reporters as “a big Trump supporter” who watches “a lot of Fox News.”
He pronounced Trump “good for America and good for Israel.” The rabbi especially admired the Trump family vibe. “You can tell he really loves his children,” Spring told The Washington Post. “That says a lot.”
Spring was born in New York and moved to Israel more than 40 years ago. As a U.S. citizen, he is eligible to register and vote.
GOP activists in Israel say there are a lot more voters here like the rabbi — as many as 400,000 U.S. citizens living in Israel today.
Bumper stickers produced by Israeli supporters of Donald Trump are stacked on a table in newly opened offices in the West Bank settlement of Karnei Shomron on Sept. 5. (Ruth Eglash/The Washington Post)
Nobody knows the exact number, not even the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, which declined to give an estimate. U.S. citizens are free to come and go to and from Israel and many other countries without a visa, and many do not register with their local embassies.
A group named I Vote Israel says there are 200,000 possible voters. “We have the same influence on this upcoming election as numerous states in the union,” the organization states. “That’s really something.”
Democrats here say the total number is probably less — but still a lot.
[U.S. and Israel reach agreement on an unprecedented amount of military aid]
Polling experts say there may be enough American voters in Israel to matter in a tight race, especially in a swing state such as Florida, which is exactly where the Israeli Republicans are laser-beaming their focus.
In many cases, a U.S. citizen living abroad — even one who has not resided in the United States for years — can register to vote in the last state in which they lived. Others who have never lived in the United States can register where their parents lived.
Working off lists, several hundred GOP activists in Israel are phoning potential voters and knocking on doors, telling them that their votes count.
Volunteers with the group Democrats Abroad in Israel register voters in Jerusalem's German colony neighborhood on Sept. 16, 2016. (William Booth/TWP)
Their pitch: Remember the 2000 race between Al Gore and George W. Bush, which came down to 537 votes in Florida?
Much of the 2000 recount action was centered in Palm Beach County, with its notorious “butterfly ballot.” Palm Beach also has one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States.
Last week, the rabbi’s house became the fifth campaign office for the group Republicans Overseas Israel, as well as the first Trump headquarters in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. There was a big banner in the driveway in Hebrew that read “Trump: In Israel’s Interest.”
The Israeli Republicans declined to say how much they are spending or who their top donors are.
At a news conference, an organizer for the Republican effort, Tzvika Brot, said the decision to open an office in Karnei Shomron did not signal an appeal to supporters of Jewish settlements. Standing beside him, Marc Zell, co-chairman of Republicans Abroad, said, “That’s not entirely true.” He also said he preferred not to call them “settlements” and disagreed that the Israeli army “occupied” the West Bank.
Zell said it was very symbolic that the GOP was here.
There are about 400,000 Jews living in more than 200 communities in the West Bank, and as many as 15 percent of them are dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, according to researchers.
The settlements are on the land that many Jews say is their biblical and historical home. It is also land the Palestinians want for a future state. The international community calls the Jewish settlements “illegal”; the United States considers them “illegitimate” and “an obstacle to peace.” Israel disputes this.
Zell praised the Republican Party and Trump for endorsing a plank at the convention that gave full-throated endorsement to Israel.
“The platform eliminated any reference to Israel as an occupier,” Zell said. “That wasn’t just a play on words; that was a real statement that coincides with Donald Trump’s own statements recently that when it comes to building homes and synagogues and schools for Arabs and Jews in Judea and Samaria, this is an issue for the Israeli government to decide.”
Judea and Samaria are the historical and biblical names many Jews and Israel supporters use for the West Bank.
Zell, who lives in a Jewish settlement, said that he has eight children, now all adults, and that all are registered to vote and ready to mail in their ballots for Trump.
Earlier this month, Trump said Israel would be destroyed unless he is elected president. He said the Jewish state faced an existential threat from Iran and criticized the nuclear pact that President Obama and other world leaders signed.
In comparison, Democrats on the left, led by public intellectual Cornel West, pushed hard for a convention plank to condemn the almost 50-year Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, a fight ultimately lost to Hillary Clinton supporters on the platform committee. But unlike the GOP platform, the Democratic one still calls for a two-state solution that would give the Palestinians a sovereign nation.
[Israel to launch one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, with U.S. help]
The Democrats Abroad organization is mostly invisible in the 2016 campaigns in Israel.
“The Republicans are taking advantage of the fact that the Democrats have taken this time to reorganize in Israel, and the Republicans see an opening for them,” said Sheldon Schorer, former spokesman for Democrats Abroad here.
“The Republicans are aware that in the last 30 years a very large proportion of Americans who have moved to Israel are Orthodox, and they are generally right-wing both in Israeli and American politics,” said Jonathan Rynhold, a political scientist at Bar Ilan University in Israel.
“Whether the Republican campaigners here are right and there are enough American Israelis who can vote in the swing states remains to be seen,” Rynhold said. “Obviously, many Jews come from New York, and that is not a swing state, or they are from California, also not a swing state. I am not sure about New Jersey.”
But Florida?
“My sense is that maybe, if the election is very close, it could make a difference,” he said.
Recent studies by the Pew Research Center found that 68 percent of Jewish Americans are Democrats or lean that way.
In Israel, many observers say the pattern is reversed.
The group I Vote Israel released a poll during the 2012 race that found that 85 percent of the U.S. voters in Israel went for Mitt Romney. The survey was criticized as an unscientific snapshot taken at polling stations at Jewish religious schools packed with Republicans. Polling in Israel finds Obama unpopular here. Yet among Jewish Israelis who are not U.S. citizens, surveys say they are equally split over who they’d like to see in the White House.
Haim Rosenfeld, 18, was one of the young volunteers making phone calls to possible voters from the dining-room table at the rabbi’s house.
Rosenfeld was born in the United States but moved to Israel as a baby with his family. He now lives in the Jewish settlement of Tel Mond.
“I sit in an office and make lots of phone calls to Americans,” he said. “I tell those I speak to that Trump has a great staff, he has [vice-presidential candidate] Mike Pence, and they have every reason to vote for him. I tell them that he wants to make America great again and that he was successful in his field of business and is very successful in life.”
What else? “I also say that Trump has a staff of advisers who are very experienced and will not let him do stupid things,” he said.
Read more:
Ten years after last Lebanon war, Israel warns next one will be far worse
Israel, Hamas and Egypt form unlikely alliance against Islamic State affiliate
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the worldIt is pretty rare for someone who was once our nation’s prime minister to come out with such complete and utter rubbish as Gordon Brown with his recent comments on the prospect of the UK leaving the EU.
Writing in The Guardian yesterday, Brown regurgitates the now discredited “three million jobs” myth and pooh-poohs the Norwegian Option in a manner almost worthy of Nick Clegg. However, his most bizarre comment was to claim that “leaving Europe to join the world is really the North Korea option, out in the cold with few friends, no influence, little new trade and even less new investment.”
So withdrawalists are wanting to turn the country into one of the most dictatorial, impoverished and isolated countries in the world, eh, Gordon?
How about a few facts here and there? Withdrawal from the EU would make us more democratic. We would be governed by representatives we could elect and dismiss rather than having to kow-tow to unelected bureaucrats of the whims of foreign heads of state. If we remained within the EEA and re-joined EFTA, we could retain our trade with the EU’s single market while being free to renegotiate our own free trade agreements free from the UN-inspired red tape that renders so many of the EU’s free trade agreements so bureaucratic. What of the isolation element? Unlike the North Koreans, we speak the world’s lingua franca. Unlike North Korea, we are, even within the EU, one of the countries offering the fewest obstacles to businessmen. Outside the EU, we could repeal the more burdensome regulations and be even more business-friendly.
Would we lose all our friends when we left? The bonds of the Anglophone world go deep. In many ways, we would be more likely to strengthen them. After all, withdrawal offers us a chance to redress the betrayal of our Commonwealth friends in 1973 when we reorientated our trade away from them.
As for the “no influence” issue, it is amazing that anyone takes us seriously at the moment when as an EU member state, we don’t even have the freedom as to how we label our bananas! We would still be members of NATO and the Commonwealth. Our well-trained, if depleted armed forces, would still be in demand for training the armed forces of other nations. Our public schools and universities would still be attracting top students from across the world.
Somehow, this doesn’t sound much like North Korea!
Brown said that “Britain has shaped the destiny of Europe and the world before.” History says that we have done much better in shaping Europe from without – in other words, as an independent state. We did more far more good to Europe in 1802-1815, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 than we have done since 1973. The EU was designed as a federal superstate. That’s not what we want and we have failed totally to convince the other member states to ditch the silly idea of ever-closer union. We have failed time after time to persuade the French to abandon the protectionist and wasteful Common Agricultural Policy. We have had forty years of Conservative talk of reforming the EU and ended up with an arch-integrationist, Jean-Claude Juncker, chosen as Commission President in spite of David Cameron’s protests.
Brown is right in one thing:- yes, we who support withdrawal are calling it the patriotic option and unashamedly so. No self- respecting, successful country normally submits to rule from abroad unless it has been invaded. It was patriotism that caused millions of our young men to give their lives in two world wars. Thankfully, no such sacrifice will be needed this time, just a cross in the right place on the ballot form, but the motivation is the same – freedom from foreign tyranny – a noble and patriotic cause indeed.
Brown has promised to play an active part in the “In” campaign if a referendum is held in 2017. How much he was able to influence the result in the Scottish referendum campaign by his intervention is a moot point, but south of the border he hasn’t been forgotten as the man who raided our pension pots as Chancellor and crashed the economy as Prime Minister. Unless the Clunking Fist takes a hefty reality check, the more he intervenes on behalf of the “in” campaign with gibberish like this, the brighter the prospects for withdrawal. Bring it on, Flash!
Photo by david_terrarDonald Trump called for a restoration of "law and order" in the wake of the deadly attack on law enforcement officers in Dallas.
"We must restore the confidence of our people to be safe and secure in their homes and on the street," Trump said in a statement early Friday morning, roughly 12 hours after the attack at an otherwise peaceful protest in downtown Dallas against police brutality.
In the attack, 12 Dallas law enforcement officers were shot, five fatally.
The protest was focused on police brutality against black people, specifically Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., on Monday and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn., on Tuesday. Both were shot dead by police officers.
Trump referenced both incidents in his statement.
"The senseless, tragic deaths of two motorists in Louisiana and Minnesota reminds us how much more needs to be done," Trump said. Sterling in Louisiana was not a motorist, but rather shot outside a convenience store. Castile was shot in his car during a traffic stop.
"Our nation has become too divided. Too many Americans feel like they've lost hope. Crime is harming too many citizens. Racial tensions have gotten worse, not better. This isn't the American Dream we all want for our children," Trump concluded. "This is a time, perhaps more than ever, for strong leadership, love and compassion. We will pull through these tragedies."
Earlier Friday morning, Trump tweeted his "prayers and condolences" to anyone "devastated by the horrors we are all watching take place in our country." He canceled a planned campaign stop in Miama for Friday.Successful hunts in Repulse Bay, Arctic Bay
By SAMANTHA DAWSON
People in Repulse Bay won’t go hungry for the next little while.
That’s because everyone in the Kivalliq community is celebrating the catch of a bowhead whale that was butchered and divided up Aug. 13.
Michael Akkuardjuk, chairperson of the Repulse Bay Hunters and Trappers Organization, said that the hunt was successful, with a whale, just short of nine metres, caught about 20 kilometres from the community of 750.
“It was a good size for the community of Repulse Bay,” he said.
Four boats went out Aug. 13, with four hunters on each boat. The whale was caught around 3 p.m. that day.
The hunters had first headed out Aug. 10 at about 10 a.m. having obtained a license from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Aug. 8.
But the first bowhead whale they saw was too small, and hard to find, Akkuardjuk said.
But the hunters did see more bowheads. On the next day, it was windy and the weather wasn’t co-operating so they stayed home, he said.
After that, the hunters went out again around early in the morning on Aug. 13 and spotted a bowhead, but lost sight of it.
By around 3 p.m. they spotted another whale, which they were able to harpoon and keep, thanks to a strong 600-foot rope.
After getting the whale to shore in Repulse Bay, people from the community came down to the area where other whales have been butchered, to watch and help.
Ten or 11 people worked to remove all the muktuk, the skin and blubber, off the whale in a little over an hour, Akkuardjuk said.
“Sometime today everything is going to be done,” he said.
Repulse Bay has previously seen successful bowhead hunts in 1996, 2005 and 2010 — but people are still overjoyed by the recent catch.
“Everybody was happy about it, everybody,” Akkuardjuk said. “It was as good hunt, successful, the hunters are all okay.”
Arctic Bay hunters also took a nine-metre bowhead this past weekend near Admiralty Inlet.
Until recently, DFO scientists claimed there were only several hundred bowhead whales in eastern Arctic waters, preventing their harvest in Nunavut.
Estimates of the bowhead population jumped from 345 in 2000 to about 3,000 in 2003, then to 7,309 in 2007, and in 2008 to 14,400, with an outside estimate of up to about 43.000.
In 2009, the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board established a quota, or a total allowable take, of three whales per year over three years.
That means that each of Nunavut’s three regions has been able to harvest a whale in recent years.
The Kitikmeot community of Taloyoak also plans to hunt a bowhead whale this month.
Last August, for the first time in a century, Iqaluit hunters landed a bowhead, a 14-metre-long whale, weighing in at more than 70 tonnes.Now that the 2016 season is complete and the dust has settled, it’s time to begin our annual season review series. This year was a complicated one. That’s for sure.
A year ago the Yankees started their rebuild with an unusual strategy. With only a few big league ready prospects of their own, the team went out and acquired out-of-favor young players with other organizations. The hope was they could buy low on talented players and unlock their potential. So far it’s worked with Didi Gregorius. He’s been pretty awesome as Derek Jeter’s replacement.
The Yankees imported Nathan Eovaldi from the Marlins as part of this on-the-fly rebuild, and his first season in pinstripes was eventful. He struggled early in the season, dominated after picking up a splitter with an assist from pitching coach Larry Rothschild, then finished the season on the shelf with elbow inflammation. This season followed a similar script, albeit at the extremes.
The No. 3 Starter
In hindsight, Spring Training should have been a red flag. Eovaldi struck out ten and walked eight in 14.2 Grapefruit League innings during the spring — he had a 20/3 K/BB in 18.2 innings last spring — after missing time with a groin problem. The vast majority of Spring Training stats mean absolutely nothing. This year, Eovaldi’s inability to locate in March was a harbinger of things to come during the regular season.
The Yankees slotted Eovaldi in as their No. 3 starter to start the regular season because that’s the kind of production they hoped to receive. He had a 3.43 ERA (2.86 FIP) in his final 14 starts and 84 innings of the 2015 season, and the new splitter was a tangible reason for the improvement. The Yankees were hoping to get that guy full-time this season. That didn’t happen. Not even close.
Eovaldi allowed five runs in five innings to the Astros in his first start of the season, and also gave up two home runs. That was ominous. Eovaldi allowed ten home runs total last season. Right out of the gate he gave up two this year. Four runs in 6.2 innings against the Blue Jays followed seven days later, including two more home runs. That’s four home runs in his first 11.2 innings |
relative scarcity of some large number of goods) or a deficient supply of money. We might further distinguish between these two by referring to the first as “price deflation” and the latter as “monetary deflation.” Price deflation, as it turns out, is the “Good” of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Monetary deflation is the “Bad” and can lead to the “Ugly.”
Price deflation, sometimes called “benign deflation,” is, or at least should be, the normal by-product of a growing economy. To see why, we need one last digression, this time into monetary theory. Understanding both inflation and deflation requires that we recognize that the demand for money is a demand to hold real cash balances: We demand money when we hold balances in our wallets or our checking accounts. When we spend money we actually reduce our demand for money as we shift how we hold our wealth from money to whatever we buy. Think of a wallet or checking account as part of a larger portfolio of assets we choose to hold at any given time. We want a certain portion of our wealth in the form of housing, some in the form of food, some in the form of clothing, and some in the form of money. Thus our demand for money is a demand to hold money balances, and we care about the real purchasing power of those money balances—what they are capable of buying, not just what number is stamped on the bills.
A correct understanding of the demand for money helps us to understand why sometimes people can have either more or less money than they would prefer. For example, during inflation the monetary authority has created more money than people wish to hold at current prices, so they spend those “excess” money holdings on goods and services, driving up their prices. During a monetary deflation, as we shall see, a deficient supply of money means that people do not have large enough money balances and will act to get more.
All of this implies that a good monetary system is one that supplies exactly the amount of money the public wishes to hold at the current level of prices. It is worth noting that this view, called “monetary equilibrium theory,” implies that not every increase in the supply of money is inflationary. Should the demand for money rise, it is the appropriate response of the monetary system to increase the supply to match it. In our discussion of monetary deflation below, we will see why monetary equilibrium theorists make this argument. This argument also distinguishes those Austrian economists who work from the monetary equilibrium tradition from those who work from a more Rothbardian tradition, in which any increase in the money supply not matched by an increase in the quantity of gold is necessarily inflationary and the ideal monetary system is not one that matches changes in money demand with changes in the money supply.
The Good
If the monetary system is doing its job and matching changes in money demand with changes in supply, the long-term trend of the price level will be gently downward as economy-wide productivity rises. Put differently, increased productivity will cause benign price deflation as the real cost of goods and services falls. This sort of deflation is not only not harmful; it is beneficial because the cost of living is lower. In the United States this is precisely what happened to the price level during the last few decades of the nineteenth century, since the pre-Federal Reserve banking system based on gold was reasonably effective at getting the money supply right much of the time and productivity gains caused a steady, slow fall in the price level. Over the last few decades the same downward pressure on prices from productivity gains has been taking place, but it has been outweighed in the aggregate by the inflationary policies of the Fed, so the price level continues to climb in spite of these productivity-induced deflationary pressures.
One implication of this last observation is that consumer price index figures may well understate the real degree of monetary inflation in a given economy. For example, if productivity increases are pushing prices down 3 percent per year, but excesses in the money supply are pushing prices up by 3 percent per year, the common measures of inflation would show stable prices. However, on the monetary equilibrium view, that stable price level is disguising underlying inflation of 3 percent, as prices should have fallen by 3 percent. Austrian economists have long argued that something like this may well have been at work in the 1920s, where relatively stable prices concealed a multiyear inflationary boom that culminated in the recession and then the stock market crash of 1929.
To the extent that a fall in the overall level of prices reflects increased productivity, it is Good. Similarly, a decline in the price level caused by the decreased relative scarcity of key goods is not problematic. The dramatic fall in oil prices in the autumn of 2008 was enough to cause the average level of prices in the United States to fall, which is the source of much of the concern about deflation. However, this sort of deflation is not the type to be concerned about, and certainly does not warrant the comparisons to the Great Depression. In fact, falling oil prices in this case probably did much to prevent the early months of the recession from being any worse than they were, as lower gasoline prices eased financial pressures on many households.
The Bad
The “Bad” sort of deflation arises from an insufficient supply of money. When people do not have as much of their wealth in the form of money as they would like, they will make attempts to increase those money balances. Assuming that in the short run additional income is not possible, people have essentially only two other options: sell off other assets or reduce their expenditures. Either one will work, but selling off assets is problematic for two reasons. First, it is not totally under the individual’s control since it requires a buyer, and second, if everyone is short on money, finding a buyer will be especially difficult because everyone else is looking to sell. Therefore, the most likely result of a deficient money supply is that people will restrict their expenditures to allow more of their income to build up as checking account or currency balances.
As everyone reduces spending, firms see sales fall. This reduction in their income means that they and their employees may have less to spend, which in turn leads them to reduce their expenditures, which leads to another set of sellers seeing lower income, and so on. All these spending reductions leave firms with unsold inventories because they expected more sales than they made. Until firms recognize that this reduction in expenditures is going to be economy-wide and ongoing, they may be reluctant to lower their prices, both because they don’t realize what is going on and because they fear they will not see a reduction in their costs, which would mean losses. In general, it may take time until the downward pressure on prices caused by slackening demand is strong enough to force prices down. During the period in which prices remain too high, we will see the continuation of unsold inventories as well as rising unemployment, since wages also remain too high and declining sales reduce the demand for labor. Thus monetary deflations will produce a period, perhaps of several months or more, in which business declines and unemployment rises. Unemployment may linger longer as firms will try to sell off their accumulated inventories before they rehire labor to produce new goods. If such a deflation is also a period of recovery from an inflation-generated boom, these problems are magnified as the normal adjustments in labor and capital that are required to eliminate the errors of the boom get added on top of the deflation-generated idling of resources.
Over the course of U.S. history the economy has been subject to a number of deflationary episodes, all of which were the consequence of a variety of government interventions in the monetary system. In each of those cases before the Great Depression, policymakers largely allowed the economy to repair itself by standing by and doing little to nothing while prices and wages fell sufficiently to get the demand for money back into alignment with the supply. No doubt these were painful recessions that could have been avoided by having a banking system that responded to changes in money demand by more quickly adjusting the money supply, rather than allowing the price-level adjustment process to cause the problems noted above. However painful they were, these recessions did not become the “Ugly” version of deflation precisely because policymakers allowed the necessary downward adjustments to take place, which was the correct thing to do given the monetary system’s errors that caused the monetary deflation in the first place.
The Ugly
During the Great Depression, what should have just been a Bad deflation became an Ugly one. This deflation was unlike earlier ones for two reasons. First, the scale of the deflation was unmatched. The U.S. money supply fell over 30 percent between 1929 and 1933, a period in which the demand for money was actually rising as a consequence of the stock market crash and the bank failures that followed it. The combined effect was a massive downward pressure on prices. The Fed did not actively reduce the money supply during this period; it failed to react strongly enough to actions the public and banks were taking, such as the public’s holding more currency rather than bank deposits, which caused a multiplied reduction in the total money supply. As Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States describes it, there was a great deal of internal debate within the Fed over whether it had the power to respond as we now believe it should have and whether, even if it had the power, such a response was the right one. Those who argued in favor of doing nothing won the day and substantially worsened the depression in the process.
The second difference from earlier recessions was that policymakers adopted the view that the key to recovery was to “maintain” prices and wages at their pre-deflation levels. Both Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt strong-armed business leaders into keeping prices and wages up and pushed laws that directly or indirectly did the same.
The effects of these misguided attempts at price and wage maintenance were devastating. Firms continued to pay unjustifiably high wages, while watching sales slacken because prices also stayed high; they covered their losses out of their profits, causing some firms to fail and others to see severe declines in their stock prices. This contributed to the low levels of private investment that prolonged the depression since firms did not have profits to recycle back into their own activities. More brutally, keeping wages so high led to the horrific unemployment rates of the Great Depression, which peaked at around 25 percent in 1933. Only by around 1934 did prices and wages fall enough to start bringing unemployment rates back down. However, unemployment remained at historic highs because even with the declines in prices and wages, private investors were hesitant to take risks in light of the policymakers’ earlier mistakes and the constantly shifting political environment. During the Great Depression, unemployment stayed above 14 percent from 1931 through 1940.
Current observers are quite right to point to the Great Depression as an example of what can go wrong from deflation. There is no doubt that the very large monetary deflation of the early 1930s made the recession that began in the summer of 1929 much deeper and more severe than it would have been otherwise. But even so, had prices and wages been allowed to adjust, that recession would have been Very Bad, but not Ugly. Attempting to keep prices and wages high during the monetary deflation prevented the cleansing price adjustments from taking place and forced sellers to make “quantity” adjustments in the form of reduced production and historic levels of unemployment.
Avoiding the Last Big Mistake
The price level declines seen in the fall of 2008 and early 2009 do not seem to be harbingers of significant deflation. As noted earlier, the decline in oil prices is the leading factor pushing down the overall price level, and this is the benign price deflation that we have labeled Good. In fact, the Fed’s initial response to the troubles in the banking system in the fall of 2008 was to flood the system with reserves, remembering the mistakes the Fed made at the onset of the Great Depression. Given the worries about a cascade of bank failures and the major deflationary effects this would have had on the money supply and the economy as a whole, injecting some additional reserves was probably the right reaction at the time. Two key questions remain, however:
1) Did the Fed overreact and create too many reserves? A look at the Fed’s balance sheet suggests it may well have done so, especially given how many of those new reserves are just sitting in the banks right now (helped along by the Fed, now paying interest on such reserves).
2) Will the Fed be able to withdraw those reserves as the economy recovers and thereby avoid a potentially massive and damaging inflation? If it cannot do so, we will face a much bigger threat in the near future from inflation than from deflation.
All of that said, we do not know for certain what is going on with the demand for money. We know that expenditures are down, which suggests that people are quite possibly increasing their demands for money. But in the absence of the thousands of bank failures that characterized the 1930s and with evidence that banks, on the whole, are continuing to lend (despite scare-mongering media and government stories to the contrary), the concern that any increase in money demand will translate into significant monetary deflation seems remote. As Milton Friedman once said, central banks are always trying to avoid their last big mistake. In this case, that big mistake was the Great Depression, and the Fed has clearly shown a willingness to err on the side of inflation rather than deflation, even at the cost of putting itself in a difficult position once the recovery starts.
What all of this goes to show is that the best way to avoid both Bad and Ugly deflation and to generate the Good kind is to minimize the role of government intervention in both the monetary system and the regulation of prices and wages. A competitive banking system—one without a central bank but with fractional reserves—would avoid both deflation and inflation. Even under a central bank, the effects of a monetary deflation can be minimized by restricting government’s involvement in the setting of prices and wages. In a free economy the only deflation we would see is the slow, long-run decline in prices that results from the productive powers of competitive capitalism. That deflation would be just another Good produced by truly free markets.Notebook: UMass seeks ESPN’s help in filling out 2016 football schedule
AMHERST — While UMass searches for a new athletic director, the school is set to utilize the services of ESPN’s Dave Brown to help fill the 2016 football schedule.
UMass needs to add at least three home games for that season. According to athletic department sources, the school has approached the ESPN vice president for college sports programming to help serve as a scheduling matchmaker of sorts. Brown has provided similar help to other schools needing scheduling assistance.
Former athletic director John McCutcheon and former assistant athletic director Garrett Waller did most of the work scheduling football games. But Waller left for Rhode Island last year and McCutcheon left to become the AD at California-Santa Barbara earlier this month.
Before McCutcheon left, he was in discussions with ESPN to broadcast UMass home games online at ESPN3 during the school’s seasons as an independent. The Minutemen are scheduling under the expectation of being an independent for the 2016-18 seasons.
NCAA rules mandate that schools play at least five home games. UMass could apply for a waiver for that season because of the short window to complete that schedule after the Mid-American Conference forced the Minutemen to choose between putting all of their sports in the MAC or leaving as a football-only member.
UMass has only two home games scheduled for 2016, Sept. 10 vs. Connecticut and Sept. 24 vs. Rhode Island. Both of those are contracted to be held at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. The Minutemen have road games at Boston College, Old Dominion, Appalachian State, Troy and Hawaii.
DeFILIPPO NOT A CANDIDATE — Former Boston College athletic director Gene DeFilippo squashed rumors that he’s a candidate for UMass’ vacancy.
The Northampton native said he hadn’t heard from UMass and wouldn’t be interested.
“I’m not interested in being an athletic director again,” said DeFilippo Thursday.
He retired from Boston College in 2012.
WILLIAMS A CANDIDATE? — Sources familiar with UMass’ search said Kennesaw State athletic director Vaughn Williams is someone the search committee is interested in to fill the school’s vacancy.
The New Jersey native played football at UMass, where he graduated with a sport management degree in 1992. He earned his master’s degree from Boston College and spent 61/2 years as UConn’s associate athletic director where he worked in “strategic planning, facility master planning, and policy and procedure improvement and was the chair of the University of Connecticut’s Sportsmanship/Fan Environment Initiative Committee,” according to his Kennesaw bio.
SEASON-OPENING BYE — UMass is expected to release its full 2015 football schedule Friday afternoon. The Minutemen open the season on Sept. 12 at Colorado. That’s one week later than most teams as their bye week is Sept. 3, when most teams open their season.YOUR rubbish could be spying on you. As well as guarding your grime it might be disclosing your dirty habits. Your wheelie could be revealing all.
Residents in Sydney’s inner west were surprised this month when the local council began replacing municipal bins, many of which in perfect working order.
They were even more surprised when it was revealed there was a hidden addition to their shiny new bin. And it was telling council about all their filthy habits.
Sydney’s Inner West council has begun rolling out 35,000 new wheelie bins. Just under the rim in the new bins, away from prying eyes, is a small circular device — a Radio Frequency Identification Device, or RFID, tag.
It’s part of the increasing march of the so-called ‘internet of things’ which sees everyday objects — from fridges to kettles collect data on how they are used. Connected fridges can tell when products are expiring, connected bins could tell when you haven’t done enough recycling.
Privacy expert David Vaile has told news.com.au the unwillingness of organisations to reveal exactly why they need all this extra information meant residents it was “quite reasonable for people to be concerned... in the absence of transparency”.
The Inner West council is not alone. If anything, they’re pretty late to the game. Sydney’s Randwick and Ryde councils are among many across Australia that already tag their bins and British cities have had what is sometimes know as is “bin bugs” for a decade or more.
In a statement, Inner West council told news.com.au tagging technology was a “standard feature in mobile garbage bins.” Their bin bugs were used for “identification” purposes and could detect households which “contaminate” their recycle bins.
“It is an asset management tool allowing councils to monitor their bin infrastructure. Should a resident advise that their bin has been missed, Council has real time information to identify whether all bins on that street are yet to be emptied, if the bin has already been collected, or the reason why the bin may not have been collected.”
The various tags work in different ways but one version is activated when the bin is hoisted off the ground to be emptied. As the contents are tipped out, the chip passes an antenna revealing its unique ID number.
The lifting mechanism then weighs each bin. If a bin is deemed too full, or indeed if a recycling bin seems too empty, the waste contractor instantly knows what household the bin belongs too.
A quick scan will also see if a waste receptacle has grown a mind of its own and wheeled itself away to a neighbouring street.
But it’s the secrecy involved which has concerned some.
Some British councils have got in hot water for squirrelling the tags under the rims without informing residents. While a poll taken in 2009 by Britain’s Big Brother Watch, admittedly an organisation whose name suggests they are not predisposed to monitoring technology, found that more than 82 per cent of people opposed putting microchips in bins to encourage recycling.
Mr Vaile is the executive director of the University of New South Wales’ Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre. He sympathised with local residents’ concerns.
“I wouldn’t call it paranoia, even if everything was fully clear and disclosed people would still worry, but they over react in the absence of transparency.
“It’s quite reasonable for people to be concerned about the governance of that information and what it is going to be used for.”
He said while, initially, there might be a tight remit around what the information was used for, over time “data creep” might see it used for other purposes. It wouldn’t be too difficult for someone monitoring the data to know if a particular household had gone on holidays because of the low weight of their rubbish, he said.
“Will this info be shared? Where will it be stored? It’s a massive pool of apparently low value information but it can be potentially bundled up with other information and there can be unexpected and unintended consequences.”
In some countries, households are charged depending on the weight of their rubbish. Inner West said they had “no plans to move to a pay by weight system”.
On the Inner West council website, a page about the new bins explains that the introduction of the RFID technology is used to identify bins and “educate people about the correct way to dispose of their waste.”
However, no mention of the tags was made on social media posts regarding the bins’ rollout, a flyer sent to residents or a letter physically attached to the bin — despite the tag being just centimetres away.
Mr Vaile said companies and government organisations tended to downplay the use of data collection technology while privacy statements, setting out how the data would be used, were often only up to a bare minimum standard or completely lacking.
Writing for The Conversation in October, Associate Professor in Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney, Uri Gal, said the amount of data collected on individuals had serious implications for free will.
“Data surveillance has become increasingly invasive and its scope has broadened with the proliferation of the internet of things [that] expands surveillance to our homes, cars, and daily activities by harvesting data from smart and mobile devices.”
These “digital traces” were collected and sometimes sold or shared without the knowledge of the people whose data had been collected. This information could then be used to “nudge” people into certain behaviours — like recycling more.
“More of our behaviours will be evaluated and ‘corrected’. With this disciplinary drive becoming routine, there is a danger we will start to accept it as the norm, and pattern our own behaviour to comply with external expectations, to the detriment of our free will.”
But if we’re already giving our data away on social media should we even worry about what our bins are reporting? Dr Vaile said we should.
“People have given up their rights on social media in a deal they might not accept or even understand. But just because they have done that, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be wary about their privacy being used in other ways.”Nevada teen Carter Wilkerson has successfully ousted Ellen DeGeneres for the world record of the most retweeted tweet of all time. The title, previously held by DeGeneres at 3.4 million retweets, comes a little over a month after Wilkerson asked the Wendy’s Twitter account how many retweets he would need for a free year’s supply of chicken nuggets, and the company responded with “18 million.”
.@carterjwm is now the most retweeted tweet of all-time. That’s good for the nuggets, and $100k to @DTFA. Consider it done. #nuggsforcarter pic.twitter.com/k6uhsJiP4E — Wendy's (@Wendys) May 9, 2017
Since then, brands and celebrities have all poured their support for Wilkerson, from Apple Music, Google, and Microsoft to actor Aaron Paul, T-Mobile CEO John Legere, and Ellen DeGeneres herself. United tried to get in on the fun, too, but mostly this backfired just about immediately. Meanwhile, Twitter has granted Wilkerson a verified badge, and made a custom hashtag with emoji for the cause. It even included Wilkerson’s tweet in its Q1 shareholder letter.
Wilkerson appeared on The Ellen Show on April 18th (about a week and a half since his initial tweet) where she proposed that if he makes it to 18 million retweets, she’ll give him a special prize — but on the condition that he doesn’t surpass her own record by asking fans to retweet both their accounts and surge to 18 million together. Whoops. Sorry, Ellen.
Nugget boy is here today. You know what they say... keep your friends close and your Twitter competition closer. pic.twitter.com/PA9Vfu2tY3 — Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) April 18, 2017
Since the tweet went viral, Wilkerson has pivoted his objective a bit — promising that once the record is broken, Wendy’s will donate $100,000 to The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. Wendy’s also confirmed that the teen will get his nuggets, though it didn’t specify how many pieces he’ll be allotted per day. For the amount of press the company got though, complying with Wilkerson’s nuggets demand sounds like bargain.Podmass _In [Podmass](https://www.avclub.com/c/podmass),_ The A.V. Club _sifts through the ever-expanding world of podcasts and recommends the previous week’s best episodes. Have your own favorite? Let us know in the comments or at [podmass@avclub.com](mailto:podmass@avclub.com)._
To listen to these and other podcasts, visit Podmass Central, our podcast hub.
Podmass comments and suggestions for future coverage can be directed to podmass@avclub.com
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Note: Certain podcasts released on Friday may be added on Monday morning.
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“I have my own Google: It’s called books.” —Greg Proops, The Smartest Man In The World “Yes, we all murder each other all the time. It’s never not satisfying.” —Paul F. Tompkins, as the ghost of Richard Harrow, answering the viewer question “Do you get to murder anyone in Murder Heaven?”, Comedy Bang! Bang! “Diarrhea in a pool is the most invasive species.” —Tig Notaro, Professor Blastoff
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NEW TO US
Tell ’Em Steve-Dave!
On a recent episode of Tell ’Em Steve-Dave!, Brian Quinn—one of the show’s three main members and star of TruTV’s Impractical Jokers—complained that they don’t get any respect in the podcast community, specifically citing a lack of mention on Podmass. Lovable grump (and routinely the best part of the show) Walt Flanagan explained that he thinks the show is better as an underground hit, with the fans of TESD part of a special tight-knit club. About two minutes later, Flanagan calls the show’s listeners furious masturbators who live in their mom’s basement. After Quinn asks why they’re insulting the audience after showering them with praises, Walt explains to them, “[You’re] still in that special club, but there’s a reason you’re in that club! There’s a reason you’re listening to some fucking third-rate podcast!”
That self-deprecating sense of humor (to themselves and the audience) is a big part of what makes Tell ’Em Steve-Dave! such an entertaining listen. Led by longtime pals Quinn, Flanagan, and Bryan Johnson (the latter two of Comic Book Men on AMC), they record in the back of a New Jersey comic-book store run by Flanagan, and it runs on t Kevin Smith’s Smodcast network. Occasionally featuring prepared comedy pieces, it’s mostly made up of the boys chatting about the news, busting each other’s balls, or talking with the large supporting cast of friends who have appeared throughout the show’s 150-plus episodes. TESD’s mildly half-assed charm comes from them doing pretty much whatever they want. (Their most popular episodes form the “Making Hay” series, where the trio investigates the depressing underbelly of a cheap Jersey flea market.) It’s ultimately three regular guys just hanging out, though way more alluring than that sounds. [BB]
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OUTLIER
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OK Radio
Nature Theatre Of Oklahoma, a New York-based performance art troupe, borrows its name from the all-welcoming collective in Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika. On its surface, the same probably couldn’t be said for NTO founders and hosts Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper’s podcast, which features niche-aimed long-form discussions with scholars and artists like Viewpoints pioneer Anne Bogart, Yale dramaturgy professor Tom Sellar, and the occasional mainstream guest like Reggie Watts. As esoteric and uncompromising as some of the discussions get (i.e. Bogart comparing her role in the rehearsal process to “pregnancy paper” for actors to pee on), listeners with an interest in the experimental arts world might find OK Radio to be a quintessential platform for serious discussions with serious artists whose advice could be applied across many disciplines. On the other hand, it’s a must for students. [DJ]
THE BEST
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The Best Show on WFMU
Much of the lasting brilliance of The Best Show lies in Tom Scharpling’s refusal to allow even excellent bits, like his classic 2009 Gathering Of The Juggalos meditation with Paul F. Tompkins, to grow stale. The host has a history of killing topics before they overwhelm the program or, in the case of 2013’s obsession with Grateful Dead’s Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, continually expanding the bit until it morphs into something new and exponentially more bizarre. In this solid installment, Scharpling continues his maniacal expansion of a soundscape that started with McKernan’s stomach-churning cover of “Good Lovin’” before incorporating Suicide, Chuck Woolery, Andrew Dice Clay, and Spring Breakers. The McKernan fixation also makes for a delightful call with comedian/Deadhead Andy Kindler, who performs his own version of the singer’s improvised creepiness. While poking fun at Juggalos has a short shelf life, the glory of Pigpen’s “four-day creep” lives on. [TC]
The Bugle #244: Russian Into Battle
Real global disasters never provide the right kind of fodder for The Bugle’s skewed perspective, but social issues that seem bizarrely avoidable make for perfect episodes. The head-scratching case of Russia’s extreme stance against homosexuals has Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver in top form as they reflect the insane news, and make it somehow even weirder. They’re able to tackle it from a number of angles in an unusually focused issue, ranging from news of President Obama skipping a meeting with Putin, to Zaltzman delivering an unforgettable fantasy laden with political puns. To make matters better and worse, Zaltzman rings a bell at every pun, which becomes its own joke by the end of the run. [MK]
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Comedy Bang! Bang! #236: Murder Heaven: Rob Corddry, Paul F. Tompkins
In what could be read as a metaphor for the episode in general, Scott Aukerman kills time at the beginning of this live recording session awaiting the arrival of his first guest, to whom he had apparently given bad directions. When Rob Corddry finally shows up about five minutes in to discuss the new season of Childrens Hospital and Hot Tub Time Machine 2, the show begin in earnest. But as is often the case with CBB, once the second guest steps in, it gets good. Paul F. Tompkins tries on a new character: the gravel-voiced, half-faced Former Richard Harrow, ghost of Boardwalk Empire’s sad WWI vet. The clear episode highlight sees Aukerman and Corddry attempt to puzzle through Harrow’s explanation of the convoluted system of heavens available to the deceased, including Murder Heaven, where everybody murders one another all the time. [DD]
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Comedy Bang! Bang! #237: Filipino Blockbuster: Jonah Ray, Nick Thune, Eugene Cordero
Scott Aukerman is at his best with first-time guests, especially when the guests are open for anything. Nerdist co-host Jonah Ray makes his first appearance on the show, alongside jovial regular Nick Thune, for a chat that rapidly devolves into an overly self-aware bro-fest. “Filipino Blockbuster” is a slight b-b-b-bonus-s-s-s episode, but its relative brevity is no problem. Once Eugene Cordero (last heard as Jazz-Jazz the puerile barber) shows up, Ray and Thune interact perfectly with the Filipino owner of a Blockbuster-esque mall kiosk. Cordero’s principle joke runs dangerously parallel to Be Kind Rewind, but he makes it work and quickly elevates it to new extremes, which play out in a game of Would You Rather? for the books. [MK]
Doug Loves Movies: Dominic Monaghan, Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel
It’s no surprise that Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel, two-thirds of Human Giant, have an easy, hilarious chemistry on this episode; what is a little surprising, and delightful, is how well actor Dominic Monaghan fits into the dynamic. Monaghan jumps in with the comedians’ riffing, and gets in quite a few good observations/stories of his own, many of them having to do with his BBC America show Wild Things. Better yet, he understands the Leonard Maltin Game well enough to jump in with ease (those rule cards given to Doug Benson by a fan appear to be working), though with such movie-savvy (Scheer) and shameless (Huebel) opponents, he does get a bit overshadowed. But it’s a smooth, funny episode that flies by, and makes a good case for repeat appearances by Monaghan. [GK]
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Hang Up And Listen: The A-Rod Vs. Everyone Edition
Clint Dempsey is coming back to play soccer in America with the Seattle Sounders, and the patronizing analysis of his move continues! Despite the progress made by the US Men’s National Team, sportswriters cannot stop acting like a bunch of entitled SEC fans whose school hasn’t won a conference title since the 1970s by demanding that a 30-year-old with kids should not take a lot of money to return to his home country and play a sport while he’s still in his prime; he should instead choose to remain in a foreign country with a struggling team just to play against better competition. HUAL delves into this discussion, but hardly anyone comes out looking like they actually give a damn about the person behind all the nationalistic hopes for World Cup success. [KM]
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Improv4Humans #93: LIVE from DCM 15 Pt. 1
While callbacks have never been the backbone of Improv4Humans, this week’s live episode, taped at the Del Close Marathon in New York City, demonstrates their importance. For the marathon, Matt Besser does something special, inviting new improvisers up to join him every 20 minutes. The result is a manic show, occasionally hilarious, and at many points stilted. Besser does his best to keep “Live From DCL 15 Pt. 1” interesting throughout, but the episode really shines when the right crew comes out. In particular, cult improviser Chris Gethard (of The Chris Gethard Show) comes out swinging for his entire 20 minutes in the second segment, and Brian Huskey’s group toward the end delivers an absurd airport scene. The audience goes quiet during a few dead moments, but overall Besser delivers a solid slate of improv. Plus, there’s a second part to look for soon. [MK]
The J.V. Club #73: Autumn Reeser
It’s always interesting when guests with children come on the show, and Last Resort’s Autumn Reeser’s pregnancy makes for a fascinating discussion as she contemplates how her past will influence the decisions she makes if her child is a girl. Reeser already has a son, but the possibility of a girl on the second round makes her more aware of how she can help her daughter overcome the challenges she faced as a teen, from bullying to choosing between smarts and popularity. It’s one of the show’s longer episodes, with Varney and her guest spending considerable time on their adult lives in the entertainment industry, but there’s a strong balance of past and present subject matter. Reeser paints an evocative image of her childhood in Southern California, and she provides a strong point of contrast to Varney’s upbringing in the Arizona desert. [OS]
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My Brother, My Brother And Me 162: Mystery At The Petting Zoo
An opening routine in which the brothers speculate about the identity of the new Doctor (spoiler alert: it’s Peter Capaldi) sets the tone for one of the nerdier MBMBAMs in recent memory. The questions seem to have been chosen more judiciously than usual, since the hosts were able to choose from two weeks of submissions due to last week’s clip show. As a result, the running gags are solid, most notably a mispronunciation of “Celiac” that will most likely only be funny to those who haven’t completely lost touch with their 12-year-old selves. And the brothers have yet to shake their bashful amusement with the goods offered at extremerestraints.com despite months of sponsorship—a fact that provides an unusually high number of giggles this time around. [AB]
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Professor Blastoff #116: Ecology (w/ Katie Pagnucco)
Professor Blastoff hosts tend not to plan much of anything, but this excellent episode is especially reliant on improv. Recording in a hotel (and sounding like it) in Montreal, the three set off a number of riffs that see callbacks of increasing payoff peppered throughout, a treat the hosts can’t always provide. Guest Katie Pagnucco, a Ph. D candidate studying ecology and invasive species, is a great booking: an eager, fast-talking expert, she’s also a member of an improv troupe, and it shows. When the hosts arrive at the topic, they’ve got a half-hour of crackling, semi-relevant material to pull from, and with the discussion focused on the sort of species they’d eradicate; or what’s cuter, a mouse-sized Ed Asner or an Ed Asner-sized mouse; or rounds of “We Built This City” to complement humans outgrowing the term “invasive,” it amounts to essential listening for fans of Professor Blastoff at its silliest. [SM]
Nerdist 393: Vince Gilligan
Sure, it’s a tie-in with Chris Hardwick’s hosting duties on the new Breaking Bad after-show Talking Bad, but Vince Gilligan is such a cordial guest that he’s perfect for Nerdist. Before digging into theories about Breaking Bad, Hardwick brings up Gilligan’s script for Wilder Napalm, the 1993 |
people talk about gender, and transgenderism in particular.
Honestly, I think I could feel pretty satisfied with my entire “career” (I know) if I could just manage to put this one thing to rest.
Gender expression and gender identity are two different things.
One of the chief confusions about transsexuality and the decision we make to transition is how, from an outside perspective, with limited or superficial understanding, it can seem that the reason we transition is because we’ve determined ourselves to be female or male on the basis of our personalities fitting better into a female or male identity than into the gender that we’d been assigned, and that therefore we “ought” to be the sex that matches our personality.
That is not how it works, how we came to realize our gender identity, or why we transition.
From this basic misunderstanding a whole host of common confusions and misconceptions arise. This is what motivates people to say that we ought to simply learn to accept ourselves instead, or that if we lived in some kind of post-gender utopia without rigid binaries there would cease to be any need for transition, or that trans people are buying into or enforcing gender binaries and stereotypes, or that trans women are “appropriating” female stereotypes and trans men are simply experiencing “internalized misogyny”, or that we ought to learn to simply be happy with being feminine men or masculine women.
But in actuality, all of those concepts are based on a faulty premise, that is easily undercut by looking at the actual complex (and diverse) realities of lived trans experience. All too often, people will discuss transgenderism as an abstract, thinking that having some basic grasp of the concept (often hastily, lazily or shoddily assembled from clunky and simplistic metaphors like “women trapped in men’s bodies”) is a sufficient basis on which to work through the theoretical implications and develop firm opinions or political positions on us (as though we’re an “issue”, not people), and totally neglect to acquaint themselves with the actual living, breathing reality of trans people, and our community.
Doing so -bothering to learn about who we are- is completely essential to not glossing over certain key details. One of these is the fact that not all trans women are feminine; many identify, or express themselves, as butch, tomboy, masculine, androgynous, or otherwise not strictly femme (and it is a relatively small minority for whom their femininity couldn’t have been safely expressed within a male identity if they were male). Likewise, not all trans men are masculine. Many identify, express or present within a femme spectrum. This reality collapses the abstracted, simplified concept of what transgenderism is and means that most cis people carry around. It is only by discussing the abstraction as divorced from the realities that one is able to maintain the faulty premises required for the misconceptions I mentioned above. It’s sort of like physicists who think that with the right models they could understand or solve everyone else’s fields. The basic concepts aren’t enough, and lead only to misunderstandings. You need to consider the nuances and complexities of the actual reality in order to get anything even resembling an accurate idea of what’s actually going on, and you need to know what’s actually going on before you can start throwing out theories about it.
The abstract concept of The Transsexual™ is someone who is wholly normative within the assumed role, sexuality, disposition and all other culturally gendered whatevers of the identified sex but was “trapped in the wrong body” of the assigned sex. This keeps things simple. “She’s feminine, she’s attracted to men, she’s passive, she likes wearing dresses… yep, give her the surgery and she’s a woman!”. But in reality a trans person is no more likely to be the perfect normative model of her identified sex than is a cis person. All the normal variations are in play. Sexual orientation can be androphilic, gynophilic, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, demisexual, kinky, vanilla, whatever. “Masculinity” and “femininity”, cobbled together as they are from innumerable individual traits, can be as diverse and complex as in anyone.
By recognizing the existence of such diversity within trans identities, the theory that we concluded our gender identity after the fact by buying into binaries and stereotypes just doesn’t make sense. It’s logically inconsistent with the observed reality. Like saying “the earth is flat” while observing a ship’s mast rise above the ocean horizon before her hull. If transsexuality were simply the result of thinking “I’m feminine, therefore I’m female” or “I’m masculine, therefore I’m male” there would be butch trans women or femme trans men. If transsexuality were simply an exaggerated form of homosexuality, we’d see no trans lesbians or gay trans men.
Gender identity is not something that is concluded. It does not have reasons. There is never a “my gender identity is female, because X, Y and Z”. There is only the identification, that precedes the reasoning. There is only “my gender identity is female”.
THERE IS NEVER A “WHY” SOMEONE TRANSITIONS.
(other than a conflict between assigned sex and gender identity, and wanting to feel comfortable and happy, anyway)
Cis readers, how did you determine your gender identity? Did it take until you were old enough to ask what the difference was between boys and girls? And then when your parents said, “boys have a penis, girls have a vagina”, you checked your genitals, and arrived at the conclusion of your identity? Or did your sense of yourself as male or female precede anything even resembling a precise understanding of what those terms really mean? Didn’t you know which you were before even knowing there were anatomical differences between the sexes? How did you know not to object to your gender assignment?
You didn’t object, and felt comfortable with the assignment, for the same reasons we did object (or wanted to), and felt uncomfortable. Something deep, that precedes its articulation, precedes the understanding of the social mores of “masculine”/”feminine”, and long precedes any received or theorized definition of what constitutes gender or sex.
In order to understand what gender identity is, we’d need to eliminate everything it isn’t. If gender identity is not determined by relative masculinity or femininity (as indicated by the fact that these traits can exist in any combination with gender identity and assigned sex) then those are separate variables. If a person of any gender identity can have any sexual orientation, then that’s a separate variable. If gender can be presented or expressed in any number of ways across gender identities, then that’s a separate variable too. The only thing that is consistent across all individuals with a given gender identity (such as “man”, or “woman”, amongst others), is the deep-seated sense of identification with that concept. The term rings true. It holds meaning. Something inside of us says “yes, that’s right. That makes sense. That feels like home. That is what I am.”
“I am a woman.”
That is what gender identity is. This can often be misunderstood by cis people because they don’t need to ask the question, or consider the dimensions and location of their gender identity. For someone whose gender identity fits with what they’ve been assigned and told, it can feel like simply a given, and in fact be confused with sex, gender role, or gender assignment, or even sexual orientation. When all those things line up tidily, it becomes very difficult to see where one ends and another begins. Instead one has the sense that they all form a continuous whole, the one flowing from the other. “I’m attracted to women because I’m masculine because I’m a man because I have a penis because I’m a man because I’m masculine because I’m attracted to women”. It can all be taken at face value, and taken for granted, which can even give cis people the impression that they don’t even have a gender identity (or at least not a gender identity that’s distinct from either their physiological sex or expressed role). It also becomes profoundly difficult for a cis person to understand what, exactly, gender identity is at all if it is distinct from gender expression, gender role, physiological sex, or sexual orientation.
Adding to the confusion is how much gender expression is used as a tool for comprehending or, well, expressing gender identity. Let’s say your gender identity is female, and “girl” is what feels right, feels like you. But people keep saying you’re a boy (and you’ve been assigned as such, because that’s what your body looks like), and they keep expecting you to behave as such. Meanwhile, though, they’re sending the message that dolls are “for girls”. In the absence of any other means to explore your sense of yourself as female, even if you don’t yet have the words to describe that feeling, you may indeed reach for the dolls, and play with them. This doesn’t mean you’re “naturally” inclined to be “feminine” on account of your gender identity, or that girls “naturally” play with dolls, or that playing with the dolls is what “makes you” female or “proves it”, or that the gender identity (sense of self as female) is definitively connected to the gender expression (playing with the dolls) at all. It simply means that you needed some kind of outlet for the gender identity, some way of actualizing that for yourself, and within the cultural context you were provided, and with what little tools you had, you found a way to explore the concept of yourself as female.
This can happen in all kinds of ways. Sometimes women who at the beginning of their transitions express as very femme may gradually gravitate towards an increasingly tomboyish presentation as they become more comfortable with themselves as female, and no longer require any extraneous means of identifying, expressing or asserting that femaleness. Likewise, many trans women had “cross dresser” phases before coming out to themselves as trans, where they wore extremely feminine, frilly clothing that they wouldn’t be caught dead in once they actually began transition and presenting as female in real life. Because once transition begins, the symbols of femininity (feminine, as always, simply meaning “culturally related to femaleness”) no longer have that same degree of power and appeal as a means of asserting one’s gender identity. The exaggerated, symbolic totems of womanhood stop being necessary once one’s actual womanhood begins to be accepted and made real.
Gender identity is who we are. Gender expression is how we choose, or how we need, to express that. An individual’s gender expression may vary considerably from context to context (and is highly culturally mediated), but the underlying gender identity is a solid constant. Even a gender-fluid identity remains stable in its fluidity, constant in its variability. That is an identity that is solid in its capacity to feel at home in a variety of conceptual locations.
I did not come to the conclusion that I am a woman because I like men, jewelry, make-up, dresses and My Little Pony. I was a woman first. The jewelry, make-up, dresses and (to a lesser extent) My Little Pony are simply the means through which I express my being a woman. Another woman may express her womanhood through a spikey colourful pixie cut, torn jeans, and a Smiths “Meat Is Murder” t-shirt. Another woman may express her womanhood through a flannel shirt, blue jeans and a pair of work-boots. We’re all women. How we choose to go about being women is irrelevant.
And the men are just who I happen to like to fuck. That’s irrelevant to being a woman too.
So please do bear this in mind. Although for a cis person, particularly one who fits nice and comfy into the assumed role and sexuality of their gender, gender identity may seem like some vague, mysterious, incomprehensible and impossible-to-pin-down concept, it’s important not to try pinning it down by forcing untenable associations with unrelated things like our gender expression, our personalities, how we present ourselves or dress, who we’re attracted to, or whether we prefer chocolate to nachos.
I’ll give you a hand, though:
Sexual orientation is with whom, whether and how you like to have sex.
Gender expression is how you express yourself in relation to gendered concepts (your relative “masculinity” and “femininity”, as well as whether you dress “like a boy” or “like a girl”, that kind of thing)
Physiological sex is how your body is configured in relation to gendered anatomy (like your chromosomes, your hormones, your breasts or lack thereof, your body and facial hair or lack thereof, and whether you have an innie or an outie).
Gender identity is the part of your gender that’s not any of that, and would stay the same even if that stuff changed.
…
No?
Well, at least it generally makes sense for us. Because our struggle, our identity, our trans-ness itself, is defined by the conflicts along the edges of these things.
Just trust us, I guess?
Or at least learn a bit about the diverse reality before forming theories on the basis of an abstraction.Fox News takes on CNN Rupert Murdoch challenges Ted Turner with a 24-hour news channel NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. entered the 24-hour news business Monday, launching the Fox News Channel.
Fox News is going head to head with Turner Broadcasting System's Cable News Network and MSNBC, the all-news joint venture of Microsoft Corp. and General Electric Co.'s NBC division.
For Murdoch, Fox News is the culmination of a long-held ambition -- building a U.S-based global television-news network.
However, the move puts Murdoch in direct competition with his longtime nemesis, TBS chief Ted Turner -- the hands-on media magnate dubbed "Captain Outrageous" by the press.
Turner has called Murdoch a "shlockmeister," recently comparing him to "the late Fuehrer."
Murdoch, in turn, has accused Turner and CNN of a liberal bias.
Fox News will initially reach 17 million U.S. homes, less than a third of CNN's reach.
In addition to facing CNN, Fox is also up against MSNBC, the news channel launched in July and now available in 22 million U.S. homes.
But Murdoch remains undaunted by the competition, vowing to offer an alternative to what he claims is the media's liberal slant.
Nancy Maynard, chair of media studies for the Freedom Forum, believes that it's easier to get an audience by defining one differently than building one. (106K WAV) or (106K AIFF)
Still, Murdoch faces an uphill battle.
Time Warner, a cable TV and media conglomerate that will soon merge with TBS, has refused to carry Fox News in the key Manhattan market.
That means national advertisers based in New York won't see the Fox channel, as Time Warner controls most of the city's cable market.
Antitrust regulators have required Time Warner to carry a CNN competitor, but the company surprised the industry recently by deciding to cut a deal with MSNBC, not Fox.
"Murdoch thought he had a deal with Time Warner, then, at the very last minute Time Warner went the other way, over to MSNBC," said media analyst David Londoner of Schroder Wertheim.
Londoner believes Murdoch saw the flip-flop as a breach of faith, if not a breach of contract.
Fox has now enlisted New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in its fight to be seen in the Big Apple.
Murdoch is threatening to pull Fox headquarters out of Manhattan if he doesn't get his way.
So far, Time Warner hasn't backed down.
But outside of New York, Fox hopes to persuade other cable systems to pick up the new channel by showering operators with $11 a head for each of their cable subscribers.
Murdoch hopes viewers' hearts and minds will follow.
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TV's squeeze play
TV starts autumn in AugustSome players got some new homes Thursday morning. The only thing left to determine is how permanent the moves will be.
Nine players were selected in Thursday's Rule 5 Draft, highlighted by first overall pick and left-handed pitcher Patrick Schuster.
Schuster, who had been part of the D-backs organization entering the day, was picked by the Astros in the Draft but is being moved to the Padres to complete Wednesday's trade that sent reliever Anthony Bass to Houston. The southpaw posted a 1.83 ERA with 45 strikeouts and 18 walks in 44 1/3 innings at Class A Advanced Visalia last season. It was the 23-year-old's second season in the California League.
Schuster made a name for himself at J.W. Mitchell (New Port Richey, Fla.) High School where he threw four straight no-hitters in 2009. The D-backs took him in the 13th round that year.
Adrian Nieto was the second choice of the Draft, moving from the Nationals to the White Sox. The 24-year-old Cuban catcher slashed.285/.373/.449 with 11 homers and 53 RBIs in 110 games for Class A Advanced Potomac last season. He also batted.271/.345/.333 in a 13-game stint in the Arizona Fall League.
Kevin Munson (Phillies), Tommy Kahnle (Rockies), Brian Moran (Blue Jays), Seth Rosin (Mets), Wei-Chung Wang (Brewers), Marcos Mateo (D-backs) and Michael Almanzar (Orioles) rounded out the other nine selections in the Major League portion of the Draft. Moran and Rosin were both traded to the Angels and Dodgers, respectively, following their selections.
Those players picked in the Major League portion of the Rule 5 Draft must stick on his new team's 25-man roster for the entirety of the 2014 regular season, lest they be returned to their previous organization.
Thirty-four selections were made in the Triple-A portion and just two were picked in the Double-A section. The biggest name in the later rounds doesn't even play baseball anymore. Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was taken in the Triple-A round by the Rangers. Wilson last played second base in the Rockies system in 2011.
Here's a breakdown of each Rule 5 selection:Save Saved Removed 1
Nigeria is catching and intends to add substantial momentum to the growing off-grid, mobile pay-go solar energy wave sweeping across Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world. Favorable renewable energy economics led Vice-President Yemi Asinbajo to announce the launch of a national Solar Home Systems (SHS) program on the outskirts of Abuja, the capital city, this week.
The SHS initiative, Asinbajo said as Acting President, will enable Nigerians to close the wide gap in energy access and provide citizens with safe, reliable, affordable and environmentally friendly electricity, according to a news report.
Nigeria’s national solar homes initiative is being led by Niger Delta Power Holdings Plc in partnership with U.K.-based off-grid, mobile pay-go systems specialist Azuri Technologies.
Bridging the Energy-Economic Opportunity Divide
“The grid is just one transmission centre, if you like, but we cannot take all our power from the grid. And so, in the next few years, it will not be absolutely important for you to be connected to the grid because we will be deploying every type of off-grid solutions that we can deploy and we want to do that in the industrial areas,” Asinbajo was quoted as saying.
Apparently, Asinbajo and the Nigerian government view SHS as the launch pad for providing sustainable energy access across the entire country.
“We think that as solar power becomes cheaper, and it is becoming cheaper practically day by day, we will be able to afford to do even more and deploying more across the country, especially to places that are not served by the grid.”
The government and Nigeria’s national SHS program partners aim to provide 20,000 homes with off-grid solar power systems over the next 12 months in the program’s initial phase.
“We expect that this will be replicated all over Nigeria. We are starting with 20,000, but I am sure we will ramp up very quickly,” Asinbajo commented. “We have been talking to the private sector about involving themselves also on this project.”
NDPHC managing director Chiedu Ugbo noted that the SHS initiative was right in line with the company’s mandate to close the nation’s electricity access gap.
“There are many Nigerians (an estimated 70 million) without any connection to the grid who still rely on rudimentary lighting systems characterized mainly by use of kerosene lamps, candles and petrol generators with attendant health and safety risks and indeed financial challenges,” he was quoted.
“By the Solar Home System initiative being launched by Your Excellency today, NDPHC, will be actively involved in the process of bringing power to these rural communities, thereby stimulating social and economic activities in the rural communities located off the grid.”
Cheaper than Kerosene
Installing small off-grid solar PV-battery storage systems and pico-solar DC household products – chargers, LED lighting, radios and others – in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cambridge, U.K.-based Azuri Technologies is one of a growing roster of innovative mobile pay-go solar energy startups writing a new book on energy resource and socioeconomic development in Africa.
Launched in Nairobi in 2011, tens of thousands of Azuri’s PayGo Energy systems and counting have been installed in 11 Sub-Saharan countries. Customers pay a small one-time installation fee, then purchase scratch cards or use an integrated mobile money service to top-up their home solar energy units. Azuri has found that the system cuts customers weekly energy spending by as much as 50 percent.
Significantly, they start saving money, improve home safety and start reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and environmental degradation immediately.
“Whereas residents typically spend $2 per week on kerosene, they might pay $1 per week for the basic PayGo system. So for half the cost they get proper, clean lighting and the ability to charge mobile phones when they want right at home,” CEO and co-founder Simon Bransfield-Garth said in an interview.
Multiple Benefits
The benefits don’t stop there. “As technology improves, we’re looking to deliver more to consumers,” Bransfield-Garth continued. “The next thing is probably TV sets, but we’re also looking at providing decent Internet access to rural residents. If you look at what it really takes to ‘level the playing field’ for Africans, Internet access is a great leveler. It has huge educational benefits, as well as offering entertainment and improving quality of life.”
In Nigeria, NDPHC has already installed 200 off-grid, mobile pay-go home solar energy units in Wuna as part of an SHS pilot program.
Moving forward, communities in 19 northern Nigerian states are being targeted as SHS program partners work to achieve the SHS goal of installing 20,0000 off-grid home solar energy systems across the country in 12 months.
Ugbo highlighted the inclusive nature of the SHS program:
“NDPHC has adopted a community-based approach that will allow the rural low-income dwellers an opportunity to participate in this project,” he was quoted in the news report. “This approach allows a monthly payment for energy and also acquisition of the SHS unit after a certain period of time.”
In a recent, related development, Nigeria’s Bank of Industry (BoI) launched a 1 billion nara (US$3.1 million) off-grid, pay-go solar energy fund as part of its Green Energy Project with the UN Development Program (UNDP).
The bank will lend and/or invest the fund’s capital on favorable, concessionary terms to qualified businesses installing mobile pay-go and other forms of off-grid solar energy systems and services across the country, according to a news report.This year’s NCAA Championships was amazing. I know what you’re thinking: aren’t they all? The Fastest Short Course Meet in the World (TM) doesn’t often disappoint, and this year was far from that. It seemed that nearly every session had jaw dropping swims, from Morozov’s 17.8 to Kevin Cordes’ complete revision of what a good 200 breaststroke was (1:48? There were many teams at NCAAs that didn’t have an IMer that fast).Still, as I watched, all I could think about was what was coming. It should come as no surprise to readers of this website that there is something of a phenomenon going on in age group swimming at the moment. Swimming is a sport that has seen rapid change in times since it’s inception: the sectional qualifiers of today would have been Olympians in another era based on raw time. However, as time has passed it seemed the pace of improvement had slowed. As good as Morozov’s 17.8 was, many people on deck noted that it was more surprising that we hadn’t seen a 17. split yet with the number of swimmers that gotten to the 18 mid range over the years.
I think we are approaching a point where improvement at the top of events will continue at least at it’s current pace but that depth is actually going to improve faster. Not to harp on the 50 freestyle, but I think that needing only a 19.4 to make the A Final in that event will look like the Stone Age very, very soon. When so many 15-17 year old swimmers are going 19 in that event, with one 14 year old almost there, it’s not hard to envision that in four years you will need an 18 to make the A final.
I use sprinting as an example but it’s not the only one. The NAG record assault we’ve seen this year is totally unprecedented, and it will leave few events untouched once those swimmers reach college age. When Mike Barrowman won the NCAA Championships in the 200 Breaststroke with a 1:53.7 in 1990, it took over a decade for anyone to beat that time. In this case, I don’t see that happening, and not only because Cordes is just a sophomore. Swimmers are going fast enough at 15-17 that they could go sub 1:50 200 breaststrokes in college in the next few years and at least push Cordes.At this point, I feel it’s appropriate to address an important question: why is this happening? Why is improvement moving away from a slowing curve? Some attribute recent fast swims to the the suit era and the way it expanded swimmers’ notions of what was possible. I think there’s something to that explanation, but I don’t think it nearly covers it.
At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, i think we owe this “talent” explosion to the increased proliferation of results and coverage via the internet. As recently as when I was an age grouper (1993-2000), if you were a good young swimmer you dominated local meets and that was it. For the most part, you had to wait until the Top 16 lists were released (far after your season was over) to see how you stacked up.
Now, age groupers are finding out about others in real time, at this website and through their own hounding searches through the ample live results resources. I believe this has compacted the amount of time between a jaw dropping swim and young swimmers adapting to the new reality of what is “fast”. Likewise, coaches are exchanging information in a way they never have before across some of these same platforms. This doesn’t even begin to address how much these developments have changed international swimming.
As I left this meet (and NCAA Swimming for a while), I couldn’t help but think of two things: how amazing it was and how amazing it will be. Couple that optimistic thought with the fact that University of Cincinnati is bringing back it’s scholarships, that’s a lot of optimism for college swimming. For the Fastest Short Course Meet in the World, it means we aren’t going to be changing that title anytime soon.Get ready for the holidays with these vegan Christmas cookie recipes. There are so many delicious favorites in this collection from chocolate crinkles to jam thumbprints to snickerdoodles.
Have you started thinking about Christmas cookies yet?
No pressure or anything…I just happen to love everything about Christmas so much that I’ve been listening to Christmas carols, hanging Christmas lights, and thinking about Christmas baking all weekend.
There are so many possibilities, aren’t there? And so many possibilities for vegan Christmas cookie recipes, too! Thank goodness.
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Cutout cookies, gingerbread cookies, no-bakes, peanut butter balls, candy-ish cookies…ugh, I love them all. And when they’re all warm from the oven – that’s the best! A little hot cocoa, some cookies, the tree all lit up – it’s just perfect.
Clearly I will need to exercise some self-control though. As a food blogger, there tends to be an overload of sweets in my house during December. Thankfully we have some nice neighbors and my vegan brother and sister-in-law who are more than happy to take them off our hands. :)
I thought I’d do a big roundup of some super scrumptious vegan Christmas cookie recipes to help you get into the Christmas spirit!
Photo credits: Vegan Richa, The Veg Life, The Pretty Bee, Southern Vegan Kitchen.
The best vegan Christmas cookie recipes:
Oat Thumbprint Cookies from My Fussy Eater
Chocolate Almond Linzer Cookies from Yummy Beet
Almond Butter Snickerdoodles from Vegan Richa
Melomakorauna, the Greek Christmas Cookie from Veggies Don’t Bite
No-Bake Coconut Snowballs from The Kitchn
Sparkly Apricot Rosemary Jewels from Spabettie
Hazelnut Shortbread from Ingenious Cooking
Soft Chocolate Almond Cookies from Veggie Inspired
Checkerboard Cookies from The Pretty Bee
Spicy Spelt Biscuits from Trinity’s Kitchen
Pumpkin Snickerdoodles from Vegan Richa
Coconut Pecan Chocolate Chunk Cookies from Woman In Real Life
Chocolate Sack Cookies from Vegan in the Freezer
Raw Red Velvet Cookies from Fragrant Vanilla Cake
Double Chocolate Cookies from Ceara’s Kitchen
Caramel Stuffed Salted Chocolate Cookies from How to Philosophize with Cake
Coconut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies from Yup It’s Vegan
Eggnog Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies from Ari’s Menu
Vegan Snowball Cookies from The Pretty Bee
Peanut Butter Cookie Cups from Southern Vegan Kitchen
Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Pretty Bee
Italian Tri Color Rainbow Cookies from The Veg Life
Persimmon Thumbprint Cookies from Feasting on Fruit
Salty Sweet Toffee Cookies with Dark Chocolate from How To Philosophize with Cake
White Chocolate Bark from Fork and Beans
Flourless Gingerbread Cookies from My Whole Food Life
Vegan Toffee Squares from Woman in Real Life
Raw Chocolate Cranberry Pecan Rugelach from Fragrant Vanilla Cake
Coconut Snowball Cookies from The Lunchbox Bunch
Salted Triple Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Brownie Cookies from Ari’s Menu
Crispy Chewy Peanut Butter Bites from Veggies Don’t Bite
Christmas Sprinkle Cookies from Namely Marly
Chocolate Frosted Peppermint Cookies from Sarah Bakes G Free
Amaretto Snowballs from Pure Ella
Gingerbread Cookie Balls from Tasty Yummies
Candy Cane Fudge from Woman in Real Life
Chai Spiced Snowball Cookies from Cafe Johnsonia
Chocolate Coconut Macaroons from The Viet Vegan
Homemade Peppermint Patties from My Invisible Crown
Raspberry Almond Thumbprint Cookies from Oh She Glows
Almond Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies from Ceara’s Kitchen
Cranberry Cookies from Fitting Into Vegan
No Bake Cookie Dough Bars from The Live In Kitchen
Chocolate Peppermint Crinkle Cookies from My Darling Vegan
No Bake Fudgy Snowballs from Skinny Taste (substitute maple syrup)
Snowman Cookie Pops from Petite Allergy Treats
Healthier Buckeyes from The Pretty Bee
No-Bake Coconut Delights from Whole New Mom
Chewy Coconut Sugar Cookies from Yammie’s Gluten Free Kitchen
Christmas Pudding Bites from Wallflower Girl
Enjoy! I hope you’ve found some new recipes to try this season! What is your favorite kind of Christmas cookie to bake?Eric Bailly has told the Daily Mirror he could have been lining up for Manchester City in the derby had Jose Mourinho not stepped in at the last minute.
Bailly, 23, moved to Old Trafford from Villarreal in a £30 million deal in the summer to become Mourinho's first United signing -- but not before he had been chased by City and Barcelona.
The Ivory Coast international has enjoyed a fine debut season in England, establishing himself in the first team with 31 appearances already this term.
But ahead of the Manchester derby at the Etihad Stadium, he has revealed he was close to joining Pep Guardiola's team.
Eric Bailly has made 20 Premier League appearances for Manchester United.
Bailly said: "I was in the Ivory Coast, I got called from a Portuguese number, he introduced himself but I just didn't believe it at first.
"Before I came to Man United, it was City who had been watching me. In my mind, I was going there. But then everything changed.
"It felt like Mourinho was the one who really wanted me. He showed more interest, he rang me and that's why I'm at Man United.
"Man City contacted my agent, Barcelona as well were talking to my agent, but they weren't as interested in me as Mourinho. He really pushed for the move."
Bailly is set to play an important role between now and the end of the season as United chase a place in the top four and the Europa League trophy.
He is Mourinho's only fit senior centre-back after Marcos Rojo, Chris Smalling and Phil Jones all suffered injuries.
Rojo will miss the rest of the season but there is hope Smalling and Jones could return next month.
Rob is ESPN FC's Manchester United correspondent. Follow him on Twitter @RobDawsonESPN.New Study Is Latest to Find That Higher Rates of Gun Ownership Lead to Higher Rates of Violent Crime Data shows that states with the top rates of gun possession have nearly three times the rate of gun murders compared to states with the fewest guns.
A Gallup poll taken last October found that around 63 percent of Americans believe that having a gun in the house makes their home safer. It’s a perception in keeping with a constant refrain from the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights proponents, who have steadfastly pushed the idea that a society with more guns leads to less crime, and that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
But those arguments, however persuasive on the surface, do not withstand empirical scrutiny. Instead, the most reliable academic analysis consistently shows that gun ownership is more often a catalyst than a deterrent to crime.
Last week, amid heightened scrutiny of gun violence in the wake of the Charleston church shootings, a group of researchers released the latest study on the correlation between firearm prevalence and crime rates. Their findings only add to the growing evidence against the “More Guns, Less Crime” hypothesis.
The authors of “Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.” are researchers from Boston’s Children Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health. They set out to gauge the effect of firearm-ownership rates on specific types of violent gun crimes. To do so, they used national gun-ownership surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and criminal data taken from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), a large annual database administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The data covers all 50 states for the years 2001, 2002, and 2004, the only years for which the CDC firearm-ownership statistics are available. The study then sorted the states into quintiles according to their level of firearm ownership. After controlling for a variety of demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic factors, the authors analyzed each group of states and their rates of the following crimes: robbery committed with a firearm, nonfatal assault with a firearm, firearm homicide, and overall homicide.
According to the “More Guns, Less Crime” hypothesis, states with higher levels of gun ownership would expect to see lower crime rates in those categories. By contrast, the study found that states with the lowest rates of firearm ownership (Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, California, Florida, Illinois, and Maryland) had significantly lower rates of firearm-related assault and robbery, firearm homicide, and overall homicide.
States with the highest gun-ownership levels (Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Arizona, West Virginia, North Dakota, Idaho, Mississippi, and Alabama), meanwhile, had 6.8 times the rate of firearm assaults, 2.8 times the rate of firearm homicides, and twice the rate of overall homicides than states with the lowest gun-ownership levels.
In the category of robbery with a firearm, the relationship between gun ownership rates was less clear: The study did find that robbery rates rose with gun-ownership rates, but in some states the increases were not statistically significant.
For every other type of crime examined by the authors, however, the conclusion was the same: more guns, more crime.
Some gun proponents may argue that “correlation doesn’t equal causation,” that perhaps gun ownership isn’t causing an increase in crime, but instead crime is causing an increase in gun ownership. In other words, people living in high-crime areas may be purchasing guns for protection. This possibility, known as “reverse causation,” was preempted by the authors of the new study, who showed that a state’s firearm-ownership rates in 2001 strongly predict violent crime rates in 2002 and 2004. The most coherent explanation is that higher rates of gun ownership lead to increases in crime, rather than the other way around.
Undergirding the idea that expanding gun ownership deters and prevents crimes is the belief that the “bad guy with a gun” will usually be a random assailant, someone the would-be victim has never encountered before or does not know personally. But here again the hard numbers are at odds with perceptions. Nearly 70 percent of homicides involve guns, and the majority of all homicide victims know their killers; among female homicide victims, 93 percent are killed by a familiar person.Woody Allen Fan Rankings 2017 Results! This is part 3, and you can find part 1 here and part 2 here.
Here’s the pointy end – the top 10!
10. Zelig (1983, 385 points)
It may be Allen’s shortest film, but there’s plenty to love. In fact, it was overwhelming loves (28%), bests (23%) and likes (23%). This is definitely one of those films we know fans love but isn’t really talked about.
9. Deconstructing Harry (1997, 391 points)
A huge surprise. Not only Allen’s best film of the 90s, a decade that did very well in our poll. But in the top 10! 24% of you said this was |
ups and other light trucks accounted for 78 percent of Chrysler’s first-quarter sales in the United States compared with about 60 percent for General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.
The Fiat 500 is part of Chrysler’s effort to pursue consumers who want more fuel-efficient models, and it plans to bring out more small cars based on Fiat designs and technology within the next several years, but most of its focus since bankruptcy has been on redoing larger models like its Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicles.
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Chrysler remains far less profitable than its domestic competitors. Ford earned $6.6 billion last year and $2.55 billion in the first quarter of 2011. Ford’s sold 3.5 times as many cars and trucks as Chrysler last quarter, and its profit was 22 times as much as Chrysler’s.
G.M., which filed for and emerged from bankruptcy a month later than Chrysler, earned $4.7 billion in 2010. It is scheduled to reveal first-quarter results Thursday.
The United States and Canada own a combined 10.8 percent of Chrysler, which is expected to have an initial public offering later this year or in early 2012. Chrysler is 30 percent owned by Fiat, which plans to pay $1.27 billion for an additional 16 percent stake when the government loans are repaid.
Mr. Marchionne said he expected Fiat to own 51 percent of Chrysler — it will automatically gain 5 percent more when Chrysler begins selling a car rated at 40 miles a gallon — by the end of the year. By that point, he said Chrysler would be folded into Fiat’s balance sheet.
Since Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy in June 2009, its majority owner has been a trust fund set up to cover the cost of health care for hourly retirees.By Silverback, PWG Staff Writer
Don Pedro Reservoir, CA – As Pro Wrestling Guerrilla”s (http://www.prowrestlingguerrilla.com) biggest tournament since the last one quickly approaches, nerves are frayed and patience is at it”s end in the offices of SoCal Valerie Wyndham and Dino Winwood, the PWG commissionatorial staff. Word came late last week that Chris Sabin had injured his jaw, and would be unable to compete in the Battle of Los Angeles Tournament, and that it was in the hands of SoCal Val to find a suitable replacement. Never being one to shirk responsibility, and seeing herself as more of a teacher than anything else, Val left the job of finding someone else up to the still-wet-behind-the-ears Dino Winwood, while she flew across the country to flirt and carouse with men of varying levels of fame and virtue. Coming off of what most consider to be a successful event with “Smells Like Steen Spirit,” Dino felt confident that he could find the perfect man. Sure, it would be easy to get someone like Kamala, this being an open weight tournament and all, but really, who couldn”t see Frankie Kazarian pinning the Ugandan Giant in less than a minute after a top rope Flux Capacitor? No, this tournament requires someone that the fans would embrace, yet would provide a challenge to whoever he was in the ring with, and Dino Winwood knew exactly who that would be.After a quick phone call, a fancy lunch, and a rather lengthy session of not only begging, but pleading as well, Mr. Winwood was proud to announce that Chris Sabin”s replacement in the Battle of Los Angeles would be none other than Rocky Romero! Since SoCal Val was out of town, and Extreme PWG Secretary Judy Sorensen was still at lunch, Dino had no one to announce it to, however, that”s beside the point. Now, the first round of the Battle of Los Angeles, taking place Saturday, September 3, is as follows:
Block A:
– Super Dragon vs. Kevin Steen
– Jack Evans vs. AJ Styles
– Christopher Daniels vs. Scott Lost
– American Dragon vs. Ricky Reyes
Block B:
– James Gibson vs. Joey Ryan
– Chris Bosh vs. El Generico
– TJ Perkins vs. Quicksilver
– Frankie Kazarian vs. Rocky Romero
Though Chris Sabin”s injury will prevent him from competing in the tournament, he will still be in attendance, and has promised to make an impact in one way or another. Also in attendance for Night 2, as a special attraction, will be NOSAWA & Kikutaro (formerly Ebessan) from All Japan Pro Wrestling! While NOSAWA has competed in PWG as recently as May, some fans may be unfamiliar with Kikutaro, and if you are one of those people, shame on you! However, you may rest assured that you will be delighted, and we mean that in the most literal sense possible, by the unique professional wrestling style of Kikutaro!
While we”re talking about the literal use of words, let me point out to the other writers in the professional wrestling community that the word is “formerly,” and not “formally.” “Formally” would imply that it was official, or by principle, as in “Formally known as Lord Reginald Windsor III, Esquire,” while “formerly” would imply that was how things were, or used to be, as in “James Gibson, formerly known as Jamie Noble.” I”ve seen the words mixed up quite a few times in recent months, and I don”t know how everyone else feels, but it really bugs me. So get it right next time, please?
Also making its return to PWG at the first annual Battle of Los Angeles tournament will be the world famous PWG Logo T-Shirts! Available in both classic Green and stylish Black, you”ll be the talk of the town when you dazzle folks with your very own PWG Logo T-shirt! Already have all 3 versions of the classic PWG Logo Tee? Fear not, loyal fan, because the limited edition Battle of Los Angeles T-Shirt will be available to purchase as well! But be quick to get your tournament t-shirt, because much like the All Star Weekend shirts, once they sell out, they will never be printed ever again! We have taken steps to guarantee the limited availability by burning the screen used to print the shirts, and actually shooting the screen printer himself. This may give you some insight into why it’s so hard for us to get shirts printed. Both the PWG Logo Tee”s and the BOLA Tee”s are only $15. Also available this coming weekend will be the newly released PWG 2 Year Anniversary DVD”s! Buy them for $15 each, or together for $25! That”s a $5 savings, which could be used for a brand new t-shirt!
Pro Wrestling Guerrilla”s “Battle of Los Angeles – Night 1” takes place at the Hollywood-Los Feliz JCC on Saturday, September 3 at 7:00PM. “Battle of Los Angeles – Night 2” takes place at the Hollywood-Los Feliz JCC on Saturday, September 4 at 5:00PM. The Hollywood-Los Feliz JCC is located at 1110 Bates Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90029. Tickets are $20 for each night, or can be purchased for both nights for only $30, and will be available at the door. For more information, please visit http://www.prowrestlingguerrilla.com or email info@prowrestlingguerrilla.comYEREVAN/BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan and Armenia accused each other on Monday of stoking tensions over the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh inside Azerbaijan after a recurrence of fighting last week, although Yerevan said there was no immediate threat of war.
The clashes on the Azeri enclave’s fringes, in which at least 15 combatants were killed, highlighted the risk of broader conflict in the South Caucasus area where vital oil and natural gas flow from the Caspian region to Europe.
Energy-producing Azerbaijan, host to oil majors including BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil, frequently threatens to take Nagorno-Karabakh back by force and is spending heavily on its armed forces.
“The situation at the front line remains tense... But analyses of the recent days shows that in a global context there are no grounds today for a large-scale war,” Armenian Defence Minister Seyran Ohanyan told journalists.
He accused Azerbaijan of responsibility for the hostilities over Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority ethnic Armenian enclave.
“The whole responsibility for escalation of the situation and human losses is on official Baku, which is the initiator of the tension on the front line,” Ohanyan said in Yerevan.
For its part, Azerbaijan accused Armenia of escalating the more than 20-year-old conflict and then pinning blame on Baku.
“Armenians accuse Azeri armed forces of sending sabotage groups into the Armenian army. It does not correspond with any logic,” Novruz Mamedov, deputy head of Baku’s presidential administration, told journalists in Baku.
Both sides said there were more skirmishes overnight, but without casualties.
The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics, are expected to meet in the Russian Caucasus city of Sochi later this week to discuss ways to resolve the conflict.
Fighting over Nagorno Karabakh first erupted in 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up, and a ceasefire was called in 1994. But Azerbaijan and Armenia have regularly traded accusations of further violence around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Azeri-Armenian border.
Nagorno-Karabakh has run its own affairs with heavy military and financial backing from Armenia since the war that killed about 30,000 people two decades ago. Armenian-backed forces also seized seven Azeri districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.
Efforts to reach a permanent settlement have failed despite mediation led by France, Russia and the United States.
“Recent reports of multiple incidents along the front lines are cause for concern,” Andrzej Kasprzyk, a senior envoy for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the continent’s main rights watchdog, said in a statement.
“In line with my mandate, I will continue liaising closely with the sides, including at the highest levels, with a view to assist them in de-escalating the situation.”Hillary Clinton: The Fresh Air Interview
Enlarge this image toggle caption Patrick Smith/Getty Images Patrick Smith/Getty Images
Hillary Clinton is on a national book tour for her new memoir, Hard Choices. The book outlines her four years as secretary of state during President Obama's first term, when she met with leaders all over the world.
One of her priorities was to campaign for gay rights and women's rights. She says she saw the "full gamut" on how women were treated, and in some cases it was "painful to observe."
Click To Hear Clinton Discuss Her Views On Marriage Equality Listen
"It has become — and I think will continue to be — a very important issue for the United States to combat around the world and to stand up for the rights of all people," she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.
[This part of the interview — about Clinton's views on marriage equality — has been getting a lot of attention. You can listen to that segment of the interview by clicking the "views on marriage equality" audio clip on the left. ]
Her book also includes reflections on decisions before her tenure as secretary of state.
Clinton says that her vote as a senator to authorize the Iraq War was a "mistake," and she became "increasingly distressed" over time by being associated with it.
"I wanted to make clear, in this book — especially in the context of my thinking about what I would recommend to President Obama concerning additional troops in Afghanistan — that I did get it wrong in Iraq, and it was a mistake," she says. "In many ways, that mistake, as costly as it was, it gave me a much clearer view and certainly increased my skepticism and my humility about these difficult decisions that President Obama had to make when he took office."
Interview Highlights
On her "mistake" voting for the Iraq War Resolution
I made the best decision that I could at the time. And as we went through the years, and I saw the way that the president [George W. Bush] and his team used my vote and the other votes to authorize action, I became increasingly distressed. I did not believe that it was in the best interest of our country, and it was not something that I any longer wanted to be associated with.
Yet, at the same time, I was very clear that I felt a responsibility for having voted the way that I did, which led to sending hundreds of thousands of our young men and women into Iraq. And I didn't feel comfortable saying anything that could be interpreted as somehow turning my back on them.
On including "transgender" in her campaign for gay rights
LBGT includes the "T," and I wanted to stand up for the entire community. I don't believe that people who are the L, the G, the B, or the T should be persecuted, assaulted, imprisoned, even killed for who they are.
This was the debate that I was having with leaders in many parts of the world, who first denied there were any such people in their communities, that it was all an invention and export of the West. And then they would change the argument that they didn't want people being proselytized, they didn't want children being abused, and I said, "Well, there are laws against that, that are certainly appropriate. No one should be coerced, no one should be abused. But you're talking about the status, the very core of who a person is."
On women's rights in other countries
Unfortunately, a large part of the world denies women rights that should be theirs by virtue of being human beings.
There were two different experiences. In some places there is just a cultural, religious opposition to giving women their full rights. It's justified because "we've never done it," or it's justified because "it violates the tenets of our religion." But it nevertheless is painful to be observing, and I constantly raise these issues with leaders.
Then there are other places where they're kind of indifferent to women, except those who are close to them. You see that in the elites of a lot of countries that have laws against women voting or how they dress or whether they can drive a car, but their own daughters go off to Harvard or Oxford and enjoy a Western style of living and certainly an advanced education. In some places, like Pakistan, the elite, which is highly educated, could care less whether poorer women have any opportunities at all. So I saw the full gamut of how women were treated and mistreated.
On getting treated as an "honorary man" while traveling as secretary of state
When you're a secretary of state, as [Condoleezza] Rice and Madeleine Albright and I have discussed, it's perhaps unfortunate — but it's a fact — that you're treated as a kind of an honorary man or a unique woman who comes from another place outside of the religion, outside of the culture.
I never ran into any personal problems with that. I had very frank discussions on a full range of issues in a lot of countries where women were denied their rights. But I always raised women's rights, so it could not be said or assumed by the leader that I was happy with the position of being the "honorary man," the representative of the government of the United States. And I think you'd hear the same from Condi and Madeleine.
You know full well, your eyes are open, you're going into this, and the reason they're receiving you — and you don't have your head covered and, in my case, I'm standing there in a pantsuit, and I'm shaking their hand, and it's going to be on the front page of their newspaper — that they see that as an exception.
And I keep trying to demonstrate they can learn from our experience in our country, where over the long history of the United States we keep trying to make a more perfect union, and of course that includes trying to ensure the full participation of women.
On facing personal attacks from conservative media outlets
I am so used to these people; they're like a bunch of gamers. They're trying constantly to raise false canards, plant false information, and that's what they do. They don't want to have a real debate about what the tax policy should be. They don't want to have a real debate about how we begin growing the economy again.... They don't want to have a real debate about climate change and clean energy. They want people to get diverted and totally off subject, and that is their modus operandi.
But I have to say that if that's the best they have to offer, let them do it. Because that's not the debate that I think the American people want to have. There's a difference between fair game and playing games. And it is unfortunately too common in today's political environment that people want to play games that divert attention from the real issues that affect our country and its future.After a long and complex development period, we are glad to announce that version 0.11.0 of DataFrames has been released. Among other features listed in the release notes, the major change introduced by this version is the move from the NA value (from the DataArrays package) to the new missing value (from the Missings package, and soon in Base).
DataFrames have been completely decoupled from DataArrays: the DataFrame constructor will no longer convert columns to DataArray s, but will keep them as they are. DataFrame columns can therefore be either plain Vector{T} objects (without support for missing values), Vector{Union{T, Missing}} (supporting missing values), DataVector{T} (by creating such vectors manually), or any other AbstractVector object. Thanks to improvements in the compiler, Vector{Union{T, Missing}} uses an efficient storage similar to DataArray on Julia 0.7, and should generally behave like DataVector{T}. The latter type can still be used for optimal performance, especially on Julia 0.6 (but also on 0.7, since not all Vector{Union{T, Missing}} optimizations have been implemented yet).
As part of the separation of features into independent packages, PooledDataArray has been deprecated in favor of either CategoricalArray or PooledArray. Indeed, PooledDataArray suffered from a lack of clarity regarding its goals: it was at the same time a way to efficiently store data with a small number of unique values, a way to represent categorical data, and it always supported missing values. Categorical data should now be stored using CategoricalArray, which supports both nominal and ordinal variables and allows comparing elements using operators such as <. Non-categorical data with a small number of unique values should be stored using the PooledArray type. These two types can either accept missing values or not, depending on the needs.
Functions to import/export CSV ( readtable and writetable ) have been deprecated in favor of CSV.read and CSV.write from the CSV package. This allows sharing code and combining our efforts with all other packages working with data.
Finally, modeling features have been moved to a separate StatsModels package. This difference should only be visible to authors of modeling packages, which should now use that package instead of depending on DataFrames. The objective is to allow modeling packages to support any type of data structure automatically.
The porting process should be relatively straightforward. Deprecation warnings are printed, keeping the current code working in many cases (but unfortunately not all cases). NA should be replaced with missing, NAType with Missing and isna with ismissing everywhere. Functions dispatching on DataArray or AbstractDataArray should use AbstractArray{Union{T, Missing}} or AbstractArray{>:Missing} instead, which will match (among others) DataArray{T}. The na.rm=true argument should be replaced with skipmissing, e.g. sum(skipmissing(x)). PooledDataArray should be replaced with either CategoricalArray or PooledArray, which will require some adjustements to the code using such arrays. Code using modeling functions should call using StatsModels first. See the DataFrames manual for a short introduction to missing and CategoricalArray.
We hope that this new, more modular framework will allow for a better interaction between all packages in the data ecosystem. It should pave the road for future improvements to DataFrames and related packages. However, updating all packages to the new framework will take time. A list tracking progress is available here. Your help is welcome! Please also report any bugs you may find.Josh Ruebner, author of the new book on Obama’s failure to make peace, Shattered Hopes, fascinated a Columbus, Ohio, audience long concerned about Palestine and Israel with a clear solution to the crisis, one that many imagine but seldom hear. Peace comes from justice; justice depends on equal rights for all, enforced by international law. Ruebner’s moral clarity was exhilarating for listeners who are weary of hearing the standard lines of debate.
Speaking at Ohio State University two weeks ago, Ruebner, national advocacy director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, demolished the myth peddled by the “Peace-Process Industry” that the crisis in Palestine and Israel is too “complex” to solve. He pointed to twentieth-century successes: Algeria gained independence, Americans marched for civil rights, South Africa dismantled apartheid, and Northern Ireland achieved the Good Friday Agreement. These tyrannies looked indestructible, but years of work– including boycotts–exposed cruelty and promoted equality under the law. We can create such reforms in Israel and Palestine, Ruebner assured us, because, “when we boil the situation down to its essence, the answer is simple: Israel has built apartheid over all historic Palestine.”
The proof is stark: different laws for different ethnicities.
*78 percent of the land has a majority-Jewish population because of “vast ethnic cleansing.” Israel has violated the terms of its acceptance as a member state in the U.N. because it refuses to permit Palestinians’ lawful “Right of Return,” while substituting a bogus “Law of Return” to draw new Jewish citizens.
*The 20 percent of Israelis who are not Jewish are subject to severe discrimination like the Prawer Plan to confiscate the land of 40,000 Bedouin Israeli citizens and demolish their villages.
*In the Occupied West Bank, Palestinians have no rights at all. They are ruled by Israeli martial law, judged by military courts, and sentenced to military prison for six months—a term that can be arbitrarily extended for years, even decades. Israeli Jews, however, are tried in civilian courts—except when they attack Palestinians or their land: “Just yesterday, Israeli colonists demolished 600 olive trees, but they never face justice for crimes against Palestinians.”
The “Peace Process” is cover for a Jewish state that discriminates against Palestinians, whether they be Israeli citizens, people denied a state in the Occupied lands, or the diaspora. Some examples of the bad faith:
*The Oslo Accords have failed, because Israel has refused to enter “final status” negotiations as agreed. Instead, from 1993 to 2013, it has installed hundreds of thousands more colonists on stolen Palestinian land.
*In 2000, Yasser Arafat hesitated to attend the Camp David negotiations, rightly arguing that the “preliminary work” for a just solution “had not been done.” U.S. President Bill Clinton, however, promised that no one would be blamed if no agreement were reached. Ruebner asked, “Do you know how many maps Arafat was shown of Israeli P.M. Ehud Barak’s supposedly ‘generous offer?’” The ugly truth: “Zero.”
Worse, “Palestinians were told that they could have no part of the Jerusalem that under international law is rightfully theirs.”
Arafat responded, “If I sign this agreement, I’ll … be assassinated,” because, as Shattered Hopes concludes, Camp David merely “dictated terms of surrender justifiably rejected by the Palestinians” (p. 123).
Ruebner chillingly reminded us of the final treachery, “Clinton announced one hour later: I blame the Palestinians 100 percent.”
*The U.S. is not an “honest broker”: Dennis Ross, the lead “Peace-Process negotiator,” had as an “m.o. of taking Israeli demands and working them over to make them palatable to the Palestinians”—a “U.S. tag-team with the oppressor.” Ruebner quotes Aaron David Miller’s notorious confession, “We’ve acted as Israel’s lawyer,” catering to its every whim. Ruebner proclaimed, “If we’re to succeed, we must have one client: justice, for lasting peace.”
Ruebner recounted the excruciating steps by which Barack Obama—though he took office knowing more about Israel/Palestine than his predecessors and professing to care about equity—reneged on all support for Palestinian self-determination. Obama at first affirmed decades-old official U.S. policy: requiring that Israel stop expanding illegal colonies and abide by past agreements. But when Netanyahu refused–supported by AIPAC and the U.S. Congress—Obama collapsed rather than defend equality, international law, and U.N. resolutions to the American public.
Readers of this site remember the details, so I’ll touch only on what I see as the most ridiculous—and serious—incentives Obama offered Israel: material and diplomatic treasures of the American and Palestinian people. These were not his to squander, especially not just to cover for his own lack of rectitude. But in 2010 Obama attempted to exchange a mere three-month extension of the “sham settlement moratorium” from Netanyahu for a monstrous bribe of $15 billion for 75 F-35 fighter jets, plus permanent dominion over the Jordan Valley. Netanyahu only refused this unethical giveaway because he felt he could snatch the reward in future without even pretending to halt the land-grabs (page 101).
Meanwhile, “The NSA turns over raw intel on the phone records of US citizens to Israel,” Ruebner said. The State Department uses all our political capital to defend Israeli war crimes. And in a tragic about-face, the U.S. lobbied the U.N. as strenuously against Palestinian membership in 2011 as it had done for the partition of Palestine and Israel’s creation in 1947.
Obama descended, Ruebner confirmed, into the usual “US-dominated charade” of “double standards.” But, “this new round of negotiations is the worst,” for Israel insists on keeping every colony in the West Bank–building 18 high-speed rail lines (for Israelis only) to connect them–and military control of the Jordan Valley. The result of these “peace talks” will be Israel turning the West Bank into a “second version of Gaza, open-air prisons”—and checkpoints, razor wire, and Israeli soldiers licensed to kill.
In the face of such deceit, Ruebner declared, “We’d be mad to leave this to the politicians.” We need instead to persuade “Israel to remove its boot of oppression from Palestinian necks.”
He said that Boycott, Divest, and Sanction is the way of peace: “Just as BDS isolated Apartheid South Africa,” the growing refusal to be a party to Israel’s despotism in Palestine “will pull pieces out till apartheid collapses.
“South Africans thought they’d never see liberation, but it suddenly happened.”
The first audience question was from an Israel supporter, who complained, “Why talk about Israel, not other countries?”
But Ruebner welcomed the question. He answered:
*When the UN voted yesterday [10.29.13] to end the U.S. embargo of Cuba, only two countries voted against it: the U.S. and Israel.
*Israel is the top recipient of U.S. military aid, 60 percent (which adds up to 20 percent of Israel’s military budget); we pay the next-highest, Egypt, merely to comply with Israel’s demands
*Israel uses our money to injure and kill Palestinians, to bulldoze homes, sometimes killing those in wheelchairs who can’t escape with a few minutes’ notice.
*Israel attacked Gaza schools and homes with white phosphorus and DIME explosives—weapons which are illegal under international law because they injure so hideously.
*The U.S. billions are taken from the human needs of people in our own country.
*Despite our largesse, Israel has the second-worst wealth gap—after the U.S.–between rich and poor.
Ruebner’s book may be called Shattered Hopes, but it’s a valuable record of more than our government’s betrayals. It shows us the work we need to do, together. And Ruebner encourages us with successes: “Mainstream coverage has dramatically changed for the better in the last five years.”
When asked how he came to care about justice for Palestine, Josh Ruebner’s integrity sparkled: “Seeing how Israel treats the Palestinians. If you look with an open mind and open heart, it takes about five minutes to see it. This is about right against wrong.”
Ruebner’s book tour continues. And the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation home page is here.Manhattan West Projects Completes Project Platform View Full Caption
HUDSON YARDS — A developer has created new real estate to build on, using thousands of tons of concrete.
Brookfield Properties recently completed a 2.6-acre, 120,000-square-foot platform over railroad tracks leading into Penn Station. The new platform will serve as the foundation for the $4.5 billion Manhattan West project on West 33rd Street and Ninth Avenue.
“We celebrate today the creation of land in Manhattan — new land, which doesn’t happen very often and which will serve as the support and platform for new buildings to go up in the upcoming years,” said Brookfield CEO Dennis Friedrich during a press conference Tuesday.
When completed, Manhattan West will be made up of two office towers that will stand at least 60 stories tall, retail space and a 2-acre park that will have community programming, according to the developer.
Construction crews built the platform in two years, working above active railroad tracks day and night, according to the developer.
Using a $7 million horizontal crane Brookfield called “The Launcher,” workers placed the platform’s 16 bridge spans above the tracks, Brookfield said. Each span measured 240 feet in length and weighed about 400 tons, the equivalent of six subway cars.
“It was flawless. Everything was thought through,” said Al Fazio, an Amtrak deputy chief engineer, who praised the crews who worked on the project.
In addition to the office towers, Brookfield also plans to build an 800-unit residential tower and a five-star boutique hotel. It will also redevelop its neighboring office building at 450 W. 33rd St. and convert it into a glass structure that will fit in with the rest of the project.
The developer plans to begin building the residential tower early next year, and it is scheduled to open in 2017. The first office tower is expected to finish in 2018. No commercial tenants have been confirmed yet, according to a spokesman.rapid combustion of fine particles suspended in the air
A dust explosion is the rapid combustion of fine particles suspended in the air within an enclosed location. Dust explosions can occur where any dispersed powdered combustible material is present in high-enough concentrations in the atmosphere or other oxidizing gaseous medium, such as pure oxygen. In cases when fuel plays the role of a combustible material, the explosion is known as a fuel-air explosion.
Dust explosions are a frequent hazard in underground coal mines, grain elevators, and other industrial environments. They are also commonly used by special effects artists, filmmakers, and pyrotechnicians, given their spectacular appearance and ability to be safely contained under certain carefully controlled conditions.
Thermobaric weapons utilize this principle by rapidly saturating area with an easily combustible material and then igniting it to produce explosive force. These weapons are the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in the world.[1]
Terminology [ edit ]
If rapid combustion occurs in a confined space, enormous overpressures can build up, causing major structural damage and flying debris. The sudden release of energy from a "detonation" can produce a shockwave, either in open air or in a confined space. If the spread of flame is at subsonic speed, the phenomenon is sometimes called a "deflagration", although looser usage calls both phenomena "explosions".
Dust explosions may be classified as being either "primary" or "secondary" in nature. Primary dust explosions may occur inside process equipment or similar enclosures, and are generally controlled by pressure relief through purpose-built ducting to the external atmosphere. Secondary dust explosions are the result of dust accumulation inside a building being disturbed and ignited by the primary explosion, resulting in a much more dangerous uncontrolled explosion that can affect the entire structure. Historically, fatalities from dust explosions have largely been the result of secondary dust explosions.[citation needed]
Conditions required [ edit ]
Diagram showing the five requirements for a dust explosion
There are five necessary conditions for a dust explosion:[2]
A combustible dust
The dust is suspended in the air at a sufficiently high concentration
There is an oxidant (typically atmospheric oxygen)
There is an ignition source
The area is confined—a building can be considered an enclosure
Sources of dust [ edit ]
Many common materials which are known to burn can generate a dust explosion, such as coal and sawdust. In addition, many otherwise mundane organic materials can also be dispersed into a dangerous dust cloud, such as grain, flour, starch, sugar, powdered milk, cocoa, coffee, and pollen. Powdered metals (such as aluminum, magnesium, and titanium) can form explosive suspensions in air, if finely divided.
Explosive dust can arise from activities such as transporting grain, and grain silos have often been demolished violently. Mining of coal leads to coal dust, and flour mills likewise have large amounts of flour dust as a result of milling. A gigantic explosion of flour dust destroyed a mill in Minnesota on May 2, 1878, killing 14 workers at the Washburn A Mill and another four in adjacent buildings.[3] A similar problem occurs in sawmills and other places dedicated to woodworking.
Since the advent of industrial production–scale metal powder–based additive manufacturing (AM) in the 2010s, there is growing need for more information and experience with preventing dust explosions and fires from the traces of excess metal powder sometimes left over after laser sintering or other fusion methods.[4] For example, in machining operations downstream of the AM build, excess powder liberated from porosities in the support structures can be exposed to sparks from the cutting interface.[4] Efforts are underway not only to build this knowledgebase within the industry but also to share it with local fire departments, who do periodic fire-safety inspections of businesses in their districts and who can expect to answer alarms at shops or plants where AM is now part of the production mix.[4]
Although not strictly a dust, paper particles emitted during processing - especially rolling, unrolling, calendaring/slitting, and sheet-cutting - are also known to pose an explosion hazard. Enclosed paper mill areas subject to such dangers commonly maintain very high air humidities to reduce the chance of airborne paper dust explosions.
In special effects pyrotechnics, lycopodium powder[citation needed] and non-dairy creamer[5] are two common means of producing safe, controlled fire effects.
To support rapid combustion, the dust must consist of very small particles with a high surface area to volume ratio, thereby making the collective or combined surface area of all the particles very large in comparison to a dust of larger particles. Dust is defined as powders with particles less than about 500 micrometres in diameter, but finer dust will present a much greater hazard than coarse particles by virtue of the larger total surface area of all the particles.
Concentration [ edit ]
Below a certain value, the lower explosive limit (LEL), there is insufficient dust to support the combustion at the rate required for an explosion.[6] A combustible concentration at or below 25% of the LEL is considered safe.[7] Similarly, if the fuel to air ratio increases above the upper explosive limit (UEL), there is insufficient oxidant to permit combustion to continue at the necessary rate.
Determining the minimum explosive concentration or maximum explosive concentration of dusts in air is difficult and consulting different sources can lead to quite different results. Typical explosive ranges in air are from few dozens grams/m3 for the minimum limit, to few kg/m3 for the maximum limit. For example, the LEL for sawdust has been determined to be between 40 and 50 grams/m3.[8] It depends on many factors including the type of material used.
Oxidant [ edit ]
Typically, normal atmospheric oxygen can be sufficient to support a dust explosion if the other necessary conditions are also present. High-oxygen or pure oxygen environments are considered to be especially hazardous, as are strong oxidizing gases such as chlorine and fluorine. Also, particulate suspensions of compounds with a high oxidative potential, such as peroxides, chlorates, nitrates, perchlorates, and dichromates, can increase risk of an explosion if combustible materials are also present.
Sources of ignition [ edit ]
There are many sources of ignition, and a naked flame need not be the only one: over one half of the dust explosions in Germany in 2005 were from non-flame sources.[6] Common sources of ignition include:
However, it is often difficult to determine the exact source of ignition when investigating after an explosion. When a source cannot be found, ignition will often be attributed to static electricity. Static charges can be generated by external sources, or can be internally generated by friction at the surfaces of particles themselves as they collide or move past one another.
Mechanism [ edit ]
Dusts have a very large surface area compared to their mass. Since burning can only occur at the surface of a solid or liquid, where it can react with oxygen, this causes dusts to be much more flammable than bulk materials. For example, a 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) sphere of a combustible material with a density of 1 g/cm3 would be about 12.4 centimetres (4.9 in) in diameter, and have a surface area of 0.048 square metres (0.52 sq ft). However, if it were broken up into spherical dust particles 50 µm in diameter (about the size of flour particles) it would have a surface area of 120 square metres |
what we want from a Big Data Processing cluster.
At the end of the day, we want a system that books a lot of the resources of the cluster for a job that should process a lot of data and only a small subset of these resources for a job that works on a small subset of data, with a strong enforcement of data locality optimization.
And this is precisely what one can achieve pretty easily with the ELK-MS stack, in an almost natural and straightforward way.
I will present why and how in this article.
The first article - ELK-MS - part I : setup the cluster in this serie presents the ELK-MS stack and how to set up a test cluster using the niceideas ELK-MS package.
The second article - ELK-MS - part II : assessing behaviour presents a few concerns, assesses the expected behaviour using the niceideas ELK-MS TEST package and discusses challenges and constraints in this ELK-MS environment.
This third and last article - ELK-MS - part III : so why is it cool? presents, as indicated, why this ELK-MS stack is really really cool and works great.
This article assumes a basic understanding of Big Data / NoSQL technologies in general by the reader.
Summary
1. Introduction
The reader might want to refer to the Introduction of the first article in the serie as well as the introduction of the second article.
Summarizing them, this series of article is about presenting and assessing the ELK-MS stack, the tests done using the test cluster and present the conclusion, in terms of constraints as well as key lessons.
The second article was presenting the technical constraints coming from integrating Spark with ElasticSearch through the ES-Hadoop connector when running Spark on Mesos.
In this second article I focused a lot on what was not working and what were the constraints. A reader might have had the impression that these constraints could prevent a wide range of use cases on the ELK-MS stack. I want to address this fear in this third article since this is all but true, Spark on Mesos using data from ElasticSearch is really a pretty versatile environment and can address most if not all data analysis requirements.
In this last article, I will present how one can use a sound approach regarding data distribution in ElasticSearch to drive the distribution of the workload on the Spark cluster.
And it turns out that it's pretty straightforward to come up with a simple, efficient and natural approach to control the workload distribution using ElasticSearch, Spark and Mesos.
ES index layout strategies
The parameters that architects and developers need to tune to control the data distribution on ElasticSearch, which, in turn, controls the workload distribution on spark, are as follows:
The index splitting strategy
strategy The index sharding strategy
strategy The replication strategy (factor)
strategy (factor) The sharding key
Spark aspects
Then on the spark side the only important aspect is to use a proper version of ES-Hadoop supporting the Dynamic Allocation System without compromising data locality optimization (i.e ES-Hadoop >= 6.x for Spark 2.2)
But before digging into this, and if that is not already done before, I can only strongly recommend reading the the first article in this serie, related presenting the ELK-MS stack and the second article which presents the conclusions required to understand what will follow.
2. Data locality and workload distribution
What has been presented in the conclusion section of the ELK-MS part II article is summarized hereunder:
Fine Grained scheduling mode of spark jobs by Mesos screws performances up to an unacceptable level. ELK-MS need to stick to Coarse-Grained scheduling mode.
scheduling mode. ES-Hadoop is able to enforce data-locality optimization under nominal situations. Under a heavily loaded cluster, data-locality optimization can be compromised for two reasons: If the local Mesos / Spark node to a specific ES node is not available after the configured waiting time, the processing will be moved to another free Mesos / Spark node. ElasticSearch can well decide to serve the request from another node should the local ES node be busy at the time it is being requested by the local spark node.
With ES-Hadoop 5.x, Dynamic allocation was messing up data locality optimization between ES and Spark. As such only Static allocation was usable and it was required to limit artificially the amount of nodes for a given job in good correspondance to the amount of shards in ES (usage of property spark.cores.max to limit the amount of spark executors and the search_shards API in ES to find out about the amount of shards to be processed)
But now with ES-Hadoop 6.x, Dynamic allocation doesn't interfere with data locality optimization and everything works well out of the box.
to limit the amount of spark executors and the API in ES to find out about the amount of shards to be processed) Re-distributing the data on the cluster after the initial partitioning decision is only done by spark under specific circumstances.
ES-Hadoop drives spark partitioning strategy
So what happens with ES-Hadoop 6.x and dynamic allocation is that ElasticSearch sharding strategy drives the partitionning strategy of corresponding data frames in Spark. With Data Locality Optimization kicking in, even with Dynamic Allocation enabled, The Spark / Mesos cluster will do its best to create the Spark partitions on the nodes where the ES shards are located.
And this really works just out of the box.
Eventually, there will be just as many executors booked by Mesos / Spark on the cluster as is requiredto handle every ES shars in a dedicated, co-located partition within Spark.
3. Examples
In order to illustrate why I believe that in fact the way ELK-MS behaves when it comes to distributing the workload following the distribution of the data is efficient and natural, we'll use the examples below.
Imagine the following situation: the ELK-MS test cluster contains 6 nodes with similar configurations. The dataset to be stored is called dataset and contains 2 months of data.
In ElasticSearch the indexing settings are as follows:
The Index splitting strategy is by month. This is not strictly an ElasticSearch setting, this is configured in Logstash or any other data ingestion tool.
As a matter of fact, whenever one wants to store temporal data in ElasticSearch (timeseries), one naturally considers splitting the index by year, month or even day depending on the size of the dataset.
is. This is not strictly an ElasticSearch setting, this is configured in Logstash or any other data ingestion tool. As a matter of fact, whenever one wants to store temporal data in ElasticSearch (timeseries), one naturally considers splitting the index by year, month or even day depending on the size of the dataset. The sharding strategy consists in creating 3 shards.
consists in creating 3 shards. The replication strategy consists in creating 2 replicas (meaning 1 primary shard and 2 replicas).
consists in creating 2 replicas (meaning 1 primary shard and 2 replicas). We do not care about configuring the sharding key any differently than the default for now (a few words on the sharding key configuration are given in the conclusion).
Initial situation
We can imagine that the above situation ends up in the following data layout on the cluster. (One should note though that this is not very realistic since ES would likely not split both month this way when it comes to storing replicas):
Working on a small subset of data for one month
Now let's imagine that we write a processing script in spark that fetches a small subset of the data of one month, June 2017, so [A] here.
In addition, imagine that the filter ends up identifying precisely the data from a single shard of the index. Spark / Mesos would create in this case a single spark partition on the node co-located to the ES shard.
The processing happens this way in this case:
Since only one shard needs to be read from ElasticSearch, ES-Hadoop will drive the creation of a single partition in the resulting DataFrame (or RDD), which in turn will cause Spark to request a single task in one executor, the one local to the ES shard.
So what actually happens is that working on a single shard located on single ES node will actually drive spark in a way to make it work on one single node as well.
Using replicas has the benefits to give the Mesos / Spark cluster some choice in regards to which this node should be. This is especially important if the cluster is somewhat loaded.
Working on a single month of data
In this second example, the processing script works on a single month of data, the full month of June 2017, so all shards of [A] here.
This will drive Spark to create 3 corresponding partitions on the Mesos / Spark cluster.
The processing works as follows in this case:
Three shards from ES need to be fetched to Spark. ES-Hadoop will create 3 partitions which leads to 3 tasks to be dispatched on the Spark processing stage. These 3 tasks will be executed on the 3 local ES nodes owning the shards.
Again, distributing the input data on one third of the ES cluster on one side, and limiting's Spark resources to the actual number of nodes required on the other side, leads to one third of the Spark cluster to be used for the spark processing.
In this case, the ElasticSearch data distribution strategy drives the workload distribution on spark.
Again replication is useful to ensure a successful distribution even under a loaded cluster.
Working on the whole period
This will drive spark to create partitions on all nodes of the cluster.
The processing happens this way:
When working on the whole period, it happens fortunately in this case that we end up fetching shards from the whole ES cluster, in this case the whole spark cluster will be used to distribute the processing workload, since each and every local spark node will need to work on the local ES shard.
Again, one last time, the ElasticSearch data distribution strategy drives the workload distribution in good understanding to the data distribution, enforcing data-locality optimization.
4. Conclusion
In conclusion, having the ElasticSearch data distribution strategy driving the processing distribution on the Mesos / Spark cluster, thanks to the ES-Hadoop connector requirements given to spark, makes a lot of sense if you think of it.
First it's simple and consistent. One can understand how the first stages of processing will occur within spark by simply looking at the data distribution using for instance Cerebro. Everything is well predictable and straightforward to assess.
But more importantly, it's efficient since, well, whenever we store data in ElasticSearch, we think of the distribution strategy, in terms of index splitting, sharding and replication precisely for the single purpose of performance.
Creating too many indexes and shards, more that the amount of nodes, would be pretty stupid since having more than X shards to read per node, where X is the amount of CPUs available to ES on a node, leads to poor performances. As such, the highest limit is the amount of CPUs in the cluster. Isn't it fortunate that this is also the limits we want in such case for our spark processing cluster?
On the other hand, when one wants to store a tiny dataset, a single index and a single shard is sufficient. In this case, a processing on this dataset would also use a single node in the spark cluster. Again that is precisely what we want.
In the end, one "simply" needs to optimize his ElasticSearch cluster and the spark processing will be optimized accordingly.
Eventually, the processing distribution will scale linearly with the data distribution. As such, it's a very natural approach in addition to being simple and efficient.
Summing things up, the spark processing workload distribution being driven by the ElasticSearch data distribution, both are impacted by the following parameters of an ES index:
The index splitting strategy
strategy The index sharding strategy
strategy The replication strategy (factor)
strategy (factor) The sharding key
The sharding key is not very important unless one has to implement a lot of joins in his processing scripts. In this case, one should carefully look at the various situations of these joins and find out which property is used most often as join key.
The sharding key should be this very same join key, thus enabling spark to implement the joins with best data locality, most of the time on the local node, since all shards with same sharding key end up on same node.
This may be the topic of another article on the subject, but likely not soon... since, after so much writing, I need to focus on something else than Spark and ElasticSearch for a little while...
As a last word on this topic for now, I would like to emphasize that not only this ELK-MS is working cool, in a simple, natural, efficient and performing way, but in addition all the UI consoles (Cerebro, Kibana, Mesos Console, Spark History Server) are state of the art, the Spark APIs is brilliantly designed and implemented, ElasticSearch itself in addition answers a whole range of use cases on its own, etc.
This stack is simply so amazingly cool.Fear often keeps us from the things we want.
Maybe we want to go talk to that guy, or ask that girl out, or go to that party. But we're afraid.
What if he doesn't want to talk to me?
What if she says no?
What if I feel awkward at the party?
In the moment, these fears can seem really big. And when our fears are big, we play it safe, which means we avoid the things we really want to do.
Fortunately, there's one simple rule you can use to give yourself courage.
10-10-10
It's called the 10-10-10 rule, and it was developed by Suzy Welch, a business writer. In a nutshell, the 10-10-10 rule asks yourself to imagine the likely outcomes of a decision...
10 minutes in the future
10 months in the future
10 years in the future
It's developed for business decisions (what will happen in 10 minutes/10 months/10 years if we launch this new product?) but it's really useful for social situations too.
10-10-10 For Social Situations
What happens when you apply the 10-10-10 rule to social situations?
Well, let's say you're at a party and you want to strike up a conversation with someone. What are the best and worst things that might reasonably happen? Well....
In 10 minutes, best case you will be having a great conversation, worst case the conversation will flop and you'll feel awkward.
In 10 months, best case you are still friends with the person you talked to, worst case you have a dim memory of an awkward conversation
In 10 years, best case you are STILL friends with the person you talked to, and there is no worst case -- you're not going to remember an awkward conversation from a party ten years ago.
Long-Term Courage
When you look at it this way, the path is clear. You should start the conversation, because the potential upside (a new friend!) is much greater than the potential downside (10 minutes of awkwardness.)
And you'll find this is true in many social situations where you feel anxious or scared. When you use the 10-10-10 rule to give yourself a long-term perspective, it's much easier to overcome fear and make the best decision.
Or to put it another way -- it's hard to be afraid of 10 minutes of awkwardness when you're thinking about the next 10 years of your life.
So try it out!
Next time you are afraid of taking the initiative in a social situation, just ask yourself "If I do this, what is the best and worst thing that might reasonably happen in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years?"
This only takes a moment, but it will give you a clear direction and the confidence to push past fear. Try it out, then report back in the comments how it worked for you!A team of researchers from MIT, Google, the University of Sydney, and Cornell University present a new quantum error correcting code that requires measurements of only a few quantum bits at a time to ensure consistency between one stage of a computation and the next.
Quantum computers are largely theoretical devices that could perform some computations exponentially faster than conventional computers can. Crucial to most designs for quantum computers is quantum error correction, which helps preserve the fragile quantum states on which quantum computation depends.
The ideal quantum error correction code would correct any errors in quantum data, and it would require measurement of only a few quantum bits, or qubits, at a time. But until now, codes that could make do with limited measurements could correct only a limited number of errors — one roughly equal to the square root of the total number of qubits. So they could correct eight errors in a 64-qubit quantum computer, for instance, but not 10.
In a paper they’re presenting at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Symposium on Theory of Computing in June, researchers from MIT, Google, the University of Sydney, and Cornell University present a new code that can correct errors afflicting — almost — a specified fraction of a computer’s qubits, not just the square root of their number. And for reasonably sized quantum computers, that fraction can be arbitrarily large — although the larger it is, the more qubits the computer requires.
“There were many, many different proposals, all of which seemed to get stuck at this square-root point,” says Aram Harrow, an assistant professor of physics at MIT, who led the research. “So going above that is one of the reasons we’re excited about this work.”
Like a bit in a conventional computer, a qubit can represent 1 or 0, but it can also inhabit a state known as “quantum superposition,” where it represents 1 and 0 simultaneously. This is the reason for quantum computers’ potential advantages: A string of qubits in superposition could, in some sense, perform a huge number of computations in parallel.
Once you perform a measurement on the qubits, however, the superposition collapses, and the qubits take on definite values. The key to quantum algorithm design is manipulating the quantum state of the qubits so that when the superposition collapses, the result is (with high probability) the solution to a problem.
Baby, bathwater
But the need to preserve superposition makes error correction difficult. “People thought that error correction was impossible in the ’90s,” Harrow explains. “It seemed that to figure out what the error was you had to measure, and measurement destroys your quantum information.”
The first quantum error correction code was invented in 1994 by Peter Shor, now the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, with an office just down the hall from Harrow’s. Shor is also responsible for the theoretical result that put quantum computing on the map, an algorithm that would enable a quantum computer to factor large numbers exponentially faster than a conventional computer can. In fact, his error-correction code was a response to skepticism about the feasibility of implementing his factoring algorithm.
Shor’s insight was that it’s possible to measure relationships between qubits without measuring the values stored by the qubits themselves. A simple error-correcting code could, for instance, instantiate a single qubit of data as three physical qubits. It’s possible to determine whether the first and second qubit have the same value, and whether the second and third qubit have the same value, without determining what that value is. If one of the qubits turns out to disagree with the other two, it can be reset to their value.
In quantum error correction, Harrow explains, “These measurement always have the form ‘Does A disagree with B?’ Except it might be, instead of A and B, A B C D E F G, a whole block of things. Those types of measurements, in a real system, can be very hard to do. That’s why it’s really desirable to reduce the number of qubits you have to measure at once.”
Time embodied
A quantum computation is a succession of states of quantum bits. The bits are in some state; then they’re modified, so that they assume another state; then they’re modified again; and so on. The final state represents the result of the computation.
In their paper, Harrow and his colleagues assign each state of the computation its own bank of qubits; it’s like turning the time dimension of the computation into a spatial dimension. Suppose that the state of qubit 8 at time 5 has implications for the states of both qubit 8 and qubit 11 at time 6. The researchers’ protocol performs one of those agreement measurements on all three qubits, modifying the state of any qubit that’s out of alignment with the other two.
Since the measurement doesn’t reveal the state of any of the qubits, modification of a misaligned qubit could actually introduce an error where none existed previously. But that’s by design: The purpose of the protocol is to ensure that errors spread through the qubits in a lawful way. That way, measurements made on the final state of the qubits are guaranteed to reveal relationships between qubits without revealing their values. If an error is detected, the protocol can trace it back to its origin and correct it.
It may be possible to implement the researchers’ scheme without actually duplicating banks of qubits. But, Harrow says, some redundancy in the hardware will probably be necessary to make the scheme efficient. How much redundancy remains to be seen: Certainly, if each state of a computation required its own bank of qubits, the computer might become so complex as to offset the advantages of good error correction.
But, Harrow says, “Almost all of the sparse schemes started out with not very many logical qubits, and then people figured out how to get a lot more. Usually, it’s been easier to increase the number of logical qubits than to increase the distance — the number of errors you can correct. So we’re hoping that will be the case for ours, too.”
Stephen Bartlett, a physics professor at the University of Sydney who studies quantum computing, doesn’t find the additional qubits required by Harrow and his colleagues’ scheme particularly daunting.
“It looks like a lot,” Bartlett says, “but compared with existing structures, it’s a massive reduction. So one of the highlights of this construction is that they actually got that down a lot.”
“People had all of these examples of codes that were pretty bad, limited by that square root ‘N,’” Bartlett adds. “But people try to put bounds on what may be possible, and those bounds suggested that maybe you could do way better. But we didn’t have constructive examples of getting here. And that’s what’s really got people excited. We know we can get there now, and it’s now a matter of making it a bit more practical.”
PDF Copy of the Study: Sparse Quantum Codes from Quantum Circuits
Image: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIThttp://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
This rifle is a Steyr M95 straight-pull carbine that has been converted into a semiauto by adding a gas piston under the barrel connected to the bolt carrier, and an extension to the stock and receiver for the bolt to travel in. The pistol grip was added so that the trigger group could remain unchanged despite the longer receiver. It still feeds from the same 5-round Mannlicher clips as the standard M95, and appears to be in 8x50R (ie, not updated to the 8x56R cartridge).
This rifle is in the collection of the Beretta factory museum in Gardone val Trompia, but I have no information on whether they did the conversion themselves or acquired it elsewhere. Unfortunately, the bolt and piston mechanism is very sticky, and I was unable to disassemble it. However, it appears to be a quite simple conversion, as these sorts of things go. Just the project for the hobbyist gunsmith with a cheap extra M95 carbine and lots of spare time...
Thanks to Beretta for allowing me to have a look at this very neat rifle!Cheap, solar-power Kyoto Box cooker for rural Africa
If you are smart enough, it’s always good to invent smart and efficient things for people to use in lesser extravagant surroundings. Jon Bohmer has invented a cheap, solar-powered cardboard cooker for rural Africa called the Kyoto Box. This invention can apparently help prevent two tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per family per year. It consists of two cardboard boxes with an acrylic cover. This allows the sun’s power to come in and not leave. A layer of straw or newspaper between the boxes provides insulation, while black paint on the interior and the foil on the exterior help ion preserving the heat.
The Kyoto Box costs just $5 and can be produced at any cardboard factory. Also on the cards are a more durable model made from recycled plastic. The main aim of this is to reduce health problems in the rural villages while also avoiding carbon dioxide emissions.
[FT]Heads up! Tim Cook is set to appear next month at Box’s BoxWorks conference, WSJ’s WSJ.D Live conference, and perhaps most importantly, CBS’s The Late Show next week. Stephen Colbert, previously of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and Colbert Report, took over hosting duties at CBS’s late night variety show earlier this week on Tuesday after David Letterman’s recent retirement. Colbert announced in a cheeky tweet tonight that Tim Cook will appear as a guest during the comedian’s second week on the air.
Colbert sported an Apple Watch during the run up to his new show’s premier earlier this summer, though he hasn’t worn it on set during the first week of broadcasting. An Apple Watch with Link Bracelet, of course, is seen in the tweet announcing Cook as an upcoming guest so we’ll have to see if he brings it out for the interview.
On his previous show, Colbert promoted the iPhone 6 between it’s announcement and launch on Comedy Central so the new models will probably be a topic.
So when you can tune in to catch the Apple CEO interviewed by Colbert? Tuesday, September 15th at 11:35 PM ET. This should be a good one.
[tweet https://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/status/642495435786059777 align=’center’]"What man that sees the ever-whirling wheel Of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway, But that therby doth find, and plainly feel, How Mutability in them doth play"
he genetic information specifies everything about an organism and its potential. Genotype specifies possible phenotypes, therefore, phenotypic change follows genetic change. This obviously should be one of the areas where evolutionary change is seen, and genetic change is truly the most important for understanding evolutionary processes.
Confirmation:
Extremely extensive genetic change has been observed, both in the lab and in the wild. We have seen genomes irreversibly and heritably altered by numerous phenomena, including gene flow, random genetic drift, natural selection, and mutation. Observed mutations have occurred by mobile introns, gene duplications, recombination, transpositions, retroviral insertions (horizontal gene transfer), base substitutions, base deletions, base insertions, and chromosomal rearrangements. Chromosomal rearrangements include genome duplication (e.g. polyploidy), unequal crossing over, inversions, translocations, fissions, fusions, chromosome duplications and chromosome deletions (Futuyma 1998, pp. 267-271, 283-294).
Potential Falsification:
Once the genetic material was elucidated, it was obvious that for macroevolution to proceed vast amounts of change was necessary in the genetic material. If the general observation of geneticists was that of genomic stasis and recalcitrance to significant genetic change, it would be weighty evidence against the probability of macroevolution. For instance, it is possible that whenever we introduce mutations into an organism's genome, the DNA could back-mutate to its former state. However, the opposite is the case—the genome is incredibly plastic, and genetic change is heritable and essentially irreversible (Lewin 1999).
Cladistic classification, and thus, phylogenetic reconstruction, is largely based on the various distinguishing morphological characteristics of species. Macroevolution requires that organisms' morphologies have changed throughout evolutionary history; thus, we should observe morphological change and variation in modern populations.
Confirmation:
There have been numerous observations of morphological change in populations of organisms (Endler 1986). Examples are the change in color of some organ, such as the yellow body or brown eyes of Drosophila, coat color in mice (Barsh 1996), scale color in fish (Houde 1988), and plumage pattern in birds (Morton 1990). Almost every imaginable heritable variation in size, length, width, or number of some physical aspect of animals has been recorded (Johnston and Selander 1973; Futuyma 1998, p. 247-262). This last fact is extremely important for common descent, since the major morphological differences between many species (e.g. species of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds) are simple alterations in size of certain aspects of their respective parahomologous structures.
One of the major differences between organisms is their capacity for various functions. The ability to occupy one niche over another is invariably due to differing functions. Thus, functional change must be extremely important for macroscopic macroevolutionary change.
Confirmation:
Many organisms have been observed to acquire various new functions which they did not have previously (Endler 1986). Bacteria have acquired resistance to viruses (Luria and Delbruck 1943) and to antibiotics (Lederberg and Lederberg 1952). Bacteria have also evolved the ability to synthesize new amino acids and DNA bases (Futuyma 1998, p. 274). Unicellular organisms have evolved the ability to use nylon and pentachlorophenol (which are both unnatural manmade chemicals) as their sole carbon sources (Okada et al. 1983; Orser and Lange 1994). The acquisition of this latter ability entailed the evolution of an entirely novel multienzyme metabolic pathway (Lee et al. 1998). Bacteria have evolved to grow at previously unviable temperatures (Bennett et al. 1992). In E. coli, we have seen the evolution (by artificial selection) of an entirely novel metabolic system including the ability to metabolize a new carbon source, the regulation of this ability by new regulatory genes, and the evolution of the ability to transport this new carbon source across the cell membrane (Hall 1982).
Such evolutionary acquisition of new function is also common in metazoans. We have observed insects become resistant to insecticides (Ffrench-Constant et al. 2000), animals and plants acquire disease resistance (Carpenter and O'Brien 1995; Richter and Ronald 2000), crustaceans evolve new defenses to predators (Hairston 1990), amphibians evolve tolerance to habitat acidification (Andren et al. 1989), and mammals acquire immunity to poisons (Bishop 1981). Recent beneficial mutations are also known in humans, such as the famous apolipoprotein AI Milano mutation that confers lowered risk to cardiovascular disease in its carriers.
A very general conclusion made from the theory of common descent is that life, as a whole, was different in the past. The predicted evolutionary pattern is that the farther back we look back in time, the more different life should appear from the modern biosphere. More recent fossils should be more similar to contemporary life forms than older fossils.
This point is related to, yet subtly different from, prediction 1.4 and prediction 1.5 concerning predicted common ancestors. As we have seen, the standard phylogenetic tree predicts many common ancestors and their morphologies. However, given what we know of modern species dynamics and recent extinction rates, we know that the majority of organisms will eventually go extinct (Diamond 1984a; Diamond 1984b; Wilson 1992, ch. 12; Futuyma 1998, pp. 722-723). By extrapolation, the majority of past organisms also have gone extinct. Thus, we should reasonably expect that the predicted common ancestors had many other descendants and relatives that did not leave descendants which survive today. In short, we predict that the majority of fossil species that we find should not be the actual common ancestors of modern species, but rather they should be related organisms that eventually ended in extinction.
Confirmation:
The oldest rocks we find on the earth are about 4 Bya (billion years ago), and they are devoid of any life. The oldest potential fossil evidence for life are fossil bacteria from the Apex Chert of Australia (3.46 Bya), though these fossils are currently embroiled controversy and may not represent traces of life. The next oldest fossils are well-accepted fossil bacteria and bacterial mats (stromatolites) from South Africa that date to 3.4 Bya. Thus, the oldest fossil prokaryotes date to 3.4 to 3.5 Byr. For nearly the next billion years, rocks from the Archean have no multicellular life at all, just prokaryotes. The oldest eukaryote fossils are acritarchs dating to about 1.75 Byr. For another 1000 million years, there is still no evidence of multicellular life.
Near the Precambrian/Cambrian transition, only 580 Mya, in the Ediacaran and Burgess shale faunas we finally find the first fossils of multicellular animals. However, they are very unusual, mostly small, soft-bodied metazoans, and most are superficially unlike anything found today. Precisely as we would expect from the standard phylogenetic tree, the earliest fossils of multi-cellular life are very simple sponges and sea anemone-like organisms (sea anemones and jellyfish are both cnidarians). Around 20 million years later, we find the first evidence of simple mollusks, worms, and echinoderms (organisms similar to starfish and sea cucumbers). Another ~15 million years later, the very first vertebrates appear, though most people would strain to recognize them as such. They are small worm-like and primitive fish-like organisms, without bones, jaws, or fins (excepting a single dorsal fin).
As we progress through the Phanerozoic, life gets progressively more similar to modern biota. In the Cambrian (~540 to 500 Mya), we find predominantly invertebrate sea organisms, such as trilobites, sponges, and echinoderms. During the next 100 million years sea life is dominated by invertebrates and strange jawless fish, which besides chordate worms are the only vertebrates around at the time. More familiar jawed fish only appear during the late Silurian, about 410 Mya. Ninety percent of the earth's sediments, up until the Devonian (~400 Mya), are devoid of any land animals.
During the Devonian, we finally find the first evidence of insects. For the next 100 million years, through the Carboniferous up until the Permian (~300 Mya), there are no land reptiles, no birds, nor mammals—only amphibians and insects. The land is covered by ferns—no pine trees or oaks or anything resembling them.
During the Mesozoic (from 250 to 65 Mya) life is dominated by monstrously large reptiles, the dinosaurs. The predominant plants are unusual gymnosperms, like the cycads. Nothing even resembling a modern mammal is found until the Jurassic, about 190 Mya. Even then, these "mammals" are small and appear half-reptile/half-rodent—far removed from the large megafauna yet to come. Ninety percent of the sediments on the earth which contain fossils of living organisms have no evidence of flowers—these appear for the first time just before the Paleocene (~65 Mya). Likewise, the earth's record of life is devoid of any hardwood forests until the beginning of the Cenozoic (~65 Mya to the present).
During the Cenozoic, mammals and birds finally come to prominence on the land, much as we find today. By the Pleistocene (2 Mya), the earth's biota closely, yet imperfectly, resembles what we presently find on the earth. Notable exceptions are the recent megafauna that covered the continents with organisms like mammoths, giant sloths, and saber-toothed tigers (Futuyma 1998, pp. 130, 169-199).
Potential Falsification:
This falsification would be simple and facile—the sediments of the earth could contain a composition of species very similar to modern life as far back as we can see in the sequential layers.
The most useful definition of species (which does not assume evolution) for sexual metazoans is the Biological Species Concept: species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups (Mayr 1942).
If branching of existing species into new species occurred gradually in the past, we should see all possible degrees of speciation or genetic isolation today, ranging from fully interbreeding populations, to partially interbreeding populations, to populations that interbreed with reduced fertility or with complete infertility, to completely genetically isolated populations.
Confirmation:
There are countless cases of distinct species which can, in unusual or limited circumstances, form hybrids. One example is the West European carrion crow (Corvus corone) and the Asian hooded crow (Corvus cornix), which have distinct ranges meeting in a narrow "hybrid zone". Another are the Platte river species of sucker fish of the Catostomus genus which live together and only rarely interbreed (Futuyma 1998, p. 454).
One of the most striking instances of partial or incomplete speciation are the numerous "ring species" (for review see Irwin et al. 2001). Ring species, such as the salamander Ensatina, form a chain of interbreeding populations which loop around some geographical feature; where the populations meet on the other side, they behave as completely different species. In the case of Ensatina, the subspecies form a ring around the Central Valley of California—the subspecies freely interbreed and hybridize on the east, west, and north sides of the valley, but where they coexist on the south side they are incapable of hybridizing and act as separate species (Moritz et al. 1982; Futuyma 1998, pp. 455-456).
Another example of a ring species is the gull genus Larus. L. argentatus and L. fuscus were originally identified as distinct species in England. However, there is a continuous ring of Larus hybrids extending to the east and west all the way round the North Pole. Only in England are they incapable of interbreeding.
The Great Tit, Parus major, similarly forms a ring species around the mountains of Central Asia, freely interbreeding everywhere except in Northern China (Smith 1993, pp. 227-230).
Many species can hybridize, but the resulting offspring have reduced fertility. One example is |
er built in 1910. This wreck’s story of how it became is an interesting one that takes us back to the night of April 9, 1942 when the Benwood was on a routine voyage from Tampa Bay, Florida to Norfolk, Virginia with a load of phosphate rock.
That same day, the Robert C. Tuttle was traveling to Texas. This was during World War II and there were rumors of German U-boats in the area. Both vessels traveled completely blacked out to avoid the enemy. At 12:45 a.m., the Tuttle turned starboard (right) as the captain sighted a black object ahead which was believed to be a U-boat. The captain signaled with one blow of the ship’s whistle, “I intend to turn starboard.” There was no response from the Benwood. At 12:50 a.m., the Benwood sighted a black object and sounded the whistle twice indicating, “I intend to turn port (left).” There was no response from the Tuttle.
It’s believed the Benwood and Tuttle were unknowingly on a collision course with each other. Captain Skjelbred of the Benwood made a last-minute effort to avoid the Tuttle by ordering the engine full astern (fastest reverse). Moments later, the bow of the Benwood crashed into the Tuttle’s port side above the waterline. The collision caused the bow of the Benwood to collapsed upon itself. The Benwood quickly took on water and the crew was forced to abandon ship. The Tuttle sustained minor damage.
The day after the collision it was discovered the keel of the Benwood was broken and the vessel was declared a total loss. Her superstructure and cargo was salvaged. The salvaging on the Benwood Wreck prompted John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park to create a protection program in 1959. This helped to prevent further damage to the historical Benwood Wreck. After being salvaged, the Benwood was later used as target practice by the Army Air Corp, which became the US Air Force. She was then dynamited as she was a navigation hazard.
The wreck is protected under the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary which was formed in 1975.
Diving the Benwood Wreck:
The Benwood Wreck rests between 25 feet to 55 feet of water northeast of French Reef off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. Be very careful of the jagged, rusted, fire coral encrusted metal when exploring the Benwood Wreck. Between the history and its shallow depth, This wreck is one of the most popular dives in Key Largo. We like to refer to the Benwood Wreck as a “wreck of a wreck.”
This dive site is home to many Jawfish – we almost felt like we were exploring the Blue Heron Bridge!
Diving Key Largo’s Benwood WreckDeMarco Murray delivered yet another terrific performance Sunday night as the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Philadelphia Eagles, but he paid the price with an injury, suffering a broken bone in his left hand.
Specifically, Murray fractured the fourth metacarpal in his left hand, according to ESPN.com’s Todd Archer. The fourth metacarpal is the long bone that runs from the base of the ring finger to the wrist.
By the time the injury news was announced, Murray was undergoing surgery to stabilize the fracture. The team left open the possibility that Murray could return this weekend by stating he had not been ruled out of Sunday's game against the Indianapolis Colts. But is it really possible that he could return less than a week after undergoing surgery?
Yes, actually, it is possible.
The implantation of hardware during surgery provides a construct in the hand that offers immediate stability and helps ensure proper alignment of the bone. While the bone itself takes at least four to six weeks to heal, the surgical stabilization permits sooner range of motion activities (sooner than if there were no surgery) and potentially less soft tissue adhesions or scarring. The return-to-play criteria then comes down to pain tolerance and the return of functional range of motion and strength.
It seems possible DeMarco Murray can play this week despite undergoing surgery on a broken bone in his left hand on Monday. Mitchell Leff/Getty Images
In a study presented at the 2014 American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine meeting, a group of in-season elite football players who had undergone surgery to repair metacarpal fractures were able to return to play, on average, in less than a week. The study, conducted by physicians at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, included high school and collegiate football players; the average return-to-play time for the collegiate players was 2.8 days. There were no reported complications following surgery and, most importantly, no incidence of re-fractures.
One college player in this study who suffered this injury and returned to play less than a week after surgery was then-Alabama wide receiver (now Atlanta Falcons star) Julio Jones. He fractured a metacarpal in his left hand in the first half against South Carolina in October 2010. After undergoing surgery the next day, Jones returned to practice late in the week and played the team’s next game against Mississippi. During my visit to Falcons training camp in August to see Jones, who was preparing to return from a second foot surgery, I referenced the scar on his hand and asked how he was able to return to action so quickly following that injury. He told me that once he caught the first few balls in practice, he knew his hand was solid and he just mentally made the decision he would be ready to play. He has had no setbacks with his hand since the surgery.
Most athletes cited in the study were either wide receivers or defensive backs and the sample size is relatively small, but Dr. Lyle Cain, orthopedic surgeon, University of Alabama team physician and one of the study’s authors, notes there have been several other players since that data was collected -- including running backs and offensive linemen -- who have returned to play in under a week. The study results demonstrate that a return to playing football at a high level less than a week after surgery to repair a metacarpal fracture is possible. But is it probable?
Not necessarily. It’s important to remember, above all, that individuals heal at different rates. Each injury has its own unique presentation, and there may be other factors that influence how quickly a player is allowed to progress through the rehab process and onto the playing field.
Cain says there are two primary considerations when evaluating whether an athlete can return to play within days following this type of injury and surgery: surgical fixation and functionality. Most of the fractures that occur in these athletes are clean breaks in the middle of the bone that are easily stabilized; fractures that result in multiple fragments are more complex and would not fall into this category.
“Once you get good fixation with the hardware in there, it appears the repaired metacarpal may even be stronger than the native metacarpals around it," Cain said. “Then you need to make sure the athlete has enough strength in the intrinsics [small muscles of the hand] to control the ball and to do what he needs to do on the field with minimal discomfort.”
As a running back, Murray needs to not only carry the ball effectively (which he does primarily with his right hand; the injury is to his left), but he also needs to be able to catch the ball and block effectively. Murray would be expected to be wearing some type of protective equipment on his surgically repaired hand and would need to demonstrate that he could still carry out his responsibilities uncompromised (or at least minimally compromised). As ESPN’s Ed Werder reported, the Cowboys athletic training staff that cared for Emmitt Smith as he returned from a similar injury is unchanged, which benefits Murray.
When he spoke to reporters Monday, coach Jason Garrett laid out what will be the determinants of whether Murray plays this week. Garrett's words seemed to reflect what the team’s medical personnel will also be evaluating.
“The biggest question we have to ask ourselves is: Is he functional to do his job?" Garrett said. "Can he hold the football? Can he carry it under duress? Can he block? Can he do the things necessary to play the position?”
All football players who undergo surgery to repair a metacarpal fracture will have a few things in common: They will all experience some degree of pain and limitation after the operation and will all require several weeks to heal completely. The timetable in which they return to competition, however, is based on the variables that make each of them and each of their injuries unique, particularly how fast they recover and how quickly they can return to form. The big question for the Cowboys will be whether they are comfortable enough with Murray’s progress as of Sunday to expose him to game conditions.
While recent examples provide evidence that elite football players can return to competition quickly following this type of surgery, given the uncertainty that surrounds how any player recovers from injury, it shouldn’t come as a surprise if Murray’s status remains in question until game day approaches.The Saskatchewan government refuses to talk to the Alberta government after banning Alberta licence plates on road construction sites, says Alberta's economic development minister.
"We learned about this through the media. They did not give us a heads up at all," Deron Bilous said Thursday.
"My office reached out to both the trade minister of Saskatchewan and the infrastructure transport minister... before we made a comment as the government of Alberta.
"They still have not returned our calls."
On Thursday, Bilous repeated his threats to take Saskatchewan to court within a week if the province doesn't back down.
"The clock is ticking," he told reporters at the legislature.
Bilous called the ban desperate and said it violates interprovincial free trade rules. He added there may be "consequences" in addition to the court case, but wouldn't provide specifics.
"You've got Brad Wall, who is a premier, who is quite desperate to change the channel from his bad-for-business budget," Bilous said in an interview with CBC Radio's Edmonton AM. "And so they've decided to come after Alberta and Alberta workers.
"It's quite absurd, when you think about it. Alberta's economy is bigger than both B.C. and Saskatchewan's combined, so starting a trade war with your bigger, older brother is never a wise thing to do."
Wall fine with a court battle
Wall defended the decision Thursday during question period in Regina.
"No, we didn't check with Alberta. We defended the interest of the people of Saskatchewan."
Later, Wall said he would welcome a court challenge.
"We won't be backing off on it," he said. "First of all, we think it doesn't necessarily violate trade agreements, because this is the treatment our contractors get when they are working in Alberta.
"They are asked to permit they are asked to plate. We think it's fair to ask the same thing of Alberta folks working here."
The Saskatchewan government is banning vehicles with Alberta plates from road construction sites in the province. (The Muskegon Chronicle, Ken Stevens/AP)
Wall mentioned a recent trade dispute between the two provinces over beer. His government argued a new beer tax was hurting Saskatchewan brewers. Saskatchewan won the court case, which is now being appealed by Alberta.
"They set this example," Wall said. "If you're going to live by the protectionist sword, you're going to have to face other provinces that will stand up and defend their economy and their sectors."
'They're going to lose this fight'
Saskatchewan announced Wednesday that it is banning workers with Alberta licence plates from all new road projects.
"I've called on Brad Wall to smarten up and kill this ridiculous and discriminatory restriction," Bilous said.
"They're going to lose this fight."
The ban only applies to Alberta. Existing projects will not be affected. The Ministry of Highways said it is singling out Alberta for a reason.
"Saskatchewan operators feel forced to register their vehicles in Alberta if they want to do business there," Saskatchewan Infrastructure Minister David Marit said Wednesday. "Today's announcement just levels the playing field."
Saskatchewan Minister of Highways and Infrastructure David Marit said his decision to ban Alberta licence plates from new construction projects was shaped by concerns from the province's construction industry. (CBC)
Saskatchewan also said that since Alberta does not have a provincial sales tax, Alberta drivers don't pay PST when registering vehicles as Saskatchewan motorists do — an unfair trade advantage for Alberta contractors.
Now Alberta contractors will be required to get Saskatchewan plates and pay PST when they register their vehicles.
According to a statement from the Saskatchewan government, the amount of PST will be prorated, based on the amount of work Alberta contractors do within the province.
Alberta Trade Minister Deron Bilous demands Saskatchewan kill restrictions that ban workers with Alberta plates from new road projects. 0:54
Bilous said the ministry's claims are bogus. Saskatchewan contractors working in Alberta are not required to change plates or go through any additional vehicle registrations, he said, adding that Saskatchewan's trade minister might be "confused."
"Their accusations, we've gone through our own departments and found it to be untrue, so the fact that they're trying to pick a fight with Alberta, I think it's a little ridiculous. In fact, it's quite absurd," Bilous said.
And, he said, "trying to punish Alberta for not having a PST is ridiculous."
Notley calls policy 'ridiculous'
The plate feud is the latest cross-boundary sniping between Wall's right-of-centre government and Premier Rachel Notley's left-leaning NDP.
Notley joked about the controversy at the start of her speech to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce Thursday.
"If any of you drove here, and have a Saskatchewan licence plate, you might want to move your car, because we are towing," she said to laughter from the crowd.
"I'm just kidding, of course. Everybody is welcome here in Alberta."
Wall said Notley's government set a projectionist tone in 2016 when it didn't go along with open procurement, he said all other provinces were in favour.
Notley was asked about that point by reporters on Thursday.
"That doesn't apply at all to Saskatchewan and Brad Wall knows it. That is, I believe now explanation number four for this ridiculous piece of public policy coming from Saskatchewan in under 12 hours," Notley said.
Fishing for controversy
Political analyst Paul McLoughlin said the spat is an interesting manifestation of a complicated, three-way political feud between Notley's NDP government, Alberta's United Conservatives and the reigning Saskatchewan Party.
"There is a little partisan game going on here," McLoughlin said Thursday. "It's more than a rivalry; it's political friction between Saskatchewan and Alberta."
It's like Saskatchewan took the bait and the NDP said, 'Fine, let's reel this one in' - Paul McLoughlin, political analyst
By making Saskatchewan look foolish, the NDP government has managed to cast shade on Alberta UCP leader Jason Kenney and his newly formed party, said McLoughlin.
All three parties are fishing for a little bit of controversy, he said.
"You have to remember that Brad Wall is a hero to conservatives across the country — including Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party — so any opportunity the NDP has to generate outrage about the terrible things they're doing in Saskatchewan, they go after it with relish and glee.
"It's like Saskatchewan took the bait and the NDP said, 'Fine, let's reel this one in.'"
Terry Parker, executive director for Building Trades of Alberta, which represents 75,000 workers, and former executive director for Building Trades of Saskatchewan, said he was baffled by the move.
He said he hasn't heard any complaints, on either side of the border, about the licensing issue, and the announcement came as a shock to people working in the construction industry.
'Unnecessary' argument
Saskatchewan's argument that taxes aren't being paid by Alberta contractors is "unnecessary," said Sandy Johnson, owner of North Star Fleet Solutions Inc., a Calgary company that specializes in consumption taxes and licence fees for inter-jurisdictional carriers.
"This whole system of tax distribution is to create a level playing field," Johnson said.
"It doesn't matter if you're from Alberta or if you're from Florida. If you are competing for the same traffic, or a contractor competing for the same job, you are subject to taxes and licence fees."
She said any Alberta contractors circumventing the system are subject to audit and would be in breach of contracts in Saskatchewan.One of the things that craft beer has had to fight for every step of the way is access to market. These acquisitions and the rumblings we hear about AB muscle being exerted on their distribution network to do an updated version of the 100% share of mind from the mid–‘90s, all of these things act to limit the access to market of craft brewers. I think that’s a really important thing.
I think AB is also trying to poke holes in the whole three-tier system through their acquisition of breweries that have pubs. People were sort of scratching their head about 10 Barrel and Elysian, but they’ve succeeded in changing the laws here and there, and we all do those things as best we can with our legislators. But I think they are going to try to take as much control of all three tiers as they can. So that’s going to effect, not just brewers, but distributors as well. And ultimately have a great deal to do with limited consumer choice.
What they’ve seen in this country kind of angers them, because I think they probably feel like if they’d really made a concerted effort, they could’ve put a stop to it early. But they let it go. So what they’d like to do is duplicate the market share numbers they’re seeing in some of their South American and African and Asian markets. They want everything. They want world domination. They’ve got 85–90% of the market share in some South American countries. That’s the kind of thing they want here. They really want to make sure that China doesn’t slip away from them. So they’re certainly thinking globally. We can think of it in terms of U.S., but they’ve got a bigger strategy than that.NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gold prices fell for a second day on Friday as a stronger appetite for riskier assets such as equities and an improving economic outlook diminished safe-haven buying, more than offsetting a weaker dollar.
Gold bars are pictured at the Ginza Tanaka store during a photo opportunity in Tokyo September 17, 2010. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao
Bullion notched a third consecutive weekly loss, its longest since July, which called into question the metal’s lengthy bull run due to signs that the economic recovery is taking hold and as fears about an European debt crisis have subsided for now.
Gold prices fell on Friday as safe-haven demand faded, a day after the metal was pushed down nearly 2 percent to two-month lows as investors sold bullion together with equities and commodities like crude oil and copper that are perceived as riskier.
“The German IFO today is an indication of ongoing strength and an improvement in the EU economy. The idea that the U.S. and European economies are doing better and less sovereign debt concerns are weighing on gold investor psychology,” said Bill O’Neill, a partner in commodities firm LOGIC Advisors.
German business sentiment rose to its highest level in 20 years in January, surging past economists’ forecasts on a strong manufacturing sector. The bright European report followed a raft of strong U.S. economic data, including encouraging jobs and housing numbers on Thursday.
Spot gold fell 0.2 percent to $1,343 an ounce by 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT). U.S. gold futures for February delivery settled down $5.50 at $1,341 an ounce.
Bullion hit a low of $1,337.50, their weakest price since November 18, as financial markets opened in New York. U.S. traders cited an increase in margin requirements for precious metals futures as a reason for the decline.
Silver inched up 0.2 percent to $27.53 an ounce.
The gold-to-silver ratio — the number of ounces of silver needed to buy an ounce of gold — rose back toward 50, its highest level since late November, as some traders believed gold is becoming increasingly expensive relative to silver.
Friday’s turnover was modest as COMEX gold and silver futures volumes on the New York Mercantile Exchange were largely in line with their 30-day averages.
Analysts say outflows of money from products such as physically backed exchange-traded funds suggest investor appetite for gold is slackening after a run of firmer-than-expected U.S. economic data and as concerns over euro zone sovereign debt levels recede.
“There is a real lack of catalysts to provide any sort of support,” said Macquarie analyst Hayden Atkins. “Day by day the data does seem to be supportive of the theory that activity is pretty good for now, and the expectation is growing that things will be OK through the year.
“There is nothing definitive either way to push it, and at the margins (investors) are maybe putting their money somewhere else, rather than putting it in gold.”
Gold’s slide was limited on Friday by a retreat in the dollar to two-month lows versus the euro, with the European single currency reaching its highest level since late November, helped by improving confidence in region.
Stock markets moved higher in both Europe and the United States as strong earnings from key U.S. companies lifted appetite for equities.
“Gold used to be a fear indicator, and, as this fear appears to be leaving the market, the gold price is under pressure,” said Commerzbank analyst Eugen Weinberg.
SILVER ETF HOLDINGS FALL
Silver prices had earlier hit a seven-week low at $27.10 an ounce, pressured by a further outflows from the world’s largest silver-backed exchange-traded fund, the iShares Silver Trust.
Related Coverage Gold miners cut hedges in third quarter: report
Holdings of the trust fell by just over 10 tonnes on Thursday, after recording their biggest one-day drop since late November in the previous session. It has seen outflows of more than 346 tonnes so far this year.
Investment demand was a major driver in silver’s price gains of more than 80 percent last year.
Platinum rose 0.8 percent to $1,822.24 an ounce against $1,808.50 on Thursday, while palladium climbed 1.4 percent to $819.50.Raul Roa has been a general-assignment photographer in Los Angeles for 20 years. He covers everything. The overturned tractor-trailer on I-5. The water polo meet at Glendale High. The protests in downtown Los Angeles after Ferguson. He does it all.
But the geography of his beat — north of Los Angeles — and where it is in relation to his home in Whittier, south of there, has unexpectedly birthed a hobby. Every day as he drives home, he sees planes swooping down to land at Los Angeles International Airport.
He lives right under the airport’s flight path.
It would not be a stretch to say that some people might find this irksome — the noise alone — but Mr. Roa, 49, has an eye, of course, and his eye, one commute home 18 months ago, turned to a ripe full moon perched in the sky, plump as could be. He noticed how perfectly silhouetted the planes were as they flew past the moon. He was driving along the Pomona Freeway. He took the next exit, which led him to the parking lot of the Montebello mall.
“I waited for another plane to go by,” Mr. Roa said. “It was nighttime. Clear. Two or three planes went by and I snapped a couple of shots. And there it was. I had it.” It was a stunning photo, the sharp outline of a plane framed within the perfect white orb of the moon.
Photo
And so he came to a very specific practice of photography. First, he started paying attention to the moon’s phases. When it was full, or close to it, he headed to Palm Park near his house, or the parking lot of Ralph’s supermarket or even behind a Denny’s. Then he would set up his tripod and shoot the moon. He posted his photos on Instagram, and this led to a lot of compliments from fellow photographers.
So he invited them out to shoot the moon with him.
Some of them were press photographers in the area, including Nick Ut. Mr. Ut is best known for his Vietnam War photos, especially the image of the young girl running away from a bombed village, her clothes burned off her body by napalm. Mr. Ut and Mr. Roa have been colleagues for years.
They might give each other a nod at a news conference, but it’s hard to really socialize when they are working. They have to concentrate on getting the picture. So when a bunch of photographers are invited to get together informally, friendships are cemented.
Now several of them get together monthly, chasing that perfect photograph. They call themselves the Lunartics. Sometimes they barbecue — carne asada and lamb — and sometimes they talk shop. And always they shoot the moon.
“It’s something different,” said Mr. Ut, 64. “I came here after the Vietnam War and covered almost everything. I live in the hills in L.A. Every time a plane flies over my house, you see them dancing in the moon. All my friends call me and say, ‘Nicky, we going to go out at the end of the month.’ ”
Photo
Getting a good shot is really hard, as there are several factors at play, like the plane’s altitude and the degree at which the moon sits in the sky. Planes could be flying over, but depending on the timing, they could be just above or below the moon. Also, the plane’s size matters, as well as where the photographer is in relation to it all. So if it’s a big fat Airbus A380, the plane might block the moon. At the opposite end of the spectrum are Learjets, which can look tiny and get lost in the photo.
“Sometimes we get skunked,” Mr. Roa said, explaining how the photographers might be out for two or three hours and not get a decent shot. But when they do, there is a “collective primordial screaming and hollering that we all give out,” he said.
The Lunartics have been meeting monthly since their inception. The only time they missed a session was when it was overcast last November. It helps that Southern California and its predictably nice weather provide ideal conditions for a club that needs clear skies.
Mr. Roa has new goals. He wants to capture two planes crossing the moon at once, one closer and one far away, giving the illusion they are in the same space. “I look at the moon sometimes and wonder if I can capture other things, like birds or satellites or the International Space Station,” he said. “That would be nice, too.”
Raul Roa is a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times Media Group.
Follow @raulroa, @nickut, @samanthastorey and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.Jonathan Trager and Sara Thomas met while shopping for gloves in New York. Though buying for their respective lovers, the magic was right and a night of Christmas shopping turned into romance. Jon wanted to explore things further but Sara wasn't sure their love was meant to be. They decided to test fate by splitting up and seeing if destiny brought them back together... Many years later, having lost each other that night, both are engaged to be married. Still, neither can shake the need to give fate one last chance to reunite them. Jon enlists the help of his best man to track down the girl he can't forget starting at the store where they met. Sara asks her new age musician fiance for a break before the wedding and, with her best friend in tow, flies from California to New York hoping destiny will bring her soulmate back. Near-misses and classic Shakespearean confusion bring the two close to meeting a number of times but fate will have the final word on whether it was meant to be. Written by Lordship <lordship@juno.com>Ron Howard revealed he directed his 'Willow' star for the first time in more than 30 years.
One of the original actors from the Star Wars trilogy, prequels and new films has joined the upcoming Han Solo stand-alone film.
Warwick Davis will appear as an unspecified character, director Ron Howard revealed slyly on Twitter Wednesday.
A user asked when fans might get a sequel to his 1988 fantasy film, Willow, which starred Davis.
Howard responded, "Glad you are asking for one! I directed @WarwickADavis for the 1st time in 30 years today. It made me happy."
Davis may have starred in that film, but got his start in movies when he played the beloved Ewok, Wicket W. Warrick, in Return of the Jedi. He would go on to play assorted characters in Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace, then the Force Awakens and 2016's Rogue One.
That casting was the second piece of news coming from the Han Solo production on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, it was announced composer John Powell will score the film. Powell is largely known for his work on animated movies, including Shrek and Kung Fu Panda. He was nominated for an Oscar for 2010's How to Train Your Dragon.
The Davis tidbit is far from the first time Howard — who was named director of the film in late June after directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired — shared something on social media to get fans all in a tizzy.
For the past few weeks, he has been sharing pictures from the set, most recently the first look at Donald Glover as Young Lando Calrissian.TRIPOLI (Reuters) – NATO air strikes hit Muammar Gaddafi’s compound Thursday, hours after the Libyan leader was shown on television for the first time since another aerial attack killed his son nearly two weeks ago.
Libyan officials who showed reporters around the scene of the air strike, at Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziyah compound, said three people had been killed and 25 wounded.
The corner of a two-storey building was blown away, leaving fragments of concrete on the street below. Deep craters were left in two other locations around the compound, which has been targeted several times since NATO began its campaign.
Government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim said the strikes hit near a spot where dozens of Libyans come every night, some with families, to shout slogans in support of Gaddafi. He denied the compound contained any military facilities.
“The NATO alliance is completely bereft of morality,” Ibrahim said. “No one has the right to say to the people of Libya move away from the cities so we can bombard you.”
“This is our country. We are proud of it. We will continue to be a fighting nation,” he told reporters.
An official at NATO headquarters said the target it hit overnight was a large command and control bunker complex.
“These locations were known to be command and control facilities engaged in coordinating attacks against civilian populations in Libya,” said the official.
“While the possibility of collateral damage will always exist, we go to great lengths to reduce such possibilities.”
Earlier, Gaddafi had drawn a line under nearly two weeks of speculation over his fate when Libyan television showed him meeting officials in a Tripoli hotel.
The Libyan leader had not been seen in public since an April 30 strike killed his youngest son and three grandchildren.
He made his appearance Wednesday in trademark brown robe, dark sunglasses and black hat. Gaddafi was shown greeting a group of tribal leaders who support him.
“You will be victorious,” an old man told Gaddafi.
GADDAFI HOLDING ON
Four months into a revolt against his rule, Gaddafi is still holding doggedly onto power despite weeks of NATO strikes on his military and command structures.
The conflict has now entered stalemate, with Gaddafi in control of most of the west of the country, while the rebels are hemmed in to their stronghold in the east and a few pockets in the west.
State television reported that the North Korean embassy in Tripoli had suffered major damage in the overnight NATO strikes.
The report is likely to revive uncomfortable memories for the alliance of an incident in 1999 when it bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during a campaign against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
But the NATO official said the North Korean embassy is 500 meters (yards) from the target it struck. “It has been alleged that NATO attacked the North Korean embassy; this is simply not true,” said the official.
The rebel leadership in the eastern city of Benghazi — having seen attempts to advance west on the capital bogged down in the desert — is now focusing on drumming up more international support.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the Libyan National Transitional Council, met British Prime Minister David Cameron in London and received a pledge of help.
“The government is today inviting the council to establish a formal office here in London,” Cameron told reporters. “We will work with you to ensure that the international community increases the diplomatic, the economic and the military pressure on this bankrupt regime.”
Offering a glimmer of encouragement for Western governments which hope Gaddafi’s rule will collapse from within, Tripoli’s consul in Cairo said he was quitting his post to join rebel ranks.
He joined a string of senior Libyan officials who have broken ties with Gaddafi’s government.
REBEL GAIN IN MISRATA
Western governments say they are carrying out their military intervention in Libya to stop Gaddafi’s forces killing civilians who rose up against his rule in a rebellion which took its lead from uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.
Thousands of people have been killed since the revolt broke out against Gaddafi’s rule in late February.
Libyan officials deny killing civilians, saying instead they are fighting criminal armed gangs and al Qaeda militants. They say the NATO air strikes are an act of colonial aggression by countries that want to grab Libya’s oil wealth.
Rebels in the city of Misrata, their only major stronghold in the west of Libya, hailed an important victory Wednesday, saying they had seized the city airport from pro-Gaddafi forces.
The rebels said they had also seized large quantities of weapons and munitions. No independent verification of the rebels’ account was available.
Taking the airport would be a psychological boost for rebels who have been grimly defending the besieged city for weeks, but it was unlikely to change the military balance of power.
The city, Libya’s third largest, is still encircled by pro-Gaddafi forces and cut off from other rebel holdouts by thousands of kilometers of desert.
On another front in the rebels’ conflict with Gaddafi loyalists, in the barren Western mountains region south-west of Tripoli, anti-Gaddafi fighters are holding off attempts by loyalists to take their mountain-top positions.
A Reuters reporter in the town of Zintan said he heard planes flying overhead, and the an explosion to the south. That is the area where NATO aircraft have been targeting government weapons depots in the past few days.
(Reporting by Matt Robinson in Zintan, Mohammad Abbas in Benghazi, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, David Brunnstrom in Brussels, Peter Griffiths and Stefano Ambrogiin London, Catherine Hornby in Rome and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; writing byChristian Lowe)
Mochila insert follows…U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson | Pool photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images Tillerson: ‘Steps underway’ to remove Assad from leading Syria ‘Assad’s role in the future is uncertain, clearly,’ Tillerson said, explaining that US officials believe Assad’s regime orchestrated the attack.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested Thursday that President Bashar Assad should no longer lead Syria in the wake of the chemical attack that killed dozens there and said "steps are underway" in the international community to remove him from power.
“Assad's role in the future is uncertain, clearly,” Tillerson said, explaining that U.S. officials believe Assad’s regime orchestrated the attack. “With the acts that he has taken, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people.”
Tillerson described a push to remove Assad as a likely international effort. He did not elaborate on how that would happen or comment on reports that the United States is considering military strikes there, though he said chemical weapons use requires a "serious response."
“The process by which Assad would leave is something that I think requires an international community effort,” Tillerson said. “Both to first defeat ISIS within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country, to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving.”
Tillerson also criticized Russia for its alignment with Assad.
“I think, further, it is very important that the Russian government consider carefully their continued support for the Assad regime,” said Tillerson, who will travel to Moscow to meet with Russia’s foreign minister next week.
President Donald Trump did not detail his own thinking on how to respond to the situation in Syria while speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday, according to a pool report. He reiterated that “what Assad did is terrible” and suggested that some action is needed.
“I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity, and he's there, and I guess he's running things, so I guess something should happen,” Trump said.Tesla has so far declined to comment besides restating what it said in June, where it vowed to "clearly define" its manufacturing plans in China before the end of 2017. The company had confirmed that it was talking to Shanghai's government about a factory at the same time.
If the deal is in place, it could be the ticket to igniting Tesla's Chinese sales -- and the company as a whole. While the automaker has sold its EVs in China for years, sales have sometimes struggled in a country where it faces an uphill battle between its outsider status and apartment-focused living (you can't buy an EV if there's nowhere to charge it). A Shanghai factory would not only make Tesla's vehicles more palatable, but could help it satisfy demand now that the Chinese EV market is truly heating up. And this is especially important for the Model 3. It's the cornerstone of Tesla's expansion into the (relative) mainstream, and anything it can do to both lower costs and improve availability should make a significant impact on sales.Want to know about Bayesian machine learning? Sure you do! Get a great introductory explanation here, as well as suggestions where to go for further study.
By Zygmunt Zając, FastML.
So you know the Bayes rule. How does it relate to machine learning? It can be quite difficult to grasp how the puzzle pieces fit together - we know it took us a while. This article is an introduction we wish we had back then.
While we have some grasp on the matter, we’re not experts, so the following might contain inaccuracies or even outright errors. Feel free to point them out, either in the comments or privately.
Bayesians and Frequentists
In essence, Bayesian means probabilistic. The specific term exists because there are two approaches to probability. Bayesians think of it as a measure of belief, so that probability is subjective and |
score more goals for Swansea and show my best performance like I showed with Athletic Bilbao and Juventus."A Brief History of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Inc.-
A Division of the APA
Laura L. Koppes
SIOP Historian, 1996--2001
A brief account of the history of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Inc. was prepared to inform individuals interested in the society's evolution. This account is intended to be a synopsis of events and not a complete and thorough description or analysis. This synopsis is based primarily on the work completed by Ludy T. Benjamin (1997a).
The account is presented in three parts. The first part is a brief narrative summary of the history. The second part is a list of major events. The third part is a bibliography that contains sources for additional reading on the history of the society and of the discipline. For additional information, I may be contacted at LKoppes@siop.org.
Part 1 Narrative Summary
Part 2 List of Major Events
Part 3 Bibliography
SeeTable 1 for Officers of AAAP Section D Industrial and Business
See Table 2 for Presidents
See Table 3 for Membership Totals
Click here for Award Winners
The current Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Inc. can trace its roots to the founding of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1892. APAs initial objective was the advancement of Psychology as a science (Cattell, 1895, cited in Sokal, 1992, p. 115) and several proponents of industrial psychology were prominent members (e.g., Hugo Munsterberg, James McKeen Cattell, Walter VanDyke Bingham, Walter Dill Scott). It was APAs lack of recognition for applied psychology during those early years, however, that served as the impetus for organizing industrial and organizational psychology.
For 50 years following the establishment of APA, psychologists with applied interests requested that APA respond to their needs (e.g., program time, recognition as a section, legitimization) and they attempted on several occasions to organize under the auspices of APA. Reluctantly, APA created a Section of Clinical Psychology in 1919 to accommodate the applied psychologists in clinically-related jobs, however, nothing was created for industrial or educational psychologists. Shortly thereafter, it became obvious to the clinical psychologists and other APA members with applied interests that APA was not going to revise its original objective of advancing psychology as a science and consequently, would not recognize applied areas of psychology. Applied psychologists sought other professional organizations to pursue their interests.
In 1921, the New York Association of Consulting Psychologists (ACP) was founded. It consisted mostly of clinical and educational psychologists and a small core of industrial psychologists. In 1930, as a result of a growing body of applied psychologists and increased dissatisfaction with APA, the New York ACP expanded and formed the Association of Consulting Psychologists (ACP). Industrial psychologists were involved in the formation of ACP and they participated every year in the ACP meetings. In 1936, ACPs president, Gertrude Hildreth, suggested that a committee of industrial psychologists be created to work for the improvement of status among industrial psychologists, and possibly develop a set of standards and code of ethics (Report of the Committee on Psychology in Industry, as cited in Benjamin, 1997b, p. 460). ACP also established a national journal for professional psychologists called the Journal of Consulting Psychology.
Tension continued to grow within APA as a result of its inadequate attention to the interests of applied and professional psychologists. At the APA Annual Meeting in 1936, a group of applied contemporaries asked New York University Douglas Fryer to lead an effort for organizing applied psychologists. In 1937, under Fryers leadership, members of several applied groups including APAs clinical section, ACP, and other local and state groups, formed the American Association of Applied Psychology (AAAP) as a national association to represent the interests of applied psychology.
The AAAP rapidly grew as the dominant organization in the U.S. for individuals with applied psychological interests. Section D, Industrial and Business, was one of four sessions created within the organization. The other three sections were clinical, consulting, and educational. Later, a section for military psychology was added.
From 1937 to 1945, the AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, was the professional organization for industrial psychologists. Membership to the section was limited to AAAP fellows or associates who at the time of application for membership, are actively engaged in the application of psychology in business, industry, public service or allied fields (Constitution of Section D, 1939, as cited by Benjamin, 1997b, p. 462). Although the membership was small, it included the most visible industrial psychologists of the time. Four of the total of eight AAAP presidents had industrial interests: Fryer, Paterson, Bingham, and Poffenberger. Membership was dominated by university-based psychologists although many psychologists employed full-time in industry were members. The purposes of AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, were:
(a) to promote high standards of practice in the application of psychology
to business, industry, public service, and allied vocational fields;
(b) to promote research and publications in these fields;
(c) to facilitate the exchange of information and experience among its members;
(d) to promote the development of new professional opportunities; and
(e) to contribute in general to the advancement of applied psychology.
(AAAP, 1940, cited in Benjamin, 1997b, p. 462).
Table 1 contains the officers of AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, from 1938-1945.
Upon request of the National Research Council, AAAP, APA, and SPSSI (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues) were asked to collaborate for the benefit of the national welfare. In 1945, these groups agreed to merge and reorganize as the national psychological association in the U.S. (see Capshew & Hilgard, 1992). The original five AAAP sections continued as sections of the new APA. Carroll Shartle, the last chairman of AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, chaired the organizing committee that would create a new division. AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, became APA Division 14, Industrial and Business Psychology (one of 19 original divisions of APA).
The charter members of Division 14 were the former members of the AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, who chose to pay APA dues following the merger of AAAP and APA. All members had to be actively engaged in the application or study of psychology in business, industry, public service or allied vocational fields and whose activities are in conformity with the standards adopted by the Division. (Burtt, 1947, as cited in Benjamin, 1997a, p. 108). The membership was split between fellows and associates as defined in the original bylaws. These two categories prevailed until 1958 when the APA changed its membership designation to add the category of memberand to redefine fellow as an individual who made outstanding contributions to psychology. Previous fellows attained the new fellow status if they desired. In 1957, Division 14 voted to eliminate the associate category, which was then restored by the division in 1963. The five goals of Division 14, Industrial and Business Psychology, were to:
(a) Ensure high standards of practice.
(b) Promote research and publication in the field.
(c) Provide a forum for exchange of information and experience.
(d) Develop new professional opportunities for industrial/organizational psychologists.
(e) Advance applied psychology. (Benjamin, 1997a, p. 119)
In 1962, Business was dropped from the divisions name and in 1973, Organizational was added to the name and Division 14 became the Division of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
Member dissatisfaction with APA surfaced again during the 1970s. Over the course of the twentieth century, APAs emphasis changed from scientific issues to practice issues, primarily in the health care area. Subsequently, scientific members left APA and organized the American Psychological Society (APS) in 1988. The shift in emphasis and other issues (see Benjamin, 1997a; Hakel, 1997; Campbell, 1997) led members of Division 14 to explore ways for addressing concerns with APA. One option was to establish some independence from APA by incorporating as a society. According to Hakel (1997),
Incorporation as The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology was proposed to provide Division 14 with an independent and secure base, to sharpen our public identity, to increase member identification with our organization, to gain flexibility and responsiveness in dealing with legal (EEO) issues, to gain more control over our financial affairs, and to enable us better to pursue opportunities. (pp. 78-79)
In 1982, Division 14 incorporated as the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Inc.-A Division of the American Psychological Association (SIOP). SIOP is affiliated with both APS and APA, and its members can join either. According to the current bylaws, the purpose of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology is:
to promote human welfare through the various applications of psychology to all types of organizations providing goods or services, such as manufacturing concerns, commercial enterprises, labor unions or trade associations, and public agencies.
Criteria for membership and additional objectives of the society as stated in the bylaws are located in the SIOP Annual Membership Directory.
The overall purpose of the society has not changed significantly from the purpose established by the AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, in 1937. Clear linkages between SIOPs and AAAPs objectives are obvious. The organization has experienced changes with regard to structure, membership, and activities, primarily due to the expansion of the discipline and the growth of membership (see Benjamin, 1997a).
Table 2 contains the names of presidents for Division 14 and SIOP. Table 3 contains membership totals in 5-year intervals for the organization from 1945 to 2000. Table 4 includes the names of award winners.
Following the tables is a list of major events in the evolution of our professional organization.
Table 1
Presidents and Officers of the Industrial and Business
Section of the American Association for
Applied Psychology (AAAP): 1938-1945
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945 Harold E. Burtt
Walter V. Bingham
Morris S. Viteles
Arthur Kornhauser
Arthur Kornhauser
Arthur Kornhauser
Paul S. Achilles
Carroll L. Shartle Marion A. Bills
Marion A. Bills
Marion A. Bills
Millicent Pond
Kinsley R. Smith
George K. Bennett
George K. Bennett
Rensis Likert*
Beatrice Dvorak*
Floyd L. Ruch
*Left because of a new wartime assignment.
Table 2
PRESIDENTS OF SIOP
1945-46 Bruce V. Moore
1946-47 John G. Jenkins
1947-48 George K. Bennett
1948-49 Floyd L. Ruch
1949-50 Carroll L. Shartle
1950-51 Jack W. Dunlap
1951-52 Marion A. Bills
1952-53 J. L. Otis
1953-54 Harold A. Edgerton
1954-55 Edwin E. Ghiselli
1955-56 Leonard W. Ferguson
1956-57 Edwin R. Henry
1957-58 Charles H. Lawshe, Jr.
1958-59 Joseph Tiffin
1959-60 Erwin K. Taylor
1960-61 Raymond A. Katzell
1961-62 Orlo L. Crissey
1962-63 William McGehee
1963-64 S. Rains Wallace
1964-65 Brent N. Baxter
1965-66 Ross Stagner
1966-67 Marvin D. Dunnette
1967-68 Philip Ash
1968-69 Stanley E. Seashore
1969-70 William A. Owens
1970-71 Herbert H. Meyer
1971-72 Douglas W. Bray
1972-73 Robert M.Guion
1973-74 Edwin A. Fleishman
1974-75 Donald L. Grant
1975-76 Lyman W. Porter
1976-77 Paul W. Thayer
1977-78 John P. Campbell
1978-79 C. Paul Sparks
1979-80 Mary L. Tenopyr
1980-81 Victor H. Vroom
1981-82 Arthur C. MacKinney
1982-83 Richard J. Campbell
1983-84 Milton D. Hakel
1984-85 Benjamin Schneider
1985-86 Irwin L. Goldstein|
1986-87 Sheldon Zedeck
1987-88 Daniel R. Ilgen
1988-89 Ann Howard
1989-90 Neal W. Schmitt
1990-91 Frank J. Landy
1991-92 Richard J. Klimoski
1992-93 Wayne F. Cascio
1993-94 Paul R. Sackett
1994-95 Walter C. Borman
1995-96 Michael A. Campion
1996-97 James L. Farr
1997-98 Kevin R. Murphy
1998-99 Elaine D. Pulakos
1999-00 Angelo S. DeNisi
2000-01 Nancy Tippins
2001-02 William H. Macey
2002-2003 Ann Marie Ryan
2003-2004 Mike Burke
2004-2005 Fritz Drasgow
2005-2006 Leaetta Hough
2006-2007 Jeffrey McHenry
2007-2008 Lois Tetrick
2008-2009 Gary Latham
2009-2010 Kurt Kraiger
2010-2011 Eduardo Salas
Table 3
Division 14/SIOP Membership Totals: 1945-2000
Year Fellows Members Associates Total 1945
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000 80
165
213
254
252
243
238
236
234
240
209
231 --
--
--
480
609
711
948
1436
1936
2017
2096
3043 50
123
301
--
73
155
184
281
329
288
253
327 130
288
514
734
934
1109
1370
1953
2499
2545
2558
3601
Note. For 1960 there was no listing that separated associates and members. The associate category was eliminated during this time.
Major Events in the History of the Society for Industrial
and Organizational Psychology, Inc.
A Division of APA Major Events in the History of the Society for Industrialand Organizational Psychology, Inc.A Division of APA
1892 American Psychological Association (APA) was organized.
1921 The New York Association of Consulting Psychologists (ACP) was founded. It consisted mostly of clinical and educational psychologists, however, a small core of industrial psychologists did exist.
1922 APAs Committee on the Certification of Consulting Psychologists was asked to create two new sections on educational psychology and industrial psychology. No further action was taken as the APA Committee perceived there was no support by either educational or industrial psychologists.
1930 New York ACP reorganized to become ACP. The organization was expanded to include the northeastern.
1933 ACP adopted a Code of Ethics for psychologists in applied work.
1936 At the APA Annual meeting, New York University Douglas Fryer was selected by applied colleagues to chair a committee to create a new national organization for applied psychologists.
1937 The American Association for Applied Psychology (AAAP) was established.
Both the APA Clinical section and ACP disbanded to make way for the new association.
ACPs national journal for professional psychologists called, Journal of Consulting Psychology, became AAAPs official journal.
AAAP held its first meeting in conjunction with APA in Minneapolis.
1938 AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, identified eight areas for which members could provide services. These areas are:
1) Study of the requirements of occupations
2) Development and use of tests and other scientific techniques in the scientific placement of workers
3) Formulation of the best methods of applying human energy at work
4) Organization and systematization of training programs to insure the most complete development and most efficient use of individual ability
5) Determination of the optimal conditions of work
6) Analysis of characteristics of industrial organization for the determination of types best adapted to serve both the economic and social, and broadly, human objectives of industrial organization
7) Examination and control of motivating forces in the case of both workers and management, which influence production and harmonious relationships in the industrial situation
8) Analysis of human factors influencing the demand for and sale of commodities through the application of scientific techniques of market research
(Reports of the AAAP, 1938, as cited by Benjamin, 1997b, p. 463)
1939 AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, adopted a constitution. The initial by-laws had 3 standing committees: membership, elections, program
1938-1945 AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, was the professional
organization for industrial psychologists.
1945 AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, had its largest membership: 85 members.
AAAP merged with a reorganized APA.
AAAP Section D, Industrial and Business, became APA Division 14, Industrial and Business Psychology.
Bruce V. Moore of Pennsylvania State College (now Pennsylvania State University ) was elected as first president of Division 14.
1946 The first program for APA Division 14, Industrial and Business Psychology, was held at an APA meeting. The program included a:
Business meeting
Presidential Address (Evening Banquet)
Two paper sessions
Roundtable Discussion (Internship Opportunities in Industry)
1947 The organization structure for APA Division 14, Industrial and Business Psychology, was created, which included:
Executive Committee
President
Secretary/Treasurer
2 Division Representatives to the APA Council
3 Members-at-large
Membership Committee
Program Committee
Election Committee
Committee on Standards and Code of Ethics
At the APA meeting in Detroit, 80 fellows and 50 associates were counted as charter members.
Fellows had to
(a) have a doctoral degree based on a psychological dissertation
(b) have prior membership in the APA or the AAAP
(c) have 4 years of postdoctoral professional experience, two of which must be in the application of psychology to business, industry, and so on, or a record of significant published research of direct value to the application of psychology in business. (Burtt, 1947, as cited in Benjamin, 1997a, p. 108)
Associates could have a doctoral degree with a psychology-based dissertation, or 2 years of graduate work in psychology, or 1 year of graduate work in psychology and 1 year of experience in the application of psychology business, industry, and so on (Burtt, 1947, as cited in Benjamin, 1997a, p. 108).
1948 The Committee on Training was added to address issues such as recruitment of students, graduate course work, training opportunities, and future job opportunities. This specific committee was abolished by 1953 but resurfaced in other forms over the next several years until the establishment of the standing Education and Training Committee.
1949 The first newsletter was published.
The Committee on Professional Relations was established. Its first order of business was to review a proposal to form a board for control and certification of psychological consulting firms. The committees response was that no such boards existed to govern the practices of groups of lawyers or physicians and felt that certification of individuals (via ABEPP) offered sufficient control of psychological practice. The recommendation was forwarded to the APA board of directors, which agreed with the committee. (Benjamin, 1997a, p. 112).
1951 Marion A. Bills was elected as the first woman president of Division 14.
The first directory of members was published. The directory was for both members and for businesses as an advertisement of consultant services.
1953 The first workshop was held in conjunction with the APA meeting in Boston.
Although enrollment was limited to 30, 31 people attended (25 were from industry). The first workshop was led by Edwin R. Henry and Stephen Habbe.
A Workshop Committee was established. Workshops were offered at both APA meetings and the Midwestern Psychological Association meetings.
A brochure was published to encourage businesses to use the services of psychologists. (Benjamin, 1997a, p. 118).
1955 The bylaws were revised; two committees were added to the standing committees (Public Relations, Professional Practices).
Several special committees were formed over the years to address numerous issues. Most of the committees grew out of 3 committees (Public Relations, Professional Practice, Education and Training).
1957 Membership included 236 fellows and 357 associates. Members voted to remove the associate category for the following year.
1962 The name of the division was changed to APA Division 14, Industrial Psychology.
1963 The Associate category of membership was re-established to include graduate students, practitioners with masters degrees, psychologists in other fields who had interested in industrial/organizational psychology, and nonpsychologists in industry who were involved in psychological work. (Benjamin, 1997a, p. 114)
Industrial Psychologist (TIP) was published. The first editor was Robert Perloff.
1964 The James McKeen Cattell Award for Research Design was established.
1965 A model curriculum for doctoral training in industrial psychology was published.
1970 The S. Rains Wallace Dissertation Research Award was established.
1973 The name was changed to the APA Division 14 Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
TIP changed its name to The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist.
1977 The Distinguished Professional Contributions Award was established.
1980 The National Conference of Graduate Students in Industrial-Organizational Psychology held its first annual meeting at The Ohio State University. (Later to be named the Industrial-Organizational Psychology/Organizational Behavior Graduate Student Conference)
The Principles for Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures was published.
1981 The Specialty Guidelines for the Delivery of Services by Industrial Organizational Psychologists was published.
1982 The signed Articles of Incorporation were filed with the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, D.C. The name changed to The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Inc.-A Division of the APA.
The Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award was established.
1983 A half-time assistant was hired for the administrative office, which was located at the University of Maryland.
The Robert J. Wherry Award for the Best Paper at the I-O/OB Conference was given.
1984 The Cattell Award was renamed the Edwin E. Ghiselli Award for Research Design.
1985 The Casebook on Ethics and Standards for the Practice of Psychology in Organizations was published.
1986 The brochure, The Science and Practice of Industrial and Organizational Psychology was published.
The first volume of the series, Frontiers of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, was published. The initial series editor was Raymond Katzell. The volume is Career Development in Organizations, edited by Douglas T. Hall. Four thousand copies were sold. Now there are 11 titles.
In April, SIOP held its first conference independent of the APA annual convention in Chicago, IL.
The First Annual I/O-OB Doctoral Student Consortium was held in Washington, D.C. (Later to be named the SIOP Doctoral Consortium.)
1988 SIOP joined the American Psychological Society (APS) as an affiliate.
It was proposed to change the By-Laws to allow members of both APA and APS to join SIOP.
An Administrative Manual was adopted to guide committees and officers.
1989 The Distinguished Service Contributions Award was established.
A new category called Society Fellow was added (earlier, the name was Division 14 fellow.)
The Graduate Training Programs in Industrial-Organizational Psychology was published.
1990 The SIOP Administrative Office was moved to Arlington Heights, Illinois. A full-time administrative assistant was hired.
The annual conference was expanded to 3 days.
SIOP developed its own mailing list and began collecting own dues. (prior to1990, APA did these activities.)
The first membership and salary survey was completed. The Multiple Facets of Industrial-Organizational Psychology was published.
1991 The first volume of the series, Professional Practice, was published. The initial series editor was Douglas Bray, who also edited the first volume entitled Working with Organizations and Their People: A Guide to Human Resource Practice. Now there are 9 titles.
TIP issues were copyrighted and formally registered.
1992 The Ernest J. McCormick Award for Distinguished Early Career Contributions was established.
1993 The Professional Job Placement Service at the annual conference was established.
1994 The Guidelines for Education and Training at the Masters Level was published.
1995 The administrative office moved to Bowling Green, Ohio. An office manager and a full-time administrative assistant were hired.
The SIOP Web Site was established and coordinated from the University of Nebraska, Omaha.
1996 The SIOP Foundation was created.
The Multiple Facets of I-O Psychology II was completed and published.
The Executive Committee approved the establishment of the SIOP Historian.
The M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace was established.
1997 The monograph, Affirmative Action: A Review of Psychology and Behavioral Research, was published.
The William A. Owens Scholarly Contribution Award was established.
1998 The Ethical Practice of Psychology in Organizations was published.
The Best Student Poster at SIOP was renamed as the John C. Flanagan Award for Outstanding Student Contribution to the SIOP Conference.
2000 There are 5 positions in the administrative office: Assistant Manager for Membership, Assistant Manager for Publications, IT Manager, Administrative Assistant, and Director.
SIOP Membership is at a record high. As of April 19, 2002, there were 6,117 paid members. They include:
183 Fellows
51 Retired Fellows
2696 Members
120 Retired Members
13 Retired
383 Associate Members
8 Retired Associate Members
191 International Affiliates
2 Retired International Affiliates
2291 Student Affiliates
166 Student International Affiliates
Bibliography
Baritz, L. (1960). The servants of power. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Benjamin, L.T., Jr. (1997a). A History of Division 14 (The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology). In D.A. Dewsbury (Ed.), Unification Through Division: Histories of the Divisions of the American Psychological Association, Volume II. Washington, D.C. : American Psychological Association.
Benjamin, L.T., Jr. (1997b). Organized industrial psychology before Division 14: The ACP and the AAAP (1930-1945). Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(4), 459-466.
Benjamin, L. T., Jr. (1997c). The early presidents of Division 14: 1945-1954. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 35(2), 29-34.
Campbell, R. J. (1997). Incorporation: A coming of age. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 34(3), 80-88.
Capshew, J. H. (1999). Psychologists on the march: Science, practice, and professional identity in, 1929-1969. Cambridge, : Cambridge University Press.
Capshew, J.H., & Hilgard, E.R. (1992). The power of service: World War II and professional reform in the American Psychological Association. In R.W. Evans, V.S. Sexton,, & T.C. Cadwallader, (Eds.) (1992). The American Psychological Association: A Historical Perspective. (pp. 149-175). Washington, D.C. : The American Psychological Association.
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Evans, R.W., Sexton, V.S., & Cadwallader, T.C. (Eds.) (1992). The American Psychological Association: A Historical Perspective. Washington, D.C. : The American Psychological Association.
Farr, J. L. (1997a). Creation, early structure, and early concerns of Division 14. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 34(3), 11-15.
Farr, J. L. (1997b). Organized I/O psychology: Past, present, future. Presidential Address given at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, St, Louis, MO.
Farr, J. L. And Tesluk, P. E. (1997). Bruce V. Moore: First President of Division 14. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(4), 478-485.
Ferguson, L. (1965). The heritage of industrial psychology. Hartford, CT : Finlay Press.
Foster, L. L. & Coovert, M. D. (1997). TIPical trends: An examination of the evolution of TIP. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 34(3), 97-107.
Hakel, M. D. (1979). Proposal to incorporate as the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 16(4), 4-5.
Hakel, M. D. (1997). Why incorporation looked (and still looks) attractive. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 34(3), 77-79.
Hale, M., Jr. (1980). Human science and social order: Hugo Munsterberg and the origins of applied psychology. Philadephia: Temple University Press.
Hilgard, E. R. (1987). Psychology in : A historical survey. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Katzell, R.A., & Austin, J.T. (1992). From then to now: The development of industrial-organizational psychology in the. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 803-835.
Koppes, L. L. (2000). Making the workplace better: A history of industrial and organizational psychology. Manuscript in preparation for I. Weiner (Series Ed.), D. K.
Freedheim & D. K. Detterman (Vol. Eds.), Comprehensive handbook of psychology: Volume 1: History of Psychology. New York : Wiley & Sons.
Koppes, L.L. (1999). Ideals of science: Persons behind the SIOP awards. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 36(4), 75-86.
Koppes, L.L. (1997a). American female pioneers of industrial and organizational psychology during the early years. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(4), 500-515.
Koppes, L. L. (1997b). Preserving the history of APA Division 14/SIOP. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 34(3), 37-39.
Landy, F. J. (1997). Early influences on the development of industrial and organizational psychology. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(4), 467-477.
Landy, F. J. (1997). The family tree. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 34(3), 28-36.
Landy, F. J. (1993). Early influences on the development of industrial and organizational psychology. In T. K. Fagan & G. R. VandenBox (Eds.), Exploring applied psychology: Origins and critical analyses (pp. 83-118). Washington, D.C. : American Psychological Association.
Landy, F. J. (1992). Hugo Munsterberg: Victim or visionary? Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 787-802.
Napoli, D.S. (1981). Architects of adjustment: The history of the psychological profession in the. Port Washington, NY : Kennikat Press.
Sokal, M.M. (1992). Origins and early years of the American Psychological Association, 1890-1906. American Psychologist, 47, 111-122.
Stagner, R. (1981). Training and experiences of some distinguished industrial psychologists. American Psychologist, 36, 497-505.
Thayer, P. W. (1997). Oh! For the good old days! The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 34(3), 17-20.
Van De Water, T. J. (1997). Psychologys entrepreneurs and the marketing of industrial psychology. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(4), 486-499.
Wickert, F. (1997). Reminiscences of 1946 and its historical context. The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 34(3), 21-23.
The Committee on Training recommended adding a workshop to the annual program. The workshop should be focused on providing postdoctoral education and training for all industrial psychologists, especially for working full-time in industry. (Benjamin, 1997a, p. 112)
These numbers also include retired individuals for each category. The member category also includes foreign affiliates. Not included in the total is the number of student affiliates, which is 2535, including foreign student affiliates. Details for each current category of membership is presented at the end of the list of major events.Monchi set for Roma
By Football Italia staff
Reports in Spain suggest Sevilla sporting director Monchi has confirmed that he’ll leave to join Roma.
Rumours have been swirling for some time that the former goalkeeper would replace Walter Sabatini, who left the Giallorossi in October.
Monchi has already confirmed his desire to leave, but no club was willing to pay his €5m release clause in the summer of 2016.
However, Sport is now reporting that the sporting director has told Sevilla that he intends to leave to join Roma after the transfer window shuts.
The Lupi could sign Monchi for €2.5m if they wait until the summer, but both the director and the club want to leave as much time as possible to prepare for the summer market.
Therefore, Sport reports, Monchi will leave Seville after the January transfer window, having already secured the signing of Stevan Jovetic from Inter.SNL Likens Trump to Monkey with Machine Gun
After eight years of a Black Democrat as president where such behavior was cause for firing and online flogging, it is politically correct again to liken the president of the United States to a monkey now that Republican Donald Trump is president-elect.
Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update aired on December 17 featured a joke by Michael Che comparing Trump to a monkey with a machine gun.
“…Taking the presidency away from Donald Trump now is like giving a monkey a machine gun and then trying to wrestle it back from him. At this point all we can do is pray that he can’t figure out how it works, gets bored and just puts it down and walks away.”
Video of the segment was posted to Twitter by Politico’s Ken Vogel.
Michael Che compares Trump presidency to a monkey w a machine gun:"just pray that he can't figure out how it works, gets bored & walks away" pic.twitter.com/sgXnORcyZ9 — Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) December 18, 2016
“Michael Che compares Trump presidency to a monkey w a machine gun:”just pray that he can’t figure out how it works, gets bored & walks away””
Image via Legal Insurrection.
Democrats and liberals skewered with impunity then-President George W. Bush with monkey comparisons all during his presidency. When Barack Obama became president in 2009 all such comparisons were deemed racist and resulted in people losing their jobs and being publicly shamed on the Internet. Now that a white Republican is soon to be president again, de-humanizing the president is politically correct again.
Link to full clip of Weekend Update at NBC.Québec City and Hamilton have the minimum market conditions to support National Hockey League (NHL) franchises – which would bring the total number of Canadian cities that have or could support NHL teams to nine – according to The Conference Board of Canada’s 12th analysis of the professional sports market.
Ottawa, February 9, 2012 – Québec City and Hamilton have the minimum market conditions to support National Hockey League (NHL) franchises – which would bring the total number of Canadian cities that have or could support NHL teams to nine – according to The Conference Board of Canada’s 12th analysis of the professional sports market.
“Future Hockey Day in Canada celebrations could include up to four all-Canadian matchups if an eighth or even ninth city acquires an NHL franchise,” said Mario Lefebvre, Director, Centre for Municipal Studies. “However, nine has to be considered the upper limit.
“Let’s also be clear that Winnipeg, Hamilton and Québec City have less of a margin for error than teams in larger Canadian or U.S. cities. These franchises can be successful as long as they have dedicated owners who are invested for the long term, manage their business and markets carefully, and the Canadian dollar remains a strong currency.”
This briefing, How Many NHL Franchises Could Canada Sustain?, is 12th in the Conference Board’s series Playing in the Big Leagues. It assesses the NHL prospects for Canadian cities using league and franchise-specific factors, as well as the four market pillars required for a professional sport franchise, as developed in earlier briefing in this series.
Population Size: Prior to the 2011-12 season, the six existing Canadian NHL franchises had more than one million people in their Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). The return of the Jets to Winnipeg brought a franchise into a CMA of about 750,000 people, which the Conference Board considers the minimum threshold for a viable NHL team. This population requirement makes Hamilton and Quebec City the only potential additional NHL markets in Canada, at least according to this pillar. Market Wealth: This pillar has grown in importance, given the rapid rise in ticket prices for professional sport events. In per capita income, Winnipeg ranked 14th among Canada`s 27 largest CMAs in 2010, Québec City ranked 10th in 2010 and Hamilton ranked 18th. While these three markets are far from the wealthiest in Canada, Hamilton’s per capita income surpassed that of Montréal. Moreover, Winnipeg and Quebec City ranked ahead of both Vancouver and Montreal in per capita income. Corporate Presence – In 2009, Quebec City was home to 17 of Canada’s |
bands of population activity each carry complementary information about stimulus features. For example, nested patterns of slower (e.g., delta or theta) and faster (e.g., gamma) auditory cortical rhythmic activity encode complementary aspects of speech ( Figure 2 B) []. These results illustrate the multiple coding dimensions of population signals, and highlight the importance of understanding how specific aspects of coding in spiking activity map onto phase and power of rhythmic mass signals. Specific challenges for understanding the link between non-invasive neuroimaging and neural population codes are outlined in Box 2 and in the outstanding questions ( Box 3 ).
How can we best integrate recent advances in cellular imaging and histochemical or morphological analysis to disentangle the contribution of specific cell types to neural population codes?
How do local descriptions of cortical state (derived from multi-neuron recordings) relate to state-dependent signatures visible in neural mass activity?
What do neural correlations imply for mass signals, and how can we infer some properties of the microscopic structure of neural population codes from mass signals?
Is mixed selectivity a hallmark of higher (association) brain regions, and does the mixed selectivity (previously observed across neurons) also exist in the time or frequency domains of neural activity (i.e., do different temporal signal components exhibit mixed selectivity)?
How do microscopic-level neural coding mechanisms (neuronal heterogeneity, sparseness) interact with macroscopic scale aspects of neural activity (patterns of coupling across multiple areas or global state changes)?
How is it possible that mass signals carry sensory information given that only a small fraction of neurons are informative? How does neural heterogeneity affect what we can learn from mass signals?
In visual cortices the amplitude of gamma rhythms is the signal component carrying the most sensory information []. Models of gamma generation suggest that its amplitude reflects the instantaneous strength of local interactions between inhibitory and excitatory neurons, which is roughly proportional to the stimulus input – if excitation and inhibition are balanced []. Thus, gamma amplitude is expected to encode aspects of current stimulus features rather than the slow stimulus dynamics (which is reflected by slower signal components). The validity of this hypothesis requires further experimental tests, as does the causal role of such rhythms for behavior.
What determines the frequency of fast network oscillations with irregular neural discharges? I. Synaptic dynamics and excitation-inhibition balance.
Does this phase also indicate what is encoded? Recent work suggests this is the case: low-frequency phase can reflect the slow temporal structure of dynamic sensory stimuli. Experimental data and network models show that slow brain rhythms entrain to low-frequency variations of natural stimuli such as speech, directly inducing sensory information in the phase of these signals (e.g., []).
Encoding of naturalistic stimuli by local field potential spectra in networks of excitatory and inhibitory neurons.
Robust cortical entrainment to the speech envelope relies on the spectro-temporal fine structure.
The phase of low-frequency (<12Hz) rhythms likely reflects changes in local network excitability that shape both stimulus responses and spontaneous background activity. Evidence for this comes from neural recordings [] and from neuroimaging studies demonstrating a causal relation between the phase of low-frequency activity and single-trial stimulus detection []. Hence, the phase of low-frequency network activity may indicate whether or not local networks are in a state facilitating the encoding of sensory information and driving perception. Some theories suggest that the excitability fluctuations marked by the low-frequency phase help to prioritize the encoding of salient features [].
A precluding but not ensuring role of entrained low-frequency oscillations for auditory perception.
The functional importance of rhythmic activity in the brain.
An oscillatory hierarchy controlling neuronal excitability and stimulus processing in the auditory cortex.
Specific frequency components extracted from MEG and EEG signals seem to be particularly predictive of neural firing rates. Combined neural and EEG recordings from visual cortex show that the phase of low frequency (<10Hz) and the amplitude of high-frequency (gamma, 40–100Hz) rhythms carry the most information about the strength of local firing, and each offer complementary information about the firing rate []. An indirect comparison of auditory stimulus selectivity in firing rates and EEGs revealed the strongest association with the phase (but not power) of low-frequency components []. How do the phase of low-frequency components, and the amplitude of faster components, relate to sensory encoding?
Measurements of neural mass activity with high temporal resolution (LFP, MEG, EEG, ECoG) provide rich signals varying on multiple timescales [] and exhibiting reasonable spatial specificity []. Nevertheless, owing to the multiple neural phenomena they capture, and because of uncertainties in source localization and to cancellation of local signals [], they are difficult to interpret in terms of the underlying neural processes. However, some relations between mass signals, spiking activity, and sensory encoding are emerging from recent work.
The origin of extracellular fields and currents – EEG, ECoG, LFP and spikes.
Modelling and analysis of local field potentials for studying the function of cortical circuits.
Additional insights can be gained from mass signals by decomposing them into specific frequency bands and separating the sensory information carried by power and phase of individual bands. Recent work, based on both invasive (LFP) and non-invasive (EEG and MEG) recordings, has individuated the phase of low-frequency activity as a particularly informative feature of mass activity []. In the visual system, detailed sensory features are reflected more in the phase of low-frequency (below 12Hz) activity than in the power [] ( Figure 2 A). Related findings were made in the auditory system, where the phase of low-frequency activity encodes speech or complex sounds [] ( Figure 2 B,C). Stepping beyond single-site analysis, some studies found that the relative timing of neural responses across different sites carries more sensory information than the activation of individual sites []. These results hence suggest that the relative timing of population activity could at least be as important for sensory coding as the strength of activity of an individual population, in line with insights from studies on spiking activity that highlight the role of relative response timing.
Phase coding observed from single-trial analysis of mass signals.Encoding of visual features in the phase of EEG signals. (Left) Information about visual stimuli carried by time-frequency EEG data reveals phase-specific coding of stimulus features (eyes and mouth of a face). (Right) Time-frequency representation of feature coding. In both panels, information carried by the EEG signal is color-coded, with warmer colors indicating higher information values. The contralateral eye was encoded by the phase at the 10Hz signal (reproduced fromPhase encoding of continuous speech in auditory cortex. Theta-band (3–7Hz) phase in bilateral auditory cortex dynamically encodes temporal variations in the envelope of continuous speech and modulates the amplitude of high-frequency gamma oscillations (reproduced fromCorrelation between the performance (quantified as percentage of correctly decoded trials) in decoding which natural sound was presented when using auditory cortical firing rates in non-human primates, and the performance in decoding natural sounds when using theta-band EEG phase/power in humans. The same natural sound stimuli were presented to both species. Theta-band EEG phase captures better the stimulus selectivity of cortical firing rates (reproduced from
Coding of information in the phase of local field potentials within human medial temporal lobe.
Discrimination of speech stimuli based on neuronal response phase patterns depends on acoustics but not comprehension.
Sensory information in local field potentials and spikes from visual and auditory cortices: time scales and frequency bands.
Coding of information in the phase of local field potentials within human medial temporal lobe.
Discrimination of speech stimuli based on neuronal response phase patterns depends on acoustics but not comprehension.
Advances in single-trial data analysis have expanded the use of mass signals to study sensory transformations, permitting researchers to study the same questions using neuroimaging, multi-neuron recordings, and computational models. For example, recent neuroimaging studies extracted features of population activity influencing the variability of single-trial percepts [], and demonstrated that visual object categories [] or fine details of auditory signals [] can be recovered using stimulus reconstruction or decoding methods.
The dynamics of invariant object recognition in the human visual system.
Although a complete description of population codes may require recording all neurons involved in the considered task, important empirical knowledge about population codes can be gained from measurements of neural mass signals with high temporal resolution (LFP, ECOG, EEG, MEG). These measurements lack cellular-level resolution but can be easily applied to multiple brain areas and complex tasks, and are sensitive to both supra- and sub-threshold activity. Importantly, they have the potential to capture indicators of cortical state that cannot be easily extracted from the spiking activity of a few neurons alone [].
Modelling and analysis of local field potentials for studying the function of cortical circuits.
Another approach to clarify the neural basis of the sensory information carried by different components of MEG/EEG signals is based on the use of information theoretic or stimulus-decoding methods [] to compare quantitatively the similarities of stimulus encoding in mass signals and multi-neuron recordings []. This approach revealed ( Figure 2 C) that the phase (and to a much lesser extent the power) of low-frequency mass activity captures some aspects of the sensory information carried by population spiking activity []. Such comparative approaches will be crucial for understanding what mass signals can tell us about the underlying neural information processing ( Box 2 ) and open the possibility to study emerging principles such as multiplexing, mixed selectivity, or of state-dependence across scales of brain measurements.
Emerging principles of population coding: in search for the neural code.
Joint measurements of single-neuron spikes and mass signals also facilitate our understanding of the coordination of population codes across brain structures. Recent concurrent multi-site recordings of spiking activity and LFPs have shown that the spiking activity of a single neuron depends not only on the phase of the LFP oscillation at the same site but also on the dynamic patterns of the relationships (or ‘phase coupling’) between the phases of neural oscillations measured by LFP at multiple distant sites [] ( Figure 3 B). The similarity of preferences in LFP phase coupling between neurons also predicts the similarity of their firing-rate variations: neurons that prefer similar patterns of phase coupling exhibit similar changes in firing rates with time or task, whereas neurons with different phase preferences show divergent firing-rate dynamics []. This provides direct evidence that large-scale functional connectivity shapes local activation patterns and controls the co-activation and coordination of anatomically dispersed but functionally integrated ensembles of neurons, thus breaking new ground in the understanding of the large-scale organization of neural population codes.
Converging studies suggest that single-neuron spike timing depends on the frequency-specific oscillatory LFP phase ( Figure 3 A), and that the sensory information carried by spiking activity can be better interpreted when the network context during which spikes were emitted is known [] ( Figure 3 A). A recent study in the human medial temporal lobe showed that perception-related spiking activity is locked to an early stereotyped increase in theta LFP signals, suggesting that specific interactions between network rhythms and firing of individual neurons may define temporal windows facilitating conscious perception []. Complementing measurements of spiking activity with LFP recordings may allow differentiating otherwise ambiguous population states and provides a means to disentangle context-related activity fluctuations from those induced by sensory noise or other causes.
Insights about population coding from joint analysis of spiking activity and mass signals.State-dependent neural firing in auditory cortex (data fromSchematic of how patterns of oscillatory phase coupling across multiple brain areas may coordinate anatomically dispersed neuronal ensembles (reproduced, with permission, from
Timing of single-neuron and local field potential responses in the human medial temporal lobe.
One key opportunity of the joint measurements arises from the complementary nature of single-neuron firing and of mass signals: mass signals capture aspects of sub-threshold activity and of intrinsically driven state-changes that cannot be measured by observing the spiking activity of a few neurons alone []. Thus, low-frequency mass activity can be seen as a measure of the background state fluctuations constituting the ‘context’ that affects processing of the ‘content’ carried by sensory inputs []. Examining the responses of individual neurons relative to the phase of low-frequency network rhythms can shed light on how the local circuit context affects the specific sensory content encoded in spiking activity.
The origin of extracellular fields and currents – EEG, ECoG, LFP and spikes.
Modelling and analysis of local field potentials for studying the function of cortical circuits.
Important insights about population codes further arise from studies that simultaneously measure spiking responses and mass signals, or that perform comparative analysis on such data obtained in separate experiments.
Insights from the combined observations of single neurons and mass signals
To enhance our understanding of population coding, future developments of methods for high-dimensional data analysis and neural modeling will be necessary as well. Recent work has provided improvements in analytical techniques for reducing high-dimensional datasets and extracting the relevant sensory representations []. In addition, biophysical models of sensory representations in cortical microcircuits allow a principled and rigorous direct link between neural signals and computing architectures, facilitating our understanding of how coding principles are implemented in the neural circuits. Being able to subject different neural signals to the same scientific question and analysis routine, and being able to compute both spiking and mass signals from the same plausible neural network models [], are two crucial features to further improve our understanding of neural population coding in the future.
Modelling and analysis of local field potentials for studying the function of cortical circuits.
Modelling and analysis of local field potentials for studying the function of cortical circuits.
In light of the reviewed properties of population codes several questions emerge about the integration of microscopic and macroscopic structure of population codes ( Box 3 ). For example, can the mechanisms that seem crucial at the microscopic scale (such as neuronal heterogeneity, sparseness, or correlations or mixed selectivity) be observed from mass signals? In turn, how do specific patterns of activity observed at the macroscopic scale (such as patterns of phase coupling across multiple areas or global state changes) relate to the coding properties that are crucial at the microscopic scale? For sure, much is to be learned by methods, such as single-trial stimulus decoding or reconstruction methods, that allow a comparative and detailed assessment of similarity and complementarity of activity at each spatial and temporal scale.
Understanding the properties and principles of cortical population codes requires identifying the most informative patterns within the spatio-temporal complexity of multi-neuron activity and understanding how coding properties are affected by large-scale state changes. Invasive recordings provide detailed access to the heterogeneity, temporal precision, and correlation structure of multi-neuron activity, properties which recent computational studies highlight as being crucial for shaping the information-coding properties of a population. Mass signals, on the other hand, provide more direct access to large-scale changes in network state and connectivity, other crucial properties that shape information coding and which can account for trial-by-trial variations in cognitive tasks. Combining insights from both mass signals and multi-neuron recordings is a key challenge for the future.
We are grateful to J. Assad, J. Carmena, S. Fusi, F. Jäkel, A. Onken, and R. Schwarzlose for useful feedback on an early version of the manuscript, to J. Carmena and S. Fusi for sharing their figures, and to S. Maistrelli for help with figure reprint permissions. We acknowledge the financial support of the VISUALISE and SICODE projects of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Programme within the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission (FP7-ICT-2011.9.11; FP7-600954 and FP7-284553), and of the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 (PITN-GA-2011-290011), by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC, BB/L027534/1), by the Max Planck Society, the Wellcome Trust (098433), the Autonomous Province of Trento (Call ‘Grandi Progetti 2012’, project ‘Characterizing and improving brain mechanisms of attention – ATTEND’) and was part of the research program of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Tübingen, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; FKZ: 01GQ1002).
What determines the frequency of fast network oscillations with irregular neural discharges? I. Synaptic dynamics and excitation-inhibition balance.
Encoding of naturalistic stimuli by local field potential spectra in networks of excitatory and inhibitory neurons.
Robust cortical entrainment to the speech envelope relies on the spectro-temporal fine structure.
A precluding but not ensuring role of entrained low-frequency oscillations for auditory perception.
The functional importance of rhythmic activity in the brain.
An oscillatory hierarchy controlling neuronal excitability and stimulus processing in the auditory cortex.
Timing of single-neuron and local field potential responses in the human medial temporal lobe.
The origin of extracellular fields and currents – EEG, ECoG, LFP and spikes.
Sensory information in local field potentials and spikes from visual and auditory cortices: time scales and frequency bands.
Coding of information in the phase of local field potentials within human medial temporal lobe.
Discrimination of speech stimuli based on neuronal response phase patterns depends on acoustics but not comprehension.
The dynamics of invariant object recognition in the human visual system.
Macke, J.H. et al. (2011) Empirical models of spiking in neural populations. In In Advances in neural information processing systems, pp. 1350–1358
A simple model of cortical dynamics explains variability and state dependence of sensory responses in urethane-anesthetized auditory cortex.
Oscillatory multiplexing of population codes for selective communication in the mammalian brain.
The role of thalamic population synchrony in the emergence of cortical feature selectivity.
Comparative strength and dendritic organization of thalamocortical and corticocortical synapses onto excitatory layer 4 neurons.
Synchrony makes neurons fire in sequence, and stimulus properties determine who is ahead.
Neurons with stereotyped and rapid responses provide a reference frame for relative temporal coding in primate auditory cortex.
Good noise or bad noise: the role of correlated variability in a probabilistic inference framework.
Spontaneous cortical activity reveals hallmarks of an optimal internal model of the environment.
The effect of correlated variability on the accuracy of a population code.
Inferring decoding strategies from choice probabilities in the presence of correlated variability.
The effect of noise correlations in populations of diversely tuned neurons.
Correlations and the encoding of information in the nervous system.
Internal representation of task rules by recurrent dynamics: the importance of the diversity of neural responses.
Dissociation of visual, motor and predictive signals in parietal cortex during visual guidance.
Differences in onset latency of macaque inferotemporal neural responses to primate and non-primate faces.
Complementary contributions of spike timing and spike rate to perceptual decisions in rat S1 and S2 Cortex.
The representational capacity of the distributed encoding of information provided by populations of neurons in primate temporal visual cortex.
Functional heterogeneity in neighboring neurons of cat primary visual cortex in response to both artificial and natural stimuli.
The variable discharge of cortical neurons: implications for connectivity, computation, and information coding.
Emerging principles of population coding: in search for the neural code.
Modelling and analysis of local field potentials for studying the function of cortical circuits.
Large-scale, high-density (up to 512 channels) recording of local circuits in behaving animals.
Glossary
brain activity dynamics on a timescale of seconds. It reflects the interactions between ongoing endogenous activity and sensorimotor processing, and is strongly influenced by neuromodulatory systems.
two neural codes carry complementary information if the information they carry jointly is higher than the information carried by either code individually; this implies that some information not available in one code is provided by the other.
the estimation (by either the brain or an artificial decoder) of a variable of interest (for example, the value of a presented sensory stimulus, or a motor variable) from the observation of a single-trial neural population response.
a noise correlation between the firing rates of a pair of neurons whose strength, for each stimulus value, is proportional to the product of the derivatives of the tuning curves.
the minimal number of coordinate axes that are needed to describe the variations of responses across all trials to all different experimental conditions (for example, all combinations of sensory stimuli and behavioral responses).
electrocorticography.
electroencephalography.
the generation of the set of specific activity patterns that represent a sensory attribute.
neural code that represents stimulus attributes using the number of spikes emitted in response to the stimulus, regardless of their temporal pattern.
a measure of the variance of estimation of a particular stimulus value (e.g., contrast of a grating) from the single-trial observation of neural population activity.
a measure of how much knowledge about which stimulus is being presented can be gained from a single-trial neural population response. Information is often quantified as Shannon Information or Fisher Information.
a specific form of neural code encoding information in the timing of the response onset. The time of the response onset is usually measured with respect to stimulus presentation time, but can be defined also relative to another neural event (relative latency code).
a neurophysiological signal obtained by low-pass filtering extracellular recordings. It captures slow components of both sub- and supra-threshold neural activity.
a signal that comprises the aggregate neural electric activity in a local region and captures both supra- and sub-threshold phenomena, including spiking and synaptic activity. Examples are LFPs, ECOG, MEG, and EEG.
magnetoencephalography.
neural coding scheme in which complementary information is represented in different frequency components or temporal scales of neural population activity. For example, when different information is represented by the precise timing of individual spikes on the scale of milliseconds and by the slow modulation of the spike count on the scale of hundreds of milliseconds.
the set of response features of a population of neurons that carry all information about the considered stimuli. These features consist of spatio-temporal sequences of action potentials distributed across neurons and/or time.
a measure of correlation between the firing of a pair of neurons that cannot possibly be attributed to the sensory stimulus. Noise correlation is quantified as the correlation between the firing of the neurons in response to a fixed external stimulus.
a pattern of firing consisting of a group of neurons firing transiently in a relatively stereotyped sequence. A packet may encode different stimulus features by modulating the relative timing and relative firing rate of the subsets of neurons firing within the sequence.
the current period within a cycle of a given oscillation / the amplitude of an oscillatory signal.
a set of biophysical computational mechanisms used by the brain to extract information out of a neural population response.
a measure of how much (on average) observation of a neural population response reduces the uncertainty about which stimulus (among those in a set) is being presented. Also called ‘mutual information’.
a measure of correlations between the firing of a pair of neurons that are attributable to the sensory stimulus. Signal correlations are quantified as the correlation of tuning of the firing of the pair of neurons to the stimuli (for example, the correlation across stimuli of the tuning curves).
a repeatable temporal sequence of spikes that carries information about stimuli.
a neural (single-neuron or population) activity pattern that encodes the time of an important event (for example, the onset of a stimulus) by emitting a transient response with a stereotyped, invariant, and short latency.
a mathematical function describing the dependence of the trial-averaged firing rate of a neuron upon the value of the stimulus.
a measure of the selectivity of neural firing to stimuli. In intuitive terms, a narrow (respectively coarse) tuning width means that only few (respectively many) stimuli elicit a strong neural response.Colin Greening is doing the best he can.
Through this difficult stretch, he’s positive, keeping his head up and working hard. At this juncture, the Senators winger has no other choice.
Back after a road trip through Western Canada, it wasn’t easy for the 28-year-old Greening to play the role of spectator for all three games, but it happened and it’s behind him.
His hope: Better days ahead.
Greening has suited up for only four games. The last time he was in the lineup was in back-to-back games against Winnipeg and Toronto on Nov. 8-9 when winger Alex Chiasson was injured.
It’s fair to say Greening made contributions and looked comfortable. Once Chiasson was healthy, Greening was back to healthy scratch in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.
"It’s a different situation than I’m used to," Greening admits. "I’ve been sat out before but not for this length of period.
"But, this is a business, you have to be professional about it and this is a team that has a lot of depth. Guys have come up and they’ve played well. That’s part of hockey people forget, there’s only a finite number of spots that each team has. If guys are playing well, they are going to fill those roles."
Greening is definitely not a glass half-empty kind of guy. No, he’s not living up to the expectations that go with a cap hit of $2.65 million per-season, but he’s not about to mope around either.
"You have to stay positive," he said. "If you let negative thoughts get too much inside your head it can be toxic, not only in the dressing room, but in your home life as well.
"I’m very fortunate that I have a very supportive wife (Tissy) and a very supportive family through this whole situation. At the end of the day, you have to come to the rink, be professional about it. I’m still part of this team and that’s the most important thing to me."
Make no mistake, the Senators don’t love the fact Greening is sitting in the stands because they want him to be a regular contributor. Management admires the fact he’s working hard.
"He has been a total pro about this situation," said assistant GM Pierre Dorion Monday.
Greening isn’t alone here. Winger Erik Condra, who is making $1.2 million and will be a unrestricted free agent on July 1, is in the same spot. They are the last ones off the ice every day.
The Senators aren’t going to keep 14 forwards here forever. GM Bryan Murray attended Tuesday’s meeting in Toronto with an eye towards finding out just how much interest their is in his players.
Ideally, if the Senators move Greening or Condra, they’d like to get a player who can help in return. At some point or another, they will also have eight healthy defencemen.
Until a decision is made, Greening isn’t going to let his work ethic drop and he’s making the most of practice.
"That’s what I have to do," said Greening. "When you’re not getting the game-like situations you have to try and mimic that in practice.
"That’s something I try to do with (skating coach) Mark Power and (skills coach) Shean Donovan staying out a little extra by playing those 2-on-2s and 1-on-1s and relishing the moment when I get those chances. Right now, I’m getting the game-like situations that get you in the comfort zone when you’re playing well."
Greening is aware he has to make an impact when he does get the chance. He’s had several discussions with coach Paul MacLean and the staff about what can be done to stay in the lineup.
"I’d like to define myself as a person that can be an energy guy and a two-way player," said Greening. "A lot of people allude to the fact you need to score goals and get points.
"I don’t want to define myself by that. If, and when, I do get back in the lineup I want to be a guy who is good at both ends of the ice. I want to be a puck-possession guy who is good in the corners and I want to be able to compliment the guys I play with."
You have to admire Greening’s attitude.
SENS STAYING IN PLAYOFF HUNT
A break in the schedule gave the Senators a break Tuesday.
After making the long-trip home from Calgary on a red-eye late Saturday and holding a one-hour practice Monday, the Senators had time to get rested and ready for a visit by Nashville Thursday.
While they were outside of a playoff spot when they left on the three-game trip, the Senators were back sitting in a good spot by getting 3-of-6 points but now they have plenty of racetrack ahead.
“We ended up being.500. That’s the big picture,” said goalie Craig Anderson. “That’s a satisfactory number. We’d like to be better.”
The schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Senators and the key is to stay in the hunt. After this two-game homestand against Nashville and St. Louis, they’ll play six of their next seven on the road.
It starts Monday with back-to-back stops in Detroit and St. Louis. By the time U.S. Thanksgiving arrives next Thursday, they club wants to remain in the hunt for a spot in the post-season.
Why is that so important?
Statistically, it has been proven that if you’re not in a playoff spot by the American holiday, then it can be tough to get into one. It’s not written in stone, but the stat is pretty reliable.
“One thing we’ve learned is that we’re resilient and we’ve found ways to get points when maybe we shouldn’t,” said winger Bobby Ryan. “Hopefully, these are just building blocks.”
An area that has to improve is the power play. The club went 0-for-6 in the loss to Calgary Saturday night. That just doesn’t cut it and isn’t acceptable.
“Our power play has been a positive for us this year,” said Ryan. “We’ve found ways to produce goals in games where we were behind, trailing or tight.
“It finally let us down. We got away from some of the things that made us successful. We held onto the puck a little too long and we were way too stationary. You could see the trickle effect of the last three games into that game.”
The Senators hope practice makes perfect when they return to the ice Wednesday.
Twitter: @sungarriochLast xmas, I happened across my dad searching for his reading glasses while they were already perched atop his head, and I thought, “If I didn’t know any better I’d say my dad was stoned.” He wasn’t of course. He’s just transitioning from middle-aged into senior discount land. But more and more lately my parents have been reminding me of potheads, and it’s dawned on me… Old people are in essence stoned at all times. What used to seem like the sad ravages of age are a lot less alarming if you just imagine the person being high. Then it’s kinda adorable. Hell, I can really relate to my grandparents now. I too have walked into a room with a purpose, only to find myself standing there at a total loss of what that purpose was. I constantly forget where I put my mail, or the point of stories I’m telling halfway through. I’ll drive well below the speed limit, wondering why everyone else is being so aggressive. I’ve stared at a tree, just enjoying the look of the damn thing. I've definitely gotten obsessed with a particular kind of bread. And I love hot baths and shitty TV.
I think I could have a ton of fun with my grandparents if I were blazed: rocking chairs outside, blankets on our laps, talking about how they keep their lawn so healthy. Dude, do a big ass puzzle! Or bingo at the rec! That would be amazing. I might lose them when I wanna get an assload of buffalo wings and play Mario Kart all night, but they’d probably be ready for bed around that time anyway. This epiphany has also made me realize that if old people are stoned, then little kids are drunk. Hanging with my nieces and nephew is eerily similar to showing up late (and sober) to a party. I get to hear the same stories over and over again, told with the bare minimum of sense-making at the loudest possible volume. The short attention spans and tempers. The spilling of drinks and accidental breaking of shit. Not to mention the occasional fights and passing out on the couch. It’s uncanny. Though unlike my genius plan for my grandparents, I’m not sure my brother would appreciate me getting shitfaced before I baby-sit.We've watched this year as Amazon, Google, and Apple have raced to roll out cloud-based music locker services. Each of these company's services signals something in common: an apparent fear of liability for de-duplicating files uploaded by their customers. (De-duplicating means that the service does not store multiple identical files on its servers, even if more than one customer individually uploads the same file.) This can be a huge waste of storage, to little purpose other than pacifying copyright owners more concerned over form than substance. Because of this, Amazon and Google store a distinct and separate file for every single file that is uploaded to their services, and Apple reportedly paid $150 million in licensing fees for, among other things, the ability to avoid this practice.
But it appears that all of this worry and extra work may have been in vain. Just yesterday, a court found that an early music locker service, MP3tunes, which uses a de-duplicating process, “is precisely the type of system routinely protected by the DMCA safe harbor(s).” This outcome represents an understanding of copyright law more in line with how technology actually works, and avoids an absurd result where a music locker needs to waste server space by storing thousands of copies of identical files. This means more efficient music locker services, which is good news for music fans and for companies coming up with new and better ways to give those fans access to music they already own.
The opinion in the Capitol Records vs. MP3tunes case contained other good news (EFF filed an amicus brief in this case earlier this year). For example, the court made clear that the music locker service—whether it de-dupes or not—is like any online service provider (OSP) and, therefore, is entitled to the DMCA safe harbor protections as long as it complies with other DMCA requirements.
One of those requirements is that the OSP maintain a repeat infringer policy. We’ve written before about this somewhat vague provision of the DMCA, and we were happy to see the MP3tunes court reaffirm what we already knew: that an OSP is only required to do “what it can reasonably be asked to do” and it has “no affirmative duty to police [its] users.” The court went even further, implying that a repeat infringer policy need only target “blatant infringers”:
There is a difference between users who know they lack authorization and nevertheless upload content to the internet for the world to experience or copy, and users who download content for their personal use and are otherwise oblivious to the copyrights of others. The former are blatant infringers that internet service providers are obligated to ban from their websites. The latter, like MP3tunes users who sideload content to their lockers for personal user, do not know for certain whether the material they are downloading violates the copyrights of others.
Other highlights from the opinion include: 1) a statement reaffirming that a notice under the DMCA must specifically list each work allegedly infringed and a representative list will not require an OSP to remove other works owned by the notifying party (“the DMCA does not place the burden of investigation on the internet service provider”); 2) a footnote saying that the DMCA applies to state copyright laws, meaning that it applies to sound recordings from before 1972 as well as after; and 3) language showing that services like MP3tunes, which do not directly benefit from infringement, deserve the same protections as popular search engines:
If enabling a party to download infringing material was sufficient to create liability, then even search engines like Google or Yahoo! would be without DMCA protection. In that case, the DMCA’s purpose—innovation and growth of internet services—would be undermined.
The news was not all good for MP3tunes, however. The court found that MP3tunes, upon receiving a valid takedown notice, has an obligation to remove the infringing materials not just from sideload.com (MP3tune's search engine populated with links to music), but from its customers' personal music lockers. The court also found MP3tunes liable for contributory infringement for failing to remove works from those personal lockers and held its founder, Michael Robertson, personally liable for infringement for certain files he downloaded. This is likely to amount to millions of dollars in damages for both Robertson personally and his company.
Overall, we were glad to see the Court get it right that music locker services fall safely within the DMCA’s safe harbors, which Congress designed to foster innovation on the Internet. MP3tunes and all the music locker services that have followed it give music fans more options for storing and listening to the music they already own, helping realize the promise of that innovation.Thanks to CSS3, our design and development options have grown a lot. In this tutorial I will how you how to make a transparent glass menu bar with CSS3.
The demo can be seen below.
See the Pen Colorful glass menu concept by Creative Punch (@CreativePunch) on CodePen.
For this demo, I wanted to have a background with some variation. I used a colorful gradient for this, but you could also use a nice image. A flat color as background would not look as good with a glass menu.
I made use of a CSS reset, and prefix-free
The HTML for the glass menu bar
The CSS for our glass menu bar will be much the same as with any menu bar. We will place a nav tag, containing an u list with links.
<nav> <ul> <li> <a href="#">Home</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Blog</a> <li> <a href="#">About</a> </li> <li> <a href="#">Contact</a> </li> </ul> </nav>
The CSS for the glass menu bar
The CSS for the glass menu bar is really simple, but uses a few nice CSS3 features!
nav { max-width: 960px; mask-image: linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0) 0%, #ffffff 25%, #ffffff 75%, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0) 100%); margin: 0 auto; padding: 50px 0; } nav ul { text-align: center; background: linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0) 0%, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2) 25%, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2) 75%, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0) 100%); width: 100%; box-shadow: 0 0 25px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1), inset 0 0 1px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.6); } nav ul li { display: inline-block; } nav ul li |
]
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Wake up call: 59% of mobile apps don’t earn enough to break evenWill Graham is a former FBI agent who recently retired to Florida with his wife Molly and their young son. Graham was a 'profiler'; one who profiles criminal's behavior and tries to put his mind into the minds of criminals to examine their thoughts while visiting crime scenes. Will is called out of his self-imposed retirement at the request of his former boss Jack Crawford to help the FBI catch an elusive serial killer, known to the press as the 'Tooth Fairy', who randomly kills whole families in their houses during nights of the full moon and leaves bite marks on his victims. To try to search for clues to get into the mind of the killer, Will has occasional meetings with Dr. Hannibal Lecktor, a charismatic but very dangerous imprisoned serial killer that Will captured years earlier which nearly drove him insane from the horrific encounter that nearly cost Will's life. With some help and hindrance, Will races against the clock before the next full moon when the 'Tooth Fairy' will... Written by matt-282The 2010 CMA Music Festival will be remembered as one of high attendance and high temperatures. All of the festival’s nightly concerts at LP Field sold out for this first time this year. Attendance for the evening concerts was up 16.7 percent over last year, including four-day ticket packages, promotional tickets and single night tickets. Average nightly attendance topped 49,000. In addition, despite near-record temperatures, attendance at the daytime concerts at Riverfront Park was up 6.4 percent over last year. According to figures released by the CMA, estimated daily attendance for this year’s festival was 65,000 people, compared to 56,000 last year. With temperatures in the mid-90s for the four-day festival that ended Sunday (June 13), the heat index reached as high as 104 and caused more than 400 people to be treated for heat exhaustion. Two deaths occurred in downtown Nashville during the festival. A 33-year-old security guard at the festival was found dead inside a closed medical tent, and a 54-year-old homeless man was found dead near Municipal Auditorium. Authorities are still trying to determine the causes of death.Today, India successfully tested the Agni-V, a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The missile has a range of over 3,000 miles and could potentially reach Beijing or Shanghai, China. This is not good.
Many defense experts believe that India has developed this long-rage missile for deterrence parity with China, who has long had missiles that could strike India, and any other target within 6,200 miles. The two countries, though currently peaceful with each other, have long had a contentious history regarding their border. Developing a missile that could potentially reach all of China's biggest cities? That's the best future bargaining chip India could have. It's also, though, an escalation in an area of the world that's already far from stable.
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The Agni-V
As for the missile itself, the Agni-V is 51 feet long, weighs nearly 50 tons, can reach an altitude of 430 miles, and cost around $480 million to develop. Even though the test was successful in every way, hitting a pre-determined target in the Indian Ocean, the Agni-V won't be fully operational—i.e. strapped with a nuclear bomb—until 2014.
Oh and Agni is the Hindi word for fire.
The new arms race
The development of the Agni-V marks a continuation of a new "arms race" that's happening in Asia. Every major country is loading up. China is continually increasing its military spending, South Korea has missiles that can hit North Korea, North Korea epically failed with their missile project but will keep trying even if their people starve and India has somehow become the top arms buyer in the world. Oh and they're also proud owners of the newest long-range, nuclear capable missile on the planet. Things aren't quite boiling in Asia yet but everyone is getting ready for when it explodes.
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Surprisingly enough, the one country in the region least affected by the existence of Agni-V is the one with whom India already has the most tension: Pakistan. The two countries have long bickered over the intermediate Kashmir region, and many think it's a question of when, not if, the two will come to serious blows. But since Pakistan is much smaller and the countries are closer, India's previous long-range missiles (the Agni I, II and III) already are capable of reaching it; the added range of the Agni-V doesn't really change anything, though it does give India the upper hand, significantly leapfrogging Pakistan's missile range of 744 miles.
From what it looks like, the Agni-V is a defensive chess move made against China, not an agressive move towards Pakistan.
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Welcome to the club
By building the Agni-V, India joins the elite nuclear club of US, China, Russia, UK and France, all of which already have long-range missiles (though with much greater range). Getting a seat at that table is a feat in itself, and India is celebrating the accomplishment, toasting its scientists and calling the missile an immaculate success. The good news is that even though India has reached elite status, it still maintains a no first-use policy for nuclear weapons. The bad news, of course, is that we're officially one step closer to World War III. [Times of India, WSJ, NY Times, BBC]tl;dr use ports and localstorage
Why
Some reasons why you may want to communicate between browser tabs:
Keep data from an API in sync/cached Login a user in all open tabs when they login in one Store auth tokens Use one tab to control the UI in another
In the rest of this post, I will show you a super simple example of how to talk between tabs in Elm using ports and localstorage.
Example
Click the buttons to change the counter value - then open this page in another tab, you will see the counter update in both places.
How it works
Every time we change our model in Elm, we send it out a port in our update function.
update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) update msg model = let newModel = updateHelper msg model in ( newModel, saveToStorage newModel ) port saveToStorage : Int -> Cmd msg
On the JS side, this port saves the model to localstorage.
app. ports. saveToStorage. subscribe ( function ( m ) { // save our model to local storage localStorage. setItem ( lsKey, JSON. stringify ( m )); });
Still in JS land, we have an event listener that subsribes to localstorage: if our model is updated in localstorage, then we send it back into a port in our Elm app.
window. addEventListener ('storage', function ( event ) { if ( event. key === lsKey ) { // if the model changes, pass it into elm app. ports. fromStorage. send ( event. newValue ); } });
In elm, we then decode the value and put it in our model.
port fromStorage : ( Maybe String -> msg ) -> Sub msg subscriptions model = fromStorage FromStorage update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg ) update msg model = let newModel = updateHelper msg model in ( newModel, saveToStorage newModel ) updateHelper : Msg -> Model -> Model updateHelper msg model = case msg of Increment -> model + 1 Decrement -> model - 1 FromStorage ms -> decodeLocalStorage ms decodeLocalStorage : Maybe String -> Int decodeLocalStorage ms = case ms of Nothing -> 0 Just s -> Json. Decode. decodeString Json. Decode. int s |> Result. withDefault 0
You can see the full source code in this gist. If you want to see a more complicated example, have a look at apostello.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGL5I8esuwA
I am wondering if it is possible to do something like the linked video above with a Pixhawk or other similar flight controller. I know Ardupilot can do it, but the thing I'm having trouble finding is the capability to do this with a flying wing such as the TBS Caipirinha since it is a pusher and not a puller. I think it should be possible, as it has the capability to accelerate vertically, but I'm not sure where to find it or how precisely the location hold is. I want to avoid having to use more than one motor on the Caipirinha but multiple rotors is an option (2 is my limit) on other aircraft. I just want to use the Caipirinha as a testing platform. If needed I will use thrust vectoring(for rudder control) but I would prefer that the Pixhawk could automatically toggle it for the sake of the battery (so I'm not using it all the time). The problem with finding the answer to this is that I want to use one pusher motor instead of multiple puller motors. I haven't seen anyone do that yet but if it was possible I would like to know how and where I can find it. Suggestions are also greatly appreciated!Times News NetworkLudhiana: The division number 7 police arrested two youths of EWS Colony for hurting religious sentiments of Muslim community by allegedly circulating a derogatory message about the Prophet on the occasion of Eid on Monday night.An FIR was lodged against Vipan Singh and Sunil Kumar, following which members of Shiv Sena Hind staged a protest at the division number 7 police station and later at Samrala Chowk on Tuesday afternoon. They demanded release of youths and cancellation of the FIR.Mohammad Sahib of EWS Colony told the police that there was an atmosphere of festivity on Eid and around 11.40am, he got a message from Vipan Singh, making derogatory remarks against the Prophet. He said Vipan was his neighbour and they had created a friends’ group on WhatsApp on which the message was circulated.Following this, Mohammad lodged a police complaint and Vipan was arrested.Division number 7 SHO sub-inspector Bikramjit Singh said first, Vipan was arrested, but later it was identified that Sunil had sent him that message, which he forwarded in the group. So, Sunil was also booked and arrested.However, the Hindu organization alleged that Mohammad Sahib also passed derogatory remarks on Hindus and demanded that he be booked too.Saurav Arora, Punjab president of Shiv Sena Hind, said the message sent by the youths was not derogatory and it stated what was mentioned in the Holy Quran. The organization members also met the commissioner of police RN Dhoke for the cancellation of the FIR.Dhoke said, “I have asked them to submit a written application.”Dread tales told in the dead of night!
There are many iconic adventures and stories in the 43-year history (!) of Dungeons & Dragons that current fans may not have ever experienced. If you just got into D&D in the past few years, you likely haven’t braved the Tomb of Horrors or climbed White Plume Mountain or fought Against the Giants. Even longtime fans haven’t been able to fully explore the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan or the Sunless Citadel with stats and monsters updated for the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
Now you can jump into some of the most popular D&D modules ever created with Tales from the Yawning Portal. Releasing wide on April 4th, this 248-page book contains seven full adventures including timeless classics and more recent best-sellers like Forge of Fury and Dead in Thay, all completely updated and ready to run using the latest D&D rules.
The cover of Tales from the Yawning Portal was illustrated by Tyler Jacobsen. It depicts Durnan the Wanderer, the longtime owner and barkeep of Waterdeep’s most famous tavern. Adventurers from all over the Forgotten Realms gather in the taproom at the Yawning Portal to trade stories of their exploits and rumors of far-off treasures, some even from other worlds in the D&D multiverse. The Yawning Portal is the one place you’d expect to hear tales of the seven dungeons in this book.
Look for Tales from the Yawning Portal in your local game store on March 24th! Otherwise, you can pick it up on April 4th, and start running these classic adventures for your gaming group. Even if you’re in the middle of a Storm King’s Thunder or Curse of Strahd campaign, clever Dungeon Masters and players can take inspiration from D&D’s history to infuse traps, challenges, monsters and magic items from these adventures into any session.
Official Product PageCould the results of tomorrow’s general election really lead to change in the electoral system? Many commentators seem to think yes. Alan Renwick here offers some reason for caution.
Lots of people are suddenly talking about electoral reform. Never mind that the British electorate voted by 68 per cent to 32 per cent in a referendum in 2011 against dropping First Past the Post in favour of the Alternative Vote (AV) system, there is a growing feeling among some activists and commentators that change is on the way. First Past the Post, the argument goes, works well in a world of two-party politics. But now that we have seven-party politics, it produces absurd results that no one can defend. Pressure for reform will bubble up and force a shift.
We should not jump to such easy conclusions. Major electoral reform happens very rarely – only one long-standing democracy (New Zealand) has ditched First Past the Post since the Second World War. We need to think, first, about how the election result might strengthen the case for reform, and then, second, about what barriers the reform cause might nevertheless face.
Reasons for thinking First Past the Post is broken
If the opinion polls come anywhere close to the electoral reality, the results on Friday morning will strengthen four arguments for saying that our voting rules are in need of serious reform.
First Past the Post forces voters into difficult tactical voting dilemmas. The first argument actually holds whatever the election result, as it relates to the difficult tactical choices that some voters now face. In a straight two-party contest, the voter’s task is easy: you just vote for whichever of the two parties you prefer. In a contest where there are two candidates with a chance of winning and a number of others who are just flying the flag, minor party supporters face a decision about whether to vote tactically and affect the outcome or to express their genuine preference and have that view heard. That can be a tricky decision, but It’s still a fairly simple one. As Meg Russell has pointed out, however, once there are three or more serious contenders, the calculations get much, much tougher. Should an anti-UKIP voter in Thanet South or in Thurrock vote Labour or Conservative? Should an anti-SNP voter in Berwickshire, Roxburgh, and Selkirk vote Conservative or Lib Dem? Should an anti-Conservative voter in Watford vote Lib Dem or Labour? It’s just not clear. The more voters feel the system is preventing them from influencing the election result in the direction they want, the more they may support reformed rules. At the constituency level, First Past the Post produces many minority victories. In the 1950s, the vast majority of MPs were elected on more than 50 per cent of their constituency vote. In 2010, just 210 out of 650 secured an absolute majority, while eight were elected on less than a third of the vote. The lower the winning candidate’s share of the vote, the less the result can be said to reflect the will of the local electorate and the more the outcome is a lottery rather than a serious election. At the national level, First Past the Post produces huge inequities. The Liberal Democrats have long complained that the First Past the Post system treats them unfairly: in 2010, they secured 23 per cent of the vote but fewer than 9 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. The 2015 election looks set to produce even more iniquitous results than that: the SNP could win around fifty seats with 4 per cent of the UK-wide vote, while UKIP might win three times as many votes but only one seat. UKIP (and the Greens) are already calling loudly for reform to redress these imbalances, and these calls will only grow louder once the results are in. A second hung parliament destroys the case for First Past the Post. The strongest case for First Past the Post has always been that it produces single-party majorities. Whether that is good for governance is less clear than is often supposed. But what is clear is that it is good for accountability: except on those (fairly rare) occasions where First Past the Post gives the majority to the wrong party, the government is formed by the party with most support. That party can then be held to account for whether it adheres to its manifesto or not and, come the next election, voters can throw the government out if they are dissatisfied with its performance. Where no party wins a majority, by contrast, who forms the government is determined, at least in part, by post-election negotiations, and the government’s programme becomes a compromise among two or more rival manifestos. That case for First Past the Post starts to look shaky, however, if two consecutive elections produce no overall majority and the dynamics of the party system suggest these are no mere blips.
Reasons for thinking First Past the Post will survive
All of that will seem to many to add up to a powerful case for fundamental electoral reform. But those commentators who tell us that such reform is therefore inevitable rarely explain the process by which it is actually going to come about. When we start to think about process, we see that electoral reform in fact faces two very high barriers.
The first is that major reform would not serve the interests of either of the two main parties. Labour and the Conservatives will still win around two thirds of the votes at this election – indeed, the polls suggest that their combined vote share will be slightly higher than in 2010. The latest projections put them on over four fifths of the seats. Electoral reform is not going to happen unless at least one of these parties acquiesces in a process that could let it happen. But why would they do so? Both parties will gain seat shares at this election that are substantially ahead of their vote shares. Furthermore, both know that a proportional system would likely lead to a further fragmentation of the vote as the fear of wasting a vote on a losing candidate is diminished. A move to proportional representation would endanger these parties’ status as the only parties capable of leading a government.
Some will point to the fact that Labour is about to be crucified in Scotland as reason for thinking that at least a substantial part of the party will rethink its attachment to First Past the Post. But Labour and the Conservatives have long suffered severe under-representation in parts of the country without seriously thinking about reform, and it isn’t obvious why that would change. The voice of those under-represented areas within each party is not very loud, precisely because they are under-represented. And, for the party leadership, what counts most is always the national picture.
Others will say that the big parties will be forced to accept reform by a combination of the minor parties with whom they have to do deals and pressure from the public who are increasingly dissatisfied with a dysfunctional system.
But that leads on to the second key barrier: the public are just not all that interested in electoral systems. The Independent has reported a poll this week that, it claims, shows that “a majority of people support electoral reform”. The pollsters, it continues, “found that 61 per cent believe the system should be reformed so that smaller parties are better represented in parliament, while 39 per cent think it should remain as it is, with MPs chosen directly by their constituents”.
Unfortunately, this is a good example of how not to interpret an opinion poll. Do we really think – as the sentence just quoted implies – that 100 per cent of the British electorate have a “belief” about the electoral system? That’s bonkers. The reality is that most voters have no clear view about electoral systems – electoral systems are, perfectly reasonably, not things that they think about very much. Lots of people will have responded to the pollsters by saying “don’t know” – but we haven’t been told how many. And, crucially, lots of people will have given a top-of-the-head answer that could easily have been different had the question been worded slightly differently.
The British Social Attitudes survey has regularly asked two questions about electoral reform over many years. One of these asks the following: “How much you agree or disagree with this statement: Britain should introduce proportional representation, so that the number of MPs in the House of Commons each party gets, matches more closely the number of votes each party gets.” Ever since this question was first asked in 1994, it has always produced a substantial plurality in favour of reform: among those willing to express a view either way, well over two thirds have always backed change. But around a third of voters have always hedged their bets, saying either “neither” or that they can’t choose.
The other British Social Attitudes survey question is the following: “Some people say we should change the voting system for general elections to the (UK) House of Commons to allow smaller political parties to get a fairer share of MPs. Others say we should keep the voting system for the House of Commons as it is, to produce effective government. Which view comes closer to your own?” This has been asked from time to time since 1986 and the majority has consistently favoured keeping the system as it is.
So you can get a majority for or against electoral reform depending on the survey question that you ask. The Independent hasn’t told us the question wording, so we can’t be sure. On the evidence they have provided, however, there is no reason to think that opinion on electoral reform is any more supportive now than it has been at any other time over the last thirty years.
But will the election result change that? There is good reason to think it will change things a bit. Some UKIP and Green voters will be angered that their votes have not been translated fairly into seats. The minority of voters who think through the tactical voting calculations in the minority of seats where three or more parties seem to be in contention may well be aggrieved if they find on Friday morning that they have plumped the wrong way. More generally, a wide swathe of voters may feel that it all looks a bit fishy.
But the majority of voters will have voted for one of the two big parties and have no reason to feel personally under-represented in the national result. Most voters are not greatly enamoured by coalition government – so moving to a system that would make such government even more likely is going to be a hard sell. And, as we saw in the AV referendum in 2011, voters have a strong status quo bias on issues such as this: few voters understand the ins and outs of electoral systems; and voters who don’t quite understand the reform that is on offer tend to opt for the existing rules.
So what might happen?
What, then, might happen after the election? Some of the minor parties – though not, of course, the SNP – might push for electoral reform. They won’t make this a strong red line, as they will know that the public are on the whole much more interested in things like immigration, economic recovery, taxes, and the quality of public services. But they might push for some kind of concession. The two main parties will be resistant. But they might feel that some movement on the issue would be a way of responding to diffuse public unease. They probably won’t want to give the issue to a citizen-led constitutional convention, such as the one Labour is committed to: that could be risky and would distract attention from the convention’s core purposes. But they might accept some kind of enquiry process. It is conceivable – though unlikely – that that could lead to a referendum.
So say we do somehow end up with a referendum on some form of proportional system. Then the issue becomes how the public will vote. And here there is no reason to expect a dynamic very different from that in 2011. Almost all Conservative and most Labour politicians will almost certainly oppose reform. Many of the newspapers will denounce tricksy foreign voting models that deprive us of the opportunity to vote a local rascal in or out. Many voters will be bemused by the whole thing. And the majority will probably end up voting for the status quo.
I am not one of those cynics who say that public opinion never matters. Indeed, I have written a lot about electoral reforms that have come about only as a result of pressure from below. But such reforms lead only to reforms of particular types only in certain sorts of circumstances. At the moment, the circumstances that might generate a shift to proportional representation in the UK just don’t appear to be there. That might change – particularly if the main parties start to show signs of a Scottish-style collapse in England. For the moment, however, the barriers to major electoral reform remain very high.
So there will be some pressure for electoral reform on Friday morning and the days thereafter. And this might yield some movement towards an enquiry. Indeed, a shift to something like the Supplementary Vote system that is used to elect the London mayor is imaginable if the main parties think it would help contain UKIP and allow pro-Union votes in Scotland to coalesce.
But the circumstances for the adoption of proportional representation are not present yet. And nothing in the polls suggests they will be present on Friday morning.In the summer of 1985, Ronald Reagan, concerned about a spike in the number of international terrorist attacks from 1983 to 1985, delivered a speech on the subject before the American Bar Association. He offered a simple prescription: “There can be no place on earth left where it is safe for these monsters to rest or train or practice their cruel and deadly skills. We must act together, or unilaterally if necessary, to ensure that terrorists have no sanctuary anywhere.”
More than a decade later, in May, 1998, a few months before the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, as the threat grew from Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, which was then safely ensconced in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, Bill Clinton spoke at the Naval Academy and promised “to work with other nations to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries overseas.”
Clinton’s top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, fashioned a proposal he called “Delenda” (Latin for “must be destroyed”) to “immediately eliminate any significant threat to Americans” by denying bin Laden his Afghan protectorate. Clarke remained at the White House at the beginning of the Bush Administration, and proposed much the same strategy in the months before the September 11th attacks.
But neither Reagan, nor Clinton, nor Bush made the “no sanctuary” policy a centerpiece of their national-security strategy. The idea of invading Afghanistan, absent a serious attack on American soil, seemed unreasonable. The authors of the 9/11 Commission Report wrote, in 2004, “Since we believe that both President Clinton and President Bush were genuinely concerned about the danger posed by al Qaeda, approaches involving more direct intervention against the sanctuary in Afghanistan apparently must have seemed—if they were considered at all—to be disproportionate to the threat.” The report added, “Insight for the future is thus not easy to apply in practice. It is hardest to mount a major effort while a problem still seems minor. Once the danger has fully materialized, evident to all, mobilizing action is easier—but it then may be too late.”
“No sanctuaries” became one of the central recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda, and groups like it, should never again be allowed to operate in a safe haven where they have “the operational space to gather and sift recruits,” especially in failed states. “If, for example, Iraq becomes a failed state, it will go to the top of the list of places that are breeding grounds for attacks against Americans at home,” the report noted. This was the year after the Bush Administration invaded Iraq, and three years into the war in Afghanistan, about which the report’s authors added, “Similarly, if we are paying insufficient attention to Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban or warlords and narcotraffickers may reemerge and its countryside could once again offer refuge to al Qaeda, or its successor.”
Eleven years after the Commission’s report, ISIS is safely operating in a sanctuary the size of Indiana and, with the notable exception of Lindsey Graham, neither President Obama nor any Presidential candidate, whether Republican or Democrat, has put forward a detailed plan that would uproot ISIS from the territory it controls across Iraq and Syria. Even Jeb Bush, who on Wednesday said more American ground troops were needed to fight ISIS, did not propose a massive ground invasion, or not forthrightly. Like all of the candidates, he was disappointingly vague about how the military could solve the problem.
Indeed, President Obama is about the only public official to have honestly explained, in the days since the Paris attacks, why a quick end to ISIS’s sanctuary is not immediately possible. He mentioned those who “suggested that we should put large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground,” and then said,
Keep in mind that we have the finest military in the world and we have the finest military minds in the world, and I’ve been meeting with them intensively for years now, discussing these various options, and it is not just my view but the view of my closest military and civilian advisors that that would be a mistake—not because our military could not march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out ISIL, but because we would see a repetition of what we’ve seen before, which is, if you do not have local populations that are committed to inclusive governance and who are pushing back against ideological extremes, that they resurface—unless we’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries.
And let’s assume that we were to send fifty thousand troops into Syria. What happens when there’s a terrorist attack generated from Yemen? Do we then send more troops into there? Or Libya, perhaps? Or if there’s a terrorist network that’s operating anywhere else—in North Africa, or in Southeast Asia? So a strategy has to be one that can be sustained.
In some quarters, Obama’s realism about defeating ISIS has been taken as defeatism. He is, the argument goes, clinging stubbornly to a strategy meant to gradually reduce the group’s footprint, while simultaneously pursing broader diplomatic goals in Iraq (convincing the Shiite-dominated government to make disfranchised Sunnis feel that they have a voice) and Syria (ending Assad’s reign and moving toward a transitional government) that he insists are the real roots of ISIS’s growth. His willingness, especially in the wake of a horrific attack, to withstand the pressure to offer a swift military solution is impressive.
And Obama has some surprisingly good company. “Once you take ’em, you own ’em,” former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, who was the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, told me on Wednesday, after Jeb Bush’s speech. “Then you get called ‘the Crusaders’ and all that. We’ve put too much reliance on the military to the exclusion of other things. We have a whole realm of other tools at our disposal.”
That kind of careful response can be emotionally unsatisfying. At the same time, anyone offering an easy plan to defeat ISIS fast and on the cheap should be met with extreme skepticism. But one lesson of Iraq (and Libya) is that wars are always more complicated than they sound and often create new sanctuaries—which then also, somehow, must be destroyed.Wellington's Tuatara Breweries will be making beer overseas by the end of the year, chief executive Richard Shirtcliffe says.
But Tuatara beer drinkers should fear not because the craft brewer would still be producing the majority of its beer at its two breweries in Paraparaumu and central Wellington, Shirtcliffe said.
"New Zealand is our main market and always will be."
JOHN ANTHONY/FAIRFAX NZ Tuatara Breweries chief executive Richard Shirtcliffe says the company will start brewing overseas before the end of 2015.
Tuatara had experienced significant growth over the past 18 months especially in overseas markets with exports growing about 320 per cent this year, Shirtcliffe said.
Much of that was coming out of Australia, Britain, Ireland and Asia especially China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, he said.
"That caused us to really think hard about how we best execute in those market."
In two of those markets Tuatara was "actively engaged" with partners to contract brew but he declined to disclose which ones.
"In the next two months we should have both of those signed off all things being equal."
The move made sense both economically and environmentally, Shirtcliffe said.
Tuatara would be brewing and distributing kegs and bottled beer in those markets through a contract brewing arrangement using mostly New Zealand ingredients, he said.
The company's trademark reptilian shaped bottles were made in New Zealand by an international company and could be produced overseas if need be, he said.
In February Tuatara joined fellow craft brewers Yeastie Boys, Renaissance Brewing, 8 Wired Brewing Co and Three Boys Brewery to form the New Zealand Craft Beer Collective which signed a deal with an international drinks distributor Instil Drinks Co.
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For years Tuatara has been a leader in New Zealand's growing craft beer which is growing at an estimated 25 per cent a year.
The company's sales have increased from 27 per cent in the 2014 year to 52 per cent in 2015, Shirtcliffe said.
In 2013 Wellington investment company Rangatira bought a 35 per cent of Tuatara for an undisclosed sum.
Shirtcliffe, who was appointed as chief executive six month later, said the Rangitira investment was a watershed moment for the company.
Rangitira provided seasoned experience at the board table, expert advice and the opportunity for the craft brewer to "reinvigorate itself".
After attracting investment Tuatara looked at better utilising staff and filling any gaps, while also reassessing its processes, brand, product range, channel management and supply chain, Shirtcliffe said.
"In every case we needed some hard work and determination to recreate ourselves in order to be set up for any kind of future success."
Shirtcliffe said Rangitira were attracted to Tuatara after the company was named a Deloitte Fast 50 company in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
"It was an obvious fishing ground for a private equity firm's future investment."
The Fast 50 ranks businesses experiencing rapid revenue growth.
Being in the Deloitte Fast 50 could be extremely valuable for companies wanting to attract investment, he said.
"It gets you on the radar."
It also forced companies to analyse their business, he said.
Tuatara was not entering the Fast 50 this year because it was not looking at investment, but it could be an option in the future if the company decided to undertake another capital raising, he said.
The remaining 65 per cent of Tuatara was owned by founders Carl Vaster and Sean Murrie and smaller shareholders and the private equity investment did not make it a rich company, Shirtcliffe said.
"It doesn't mean we're up all night ironing cash."
Quite the opposite because the company was having to reinvest in the business to ensure it achieved sustained growth, he said.
Tuatara now has about 50 staff, half of which were full time employees.The EU elections in May 2014 are going to be a challenge for the traditional parties and for the legitimacy of EU integration. The EU-wide parties—chiefly the center-right People's Party and left-leaning Socialist Party—will be running candidates for president of the European Commission.
There will be EU-wide electoral programs and shared strategies. But the citizens, as on previous occasions, will vote for their own countries’ parties, because the EU-wide parties have no credibility of their own. Nor can they, as long as they are incapable of criticizing national member parties, or of pressuring them to change when their behavior is manifestly opposed to values the EU-wide party claims to stand for.
Now the European Socialist Party has approved a program that identifies the Europe-wide social-democratic family. It did this in Bulgaria, where the local socialists are in power thanks to the support of the ultra-nationalist party Ataka, amid massive protests.
This government was touted as a technical one, but included figures as shady as Delyan Peevski, a media magnate dogged by corruption allegations, whom the government had to withdraw due to the protests. The European Socialist Party did not wish to raise its voice against “its own people” in Bulgaria; nor did it against the corruption in the Pasok (socialist) party in Greece; nor against the national-populist drift of leftist parties Slovakia and Romania.
With the excuse that “the others [i.e. the right] are worse,” the European Socialist Party is nourishing Euroscepticism when it abstains from criticism of member parties that shame the values enshrined in the new Fundamental Program.
These Socialist weaknesses are the perfect excuse for the European People's Party’s complicit and supportive silence concerning the undemocratic behavior of Fidesz, the political group that holds power in Hungary. Thanks to this support, Viktor Orbán’s government has escaped EU sanctions for having abused his two-thirds parliamentary majority to stamp out every trace of checks and balances, compulsively amending and re-amending the Constitution, always in his own favor.
Even Orbán’s principal defenders in the European People's Party have uttered murmurs of discontent. This, at least, is something: better than nothing. The European People's Party never uttered a word against Berlusconi’s abuses of power for private ends, nor does it speak now against the authoritarian drifts of conservative governments in Turkey, Macedonia, and Albania.
The British conservatives seem intent on making the European People's Party, which they left, look better than it is. Their Eurosceptic voting alliances with Poland’s Law and Justice party (Catholic, homophobic, ultraconservative), the Czech ODS of Václav Klaus (who preaches that climate change is a communist conspiracy), and other, frankly authoritarian groups, shows unconcern for democratic values and puts them outside the European democratic game.
Every time the two major EU-wide parties decide to look the other way in the face of misbehavior by “their own people,” they belie their rhetoric about shared values. Their solidarity is not, in practice, between nations or states, but a clan spirit in defense of their own people, right or wrong.
In this sense the European groupings distill the worst of the national parties of which they are comprised: uncritical loyalty and obsession with closing ranks, even at the cost of ethical integrity or coherence of ideas.
Luckily for them, their voters care little about unity on the European scale. If they did |
home births from 2004 to 2009, with the biggest increase coming from married, white women who already had children.
Not surprisingly, many doctors disapprove.
The question is, who should have the final say about where a baby is born?
In North Carolina, it’s not the parent.
While it is not illegal to give birth at home — some women do it by accident — it has been illegal to do so with the help of a midwife in North Carolina since 1983. As most women aren’t willing to give birth unassisted, home birth is not an option for them.
To obstetricians looking to protect their trade, that’s a good thing. Although I’m sure they genuinely are concerned about our safety.
Even so, obstetricians actively seek to suppress home births. As partial justification, they cite a study published by the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology warning that planned home births have a neonatal death rate “at least twice as high” as that of planned hospital births.
The statistic was repeated often last summer in a legislative committee meeting, at which state lawmakers considered licensing midwives.
But the figure is misleading. A rate “twice as high” represents two out of 1,000 deaths, rather than one out of 1,000 deaths. That’s a miniscule difference, if you trust the study, which most home birth advocates don’t.
What the doctors also failed to mention is that the same study admits there is no significant difference in perinatal mortality (or the death of a fetus), which includes stillbirths.
In fact, midwives argue that some hospitals have even higher perinatal mortality rates because of babies being delivered forcibly — through labor induction and cesarean sections — before they are ready.
Additionally the study says there is no difference in the maternal death rate, and that women who planned to give birth at home were less likely to end up with episiotomies, lacerations, or infections.
More importantly, home births are much less likely to result in c-sections. Nearly one of three hospital births in North Carolina is by c-section.
C-sections have been linked to a long list of problems for infants, including premature birth, respiratory and breastfeeding complications, and an increased risk of obesity. For the mother, c-sections are associated with increased blood loss, increased recovery time, and increased chance of death.
These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to reasons more women are deciding to have their babies at home.
For me, safety was the top concern. Once I had established that my baby and I had about the same chances of survival at home as we did in the hospital, I considered all the other health risks associated with each place.
A first-time mother and a health fanatic, I did my research and concluded that the safest place for me to welcome my daughter into the world was at the foot of my bed in a pool of warm water, with the help and encouragement of two midwives.
Had I been convinced a hospital was the safest and healthiest place for her to be born, we would have been there. But I wasn’t convinced, and as a parent, I should have the right to follow my convictions about what is best for my child.
Unless someone can prove that giving birth outside of a hospital is abusive or neglectful, the government has no business telling me where I can and cannot give birth to my child, or whom I can hire to assist me.
A few weeks ago, one of my midwives was forced to sign a cease and desist order or be arrested for “practicing midwifery” without a license. She was caught after transporting a woman — whose labor was not progressing normally — to the hospital. Three other women have been arrested in North Carolina for “practicing midwifery” within the last two years.
This is outrageous. These are competent, educated, and skilled women, who have helped deliver thousands of healthy babies. Hundreds of women in this state love and rely on these women. Without them, we will be forced to cross state lines to deliver our babies in peaceful, non-hospital settings. Some, who don’t have that option, will resort to going it alone.
Instead of throwing midwives in jail — which makes them afraid to transfer women to hospitals when necessary — the state should respect women’s choices and legalize them. Before the short session ends would be ideal, but if not that soon, at least before I’m ready to have my second child.
Sara Burrows is a contributor to Carolina Journal.Mike Pence called into Rush Limbaugh‘s show this afternoon to talk about dealing with being the underdogs in the race right now.
Pence diverted from talking about the polls to say, “It’s clear to me the national media is trying to build a narrative to support Hillary Clinton by suggesting this thing is all rolled up and nothing could be further from the truth.”
He also invoked “Dewey Defeats Truman.” So yeah, that’s where we are right now.
Limbaugh asked him what he thinks about the media basically actings like short of something massive, this race is over. Pence gave this answer:
“I honestly think it’s all just tactical by Hillary’s team and by her allies in the national media. You know, there’s two ways you can defeat your opponent, number one, is you can defeat ’em outright, or number two, you can just demoralize them. I think that’s what they’re trying to do here. But I don’t think the American people are buying it.”
Listen above, via The Rush Limbaugh Show.
[h/t Daily Rushbo]
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comBoos rang round White Hart Lane at half time on Sunday afternoon – a sound that has sadly become all too familiar in recent weeks. Tottenham had just been played off the park by a very lively QPR team that Spurs had made look like Barcelona.
It was a worrying first 45 minutes. But for a couple of very good saves from Brad Friedel, the game could well have been beyond us at half time. There was no cohesion in the team, the play was too slow and deliberate and the players looked like they were strangers. A number of them looked uninterested, with Clint Dempsey a primary example. Asked to play in an unfamiliar position on the left he looked as if he would rather be in Liverpool than out on the pitch.
At half time Andre Villas Boas (AVB) had to decide how to turn the game around. It has often been said that AVB can be a stubborn man, someone who would rather prove a personal point than opting for the tactical change that the game is crying out for. On Sunday he got this decision spot on. It could be argued that he should have gone with the team that came out in the second half from the off, but at least he took the decision to make the changes at half time. There were numerous occasions in Redknapp’s reign where everyone in the ground could see the simple tactical improvements that could change the game in our favour apart from the man in charge himself.
By bringing on Steven Caulker to play at centre back, it allowed Jan Vertonghen to move to left-back (a position he is accustomed to in the Belgian national team) so that Gareth Bale could take up his natural position on the left-wing. This in turn allowed Dempsey to play a more familiar position in a more advanced role alongside Defoe.
The team instantly looked more balanced and were able to take the game to QPR. While the first goal had more than a hint of good fortune, the second was from a fast paced break that we have grown accustomed to at the lane. Dembele won the ball well on the edge of his own box to start the attack with men pouring forward.
The change in personnel at half time saw Spurs play to their strengths. This is summed up perfectly by looking at some of the player dashboards that are available from the Stats Zone app. The contrast in Dempsey’s performance in the second half compared to the first is staggering. In a more familiar position he posed far greater danger to the QPR defence, using his ability in the air to good effect and testing Julio Cesar on a couple of occasions.
Dempsey First Half Attacking Performance Dempsey Second Half Performance
Next Page: Spurs’ Left Hand Side Performance vs Queens Park Rangers (Bale / Vertonghen stats analysis) and a look at Vertonghen’s tackling stats!
It is also interesting to look at the difference in the left hand side from first to second half. The intention of playing Bale at left back was most likely as he can offer a threat running from deep rather than for his defensive prowess. He was unable to get forward in the first half as his dashboard shows. If we compare this to his 2nd half dashboard as well as Vertonghan’s attacking dashboard for the same half, we can see how much more attacking threat we possessed down the left hand side.
Left Hand Side Performance
The question for AVB now is how to line up against Manchester United at the weekend. Does AVB stick with the side that started the second half against QPR? I would say yes. Caulker has been an accomplished centre back and Vertonghen excelled at left back – the trouble is he has also been our best performing centre back. He was won all of the tackles that he has made this season, none more so important that a last-ditch tackle at the weekend when it looked like an unmarked Hoilett was poised to score.
Vertonghen Tackling Stats
AVB has taken a considerable amount of stick from the media after replacing their darling Harry Redknapp. Despite this, we are only 1 point behind Arsenal who is being tipped as title contenders. Admittedly we have had an easier start (on paper) but people tend to forget that Arsenal struggled to find the net in their opening two games resulting in goalless draws.
We have a number of key players to come back into the squad with the likes of Kaboul, Parker and Adebayor all currently out. With the players we lost in the summer it was always going to be a test to replace them and this season can be seen as a period of transition.
One thing is vitally important though, the crowd has to get behind the team and support them through thick and thin – this booing is helping no one…Amish Community Not Anti-Technology, Just More Thoughtful
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jeff Brady/NPR Jeff Brady/NPR
Many outsiders assume the Amish reject all new technology. But that's not true.
One Amish man in Lancaster County, Pa., checks his voicemail about four times a day. His shop is equipped with a propane-powered forklift, hydraulic-powered saws, cordless drills, and a refrigerated tank where milk from dairy cows is stored.
The difference between Amish people and most other Americans is the deliberation that takes place before deciding whether to embrace a new technology. Many Americans assume newer technology is always better, and perhaps even inherently good.
"The Amish don't buy that," says Donald Kraybill, professor at Elizabethtown College and co-author of The Amish. "They're more cautious — more suspicious — wondering is this going to be helpful or is it going to be detrimental? Is it going to bolster our life together, as a community, or is it going to somehow tear it down?"
There are 40 different Amish affiliations around the country, according to Kraybill, and they often reach different conclusions in answering those questions.
"Some of the subgroups are very conservative, very isolated and doing very well protecting their way of life because they basically reject much more technology than the more progressive ones," he says.
Kraybill says the process takes place from the ground-up — people try out new technologies and then leaders ultimately determine whether they are acceptable or not.
In Lancaster County, the Amish population is OK with using electricity, but they reject the grid that brings it into most Americans' homes. That's because they want to maintain a separation from the wider world.
The Amish believe this life on earth is part of their journey to heaven. Kraybill says if you're just here as a pilgrim, "Then you don't want to get too engaged and too embedded in this world... because you may lose your ultimate, eternal goal of completing the journey to heaven."
In recent years the Amish have begun embracing new technology at a faster rate. One reason is because more of them are working as entrepreneurs instead of on a farm. This shift creates new problems that technology often has an answer for.
Ben is an Amish man living in Lancaster County. He wants to be known only by his first name. In some Amish communities, using your full name in the media is considered showing off, or trying to speak for all Amish.
He owns a deli and says he tracks all his finances with paper and pencil. "I would really love to have Quickbooks, because it's a pain to balance my checkbook," he says. But that would require a computer, and Ben is reluctant to leap into the digital world. He plans to think long and hard before making a decision.
Ben plans to follow this advice: "You shouldn't be the first in your neighborhood to adopt the new technology and neither should you be the last."
The business owner says evaluating new technologies is something that takes place between the push of progress and the pull of tradition. And in the background there's always one big question: Will this new technology hurt the Amish way of life?
While that evaluation process can be slow, changes that have taken place so far have allowed Amish businesses to grow. Homestead Structures, in New Holland, Pa., constructs small buildings such as storage sheds and pool houses.
There are 19 employees in the large shop and they use drills, saws and nail guns. But the power for those tools doesn't come from the electrical grid. There are solar panels and a diesel generator for the electric tools.
"We seem to be able to compete with other companies that use electric off of the grid," says owner Stephen Stoltzfus.
His company has a website that an outside marketing firm maintains for him.
"We have telephones, in the office," says Stoltzfus, "And for our bookkeeping we have what they call word processors."
Stoltzfus is among the Amish businessmen who have entered the computer age. A company that outfits computers for Amish people touts in its advertising what the machines do not have: "no Internet, no video, no music."
All these contortions — finding ways to enjoy the benefits of technology while maintaining tradition — may seem like cheating. But Professor Kraybill says there's another term for it: "Amish hacking."
"It's not hacking the Internet, but it's learning how to get around the restrictions in ways that are acceptable within the moral order of the community," says Kraybill. And even that requires a level of deliberation foreign to many Americans.
The Amish don't automatically embrace what's new, they evaluate it and decide if it's a good fit for the lives they want to lead. Kraybill believes that is where the Amish may have something to teach the rest of us.Transgender Students Learn To Navigate School Halls
Enlarge this image toggle caption Teresa Chin/Youth Radio Teresa Chin/Youth Radio
The first time I learned that gender could be fluid was in sex ed in the ninth grade. I remember the teacher mumbling under her breath that some people don't identify their gender with the biological sex they were born with.
At the time it didn't faze me because I'd never known anyone who'd talked about it or felt that way. But now, three years later, I have a 16-year-old classmate who's transgender. His name is Jace McDonald.
"That is the name I have chosen," Jace says. "It's what my parents would have named me if I was born biologically male."
Jace McDonald was born female. But says he always knew there was something different about him. He didn't like so-called girl things, and more than that, he felt like a boy.
At 13, he started identifying as transgender, and has become something of an activist.
"Never ask someone who's trans what their real name is," he says. "That is so offensive. My real name is Jace. And my birth name is none of your business."
Jace has thick glasses and short brown hair, and he's outspoken at school. One time in English class when a teacher stumbled over gender terminology, Jace stepped in to clarify and ended up teaching a whole lesson himself.
He sometimes finds himself fed up. "High school is hard enough as it is," he says. "High school as someone who is non-gender conforming just makes it harder. How many times today am I going to be called a girl?"
In many ways, it seems like gender non-conformity awareness is at all-time high. Last week Congressman Mike Honda announced via Twitter that he was the "proud grandpa of a transgender grandchild." And according to new polling out last month, young people increasingly see gender as not just limited to male and female.
But the torchbearers of gender fluidity aren't just celebrities or politicians, but kids. Schools are still catching up with the needs of gender non-conforming students.
Last year, California's first law protecting gender non-conforming students went into effect. It gives Jace the right to use the bathroom of his choice.
Last month, Jace and I walked down the hall of the high school that we both attend. He stopped and pointed to the set of doors for our main bathrooms on campus. He says when he uses the bathroom between classes that kids occasionally give him strange looks.
"So, if I go in there and people are already in there, I'm more likely to just hold it and just go to my next class," he says.
It seems rough, but Jace says this is way better than he used to have it.
He's a junior now, and this is his first year at my school. He's gone to two other high schools and left because he was taunted and called names such as "tranny."
He says the schools didn't let him use the boys' bathroom, and insisted on keeping his birth name on the roster. At my school, he says he finally feels safe.
Just a few towns away at Malcolm X Elementary School, teachers start addressing gender identity at a young age, with the goal of making school more safe and inclusive.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Brett Myers/Youth Radio Brett Myers/Youth Radio
One of the students there, third-grader Tomás Rocha, has shoulder-length hair and long bangs. He's wearing a turquoise My Little Pony t-shirt with black flats. A lot of days he wears dresses, and last year he started using the girls' bathroom.
Tomás says people regularly ask him if he's a boy or a girl.
"I just really think I'm really both," says Tomás. "I really don't care what people call me. Sometimes I say I'm a girl. Sometimes I say I'm a boy. Sometimes I say, does it really matter?"
However, it mattered to his mom, Amy. She struggled with Tomás' gender bending. And at first hoped it was a phase.
"His first grade teacher told me that, 'Yeah I don't know if this is a phase,'" she says. "And so that scared me because I wanted it to be a phase, because I didn't want to have to have my child hurt. I wanted him to be what society wants a baby boy to be like when they're born. You know, tough and want to play sports."
Her concerns came from her fear that Tomás might get bullied. It's something Tomás' teacher Julia Beers also thinks about. Beers was Tomás' second grade teacher last year — the first year he started wearing dresses to school.
When students question Tomás, Beers tries to assume the best — that her students are curious and not trying to be mean.
Like when she overhears a student say to Tomás, "Did you know you're wearing a dress to school today?"
"If a student is laughing, for example, I might say, 'Hmm what are you thinking when you laugh like that,'" Beers says. "And by opening up that question, it can often help that student kind of dig deeper and realize 'It just seems weird' or 'I feel uncomfortable' or 'I've never seen someone do that before.'"
According to the Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network, 82 percent of transgender young people say they don't feel safe at school. Struggles, such as the ones my high school classmate Jace has been through, are the norm.
For Tomás though, his elementary school's efforts seem to be working. His mom says his grades and behavior improved after he was given more freedom to be himself.
This story was produced by outLoud, a project of Youth Radio.It is hard to imagine the Anaheim Ducks without Jonas Hiller Between the pipes. However the emergence of Viktor Fasth and the rise of John Gibson have made the the idea of moving Hiller a much more attractive idea.Fasth is signed through the 2014-15 season and is coming off his first season in the NHL. The 30-year-old Swede appeared in 25 games, starting 23 of them and compiled a 15-6-2. Not to mention he was unbeaten in his first 11 career NHL starts. Comparatively, Hiller started 25 games and finished 15-6-4. Despite similar win/loss records, Fasth's overall numbers where far superior statistically. He completed the 2012-13 season with a 2.18 goals against average..921 save percentage and four shutouts.All this on the heels of a successful career in Sweden that included back-to-back Honken Trophy wins for best goalie and a silver medal in the 2011 worlds where he was named the tournaments MVP and best goalie.Fasth made such an impression on Anaheim's up management that he was given a 2-year $5.8 million extension in the middle of the season. Meanwhile, Hiller will be entering the final year of his deal that will pay him $4.5 million in 2013-14.Anaheim has 19 players under contract for next season and about $8.5 million in cap space. Another $4.5 million sure would be nice. If Teemu Selanne and Saku Koivu are done, the Ducks need to bring in replacements. Although I like Anaheim's young depth, it doesn't hurt to have the flexibility to sign or bring in another bonafide NHL player; especially at center.Additionally, how can anybody ignore what John Gibson is doing? The 19-year-old led the United States to a gold medal in the 2013 World Junior Champions before backstopping the U.S. to its first medal (bronze) at the IIHF Word Championships since 2004 against real NHL players. He is the worlds best goalie prospect and he belongs to the Ducks. This is good news people.I know most people think I'm nuts when I bring this topic up, but it has to be discussed folks. Anaheim was upset in the first round of the playoffs by the number seven seeded Detroit Red Wings. Hiller started every game. Maybe the outcome is different with Fasth in net?Once the Ducks opened up their wallets to retain both Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf they also opened themselves up to second guesses and criticism. There are plenty of teams looking for goalie depth right now, so why not make a move now? The Ducks will more than likely will decide to keep Jonas heading into the season, but given his injury history it makes more sense to made a deal while we know he is relatively healthy.I believe Anaheim must address this situation before it becomes a distraction. What do you think? Keep or trade?***(Le Vision Pictures)
Tiny Times, a Chinese feature film set in contemporary Shanghai, made headline news on its opening day in late June by knocking the Hollywood blockbuster Man of Steel from its perch atop the domestic box-office and breaking the opening-day record for a Chinese-language 2D release.
The film follows four college girls as they navigate romance and their professional aspirations, but the bulk of the film is about the female longing for a life of luxury in the company of a good-looking man. Tiny Times is not a women's film, though it does feature female characters, draped from head to toe in designer clothes and easily mesmerized by the presence of supposedly visually stunning males -- not the usual, muscle-bound Hollywood types, but Asian boys of androgynous demeanor with compact frames, exquisite facial contours and the look of perpetual youth.
At first glance, Tiny Times might be mistaken for a Sinicized Sex and the City, but soon it becomes clear that the four boy-crazed, mall-loitering characters in Shanghai have little in common with the fiercely independent career women in Candace Bushnell's New York. Positioned in the market by Le Vision Pictures of Beijing as a coming of age story, the rite of passage for one dazed girl in the film is to grow into a competent personal assistant to her oh-so-handsome male boss whose aloof demeanor and penetrating gaze constantly destabilizes her. Another girl from a nouveau riche family, showers her boyfriend with expensive clothes and accessories. The third girl -- chubby, suffering from stereotypically low self-esteem and emotional eating -- is made fun of throughout the movie as she obsesses over young tennis player, the one man in the movie who actually possesses something resembling muscle. The fourth girl, a budding fashion designer from a humble background, is trapped in an abusive relationship with yet another good-looking boy.
Taking a page from the book of popular East Asian "idol dramas" that cater primarily to youth in their teens and 20s, the film features popular singers, actors, and actresses, cast regardless of any actual acting ability. Good idol dramas frequently feature teen romance, in which brooding characters with dark secrets and painful pasts elicit pathos and real emotion. Tiny Times, however, has done away with complex story arcs and character development. The film looks great but ultimately lacks substance.Ford Motor Company to mass produce self-driving cars with no brakes, accelerator and steering wheel
Simeon Tuoyo Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 18, 2016
Ford takes a cue from Google.
While search giant Google is grappling with how to turn its Self-driving car unit into a money spinner, after its fleets of self-driving Priuses and ‘prototype’ vehicles cumulatively racked up more than 1.8 million miles in autonomous driving and recoup the money it’s spent on the project, automaker Ford plans to manufacture its fully Ford autonomous cars by 2021 to ferry passengers from point a to b. The Motor company revealed this yesterday through its Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields
The US carmaker says will follow somewhat in the footsteps of other automakers and companies currently experimenting with self automated vehicles like Google, which has a fleet of fully self-driving cars built from scratch with no steering wheel, accelerator and brakes for a human to take control if things go awry; except an emergency stop button. Its Ford Fully self-driving cars will too have no brake, steering wheel and accelerator — driver’s input won’t be needed.
Ford reveals that it would put its completely driverless automobiles on roads by way of ride-sharing services, where passengers could call a Ford Fusion sedan from their smartphone and it will take them anywhere; while they sit back and chat with their friends or read the morning papers on their way to work.Resource dispersal is an important part of prepping that is often underrated and overlooked. Between redundancies, caches, and bug out locations, you can improve your odds when the unknown and unthinkable is happening.
1/3: Kit Redundancy
We know prepping can be expensive. Multiple disaster kits and bug out bags may seem too costly to many preppers, but having duplicate kits stored in separate locations in your home can greatly improve your chances of survival. If the part of your home where all your preps are stored becomes compromised, the results could be disastrous- even for a prepper. Even if you do not have redundant kits to due space or cost, splitting up the stores that you have can help. I know preppers that keep all their food stores in their garage. In the event of a hurricane, if a tree fell on that garage they would be ‘up the creek.’ Spreading out your storage areas is necessary to truly be prepared for the worst case scenarios.
2/3: Survival Caches
Using caches for small or large survival gear is a great way to disperse your resources. Survival caches are the ultimate tool for resource dispersal because they are versatile and usable five feet from your home or 50 miles. A good mid-size survival cache could be the difference maker in a SHTF situation. You can store ammunition, maps, personal information, money, and tools in a cache which all could provide aid when you need it most. Make sure you stash some desiccant in the survival cache as well to prevent moisture build up. Bury or conceal the cache in an easily accessible location that is not visible or well traveled, so you can avoid having someone loot your cache. Burying a cache in your yard may be an option as well, in case your home is compromised in a disaster or emergency. Redundancy in caches can also help, since you can easily set up several small caches for relatively cheap.
3/3: BOL (Bug Out Location)
Having a bug out location with resources can greatly improve your ability to contend with geographic threats. Without at least one bug out location, or multiple locations, you may find yourself hard pressed to survive when a regional catastrophe occurs. While you can learn skills to become completely self sufficient, resources are always good to have and bug out locations can provide places to store those resources. Many preppers turn to the wilderness away from many natural and man-made threats. Distance from nuclear plants, military facilities, as well as natural disaster history can go into consideration when selecting a location. BOLs don’t have to be cabins that you purchase in the backwoods- friend and family locations in different geographic regions can work as well and do not require purchasing property. Be sure to have a conversation with them regarding what and how much you store at their location- and be sure to include them in your preps if they are not preppers on their own.
You may lose some stored preps, since we cannot control every situation no matter how well prepared. The purpose of resource dispersal is to make it so only a fraction of your survivability is hurt from any one kit being destroyed. Hopefully these three points have allowed you to pause and examine your own plans and how you store your prepping gear. Disperse your preps, and don’t put your eggs all in one basket.
The best way to stay up to date with our articles is to sign up for updates by subscribing to TruePrepper, or by following our Facebook page.The lights of the metropolis shine brightly on the clear summer night. Down on the bay, a crowd gathers around a giant outdoor screen. Spotlights flood the area as the audience, now exceeding 50,000 people, work themselves into a fever pitch. The two teams come out on stage to deafening cheers. Teenage girls scream as one idol from each team is chosen for the first round of combat. They each enter a booth. The music swells, and the video game begins.
It sounds like a science fiction story from the future. But this event actually happened in the past, in a place where such things have been commonplace for over ten years. This was the 2006 Proleague finals held in Seoul, South Korea. The game being played was StarCraft.
When people first learn about the professional gaming scene in Korea, they typically believe it to be a curious cultural anomaly, something that could never be repeated anywhere else. But there are those who have watched this scene while growing up, and as adults have made it their life's goal to bring it to the rest of the world. They are passionate about it in a way that is inspiring and infectious. They are on a mission. What follows is a look at that mission—where it has been, and where it's going—through the eyes of a longtime StarCraft e-Sports fan.
The StarCraft 1 scene
The year was 1999. A combination of government-sponsored inexpensive broadband, punitive tariffs on Japanese video game consoles (which at the time meant video game consoles in general), and the rise of "PC bangs" or gaming cafes where people played computer games, all combined at once to create something entirely new. Local tournaments at the PC bangs grew into larger and larger events, and when the Korean TV channel OnGameNet sponsored the first OSL championship, won by Canadian Guillaume "Grrrr..." Patry, there was no turning back. Patry became the first StarCraft superstar, appearing on talk shows and being mobbed by fans.
Patry's success inspired other foreigners to go to Korea to try their luck. Some, like Peter "Legionnaire" Neate and Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier achieved some success in the early years, but when they retired there were few others with the patience and dedication to replace them. Korean StarCraft became exclusive to Koreans.
Non-Koreans players had only one tournament that mattered at all: the World Cyber Games. In the 2005 WCG USA championships, brothers Nick and Sean Plott were pitted against each other in the first round. Nick lost, but it was a blessing in disguise—while wandering the performance hall he became frustrated with the poor commentating and told the tournament manager that he could do better. He commentated the rest of the finals with an informed yet easygoing style—he was a natural in front of the camera. In the end, he was offered a job to come out to Singapore to commentate the world finals for WCG. Sean went on to beat Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski in a close game and win in the finals. For this he was awarded a trip to Singapore, where he nearly took a game off the 2004 champion from Korea, Xellos (Seo Ji Hoon). The USA finals were captured by filmmaker Brian J. Kim, and the world finals became the subject of a National Geographic documentary.
Following the finals, Nick went on to commentate other WCGs. His casts were popular enough that in 2008 the Korean Internet TV channel GOM TV asked him to come to Korea to do English commentary for a special tournament of the best Korean StarCraft players. The Star Invitational was a success, with over 75,000 views of the final match between Stork (Song Byung Goo) and upcoming phenomenon Flash (Lee Young Ho). It seemed like the rest of the world was finally going to start seeing why StarCraft was so popular in Korea.
KeSPA and Blizzard: the animosity begins
The success of the Star Invitational led to three seasons of the Averatec-Intel Classic, with Nick and co-commentators lilsusie (Susie Kim) and Super Daniel Man (Daniel Lee). However, KeSPA, the Korean e-Sports Association, put pressure on its players and teams to sit out Season 3, and when almost no players were allowed to participate, Season 4 was cancelled. Various reasons were given for this, but it was thought that KeSPA was not happy about the fact that Blizzard had been a major sponsor of the final season—the first time Blizzard had ever sponsored a StarCraft tournament in Korea—doubling the prize pool and making the tournament more attractive to players.
Why would KeSPA be against Blizzard sponsoring a tournament? Because at the time, KeSPA and Blizzard were in tough negotiations over the rights to broadcast StarCraft on television. For years Blizzard had paid little attention to the huge success that pro StarCraft had found in Korea, other than being happy that they sold lots of copies of the game there. In fact, it wasn't until 2005 that Blizzard finally released full support for the Korean language in the game!
What had happened was this: in 2007, KeSPA had started charging for the broadcast rights for StarCraft matches to TV stations OnGameNet and MBC. Blizzard argued that this money should go to Blizzard, and that Blizzard should have some control over how the tournaments were run. KeSPA refused to negotiate further, and things were at a standstill. This was a problem for Blizzard, as after a long delay, StarCraft 2 was about to be released.
StarCraft 2 prepares to take the stage
There was a 12-year delay between StarCraft 1 and StarCraft 2, and Blizzard had changed significantly in that time. There was much outcry when it was announced that StarCraft 2 would have no LAN play and would require a constant Internet connection to Battle.net at all times during multiplayer games. Blizzard claimed this was to cut down on cheating online (a common problem in StarCraft 1 was "maphacking," where people would run utilities to reveal the entire map while their opponents were still in the dark) and to allow players to follow each other's statistics, but many people saw it as a money grab, especially when paired with the fact that players living in different parts of the world were required to purchase multiple "regional" versions of the game in order to play with each other online.
Despite these concerns, anticipation for the release of StarCraft 2 ran high. When a multiplayer version of the beta was released, people immediately began playing online, and even started streaming their games live over the Internet using new services like UStream and JustinTV. There were even tournaments during the beta, like the "Stars Wars" contest held in China where players from the United States, including Nick Plott, beat the Korean team only to fall to the home country favorites.
As the game neared release, Blizzard had another big announcement. While still unable to reach an agreement with OGN or MBC, the two primary TV channels in Korea that sponsored and broadcasted StarCraft 1 tournaments, they finalized a partnership deal with GOM TV. It was a huge announcement: a global StarCraft 2 league called the GSL, with an unprecedented prize pool—tournaments would be held every month, and the champion would receive 100,000,000 Korean Won, or about $90,000 US, almost double the money that was awarded for StarCraft 1 championships. The tournaments would be broadcasted in Korean and English, with the latter commentated by Nick "Tasteless" Plott and Dan "Artosis" Stemkoski. While the tournaments would be held in Korea, everyone in the world was invited, and it was hoped that many non-Koreans would try out.
Blizzard was throwing down the gauntlet, effectively telling KeSPA that they intended to make StarCraft 2 a global e-Sport, with or without their help. KeSPA's response was to forbid any of their StarCraft 1 players from playing StarCraft 2 and launch a media blitz attacking the game and Blizzard itself. They even convinced the Korean government to threaten to give the game an "adults-only" rating for violence—ridiculous, as the level of violence was |
June 1st from 4:00-8:00pm
$20 (+ taxes & fees)
FanClub – 1050 Granville Street
Cider Rules
Six different premium ciders from Anthem, Reverend Nat and Finn River, will be featured and expertly paired with a different appy / amuse-bouche. The ticket price will include entrance, one cider sample and one appy. Additional samples and appetizer pairings will range in price. The event will start at 6:00pm and run until 9:00pm, when doors will open to the public and for a “cider mingler” with live music.
Thursday, June 5th from 6:00-9:00pm
$15 (+ taxes & fees)
The August Jack – 2042 West 4th Avenue
The VCBW Beer Festival presented by CRAFT Beer Market
IT’S A RAP!
Sadly, it’s the last day of VCBW, but what better way to say goodbye for another year than by celebrating VCBW Beer Festival presented by CRAFT Beer Market! Spend an epic evening showcasing over 70 of the best craft breweries in the industry, from both local and abroad, at the amazing Olympic Village event grounds. Tickets include a commemorative VCBW taster glass & 3 drink tokens. Additional tokens are $1.25 each.
Saturday, June 7th from 2:00-7:00pm
$35 (+ taxes & fees)
Olympic Village Event Grounds – 215 West 1st Avenue
Featured Image: Vancouver Craft Beer WeekPhoto
On the morning of Aug. 7, 1974, New Yorkers awoke to a French funambulist walking between the Twin Towers
“I couldn’t help laughing — it was so beautiful,” recalled the 24-year-old professional stuntman Philippe Petit as he took his first steps that gray morning.
For nearly 45 minutes, the lithe blonde man dressed head-to-toe in black strode back and forth on the 131-foot galvanized steel cable, occasionally pausing to bend his knees or to lie down.
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“There is no why,” the aeralist said later when questioned about his motivations.
“If I see three oranges, I have to juggle. And if I see two towers, I have to walk,” he told The New York Times.
The stunt took years to prepare.
Mr. Petit made nearly 200 trips to the towers to draw up the wire architecture and to smuggle in the necessary equipment, ropes and guy lines for the grand finale.
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The night before, Mr. Petit and a small band of friends and conspirators slipped past the guards disguised as construction workers to execute their plan.
Just after dawn, Mr. Petit stepped out into a stiff breeze.
A quarter mile below, hundreds of pedestrians cheered as they looked skyward.
“Get off there or I’ll come out and we’ll both go down,” a police officer shouted.
And when Mr. Petit descended 110 floors to the street below, he was taken away in handcuffs.
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Manhattan District Attorney Richard H. Kuh agreed to drop charges of disorderly conduct and criminal trespass in exchange for a free performance in Central Park.
“My punishment is the most beautiful punishment I could have received,” Mr. Petit told The Times.
The stunt would later be called “the artistic crime of the century” and inspire a children’s book, “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers,” and a documentary about the heist-like plot, “Man on Wire.”
Earlier this year, The New York Times interviewed Mr. Petit about his most recent book, “Creativity: The Perfect Crime.” When asked about Sept. 11, he replied:
“Those towers were almost human for me. I was in love with them, and that’s why I married them with a tight rope.”Over the weekend I was catching up on some of my internet readings, one of which is Timo Sugliani's excellent weekly Tech Links (highly recommend a follow). In one of his non-VMware related links (which funny enough is related to VMware), I noticed that the recent Container startup ContainerX has just made available a free version of their software for non-production use. Given part of the company's DNA included VMware, I was curious to learn more about their solution and how it works, especially as it relates to VMware vSphere which is one of the platforms it supports.
For those not familiar with ContainerX, it is described as the following:
ContainerX offers a single pane of glass for all your containers. Whether you are running on Bare Metal or VM, Linux or Windows, Private or Public cloud, you can view your entire infrastructure in one simple management console.
In this article, I will walk you through in how to deploy, configure and start using ContainerX in a vSphere environment. Although there is an installation guide included with the installer, I personally found the document to be a little difficult to follow, especially for someone who was only interested in a pure vSphere environment. The mention of bare-metal at the beginning was confusing as I was not sure what the actual requirements were and I think it would have been nice to just have a section that covered each platform from start to end.
In any case, here are high level steps that are required in setting up ContainerX for your vSphere environment:
Deploy an Ubuntu (14.01/14.04) VM and install the CX Management Host software Deploy the CX Ubuntu OVA Template into the vSphere environment that will be used by the CX Management Host Configure a vSphere Elastic Cluster using the CX Management Host UI Deploy your Container/Application to your vSphere Elastic Cluster
Pre-Requisite:
Sign up for the free ContainerX offering here (email will contain a download link to CX Management Host Installer)
Access to a vSphere environment w/vCenter Server
Already deployed Ubuntu 14.01 or 14.04 VM (4 vCPU, 8GB vMEM & 40GB vDISK) that will be used for the CX Management Host
CX Management Host Deployment:
Step 1 - Download the CX Management Host installer for your OS desktop platform of choice. If you are using the Mac OS X installer, you will find that the cX.app fails to launch as it is not signed from an identified developer. You will need to change your security settings to allow an application which was downloaded from "anywhere" to be opened, which is a shame.
Step 2 - Accept the EULA and then select the "On Preconfigured Host" option which expects you to have a pre-installed Ubuntu VM to install the CX Management Host software. If you have not pre-deployed the Ubuntu VM, stop here and go perform that step and then come back.
Step 3 - Next, provide the IP Address/hostname and credentials to the Ubuntu VM that you have already pre-installed. You can use the "Test" option to verify that either the SSH password or private key that you have provided is functional before proceeding further in the installer.
Step 4 - After you click "Continue", the installer will remotely connect to your Ubuntu VM and start the installation of the CX Management Host software. This takes a few minutes with progress being displayed at the bottom of the screen. If the install is successful, you should see the "Install FINISHED" message.
Step 5 - Once the installer completes, it will also automatically open a browser and take you to the login screen of the CX Management Host UI interface (https://IP:8085). The default credentials is admin/admin
At this point, you have successfully deployed the CX Management Host. The next section will walk you through in setting up the CX Ubuntu Template which will be used to deploy your Containers and Applications by the CX Management Host.
Preparing the CX Ubuntu Template Deployment:
Before we can create a vSphere Elastic Cluster (EC), you will need to deploy the CX Ubuntu OVA Template which will then be used by the CX Management Host to deploy CX Docker Hosts to run your Containers/Applications. When I had originally gone through the documentation, there was a reference to the CX Ubuntu OVA but I was not able to find a download URL anywhere including going through the ContainerX's website. I had reached out to the ContainerX folks and they had updated KB article 20960087 to provide a download link, appreciate the assistance over the weekend. However, it looks like their installation documentation is still missing the URL reference. In any case, you can find the download URL below for your convenience.
Step 1 - Download the CX Ubuntu OVA Template (http://update.containerx.io:8080/cx-ubuntu.ova) and deploy (but do NOT power it on) using the vSphere Web/C# Client to the vCenter Server environment that ContainerX will be consuming.
Note: I left the default VM name which is cx-ubuntu as I am not sure if it would mess up with the initial vSphere environment discovery later in the process. It would be good to know if you could change the name.
Step 2 - Take a VM snapshot of the powered off CX Ubuntu VM before powering it on.
Creating a vSphere Elastic Cluster (EC) to ContainerX:
Step 1 - Click on the "Quick Wizard" button at the top and select the "vSphere Cluster" start button. Nice touch on the old school VMware logo 🙂
Step 2 - Enter your vCenter Server credentials and then click on the "Login to VC" button to continue.
Step 3 - Here you will specify the number of CX Docker Hosts and the compute, storage, and networkings resources that they will consume. The CX Docker Hosts will be provisioned using VMware Linked Clones based off of our CX Ubuntu VM Template that we had uploaded earlier. If you had skipped this step, you will find that there is not a drop down box and you will need to perform that step first before you can proceed further.
Note: It would have been nice if the CX Ubuntu VM was not detected, that it would automatically prompt you to deploy it without having to go back. I did not even realize this particular template was required since I was not able to find the original download link in any of the instructions.
Step 4 - An optional step, but you also have the option to create what is known as Container Pools which allow you to set both CPU and Memory limits (supports over-commitment) within your EC. It is not exactly clear how Container Pools work but it sounds like these are being applied within the CX Docker Hosts VMs?
Step 5 - Once you have confirmed the settings to be used for your vSphere EC, you can then click Next to being the creation. This process should not take too long and once everything has successfully been deployed, you should see a success message and a "Done" button which you can click on to close the wizard.
Step 6 - If we go back to our CX Management UI home page, we should now see our new vSphere EC which in my example is called "vSphere-VSAN-Cluster". There is some basic summary information about the EC, including number of Container Pools, Hosts and their utilization. You may have also noticed that there are 12 Containers being displayed in the UI which I found a bit strange given I have not deployed anything yet. I later realized that these are actually CX Docker Containers running within the CX Docker Hosts which I assuming is providing communication back to the CX Management Host. I think it would be nice to separate these numbers to reflect "Management" and actual "Application" Containers, the same goes for resource utilization information.
Deploying a Container on ContainerX:
Under the "Applications" tab of your vSphere EC, you can deploy either a standalone Docker Container or some of the pre-defined Applications that have been bundled as part of the CX Management Host.
We will start off by just deploying a very simple Docker Container. In this example, I will select my first ContainerPool-1 and then select the "A Container" button. Since we do not have a repository to select a Container to deploy, click on the "Launch a Container" button towards the top.
Note: I think I may have found a UI bug in which the Container Pool that you select in the drop down is not properly being displayed when you go deploy the Container or Application. For example, if you pick Container Pool 1, it will say that you are about to deploy to Container Pool 2. I found that you had to re-select the same drop down a second time for it to properly display and whether this is merely a cosmetic bug or its actually using the Container Pool that I did not specify.
Step 1 - Specify the Docker Image you wish to launch, if you do not have one off hand, you can use the PhotonOS Docker Container (vmware/photon) and specify a Container name. You can also add additional options using the advanced settings button such as environmental variables, network ports, Docker Volumes, etc. For this example, we will keep it simple, go ahead and click on "Launch App" button to deploy the Container.
Step 2 - You should see that our PhotonOS Docker Container started and then shortly after exited, not a very interesting demo but you get the idea.
Note: It would be really nice to be able to get the output from the Docker Container, even running a command like "uname -a" did not return any visible output that I could see from the UI.
Deploying an Application on ContainerX:
The other option is to deploy a sample application that is pre-bundled within the CX Management Host (I assume you can add your own application as it looks to be just a Docker Compose file). Select the Container Pool from the drop down that you wish to deploy the application and then click on the "An Application" button. In our example, we will deploy the WordPress application.
Step 1 - Select the application you wish to deploy by click on the "Power" icon.
Step 2 - Give the application a name and then click on the "Launch App" to deploy the application.
Step 3 - The deployment of the application can take several minutes, but one completed, you should see in the summary view like the one shown below. You can also find the details of how to reach the WordPress application that we just deployed by looking for the IP Address and the external port as highlighted below.
Step 4 - To verify that our WordPress application is working, go ahead and open a new browser and specify the IP Address and the port shown in the previous step and you should be taken to the initial WordPress setup screen.
If you need to access the CX Docker Hosts whether it is for publishing Containers/Applications by your end users or for troubleshooting purposes, you can easily access the environment information under the "Pools" tab. There is a "Download access credentials" which contains zip file containing platform specific snippets of the CX Docker hosts information.
Since I use a Mac, I just need to run the env.sh script and then run my normal "Docker" command (this assumes you have the Docker Beta Client for Mac OS X, else you will need a Docker Client). You can see from the screenshot below the three Docker Containers we had deployed earlier.
Summary:
Having only spent a short amount of time playing with ContainerX, I thought it was a neat solution. The installation of the CX Management Host was pretty quick and straight forward and I was glad to see a multi-desktop OS installer. It did take me a bit of time to realize what the actual requirement was for just a pure vSphere environment as mentioned earlier, perhaps an end-to-end document for vSphere would have cleared all this up. The UI was pretty easy to use and intuitive for the most part. I did find it strange not being able to edit any of the configurations a bit annoying and ended up deleting and re-creating some of the configurations. I would have liked an easier way to map between the Container Pools (Pools tab) and their respective CX Docker Hosts without having to download the credentials or navigate to anther tab. I also found in certain places that selection or navigation of objects was not very clear due to the subtle transition in the UI which made me think there was a display bug.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the Container Pool concept. I am not sure I understand the benefits of it or rather how the underlying resource management actually works. It seems like today, it is only capable of setting CPU and Memory limits which are applied within the CX Docker Host VMs? I am not sure if customers are supposed to create different sized CX Docker Host VMs? I was pretty surprised that I did not see more use of the underlying vSphere Resource Management capabilities in this particular area.
The overall architecture of ContainerX for vSphere looks very similiar to VMware's vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC) solution. Instead of a CX Docker Host VM, VIC has a concept of a Virtual Container Host (VCH) which is backed by a vSphere Resource Pool. VIC creates what is known as a Container VM that only contains the Container/Application running as VM, rather than in a VM. These Container VMs are instantiated using vSphere's Instant Clone capability from a tiny PhotonOS Template. Perhaps I am a bit biased here, but in addition to providing an integrated and familiar interface to each of the respective consumers: vSphere Administrators (familiar VM construct, leveraging the same set of tools with extended Docker Container info) and Developers (simply accessing the Docker endpoint with the tools they are already using), the other huge benefit of the VIC architecture is that it allows the Container VMs to benefit from all the underlying vSphere platform capabilities. vSphere Administrators can apply granular resource and policy based management on a per Container/Application basis if needed, which is a pretty powerful capability if you ask me. It will be interesting to see if there will be deeper integration from a management and operational standpoint in the future for ContainerX.
All in all, very cool stuff from the ContainerX folks, looking forward to what comes next. DockerCon is also this week and if you happen to be at the event, be sure to drop by the VMware booth as I hear they will be showing off some pretty cool stuff. I believe the ContainerX folks will also be at DockerCon, so be sure to drop by their booth and say hello.This page contains links to all sites covered in the FOURTH edition of The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook (2013). To order the 4th Edition, go to books.infotoday.com/books/Extreme-Searchers-Handbook-4.shtml or call Information Today at 609-654-6266. If calling from outsite the U.S., you may call 001.609.654-6266.
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Refining options that were formerly shown on the left side of results pages are now shown as menu items beneath the search box on results pages.
Under the "Search Tools" menu item you will find submenu items for time, type of results, and location. Click on the "all results" menu item for the following options: sites with images, pages you have already visited, those you have not yet visited, definitions, reading level, personal (related posts, etc.. from your "friends" and 'connections" ), results (primarily businesses) near your location, translated foreign pages (formery the 'language" search option and "language tools"), and Verbatim (to theoretically remove modifications to you search that Google has made).
Other options are now tucked away under the "More" menu item. There you can limit your results to: videos, books, blogs, flights, discussions, recipes, and applications.The front landing gear on a Boeing 737 collapsed as the plane touched down at LaGuardia Airport Monday, causing the aircraft to skid and spark along the runway, according to witnesses, injuring as many as 10 people.
Passengers on the Southwest Airlines flight from Nashville, Tenn. evacuated the plane on emergency chutes just after the landing. The plane came to a stop in a grassy area on runway 4 after the nose gear collapsed, officials said.
The FAA said the flight "reported possible front landing gear issues before landing."
The plane was carrying 149 passengers and crew, and there may have been an additional non-ticketed child on a passenger's lap, putting the total number of people on board at 150.
Ten people, including passengers and flight attendants, were treated by medical personnel at the scene for anxiety attacks and some minor bumps and bruises, according to Thomas Bosco, general manager at LaGuardia Airport. Four refused further medical attention, and six were transported to a hospital.
The flight crew was also taken to a hospital for observation, and a Port Authority police officer was treated at the scene for heat exhaustion, Bosco said.
Bill Roland, a passenger on the Southwest flight, said it felt like being in a car accident when the plane made impact with the runway.
"It sort of came down really fast, and kind of steep. And then it sort of banged, and then it banged again and then it sort of skidded to a stop," he said. "It all stopped quicker than you would have thought."
Roland did not know at the time that the nose of the plane had caught fire or that the landing gear was broken, but witnesses on the ground saw what they described as a "fireball" skidding down the runway.
The plane "was just screeching down the runway, fire on both sides," said Steve Czech, who was waiting for his American Airlines flight to take off when he saw the Southwest flight touch down. "There was debris kind of rolling off to the sides."
Czech said passengers on his flight shrieked as they watched.
"I was concerned, obviously, about the people on the plane. And then when I saw the debris rolling off, I was wondering if we were going to be in the debris field and get hit by some of the debris," he said.
Melina Andujar and her husband saw the plane approach the runway, and say they knew something was wrong.
"My husband noticed it was out of shape, like it wasn't supposed to land that way," she said. "He said, 'Oh, my God, I think something's wrong.'"
"The front wheel didn't come out, and it landed on its nose and it started skidding," said Andujar, who saw sparks fly as the plane landed.
The plane ended up on a grassy area about halfway down runway 4, between the runway and a taxiway, said Bosco.
Sam Brock, an NBC Bay Area reporter, was on another plane next to the Southwest aircraft on the runway when it landed. The Asiana crash in San Francisco earlier this month made passengers jittery, he said.
"I think a lot of people had nerves that were rattled. As soon as it was clear that there was something going on, everybody on one side of the plane rushed to the other to take a look, obviously hoping we weren't seeing some sort of repeat of what happened at SFO," he said.
That's when they saw the Southwest plane on the ground.
Southwest passengers said they had no warning from the pilot they were about to crash land, and the sudden impact left everyone "a little nervous and freaked out," according to Eric Westmaas.
The plane's emergency chutes were deployed, and passengers slid down the chutes "in an orderly fashion," according to Bosco.
"The nose of the airplane was on the ground so there was an unusual latitude. That was the best and safest way to get people off," he said.
The Port Authority Police Department's aircraft rescue team and emergency medical responders were on the scene, but "at no point in the process did it seem like there were any serious injuries or any immediacy with respect to the emergency response," Brock observed.
NTSB investigators were on the scene gathering more information and assessing the damage.
"As soon as NTSB gives us the OK, we will start to clear the runway of debris," said Bosco.
Airport officials were working with Southwest to move the plane from the grassy area, then assess the physical damage.
The airport is aiming to reopen the runway by Tuesday morning, Bosco said. Passengers traveling through LaGuardia should check if their flights are canceled or delayed.Photo: Flickr, CC
Petrobras, the semi-public Brazilian oil giant (the government of Brazil owns 55.7% of Petrobras' common shares with voting rights), has just built the first of what it hopes will be many electric charging stations. It is located in the Barra de Tijuca neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro because that area has the most electric motorcycles and bikes in circulation in the country.What's interesting about the charging station is that it is solar-powered whenever the sun's shining, but it still maintains a tie to the main electrical grid for when it's dark.
Edimar Machado, the head of Petrobras' distribution division, said that the battery charging point will be mostly symbolic for now, "awakening environmental awareness by showing people that it is possible to use energy without harming the environment." But awareness has to start somewhere, and even if these stations were not directly powered by the sun, it would still be a good thing to create a charging infrastructure to break the "chicken vs. egg" dilemma faced by electric cars and bikes (especially in urban areas where not everybody has a garage or a reserved parking spot).
IPS News reports: "The next phase depends on how quickly the market for electric vehicles expands to make the project commercially viable, and will consist of creating charging points all over the country. Ideally, according to Machado, they should be spaced about 30 kilometres apart."
Sugarcane field in Brazil. Photo: Wikipedia, CC
But Brazil still has a loooong way to go when it comes to electrification of transportation. Electric cars are extremely rare, and even electric 2-wheelers are numbered in the hundreds or low thousands. The country has mostly focused on sugarcane ethanol so far; a fuel that is a lot more energy positive than the corn ethanol of the US, but that can still have a big negative impact if the sugarcane is grown on deforested land.
What would have a bigger positive impact on the environment would be investments in further improve mass transit. One possibility would be to bring the Curitiba Bus Rapid Transit model to other Brazilian cities (and other countries should pay attention too).
Via IPS News, EcoWorldly
More Green(er) Transportation
Toyota to Mass-Produce Plug-In Hybrid in 2012... For $48,000!
VW Announces Electric Car for 2013, Warns Against "Electro-Hype"
Chinese Government Raises Fuel Prices by 10% (That's Good!)
All Ocean-Going Ships Near California's Coast Must Now Use Cleaner FuelLiberal Democrats leader Tim Farron. Matt Cardy/Getty Image LONDON — Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron and his predecessor Nick Clegg are both at serious risk of losing their seats at the general election.
Conservatives in Farron's Westmorland and Lonsdale seat are confident of pulling off a remarkable victory in Cumbria, while a drop in Lib Dem support in Sheffield Hallam has Labour confident that it can unseat Clegg, party sources have told Business Insider.
The Telegraph's Ben Riley-Smith reported last week that Cumbrian Tories are working on a "take-out Tim" strategy to unseat the Lib Dem leader and win back the Westmorland and Lonsdale seat the party lost in 2005.
Conservative sources have confirmed this to Business Insider, claiming that Tory activists in Westmorland and Lonsdale are "throwing lots of money and resources" at the seat amid growing confidence that Theresa May can wrench it from Farron's grasp.
"They are throwing the kitchen sink at it and having a lot of fun up there," a Conservative candidate in the region told us.
Meanwhile, in Sheffield, the local Labour Party is confident of unseating former deputy prime minister Clegg, who has been the MP for Sheffield Hallam since 2005. Local Tories are wary of the threat posed by Labour, too.
Clegg defeated Labour's Oliver Coppard by 4.2% in 2015 but Labour's candidate this time around, Jared O'Mara, fancies his chances of overturning this margin and winning the seat the Lib Dems have held since 1997.
Labour sources believe many former-Conservative voters who backed Clegg in 2015 to make sure Labour didn't win the seat are not set to vote tactically this time around, paving the way for Labour to leapfrog the Lib Dems to victory.
Farron and Clegg losing their seats would undoubtedly be one of the biggest stories of election night. The party has come into the snap election pledging to double its number of seats in Commons amid talk of a Lib Dem revival fuelled by Remain-voting Brits who want to oppose Brexit. However, the party is yet to surge in the polls, while YouGov research published this week shows 68% of Brits want Brexit to happen, including 23% that voted Remain in June.
Having initially been tipped for a resurgence, the Lib Dems could be set to lose its two biggest names on June 8.
What would it take for Farron and Clegg to lose?
Clegg, who was David Cameron's deputy in the coalition government, has held Sheffield Hallam since 1997 but at the last election won 40% of the vote share compared to 53.4% in 2010, giving him a significantly reduced majority of 2,353. If the feeling within the local Labour Party is right and floating voters who backed Clegg in 2015 decide to cast their votes elsewhere, Labour would be in a strong position to win the seat, assuming its local vote holds up.
A loss for Farron would take something much more spectacular. The Lib Dem leader won the Cumbrian seat in 2015 with a huge 18.5% lead over Conservative candidate Ann Myatt, who was runner-up. However, Conservative activists are quietly confident that a campaign centred on the mandate Theresa May claims she requires to negotiate Brexit will resonate with the 45% of residents who are estimated to have voted Leave.
YouGov recently produced some figures into how Britain's regions plan to vote on June 8. We took these figures and fed them into Electoral Calculus' user-defined regional poll, a tool for projecting election results using polling data. As the graphic below illustrates, Farron is set to surrender his seat to the Conservatives, according to these recent figures.Stefan Goldmann on why Web 2.0 can work for you but won’t for most, where all the money went and how working against the market consensus can be a winning strategy.
Electronic music. What we believed for a long time was that anyone with a bit of talent had a chance at a career of about ten years before eventually retiring from the circuit. Of course there are exceptions for whom this does not seem to apply. Francois Kevorkian has probably had the longest career here (unless we count Kraftwerk as part of our little world); and it’s hard to imagine techno or house without Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills or Laurent Garnier. That’s the good news: it does not necessarily have to meet a predetermined end. On the other hand, artists emerging now face the hardest times ever to establish themselves. The lifespan between breaking through and being laid off seems to have reached a historic low point of half a year. The reasons behind this “haircut” to artistic longevity are the radically lowered barriers to participation, as well as the hectic marketplace discovering today’s new talent and abandoning yesterday’s new talent.
Let’s clarify “barriers”: in the old days of the music business, which was basically before the end of the 1970s, the main barriers to “making it in music” were studio time and access to distribution. Whoever wanted to be heard adequately needed well distributed releases. That is, having recorded material in the first place. The means for producing such recordings were so expensive that at some point only big corporations could spare the funds to pay for the required studio time and personnel. The effect of this economic barrier to resources was that a couple of hundred artists and bands gained access to an audience of millions. Once a recording was produced it enjoyed a long life in the market due to the lack of competition that otherwise would have pushed it off the store shelves. Only under these conditions did the huge, continuous investments in promotion and distribution actually make economic sense in those times and circumstances.
What a typical recording studio once looked like
This model experienced a serious challenge with the advent of the affordable 4-track recorder, which enabled home recording that could deliver marketable results for the first time ever. For instance, the whole late ’70s/early ’80s New York downtown scene can be pretty much explained by this piece of technology. Progress in affordable music equipment in the form of synthesizers, drum machines, these earphones for $50 and samplers gave birth to a plethora of innovative styles in music, including hip hop, house, techno and drum ‘n’ bass. At the same time independent distribution was born, conquering channels previously serviced exclusively by major corporations. The new distributors were capable of connecting with ever smaller target groups. Fueled by enthusiasm, small businesses could survive on small quantities of product previously considered not to be worth the effort. Tango from Finland and death metal from anywhere found comfortable niches with worldwide followings.
These enabled artists and the people around them to become professionals, i.e. to make a living on the music instead of funding a hobby through an undesirable day job. That was the core economic feature of the independent music culture: no riches, but still sufficient funds to avoid wasting time on activities not related to music. Anyone busy generating income from 9 to 5 wouldn’t be able to gain the deep skills necessary to sustain a career in music and hold an audience for long. By the way, this comfortable indie-constellation was never really threatened by the majors, who only occasionally dropped by to sign away the most successful artists of any niche. Working within your own artistic preferences became a pretty comfortable thing to do back in the ’80s.
Closer to what today’s typical studio looks like. Richie Hawtin’s bedroom studio.
The next level was reached when it took nothing but a standard PC and a microphone (if required) to render an entire production. The software that emulated the previously needed pieces of gear came mostly for free thanks to piracy. Therefore, production costs practically hit zero and the record sales you needed in order to sustain a release fell almost to the cost of the manufacturing of the records themselves (with a few bucks for promotion). At that point, at least in dance music, sales figures of just around 5,000 physical units were considered a “hit,” whereas a bit earlier it would’ve required a few hundred thousand units. Many soon realized that even the expense of pressing up records or CDs was not really necessary. A digital download has no costs at all. The logical outcome was distribution that granted any piece of music total availability, with the downside of being the most inefficient way of distribution ever: what should I download when there are five billion files to choose from? Whom should I bless with my attention? Do I have any attention to spare?
Contrary to public perception, this didn’t affect the majors all that much. Their problems were mostly in their inability to maximize the advantages they already had instead of wasting resources on trying to revive an overthrown order. Soon enough it dawned on them that big artists (i.e. those with the biggest turnover) can generate reasonable income through so called 360-degree-deals, covering live gigs, publishing rights, merchandise, etc. all under the control of one company. Even the smallest labels engage in a similar policy nowadays. But the required resources to participate in the game of filling stadiums, really cashing in on movie and advertising deals today are almost exclusively in the hands of majors. Interestingly, the so called “democratization” of music production and distribution didn’t change this allocation of relevant income to the majors’ detriment at all.
The world is at your fingertips
Others fell victim to it. Absurdly, the complete disappearance of economic barriers to distribution (offering a free download doesn’t cost more than the time to upload the file) hit the wallets of the “indies” first, stripping a substantial part of their income. This mostly affected the artists and the personnel around them: designers, engineers, studio musicians, promotion and label professionals, music journalists, et al. The mass of competition they encountered meant anyone with a limited marketing budget had a difficult time surviving in the market. With the same promotional tools available to almost anyone, they lost their efficiency. The professionals listed above basically lost their income. In 2000, an average vinyl single generated a return of a couple of thousand Euros, while in 2011 the same single generates a loss of a couple of hundred Euros, even without what were formerly known as “production costs.” Anything on top, like a bigger production, a decent mastering, or proper sleeve design became factors of deepening material loss. That area of the craft gets subsequently cut off and replaced by an undiscriminating routine of two-step-distribution: “save as” and “upload to.”
Fleeing to a purely digital distribution doesn’t look that much better in general: only an established artist backed by a strong physical release experiences significant digital sales. The overwhelming majority goes by unnoticed. The average “digital only” dance single generates around 100 Euros of profit, for both artist and label, now most often being the same person. And these figures go down, too. Today a couple millions artists try to reach a few hundred people. Or like the contemporary pun puts it, “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 people.”
Vinyl pressing plant from the days of yore
The result is a wide spread de-professionalization. If an artist regularly loses money on her efforts, she faces an economic end to her endeavors sooner or later. Being a “musician” is increasingly becoming a profession for those coming from inherited wealth or being mercantily exceptionally clever. It’s less then ever a question of the intrinsic quality of the music. What used to be done by professional enthusiasts now becomes the domain of the artists — turning them into designer, PR dude and distributor. It all subtracts from the time spent actually creating music. This puts additional pressure on the remaining professional environment. Nowadays it is increasingly harder to get hold of well executed services. Mastering, manufacturing vinyl, music PR — no one qualified enough is willing to tolerate the miserable working conditions and hilarious paychecks of these jobs for an extended time. Whoever has the chance seems to flee the music industry for something more prosperous. The error rate in manufacturing and distribution grows exponentially and actually feeds the market with ever shabbier products in content and execution.
Good luck learning to use one of these while holding a day job
There’s this die-hard belief that income, at least for the musicians (but not for the professional environment), will come from the fees for live performances instead. But how do you get live performances in the first place? Well, purchasing views and press recognition helps. The problem encountered there is that the media has adapted to the state of the music industry. In |
would take 60 votes to overcome. And, even if both Houses were to pass a resolution of disapproval, President Obama could veto it, which would then require two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate to override. “If those super-majorities cannot be mustered, the President’s bad Iran deal would go into effect.” “Thus, Corker-Cardin motion of disapproval reverses the ordinary presumptions. Instead of the President needing 67 Senate votes to ratify the Iran deal, it would now require 67 votes to stop an Iran deal.”
Senate Rejects Tying of Sanctions Relief for Iran with Terror
“Senators Bob Corker and Ben Cardin, the committee’s Republican chairman and top Democrat, have been arguing against so-called “poison pill amendments” seeking to toughen the Iran Nuclear Review Act. “They insist that those amendments would kill its chances of becoming law by alienating Democrats and provoking a veto from Obama, who considers tougher restrictions a threat to ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers. “We should do everything we can to make sure we have a voice,” Corker said in the Senate on Wednesday, as he appealed to lawmakers not to push forward with partisan amendments and explains why. “But a Senate voice is of little value because at the end of the day Iran will get the bomb and the money from lifting sanctions notwithstanding its promotion of terrorism and its intention of destroying Israel.”
These “poison pill” amendments were tabled by Sen Marco Rubio, requiring Iran to recognize the right of Israel to exist, and Sen Tom Cotton, requiring Iran to allow inspectors to check suspicious sites. They are considered poison pills because they know Iran would never accept such conditions.
Many argue as bad as the deal will ultimately be, it is better than the alternative. Although Netanyahu argued for a better deal, no one is talking about preventing Iran from getting the bomb. The anticipated deal will only delay the date Iran gets the bomb.Time banks, farmer-to-buyer sales groups and alternative currencies springing up but expansion has not been steady or easy
As money has become tighter in Greece, an alternative “solidarity economy” has sprung up providing everything from food and medical care to hairdressing and language classes to thousands – without a euro changing hands.
The Athens Time Bank, for example, allows members to collect credits by offering an hour of their time to someone who needs their services. The bank boasts doctors, dentists, electricians, yoga teachers and plumbers among its ranks, but the most popular service on offer is psychotherapy – highlighting how years of austerity have eaten away at more than just savings and living standards.
“These are the seeds, we are still in the beginning,” said member Christine Papadopoulou, who is also one of the coordinators of an annual “festival of solidarity” that brings together thousands of people for discussions, concerts and workshops each autumn.
Euros discarded as impoverished Greeks resort to bartering Read more
The network is made up of a diverse patchwork of groups. Some have rejected money entirely, like the time bank and the Helleniki clinic, a centre in Athens that serves more than 100 people a day entirely on donations of supplies and time while discouraging cash contributions.
Others have experimented with alternative currencies that can be used alongside shrinking euro income, while some initiatives are commercial enterprises that reject the pursuit of profit, such as communes and direct farmer-to-buyer sales groups.
Most had their roots in anti-austerity protests and demonstrations in 2011, when the government unveiled a sweeping set of tax increases and benefit cuts meant to tackle the debt problems, and years of mass unemployment and failing services began.
“There were a lot of ideas circulating before, but in the context of the crisis there was an incentive to put them into action. The other part was need, you had a lot of people who had lost their jobs,” said Ilias Ziogas, of the Syn Allios (Together with Others) cooperative, set up in 2011 to sell fair-trade goods.
It has managed to increase sales as regular shops have failed, something Ziogas puts down to the desire for different ways of living. “Its not a huge movement, let’s not exaggerate, but it’s something that has grown in the last few years,” he said.
The expansion has not been steady, or easy. The sprolonged financial crises that hollowed out the conventional economy has also taken out many of the radical alternatives, often small, fragile systems vulnerable to fatigue or infighting.
There are many projects whose obsolete websites stand as the only memorials to their founders’ dreams, ranging from a project for unemployed young people in Athens to the votsalo (pebble) currency.
Of all the “solidarity economy” projects, alternative currencies have drawn perhaps the most media attention amid questions about what Greece will do if it runs out of euros or decides to leave the shared currency. But running a currency is complex and demanding, and most have been short-lived.
“When the [votsalo] project started in 2012, the aim was to cover our basic needs, to stop thinking as a consumer, start thinking as a human being. [To prove] that we can live without money,” said Margarita Kiriakou, one of the founders, who now thinks it was a mistake to dabble in an alternative form of money.
Some members were overwhelmed by demand and could not spend what they earned, while others saw it simply as free cash. “The dentists, one of the most popular services, couldn’t get rid of their votsalos, and others took a lot without providing services.”
That was also a problem for Greece’s most successful alternative currency, the tem, said Ioanna Kostopolis, daughter of one of the original founders. It owes its durability in part to a programmer who spent time in San Francisco and set up a very robust software base for the currency, but they still had to deal with human challenges.
“In the beginning we gave 300 tem to anyone who registered, so they could start spending, but many saw it basically as a giveaway of €300, spent it and never came back,” she said from the northern port of Volos. “After we saw what was going on, it went down to 50 or then 20.”
They also had problems with people using the network to tout for work, then demanding payments in euros instead of tem. Each one has to be cautioned and then thrown out at public meetings, a laborious process, but the group has since settled down.
“It’s good to have just a few hundred people, then you know each other and trust each other and have solidarity like we do,” said Kostopolis. “Otherwise it’s an open market like anyone else, you don’t know who will rip you off.”
She cannot imagine the currency spreading outside Volos because of this, but said its founders were looking at other ways to organise nationwide exchanges of goods and services that might bypass conventional cash.
Thousands of Greeks are benefiting from perhaps the simplest of the “solidarity economy” projects nationwide, a movement that links buyers directly to the people who produce their food, detergent and other essentials, undercutting supermarkets.
Most take orders before a monthly meeting when cash and goods are handed over. In a country with a notorious parallel market, even the government wins, because all transactions are recorded, said 38-year-old teacher Dimitris Tsilogiannis.
“We have had a great response from the public, all we do is totally legal and most importantly all sellers give receipts,” he said during an evening spent manning phones to answer queries and help buyers unable to use the internet. In the office with him were a soldier, an unemployed friend and an office worker, all of them volunteers.
Their local group has coordinated the sale of 1,500 tonnes of potatoes, olive oil, rice, flour, fruits, honey, cheese, pulses and other products at prices around a third to half of supermarket levels.
“It needs time, hard work and a lot of effort from its members,” Tsilogiannis said. “But we have a result that’s very inspiring and we feel that people respond to our purpose.”
With further sweeping cuts agreed this week, the need for the alternative sector is only likely to grow, drawing in new members and inspiring others to try again. Those who have stumbled say their dreams are more robust than their organisations.
“Now the crisis has grown I think something will happen,” said Kiriakou, one of the founders of a failed currency. “Maybe we will organise again with different people.”Im gonna do my best to try and guess the lyrics for the other one: When I woke up this morning, my head was not intact I asked my friends at the valley show me where it's at It crawled up inside of me, and the dust clouds blew away And the heat came round and busted me for smilin on a cloudy day (chorus) The heat down at jail, they weren't very smart They taught me how to read and write, they taught me the precious heart When I broke out of jail, I learned that right away They didn't need tell me about smilin or runnin away Thats my best guess. theyre not the real lyrics, but thats just what i hear when i listen to this version
favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite
This is a show I can listen to repeatedly. Not only high energy, but like the 1977 shows, tight – the band is playing together and without sloppiness, and all the vocals and harmonies are on target. Bob is good on Beat It, which wasn’t always the case during this period. Mickey Hart had only been playing with the Dead for a few weeks, but he and Bill are working smoothly together. (September 29 was Mickey’s first show.)
They start with a solid Morning Dew, followed by a great new Potato Caboose, which features not only a firey Jerry, but a Jerry and Phil counterpoint, with, Phil following Jerry’s lead. Listen to Phil here. Beat It and Cold Rain and Snow were “oldies” for them, having played it most of 1966, and they sound polished here.
Another oldie is It Hurts Me Too back, and Pigpen shows his master of the blues. Lovelight is gives us more high-energy Jerry, the usual great vocal and rap from Pigpen--the best vocalist the Dead ever had. Unfortunately, it’s cut off as things are getting going after a calm period.
The electric Jerry we hear on New Potato is also featured in Cryptical/Other One, which they had only recently started playing, when they hadn’t settled on the lyrics. There were also rehearsing it in the studio for the Anthem of the Sun, and it’s a crisp, freeform performance. It’s also an ensemble effort, lead by Jerry. Phil is great here as well. It simply smokes and is the highly of the show.
By this time the Dead had completed the reinvention of themselves from the Beatles pop/blues of 1966 to the unique psychedelia that proved the creative chops. It was one of several transformations they made over the years. The New Potato and Cryptical/Other One exemplify the psychedelic Dead, and are worth multiple listens. The psychedelic Dead isn’t just space—in fact, it’s mostly not space. It has underlying form and structure (with defined movements) and is melodic. I like the repetitive licks Jerry uses towards the end – the have a trance-inducing quality of the raves of the 1990’s –the Dead were all about Dance music, and they said so at the time and later.
The audio is great, with all of the instruments audible.
- December 7, 2008A tight, well-executed, and exciting showA musician’s ability to remember vast quantities of notes is one of the great wonders of the human mind. As the Aurora Orchestra prepares to play Beethoven off by heart at the Proms, neuroscientist Daniel J Levitin explains how the brain makes music happen – and why he can’t get Elvis Costello out of his head
Like many people, I often find that I have little snippets of music playing in my head when my brain is meant to be doing something else. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to what this miniature jukebox decides to play. It could be something I just heard, something I’m practising for performance, or a melodic line from Die Walküre, Pitbull or Frozen. Sometimes it’s triggered: a colleague sent me an email this morning that said “There’s no action item for you on this” and, 10 minutes later, I discovered Elvis Costello’s No Action playing in my head.
For neurobiologists, the fact that music sticks in our heads suggests an evolutionary origin. Darwin felt that both music and language evolved as part of an emotion-signalling system, initially based on imitating – and modifying – environmental and animal sounds. Studies show that the same brain regions process all these kinds of sounds, lending credence to the idea of a common evolutionary origin. My lab’s own studies show that music activates regions of the brain that are older than those that process language, suggesting music preceded language, as Darwin believed.
Despite these ancient evolutionary roots, musicians sometimes seem a breed apart. Soloists have to learn vast numbers of notes. Pianists are expected to perform concertos that might last 40 or 50 minutes; a cellist will perform Bach’s six cello suites – roughly two hours of music – from memory. And what about singers? Pity the soprano who takes on Elektra and is on stage for all but five minutes of a 100-minute opera.
I’m often asked if musicians have better memories than everyone else. The answer is yes – and no. Yes, they tend to have better auditory memories. Music unfolds over time, so a musician’s memory for auditory sequences has to be very good. But their memory for other time-bound things, such as birthdays or appointments, is not necessarily better than anyone else’s.
So how does musical memory work? There are only 12 notes in western music and their combinations create all the diversity we experience. But music is rarely just a random sequence of these 12 notes. It’s highly organised, and musical pieces have a kind of narrative arc just like novels and films. In many cases, a musician learning a new piece will observe that a particular run starts on one note and ends on another, and that the two are connected by a particular scale. In this case, the musician doesn’t need to memorise every single note: they simply memorise the first and last note of the run, and apply their knowledge of scales to connect them.
More generally, musicians use “chunking”: breaking up the music they’re learning into small pieces. We do this when we memorise a speech or poem, taking little bits at a time and then gradually stringing them together. Twelve-tone or atonal music is more difficult to memorise because, by definition, it lacks the structure of tonal music – there’s no way to predict what will come next, so every note has to be memorised by rote. It would be the equivalent to trying to memorise random words that don’t make up sentences and paragraphs (try memorising Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky and you’ll see for yourself).
All musical instruments, including the voice, require some movement on the part of the musician, and the brain has evolved very sophisticated mechanisms for learning motor-action sequences, the basis of tool use. When learning a piece of music, musicians learn and store in their memory a series of movements, and these are bound to their aural memory.
So musicians, as well as athletes and dancers, learn and memorise precise sequences of body movements. We might call this “muscle memory” but really the memory resides not there, but in the cortex of the brain, in specialised structures that instruct our muscles precisely how to move. With practice, our muscles become stronger and more able to follow the brain’s instructions, but the memory itself is not in them. Many musicians object to this formulation of muscle memory because it feels as though their fingers are remembering where to go, but this is simply an illusion: if their brains become damaged, their fingers don’t remember how to play.
This muscle memory mostly resides in areas of the brain that look after the movement of the different fingers, toes, hands, wrists and forearms, in regions called pre-motor cortex (the planning of the movements) and motor cortex (their execution). Listening to rhythm, melody and harmony activates different brain regions. Remembering music, such as listening in your mind’s ear to a little snippet of music that has suddenly started playing in your head, activates the same regions as listening to it.
Carlos Santana once said I play guitar with an accent
For musicians, listening to or imagining music activates the same parts of the brain that would be moving their fingers if they were actually playing. Because the components of music are distributed throughout different brain networks, stroke, lesions, tumours or other brain trauma can lead to selective loss of very specific functions. We’ve seen patients who lose their ability to process rhythm but retain everything else; or they lose their ability to process melody but retain rhythm. Brain damage is so selective it can preserve memory for all the pieces you used to know, but interfere with the ability to form new memories.
It’s common knowledge that most of the best musicians began young. During the first 10 years of life, the primary mission of the brain is to make as many new connections as possible. Starting around puberty, its primary mission shifts to prune out unneeded connections. This doesn’t mean that we can’t learn anything new, but the learning takes on a qualitatively different aspect. This is why, if we learn a second language after the age of 12 or so, it’s likely we’ll end up speaking with an accent. Although I’ve played saxophone since I was eight, I didn’t begin playing guitar until I was 18. Carlos Santana once said I play guitar with an accent.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Aurora Orchestra at last year’s Proms. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
There appears to be no limit to the amount of music that we can hold in our heads at any one time. Lounge pianists can often play thousands of songs from memory, and even play songs they’ve heard but never played before. This is a feature of human memory that’s not specific to music, however. Imagine you were asked to tell a Martian absolutely everything you know: mammals give live birth; the sun rises in the east and sets in the west; Paris is the capital of France; Great Expectations was written by Charles Dickens, seven times four equals 28 … anyone with a healthy, intact memory can recall a nearly limitless range of experiences, places and facts learned.
But of all musicians, perhaps it’s conductors who appear to be capable of the most prodigious feats of memory, to conduct operas and lengthy symphonies with parts for 30, 40 or more instruments from memory. In fact, you could argue that a conductor needs to know a piece that well in order to conduct it, whether or not they look at a score. Similarly, good stage directors tend to know the parts of everyone in a play.
All conductors conduct from memory to some extent. If they’ve conducted a piece many times, they might dispense with the score in front of them because the work is in their “physical memory”. But it’s very rare indeed for conductors to memorise a score to the point that they could write down from memory every single different part.
The distinction between playing from memory (“good”) and not playing from memory (“bad”) is not as black and white as it might appear. All playing is scaffolded on some type of memory: motor memory for scales and chords learned as a student, auditory memory of the piece and other pieces it reminds us of. The real question is whether the musician refers to written music or not. In a few contexts, such as studio work or a player sitting in as a substitute in a Broadway pit orchestra, reading is necessary because there is not enough time to memorise the parts.
And, as we can see, most pop musicians and orchestral soloists perform entirely from memory, without written music in front of them. The aim is to know a piece so well that you can stop thinking about the notes, and start thinking about the emotional expression that you (and the composer) want to convey. Ultimately the goal is to have the music “stuck in your head”, and that includes an integrated, cognitive representation of the sound of the music as well as the emotions it conveys to the musician – and hopefully the audience.Archeologists have a cool job. They raid ancient tombs to discover long lost civilizations and reconstruct the parts of human history that existed before anyone kept written records.
In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, scientists recently discovered an elite group of Native Americans all descending from the same mother. For 330 years, women appear to have been elevated in status. Not only were they heirs to future generations, they presumably had the success of the Pueblo Bonito society in their hands (or at least the success of the elite).
Pueblo Bonito was the largest society the canyon had ever seen. It existed over 1,700 years ago and became an incredibly complex society in only a few hundred years before it collapsed.
The society was composed of over a dozen multistory buildings with about 650 rooms. The researchers found the elite members in a room built early in the birth of Pueblo Bonito — ominously named “room 33.” It was likely used as a crypt to bury the dead elite to set them apart from most members of the society who were instead buried outside and around the settlement. Room 33 was filled with thousands of turquoise stones and shells from the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of wooden staffs, many ceramics, scarlet macaw remains and tons of jewelry. Surely, the people entombed there were part of a higher ruling class.
To uncover the genealogy of those in room 33, researchers analyzed ancient DNA housed within their mitochondria — the tiny power sources of our cells.
Why mitochondria?
Everyone has half of their mother’s and father’s DNA, but that genetic information comes from the cell's nucleus. Genetic information in the mitochondria, on the other hand, is passed down only from mother to child.
When sperm and egg meet to make a fetus, only the egg has mitochondrial DNA.
By looking at mitochondria, researchers were able to trace the maternal ancestry of each individual in room 33. They found that all of them had the same mitochondrial DNA and concluded that the maternal line within the elite caste of the Pueblo Bonito society was retained for hundreds of years.
In their paper published in Nature Communications last week, Douglas Kennett and his colleagues refer to their findings as the "hereditary basis of leadership” in the Pueblo Bonito civilization — a leadership of women!
While this is unique to the Pueblo Bonito during that time, it’s known that other Native American civilizations also had leadership systems deviating from the widespread male-dominated world.
The Eastern Pueblo, for example, chose their leaders by their abilities and achievements irrespective of descent on the mother's or father's side of the family.Having thought long and hard (since 2009) about the benefits of becoming a member of the European Union, Iceland has decided to withdraw its application...
*ICELAND SAYS WON'T RESTART ACCESSION TALKS WITH EU
The 2013-elected (euroskeptic) coalition government had scrapped talks, so this is not entirely surprising, as it sought more trade accords.
Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson formally withdrew bid for European Union membership in a letter presented to Latvia’s Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, according to an e-mailed statement from the Foreign Ministry in Reykjavik.
As Sputnik News reports,
According to Agence France-Presse, Iceland is reportedly dropping its bid for membership in the European Union. Iceland applied for EU membership in 2009, but earlier this year, the Icelandic prime minister said that his country would withdraw its application.
* * *Story highlights Onion editor: Tricking China has a "certain delightfulness"
A Chinese news site takes an Onion satire for a real story
The Onion declares North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "sexiest man alive"
People's Daily Online runs portions of the Onion story and 55 photos of Kim
China, as one Twitter user wrote Tuesday, has been fooled by the "mysterious Western art of satire."
The merciless comedy website The Onion has declared North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the " sexiest man alive for 2012. " And it appears China's People's Daily Online has taken the story seriously.
"I love this one," Onion editor Will Tracy told CNN. "It has a certain delightfulness to it."
The Chinese story reprinted satirical comments describing Kim's "air of power that masks an unmistakable cute, cuddly side," his "impeccable fashion sense, chic short hairstyle, and," the story says, "that famous smile."
The story on People's Daily Online on Tuesday illustrates the mutual backscratching that China and North Korea exercise through their government-run media. The incident also shows foreign media outlets' difficulty in navigating The Onion's brand of satire.
A Chinese state-run site was fooled Tuesday by a satirical story that declared North Korea's Kim Jong Un the "sexiest man alive."
The Chinese website had underscored its story by including its own 55-page photo gallery to accompany the text, which was published in both English and Chinese. But the pages and the images were no longer available Wednesday.
A woman responding to a call Wednesday to the office of the website said it was "impossible that the People's Daily will quote from any unreliable media -- we do verify our news and sources."
The woman, who declined to identify herself, noted that the item had been removed.
The People's Daily Online has a separate office from the print version of the Chinese Communist Party's main newspaper.
Tracy said he's not surprised when legitimate news sites fall for his high-level tomfoolery, but this was the first time The Onion had named a "sexiest man alive." "We knew it would get a response," he said "but we didn't expect it would get life from abroad."
A satirical post on The Onion congratulated the People's Daily for its coverage.
The site "has served as one of the Onion's Far East bureaus for quite some time, and I believe their reportage as of late has been uncommonly fine, as well as politically astute," said The Onion's Grant Jones in a e-mail statement. "May our felicitous business association continue for centuries to come."
Earlier Tuesday, The Onion pointed readers to the Chinese website: "please visit our friends at the People's Daily in China, a proud Communist subsidiary of The Onion, Inc. Exemplary reportage, comrades."
Twitter users went wild over the editorial faux pas. "It makes me cry from another room!" Tweeted Francesca Ulivi @fraubass.
"Not sure they know this was a joke," wrote @loweringthebar.
"Curse of the #Onion again," said Colin Freeman @colinfreeman99.
Yes. Again. If this scenario sounds familiar it's because The Onion is no stranger to fooling government-run news outlets.
In September, an Onion satire fooled Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency. Fars published an Onion story claiming that a Gallup poll found that rural white Americans preferred Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over President Barack Obama.
On the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo, netizens made their own teasing comments about People's Daily.
"Foolish foreigners, the party paper was born to be funny," wrote @sheldon-BaiBai.
"The world was fooled by the People's Daily, because no Chinese believes this paper," wrote @Hai_Dao_Wu_Bian.
The Onion never writes its stories with the intention of fooling government agencies, Tracy said. But "it's great when it happens. We hope it happens more often."
This prank, he said with obvious glee, may turn out to be the legendary Onion fake story that veterans will talk about for years to come. "We essentially just fooled the government of China."Fair enough on your first paragraph. I guess this then just comes down to what we value more... free speech (even for what some people make think is the sleeziest of speech) OR making sure to not try and offend a single person (which I personally think is impossible, and is why I'm on the other side of this).
Also, those sites I listed aren't exactly your typical random/small time forum... they are pretty mainstream. Anyways, while I agree that it would feel at the very least, awkward to have people take pictures of you (without you knowing) and then have them be posted for fap material. Personally though, I don't really see the harm it causes. Yes it's kind of creepy, but I mean, its in a public space so how you are presenting yourself is how everyone sees you anyway. It's not like you know the pictures are being taken so it doesn't really affect you anyway (you would notice no change at all if the pictures stopped), and chances are the people looking at these don't know you and will never ever see you. The only situation I could think of that would actually cause some tangible "harm" would be if people actually then saw these people in real life, and as such would probably act a fair amount differently. If all the pictures had faces blurred and were otherwise made anonymous, I'm not really seeing how harm could be caused. Again, I'm not saying it isn't creepy and like I said, I would feel at the very least awkward, but I'm just not seeing the real world harm happening... I almost see it as a victim-less "crime".This article is over 3 years old
The boat appears to have approached Flying Fish Cove in the early hours of the morning before being intercepted by Australian officials
Asylum seeker boat towed away after coming within 200m of Christmas Island
A boat carrying asylum seekers was intercepted close to Christmas Island on Friday, the first to reach Australian waters since June 2014.
The boat made it within 200m of Flying Fish Cove before it was boarded by Australian officials, sources on the island told Guardian Australia.
It is unclear whether the boat was intercepted by Australian navy or Border Force staff.
Closed doors and troubled minds: the anguish of Christmas Island's detention centre Read more
Those on board were given life jackets. The boat was moved further away from the island and covered in a tarpaulin so the arrivals cannot be counted or identified, the sources said.
Christmas Island shire president Gordon Thomson said locals spotted the fishing boat early on Friday morning about 100 to 200 metres from Smith Point, the entry to the island’s harbour.
By the time he arrived to join onlookers at Smith Point before 7am, the boat was being towed by an Australian navy patrol boat and was about 3km to 5km out to sea.
“I saw the navy patrol boat towing the Indonesian fishing boat out to sea away from Christmas Island,” he told AAP. “It’s a wicked thing to do.”
Thomson said the federal government had not notified him about approaching boats since 2009. He questioned whether officials checked the boat’s seaworthiness before towing it out to sea.
Given it arrived into the harbour, Customs would have needed to issue a port clearance which can only be done if the boat is seaworthy, he said.
It is believed the boat came from Indonesia, but sources said it is not known from which country the asylum seekers came originally.
Historically, the boat journey from south-west Java to Christmas Island - a distance of a little more than 350km - has been a popular route for people seeking protection in Australia.
It is the first boat to reach Australian waters since June last year, when 157 Sri Lankan Tamils were intercepted about 300km from the island. They were held on board for a month and, after negotiations to send them back to India broke down, transferred to immigration detention in Nauru.
Australia claims to have “turned back” 20 boats since Operation Sovereign Borders began in late 2013. Boats have been forcibly sent back to Indonesia and Sri Lanka, some crashing on reefs and requiring rescue.
In May at least one boat returned to Indonesia after the crew was paid by Australian government officials, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. The immigration department has not denied paying the people smugglers, but maintained it had acted within international law at all times.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull refused to comment on the boat’s arrival on Friday..
Addressing media in Darwin, he reiterated that the government did not comment on operational matters, and would not answer whether those on board - including any children - would be detained in offshore processing centres.
“I can’t help you other than to say we do not comment on operational matters,” he said.
Steven Ciobo, the minister for international development and the Pacific, told the ABC: “I think Australians and, importantly, those engaged in people smuggling know the absolute resolute way Australia now deals with this matter and that is to say we will not tolerate those people that seek to come to Australia by boat.
“They will be processed offshore and they will not find a home here in Australia,” he said.
Labor called on the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, to immediately detail what has taken place off Christmas Island and provide an assurance that Australia was complying with its international obligations.
“It is unacceptable for this Liberal government to refuse to answer questions about this reported vessel and instead continue to peddle the phrase ‘operational matters’,” the opposition’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, said in a statement.
“This is nothing more than a tired, lazy slogan for suppressing facts from the Australian community.”
The Greens immigration spokeswoman, senator Sarah Hanson-Young, called on the government to let the boat land safely and unload its passengers.
“The safest thing to do now is to let these people land on Christmas Island and find out who they are,” she said.
“It’s clear that, despite the government’s repeated claims, the boats haven’t stopped.”
An immigration detention centre has operated on the Australian territory since 2001. Its population has changed in the past months to include fewer asylum seekers and more “501s” – migrants whose visas have been cancelled and who face imminent deportation.
At 14 November, the detention facility on the island was home to 199 detainees, 113 of whom, according to the Australian government, had criminal convictions.
The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, confirmed on Friday that 12 New Zealanders had been deported from the facility after riots broke out earlier this month, following the death of an Iranian asylum seeker.
The department of immigration has been contacted for comment on the latest asylum boat.Iran announced on Sunday that its entire nuclear fuel cycle is now self-sufficient.
With two-day talks beginning in Geneva tomorrow between six world powers and Iran, Iranian leaders say they want to deliver the message that the nuclear program will progress even with international sanctions.
Iran’s top atomic chief and vice president Ali Akbar Salehi said on Sunday that for the first time the Islamic Republic had delivered uranium mined domestically to an Iranian processing unit.
Iran had bought “yellowcake,” uranium concentrate powder, from South Africa in the 1970s. But Reuters notes that analysts in the West say Iran may be close to depleting this supply.
"The West had counted on the possibility of us being in trouble over raw material but today we had the first batch of yellowcake from Gachin mine sent to Isfahan [conversion] facility," Salehi said on state TV, Agence France-Press reports.
"No matter how much effort they put into their sanctions... our nuclear activities will proceed and they will witness greater achievements in the future," he said, according to the Associated Press.
The US and many Western powers accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon.
Iran, for its part, maintains that it wants nuclear fuel for civilian energy and medical purposes. Uranium enriched to low grades is used in nuclear reactors for fuel, while uranium enriched further can be used for an atomic bomb. According to Salehi, the whole delivery of the yellowcake was done under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran: Attacks on nuclear scientists no deterrent
Salehi also addressed last week’s attacks on Iranian scientists in the televised news conference, saying these also will not deter nuclear development. One was assassinated in Tehran and another was injured in a bombing. Iran’s intelligence minister Heidar Moslehi called the attacks terrorism and said that they were carried out with the support of the CIA, Israel’s Mossad, and Britain’s MI6.
"Assassination of Iranian scientists will not hamper our progress,” Salehi said, according to Iran’s Press TV.
Despite the timing and pointedness of Salehi’s announcement, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Iran’s uranium enrichment will not be discussed in the six-power talks in Geneva, Reuters adds.
Iran seeks a 'protracted diplomatic process'
The US, Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany haggled with Iran for months over the location and size of the talks. But Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, argues in a commentary in the Los Angeles Times that Iran is seeking a “protracted diplomatic process” with at best modest concessions.
He adds that Iran is taking advantage of pointed international anxiety over its nuclear program to increase repression at home, arresting “scores” of lawyers and activists in recent weeks:
Indeed, Tehran’s principal motivation for participating in the talks has little to do with its nuclear file and much to do with its desire to fracture international unity, relieve financial distress and, most important, gain a free hand in suppressing its opposition "green movement." …
At ease with the notion that the global community's preoccupation with gradations of enrichment and spinning centrifuges will divert it from pressing Iran on its human rights record, the mullahs typically escalate their repression at home before dispatching their diplomats abroad.
Takeyh adds that sanctions have had a “dramatic impact” on Iran’s economy and that the Islamic Republic’s mullahs are putting their hope in China and Russia to defend them against further sanctions as the negotiations draw on.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 tweeted Tuesday morning that his “shackles” have been removed and that he is planning on running his campaign “the way I want to.”
“It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to,” he wrote.
“With the exception of cheating [Sen.] Bernie [Sanders (I-Vt.)] out of the nom the Dems have always proven to be far more loyal to each other than the Republicans!” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, added.
It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
With the exception of cheating Bernie out of the nom the Dems have always proven to be far more loyal to each other than the Republicans! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016
The message came after a string of tweets |
York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The plans restore all landmarked spaces, ensuring the historic public and event spaces will be accessible for generations of New Yorkers and visitors alike.
This restoration is among the most complex and intensive landmark preservation efforts in New York City history. If approved, it will revive key elements of the Art Deco masterpiece that have been altered over time, providing an experience that reflects the hotel’s original intent while delivering an enhanced visitor experience by modernizing the building’s functional capability to a 21st Century standard of luxury.
The proposed restoration plan is part of a major renovation that will set a new standard for service in New York when The Waldorf re-opens in two to three years. The hotel will continue to be operated by Hilton as part of a 100-year management agreement.
“We are at an exciting and transformative point in Waldorf Astoria’s renowned history, during which time Waldorf Astoria New York will be restored to its original grandeur while maintaining a modern and inspirational look and feel,” says John T. A. Vanderslice, global head, Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts. “It is an honor to be working with such a talented architectural and design team to breathe new life into this iconic hotel and provide unparalleled True Waldorf Service to its future guests.”
“We have assembled a world-class design team with unparalleled experience restoring and revitalizing historic properties to create a proposed plan that treats the Waldorf Astoria New York’s history with respect and dedication to detail,” said Brandon Dong, Anbang. “The restoration of the beautiful landmarked spaces is central to the Waldorf Astoria New York’s future as a New York City icon and global destination.”
SOM will lead the architectural design team for the project. The New York-based architecture firm has overseen restoration and adaptive reuse projects for several New York City landmarks, including Moynihan Train Hall, the General Electric Building headquarters and Lever House.
PYR will lead the interior design of the hotel, including its public and guest room areas. Since its founding in 1979, the firm has focused exclusively on five-star luxury hotels – including the forthcoming Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills scheduled to open June 2017 – fine dining restaurants and private residences. PYR’s interior design has helped preserve the spirit and design heritage of some of the world’s most iconic hotels.
“Our design for the Waldorf Astoria New York reclaims the full potential of one of New York City’s most legendary buildings and opens a new chapter in the hotel’s celebrated history. The Waldorf Astoria has been an audacious civic icon since it first opened in 1931, and we are honored to be leading the effort to restore this Art Deco masterpiece, while turning it into a world-class destination for the 21st century,” said Roger Duffy, Design Partner, SOM.
“Protecting the spirit of this iconic property and reflecting its history through a modern, more forward-thinking lens will be at the heart of the hotel’s interior design. From the overall atmosphere down to the finest Art Deco details, American grandeur and international glamour will meet in the Waldorf Astoria New York – no other hotel in New York will compare,” said Pierre-Yves Rochon, Principal and Global Design Director, PYR.
In addition to historic public and event spaces restored to their original intent, the Waldorf will feature new guest rooms, suites and condominiums when it reopens.
Originally opened in 1893 on the present site of the Empire State Building, the Waldorf Astoria New York opened at its current Park Avenue location in 1931, was designated an official New York City landmark in 1993 and had its most important interior spaces landmarked in 2017.
Renderings of the proposed restoration can be viewed here.Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a news conference after the talks with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida in Moscow, Russia, December 3, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he was confident Moscow and Washington can reach a deal in talks this week on the withdrawal of all rebels from the eastern part of the Syrian city of Aleppo.
He told a news conference once the deal was reached, rebels who stay in the besieged eastern part of the city will be treated as terrorists and Russia will support the operation of the Syrian army against them.
“Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists,” Lavrov said. “We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads.”
Related Coverage Russia says two of its medics killed in Aleppo hospital attack
Russia and the United States will start talks on the withdrawal in Geneva on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has sent his proposals on routes and timing of the withdrawal, Lavrov said.
“We believe that when the Americans proposed their initiative for militants to leave eastern Aleppo, they realized what steps they and their allies, who have an influence on militants stuck in eastern Aleppo, would have to take.”
He added that a United Nations resolution on a ceasefire would be counterproductive because a ceasefire would allow rebels to regroup.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc suffered a defeat on Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision forcing it to defend against claims it misled investors about mortgage securities that lost value during the 2008 financial crisis.
A trader works at the Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, April 16, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Without comment, the court refused to consider Goldman’s appeal of a September 2012 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
That court’s action lets the NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund, which owned some mortgage-backed certificates underwritten by Goldman, sue on behalf of investors in certificates it did not own, but that were backed by mortgages from the same lenders.
In afternoon trading, Goldman shares were down $2.47, or 1.6 percent, at $152.37 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Other bank stocks also fell, amid concern about an escalation of the euro zone crisis, with the S&P financial sector index down 0.7 percent.
Goldman and other banks have faced thousands of lawsuits by investors seeking to recoup losses on mortgage securities.
The bank has said that letting the 2nd Circuit decision stand could cost Wall Street tens of billions of dollars.
Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally declined to comment.
Darren Robbins, a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd representing the plaintiffs, said about 10 cases within the 2nd Circuit are affected by Monday’s order, including one against JPMorgan Chase & Co that his firm is handling.
He said the Goldman case will now proceed toward a possible trial. The NECA-IBEW fund is based in Decatur, Illinois.
“These mortgage-backed securities are ground zero for the mortgage meltdown,” Robbins said in a phone interview. “Our clients are certainly very pleased with the outcome. It reiterates the common sense test endorsed by the 2nd Circuit. It’s a good day for pension funds and investors, for sure.”
Fred Isquith, a class action and securities litigation specialist who is not involved in the Goldman case, said Monday’s order is important given other pending mortgage securities cases but that the fallout may be contained.
“If you expand the number of securities, you expand the amount of potential damages,” said Isquith, a partner at Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz. “How much more? I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that when it comes down to dealing with actual damages, it will be less than they argued.”
‘VEXATIOUS’ LITIGATION FEARED
In the Goldman case, the issue was whether the NECA-IBEW fund, an electrical workers’ union pension plan that bought certificates from two of 17 trusts under a 2007 registration statement, could sue on behalf of investors in all 17 offerings.
The 2nd Circuit let the fund sue over seven of the offerings: the two it invested in, plus five others that also contained loans from GreenPoint Mortgage Funding, later part of Capital One Financial Corp, and Wells Fargo & Co. It said the other 10 offerings were too different.
Theodore Olson, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher representing Goldman, warned in court papers that letting the 2nd Circuit decision stand “will effectively increase by tens of billions of dollars the potential liability that financial institutions face in this and similar class actions.”
Goldman said the case also merited review because it conflicted with a decision by the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals involving Japan’s Nomura Holdings Inc.
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce supported Goldman, saying they feared “vexatious, abusive litigation and coercive multimillion or billion dollar settlements to the detriment of the nation’s economy.”
In the JPMorgan case, the largest U.S. bank faces a lawsuit led by the Laborers Pension Trust Fund for Northern California and Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern California encompassing 10 mortgage offerings that they did not purchase.
JPMorgan spokeswoman Jennifer Zuccarelli declined to comment.
The Goldman case is Goldman Sachs & Co et al v. NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-528.
The JPMorgan case, which names a different plaintiff, is Fort Worth Employees’ Retirement Fund et al v. JPMorgan Chase & Co et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 09-03701.Blackmagic Design Announces Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is now Shipping with a New Low Price!
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Last Updated: February 10, 2014 7:01 am GMT
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About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check
### (Fremont, California--February 10, 2014) Blackmagic Design today announced the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is now shipping and with a new low price of US$2,995. This new low price will be available for all customers, including existing pre-orders. Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is available now from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide for only US$2,995.“The support from the creative community for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Production Camera 4K has been amazing,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “As with all of our products, we work hard in production to reduce costs so we can pass along the savings, even to our first Blackmagic Production Camera 4K customers. The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is a perfect companion for ATEM Production 4K switchers and we hope the new low price will help more customers to expand their Ultra HD live production set ups with even more camera angles!”Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is a super high resolution 4K digital production camera for Ultra HD television production. Featuring a large Super 35 sensor, professional global shutter as well as EF and ZE compatible lens mount, the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K captures high quality ProRes™ files, giving customers a complete solution to shoot amazing high resolution music videos, episodic television productions, television commercials, sport and documentaries.The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K has everything customers need right out of the box including a built in SSD recorder, rechargeable battery and a large 5” LCD touchscreen. In addition to focusing and monitoring shots, the touchscreen also lets customers enter metadata and change camera settings all on a single easy to use interface. Customers also get a full copy of DaVinci Resolve for amazing quality color grading and finishing for Mac OS X and Windows computers.The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is available now for US$2,995 from Blackmagic Design resellers worldwide.Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check http://www.blackmagicdesign.com ###
More News From Blackmagic Design »Getty Some big GOP players say Trump has a point Established party figures are stopping short of condemning Trump's proposal to halt all Muslims from entering the U.S.
While many in the GOP are fiercely condemning Donald Trump for his proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., a whole lot of other Republicans are saying, hey, he has a point.
From established party figures such as Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum to more hard-core right-wing personalities such as Ann Coulter, numerous Republicans are either stopping short of condemning Trump's audacious proposal or are outright applauding the billionaire businessman as finally offering a common-sense solution to terrorism threats.
Story Continued Below
They are offering a glimpse into why Trump has continued to zoom ahead in the polls, despite a series of jaw-dropping comments that many in the media, and now the White House, have called not only offensive but also disqualifying for the position of leader of the free world.
Santorum, who is at the bottom of the polls in the GOP race, aligned himself with the man at the top in a radio interview on Sirius XM’s “Breitbart News Daily” on Tuesday, while stopping short of endorsing his proposal. The former Pennsylvania senator said that he hasn’t proposed banning all Muslims, “but a lot of them.”
“I’ve proposed actual concrete things and immigration law that would have — not the effect of banning all Muslims, but a lot of them because we need to get rid of the visa lottery system, which is the way in which a lot of radicals have come into this country,” Santorum said.
“I think the way Trump has proposed it, it may have some constitutional infirmity. We can do it in a more practical way than in the way Donald Trump is suggesting,” he continued.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee likewise questioned the constitutionality and logistics of Trump's plan, but he didn't criticize the idea behind the proposal. "We need an all-in, effective way to screen foreigners and keep Americans safe because radical Islamic terrorism is the real threat," Huckabee said.
Cruz caused even more waves by repeatedly saying that Trump's proposal is "not my policy" but refusing to outright condemn the billionaire businessman, whose voters could conceivably move over to Cruz in significant numbers if Trump implodes.
“I do not agree with his proposal. I do not think it is the right solution,” Cruz said Tuesday as he unveiled his own plan to protect against Islamic terrorism. Twice Cruz said he did not agree with Trump, before praising him.
“I like Donald Trump,” Cruz said. “I commend Donald Trump for standing up and focusing America’s attention on the need to secure our borders.”
It was similar to the tone he struck on Monday, talking to reporters at a Greenville, South Carolina, campaign office. Sen. Lindsey Graham ripped into Cruz on Tuesday morning for not denouncing Trump's proposal. “Hey, Ted — this is not a policy debate. Nobody, I mean, nobody believe this works, Ted. The bottom line is that you need to stand up for our party and for our country, and if you want to make America great again, reject this without any doubt or hesitation,” Graham said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe." “It puts our troops and diplomats at risk overseas. I just got back from Iraq a week ago Monday, and they were worried about his behavior and statements even before this."
Trump set off his latest furor on Monday when his campaign fired off an emailed statement that proposed temporarily banning all Muslims, a move that came as Americans remain rattled by the terrorist attack carried out last week in San Bernardino, California, by a Muslim husband-and-wife team. Trump, in a vague policy prescription, said U.S. borders should be closed to Muslims until it can be determined why many people who are Muslim want to unleash violence in America.
"Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension," Trump said. "Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life."
The blowback was swift from not only many of Trump's GOP rivals but also from figures such as former Vice President Dick Cheney and former GOP presidential nominees Bob Dole and Mitt Romney. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also weighed in on Tuesday, saying, "We need to aggressively take on radical Islamic terrorism, but not at the expense of our American values."
But others haven't been so quick to call Trump out.
Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House who ran for president in 2012, criticized Trump’s tone in his proposal — but that was about it.
“I think Trump’s idea may be too strong, but I think something jarring is very helpful in leading to a national debate in how big this problem is, and how dangerous it is,” Gingrich said, according to The New York Times. “Nine percent of Pakistanis agree with ISIS, according to one poll. That’s a huge number. We need to put all the burden of proof on people coming from those countries to show that they are not a danger to us.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and hard-liner on immigration, avoided addressing Trump’s comments directly but said he appreciated Trump’s use of his advice, according to CNN. Sessions has previously advised Trump on immigration and appeared at an Alabama rally for the real estate mogul earlier this year.
“I've been pleased that he took a lot of my ideas in his immigration policy, but I have not endorsed Mr. Trump or anyone else," Sessions said when asked about Trump's comments. Pressed on whether he would support Trump's proposal, Session stopped talking as he rushed to a Senate elevator, the CNN article said.
Other conservative voices have been more extreme and have heavily praised Trump for his proposal, which some have hypothesized was timed to boost Trump's support. The policy position was emailed from the Trump camp just hours after a new Iowa poll showed Cruz zooming past Trump in the state.
Coulter, a prominent right-wing commentator and author, was thrilled by Trump's latest position. “Add in every other kind of immigrant and it's perfect! #moritorium #AssimilateTheOnesWeHave," she tweeted Monday.
“My best birthday gift! Donald Trump Calls For ‘Complete Shutdown’ of Muslim Entry to U.S.,” she followed on Tuesday.
And Democrats jumped at the chance to paint the rest of the GOP with the same brush, even those, like Sen. Marco Rubio, who condemned Trump's proposal but had asked for evidence that America had a problem with Islamophobia on Sunday night. "Where is there widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims?" Rubio asked during an appearance on Fox News after President Barack Obama's address to the nation about terrorism threats.
White House communications director Jen Psaki called out Rubio and other GOP candidates during POLITICO’s Playbook Breakfast on Tuesday morning.
“Well, I would say Marco Rubio has been out there talking about how Muslims have not been discriminated against. That is just not factually true. You’ve seen Jeb Bush make some comments, problematic comments about Muslims and sort of what restrictions should be put in place,” Psaki said. “It’s not just that this isn’t who we are as a country, this is also sending a message overseas that we are — we’re for restrictions, we’re for, you know, kind of preventing a community from really flourishing in the United States. That’s not who we are, and that’s exactly the kind of message that’s strengthening ISIL and their recruitment overseas."
Trump, for his part, predicts support for his proposal will only grow.
“Well they’ve [other candidates] been condemning practically everything I say, and then they come to my side,” Trump said Tuesday on “Morning Joe.” “They were condemning the wall, they were condemning illegal immigration, they were condemning all of the things that I’ve been espousing, and now most of them are on my side. And the ones that aren’t on my side are down to about zero in the polls and aren’t going to go anywhere — I mean, I see the … and not everybody has condemned … if you want to be specific about it."When I was eight years old, I was on the verge of being eaten. Terrified, I buried myself underneath the blankets, and nervously listened to an unearthly howling directly outside my bedroom window. I realised soon that the noise I had heard was the wind passing through the eaves of my family’s aged London terrace house, a noise that had sounded eerily sentient. My fear was simply related to a lack of data – those few extra seconds of dogged listening eased my concerns. We are evolutionarily wired towards the sensation of threat – a sensation that is overridden by taking time to pause, and listen closely.
Objections to the installation of wind farms have, in the past four years, played on this aspect of our nature. Claims have arisen that inaudible, infrasonic noise emissions have a direct effect of human physiology, bypassing our conscious percept and wreaking biological devastation. For this hypothesis to hold true, two basic principles need to be demonstrated conclusively:
– Infrasound emitted from wind farms has to be markedly higher in amplitude than infrasound produced by other sources;
– This amplitude has to be causally linked to a direct and demonstrable pathological effect on human physiology.
The South Australian Environmental Protection Agency (SA EPA) recently took some time to investigate the first premise: that wind farm infrasound measures higher than that from other sources in the environment. If the premise were found to be true, then wind turbine syndrome might well be a reality. If it were found to be false, then it serves as firm evidence that ‘wind turbine syndrome’ is deeply improbable.
The Salt Hypothesis
Alec Salt, a professor at the Washington University School of Medicine, has formulated a theory, regarding the response of the human ear to varying levels of infrasound – the second of our two hypothetical requirements. Salt suspects the outer hair cells (OHCs) of the human ear produce a response, when subjected to a certain infrasound stimulus, and tested his theory with the in-vitro OHCs of guinea pigs.
Importantly, his work focuses on amplitude – specifically, he nominates 60 dB(G) as the trigger value for the OHCs to begin their ‘physiologic reaction’- the response championed by opponents of wind developments as the primary cause of ‘wind turbine syndrome’. If this amplitude were discovered to be unique to wind farms, it would be a vindication for those calling for a moratorium on wind energy.
The EPA Discussion
The authors of the EPA paper are unequivocal in their consideration of infrasound:
“The key effect of infrasound can be a high level of annoyance when the level exceeds the hearing threshold, i.e. it must be perceptible to have an effect. No physiological effects have been found to occur below the level of perceptibility.”
Infrasound can actually be perceived, once it reaches a certain amplitude. This threshold increases as you move down the frequency range, towards zero. The authors propose a conservative criterion of 85 dB(G), based on several different assessment criteria. Importantly, this accounts for individual differences in perception thresholds for infrasound.
They use the ‘G-weighting’, a mathematical tool for ensuring that absolute measurements of sound pressure level are adjusted for the way the human body responds to sound in the infrasonic range. This what the ‘(G)’ means in ‘dB(G)’. The Australian Acoustical Society consider this weighting to be appropriate as per international standards, as they assert in an unpublished letter to The Australian.
Infrasound Measurements – Urban Locations
The EPA, in conjunction with Resonate Acoustics, reported on the levels of infrasound at various locations in urban locales (four offices and three residences).
One important finding is that the presence of human beings is a significant source of infrasound. The authors state, with regards to Location 1 (an office on Carrington St):
“The primary factor affecting the measured infrasound levels at Location 1 appears to be occupation of the office, as evidenced by the marked rise in the measured levels at approximately 4pm on Saturday and 2pm on Sunday when staff were noted to enter the office.”
The same conclusion was reached for Location 6, a house in Firle – human activity seems to be a demonstrable and significant contributor to the generation of infrasonic sound emissions.
Another important finding is the significant contribution of air-conditioning units to measured infrasound levels. Location 3, the EPA office in Adelaide exhibited “some of the highest levels measured at any of the urban and rural locations”. Traffic also resulted in infrasound levels that were “10 to 15dB(G) higher than that at night time”.
These are major problems for groups that claim infrasound has an as-yet undiscovered toxicity for the human body, at levels above 60 dB(G). There are 22,917,973 humans and 16,741,664 cars in Australia. Two-thirds of dwellings own some form of cooling – that’s around 7.6m x (2/3) = 5,066,000 air conditioner units. This means there are roughly 44.7 million unique sources of infrasound in Australia.
Infrasound Measurements – Rural environments
Wind farms are almost always placed in rural environments. The EPA measured the infrasound levels in four different locations that were host to a wind farm. Wind farm shutdowns were used to determine the contribution of the wind farm to infrasound levels at these locations. Their findings are unremarkable.
It would seem that the wind farms do not contribute significantly to measured infrasound level in rural dwellings – during the shutdown of the Bluff wind farm, the measured infrasound actually increased.
Distance has long been a creative component of the anti-wind lobby’s claims. Sarah Laurie has stated that “residents report the effects of the low frequency noise out to 10km”, but also offers 30 kilometres as the effective range of ‘wind turbine syndrome’. Motivated anti-wind enthusiast George Papadopoulos claims it can be perceived up to 100 kilometres away from wind turbines.
The EPA measured levels at a house 10 kilometres away from an operational wind turbine and found that “infrasound levels at the house are not related to wind farm operation, but rather are representative of the ambient infrasound environment at the farmhouse”.
They also measured infrasound levels at a house 30 kilometres away from a wind turbine. They simply concluded that “local wind speed (and localised turbulence) is a primary cause of infrasound levels at a location, and have a similar effect on both outdoor and indoor levels of infrasound”.
Frequency Analysis
The EPA also use their data to look at specific frequencies in the infrasonic range, between 0.25 Hz and 20 Hz (the previous sections present ‘measured infrasound’ as a single dB(G) value, over time). They do not use the G-weighting in this section. Their conclusions are similar.
“The results suggests that indoor infrasound levels at rural residences near to wind farms are no higher than those at rural residences away from wind farms, nor than infrasound levels at residences within urban areas.”
“There is minimal contribution from either the Bluff Wind Farm or the Clements Gap Wind Farm to sound pressure levels in the infrasonic region at the houses located approximately 1.5 kilometres away.”
Location 8, 1.5 kilometres away from the nearest wind turbine, showed ‘the lowest infrasound levels measured at any of the 11 locations included in this study.’
Interestingly, they did find some curious results when examining the contribution of the wind farm to low-level peaks that occur when the blades pass the tower, though they note, “sound pressure levels at these blade pass frequencies are no greater at residences adjacent to wind farms than at other locations”.
The Aftermath
The EPA’s conclusion is simple:
“This study concludes that the level of infrasound at houses near the wind turbines assessed is no greater than that experienced in other urban and rural environments, and is also significantly below the human perception threshold.”
This study is important, but not revelatory. The logical consequence of these findings, the anti-wind lobby are correct in their assertions, is that wind farms, human beings, traffic, air-conditioners and the wind itself are constantly triggering our outer hair cells, resulting in a catastrophic and constant worldwide apocalypse. There is no refuge from the dangers they preach – wind turbine syndrome is everywhere, or it is nowhere.
On the February 4 this year, Radio National’s Timothy McDonald interviewed Sarah Laurie about the research. Laurie asserts the following:
“The report itself, the authors only measured down to 10 hertz by using what we call the G-weighting. They ignored the frequencies between 0 and 10 hertz. And they’re the frequencies that many of us believe are the problem frequencies. So they didn’t actually measure those.”
As we saw earlier, the authors of the report measured down to 0.25 Hz. They state this range on 20 separate occasions in the report. Additionally, there seems to be no evidence of Laurie’s assertion that she is mainly concerned with frequencies between 0-10 Hz prior to the release of the EPA study (she states ‘0 – 200 Hz’ as the frequency range of greatest concern to the Waubra Foundation here, and makes a similar assertion in a letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, here).
Another curious response is the claim that the authors ought to have used linear, un-weighted measurements, rather than the G-weighting (presented amongst the wretchedly unpleasant sneer ‘Clean Energy Stasi’). This claim would presumably not sit well with Dr. Alec Salt, who unambiguously demands infrasound measurements utilise the G-weighting.
Regardless, the EPA included un-weighted measurements of sound pressure level (dB) across the infrasonic frequency range as part of their ‘Frequency Analysis’ section – see the figure below for an example, taken from page 57.
These responses seem to be free of logic or rigour. This is no hindrance for a movement that is borne of anger, emotion and excess rather than rationality. Where we ought to see logic, we see manic, frothing comparisons to genocidal regimes, peppered with unchecked falsehoods.
After nearly three years of heatedly calling for more research into the health effects of wind turbines, the anti-wind lobby may well consider being careful what they wish for. The Waterloo Wind Farm in South Australia is currently the subject of a similar study by the EPA, determining the levels of infrasound at nearby residences attributable to the wind farm.
Anonymous, cruel-tongued anti-wind bloggers and tabloid current affairs shows have already declared the mere commencement of this study as undeniable proof of a problem with wind energy – a logical fallacy that neatly summarises their loathsome, love-hate relationship with scientific inquiry.
For many centuries, areas untouched by empirical investigation have proven rich, fertile ground for spreading fear and anxiety. A deficiency in evidence has often been obscured by emotion, noise and anecdote. As our knowledge grows, those who dwell nervously in these dark spaces find themselves cramped and uncomfortable.
Ketan Joshi is a research and communications officer at Infigen EnergyAs we look ahead to Thursday night's presidential debate, I'm interested in the question of what candidates will be saying about their plans for Obamacare now that it's up and running and people are receiving subsidized health insurance plans. After all, it gets pretty difficult, politically speaking, to take something away from people that they already have. I'm reminded of what happened back in March when Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House GOP conference, took to Facebook to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act by asking to hear real-life horror stories from real people.
This week marks the 5th anniversary of #Obamacare being signed into law. Whether it's turned your tax filing into a nightmare, you're facing skyrocketing premiums, or your employer has reduced your work hours, I want to hear about it.
Please share your story with me so that I can better understand the challenges you're facing: http://mcmorris.house.gov/ your-story/
Instead she got this:
This is mostly just an object lesson in social media use. As many brands have discovered, opening yourself up to this kind of dialogue is basically an open invitation to get trolled.
But it also reveals something fundamental about the structure of the Affordable Care Act. Reasonable people can disagree about whether this law is, all things considered, a good idea. But one of the main things it does is raise taxes rather dramatically on a pretty small number of high-income people in order to give subsidized health insurance policies to a substantially larger number of low-income people. Indeed, this is one of the main things Republicans don't like about it!
But if you do a simple head count, you are almost certainly going to find more people getting discount insurance than people paying extra taxes.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Oct. 20, 2015, 5:29 PM GMT / Updated Oct. 20, 2015, 5:29 PM GMT By Ben Popken
Seven years after Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme imploded, the majority of Bernie Madoff's scam victims are going to get a big payback, officials said.
Those with claims deemed valid who invested up to $1.161 million "will get it back," following a new bankruptcy filing Tuesday morning, Stephen Harbeck, president and CEO of the Securities Investors Protection Corp., a federal nonprofit that protects investors in the event of an investment fund's collapse, told NBC News.
This includes 1,264 accounts out of a total of 2,227 -- or more than half of Madoff's total victims.
Though it was not the first redistribution to victims, nor the largest, Harbeck said this phase was personally satisfying to work on because of who it benefited.
"Unlike Lehman Brothers... this hit the retail customers very hard," he said. "It's gratifying to be able to help individual investors."
Madoff plead guilty in March 2009 running a ponzi scheme fraud of up to $65 billion through his investment firm and is currently serving a 150-year prison sentence. His defrauded clients included the elderly and charities, especially Jewish philanthropic organizations.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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Election judge watches a voter cast their ballot. (Reuters) Ad Policy
As part of what advocates call the “next step” of the Affordable Care Act, California voters will consider an initiative next year |
Figured it out. Head on the high part, boobs in the sort of depressed part under that.” She wasn’t a fan: “I like a smallish, soft, malleable pillow. This one was not at all moldable. I felt like my head was being bent at an unpleasant angle to the rest of my body.” Picture an outsized balaclava designed by Claes Oldenburg for E.T. and made from swatches of gray Teletubbies. That’s what the Ostrich Pillow looks like ($99). Meant to be worn over the entire head and neck, it is stuffed like a beanbag chair and has an opening for the nose-mouth region, if breathing’s your thing; there are two holes to tuck your hands into should you want to lean forward onto, let’s say, an airplane tray table. The pillow claims to make napping possible anywhere—your desk, the dinner table, the Davos World Economic Forum—provided you don’t mind a sweaty head, extreme hat hair, and possibly being an unsuspecting crime victim. My friend Joan used it during a massage but sacrificed a few minutes of her hour trying to get the masseuse to stop laughing.
Before you get too cozy, consider this: although too little sleep can be deadly, too much of it can be even more deadly. A meta-analysis of sixteen studies involving around 1.4 million subjects suggests that someone who sleeps more than eight or nine hours a day has a thirty per cent higher mortality rate than the person who sleeps seven to eight hours. Why, then, do we believe that eight hours of sleep is ideal? Jim Horne, the former head of the Sleep Research Center in Loughborough, England, told me that the fallacy originated with a study in 1913—of school-age kids. “There is no evidence that we sleep fewer hours than our parents and grandparents did, or that we are any more sleep deprived,” Horne said. “It’s simply that they kept private matters to themselves.” It’s not my place to call anyone a liar, but are you positive that you were up all night? We have data to show that you—I mean self-professed poor sleepers—often overestimate the extent of nighttime wakefulness. These days, you can wear on your wrist the Basis Peak Ultimate Fitness and Sleep Tracker, a chunky gizmo that Dick Tracy might like ($199.99). It takes note of not just calories burned and sweat levels (ew!) but also your tosses and turns and absences from bed. Using a technique that involves shining L.E.D. light into your capillaries and assessing the rebounding waves with optical sensors, it also measures the duration of each sleep phase (light, deep, and REM). In general, Basis Peak has received positive reviews from tech magazines for accuracy, especially for its heart monitor. “As for the sleep thing, I think it might be mostly bullshit,” said my friend Billy, who used the tracker for two weeks and ended up with wildly fluctuating “sleep scores” that he couldn’t explain. “It thought I slept for eleven hours one night, which can’t be true, and then twenty-three minutes another night, which also can’t be true.” But he couldn’t really see the point of knowing how much he slept anyway. “The first thing you have to know about these devices is that they are anti-conjugal,” Victoria e-mailed from Washington, D.C. For several weeks, she and her boyfriend, David, tried two sleep-tracking gadgets. She used the Beddit Smart Sleep Tracker, whose sensor is lodged in a thin strap placed discreetly under the top sheet ($149); he used the S+, by ResMed, which picked up his sleep vibes via a transponder that sits next to the bed ($149.99). The high-tech S+ looks like something that might pick up and report fluctuations in the Shanghai stock exchange. The Beddit, Victoria reported, recorded “many fewer hours of sleep than I would swear that I actually slept.” She might have sabotaged the readings, though, by migrating toward David in her sleep. (Beddit recommends placing the sensor an unromantic six inches from the center of the bed or your partner.) Victoria’s attitude toward sleep is binary (“either I did it or I didn’t”); she had no use for the data Beddit provided about her respiration, heart rate, amount of snoring, and so forth. David is a connoisseur of the unconscious, though, and revelled in the granular data disgorged daily by the S+. Victoria said, “David woke me up during his second week of S+ sleeping with a jubilant ‘Honey, I did it! I got a sleep score of ninety-eight!’ ” Although David is a little uncomfortable with the ongoing relay to ResMed headquarters of what goes on in his bed, he feels that the device has prodded him to prioritize getting better sleep. “When I wake up to a high S+ rating,” he e-mailed, “I know I’m going to feel pretty good that day.”While some in the GOP ranks are still trying to play both sides of the street on the debt limit, demanding spending cuts as a condition of passage while reassuring Wall Street that default is not an option, there are definitely some in the Republican caucus who really have no problem with default. In fact, they see it as a weapon, a way to default on people they don’t like. That’s the point of Jim DeMint and Pat Toomey’s letter to Tim Geithner about how to default with dignity:
The Treasury Department suggests that efforts to prioritize debt payments would bring about “catastrophic economic consequences.” Yet, this argument ignores the historical record. As you are well aware, the Treasury had to manage the nation’s finances in the past when the debt ceiling was reached. In 1995-1996, for example, the Department prioritized certain payments – including debt service. During this period, hundreds of thousands of federal employees were furloughed and many programs were temporarily suspended as a result of the two government shutdowns that occurred. And yet, this prioritization did not result in default on our publicly held debt nor did it cause the “catastrophic economic consequences” the administration predicts. Unfortunately, Washington has shown time and again that it is perfectly content to spend money on whatever suits its whims. That is why the debt limit exists in the first place – to restrict the government’s profligate spending and borrowing impulses and so protect the citizens responsible for paying it all back. We believe the time has come to employ this particular budget enforcement mechanism to finally force Congress to address the looming fiscal crisis, cut spending, reform entitlements, implement spending caps, and pass a balanced budget constitutional amendment before considering any increase in the federal debt ceiling. These are the contours of the debate before the American people this spring and summer. In the event of reaching the debt limit in the course of that debate, the decision of whether to use available Treasury funds to honor the United States’ debt obligations – and prevent the catastrophe of default – would ultimately fall to you. Recent comments conflating debt service with other spending notwithstanding, the markets, the courts, and the American people know differently.
DeMint is saying that debt service can be prioritized while government employees get kicked off the job and payments like Medicare, Social Security, disability, food stamps, whatever, go unpaid. This is the logical conclusion of debt denial – the government can just stop paying the people we don’t like anyway.
Whether you think this is a kabuki dance or not (and I’m pretty certain the debt limit will be increased), it’s pretty clear that Republicans want to play out the string on this, and won’t stop until Wall Street makes some tangible signal to raise borrowing costs or come close to a meltdown. We are headed for the kind of moment we saw with TARP, where lawmakers agree to something under extreme pressure. As Digby says, that doesn’t usually go well.
Let’s put it this way. The Tea Party may not be winning any legislative battles outright and they may even fade into obscurity by the 2016 election. But they will have left a mark on American politics. If the Republicans successfully create a phony hysteria over the debt during a severe economic downturn (in which the wealthy are getting richer and richer), forcing huge cuts in spending without even allowing tax increases to be on the table, it’s hard for me to see them as failures.
Agreed.OXFORD DRAMA
BY THACKTOR
Much like a willing Craigslist poster, that game sucked. Interceptions. Sacks. No running game. It was a rough little Saturday for the Aggies. Thank God the team gets to leave Texas to head to Oxford. I know everyone on the A&M team is psyched about returning for the third time in four years.
I wrote about some weird things yesterday, but I was quickly informed that I had not dug deep enough for Ole Miss. I have to admit, my research this week was suspect, so let me thank @tommybrooker for reading and making the following suggestions about how strange the atmosphere in Oxford really is.
"The town named itself Oxford to try and attract Mississippi's first college," Mr. Brooker tweets. "That’s like naming your son Jefferson and expecting him to become president."
That’s pretty good. It’s also a clutch stalker move, changing your name to attract the object of your desire. It’s right up there with getting a tattoo of something your target casually mentioned slightly enjoying the day before. *stares at "PunkinSpyz4Lyfe" tattoo, single tear forms in eye*
"Drinking liquor in The Grove is legal. Drinking beer in The Grove is illegal. True life."
That’s crazy, sir. This is like Colorado saying "you know what? Screw it. Weed is illegal again, but you get all the cocaine and heroin you want, folks. 8 BALLS FOR EVERYONE! YEEE HAWWW"
Let’s beat the hell outta Ole Miss, Aggies. Then let’s be nice and pour some bourbon for their fans. They’ll have had a rough couple of weeks.
ABSURD GAME PREDICTION
I left this section out last week. I am sorry. It is clearly my fault that the Aggies lost the game, and I expect your full wrath on Twitter. Here is your AGP.
Hugh Freeze emerges from his office wearing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s getup from Batman Forever.
"Coach, um…. what?" Chad Kelly inquires, completely taken aback by his coach’s choice of attire.
"When you drop back to pass and see Myles Garrett bearing down on you, don’t… get frozen!" Coach Freeze says in the worst Schwarzenegger voice you’ve ever heard.
"No, Coach. Just stop it," cornerback Tony Bridges says, embarrassed.
"Christian Kirk has bigtime speed, better make sure you warm up. Wouldn’t want to go out on the field… cold." Coach’s accent is devolving into something resembling an Austrian Christopher Walken.
Special teams coach Batoon has had enough, he offers the coach an opportunity to save face, "OK, that’s enough, Hugh. Let’s get the team hyped. It’s time to take the field."
"Yes, coach. It’s time. Just remember to call a timeout if they have to kick a winning field goal. I’d like Bertolet to have an … ICE DAY."
Aggies 35
Rebels 21
CAST OF CHARACTERS BY DR. NORRIS CAMACHO
Kyle Allen QB: Time to separate the cliches from the football. You don't grow up being groomed for football since you can walk without having the edge that makes you capable of putting mistakes behind you. Well, you might but KA doesn't. Hopefully we'll see an Auburn 2014-type of bloodletting. Or give Tra another look. He didn't throw a pick last week.
Germain Ifedi OL: OK...six sacks is too much, even against Alabama. Allen's going to need more time back there, and Ole Miss has a very speedy defense that brings pressure from different places. Shore up that line, hold the rope, et al. If we don't run the dang ball, let's at least pass protect the dang QB.
AJ Hilliard LB: AJ played well against Alabama, at least in the final three-quarters of the game. He's finally hitting full stride as an SEC defender and the timing couldn't be better. Ole Miss doesn't have much of a power run game so we're going to need alert LB play to sniff out misdirection and the like. There is a chance he may be familiar with that from practice.
Laremy Tunsil OL: Congratulations, you are finally done being punished arbitrarily by an organization so self-serving and inconsistent it makes an Ed Cunningham broadcast seem enjoyable and informative by comparison. Your reward? Just go out and block Myles Garrett.
Denzel Nkemdiche LB: Robert's "big" brother is the team's leading tackler. He's also listed at 5'11" and 207 lbs and potentially missing some of his top fellow defenders. This has mismatch potential written all over it, like RSJ or Reynolds mismatches ideally please. No, it's okay, Denzel. Just cover that guy. He's not that tall or fast IRL.
OPPONENT CELEB CAMEO
BY DR. NORRIS CAMACHO
WHAT TO WATCH FOR BY HYPNO-TOAD
Misdirection Last week Ole Miss lost to an AAC team, which is mortifying until you realize that lots of teams have done that and the AAC has amassed seven victories against Power 5 teams. But a loss like that is just the sort of thing to get the Ags to all run hastily into a childishly obvious trap game. This is still the team that beat Alabama, and now they're all angry and drunk on moonshine and the misconception that their school is respected.
Subterfuge Ole Miss has set the gold standard for non-standard touchdown plays this season. Future NFLer and Piesman Trophy favorite DT Robert Nkemdiche caught a pass and turned it into a 31 yard score earlier in the season. Last week the Rebs' top WR did what Tra Carson meant to do, dropping a nifty pass for a touchdown against Memphis. Look for Hugh Freeze to casually step onto the field after a huddle, declare himself as an eligible receiver, and run a go route for 4 yards before a career-ending back injury.
Aggression The Aggies have been the fainting goats of college football, freezing up when you run directly at them (last week Derrick Henry completely approximately 1.76 Kessel Runs using that technique). Ole Miss's offense matches up a little more favorably with Texas A&M, and hopefully that will allow the Aggie pass rush to bump their havoc score back up. At this point Myles Garrett could only impress more if he simultaneously covered a slot receiver, sacked the quarterback, and held your spot in line at concessions during the same play.
ELSEWHERE IN THE SEC BY HYPNO-TOAD
KENTUCKY @ MISSISSIPPI STATE Kentucky is currently sitting at 3rd place in the SEC East with a 2-2 record, but aside from Georgia the remainder of their schedule is very soft and very winnable. If they can beat Georgia and Georgia can beat Florida, we have the mixings for a three-way tie cocktail. If that isn't enough reason to root for Kentucky this weekend, then how about the fact that our ol' buddy Stingray put on his favorite t-shirt and stabbed us in the back?
HOT REELZ BY CUPPYCUP
LET'S HAVE A STATGASM BY FLETCHER MASSIE
I UNDERSTAND YOU'RE AN OXFORD MAN BY CUPPYCUP If you plan on trekking to Oxford, Mississippi consider leaving your Aggie t-shirts and cargo shorts back home in favor of something sophisticated. This Antigua Striped Polo from MaroonU is perfect for strolling through The Grove or sipping gin rickeys on the front porch back at home.
Stripes, 2015's top fashion trend and Bill Murray's best post-Caddyshack movie, are classy enough for hissing but bold enough for booing. Affix your glasses to some Croakies knowing the world is your Gulf Coast oyster... crack a Pearl beer and undo the top button when you get back to Texas.
Congratulations to Danielle W., last week's Adidas Sideline Shoes winner!
Enter to win a FREE Antigua Striped Polo from MaroonU by completing the form below before kickoff on Saturday.
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BEST CASE / WORST CASE BY THACKTOR
BEST CASE The Offense screws its head back on, and things look fully-operational again. The running game gets a good boost from an offensive line that answers the wake-up call given to them last week. Allen's poise never falters as he is confident and makes every pass you know he can make. The defensive line continues to improve as Myles Garrett racks up yet another conference award. The scenario in the Absurd Game Prediction actually happens, and we get an entire post-game interview worth of frosty puns.
WORST CASE The wheels come completely off the wagon, and the Aggies drop their second game in a row where the lower ranked team is a favorite. That's it. That's the worst case. That and finding out Santa Claus isn't real, but that's never gonna happen.
@MattMillslagle The Ole Miss game will allow us to rely on our patented "Away Field Advantage" #GBHTailgate
@rcb05 The only good thing to come out of Oxford was a comma. #GBHTailgate
@LeighAnneTuohy My husband is not showing the same amount of enthusiasm as I am about this eclipse! Hmmmmm...That's unfortunate for him
@ckelly_10 Snap me @ chaddk1022 alleged gang members accused of running Houston brothels filled with undocumented immigrants
Bianca Stephanie Reyna was charged in connection with a gang sweep. Bianca Stephanie Reyna was charged in connection with a gang sweep. Photo: Handout Photo: Handout Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close 22 alleged gang members accused of running Houston brothels filled with undocumented immigrants 1 / 10 Back to Gallery
More than a dozen suspected members of a ruthless Houston street gang accused of tattooing their sex trafficking victims are behind bars, charged by federal authorities with everything from smuggling immigrants to illegal firearms sales and drug trafficking.
The violent Southwest Cholos crew, which boasts members with street names like "Pantera" and "Troubles", preyed on undocumented immigrants who were forced to work in brothels around Houston and in Mexico, prosecutors say.
The gang ran a transnational criminal network stretching from a Houston apartment complex, to towns along the Texas-Mexico border to the Mexican resort of Cancun, according to 37-count criminal indictment unsealed late Wednesday.
Ten suspects made initial appearances before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy K. Johnson on Tuesday and Wednesday, most shackled in the casual street clothes they were wearing at the time of their arrests. The majority are set to reappear before the judge on Thursday. Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Goldman told the judge he considers them all flight risks and requested they be held in detention without bond, pending a hearing.
Twelve suspects were arrested Tuesday, on top of two already in custody. Another eight are still at large and being sought by the FBI.
The gang members enticed undocumented immigrants with promises of passage to the U.S. and restaurant jobs to pay off smuggling debts. But instead, the unwitting victims were forced to work as prostitutes in gang brothels, including one at the Carriage Way Apartments in southwest Houston. Prosecutors allege the complex was the gang's base of operations for methamphetamine and heroin peddling, gun trafficking and human smuggling.
When the women refused to work as prostitutes, the gang members allegedly threatened violence against their families.
Raids conducted Tuesday by agents across the city resulted in a string of arrests, as well as the rescue of seven trafficking victims. Previously, they'd already identified another six woman forced into the sex trade, including a 14-year-old girl.
On top of the brutal threats to harm their families, the alleged gangsters further terrorized their victims by tattooing them with nicknames to mark them as property and exert their control.The brothels, in Houston and elsewhere, operated from 2009 to 2017, according to federal charges.
But since April of this year, at least nine of the defendants also became involved in a related human smuggling scheme, prosecutors say. Together they smuggled immigrants from China, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Central American into the U.S. using gang-controlled stash houses in the Rio Grande Valley.
The smuggling victims forked over as much as $40,000 apiece to be transported into the U.S and overland to Houston by the gang. During this week's arrests, authorities discovered 16 immigrants hidden away at the secret stash houses.
The gang was largely a family operation headed by Freddy "King Mono" Montes, his mother Maria Angelica "Patty" Moreno-Reyna, 51, and Giovani Alexander "Whiteboy" Alecio, 26, all of Houston.
The government alleged that other leaders of the gang were Patty's husband, Erik Ivan "Casa Grande" Alvarez-Chavez, 39, and her four other sons - William Alberto "Payaso" Lopez, 27, Walter Lopez, 26, Eddie Alejandro "Monterrey" Torres, 38, and Jose Luis "Lucky" Moreno, 23, all of Houston.
The federal charges include multiple conspiracy counts ranging from sex trafficking of a minor and possession of methamphetamine to importation of aliens for immoral purposes, immigration law violations and making false statements.
One by one on Wednesday, the judge told them the possible sentences they faced on the allegations, and many learned they were facing life sentences on the sex trafficking conspiracy. Some of the alleged gang members also face a 10-year minimum sentence on the drug trafficking counts. The human smuggling charges could bring a maximum 20-year sentence, and the firearms trafficking could add another five years.
The FBI, DEA, Harris County Sheriff's Office, Houston police, the Texas Anti-Gang Center and ICE all worked on the investigation and arrests.Prosecutors seek prison terms of 6½ to 8 years for 2 S.F. cops
Federal prosecutors are seeking prison sentences of 6½ to eight years for two veteran San Francisco police officers convicted of stealing property and thousands of dollars from drug-dealer suspects, defense lawyers said Thursday.
While prosecutors have not yet filed their sentencing recommendations in court, they were disclosed by attorneys for Officer Edmond Robles and Sgt. Ian Furminger. The lawyers said the U.S. attorney’s office has endorsed a confidential sentencing recommendation by the court’s Probation Office.
Defense lawyers argued for shorter terms: about four years for Robles, and 2½ to three years for Furminger.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer has scheduled sentencing for Feb. 23.
Robles and Furminger, who worked in the plainclothes unit at the Mission District Station, were convicted in December of taking and dividing up thousands of dollars found during searches of drug dealers and their homes. The chief prosecution witness was another officer, Reynaldo Vargas, who pleaded guilty to similar charges and is awaiting sentencing.
Vargas described a series of incidents in 2009 in which he or Robles, his partner, swiped cash and other items from the homes of dealers they had arrested or were investigating, and shared the proceeds with Furminger, their supervisor.
On one occasion, Vargas said, the officers searched the home of a drug dealer in Newark, where Vargas found $30,000 in cash buried in the backyard. He said he, Robles and Furminger divided the loot on the drive back home.
A drug dealer who acted as a police informant testified that Robles paid him in cash and drugs for his information, and told him he could keep selling drugs with impunity as long as he continued to cooperate.
Defense lawyers described Vargas as a liar who framed their clients in order to get a lower sentence for himself. Neither Robles nor Furminger testified.
The jury convicted Robles of five felonies and Furminger of four. Both men were convicted of conspiring to steal money and property that should have been turned over to the city and of conspiring to deprive defendants of their rights.
Robles’ lawyer, Teresa Caffese, said in her court filing that the prosecution’s proposed sentence was too severe, in part because it was based on the faulty premise that the officers had intended to rob the home of the Newark drug dealer and, therefore, committed a burglary when they entered it.
Furminger’s attorney, Brian Getz, said his client had only a “minor role” in the incidents, compared with Robles and Vargas, and deserved a lesser sentence.
Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelkoRumor: Droid, Droid Incredible, Droid X Blessed With Froyo Starting August 6
Here’s a juicy rumor fresh from the rumor mill: the three major Droid smartphones on the Verizon network (Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Incredible, Motorola Droid X) are all set to receive the coveted Android 2.2 update together on August 6. AndroidSpin received tip from someone close with Verizon who is saying this is already confirmed and not simply a rumor. However, since we haven’t heard explicit word from Motorola or HTC, we have to label this as a rumor. Since large software roll outs generally take a decent amount of time, Verizon expects all devices to receive the update by August 15. Now, you may remember the Motorola Droid 2 is slated to launch with Froyo, so if these devices receive Android 2.2 by August 15, it does make sense the Droid 2 launches with Froyo on the 15th. Should we hear any more rumors or official word from HTC or Motorola, we’ll keep you updated.BMW’s new M3 4-door is technically called a sedan, as in a family car. Which it is, if you have the kind of family that enjoys slingshotting out of curves at 60 m.p.h. The M3 is to sedans what the German four-man Olympic bobsled is to your kids’ Flexible Flyer.
Understand that this is a driver’s car in every aspect, which you’d expect out of a division created to produce race cars to compete on the European touring circuit. The low, sloping hood seems to bury its face into the asphalt that you are chewing up. And you can set the M3’s controls for a variety of engine, steering, and Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) combinations so that you can feel everything that’s happening around you any way you wish. The optional dual-clutch transmission adds three mode variables to play with. But all of the settings seem designed with one thing in mind, to urge you forward.
That begins, natch, with the power plant. There was some anxiety among Beemer buddies when the engine specs of the M3 and its coupe cousin, the M4, were revealed. BMW has chosen a 3.0 liter inline 6-cylinder number to replace a beefier 4.0L V-8. But as is typical today, engine designers are coaxing more oomph out of smaller packages, which also means less weight: the I-6 gets 424 h.p., which is a 10-horse improvement. But the torque really jumps, in part because the M3 has twin turbochargers that are configured to chime in on demand. Pair that with a seamless, dual-clutch, seven-speed automatic version and the M3 means giddy passing power at any speed.
Then there’s the M Differential. Have to admit, I’ve been indifferent to differentials. Every car has one, but to the undifferentiated, let me explain: A differential is a thingamajig on the axle that uses a set of pinion gears (never mind) to change the rotational speed of a tire. It’s necessary because when you go into a left-hand curve, say, the outside right rear tire will be going faster than the inside one because it’s covering a longer distance. The differential distributes the engine torque equally to the two rear wheels, leveling the rotational speed so you aren’t burning out tires or veering off kilter.
The M3’s differential takes that basic tool and loads it with sensors that measure a range of variables such as yaw, torque, lateral acceleration, and driving speed, sniffing the ground to look for more speed and stability. When the M3 is doing this as you are entering a curve it is inevitably whispering in your ear, “Forget the brake; I’ll handle this.” And you find yourself leaving your foot on the accelerator thinking, “Yes, this makes perfect sense.”
In addition to the M Diff, there’s also a $1,000 option called Adaptive M suspension. You have the choice of Comfort, Sport, or Sport Plus, depending on how tuned into the road you want to be. According to the company, sensors are recalculating and regulating the dampers every 2.5 milliseconds at each wheel to apply the precise amount of damping. At the same time, the DSC automatic transmission has settings for three different driving modes: Efficient, Sport, and Sport Plus, as in fast, faster and Messerschmitt. The settings correspond to the response of the accelerator. In Efficient, it’s a smoother takeoff; in Sport Plus it’s more reactive. There’s even a race setting called Launch Mode that allows you to hammer the throttle from an idle position to full power.
The M3 has a race car look about it, too, with flared fender skirts, a carbon roof, and, on the inside, that combination of hard-and-soft, steel-and-leather luxury.
A car loaded with this much technology has an Apple-like premium. Although the basic price on the M3 is about $63,000, the bells and whistles add up quickly. In addition to the $1,000 Active M suspension, the M Double clutch automatic adds $2,900, and the carbon ceramic brakes $8,150 more. My test car revved in at $84,000, including the $550 “Yas Marina Blue” metallic paint job that people tend to really like or really hate.
Count me on the “like” side on the paint job; as for the M3 itself, I like it a lot. A whole lot.Tom here again, for more fanboy gushing over Zwei: The Arges Adventure!
I’ve already touched on the game’s amazing script, and I’ll definitely go more into that in my next blog entry (there’s a lot to talk about there, as this is easily the strangest script I’ve ever worked with, on multiple levels!), but I figured I’d take this opportunity now to instead discuss some of the new and updated features that our amazing programmer was able to cram into this release. I’d rank most of these under the “quality-of-life improvements” category, though some are more along the lines of old but notable features from the original 2001 PC version which have been adapted to run more readily on modern systems and integrated more thoroughly into the game proper.
Note that in all cases (except where otherwise noted), the original functionality from the 2001 Japanese release still applies – there are just additional options now as well. Also note that while the additional options described all reference making use of controller buttons, allowances have been made for keyboard shortcuts that fulfill the same functions when applicable, so you keyboard-and-mouse gamers should reap some benefits of Matt’s coding prowess as well.
Anyway, let’s dive right in, shall we?
Feature: Quick-using food items in the heat of battle.
How it works in the 2001 Japanese release: In order to use an item, you first have to make sure it’s located on your hotbar (which has 12 available slots). Then, during gameplay, you have to either right-click the item with your mouse, or press the item’s corresponding function key (F1-F12) to use it. If you don’t want to drop your controller to use the mouse or keyboard for this task, no problem: there’s a button you can press that moves control of the game down to the hotbar, at which point you can press left and right to cycle through to the item you want, then press another button to use it. Afterward, you can press another combination of buttons to deselect the hotbar and return to regular gameplay. Time does NOT stop while you do this, however, so good luck surviving the enemy onslaught as you attempt to perform all these tasks!
How it works now: Just press one controller button to instantly use the left-most consumable healing item on your hotbar. After doing so, all other consumable healing items contained therein will shift left as far as they can go, ensuring that the slot you just freed up by using that one item is now located along the right side of the hotbar rather than the left. The reason for this? Well, when you pick up new items, they get sent to your hotbar first, as long as there’s space for them there. And if the blank slot on your hotbar happens to be all the way on the left, then whatever item you just picked up will end up being the first one you use next time you press the item button. But if the blank slot is on the right, whatever item you just picked up will be the LAST one in line for use – meaning, you can customize your own personal “eat list” that determines exactly what items you use on the fly, in exactly what order. Bit of an improvement, wouldn’t you say?
Feature: Switching magic/tools in the heat of battle.
How it works in the 2001 Japanese release: Your hotbar doubles as your equipment slots, so the only way to equip a magic jewel (which determines Pokkle and Pipiro’s attack type) or specialty tool (which allows for various puzzle-solving special abilities) is to add it to your hotbar, then “use” it (via one of the methods listed in my previous feature description), which places the Japanese equivalent of an “Eqp.” symbol over it, signifying that it is now equipped and ready to use. If you “use” that same hotbar slot again, you’ll unequip that item. And if you want to switch to a different magic jewel or tool… well, you either need to open your inventory, drag the new item onto the hotbar in place of the old one, then right-click it to equip it and close your inventory, or – alternately – just keep every equippable magic or tool you think you might be using in the near future on your hotbar (never mind all the food items this is preventing you from prepping!), and press the corresponding function key on your keyboard to equip it whenever the need arises. Siiiimple, right?
How it works now: Whatever your controller’s equivalent of the L1 and R1 buttons happen to be can now be used to cycle through all of your available magic and tools via a single hotbar slot. If you have no such item in your hotbar, but you’ve got one in your inventory, no problem: pressing L1 or R1 will automatically equip whatever you’ve got available into the first available hotbar slot. And from then on, you can just press L1 or R1 to instantly swap it out for whatever the previous or next equippable item in your inventory happens to be. Even unequipping your magic is part of the cycle, for those rare times when you’re attacking enemies who have resistance to all elementals, or when you’re attempting to solve puzzles that call for the use of Pipiro’s base magic.
Feature: Dropping bombs or dynamite to blow up enemy artillery or large rocks.
How it works in the 2001 Japanese release: Oh, this one is really fun. Or rather, “fun.” In quotes. See, bombs and dynamite don’t work the same way as any other items. You can’t “use” either of them – attempting to do so will simply do nothing at all. Instead, you have to “discard” them. Using a mouse, this is accomplished via drag-and-drop; assuming there’s a bomb or piece of dynamite on your hotbar, you’ll need to click it and hold the mouse button, then drag it onto the main game screen somewhere and let go to drop it at that spot and set its 3-second fuse. This is made considerably tougher if you’re using a keyboard or controller, since you’ll have to press the button that transfers game control over to the hotbar, scroll over to the bomb or dynamite, press and hold the item-move button, then use the D-pad or arrow keys to move that item onto the main game screen, and finally let go of the button to drop the bomb/dynamite and set its 3-second fuse. But even after that, you’ll need to use the previously mentioned button combo to transfer control back over to your characters before you’re able to move out of the way of the explosion, which… doesn’t always happen in time. And worst of all, if you use any of these methods to attempt to drop a bomb or piece of dynamite, but the location you’re trying to drop it is considered invalid (maybe it’s a little too close to a wall, for example)… well, it’ll just cancel the whole operation and force you to do it all over again. There’s no mincing words here: using bombs and dynamite in the original version of this game suuuuuuuucks…
How it works now: Erm… you press the SELECT button. Basically, if you have at least one bomb or piece of dynamite on your hotbar, pressing the SELECT button will automatically drop it (or drop the left-most bomb or piece of dynamite, if you have multiples on your hotbar) at the closest valid location. That’s literally all there is to it!
Feature: Switching characters on the fly.
How it works in the 2001 Japanese release: There are three options. (1) You can click the character portrait on the bottom-left of the screen. (2) You can press the button to transfer control of the game to your hotbar, then move the cursor over to the portrait on the bottom-left of the screen and “click” it with the item-use button. (3) You can press the Esc key twice, though only if you’re standing still and… really, only if the game feels like honoring those keystrokes (it gets temperamental sometimes). Those are your options.
How it works now: …Yeah, uh, there’s a button for this now. In fact, since Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection allows for two different control schemes (one button to attack, one button to switch characters; or, one button to switch to Ragna and perform a melee attack, one button to switch to Alwen and perform a magic attack), we decided to |
) has the tone and volume to boost your solos into orbit. New for the DOD Bifet Boost 410 (2014), is a selectable Buffer On/Off toggle switch. This switch affects the bypass state of the 410 Bifet Boost and gives it the flexibility to be used anywhere in your FX chain. Use it first in the chain with the buffer off so that the buffer won’t affect fuzz pedals, or put it last in the chain with the buffer on to counter the signal loss of today’s larger packed pedalboards.
The Bifet Boost can deliver a huge amount of output to hit the front of your amp and drive it into distortion. The DOD 410 is often described as a clean boost, but there is just a little hint of grit in there that works well with already cooking tube amps.
The DOD Bifet Boost also works very well as an “always on”, touch-sensitive and dynamic, tone sweetener in conjunction with guitar volume knob usage practiced by experienced players. The DOD Bifet Boost also has all of the added features of the new DOD pedals: True Bypass, LED, and modern PSU jack.
Like its predecessor, the DOD Bifet Boost 410 (2014) offers independent Volume and Tone controls. Volume controls the amount of boost, and Tone allows for either bass or treble boost. True bypass allows your guitar tone to remain pristine even when the new DOD 410 (2014) is off. This is a big difference from the original which would color your bypassed tone. The modern 9V DC power supply input make the pedal more pedalboard friendly.Trail Name Location Description Trailhead(s)
Ais Trail Park Palm Bay A 0.7 miles (1.1 km) unpaved nature trail with a boardwalk and an overlook of Turkey Creek.[1]
Blue Heron Wetlands Trails Titusville A 2.8 miles (4.5 km) perimeter road around the water treatment plant. Vehicles are allowed on the dike, stop at the first building to sign in.[4] Great Florida Birding Trail Site
Boundary Canal Trail Palm Bay A 1.5 miles (2.4 km) paved multi-use trail along a drainage canal with views of back yards on the north side and scrub sanctuary on the south side of the trail. The trail passes the Cameron Preserve, Malabar Scrub Sanctuary and connects to the new section of the South Brevard Linear Trail.[5]
Bracco Pond Reservoir Trail Cocoa Located near the Jerry Sellers Water Reclamation Facility are 2.3 miles (3.7 km) of paved multi-use trails within 57.43 acres (23.24 ha) of uplands. Parking is available at the Crestview Dr. and Plaza Pkwy trailheads. Crestview Drive
Fiske Blvd
Plaza Pkwy
Brevard Museum Nature Trails Cocoa Three different nature trails just north of the BCC Cocoa campus in a 22 acres (8.9 ha) preserve.[6] The Trails are only open when the Museum is open and no is fee required for walking the trails.
Brevard Zoo Linear Park Trail Viera The Brevard Zoo Linear Park trail is 3.5 miles (5.6 km) long and runs from the Zoo to the north end of Turtle Mound Road. A 1 mile (1.6 km) section of a 10 feet (3.0 m) wide boardwalk was completed first.[7]
Buck Lake Conservation Area Mims This property has 12 miles (19 km) of hiking trails.[8][9] Trail Map WMA brochure Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Caution: Hunting is permitted. Note: The Western Trailheads are in Volusia County. East
West
Morgan Alderman Road
Cameron Reserve Trails Malabar This 100 acres (40 ha) preserve has several unmarked unpaved hiking and biking trails. The Yellow Connector Trail between the Malabar Sanctuaries run along the north edge of the property.
Canaveral Marshes Trails Titusville Several trails/roads in the 6,741 acres (2,728 ha) Canaveral Marshes Conservation Area.[10][11] The Florida Trail Association[12] maintains about 5 miles (8.0 km) of the trails on this property. Blue, red, and white blaze trails. Trail Map
Chain of Lakes Regional Park Titusville 3 miles (4.8 km) of paved walking trails with a bird watching tower near BCC Titusville campus.[13] Great Florida Birding Trail Site.
City of Titusville Multi-use Trail (a.k.a. Wuesthoff Trail) Titusville A 10 feet (3.0 m) wide urban trail that runs 1.8 miles (2.9 km) from the southwest corner of Wuesthoff Park to Imperial Estates Elementary School Worth Ave
Kathy Dr.
Coconut Point Sanctuary Trail South Beaches A 0.75 miles (1.21 km) unpaved, well marked nature trail with an overlook of Indian River Lagoon. The two trailheads are on A1A. The northern trailhead is across the street from the Juan Ponce de León Beach Park where parking is available.[14] Great Florida Birding Trail Site.
Cruickshank Sanctuary Rockledge A one-mile nature trail, not to be confused with the Cruickshank trail in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.[15] Brochure/Trail Map
Dicerandra Scrub Sanctuary Titusville Nature trails on 44 acres (18 ha) of EEL Sanctuary property.[16]Trail Map
East Central Florida Regional Rail Trail (ECFRRT) (Under Development) Titusville 11 miles (18 km) of this 51 miles (82 km) proposed rail-trail are in Brevard County. This trail will run along the inactive Florida East Coast (FEC) rail line from Titusville to Enterprise and Maytown to Edgewater in Volusia County. The first (1.5 miles (2.4 km)) section in Brevard has been completed.[7] South
North
Enchanted Forest Trails Titusville Several hiking trails (4.1 miles (6.6 km)) with boardwalks over wetlands in the Enchanted Forest Sanctuary.[3][17] Brochure Trail Map Great Florida Birding Trail Site.
Fay Lake Wilderness Area Trail Port St. John There is a 1.5 miles (2.4 km) trail around the property line.[19]
F. Burton Smith Regional Park Cocoa Two nature trails: Botanical (.25 miles (0.40 km)) and Woodland (1 mile (1.6 km))[20] Brochure
F.I.T. Botanical Garden Trail (a.k.a. The Dent Smith Trail) Melbourne Paved nature trail in the Florida Tech Campus.[21]
Fox Lake Sanctuary Trail Titusville There are over 7 miles (11 km) of trails are available for hiking, the trailhead is located in Fox Lake Park.[22] Trail Map
Grant Flatwoods Sanctuary Trails Grant Currently only one marked trail exists, the 1.83 mile Red Loop trail. Two additional trails are planned: A 2.5 mile extension trail (which can be accessed from the red loop trail) and will connect via a proposed bridge across Sottile Canal to a 4-mile loop trail.[23][24] The trailhead is located at the end of Crepe Myrtle Road.
Indian Mound Station Sanctuary Trail Mims This sanctuary has 1.2 miles of trails under development. Access is from Holder Park.
Island Pioneer Trail Merritt Island A 1.1 miles (1.8 km) paved multi-use trail located between the Kings Park parking area and Hall Road through wooded areas surrounded by canals and ponds. A short boardwalk crosses a wet area.[25] Note: This trail may be labeled as the George Hamilton Trail on some maps. Kings Park
Hall Rd.
Jordan Scrub Sanctuary Trails Malabar There are three designated nature trails in this sanctuary: [26] Trail Map A 3.4 miles (5.5 km) White Loop Trail.
A 0.5 miles (0.80 km) Yellow Connector Trail to the Jordon Blvd. Trailhead.
A 0.75 miles (1.21 km) Blue Trail to the SW corner of the sanctuary. Marie St.
Jordon Blvd.
Kabboord Sanctuary Trail Merritt Island Approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) of overgrown road.
Lori Wilson Park Cocoa Beach A 0.6 miles (0.97 km) nature boardwalk thru a hammock on a 32.43 acres (13.12 ha) regional beach park.[27] Great Florida Birding Trail Site.
Malabar Scrub Sanctuary Trails Malabar There are several trails in the sanctuary:[28] Red Loop 2.75 miles (4.43 km) unpaved hiking trail.
White 1.0 mile (1.6 km) unpaved hiking trail.
Blue.75 miles (1.21 km) paved exercise trail.
Al Tuttle.9 miles (1.4 km) paved multi-use trail runs along the eastern edge of the sanctuary. Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Trail Map: Malabar Park
Oak Harbour Lane
Trailhead Park
Malabar Scrub Sanctuary (West) Trails (a.k.a. Brook Hollow Trails) Malabar There are several unpaved hiking trails: The Red Trail Loop is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long and provides access to the east end of the Blue Trail and south end of the Turkey Creek MBT.
The Blue Trail Loop is 2 miles (3.2 km) long.
A.9 miles (1.4 km) Yellow Connector Trail through the Cameron Reserve to Malabar Scrub
Trail Map Red Trail
Blue Trail, Englar Ave.
Blue Trail, Pemberton Trail
Maritime Hammock Sanctuary Trail South Beaches A 2.5 miles (4.0 km) unpaved, well-marked, nature trail with an observation deck over a pond. There are two trailheads on A1A and another at the end of Pelican Drive. Parking is available on the A1A northern trailhead and at the beach access across from Mark's Landing entrance.[29] Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Trail Map
Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge Trails Titusville The hiking trails in the Refuge are: Cruickshank Trail (5 miles (8.0 km)) has an observation tower.
Oak (.5 miles (0.80 km)) & Palm (2 miles (3.2 km)) Hammock Trails.
Nature Boardwalk at Visitors Center (.25 miles (0.40 km)).
Scrub Ridge Trail (1 mile (1.6 km)).
Black Point Wildlife Drive is a 7 miles (11 km) dike road loop, entrance fee scheduled to begin 9/1/2011.
Shiloh Marsh Trail is a 11 miles (18 km) dirt road along the Indian River Lagoon.
Pine Flatwoods Hiking Trail is a 1 mile (1.6 km) hiking loop.
Note: An entrance fee is required.[3][30][31] Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Cruickshank Trail
Oak & Palm Hammock Trails
Visitors Center
Scrub Trail
Black Point Wildlife Drive
Shiloh Marsh Trail
Pine Flatwoods Trail
Micco Scrub Sanctuary Trails Micco There are two unpaved trails in the sanctuary:[32] Red Loop Trail is 5.0 miles (8.0 km) long.
White Loop Trail is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long.
Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Trail Map Micco Rd.
Babcock St.
Moccasin Island Tract Trails Viera There are three hiking trails in this Conservation Area:[33] White blaze trail: 2.5 miles (4.0 km) one way to observation tower overlooking Lake Winder.
Yellow blaze trail: 3.1 miles (5.0 km) one way to Oak Hammock Loop (Red Trail).
Red blaze trail loop: 2 miles (3.2 km)
Caution: Hunting is permitted and livestock may be present. Trail Map
North Brevard Walking Trail Titusville A 0.5 miles (0.80 km) path in a small patch of land off Dairy Road.[34]
Palm Bay Cross City Trail (In progress) Palm Bay A proposed multi-use trail system along FP&L easement that traverses the city. The Phase 1 portion of.75 miles (1.21 km) paved multi-use trail within the FP&L easement from Malabar Road to Jupiter Elementary is now complete.[35]
Palm Bay Regional Park Trails Palm Bay A paved multi-use sidewalk, also access to trails along canals.[36]
Pine Island Trails Merritt Island Two hiking trails (1.3 miles (2.1 km) and 1.5 miles (2.4 km)) located in the Pine Island Conservation Area. Also a (2 miles (3.2 km) trail starting at Sams House.[37][38] Brochure/Trail Map Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Pine Island
Sams House
Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands (Viera Wetlands) Viera 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of dirt roads are around the wetlands and a central lake. Hiking & biking, cars are also permitted on the trail.[39] Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Trail Map
Riverwalk Nature Center Rockledge This small park has a 915 ft. nature boardwalk.[40]
Rotary Park Merritt Island This 38 acres (15 ha) park includes a 0.3 miles (0.48 km) loop trail.[41] Great Florida Birding Trail Site.
Salt Lake Trail Mims There are several miles of roads in the Salt Lake Wildlife Management Area for hiking and horseback riding.[42] Caution: Hunting is permitted. Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Trail Map Salt Lake Rd. Dairy Rd.
Samsons Island Trails Satellite Beach A 52 acres (21 ha) island in the Banana River, accessible only by boat, unpaved paths on island.[43]
Satellite Beach Sports and Recreational Park Trail Satellite Beach A paved.7 miles (1.1 km) walking path around park, some unpaved paths through scrub on north end of the park.
Scottsmoor Sanctuary Trails Scottsmoor Several miles of unmarked roads in the sanctuary. Trails are currently under development, but open to the public. Parking is available at Parrish Park.[44][45] Trail Map Parrish Park
Rose Marie St.
International Ave.
US 1
Scout Island Trail at Long Point Park South Beaches Some unpaved paths on this island. There is an entrance fee for Long Point Park.[46]
Sebastian Inlet State Park Trails South Beaches This park has several trails.[47] Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Hammock Trail: A 1.0 mile (1.6 km) long Nature Trail.
Volkssport Trail: A 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) route that starts at the Inlet Marina Road.
There are three mountain bike trails (1) Old AlA Loop Trail - 1.2 miles (1.9 km)(2) Campbell's Cove Loop Trail -3.1 miles (5.0 km) (3) Long Point Loop Trail- 2.8 miles (4.5 km) Hammock Trail
Seminole Ranch Conservation Area Trails Mims Trails off Hatbill Road near Loughman Lake Lodge, observation tower/bridge to nowhere.[48] Great Florida Birding Trail Site. Caution: Hunting is permitted. Trail Map
South Beach Mountain Bike Trail South Beaches A 1.1 miles (1.8 km) Bike/Hiking trail connecting Long Point Park and Sebastian Inlet Marina. Entrance fee of one dollar may apply. Northern
Southern
South Brevard Linear Trail (a.k.a. Al Tuttle Trail) (Proposed) South Brevard A planned 22 miles (35 km) contiguous multi-use path that will link Palm Bay's Boundary Canal Trail with Malabar, Valkaria, Grant and Micco. A.75 miles (1.21 km) segment from the east end of the Boundary Canal Trail to Malabar Road has been completed.[7][49]
South Lake Conservation Area Trail Mims 2 miles (3.2 km) of hiking trails in this 155 acres (63 ha) of EEL managed property.[50][51]
South Patrick Community Park Satellite Beach 2,500 feet (760 m) of paved multi-use paths.[52]
St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park South Brevard There are two main trails in the Brevard County portion of the preserve.:[53] The Yellow Trail is a 9.7 miles (15.6 km) hiking/equestrian trail in the northeast parcel of the preserve.
The Green Trail is a 9.0 miles (14.5 km) hiking/equestrian trail in the northwest parcel of the preserve.
Great Florida Birding Trail Site Brochure/Trail Map Yellow Trail
Green Trail
State Road A1A Trail (a.k.a. A1A Pedway) South Beaches A forty mile long multi-use paved path which is a component of the East Coast Greenway along A1A from Indialantic past Sebastian Inlet to Vero Beach. Note: There is no path across the bridge at Sebastian Inlet.
Three Forks Marsh Trail Palm Bay A 16.9 miles (27.2 km) trail/road through the marsh.[54] The south 2.4 miles (3.9 km) section of the trail from T. M. Goodwin WMA (C-54 Canal) provides access to an observation Tower Trail Map Caution: Hunting is permitted. Great Florida Birding Trail Site. North
South
Turkey Creek Sanctuary Trails Palm Bay A 1.25 miles (2.01 km) Boardwalk, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) jogging trail, and a 1.1 miles (1.8 km) exercise trail.[55] Great Florida Birding Trail Site.
Turkey Creek MBT (a.k.a. Ho Chi Mihn Trail) Palm Bay The 0.7 miles (1.1 km) unpaved Mountain Bike Trail (MBT) loop runs along Turkey Creek. Note: One way for mountain bikers.
Turnbull Hammock Trail Scottsmoor Approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) of dike road. Parking at Scottsmoor Landing. Great Florida Birding Trail Site.
Ulumay Wildlife Sanctuary Merritt Island A 436.5 acres (176.6 ha) bird reservation and sanctuary. The southbound trail section dead-ends in 0.6 miles (0.97 km) and the Northbound trail section passes an observation tower and ends in 3.2 miles (5.1 km) at SR 528.[56]
Viera Park Pedways Viera Paved multi-use trails around this park.[57]Formal declaration of the Malaysia Airlines MH370 disappearance as an accident frees the carrier to begin certain procedural work, but the causal factors behind the loss remain undetermined.
The investigation has reached no conclusions over the reasons behind the Boeing 777-200ER’s vanishing while en route to Beijing on 8 March last year.
No trace of the aircraft has been located but the Malaysian government referred to the definition of ‘accident’ afforded by Annex 13 to the Chicago Convention – a definition based purely on the status of the aircraft and its occupants, not the circumstances.
Annex 13 defines an accident as an occurrence associated with aircraft operation which results either in substantial airframe damage – with the exception of certain components – or fatalities or serious injury among those on board.
It also applies to situations in which an aircraft is listed as missing, the status adopted when official search efforts have been terminated without the location of wreckage.
Given the time elapsed since satellite communications data tracked the aircraft to a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean, with no landing area, the Malaysian government considers improbable that any of the 239 occupants survived.
The unlikelihood of finding survivors had already been conveyed in April last year, when the Australian government stated that the surface search effort would transition to an underwater phase.
While the search for the wreckage is continuing, the Malaysian government says that, under the circumstances, survivability after 327 days would be “highly unlikely” – a declaration sufficient to meet the Annex 13 definition of ‘accident’.
But this does not rule out any of the scenarios which might have led to the loss. The Annex 13 definition does not limit the term ‘accident’ to any specific causal factor, stating only that the occurrence must have taken place between boarding and disembarkation of passengers or crew.
This distinction notably meant that the fire on an empty parked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 at London Heathrow in July 2013 fell outside of the definition of an accident or serious incident, and UK investigators had to specially categorise the event in order to invoke the normal protocols.
Investigators have yet to determine whether – outside of the Annex 13 definition – the loss of MH370 was accidental, in the conventional sense of the term, or the result of possible deliberate intervention.
Authorities are still pursuing both a safety inquiry and a criminal probe into the aircraft’s disappearance. But the government says that both investigations are being “limited” by the lack of physical evidence, and the inability to locate the crash site and the flight recorders, and none of the possible causes behind MH370’s loss can be substantiated.
Malaysia’s government believes, however, that the formal ‘accident’ declaration – while not resolving the crucial questions over the cause of the loss – will assist with compensation efforts. The airline says it will “proceed with the compensation process” following the decision.After defending Dr. Laura, Palin will help Glenn Beck "reclaim the civil rights movement" August 19, 2010 11:48 AM EDT ››› Blog ›››››› BEN DIMIERO
While promoting his upcoming "Restoring Honor" rally that falls on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech - and chalking up said coincidence to "divine providence" - Glenn Beck has repeatedly invoked the memory of the civil rights movement. According to Beck, the rally will "reclaim the civil rights movement" because "Martin Luther King's dream" has "been distorted" and "massively perverted" by progressives. As we've noted, Beck's shameless co-opting of King's legacy for his own self-aggrandizement is especially appalling in light of his long history of race-baiting (including, but far from limited to calling President Obama a "racist.") Joining Beck at the rally next weekend will be fellow Fox News employee Sarah Palin, whose presence at the rally is complicated by her defense of Dr. Laura's racially charged rant. As we documented, last night Palin told Dr. Laura "don't retreat....reload!" She also nonsensically chalked up attacks on Dr. Laura to an infringement on her "1st Amend.rights" by "Constitutional obstructionists."
As John Ridley pointed out in response to Dr. Laura using the same defense, this argument is "absurd."
And just to remind everyone what exactly Palin is defending here: in Dr. Laura's initial rant, she not only used the n word eleven times, but also told her African-American caller that she had a "chip on [her] shoulder," suggested that people should stop "complaining about racism" because we have a black president, accused the caller of "hypersensitivity" that is being "bred by black activists," and said that if you "don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race."
Oh, and when the caller objected to Dr. Laura's rant, Schlessinger implored her not to "double N -NAACP me." I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the people who led the civil rights movement wouldn't respond to such a rant by telling the person "don't retreat, reload!"
But Palin is going to help Glenn Beck "reclaim the civil rights movement" because they "were the people that did it in the first place."
What a disgrace.The largest bird's nest was built by a pair of bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and possibly their successors, near St Petersburg, Florida, USA and measured 2.9 m (9 ft 6 in) wide and 6 m (20 ft) deep. It was examined in 1963 and was estimated to weigh more than two tonnes (4,409 lb).
The incubation mounds built by the mallee fowl (Leipoa ocellata) of Australia measure up to 4.57 m (15 ft) in height and 10.6 m (35 ft) across, and it has been calculated that a nest site may involve the mounding of 249 m³ (8,793 ft³) of material weighing 300 tonnes (661,386 lb).
The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) also constructs huge nests, and one 4.57 m (15 ft) deep was reported from Scotland in 1954.Video gaming enjoys a wonderful double celebration this week, with an anniversary for one of its more-remarkable communities and an opportunity for one of Australia's most eclectic and inspiring scenes, the fighting game community, to go head to head.
EVE Online, the enduring space MMO, is currently celebrating all things EVE as part of the annual Fanfest convention in Iceland. As is customary for celebrations of any kind in that part of the world, the developers and fans have already ventured into the unusual and bizarre by unveiling a monument to all EVE Online players (which was defaced days later) and hosting a UFC-style match between a professional MMA fighter and several of EVE's developers.
Australia's fighting game community isn't quite that offbeat, although some might be taken aback by the raw passion and intensity on display. They're celebrating in a different form this week with pure competition: the sixth iteration of Battle Arena Melbourne.
EVE Online
We'll kick things off with EVE Online. 11 years for any games is a monumental achievement, especially one relying on a monthly subscription - a model that many consider to be completely outdated in 2014.
But comparing EVE to any other MMO - or game, for that matter - is a churlish exercise. It's very much a sandbox. You make your own fun, and if you want to shape the world in a particular way, the developers aren't going to stop you.
That attitude and freedom gives rise to gaming history in many ways. You don't see 4000 people taking part in a single battle anywhere else. You don't see the subterfuge and outright sabotage that happens in EVE on a daily basis - especially the type of revenge planned months in advance - anywhere else. And the level of complexity and the range of human interactions that EVE can provide for simply doesn't happen anywhere else. At least not yet.
What makes EVE so special - and this is an opinion coming from an outsider - is the sheer amount of direction and control afforded to players. Once you leave the confines of the NPC-controlled territories and enter Nullspace, you're literally venturing into another world, one where the power of the developers is replaced by the power of player-driven corporations. Trading, logistics, defence, transportation - the players are required and responsible for every part of the puzzle in Nullspace.
It doesn't shovel a sense of direction down your throat: a highly unconventional approach for a video game. It partly explains the sheer passion fans have for EVE, so much so that many will travel to Iceland once a year to celebrate all things deep space.
Naturally, such a dedicated fan base will create a wide variety of videos. I've included a few below that should be fairly watchable for the uninitiated.
Battle Arena Melbourne 6
Battle Arena Melbourne (BAM) isn't a tournament; it's more of an institution. It's become a staple of Australia's fighting game circuit, so much so that this weekend's event is a part of the Capcom Pro Tour, a series of tournaments around the world that feed into the annual Capcom Cup later this year.
The winner of the Street Fighter tournament (the full title is Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition v2012, for you pedants) will receive flights to attend the South East Asia Majors (SEAM) in Singapore, starting June 20. The winner and runners up of the Blaz Blue Chrono Phantasm, King of Fighters 13, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Street Fighter and Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3 events will also receive seeding points for SEAM, in case they want to attend SEAM on their own dime.
It's difficult not to enjoy fighting games as a spectator or a player. They are easy to understand, require little time investment yet there's a skill ceiling as high, if not higher, as any other scene in worldwide gaming.
Below you can enjoy some videos from past BAM events. BAM 6 kicks off from today, with the Friday reserved for special exhibition matches. Spectator passes, and those looking to register at the last minute, can be purchased from the BAM website - $10 for the whole weekend or $5 for a single day. A full schedule is also available.
I'd like to finish off this week with a video that ties in nicely with the fighting game theme and last week's Frag Reel Friday. Here Comes a New Challenger is a documentary on a new player trying to break into the Australian fighting game scene. Produced by Corey Hague, the video tracks the efforts of Jake Watts, who turns to fighting games while he deals with a self-described "midlife crisis."
Travelling to the Shadowloo Showdown, Here Comes a New Challenger also touches on gender diversity within the fighting game community and professional gaming in the broader sense.
Alex Walker is the regular gaming columnist for ABC Tech + Games. You can follow him on Twitter at @thedippaeffect.ISTANBUL (Hurriyet)–The 22.5 million Turkish members of Facebook may lose access to the popular social-networking site, Facebook, as a result of a court case filed by an opposition leader. A government minister who has defended Turkey’s bans on YouTube and other popular websites hinted Wednesday that Facebook could share the same fate.
The latest Internet controversy was sparked when lawyers for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) filed a criminal complaint over a Facebook group claiming that the opposition leader was a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Addressing rumors that Facebook might be banned as a result, Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım told attendees at an informatics fair that 30 judicial decisions had been issued to ban the site in Turkey.
“No action was taken against those decisions; applications to a higher court [were] not filed,” Yıldırım said, speaking at the opening ceremony of the Cebit Bilişim Eurasia 2010 fair. “[Facebook] did not come and meet with the administration and did not apply to the higher court either. Foreign companies are subject to the same laws as domestic ones.”
The minister said Turkey is a state of law and that the government cannot intervene in the decisions made by the judiciary.
Yıldırım has previously made similar comments about the banning of video- sharing portal YouTube, arguing that its parent company, Google, should open an office in Turkey, pay taxes and answer the legal demands regarding its content. YouTube has been banned in the country by several court orders acting on complaints about content insulting the memory of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.
CHP officials told the Hürriyet Daily News that the party is not asking for Facebook to be banned altogether, but only for the offensive content to be removed.
“Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu’s lawyer included the demand to shut down the site in the application by mistake,” CHP Adana deputy Tacidar Seylan, who is also a programmer and informatics expert, told the Daily News on Thursday. He said neither he, nor Kılıçdaroğlu want to see Facebook banned and that the case was filed to remove the offensive content, which was created when the now-party leader was running for the Istanbul mayor’s office in the 2009 local elections, with a ban only requested if such action was not possible.
The head of the country’s Telecommunication Transmission Directorate, or TİB, is currently facing one to three years in prison for not applying a court order to halt access to the page of a Facebook group titled, “Kılıçdaroğlu is a PKK member.”
Seylan said the CHP is aware that shutting down Internet sites is not a solution and that the party wants to see a nongovernmental ethics commission of journalists established to deal with insulting or immoral content.
“Attempting to shut down a website is against both freedom of communication and human rights,” Ahmet Ersin, a CHP deputy for İzmir and a member of the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, told the Daily News. He added that unethical content may be removed but shutting down a site entirely is a practice the party opposes.
Kılıçdaroğlu himself made a declaration Thursday that he does not want Facebook, which has more than 22.5 million membersin Turkey, to be banned.
The latest controversy shows that politicians in Turkey do not understand what social networks are all about, according to lawyer Mehmet Ali Köksal, the legal secretary for the Informatics Association of Turkey. He told the Daily News on Thursday that any site with Web 2.0 applications, in which a site’s visitors create the content, risks being shut down in Turkey.
“[If someone wants] to have Facebook shut down, all they need to do is to open an account and write a [insulting] reader comment or create a group,” he said.
Other commentators see the Internet bans as part of a large political strategy.
Serdar Kuzuloğlu, a columnist for daily Radikal who frequently criticizes the Internet laws in Turkey, wrote in a blog post on mserdark.com that a deputy who was a part of the commission that prepared the current law employed to ban websites told him on a TV debate show that they are also aware of the illogical and impractical nature of the law.
“Let me write what I have written a thousand times once more. YouTube is just a cover. The actual goal is silencing the opposition and founding a media that practices self-censorship out of fear,” Kuzuloğlu wrote in a July 27 column for Radikal. “[They] have succeeded at both.”
Kuzuloğlu said YouTube has representatives in Turkey and the tax loss from Google’s income originates from the Turkish companies receiving the service not paying the added-value tax. “Google makes the illegal [YouTube] contents inaccessible from [any] country where complaints are made. It did this for Turkey too,” Kuzuloğlu said. “The problem of our guys [the government] is something else.”
Who is behind most of the bans is also a subject of debate. People sympathetic to the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, generally blame the CHP and nongovernmental organizations such as the Kemalist Thought Association or ADD, since most complaints come from them or their supporters. The opposition, on the other hand, puts the blame with the AKP since Law No. 5651 on Internet bans was enacted during its time in power and because the ruling party is the one with the numbers in Parliament to potentially change it.
When it comes to internet bans, the CHP and AKP do not differ much from each other, Köksal said. “The founder of the censorship law is the AKP and the one that supports [censorship] is the CHP. It’s the pot calling the kettle black.”This morning, over at USA Today, we got a sneak peek of what's to come this August with the new Scooby-Doo Lego sets. In a new partnership between Warner Bros. Entertainment and The Lego Group, Scooby-Doo will appear in Lego form in an animated television special and some direct-to-video Lego movies.
Jill Wilfert, VP of Licensing & Entertainment at The Lego Group commented:
Fans always wonder which properties may come to life in LEGO form, and this year we are thrilled to bring all of the mystery, humor and hijinks of the Scooby-Doo universe to life in LEGO toys and animated content.
Advertisement
I posted the five new set names and set numbers the other day during our London Toy Fair coverage. We now have some conformation on pricing on three of the sets for the United States.
Mummy Museum Mystery (75900) - 301 pieces - $14.99
Mystery Plane Adventures (75901)
Mystery Machine (75902) - $29.99
Haunted Lighthouse (75903)
Mystery Mansion (75904) - $89.99
[Photo: Warner Bros.]
You're reading Leg Godt, the blog with the latest Lego news and the best sets in the web. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook.A 13-year-old Anishinaabe girl from Wikwemikong First Nation will address world leaders at the United Nations next spring about protecting water.
Autumn Peltier has been invited to speak at the United Nations General Assembly in New York for the declaration of the International Decade for Action on Water for Sustainable Development.
"This is a huge thing that the world needs to hear... and pay attention to what's going to happen to our planet," Autumn said.
"I'm representing my First Nations Peoples and I'm representing the water."
The girl's advocating and devotion to protecting water and the environment has earned her respect from Indigenous communities in Canada and also government officials.
Autumn was also the only child from Canada to be nominated for the 2017 International Children's Peace Prize. She will also receive the Sovereign's Medal for Volunteers, a national award in recognition for her contributions to her community, in January at the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.
She began advocating for water protection when she was eight, inspired by her aunt Josephine Mandamin. Mandamin had long been an advocate for clean and sacred waters and walked the shores of the five Great Lakes to raise awareness.
Autumn found it difficult to believe that there were some children her own age who are only able to drink water that has been bottled. Learning this and talking with her aunt inspired her to advocate and to pass on knowledge about the sacredness of water to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Autumn Peltier, far right, sits by the water with her sister, aunt and mother. (Submitted by Stephanie Peltier)
Autumn's mother, Stephanie Peltier, travels with her for her speaking engagements, which in the next year will take Autumn from her home on Manitoulin Island in Ontario across Canada from British Columbia to New Brunswick.
She's in such high demand that she can't commit to all of the requests she receives for speaking engagements.
"For a minute I had to sit down and turn everything off and really think this |
player in Fantasy last year, with one of the top 50 picks in Fantasy drafts this summer, which would represent a seventh round pick. Defenders with a goal threat like Marcos Alonso and Danny Rose would probably be drafted even higher.
Prioritise Strikers…
The problem is that by using an earlier round pick on a premium defender like Cahill means you give up drafting another premium midfielder or striker, positions which have far more “scarcity”. Remember that there are going to be 24 strikers drafted in every league and I would argue that there are not even 20 fantasy-relevant strikers in the league at any one time. The 24th best striker last year by total points was Andy Carroll with a paltry 69 points. Meanwhile the 40th best defender was Ryan Shawcross with 94 points. You are really going to want to target strikers with your early picks because the position is so shallow, especially compared to defenders.
You’re not going to be able to stream strikers on a week-to-week basis when 24 of them are already taken and only about 20 even start every week (one for each team).
…as well as Midfielders and Goalkeepers
The pool of midfielders is larger than strikers but still significantly smaller than defenders. Each team usually deploys around two midfielders, who offer an attacking threat. For every team like Arsenal who have Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil, Theo Walcott and Aaron Ramsey you have a team like Sunderland or Burnley who last year had no midfielder with more than 100 points. Those premium midfielders are all going to be taken in the draft, so you’re not going to be left with a very promising free agent pool to “stream” every week like you can in defence. However, I don’t think it will be impossible and I would like to do some research into a strategy of playing a 3-5-2 formation where you stream the fifth midfielder every week looking for a set piece taking midfielder from a weaker team with a good fixture.
The scarcity of good strikers and midfielders means I would suggest spending your first 10 picks on eight attacking players and two goalkeepers. 16 goalkeepers are going to be taken off the board in eight team leagues, so if you don’t draft good ones you’ve only got four other starting keepers to replace them with. The good thing is that goalkeeper is easily the lowest scoring position and also has the smallest range of outcomes. The difference between Tom Heaton and Wayne Hennessey, the number 1 and number 16th ranked goalkeeper was just 57 points last year, the same difference at the striker position was 128 points.
VORP is key
I believe the key decision to make when deciding where to draft a player is to consider their Value Over Replacement Player (VORP). If you were to draft Gary Cahill with a seventh round pick, his VORP would represent the difference between his expected Fantasy points and the expected Fantasy points of the best available free agent. We have already seen how there is going to be great value in the free agent defender pool by streaming defenders with a good home fixture every week, so Cahill’s VORP is going to be relatively lower.
Now consider you draft someone like Nathan Redmond with that pick instead. Redmond’s VORP is going to be significantly higher than Cahill’s because the best available free agent midfielder is going to be so much worse than the best available defender. Even though Cahill’s Points per Game last year was 4.8 compared to Redmond’s 3.4, this strategy suggests you get more value out of drafting Redmond since the midfielder position is so much more scarce.
Conclusion
By not drafting a defender in the first 10 rounds I expect to miss out on premium defenders like Marcos Alonso, Antonio Valencia and Hector Bellerin. But the depth of the free agent defender pool means I can make up the points by streaming week to week and picking up defenders from slightly lesser teams who have good clean sheet potential in a particular week.
You’ve really got to make your goalkeeper, midfielder and striker draft picks count because the available free agents are not going to offer as much support. The best way to do this is to spend all of your early picks at these positions. The defender position contrasts completely, to the point where you should be utilising the free agents multiple times every week.
An ideal formation should be 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 depending on who you hit on with your draft picks
If this article generates enough interest I’d love to make this a regular series and provide more advice on draft strategies in the FPL Draft game.Loui Eriksson was so frequently slapped with the underrated tag during his prime years for bad Dallas Stars teams that it became a cliché, a fantasy-nerd joke. So when his production slipped, some believed the right wing had become overrated.
Well, perhaps we’ve come full circle. You could argue that the 2015-16 Eriksson — the one producing 0.83 points per game, a better pace than Steven Stamkos, Claude Giroux, and Matt Duchene — is underrated all over again.
You’re only worth what they’ll pay for you. And if the Swede hits the trade rental market in February, he could fetch the Boston Bruins a heftier return than any other movable forward eyeing unrestricted free agency this summer.
No impending UFA has more points than Eriksson’s 38 this season. Only two — Arizona’s Shane Doan (16) and Tampa’s Stamkos (20) — have potted more goals than Eriksson’s 15. But with the Coyotes and Lightning in playoff position, we’d be shocked if either team shopped its captain by Feb. 29.
Kyle Okposo, Andrew Ladd, Jiri Hudler, Radim Vrbata, Milan Lucic, Mikkel Boedker, Frans Nielsen — Eriksson is outproducing them all, which leaves the Bruins in a tricky situation.
Boston is not considered a contender of the level of Washington, Tampa or even the two New York clubs, yet the Bruins currently hold a wild-card spot and popular belief dictates that any team with a ticket to the dance has a shot to go all the way.
But can the Bruins afford to let another star walk for little to no return, especially when Eriksson, 30, could fetch an Antoine Vermette–like haul as a trade chip?
“Loui should bring a first-rounder, from a contender who will pick below 22nd, and a prospect,” says a source close to the Bruins organization. “He has been phenomenally consistent at producing points this season, has been a key part of the [NHL’s second-best] power-play, and has been nothing short of fabulous on the PK as well.”
Eriksson currently makes $4.5 million per year and is reportedly seeking a long-term deal that pays a yearly salary from the high $5-million to the high $6-million range, depending on term. Speculation in Boston is that the Bruins won’t want to cram a contract that hefty into their 2016-17 salary-cap plans, considering a raft of affordable RFAs — Torey Krug, Brett Connolly, Colin Miller, Kevan Miller — will also need to be sorted out.
“We’ve been in discussions with Loui, and the first priority will be to get him signed,” Bruins GM Don Sweeney said on-air Thursday. “Obviously as a player entering the UFA market, he’s trying to gauge what that may be, and we’re trying to do the same. He’s been an important player for us.”
Eriksson spoke to WEEI.com Wednesday but would not say whether he wanted to stay or go.
“I feel really good about my game and the situation,” Eriksson allowed. “I play a lot and play in all different situations. That’s something I want to do. It’s always fun to get a lot of minutes and play in important parts of the game.”
A good tidbit: Eriksson, who was part of the 2013 blockbuster that turned Tyler Seguin into a Star, revealed that he wanted to leave Dallas.
“When that trade happened, it was a good opportunity to come to a really good team,” he told reporter DJ Bean. “It was just a decision right there of, we’d been in Dallas for many years. I just felt like we needed something, needed a change. When that happened and I knew Boston wanted me to come there, it was definitely nice to come and play for a team like Boston.”
During a four-season stretch in Dallas, Eriksson was good for at least 26 goals and hovered around 70 points. He’s back to that level now.
With Eriksson rediscovering his game and his concussion issues seemingly behind him, perhaps the Bruins would be wise to tear a page from the Coyotes’ playbook.
At this time last year, Arizona dealt Vermette to Chicago for a first-round pick and prospect Klas Dahlbeck. Vermette helped the Blackhawks hoist the Cup, then re-joined Arizona in the summer.
Vermette had 38 points all season. Eriksson already has that many with more than two months to go, and we know Sweeney loves stocking up on first-round picks.Ah, good ol’ emetophobia – just when I think I’ve (mostly) recovered, you come back into my life! Thanks, emetophobia, you’ve been more loyal than anyone else! Thanks, emetophobia, you’ve always helped me lose weight! Thanks, emetophobia, keeping me up late at night so I can be more productive. What a great friend you are.
If you suffer from or have ever suffered from emetophobia (the phobia of vomiting), you will know that it is in fact, not a good friend. I often talk about my emetophobia here. It is the biggest source of my anxiety – it is bigger than my health anxiety, bigger than my death anxiety, bigger than my GAD and panic disorder. Emetophobia started it all.
A lot of people kind of know my story. They know that I “have anxiety” and they know that I went through some stuff as a kid. But hardly anyone knows the full story. I want to share my whole story with you.
I was always an anxious kid. I’ve probably been called a “worry wart” more times than you’ve been called your own name. The first panic attack I actually remember happened in my grade one classroom. I was worried I would get in trouble because the rest of the class was acting rowdy. I would run to the bathroom and hide while my teacher “counted down.”
But that was it. I was just anxious. Definitely not a normal amount of anxiety, but still very functional. I loved school and I loved my friends. I loved birthday parties and sleepovers (as long as they were at my house). I was anxious, but I was still within the realm of “normal.”
The pictures above are from when I was around 4-6 years old. The funny thing about these photos is not the fact that I apparently felt the need to dress up as a dinosaur or a firefighter in order to eat my meal.
No, the funny thing about these photos is that they exist at all. There are literally dozens of photos like this – me sitting at the kitchen table, eating hotdogs, donuts, fruit, veggies, pasta…you name it. But then, something happens in our photo albums. These pictures stop. At around 8 or 9 years old, there are no pictures of me at the kitchen table anymore.
Do you know why?
Because I stopped. I stopped eating.
When I was 8 years old, I caught the stomach flu twice in a row. And thus my lifelong struggle with emetophobia began.
Emetophobia is the fear of vomiting. It in itself is not a fear of eating. However, many emetophobes, including myself, develop an eating disorder along with emetophobia. I came to associate food with vomiting. And so, to protect myself from ever vomiting again, I stopped eating.
I don’t just mean I didn’t eat a lot. I mean, I stopped eating. From the time I was 8 until I was 13, I ate virtually nothing. I lived off ice cream and scrambled eggs (my comfort foods), because that is all I would eat. My mom had to sneak butter and cream and anything high in fat she could into what little meals I would actually eat.
I associated nighttime with getting sick, so I refused to eat dinner. I often refused to eat at school, so I didn’t eat lunch either. I began missing tons of days of school. I began missing out on friends’ birthday parties, on family outings, and on my own extracurricular activities.
I quit soccer because of my fear. And I loved soccer.
When you look at the picture above, you probably wouldn’t think twice about it. “Just a picture of a kid on the beach.” I was not just a kid. I was thin in that picture, but still not as a thin as I would get.
I thought that everyone could see all of their ribs.
I wondered why other people’s stomachs didn’t look like mine. I didn’t realize that my body was the wrong one.
It got to the point where my parents tried to scare me into eating. “Do you want to end up in the hospital, on an IV?” I would cry and cut my meat into the tiniest of pieces, just trying to get something down. I mentioned this before in another post, but I almost was hospitalized. I thought my parents were exaggerating when I was a kid, but they weren’t. I was borderline failure to thrive for a long time.
From 8 until 13, I ate just enough to not die or be hospitalized.
What does emetophobia look like? It looks like an eight year old girl sweating, shaking, crying, and hyperventilating on the floor. It looks a twelve year old girl staring at herself in the mirror, realizing you shouldn’t be able to see your rib cage. It looks like a 24 year old woman reverting back to her eight year old self.
I didn’t know what self-harm was as a kid, but I did it.
The worst thing in the world was stomach pain. Stomach pain = intense, uncontrollable panic. Nothing worked to stop the pain. I realized though, that I could divert it.
During panic attacks, I would grab and pinch the inside of my thighs. Pinching isn’t so bad, right? Well, the next day I’d wake up with 15+ bruises all along the inside of my legs. Soon, my parents caught on and did everything they could to stop me. But I had other outlets too. Scratching my arms, picking at my skin, punching myself in the legs or arms.
This is hard to write about, partially because I hate thinking about that part of my childhood. Even though my emetophobia played a big role, I still managed to have a wonderful and magical childhood.
Still, the biggest reason this is hard to write about is because I haven’t won the war yet.
I still struggle with this phobia every single day. When I turned 13 and my parents finally bought me a dog, my life completely changed. My first dog, Toby (who is almost 12 years old and still alive and well), somehow calmed me more than anything else ever could.
I began eating again, slowly but surely, I gained weight. By the time I was in high school, I was 4’11 and weighed about 75-80 lbs. Still not enough, but I could no longer see every single one of my ribs.
By the time I finished high school, I was almost a “normal” person. I went to friends’ parties without having massive emetophobic breakdowns. I stayed away from home for the first time and survived (although, I did have a HUGE breakdown during a camping trip, I still stuck it out for one night).
Since then, I have had ups and downs. Sometimes, my emetophobia takes a backseat to my other mental health issues. Last year, I struggled with depression and my emetophobia was essentially non-existent. This year, I’ve been doing better overall both with my anxiety and depression, and thus my emetophobia has returned!
I could write a novel about my struggle with anxiety (and anxiety-induced depression), but all my anxiety really comes back to this. Emetophobia has controlled my life more than any of my other mental health issues combined.
So, emetophobia, what have you done?
You’ve almost killed me.
You’ve ruined friendships.
You’ve made me hurt myself.
You’ve made me cry, you’ve made me shake, you’ve made me hyperventilate.
You’ve made me miss out on endless opportunities.
You’ve made me quit jobs.
You’ve made me drop out of classes and skip lectures.
You’ve made my relationships hard.
You’ve made me question if I even want to stay alive.
But you know what you haven’t done?
You haven’t won.I’m a big fan of afternoon naps. In fact, I was super excited when joining Buffer to hear about how the team is pro-napping. It’s not everyday you come across a company that’s open to letting employees take a snooze whenever they want one.
Naps aren’t for everyone, though. I’ve heard lots of people say naps don’t make them feel better, so I wanted to explore how naps affect your brain and whether they really are good for you or not.
How sleep affects us
Better sleeping is known to provide lots of health benefits. These can include better heart function, hormonal maintenance and cell repair as well as boosting memory and improving cognitive function. Basically, sleeping gives your body a chance to deal with everything that happened during the day, repair itself and reset for tomorrow.
Sleep deprivation, therefore, actually harms us in several ways. One of the most obvious harms is that we have trouble focusing when we’re sleep deprived. Leo wrote about this on the Buffer blog before:
someone who is severely sleep deprived is in fact as attentive and awake as you are, with one big difference. Here is what a recent study found: Whether we are sleep deprived or not, we lose focus at times. And that is precisely where the sleep deprived person lands in a trap. Once we start to lose focus and have received the right amount of sleep, our brain can compensate for that and increase attention. If we are sleep deprived, our brain can’t refocus
The benefits of napping
Studies of napping have shown improvement in cognitive function, creative thinking and memory performance. As I talked about in my post about the body clock and your body’s best time for everything, we’re naturally designed to have two sleeps per day:
The idea that we should sleep in eight-hour chunks is relatively recent. The world’s population sleeps in various and surprising ways. Millions of Chinese workers continue to put their heads on their desks for a nap of an hour or so after lunch, for example, and daytime napping is common from India to Spain.
Naps can even have a physical benefit. In one study of 23,681 Greek men over six years, the participants who napped three times per week had a 37% lower risk of dying from heart disease. Not to mention a host of other positive outcomes that might occur from regular napping:
Sleep experts have found that daytime naps can improve many things: increase alertness, boost creativity, reduce stress, improve perception, stamina, motor skills and accuracy, enhance your sex life, aid in weight loss, reduce the risk of heart attack, brighten your mood and boost memory.
Memory
Naps have been shown to benefit the learning process, helping us take in and retain information better. In one study, participants memorized illustrated cards to test their memory strength. After memorizing a set of cards, they had a 40-minute break wherein one group napped, and the other stayed awake. After the break both groups were tested on their memory of the cards, and the group who had napped performed better:
Much to the surprise of the researchers, the sleep group performed significantly better, retaining on average 85 percent of the patterns, compared to 60 percent for those who had remained awake.
Apparently, napping actually helps our brain to solidify memories:
Research indicates that when memory is first recorded in the brain—in the hippocampus, to be specific—it’s still “fragile” and easily forgotten, especially if the brain is asked to memorize more things. Napping, it seems, pushes memories to the neocortex, the brain’s “more permanent storage,” preventing them from being “overwritten.”
Learning
Taking a nap also helps to clear information out of your brain’s temporary storage areas, getting it ready for new information to be absorbed. A study from the University of California asked participants to complete a challenging task around midday, which required them to take in a lot of new information. At around 2p.m., half of the volunteers took a nap while the rest stayed awake.
The really interesting part of this study is not only that at 6p.m. that night the napping group performed better than those who didn’t take a nap. In fact, the napping group actually performed better than they had earlier in the morning.
The lead researcher, Dr. Matthew Walker … said the findings support the idea that sleep is a necessary process that clears the brain’s short term memory storage so there is room to absorb new information.
The same research team had found earlier that studying through the night, such as cramming the night before an exam actually decreases the brain’s ability to absorb information by almost 40%, which makes sense in light of this newer research into the effect of a nap on the brain’s learning abilities.
I love this analogy from Dr. Walker to explain the process of clearing out your brain’s storage with a nap:
Walker likened the process to having an email inbox in your hippocampus. This gets full, and you need to sleep to initiate the clearing out process. Until you do, then the mail stays in the inbox and you can’t take in any more. “It’s just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder,” said Walker.
Dr. Walker also mentioned how these findings mean napping before learning is as important as it is afterwards:
Sleep prepares the brain like a dry sponge, ready to soak up new information.
Avoiding burnout
A study from Massachusetts showed how napping can help your brain to recover from ‘burnout’ or overload of information:
To see whether napping could improve visual discrimination, a team led by Robert Stickgold, a neuroscientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had college students who were not sleep deprived stare at a video screen filled with horizontal bars. Periodically, three diagonal bars flashed in the lower left corner of the screen, and the students had to say whether these bars were stacked horizontally or vertically. The researchers graded students’ performance by measuring how long the diagonal bars had to be shown in order for them to answer correctly 80% of the time. Students sat through 1250 frustrating trials during each session, so those who did not nap did worse and worse over the course of the day. But students who took a 1-hour nap returned to their original performance levels in the next test.
The researchers in this study also experimented with moving the diagonal bars into different areas of the screen after several tests, which resulted in participants performing as well as they did at the beginning. Stickgold said this pointed out how quickly our brain’s visual centers become overloaded, since only three tests were enough to see a decrease in performance that could be overcome by changing the placement of visual input:
Burnout is a signal that says you can’t take in more information in this part of your brain until you’ve had a chance to sleep.
Another study showed that a 60–90 minute nap could be as good as a full night’s sleep for learning a visual perception skill. It seems like our eyes are getting a lot of rest and repair when we’re asleep!
The benefits of a nap can even last for several hours, according to Professor Leon Lack from Flinders University:
Ten to 15 minutes of sleep seems to be the optimum period in terms of improving mental operations, performance, reaction times and subjective feelings of alertness. And that improvement in performance and alertness seems to be maintained for up to two and sometimes three hours after the nap. Interestingly, the five-minute nap just didn’t produce the same amount of improvement, while longer naps of 25 to 30 minutes led to subjects being somewhat drowsy and less alert for up to an hour after the nap.
What’s happening in your brain during a nap
Some recent research has found that the right side of the brain is far more active during a nap than the left side, which stays fairly quiet while we’re asleep. Despite the fact that 95% of the population is right-handed, with the left side of their brains being the most dominant, the right side is consistently the more active hemisphere during sleep.
The study’s author, Andrei Medvedev, speculated that the right side of the brain handles ‘housekeeping’ duties while we’re asleep. The study looked at how active various parts of the brain were while participants were sleeping:
Medvedev and his colleagues used a type of brain imaging known as near-infrared spectroscopy, which involves placing optical fibers similar to electrodes symmetrically around a person’s scalp. These “optodes” send infrared light through the brain and measure how much light returns. The intensity of light bouncing back provides an estimate of the blood flow in different regions of the brain. Blood flow, in turn, is an indicator of how active those regions are.
So while the left side of your brain takes some time off to relax, the right side is clearing out your temporary storage areas, pushing information into long-term storage and solidifying your memories from the day.
How to get the most from your nap
It’s true that I’m a big proponent of naps now, but I wasn’t always. In fact, I was once vehemently opposed to napping, as I found that I was generally groggy and felt even more tired when I woke up from a nap.
The trick, I’ve found, is to work out what kind of nap suits you best. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of trial-and-error, but I definitely think it’s worth it. Here are some tips to help you work out the best way to get the most from your nap:
1. Learn how long you take to fall asleep
If you’re trying to nap for a specific amount of time, you definitely need to factor in the length of time it takes you to get to sleep. If you need some help to work this out, you could try using a fitness tracker like the Jawbone UP, or a sleep-tracking app on your phone. Once you have a rough idea, you can factor this into your napping time.
When I set an alarm to wake me up from a nap, I normally set it 5–10 minutes longer than I want to sleep for, since this is about how long I take to get to sleep. If I’m still awake after 15 or 20 minutes, I reset my alarm and start over. Having an alarm set lets me relax knowing that I won’t fall asleep for hours and wake up groggy around dinner time.
If you don’t want to set an alarm, you could try this trick Michael Hyatt shared on his blog:
“Every day after lunch, I lie down on the sofa in my office,” he recounted. “I hold my car keys in my right hand and let my hand hang toward the floor. When the car keys fall out of my hand, I know I’m done.” (Evidently, the famous artist Salvador Dali had a similar practice.)
2. Don’t sleep too long
Sleeping for the wrong length of time is exactly what made me hate naps originally. The problem is that this can give you sleep inertia—that feeling of waking up groggy and even more tired than you were before.
Dr. Sara C. Mednick who wrote Take a Nap! Change Your Life says sleep inertia happens when you wake up during deep, slow-wave sleep.
Since brain temperature and blood flow to the brain decrease during this sleep stage, it’s jarring to suddenly be awake and experiencing much higher rates of brain activity. There is no benefit to napping longer than 90-minutes, as you will only begin another sleep cycle. Further, if you take a snooze too late in the day, it will contain too much slow-wave sleep.
This how-to guide for a caffeine nap explains how troublesome sleep inertia can be:
Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.
The consensus across most of the research I dug up seemed to be either to go for a short, 15–20 minute nap, perhaps with a cup of coffee beforehand to wake up with more energy (though I’ll be impressed if you can coordinate this!) or to sleep for a full 90-minute sleep cycle, and wake up before your next cycle starts.
3. Choose the right time of day
Napping when your energy levels are naturally decreased can help you to avoid the dreaded infinite hour feeling, where the day drags on as you try to ignore your sleepiness. This is usually sometime after lunch for those of us who work on a traditional 9–5 schedule:
Because of the natural cycles of our circadian rhythms, we are at our most tired twice during a 24-hour period. One peak of sleepiness is usually in the middle of the night, so the other, 12 hours later, falls smack-dab in the middle of the afternoon.
If you’re sleep deprived from the night before, you’ll feel this dip in energy even more strongly and be more inclined to nap. Rather than fighting it off with energy drinks or coffee, try a short nap to refresh your brain before taking on the afternoon.
If you’re lucky enough to have a napping place in your office like we do at Buffer, or like Social Print Studio’s napping boxes pictured above, you’re off to a good start already!
4. Practice
The best way I’ve found to get better at napping is to practice. Figuring out what works for you can take a while, so try experimenting with different times of the day, different nap lengths and different ways of waking up (if you’re worried about grogginess, you could try an app like Warmly that wakes you up slowly, or a sleep-tracking app like Sleep Cycle to wake you up during light sleep).
Don’t forget to set your napping space up with as little light as possible and to grab a blanket to keep you warm while you’re asleep. Good luck!
P.S. If you liked this post, you might enjoy our Buffer Blog newsletter. Receive each new post delivered right to your inbox, plus our can’t-miss weekly email of the Internet’s best reads. Sign up here.
Image credits: Social Print Studio, Rowland Hall Psychology, Stanford Journal of Sleep Epidemiology, EASYWAKEme, PEER, adwriter
Originally written Jul 25, 2013. Last updated Jun 17, 2014A widely used insect nerve agent that harms bees will be banned from use on corn and sunflowers in Europe from the end of 2013, after member states overwhelmingly backed the proposal in a vote on Tuesday. However, the UK once again failed to back measures to restrict pesticide use.
Fipronil is used in more than 70 countries and on more than 100 different crops, but in May the European Food Safety Authority labelled it a "high acute risk" to honeybees. A similar assessment by the EFSA on three other neonicotinoid insecticides, based on increasing scientific evidence of harm, also preceded the suspension of their use in the European Union in April.
Tonio Borg, European commissioner for health said: "In the aftermath of the restriction on use of neonicotinoids, I pledged to do my utmost to protect Europe's honey bee population and today's agreement with member states, not only delivers on that pledge but marks another significant step in realising the commission's overall strategy to tackling Europe's bee decline."
Bees and other pollinators are essential in the growing of three-quarters of the world's crops, but have seen serious declines in recent decades due to habitat loss, disease and pesticide use. In Tuesday's vote, only the UK, Slovakia and the Czech Republic abstained and only Spain – the biggest user of fipronil – and Romania voted against. The UK was also one of eight of the 27 EU member states that unsuccessfully opposed the EC neonicotinoid ban.
"The UK abstained from the vote as there were concerns that the proposals were not based on sound scientific evidence," said a Defra spokeswoman. "Fipronil is not used in any authorised pesticide in the UK so this ruling will have little impact [here]."
Paul de Zylva, of Friends of the Earth, welcomed the "leadership" of the European commission but added: "Yet again the UK's pesticide testing regime has proven to be unfit for purpose. It's disappointing to see the UK government abstaining from another cut and dried opportunity to protect bees."
In June, the UK government launched an "urgent" review of the crisis facing bees and other pollinators in the UK and pledged to introduce a national pollinator strategy. De Zylva said: ''The UK government must now prove its commitment to reversing bee decline. Ministers must deliver a strong national pollinator strategy by November and respond to MPs' calls for an overhaul of the nation's system for testing pesticides."
Fipronil, which is also used for cockroach and termite control, is manufactured by the German chemical company BASF. "Sound data from field studies that underpin the safe use of our product for bees were not considered sufficiently," said Jürgen Oldeweme, at BASF Crop Protection. "We are certain that Europe can achieve both – the protection of pollinators and the support of European agriculture – but for that all stakeholders must engage in a comprehensive action plan to address the real root causes of the decline in bee health."COLUMBIA, Mo. – Past research has indicated that Latino families, particularly Mexican-origin families, tend to be more family oriented and place a significant emphasis on family time. New research from the University of Missouri found that a father’s family values can predict family values held by Mexican-origin youth as well as family time for late adolescents. Research also indicated that the link between family time and young adults’ depressive symptoms depended on parental acceptance and warmth.
“Familism refers to an individual’s identification with and attachment to family; it is characterized by a sense of responsibility, loyalty and solidarity among family members,” said Katharine Zeiders, assistant professor of human development and family science in the College of Human Environmental Sciences. “Familism is a core cultural value among Latinos; yet, until now we have known little about the precise role it plays in youth development.”
The study is among the first to address the long term implications of parental family values on social development among Mexican-origin young adults. Zeiders and her colleagues followed families across an eight-year period to test whether mothers’ and fathers’ familism values, and the interaction of those values, had a developmental impact on adolescents. They tested youths’ familism values in middle adolescence and the proportion of time youth spent in shared activities with family members as possible mechanisms linking familism values to depressive symptoms in young adulthood.
Researchers found that fathers’ familism values, not mothers’ values, predicted the values held by sons and daughters in middle adolescence. Those values carried over to predict the amount of time daughters spent with their families in late adolescence. Family time, in turn, predicted fewer youth depressive symptoms when parental warmth was high; however, when parental warmth was low, family time predicted greater depressive symptoms in girls.
“When it comes to family values and family time, dynamics within the family need to be considered,” said Zeiders. “Simply spending time together is not adequate if relationships within the family unit are strained and if warmth and acceptance is missing from the parent-child relationship.”
Zeiders co-authored the study, “Familism Values, Family Time and Mexican-Origin Young Adults’ Depressive Symptoms,” with Kimberly Updegraff and Adriana Umana-Taylor from Arizona State University and Susan McHale and Jenny Padilla from Pennsylvania State University. The study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. The research was funded by NICHD Grants (HD39666 and DB 32336) and the Cowden Fund to the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agency.
--30--The numbers on your Social Security card actually mean something!
SSNs are not assigned consecutively; the first was not the lowest number, and the most recent is not the highest. They are assigned regionally and in batches.
The nine-digit SSN, which has been issued in more than 400 million different sequences, is divided into three parts: area numbers, group numbers and serial numbers.
Area numbers - The first three numbers originally represented the state in which a person first applied for a Social Security card. Numbers started in the northeast and moved westward. This meant that people on the east coast had the lowest numbers and those on the west coast had the highest. Since 1972, the SSA has assigned numbers and issued cards based on the ZIP code in the mailing address provided on the original application form. Since the applicant's mailing address doesn't have to be the same as his residence, his area number doesn't necessarily represent the state in which he resides. For many of us who received our SSNs as infants, the area number indicates the state we were born in. You can find out which area numbers go with each state at - The first three numbers originally represented the state in which a person first applied for a Social Security card. Numbers started in the northeast and moved westward. This meant that people on the east coast had the lowest numbers and those on the west coast had the highest. Since 1972, the SSA has assigned numbers and issued cards based on the ZIP code in the mailing address provided on the original application form. Since the applicant's mailing address doesn't have to be the same as his residence, his area number doesn't necessarily represent the state in which he resides. For many of us who received our SSNs as infants, the area number indicates the state we were born in. You can find out which area numbers go with each state at SSA.gov: Social Security Number Allocations
Group numbers - These two middle digits, which range from 01 through 99, are simply used to break all the SSNs with the same area number into smaller blocks, which makes administration easier. (The SSA says that, for administrative reasons, group numbers issued first consist of the odd numbers from 01 through 09, and then even numbers from 10 through 98, within each area number assigned to a state. After all the numbers in group 98 of a specific area have been |
warning of some other problem. Icing a sore knee without examining the ankle or hip is like pulling the battery out of the smoke detector.
What we need to realize is that "We get old too soon and smart too late." Oscar Wilde said, "I am not young enough to know everything."
Every day, I learn more and more about the body. What I learn allows me to be a better coach and a better educator. Often, what I learn contradicts what I formerly believed. Just remember, the world was once thought to be flat.What Grammy viewers learned during Sunday's telecast was that the contestation between artists isn't exclusive to records sold or critically acclaimed reviews. After seeing Beyoncé (as well as her much talked about cast of put-upon black men) fumble and falter her way through Mahalia Jackson's classic, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand," which was performed brilliantly by vocalist Ledisi on the Selma soundtrack, it can now be argued that artists aren't merely tossing about their faux manes, they're also throwing around their supposed professional clout. Good manners be damned. Never mind that Ledisi delivered the classic hymn with both thrilling exactitude and a visceral gospel heft reserved for those singers whose careers rightfully dominate America's musical cannon. That the song is so closely associated with a film that captured man's inhumanity to man, the misguide belief that what's black is decidedly less than, and what is lighter is inherently better, worthier of praise and advancement, was given to a lighter singer over a darker one shows just how pervasive racial idolization remains in American culture.
Beyoncé wanted to sing it, and we did not breathlessly await her performance as much as we were left to grudgingly endure it. Through much of her awkward rendition I found myself praying that our precious Lord would take the mic.
But I digress. There's a larger issue at play than just the swapping of one great singer for another less talented but more popular one. Ledisi, with a crown of enviable braids and beautiful dark skin, was passed over by an artist whose nose job, ten pounds of blonde hair, and suspiciously alabaster skin has no doubt aided in her ascent to the top. What perhaps Beyoncé and Grammy producers failed to realized (the producers can feign ignorance while Queen Bey, a black woman, cannot) was that this was a moment of distinct sensitivity and consequence. The performance of this iconic song, of which Beyoncé and her family apparently believes is uniquely theirs alone -- though it's sung almost universally at black funerals and churches -- should have been fraught with significance. Ledisi, who introduced it to a whole new generation with such beauty and gravitas should have been invited to sing it, not a socially constructed pop star famous this past year for her ability to surfboard, a pop star that wasn't in the movie or on the soundtrack. And if, as Beyoncé contends, this song means so very much to her why hasn't she sung it on any of her 200 albums? Could her performance have merely hinted at an exaggerated sense of self-worth that led her to steal another artist's moment to shine?
According to Common -- who did act in Selma, and John Legend, who both ashamedly consigned such magnificent vulgarity by retorting, "No one says no to Beyoncé" -- showcasing one's talents is for the powerful, and maybe even the feared. Not only should they be ashamed of robbing Ledisi of her chance to perform before a vast, rapt audience, but Common and John Legend should be embarrassed that one person (or "camp") caused them to make a decision that put their character under the glaring, and yes, unforgiving, eye of the public.
Is this what R&B has come to: cowering to the lightest among us?
There's a pattern here worth addressing. Did Beyoncé not learn her lesson when she famously accepted an offer to sing Etta James' classic "At Last" during Obama's first presidential inauguration, and Ms. James took Beyoncé and her ego to task? Humility, Mrs. Carter, is a beautiful thing; it shows maturity, grace, and civility. And you my dear not only missed an opportunity to practice the tenets of which Martin Luther King Jr. espoused in Selma, but you had an opportunity to engage in an essential social commentary. We shouldn't be intimated by one another, and we certainly shouldn't allow a mostly white governing board to pit us against one another.Police in a German town were ordered not to prosecute migrants for certain crimes - just two months before the New Year's Eve sex attacks in Cologne, it has emerged.
Documents show officers in Kiel, northern Germany, were told to forego prosecuting migrants for theft and criminal damage amid fears there was little chance of succeeding.
The guidelines were issued by the police directorate in the town in October 2015 just months before hundreds of women reported being robbed and molested by migrants in Cologne on December 31.
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Police in a German town were ordered not to prosecute migrants for certain crimes two months before the New Year sex attacks in Cologne, it has emerged (file picture)
German police have now been accused of'surrendering' in the face of refugee crime.
Documents published by the Bild newspaper on Thursday show that an official guideline issued by the police directorate in Kiel in October 2015 let asylum seekers effectively live outside the laws of the land when it comes to minor theft and criminal damage.
Officers were told there was little chance of success because so many of the arrivals in Germany do not have papers, and often if they do, they are false.
Kiel decided that the costs of pursuing asylum seekers for these low-level offences were too high, the chances of success in court too low.
Kiel's police authority stated that its guidelines should become a'statewide applicable rule' whereby'simple/low-threshold offences (shoplifting/vandalism)' by migrants should not be followed up because of the low chance of identifying suspects and gaining a successful prosecution.
But 'higher order' offences are to be treated the same, 'especially serious cases of theft and personal injury,' regardless of whether the perpetrator is a German citizen or a refugee.
The guidelines were sent as a circular to all police stations in Kiel urging restraint if the ID of a migrant suspect could not be ascertained within 12 hours of a crime being reported.
Documents show officers in Kiel, northern Germany, were told to forego prosecuting migrants for theft and criminal damage amid fears there was little chance of succeeding (file picture)
'The reason for the orders is apparently the high effort at the same time as low chances of success, since many refugees carry no identification documents with them,' commented news magazine Focus.
Under pressure after the document surfaced, Kiel's police authority said a new circular dated December 23 last year made the earlier one 'outdated' - but media reports that it contains no references to petty crimes.
The news is cannon fodder for Germany's far right which accuses the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel of letting in 'rapists and thieves' among the million-plus asylum seekers who have come into the country over the course of a year.
One Kiel businesswoman told Bild that the police edict in her city was a 'carte blanche for immigrants to steal.'
Karolina Hofmann, 37, CEO of the household goods shop Kochfest, is outraged. 'For what exactly, please, are we paying our taxes for?
'Police officers should not engage in prevent theft? Offenders in our city are simply getting a free pass.'For the tree known as ʻAiea or kāwaʻu, see Ilex anomala
Census-designated place in Hawaii, United States
Aiea (Hawaiian: ʻAiea) is a census-designated place (CDP) located in the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the CDP had a total population of 9,338.[2]
Geography [ edit ]
Aiea is located at (21.385900, −157.930927).[2] According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 1.8 square miles (4.7 km2), of which, 1.6 square miles (4.1 km2) of it is land and 0.1 square miles (0.26 km2) of it (5.71%) is water.[2]
Kamehameha Highway (Hawaii Route 99) divides most of Aiea from the shore of Pearl Harbor (mostly US government property), and the parallel major thoroughfare, Interstate H-1, further cuts the town's commercial district into two distinct areas. These east-west routes (and other streets, such as Moanalua Road) connect Aiea to Pearl City, immediately adjacent on the west, and Halawa, adjacent on the east. The residential area known as Aiea Heights extends up the ridgeline above the town. The communities of Newtown Estates and Royal Summit are located at the western edge of Aiea near its border with Pearl City at Kaahumanu Street. Residents of the census-designated places (CDP) of Waimalu and Hālawa use Aiea in their postal address.
Climate [ edit ]
Climate data for Aiea - Aloha Stadium Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Average high °F (°C) 78.5
(25.8) 80.5
(26.9) 79.0
(26.1) 81.1
(27.3) 83.3
(28.5) 84.0
(28.9) 84.8
(29.3) 86.4
(30.2) 86.8
(30.4) 85.2
(29.6) 80.0
(26.7) 77.9
(25.5) 82.5
(28.1) Average low °F (°C) 62.8
(17.1) 65.0
(18.3) 64.8
(18.2) 66.5
(19.2) 68.3
(20.2) 70.2
(21.2) 71.4
(21.9) 71.9
(22.2) 71.9
(22.2) 70.2
(21.2) 65.8
(18.8) 63.1
(17.3) 67.8
(19.9) Average precipitation inches (mm) 3.5
(89) 3.3
(84) 2.4
(61) 2.7
(69) 2.5
(64) 2.1
(53) 0.9
(23) 0.8
(20) 0.9
(23) 1.8
(46) 3.2
(81) 2.7
(69) 26.8
(680) Source: Weatherbase [4]
History [ edit ]
Historically, ʻAiea was an ahupuaʻa, or area of land ruled by chief or king and managed by the members of the ʻaliʻi
"ʻAiea" was originally the name of an ahupuaʻa, or Hawaiian land division. The name was derived from a species of plant in the nightshade family, Nothocestrum latifolium.[5] It stretched from ʻAiea Bay (part of Pearl Harbor) into the mountains to the north. At the end of the 19th century, a sugarcane plantation was opened in the district by the Honolulu Plantation Company.
In July 1941, five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Commander Thomas C Latimore from the USS Dobbin, vanished while walking in the hills above Aiea. Despite several major searches and a naval investigation, his disappearance has never been explained. Within the U.S. Navy, many believed he might have been abducted and killed by a local Hawaiian Japanese spy ring because he had either stumbled upon their activities in the hills or had been specifically targeted because of his background in Naval Intelligence.[6]
On December 7, 1941, a large part of the Japanese attack focused on the military installations around the town and the ships moored off shore. For example, one damaged ship, the USS Vestal, beached in Aiea Bay to prevent sinking. Many people photographed the attack from the hills in Aiea.
After World War II the plantation shut down and the mill was converted into a sugar refinery. Meanwhile, developers started extending the town into the surrounding former sugarcane fields. In the years since then, Aiea has grown into an important suburb of Honolulu. The town's sugar history came to a close in 1996, when C&H Sugar closed the refinery. Then in 1998, the 99-year-old sugar mill was torn down by the owners, amid protests from town residents and the County government.
Singer and actress Bette Midler was raised in Aiea.
Demographics [ edit ]
As of the census[7] of 2000, there were 9,019 people, 2,758 households, and 2,258 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 5,463.5 people per square mile (2,110.5/km²). There were 2,831 housing units at an average density of 1,714.9 per square mile (662.5/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 16.25% White, 0.85% Black or African American, 0.14% Native American, 58.31% Asian, 5.08% Pacific Islander, 0.77% from other races, and 18.59% from two or more races. 5.47% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 2,758 households out of which 27.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 63.0% were married couples living together, 13.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 18.1% were non-families. 13.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.24 and the average family size was 3.51.
In the CDP the population was spread out with 21.2% under the age of 18, 6.4% from 18 to 24, 27.6% from 25 to 44, 23.1% from 45 to 64, and 21.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42 years. For every 100 females there were 96.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 96.0 males.
The median income for a household in the CDP was $71,155, and the median income for a family was $75,992. Males had a median income of $41,384 versus $32,394 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $25,111. 4.6% of the population and 3.4% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 8.1% of those under the age of 18 and 4.0% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.
Attractions [ edit ]
Aiea is the home of Pearlridge, Hawaii's largest enclosed shopping center and second largest shopping center in the state. The mall is separated into two sections, known as Uptown and Downtown, and includes a monorail. There is a hospital located on mall property (Pali Momi Medical Center), and Hawaii's largest watercress farm (Sumida Farm).
Aloha Stadium, home of the University of Hawaiʻi Warriors football team, and the host site for the Hawaiʻi Bowl every Christmas Eve and the National Football League's Pro Bowl every February (except in 2009), is located in the adjacent Halawa CDP.[8]
Aiea is home to Keaiwa Heiau, an ancient medicine shrine. There is a 4.5-mile (7.2 km) loop trail. A World War II plane crashed in the trail and can be seen halfway through.
Aiea is also home to Aiea Shopping Center. The center's anchor stores include Times Supermarkets, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Jamba Juice. Aiea Chop Suey, Aiea Copy Center, Koa Pancake House, and L&L Drive inn are other businesses located in the center as well.
Government and infrastructure [ edit ]
The United States Postal Service operates the Aiea Post Office.[9]
The Hawaii Department of Public Safety operates the Halawa Correctional Facility in an area near Aiea.[10][11]
Camp H. M. Smith, headquarters of the United States Pacific Command, is located in Aiea.
Education [ edit ]
All areas of Hawaii are served by public schools of the Hawaii Department of Education.
Elementary schools in the CDP include Alvah A. Scott and Gus Webling.[12] Aiea Elementary School is in the adjacent Halawa CDP.[8] Pearl Ridge Elementary School and Waimalu Elementary School are in the Waimalu CDP.[13] Aiea Intermediate School and Aiea High School are the secondary schools in the Aiea CDP.[12]
Private schools in the area include Our Savior Lutheran School (LCMS) and St. Elizabeth Catholic School, both of which cater to K-8 students.WASHINGTON - In a major effort to dismantle environmental protections, President Donald Trump today signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to repeal two regulations before implementing a new rule.
This unprecedented and illegal restriction would hamstring every federal agency’s efforts to implement laws and dramatically curtail the federal government’s ability to protect human health, wildlife and the environment from emerging threats.
"This new policy is as dumb as it gets," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “How does this ‘one-step-forward-two-steps-back’ order work? So you’ll protect my drinking water but only in exchange for allowing oil drilling in national parks and more lead in my paint?”
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Today’s order has drastic consequences. For example, if an agency like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wanted to protect a species from being wiped out from poaching, it wouldn’t be able to take any steps until it removed two rules protecting other animals from extinction. It would be the same for rules protecting people, air and water from pollution or pesticides. Agencies entrusted with protecting people, animals, public lands and natural resources will be unable to carry out their duties.
“Trump is again demonstrating that he has no interest in governing this nation for the benefit of its people or to protect our environment,” said Suckling. “Instead, he’s fixated on realizing the fantasies of the most unhinged, right-wing extremists and profiteers who view government protections as nothing more to an impediment to their profits. We will fight this dangerous and nonsensical executive order in court anywhere it rears its ugly head.”
###Raiders of the Broken Planet is close to launching and MercurySteam just announced that an Open Beta will take place on September 15th and 16th on all platforms (PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One). Two missions will be available – First Round and Hanging by a Thread.
First Round is a tutorial mission focusing on Harec, the leader of the Raiders, and acts as the intro mission for the game. It is the only mission playable only in single-player. Hanging by a Thread is a daring mission for the Raiders as they infiltrate an enemy airship to rescue the unhinged warrior of legend – Lycus Dion – in an attempt to recruit him to the team. Like every other mission in Raiders of the Broken Planet, it can be played in single or multiplayer, including the innovative 4 v 1 Antagonist mod. These two missions form the Prologue which will be free to download at launch. Prologue will be accompanied by the first campaign – Alien Myths, which can be purchased for €9.99/$9.99/£9.99.
In case you aren’t aware of the game yet despite our previous coverage of the title, here’s an overview of the story and features.
Related Talking Spacelords (Part 1) With MercurySteam Co-Owner & Game Director Enric Álvarez
An incredible discovery on one of Saturn’s moons leads a force of humans to the Broken Planet on the far reaches of the Universe. A source of energy called Aleph exists there that grants ultimate power to whoever controls it… However, the human forces split into factions and fight amongst themselves for dominion over the Aleph. The peaceful inhabitants of the planet are caught in the crossfire, but a hero emerges amongst them who hopes to lead his people to freedom… Using nefarious means and exploiting the disunity amongst the human ranks, Harec recruits a rag tag group of rogues, outlaws and hired guns from the various factions and pits them against those who would destroy his people… Raiders of the Broken Planet is a brand-new take on the shooter genre. Through its 4 vs 1 counter-operative campaign, you experience both sides of the story: Join the Raiders in their fight to free the legendary Broken Planet, or become The Antagonist: Switch sides and fight the Raiders on your own alongside the invading hordes!— Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s food police have struck again!
Outlawed are food donations to homeless shelters because the city can’t assess their salt, fat and fiber content, reports CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.
Glenn Richter arrived at a West Side synagogue on Monday to collect surplus bagels — fresh nutritious bagels — to donate to the poor. However, under a new edict from Bloomberg’s food police he can no longer donate the food to city homeless shelters.
It’s the “no bagels for you” edict.
“I can’t give you something that’s a supplement to the food you already have? Sorry that’s wrong,” Richter said.
Richter has been collecting food from places like the Ohav Zedek synagogue and bringing it to homeless shelters for more than 20 years, but recently his donation, including a “cholent” or carrot stew, was turned away because the Bloomberg administration wants to monitor the salt, fat and fiber eaten by the homeless.
Richter said he was stunned. He said his family has eaten the same food forever and flourished.
“My father lived to 97; my grandfather lived to 97, and they all enjoyed it and somehow we’re being told that this is no good and I think there is a degree of management that becomes micromanagement and when you cross that line simply what you’re doing is wrong,” Richter said.
But Mayor Bloomberg, a salt-aholic himself, was unapologetic.
“For the things that we run because of all sorts of safety reasons, we just have a policy it is my understanding of not taking donations,” Bloomberg said.
Told that his administration recently enacted the policy, the mayor was Grinch-like.
“If they did in the past they shouldn’t have done it and we shouldn’t have accepted it,” Bloomberg said.
Richter said that over the years he’s delivered more than two tons of food to the homeless. He said Mayor Bloomberg is eating away at his ability to do good.
The ban on food donations was made by an inter-agency task force that includes the departments of Health and Homeless Services.
Please offer your thoughts in the comments section below …Members of the Democratic National Committee will meet on Saturday to choose their new chair, replacing the disgraced interim chair Donna Brazile, who replaced the disgraced five-year chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Even though the outcome is extremely unlikely to change the (failed) fundamentals of the party, the race has become something of an impassioned proxy war replicating the 2016 primary fight: between the Clinton/Obama establishment wing (which largely backs Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who vehemently supported Clinton) and the insurgent Sanders wing (which backs Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Congress, who was an early Sanders supporter).
The New Republic’s Clio Chang has a great, detailed analysis of the contest. She asks the key question about Perez’s candidacy that has long hovered and yet has never been answered. As Chang correctly notes, supporters of Perez insist, not unreasonably, that he is materially indistinguishable from Ellison in terms of ideology (despite his support for TPP, seemingly grounded in loyalty to Obama). This, she argues, is “why the case for Tom Perez makes no sense”: After all, “if Perez is like Ellison — in both his politics and ideology — why bother fielding him in the first place?”
The timeline here is critical. Ellison announced his candidacy on November 15, armed with endorsements that spanned the range of the party: Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Raúl Grijalva, and various unions on the left, along with establishment stalwarts such as Chuck Schumer, Amy Klobuchar, and Harry Reid. He looked to be the clear frontrunner.
But as Ellison’s momentum built, the Obama White House worked to recruit Perez to run against Ellison. They succeeded, and Perez announced his candidacy on December 15 — a full month after Ellison announced. Why did the White House work to recruit someone to sink Ellison? If Perez and Ellison are so ideologically indistinguishable, why was it so important to the Obama circle — and the Clinton circle — to find someone capable of preventing Ellison’s election? What’s the rationale? None has ever been provided.
I can’t recommend Chang’s analysis highly enough on one key aspect of what motivated the recruitment of Perez: to ensure that the Democratic establishment maintains its fatal grip on the party and, in particular, to prevent Sanders followers from having any say in the party’s direction and identity:
There is one real difference between the two: Ellison has captured the support of the left wing. … It appears that the underlying reason some Democrats prefer Perez over Ellison has nothing to do with ideology, but rather his loyalty to the Obama wing. As the head of the DNC, Perez would allow that wing to retain more control, even if Obama-ites are loath to admit it. … And it’s not just Obama- and Clinton-ites that could see some power slip away with an Ellison-headed DNC. Paid DNC consultants also have a vested interest in maintaining the DNC status quo. Nomiki Konst, who has extensively covered the nuts and bolts of the DNC race, asked Perez how he felt about conflicts of interest within the committee — specifically, DNC members who also have contracts with the committee. Perez dodged the issue, advocating for a “big tent.” In contrast, in a forum last month, Ellison firmly stated, “We are battling the consultant-ocracy.”
In other words, Perez, despite his progressive credentials, is viewed — with good reason — as a reliable functionary and trustworthy loyalist by those who have controlled the party and run it into the ground, whereas Ellison is viewed as an outsider who may not be as controllable and, worse, may lead the Sanders contingent to perceive that they have been integrated into and empowered within the party.
But there’s an uglier and tawdrier aspect to this. Just over two weeks after Ellison announced, the largest single funder of both the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign — the Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban — launched an incredibly toxic attack on Ellison, designed to signal his veto. “He is clearly an anti-Semite and anti-Israel individual,” pronounced Saban about the African-American Muslim congressman, adding: “Keith Ellison would be a disaster for the relationship between the Jewish community and the Democratic Party.”
Saban has a long history not only of fanatical support for Israel — “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel,” he told the New York Times in 2004 about himself — but also an ugly track record of animus toward Muslims. As The Forward gently put it, he is prone to “a bit of anti-Muslim bigotry,” including when he said Muslims deserve “more scrutiny” and “also called for profiling and broader surveillance.” In 2014, he teamed up with right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson to push a pro-Israel agenda. In that notorious NYT profile, he attacked the ACLU for opposing Bush/Cheney civil liberties assaults and said: “On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk.”
There’s no evidence that Saban’s attack on Ellison is what motivated the White House to recruit an opponent. But one would have to be indescribably naïve about the ways of Washington to believe that such a vicious denunciation by one of the party’s most influential billionaire funders had no effect at all.
The DNC headquarters was built with Saban’s largesse: He donated $7 million to build that building, and he previously served as chairman of the party’s capital-expenditure campaign. Here’s how Mother Jones’s Andy Kroll, in a November profile, described the influence Saban wields within elite Democratic circles:
No single political patron has done more for the Clintons over the span of their careers. In the past 20 years, Saban and his wife have donated $2.4 million to the Clintons’ various campaigns and at least $15 million to the Clinton Foundation, where Cheryl Saban serves as a board member. Haim Saban prides himself on his top-giver status: “If I’m not No. 1, I’m going to cut my balls off,” he once remarked on the eve of a Hillary fundraiser. The Sabans have given more than $10 million to Priorities USA, making them among the largest funders of the pro-Hillary super-PAC. In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, he vowed to spend “whatever it takes” to elect her. … The ties go beyond money. The Clintons have flown on the Sabans’ private jet, stayed at their LA home, and vacationed at their Acapulco estate. The two families watched the 2004 election results together at the Clintons’ home, and Bill Clinton gave the final toast at one of Cheryl Saban’s birthday parties. Haim Saban is chummy enough with Hillary that he felt comfortable telling her that she sounded too shrill on the stump. “Why are you shouting all the time?” he says he told her. “It’s drilling a hole in my head.” Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks in October contain dozens of messages to, from, and referencing Saban. And they show that he has no qualms about pressing Clinton and her aides on her position toward Israel. “She needs to differentiate herself from Obama on Israel,” he wrote in June 2015 to Clinton’s top aides.
When Clinton, during the campaign, denounced the boycott movement devoted to defeating Israeli occupation, she did it in the form of public letter to Saban. To believe that Democrats assign no weight to Saban’s adamantly stated veto of Ellison is to believe in the tooth fairy.
Saban’s attack predictably spawned media reports that Jewish groups had grown “uncomfortable” with Ellison’s candidacy (the ADL pronounced his past criticisms of Israel “disqualifying”), while whispers arose that the last thing the Democratic Party needed to win back Rust Belt voters was a black Muslim as the face of the party (even though the Detroit-born Ellison himself is from the Rust Belt).(click to enlarge photos)
In these United States of America, eating horse meat is just not done by most people these days. Yet in this week’s historical view we see three grown men boldly confronting that taboo and raising another sign announcing in big letters “horse meat.” They promise to have it by Monday — inspected by the government and not rationed, so always available as long as there are Montana horses to slaughter.
While the name of the Pike Place Market business offering the equine steaks is the “Montana Horse Meat Market,” the buyer could not know for certain that all this promised horse meat would actually come from the Big Sky Country. They may have wished it were so. In 1942, the likely year for this sign-lifting, much of the Montana range was still open.
Partners Lewis Butchart and Andrew Larson were already selling beef and pork at 1518 Pike Place in the late 1930s, but then with the war and the rationing, they brought out the horses. In a 1951 Seattle Times advertisement, they used the Montana name and offered specialties like “young colt meat, tender delicious like fine veal.” “Montana” is still used in the 1954 City Directory, but not long after.
In the mid-1960s (and perhaps later) one could still find a smaller selection of cheval cuts (the French name for the meat the French often eat) at 1518 Pike Place. Market resident Paul Dunn remembers buying horse kidneys there for his cat. Those humans who have tried it commonly describe the meat as “tender, slightly sweet and closer to beef than venison.” Those who promote the meat might note that it is lower in fat and higher in protein than beef. That is not likely to change the average modern American’s view about eating an animal most view as a pet.
WEB EXTRA
Jean writes: A Mr. D’s employee led me down narrow steps into a basement storage area. She recalled large iron hooks, hanging from the pipes, which had, Mr. D himself asserted, been used for hanging horse carcasses. The hooks were recently removed.
Anything to add, Paul?
Yes Jean but most of it uncertain, and more cheese than horse meat. I’ll caption what I know about the pixs below within their frames. [May we remind our readers to click twice and sometimes three times to enlarge these images.]
Finally, neither meat nor cheese Jean. We are looking here into what will be the heart of the future Pike Place Market – a quarter-century later. Rising above the tides and off shore you can see the ruins of what was once the largest structure in Seattle: the Pike Street coal wharf and bunkers. It was photographed ca. 1881 from the King Street Coal Wharf that replaced it in 1878. This is but a detail of a pan of the city. (This also appears in our Waterfront History Part 5, with a more detailed description and in context too of more, yes, waterfront history.) Note the south summit of Denny Hill on the right, and Queen Anne Hill on the left. In between them is the north summit of Denny Hill, and running between the two “humps” of Denny Hill is Virginia Street. The original for this is at the University of Washington’s Special Collections.
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FacebookFollow up from V Jump. Also, Yugi’s statue gets a re-release.
If you order the figure on the Good Smile Online Shop, you get Enemy Controller as a bonus.
“Destruction! Heroic Defeat! Applause!”
From the popular anime series ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’ comes a figma of Yugi Muto’s rival, Seto Kaiba!
Using the smooth yet posable joints of figma, you can act out a variety of different scenes.
A flexible plastic is used for important areas, allowing proportions to be kept without compromising posability.
The Duel Disk that attaches to his left arm, a deck of cards, single card and briefcase are all included.
The briefcase can be opened and closed, and you can insert the decks of cards printed on the packaging inside.
He comes with both a grinning face plate and a shouting face plate.
The direction Kaiba is looking can be changed to suit his pose with one of three different eye parts.
In addition, a shouting expression for use with figma Yami Yugi is also included.
An articulated figma stand is included, which allows various poses to be taken.
Product Details
Product Name: figma Seto Kaiba
Series: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Price: 7,222 Yen (Before Tax)
Release Date: May 2018
Specifications: Painted ABS&PVC non-scale articulated figure with stand included. Approximately 165mm in height.
Manufacutrer: Max Factory
Sculptor: Max Factory (Seki)
Cooperation: Masaki Apsy
Released by: Max Factory
Distributed by: Good Smile Company
Source 1
Source 2The WSJ Opinion is predictable – Alan J Reynolds says that taxing the rich won’t work at helping to reduce the huge $14trillion US Deficit. Alan cites the fact that even when tax rates for the rich go up, tax revenue do not increase measurably [and Businessweek supplies the answer to that little puzzle – see below]. But what Alan also fails to note or explain are two fundamental phenomena:
1 – Income disparity is increasing
Note that the 95th percentile [or the top 5% of earners] have seen their income more than triple while everybody else has to be content with just under a doubling of incomes[or less]. In fact incomes in the 2000 to 2010 decade have been flat for 80% of all Americans]. But what is missing from this chart is the top 400 earners whose incomes soared by 46% but whose taxrates dropped in the same period.
2 – Tax rate for the all Income Clases Have Dropped
Even worse, BusinessWeek has shown that the tax dodges available to the top 5% of earners have proliferated within the last decade such that Alan’s prediction there will be no increases in tax revenues may well apply to the top 5% of earners unless tax reforms are also made as well as raising the top income tax rates. Neither does Alan discuss the fundamental flaw in the Republican arguments for deficit reduction by using spending cuts exclusively – tax reform and any tax increases, no matter how targetted are GOP forbidden.
Instead he offers “grow the economy” and “all boats will rise”. But then Alan completely ignores two facts. Thanks to the Financial Community’s continued foreclosure malfeasance, housing is still in a mess – and so the biggest nest egg of wealth for 80% of Americans is jeopardy as housing prices remained depressed. As well, the Business class in America has exported and outsourced work overseas to such an extent that job growth is barely trickling upward while greater swaths of middle income/college degree jobs are now being outsourced in such areas as legal work, clinical research, engineering and other traditional white collar/m |
, then down to town hall. I can do the talking — I'll grab a copy of the presentation I've been using with grant committees. It has some pretty visuals, at least."
The others scramble to grab their pizza and follow him out of Big Rico's. Everyone else is either off looking for a serious restaurant, or down at the grocery store getting a head start on filling up the rental kitchens. Not a problem. Carlos can work with these three.
"Brad, we've unpacked the camera, right? Grab that while we're inside," he says. Rusakov photography is the subject of Brad's thesis.
"Fleur, grab a stack of our photo release forms, then text the others and tell them we'll be at City Hall, and not to wait on us." He'd do that himself, but he'll be spending most of the next thirteen minutes frantically adapting his presentation.
"And Adriana...." There's no online map service with details of Night Vale; someone has to read one of the town maps left in the mailboxes of the rentals, along with coupon books, fliers for local businesses, and an information packet about something called "bloodstone circles." "Your job is to figure out which direction City Hall is in."
,,,^..^,,,~
A dark-haired woman in a severe grey suit, who introduces herself as Trish Hidge, meets the group on the front steps of City Hall and ushers them inside. Her daemon, a large mostly-black bird with a fuzzy brown head, alternates between riding on her shoulder and flapping alongside her down the marble corridors.
Apparently Carlos and company were the last to know about this meeting, because they emerge into a nice classical-looking meeting chamber with at least a hundred townspeople in the seats.
There's a screen up front, and as Carlos stands behind the main podium, the title slide of his presentation flickers into place on it. Oh, good. When Trish had handed his flash drive to a (different) (probably) pale-haired child, and that child (along with its daemon, in the form of a white, eyeless spider) disappeared through a service door, Carlos had figured he would never see it again.
It looks like a lay audience for the most part, including a couple of kids whose daemons are already shapeshifting restlessly, so he skips to the slides with pictures and tries to keep it simple. Also, to focus on how fascinating and exciting Night Vale is. Overbearing local laws notwithstanding, this is a great research opportunity, and he's genuinely thrilled to finally have the funding.
He may get a little carried away talking about the amazing properties of Rusakov particles, trying to transmute the scholarly precision of his English on the subject into the more casual emotion of his Spanish. Isaña has to nudge his leg to make him wrap it up.
"...and I'm happy to talk more about it later to anyone who's interested," says Carlos, forcing his expression back into something more serious. "Also, in the name of experimental theology, we'd like to get a group photogram with anyone who's willing. You're all invited to stop by the chapel this weekend to see how the photos develop! But first, are there any questions?"
There aren't. Carlos has the distinct feeling that most people are only here for the snacks.
(Not everyone, though. With the presentation over, three men in dark glasses and dark suits with clerical collars slip quietly out. Carlos, who had noted them at the back of the room and took care not to say anything about God one way or the other, breathes a sigh of relief.)
Snacks or not, the promise of being in a photo for experimental theology does draw the interest of more than a dozen people. Brad sets up the camera, Adriana hands out release forms, and Fleur supervises them while Carlos trades handshakes with the people who want to talk to him one-on-one.
This is when he meets Cecil in person.
His first impression is: really, people still wear tie-dye?
Of course, Carlos has been wearing a chapel coat all day, so who is he to judge?
"This is so exciting!" exclaims the man in the rainbow tie-dye tunic. Aside from the clothes, he looks awfully generic; the only feature that stands out are his eyes, which are pale purple and clouded over in a way that Carlos associates with cataracts. If his vision is impaired, it isn't enough to stop him from meeting Carlos' eyes and seamlessly shaking hands. "I don't have a question, I just wanted to have the chance to personally welcome you into town."
"I appreciate it," says Carlos, smiling and trying to remember where he's heard that voice before.
"I'm Cecil!" says Cecil. "Cecil Palmero. You might have heard me on the radio? And you're Carlos, of course."
"Oh! Yes, I heard you earlier." (The news makes Cecil beam with pride.) Carlos gestures to his daemon, by his feet as usual. "And this is Isaña."
Cecil beams at her too. "It's delightful to meet you, Isaña."
The greeting catches both her and Carlos off-guard. It's not wrong to talk directly to another person's daemon, but it's still a little weird. "Likewise," she stammers.
They're both waiting for the obvious next step, which is for Cecil to introduce his daemon. The fact that Carlos hasn't spotted her yet is understandable — a big community gathering in a small space, you get plenty of daemons breaking away from their humans to socialize directly with each other. Any of the dozen animal shapes currently within ten feet of them could be Cecil's. If his daemon has an unusually high range, there are even more possibilities.
What Cecil says instead is, "If you ever have any important experimental-theology news that you need to share with the town, call me any time! Everyone listens to my show." There's a touch of what Carlos hopes is nothing more sinister than smugness when he adds, "Everyone."
He steps out of the way to let someone else interrogate Carlos, and vanishes into the crowd. Carlos doesn't get a chance to see what daemon he leaves with.
,,,^..^,,,~
Brad and Fleur don't want to waste any time developing the photos, even a set they didn't plan on taking, so when they get back to the chapel they all focus on getting out the equipment and chemicals they'll need to prepare the Asriel emulsion.
If there's a way to build digital cameras that can record Rusakov particles as easily as anbaromagnetic radiation, this world has yet to invent it. Even incorporating this particular emulsion into an instant camera with traditional film, Polaroid-style, has never been reliable. You have to prepare it to unforgiving specifications, and you can't leave it sitting for long.
But once you've put in the effort, the results are breathtaking.
It's just gotten to the stage where the mixture has to be simmered when Henriette and Jordan re-enter the chapel, daemons in tow: a chubby grey alpine marmot and a small dark tufted deer, respectively. They were with the contingent that went to the grocery store, Carlos remembers. "Kitchens are stocked!" announces Jordan. "We won't starve tomorrow morning."
"And we come bearing beer!" adds Henriette, holding up a six-pack. "Whenever you're ready for it. Congratulations, Carlos!"
"We have to babysit a mixture over an open flame for the next twenty-four minutes," points out Fleur. "So it may be a while."
"But you guys go ahead!" adds Brad. His hamster daemon is poking up out of the pocket of his chapel coat.
Carlos and Adriana, who are neither working on nor advising Brad's thesis, take the opportunity to retreat a few workbenches away and pull up chairs. The goggles come off; Adriana lifts her daemon onto the tabletop in front of them, while Carlos scoops Isaña into his lap. "Thanks for the thought," he says. "The congratulations...was that about the presentation? Because it wasn't that much of an achievement, I swear. If you'd seen it...."
The two new arrivals sit across from them, daemons next to their chairs. Henriette's is giggling, in a way that suggests she's had a beer or two already. Hopefully Jordan drove.
"We heard all the highlights on the radio," coos Henriette, pulling bottles out of the six-pack and lining them up along the sturdy painted oak. "Carlos, you player, you."
Carlos splays both hands across Isaña's armored plates. He's not anxious or anything, but he is...concerned. "You heard it? Nobody told us any part of that was going to be broadcast."
"No, we heard that guy on the radio report it," says Jordan. "Seriously, Ramirez, what did you say to him to make that impression?"
"Okay, back up!" exclaims Carlos. "What, exactly, did he say?"
Henriette clears her throat. Her Spanish, like her English, has a light French accent, but she lowers her voice and Carlos has no trouble imagining the words coming out of the radio: "Carlos sonrió, y todo él era perfecto, y me enamore inmediatamente."
Adriana spits beer across the table.
"Does me enamorae mean what I think it means?" calls Fleur.
,,,^..^,,,~
"What did we say to him?" murmurs Isaña from her basket next to Carlos' bed.
If the chapel is still somewhat disorganized, Carlos' bedroom (the last one down the hallway in the larger of the two rental houses) is a trainwreck. The place did come with furniture, but all his things are piled in boxes, and only two of them are even open. He's curled up under the sheets wearing boxers and an extra chapel coat, because neither he nor Isaña can remember where he packed his pajamas — and, in a disgrace to their profession, they barely labeled anything.
"All I remember is both of us saying hello," says Carlos. "And he said to call the radio if we had news. Honestly, I don't even remember what he looked like...the half of him I saw, anyway."
"Can't help you there." Isaña was on the ground the whole time, and of course armadillo eyesight isn't great. "All I remember is his better half not saying hello."
Carlos is stuck on trying to describe the man. Tall, short, thin, fat, pale, dark, long-haired, short-haired: every adjective he can think of seems too extreme. He remembers generic black hair, and those pale eyes, and nothing else except the tie-dye.
"...Is he cute?"
"Isaña!" hisses Carlos. "He's a gimmicky local radio jockey at best, and a fast-acting stalker at worst. That wouldn't exactly be appealing even if he was cute. Which, as far as I remember, he wasn't."
(That said, he doesn't remember Cecil being uncute, either.)
,,,^..^,,,~
Everyone on the team is up bright and early the next morning: mostly out of jet lag, but partly out of anticipation. Today they start the real work, the job on which nearly everyone's research is going to build: developing a map of the ambient Rusakov concentration across town over time.
In other words, hundreds of painstaking measurements.
It isn't the most exciting part of Carlos' job, but it leads to the fun stuff, so he runs everyone through the details one more time. They have three cars, all secondhand but serviceable, and three sets of the measuring apparatus (a great credit to Harvard, because those things aren't cheap), so they'll be splitting into three teams. Start at the designated points up at the north end of town and work southward, taking measurements approximately every thousand feet. Record the time and the precise GPS location of each measurement. When you get to the sand wastes at the edge of town, move a thousand feet westward and repeat the process heading back up.
"Question," says Ichiro. He's a researcher with his name on two dozen articles and a reputation for being sort of cutthroat, although that might just be based on stereotypes about people with primate daemons, like his capuchin. "What if our tablets all die in the middle of work? Do we seriously not get to use pen and paper?"
"Don't forget to charge your tablets," says Carlos.
"Don't patronize me, Ramirez. Ordinaters crash. Accidents happen. We can't be a hundred percent sure there won't be unavoidable equipment failure."
He has a point. "All right. This afternoon we'll look for a toy store or craft shop and pick up some number stamps. Unless anybody passes a store during work, in which case, feel free to run in. Just don't forget to save the receipts so we can reimburse you."
Fleur and Brad take a detour to the darkroom to see how yesterday's photos have developed while the rest of the team calibrates the measuring apparatus. Each device looks a lot like the rover that Hispania Nova sent to Mars a few years back, if you removed the sophisticated all-terrain wheels and evidence-gathering claws. The titanium-manganese alloy that makes up the bulk of their frames is a brilliant silver.
Just as the devices are all displaying identical readings, Fleur comes back into the room. "Carlos? Can I have a minute?"
Carlos tells the team to go ahead and load up the vehicles, and follows his colleague through the chapel. Her red-bellied grackle daemon rides on her shoulder, flapping his feathers in agitation; Isaña trots alongside them. "What is it? Something wrong with the photos?"
"Hard to say," says Fleur. "We want a second opinion before we start spreading this around."
She might mean all four of them, but Carlos gets the impression she's only talking about herself and her daemon. Something's happened that they want a fellow professional, not just a student, to look at.
The lights are up in the darkroom and the photograms laid out across a table. A few control images of City Hall's interior design, then two group portraits, covering all the townspeople who wanted to be in them...all lit up with clouds of glittering golden Dust. It's present everywhere, but swirls most thickly around the humans and their daemons: Rusakov particles made visible.
Carlos picks up Isaña and sets her on the table so she can see.
There's an obvious anomaly in the first portrait: several of the humans have unusually high concentrations of Dust in front of their foreheads, so dense that they glow white at the center. One is the man in the cartoonishly racist feathered headdress. At Carlos' best guess he's from Muscovy or Lapland, but it looks like he's been committed to embodying Native stereotypes for a long time, if the wolf daemon next to him (also in a headdress!) is any indication.
Another is Cecil, whole face washed out from the brightness above it. None of the daemons around him are identifiably his. Neither can Carlos pin down a race or ethnicity for the radio host — he runs through half a dozen in his mind (Arab, Persian like Trish Hidge, Lascar, Katagalugan, one of the native tribes, mestizo like most of Carlos' family?) and realizes he's neatly circled the globe without hitting on anything he feels comfortable ruling in. Or ruling out.
Not that a person needs to have a simple, obvious ethnicity. Carlos himself, his paternal grandmother was Afro, but people tend not to pick up on it unless they catch him outside on a humid day. There's nothing wrong with Cecil being unidentifiably mixed. It's just, in context, it makes for one more potential descriptor left blank.
He realizes he's been looking at Cecil's face for a long time, and pulls his thoughts together. "Could be an exposure error. Does it show up on the negatives? We can get in touch with some of these people and see if they'll consent to be photographed again, for...."
"Carlos," says Fleur sharply. "Carlos, this one."
At last Carlos looks at the second portrait, and his breath catches.
On the right side of the group stand three people who are nothing but brightness. Head to foot, they shimmer with Dust, humanoid silhouettes of white. No visible daemons, but then, a small daemon riding in a pocket would be utterly obscured by the glow.
It's not just overexposure of the Asriel filter, either. Everyone else in the photo looks quite normal. Up to and including the woman standing next to them (who for the record is shortish, leaning on a cane though she looks about Carlos' age, and has a peregrine falcon daemon on her shoulder).
Carlos pulls off his glasses, polishes them with his sleeve, and puts them back on. "The visible-light version?" he asks faintly.
Brad hands it to him.
The normally-developed photogram shows all the townspeople as human eyes see them, neither illuminated nor obscured by the Rusakov particles floating invisibly around them. And on the right side of the group, it shows...nobody. All the individuals are the same up to the woman with the cane, after which the photo displays nothing but blank wall.
Hoax reports of this exact phenomenon are a dime a dozen. Carlos has seen all the classics. But even if he suspected his colleagues would falsify evidence, they never could have pulled off something this sophisticated at such short notice.
"Congratulations, Brad," he says, a grin breaking across his face. "Second day on your first-ever research posting, and you've already turned up solid evidence of angels."
,,,^..^,,,~
Night Vale is nowhere near done throwing surprises at them.
There's a spot in the town's new housing development where the Rusakov ratings plummet. Ichiro blames mechanical failure or human error, but Fleur takes some photos, and they corroborate the data in a startling way: one of the houses shows up as Dust-free. Which makes no sense. Even a wild stretch of desert would have some ambient Rusakov particles, and a house doesn't need to be occupied to attract more. There's plenty of Dust around the identical-looking homes on either side. It's as if this one, and the entire space it occupies, doesn't really exist in this world.
After talking it over with Isaña, Carlos decides to call the radio station. It seems like this is something the locals should be warned about.
It's Adriana and her iguana daemon who notice that the sun isn't setting at the expected time. They find timetables online, check and double-check where the GPS says they are, and sure enough, that night it's definitely ten minutes late.
This has nothing to do with their research. Carlos decides to call the station about it anyway. Then, on second thought, he decides to have Adriana call the station about it. Cecil hasn't hit on Carlos in person, but the infatuation gimmick is still happening on-air, and he doesn't want to seem like he's encouraging it.
Nobody's sure how to deal with the prospect of real live angels. Carlos tells the team he's open to ideas, but for the moment, he thinks their systemic data-gathering is the best way to pursue it. Find patterns in the places the Rusakov ratings spike, and you can predict where the angels are most likely to be.
They don't call the station about this. So it's probably a coincidence when Jordan and Jordan's tufted deer daemon, out picking up milk at the Raúl's, hear Cecil reminding listeners of the City Council's rules regarding angels. (Carlos is starting to realize that every place in town usually has the radio on, and usually tuned to Cecil's show, no matter what time of day it is.) Officially, angelic beings do not exist, and citizens are not supposed to acknowledge them, or, for some reason, know anything about their organizational hierarchy.
"Well," says Carlos, after Jordan has repeated Cecil's warnings. "Let's play it safe. No talking about the angel research in public, okay?" Shouldn't be hard. None of them want to jump the gun on something like this and end up sounding crazy, right?
"It sure is lucky you overheard that!" adds Gerald earnestly. "Maybe we should get a radio for the chapel. Try to keep up with this stuff on purpose."
"Not to mention, keep up with Carlos' love life," teases Henriette. Her marmot daemon snickers.
The next morning when they drive in to work, there's an old-fashioned radio sitting on the front steps. (None of them ordered it. Or at least, none of them will admit to ordering it.) It seems to work fine, so Carlos shrugs and says they might as well make use of the thing.
Of course, this means everybody gets to hear Cecil's continued references to "beautiful Carlos with his perfect hair and his perfectly adorable daemon." For the sake of helping everyone stay in line with Night Vale regulations, Carlos figures he can live with it.
,,,^..^,,,~
It's been a little more than a week when Carlos' first colleague goes MIA.
The team have started doing the readings in teams of two now, rotating who gets to stay at the chapel and work on other things. Carlos is out with Gerald, in the pickup truck because it's the only vehicle that can carry a musk ox, when he gets a frantic call from Emily. She's the grad student whose thesis Ichiro's been advising; Carlos doesn't know her very well yet, although the fact that her daemon is a black-tailed jackrabbit suggests she'll do well here in the desert. "Carlos, I can't find Ichiro! What do I do?"
Waving for Gerald to finish taking the readings on his own, Carlos sits on the curb next to their parking space, where Isaña can rest against his leg. "Back up, Emily. What do you mean, you can't find him?"
"I mean, we stopped at the Pinkberry because I had to go to the bathroom, and I was only in there for a minute, but now he's gone! He's not with the car, he's not in line, he's not anywhere. I asked some of the people getting froyo if they had seen him, but maybe I said it wrong, because they just shushed me."
Carlos hates to ask the obvious, but..."You're sure he's not in the men's room?"
"That's what I thought at first. Then after ten minutes of him not coming out, I checked. He's not there. And he isn't answering his phone...and I know he had it with him, because when I went in he was using it to show photos to some of the people in line, showing them the angels...."
The word gives Carlos a sinking feeling in his gut. "Stay with the car, all right?" he says, free hand spread across his daemon's armored back. "Stay with the equipment, and give Ichiro ten more minutes. Maybe he went next door, or something. I'll see if I can track him down, and if not, I'll call you back."
He hangs up, gets confirmation from Gerald that the readings are done and recorded, and they all climb back into the truck, Isaña on Carlos' lap. While they rumble down the road to the next observation point, Carlos phones the radio station.
The host picks up on the first ring. "Carlos~! It's so wonderful to hear from you!" he gushes in his normal enthusiastic Spanish. "How have you been? Are you settling in all right?"
"I'm not calling for personal reasons," blurts Carlos, trying to cut through the small talk. "I need some information. We have a team member that we've...lost track of. Is that something you could address on the show? Ask people to call in if they've seen him? He hasn't been gone long, so I assume we can't file a missing persons report yet...although if you can tell me anything about how to do that, it would also be a big help."
"Oh my." Cecil's voice has gone from chipper to solemn. "Well, I certainly wouldn't recommend a missing persons report. The Sheriff's office is so backed up on those, I think they're just starting to look into the ones from 1972. Who did you lose?"
Carlos gives a brief description of Ichiro, and explains that he was last seen at the Pinkberry talking about ángeles. Cecil informs him that angels do not exist. Gerald parks the truck.
"Well, the good news is, he's probably not too hurt," decides Cecil. His voice is warm, deep and soothing, and Carlos feels strangely reassured until Cecil continues, "What a relief! If one of you was dead already, I'd be out twenty dollars."
"Sorry, what?"
"Station management bet on one of you dying within two weeks of arrival!" explains Cecil, and wow, that does not make Carlos feel any better. "I had my money on you holding out for at least a month. Don't worry, I can help. You'd better come down to the station — I'll look everything up while you're on your way."Patrons exit an Olive Garden restaurant, a Darden restaurant brand, in Short Pump, Va. (Photo11: Steve Helber, AP)
Fixing Olive Garden won't be a rose garden. But it's certainly doable.
That's the conclusion of five restaurant industry consultants contacted by USA TODAY.
Late last week, Olive Garden's parent company, Darden Restaurants, lost a heated battle against the powerful investor group Starboard Value, which coaxed investors into replacing the restaurant giant's 12-person board of directors at Darden's annual meeting.
Darden owns several familiar casual dining brands — from LongHorn Steakhouse to Bahama Breeze to Seasons 52 — but Olive Garden, with more than 800 locations and $3.6 billion in annual sales. is the core brand that drives Darden.
Starboard executives had previously put out a lengthy report that criticized, in detail, the inner workings of Olive Garden, even blasting the chain for waste by putting too many of its famous — and free — hot bread sticks on customer's tables.
Industry analysts say Olive Garden's problems run deeper. They say the chain can improve by:
• Thinking like Millennials. The chain needs to evolve beyond its Baby Boomer base and appeal more to Millennials by losing its reputation as a place for all the bread sticks and salad you can eat and gaining a reputation as a place for fresh, healthier and more customized offerings, says Christopher Muller, hospitality professor at Boston University. "To save itself, Olive Garden needs to become young again," he says.
• Retraining staff. Olive Garden needs to "reinvent" the work done by staff, says Muller. It should pay more to attract top waiters and waitresses, but make sure they are extremely knowledgeable about the food and its preparation. "For the customer, everything in a restaurant happens within the last three feet (before the food is served)," Muller says.
• Becoming more authentic. Some time ago, Olive Garden reached back to its Tuscan roots to convince consumers it was authentically Italian. Much of that has since been lost. The chain needs to take the next step and bring the brick oven out into the dining room so customers can "see the experience," says David Stone, managing partner at New England Consulting Group.
• Upgrading the salad. This is crucial, says restaurant consultant Linda Lipsky. The iceberg lettuce that is the core of its salad bowl has little nutritional value. The chain needs to, at the very least, switch to Romaine lettuce, or, even better, she says, a combo of field greens and a Mesclun mix "would be a home run."
• Lightening the menu. Although Olive Garden recently added some lighter dinner and lunch entrees, it also needs to offer some lighter versions of quality appetizers, salads, soups and desserts, says Lipsky.
• Updating the image. Olive Garden needs a serious brand makeover, says restaurant industry consultant Howard Gordon, a former Cheesecake Factory marketing chief. To attract a younger, more vibrant customer, the chain needs to focus and enhance the brand message, he says.
• Offering better value. Tom Frank, a restaurant industry entrepreneur who helped to develop P.F. Chang's, says that based on Olive Garden's historical success, he's studied a lot more about what the chain's done right than wrong. But he checked in with a good buddy in Dallas, who used to frequent Olive Garden often, but has recently stopped going. That's because the prices went up, but the value didn't, says Nathan Carlson, who owns an e-commerce company in Burleson, Texas. "TGI Friday's changed their prices, too, but their food is better and now, I just stopped going to Olive Garden."
Shares of Darden fell 2.7% to $47.08 Monday. Piper Jaffray's Nicole Regan cut her price target to $50 from $55, saying she's looking for more "clarity on strategy among incoming leadership."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1w1E3AYStewart Rhodes
Oath Keepers
October 9, 2009
The above photo was submitted by an active duty Oath Keeper in Mosul Iraq, sporting an Oath Keepers tab. As his other tab and patch make clear, he is also a “Three Percenter.” (see below)
The photo was also posted over at the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog with this message:
Just thought the WRSA [Western Rifle Shooters Association] and the Sipsey Street boys might like to see what we are wearing while over here in Iraq. We... know what the deal is, and when the time comes (which it will), we know where we stand and continue to make preparations for it. Keep up the good work! Regards from Mosul, K7C
All I can say to that is Hooah! Thank you for your service, K7C, and for stepping up. Give our best regards to your brothers in arms, and let them know we have your six back home. If any of you need anything at all, from socks to helmets, to body armor, just ask and it will be provided. We need you to stay safe and come home healthy.
Oath Keepers here stateside, let your brothers on active duty in Iraq know how you feel. They do come here to read comments, count on that.
Note that the tab in the photo is not the same tab we sell here on our site (which is more of a police style tab). We are having military ACU style tabs with velcro made up, but they are not yet finished. That means the troops are having their own Oath Keeper tabs made up! And no, we did not put them up to it. They are doing this on their own initiative.
So take heart! The message of the oath and its obligations is spreading, and the Guardians of the Republic are listening and responding. And every time you act to spread the message, by whatever means, you cannot know what impact you will have, or how far it will reach. That’s why it’s so crucial that we each do what we can to reach, teach, and inspire as many active duty as possible about their obligation to defend the Constitution and their duty to refuse unlawful orders that would violate the rights of their fellow Americans.
Upcoming Outreach Effort to Put Tabs, DVD’s, and OK Handbooks in the Hands of Active Duty
[efoods]
Coincidentally, the tabs those troops are wearing are almost exactly like the tabs we are having made for our upcoming care package initiative, which will put an Oath Keeper tab, DVD, Oath Keepers handbook, copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and other outreach materials, into the hands of active duty deployed worldwide. We plan on launching that effort on Veteran’s Day, November 11 and continuing right on through Bill of Rights Day, December 15, with the goal of delivering all the care packages by Christmas. Now imagine what that will be like! Tens of thousands of our troops reached with the message and a tab. I will post more details very soon.
What’s a Three Percenter?
Now, seeing the other tab and patch in the photo, you may ask “what is a three percenter?” The narrowest definition is that three percenters are hard-line gun owners who are done backing up and will not comply with more infringements of their right to bear arms. A broader definition would be that they are hard-line Americans who are done backing up and will not comply with further infringement of any of their rights. It also alludes to the three percent of the colonists who took to the field against the King during the Revolution, and the estimation that at least three percent of modern Americans will actively fight, if it comes to it, to preserve liberty. Read this essay for more explanation.
Oath Keepers and Three Percenters are separate groups, but it is not a surprise to see people who consider themselves both an Oath Keeper and a Three Percenter. If you read the supplied links you will see why.
While we Oath Keepers have a specialized mission of outreach to current serving, focused on the oath and on refusing to obey unlawful orders, there’s lots of common ground and shared commitment to the Republic among both groups. Go here to read what the Sipsey Street blog has to say about that.
Oath Keepers, expect to see more of these tabs popping up soon, even before we begin our care package initiative. You are making a real difference. Keep up the good work!
For the Republic,
Stewart Rhodes1. The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark
He said my name over and over as he lifted me up, my legs curled around him, and laid me down beneath him on the high bed. I had never imagined that I was capable of wanton behaviour, but it was as if a dam within me had burst and we made love that day and night like two people starved, slowly suffused with more and more pleasure, exploring and devouring every inch of each other, so as not to miss one single possibility of passion.
2. Desert God by Wilbur Smith
Her hair was piled high, but when she shook her head it came cascading down in a glowing wave over her shoulders, and fell as far as her knees. This rippling curtain did not cover her breasts which thrust their way through it like living creatures. They were perfect rounds, white as mare's milk and tipped with ruby nipples that puckered as my gaze passed over them.
Her body was hairless. Her pudenda were also entirely devoid of hair. The tips of her inner lips protruded shyly from the vertical cleft. The sweet dew of feminine arousal glistened upon them.
3. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Whatever had held them apart, whatever had restrained their bodies before, was now gone. If the earth spun it faltered, if the wind blew it waited. Hands found flesh; flesh, flesh. He felt the improbable weight of her eyelash with his own; he kissed the slight, rose-coloured trench that remained from her knicker elastic, running around her belly like the equator line circling the world. As they lost themselves in the circumnavigation of each other, there came from nearby shrill shrieks that ended in a deeper howl.
Dorrigo looked up. A large dog stood at the top of the dune. Above blood-jagged drool, its slobbery mouth clutched a twitching fairy penguin.
4. From 'DD-MM-YY' in Things to Make and Break by May-Lan Tan
She wriggles down under the blankets and pulls off my jeans and skivvies. I lie back and her hair tickles my stomach, her mouth wrapping over me. I'd forgotten this about her: she has the smallest, hottest mouth, as if she's storing lava in her cheeks. I shut my eyes, holding her hair by the roots. My bones start to liquefy.
When I'm about to come, I flip her onto her back and take off her underwear. I roll her nipple on my tongue and rub her clit with my thumb until her lips get slippery. I glide my middle finger in and out, then fold her legs up and push in. God. It's like sticking your cock into the sun.
5. The Hormone Factory by Saskia Goldschmidt
She was moaning softly now, her breath coming faster. She tasted of apples. Her soft warm flesh was driving me crazy – that dish of delight my tongue was now lapping at frenziedly. Her suppressed cries were coming faster and faster. I unbuttoned my pants, pushing them down past my hips, and my beast, finally released from its cage, sprang up wildly. I started inching my way back up, continuing to stimulate her manually, until the beast found its way in. She opened her eyes and said softly, 'I'm still a virgin, please be careful.'
I kept myself quiet for a moment, kissed her and said, "I'll be very gentle, all right?"
Running her tongue over her lips she nodded; she was as hot as boiling water in a distillation flask, and it wasn't long before I was able to really get going. We both came at the same time. I stayed inside her for a few seconds, gazed at her, and smiled.
6. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
The girls entwined themselves lithely around Tsukuru. Kuro's breasts were full and soft. Shiro's were small, but her nipples were as hard as tiny round pebbles. Their pubic hair was as wet as a rain forest. Their breath mingled with his, becoming one, like currents from far away, secretly overlapping at the dark bottom of the sea.
These insistent caresses continued until Tsukuru was inside the vagina of one of the girls. It was Shiro. She straddled him, took hold of his rigid, erect penis, and deftly guided it inside her. His penis found its way with no resistance, as if swallowed up into an airless vacuum. She took a moment, gathering her breath, then began slowly rotating her torso, as if she were drawing a complex diagram in the air, all the while twisting her hips. Her long, straight black hair swung above him, sharply, like a whip.
7. The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh
She closes her eyes. Shakes her head.
"We can't," she begins. His mouth is on hers; his tongue is jabbing around her gums, the wrinkled roof of her mouth. He pulls away a second time.
"Look at me," he says.
She looks him in the eye. She reaches out and cups his balls and squeezes gently. Nathan closes his eyes, bites his lip. Then |
visit the set of a Hollywood blockbuster wasn’t enough, Johnson went on to sweeten the deal.
“Here’s the best part. When you come to my movie sets, it’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, dude,” Johnson said.
“You can eat all the sweets you want, and it’s all free! Yes! It’s free! Well, somebody’s paying for it, but you and Uncle DJ… we don’t pay.”
It’s just the latest social media splash Johnson has made while filming in Vancouver.
On Friday, he posted an Instagram video teasing fans who had waited until 1:15 a.m. to see him, by pretending to drive away and jokingly refusing to sign autographs.
READ MORE: ‘One of my favourite cities’: Dwayne Johnson shares Vancouver love with personal story
And earlier in August, he posted a video to Instagram lauding Vancouver as “one of my favourite cities,” while sharing an inspirational story about how getting cut from the CFL after a game in the city put him on the road to stardom.
Johnson is in Vancouver filming Skyscraper with Neve Campbell and Pablo Schreiber, which is expected to wrap in November.
IMDB describes the film, which is slated for a 2018 release, as a “hostage-action-thriller set in China.”St Kilda’s Nathan Freeman will next week head to a clinic in Germany in an attempt to finally overcome his ongoing hamstring issues.
Freeman will be accompanied by the club’s physiotherapist Andrew Wallis and St Kilda will be hoping that the treatment by a world-renowned soft tissue expert produces success similar to that achieved by Geelong’s Max Rooke.
The Cat was treated in Germany in 2009 and by the end of that season he was part of the premiership team.
Freeman had two injury-riddled years at Collingswood before a surprise move to St Kilda late in 2015. He had not played a game in 2014, and in 2015 played just four games in the Collingwood VFL side before the hamstring issue wiped out the rest of the season.
In 2016 he twice appeared in for St Kilda’s VFL affiliate Sandringham early in the year but was again sidelined for much of the season. He returned to the field to have four senior VFL games and two in the Sandringham development team.
Now 21 years old, Freeman was originally drafted by Collingwood from Dingley and Sandringham under-18s with Pick No.10 in the 2013 National Draft.Court Fully Upholds FCC's Net Neutrality Rules The United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has fully upheld the FCC's net neutrality rules, dismantling multiple lawsuits filed by broadband providers in the hopes of killing the rules -- and FCC authority over them. In the full ruling (pdf), the court sided with the FCC not only in terms of the rules, but fully supported the FCC's decision to classify ISPs as common carriers under the Communications Act.
That's of particular note as it puts the FCC on solid footing as it pursues other pro-consumer initiatives, including the agency's plan to craft new privacy rules for broadband subscribers. The court's ruling repeatedly shoots down AT&T, US Telecom, and industry-allied groups' claims across numerous fronts, including claims that the rules would demolish sector investment -- and claims that the rules should only be applied to fixed-line services. That the courts would issue a split ruling -- exempting wireless from the rules -- had been a concern of many net neutrality advocates. "Today's ruling is a victory for consumer and innovators who deserve unfettered access to the entire web, and it ensures the internet remains a platform for unparalleled innovation, free expression and economic growth," FCC boss Tom Wheeler said in a statement. "After a decade of debate and legal battles, today's ruling confirms the commission's ability to enforce the strongest possible internet protections -- both on fixed and mobile networks -- that will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future." Granted net neutrality isn't out of the woods yet, and frankly may never be. While not common for this type of appeal, the entire battle could still head to the Supreme Court. The next election could also result in a President eager to reshuffle the agency's staff, repopulating it with commissioners with an eye toward rolling back the rules and hamstringing numerous other FCC initiatives (like privacy rules, set top box reform, the bumped 25 Mbps classification of broadband, or the agency's assault on state protectionist laws hindering public/private broadband partnerships). As we've noted numerous times, the FCC's rules as written also don't specifically address potential anti-competitive issues like usage caps or "zero rating" (exempting some content from usage caps). That's something the FCC's expected to more fully address now that the agency's over-arching reclassification of ISPs as common carriers rests on more sound legal footing. Still, there's little doubt the ruling is a resounding win for those supporting net neutrality and a relatively open internet. »twitter.com/TomWheelerFC ··· 38223616
News Jump Tuesday Morning Links Monday Morning Links TGI Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links - Valentines Edition Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links ---------------------- this week last week most discussed
Most recommended from 82 comments
ke4pym
Premium Member
join:2004-07-24
Charlotte, NC ·Charter
40 recommendations ke4pym Premium Member HA HA! tired_runner
Premium Member
join:2000-08-25
New York 48.5 31.3
·callwithus
21 recommendations tired_runner Premium Member My vision probably fails me quote: The Commission also exercised its
statutory authority to forbear from applying many of Title IIs
provisions to broadband service and promulgated five rules to
promote internet openness. Three separate groups of
petitioners, consisting primarily of broadband providers and
their associations, challenge the Order, arguing that the
Commission lacks statutory authority to reclassify broadband
as a telecommunications service, that even if the Commission
has such authority its decision was arbitrary and capricious,
that the Commission impermissibly classified mobile
broadband as a commercial mobile service, that the
Commission impermissibly forbore from certain provisions of
Title II, and that some of the rules violate the First
Amendment. For the reasons set forth in this opinion, we
deny the petitions for review.....
.....Finally, we explained that although some record evidence
supported Verizons insistence that the order would have a\
detrimental effect on broadband deployment, other record
evidence suggested the opposite. Id. at 649. The case was
thus one where the available data do not settle a regulatory
issue and the agency must then exercise its judgment in
moving from the facts and probabilities on the record to a
policy conclusion. Holy shit.... I'm I seeing this right? Customer is for once winning here?? Holy shit.... I'm I seeing this right? Customer is for once winning here??
RandalIT
FTTB
Premium Member
join:2012-07-26
Calgary, AB 18 recommendations RandalIT Premium Member Take that! YES! I might be north of the border but this is excellent news!
Rob
Premium Member
join:2001-08-25
Miami, FL ·Comcast XFINITY
16 recommendations Rob Premium Member This pretty much sums it up... quote: We also determined that the Commission had adequately supported and explained its conclusion that, absent rules such as those set forth in the [2010 Open Internet Order], broadband providers represent[ed]a threat to Internet openness and could act in ways that would ultimately inhibit the speed and extent of future broadband deployment. Id.at 645.
For example, the Commission noted that broadband providers like AT&T and Time Warner have acknowledged that online video aggregators such as Netflix and Hulu compete directly with their own core video subscription service, id.(internal quotation marks omitted),and that, even absent direct competition, [b]roadband providers... have powerful incentives to accept fees from edge providers, either in return for excluding their competitors or for granting them prioritized access to end users, id.at 64546.
Importantly, moreover, the Commission found that broadband providers have the technical...ability to impose such restrictions, noting that there was little dispute that broadband providers have the technological ability to distinguish between and discriminate against certain types of Internet traffic. Id.at 646.
The Commission also convincingly detailed how broadband providers [gatekeeper] position in the market gives them the economic power to restrict edge-provider traffic and charge for the services they furnish edge providers. Id. Although the providers gatekeeper position would have brought them little benefit if end users could have easily switched providers, we [saw] no basis for questioning the Commissions conclusion that end users [were] unlikely to react in this fashion. Id.
The Commission detailed...thoroughly...the costs of switching, and found that many end users may have no option to switch, or at least face very limited options. Id.at 647.
Can't get any more specific here. My congrats to the FCC for a victory for the American people! Can't get any more specific here. My congrats to the FCC for a victory for the American people!
rebus9
join:2002-03-26
Tampa Bay 12 recommendations rebus9 Member I'm Stunned The courts actually ruled in favor of the PEOPLE, for once. I never thought that would happen and that ISPs, with the help of their lobbyists and pet politicians, would squeeze out another win for big corporate.
maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA ·AT&T FTTP
(Software) pfSense
6 recommendations maartena Premium Member Meanwhile, at the GOP headquarters.....
Meanwhile, at the GOP headquarters.....
WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX 6 recommendations WHT Member The Turf War Has Just Begun
Quoting from techdirt's dysfunction-junction dept...
»www.techdirt.com/article ··· er.shtml
Pathway #1 - The latest example is the House Appropriations Committee's 29-17 vote to approve an FCC appropriations bill (pdf), part of a larger Financial Services Bill determining the 2017 budgets for multiple agencies. The bill was passed last week with amendment language intended to hobble the FCC's net neutrality rules As we've noted a few times, there's really only two ways the telecom sector can successfully destroy U.S. net neutrality rules. Broadband providers could prevail on part or all of their multi-headed lawsuit against the FCC, a decision on which is expected any day now. [Note: The lawsuit failed as per this topic] Or the rules could be dismantled by the next President, who could repopulate the FCC with the usual assortment of revolving-door sector sycophants, reverting the agency back to its more consistent, historical role as a dumbly nodding enabler of broadband sector dysfunction. The Court of Appeals made a decision based on current law. This can all be reversed.Quoting from techdirt's dysfunction-junction dept...Pathway #1 -Pathway #2 -
TIGERON
join:2008-03-11
Boston, MA 5 recommendations TIGERON Member Now comes the issue of data caps AT&T, Comcast, Suddenlink, CenturyLink-the extortion days are coming to an end.
battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000 4 recommendations battleop Member It's not over... That's not how our legal system works. Some DC judge can't dismantle the lawsuits just like that. What he can do is rule in the FCC's favor forcing them to appeal to the next level. This guy isn't the US Supreme Court so he can't put a stop to it just like that. shmerl
join:2013-10-21 4 recommendations shmerl Member Good. What about the court case about repealing monopolistic state bans on municipal broadband? Wasn't there one hearing already? How did it go? DarkSithPro (banned)
join:2005-02-12
Tempe, AZ 2 recommendations DarkSithPro (banned) Member We have to keep those corrupt politicians from sneaking in earmarks Such a disingenuous practice.Looking for a powerful (and accurate) symbol for global warming? One of our oldest climate cliches -- the melting of the world's glaciers -- still packs a punch. And while we know that today's massive ice sheets are lesser versions of their former selves, and that sea levels have risen 69 millimeters over the past twenty years, a new study parses out just how much of that can be blamed on human activity. Turns out, it's most of it.
For the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Science, climate scientists in Austria used climate models and an international inventory of glacial measurements to determine how much of what we're seeing can be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels, and how much is just natural variation. What they found is that since the mid-19th century, humans have been responsible for about 25 percent of the observed melt. But when you look at what's happened just during the period from 1991 to 2010, that number jumps up to 69 percent.
Advertisement:
“Glaciers without human impacts would still be melting,” Ben Marzeion, the study's lead author, explained to Climate Central. But his results are testament to just how much we've hurried up that process.
“For me, the main thing is that humans really are influencing melting glaciers,” he added. “And that the influence is actually growing.”
It also means that we can look at images of that melting -- like those featured in the USGS Retreat Project -- and understand that we're witnessing a phenomenon our actions have helped to create. Climate skeptics often express doubt that humans could possibly be exerting such a strong influence on the planet. That we can and have isn't exactly news, but it's nonetheless a powerful reminder of what that influence looks like. For another reminder, check out some of the USGS' most striking before and after shots:
[slide_show id ="13749206"]If you've ever cringed when your bare toes have come into contact with a freezing floor first thing in the morning, you can probably appreciate how much difference a rug can make to a room. During wintertime, an extra layer of insulation on the floor can make a world of difference to your comfort level, and your heating bills. Here's how to put together a simple braided rag rug—if you have basic braiding and hand-sewing skills, you can probably make this in a single weekend.
What You’ll Need:
Long strips of fabric (old sheets and curtains are ideal, and far easier to work with than t-shirt scraps sewn together to make them longer)
Sewing scissors
A ruler
Pins
Safety pins
Sewing needle(s)
Thread in a color that’s neutral to the fabrics you’re working with
Braided rag rugs have been around for centuries, and with good cause: they’re an ideal use of upcycled fabric, and they’re so sturdy that they can last a really long time. Since you’ll likely be staring at yours for years to come, it’s important to use colors that you won’t mind staring at for the next few decades. You may be completely enamored by rainbows now, but you might not have the same passion for them down the line, so it may be best to either go with more neutral shades, or at the very least, a monochromatic palette.
You can often find some great deals on cloth at large fabric stores: if they only have a yard or two of a particular fabric left, they’ll often mark it down like crazy, and you can score some beautiful colors at 1/2 to 1/4 their original price. If you’re in love with a particular cloth, but they only have a single yard of it, get it anyway! You can sew the cut strips end-to-end to make one long one, and it’ll add a lovely vibrance to the carpet you’re creating.
Where Will It Go?
While you’re in the planning stages for your rug, think about where you’re going to place it. Its final resting place won’t just determine the colors you’ll want to use, but also its size and shape. If this is going in the kitchen, you might like a rectangular piece that’s just large enough to stand on when you’re at the stove or sink. If it’s for a child’s bedroom, maybe a round or oval shape would be preferable, so it can take up a significant amount of space in the room without interfering with furniture placement.
How to Create the Rug
Step 1:
Take a sharp pair of scissors and cut your fabric into long strips. Try to ensure that they’re of equal width and length, but if there are slight deviations, don’t worry about it. One of the easiest ways to do this is to take a ruler and cut little notches every inch or so along one edge of your fabric. If you have any loose strands fuzzing along the edges of your strips, just cut them away as you come across them. Once you have a nice, big pile of fabric strips, roll them into three equal-sized balls. To make very long, continuous strands, all you have to do is overlap ends and use a needle and thread to sew them together.
Step 2:
Grab an end from each of the three balls, overlap them, and sew them together. Take a safety pin and pin this edge to a couch, curtain, or other sturdy fabric item that you can use to secure it as you work. Keep the wound balls fairly close together (keeping them in a box on the floor seems to work), and braid the strips together, moving backward a bit as you work. As the braid gets longer, you can re-pin it to the base again and again so you don’t have to back out through your house and down the street to get it all done.
*Note: If you’re making a square or rectangular rug, you can just make a bunch of braids that are the same length, so all you have to do is sew them together side-by-side. For oval or circular rugs, you’ll need a very long, continuous braid so you can coil it.
Step 3: Time to Sew!
As mentioned, if you’re putting together a square or rectangle, you can just lay the braids side-by-side, pin them together, and then use a needle and thread to sew them together. For a round or oval rug, coil the end of the braid so it looks like a snail shell, pin that together and sew it to keep it all in place, and then just keep coiling and pinning, and then use that needle and thread to sew all the coils together. Tuck the last bit under the rug to stitch it in place, and you’re done! You now have a gorgeous, sturdy, upcycled rug that’ll keep your hooves warm for years to come.
Lead image © Martin Labar, all other images by the authorPiano bars are divisive. You either relish a kitschy evening spent participating in crowd-pleasing singalongs or you run far, far away the second you hear the opening bars of "Piano Man." So, the following news could be good or bad depending on where you stand:
A new location of Louie Louie's Piano Bar, a mini-chain with spots in Arlington and Lubbock, is on track to open in Deep Ellum in the fall. Owner-operator Ronnie Wilson says the new joint, planned for the corner of Elm and Good Latimer (2605 Elm Street, to be exact), would be the largest piano bar in Texas. Put it this way: With 6,000 square feet planned, there'd be more than enough room to join hands and sway to "Superstar" or "Hey Jude."
Wilson, a musician himself, launched the Louie Louie's brand with partner Joey Hamende seven years ago. He promises in the Deep Ellum location "the most elaborate sound and lighting system in the industry," with two floors and two full bars.
In addition to welcoming dueling pianists and bachelorette parties, Wilson says he is aiming for more elegant and serious performances in the new space courtesy of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts. Himself a 1978 graduate of the arts magnet school, he's invited students and staff to perform jazz and classical pieces at the bar when it opens. He's also proposing that one of the location's outer surfaces display a mural designed by students.A growing number of mainline Protestant churches in New England are calling upon their denominations to divest from fossil fuel companies in an effort to cast unlimited coal, oil, and gas production as immoral as well as environmentally unsustainable.
The churches’ assets, usually congregational endowments or staff pension funds, are a minuscule share of the titanic fossil fuel industry. But proponents say religious divestment could underscore the damage greenhouse gas emissions are wreaking on the planet and make it socially toxic for the companies to continue business as usual.
“If ever there has been a David and Goliath situation, this is it,” said the Rev. Jim Antal, minister and president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, whose board of directors voted last December to divest its assets from fossil fuel companies within five years, becoming the first religious body in the United States to do so.
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But Antal said he believes that in this case, as in the biblical story, David will prevail.
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“By divesting, the churches begin to reinject hope into a world that has been bereft of hope,” he said.
The Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Conference affirmed the board’s vote earlier this month, and 10 other regional conferences of the United Church of Christ in the United States have voted to divest in the past six months. The denomination’s national governing body will consider the question at its General Synod in Long Beach, Calif., this week, with Antal as its principal advocate; the idea earned an endorsement from national UCC leaders last week.
“The realities of climate change require prophetic and strategic action by people of faith seeking to be faithful to the everlasting covenant God has made with us, with every living creature and with all future generations,” the resolution says in part. “If fossil fuel companies simply fulfill their purpose, the earth will become inhospitable to life as we know it.”
The UCC resolution also notes that climate change is already doing the most harm to poor people, and to those living in the least developed countries.
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The New England Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted in favor of a similar resolution this month. Activists in both Episcopal dioceses in Massachusetts are urging church leaders to consider the idea. And a Presbyterian minister in the Back Bay is working with a group of Presbyterian environmentalists from around the country on a resolution that they hope their denomination will consider next summer. The Unitarian Universalist Association passed a nonbinding resolution at its General Assembly this month asking congregations to study divestment.
Earlier this month, the First Parish in Cambridge, a Unitarian Universalist church, voted to rid its $7.3 million endowment’s investment portfolio of fossil fuel holdings as well.
“We know we have a long way to go — the economy of the US is as entangled in fossil fuels today as the economy was in slavery in 1850,” said the Rev. Fred Small, senior minister of First Parish.
“I think the divestment movement is a kind of protest against the brokenness of our political process,” he said. “We are desperate for some tactic that will shift the conversation and compel our leaders to lead.”
Oil, coal and gas companies dismiss the divestment movement as ill-conceived grandstanding.
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Alan T. Jeffers, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, the largest investor-owned fossil fuel company in the world, said divestment would not help solve the problem of global warming. He said ExxonMobil has spent $2 billion in recent years on emission reduction initiatives and improvements in the efficiency of its operations.
And he said that a variety of technologies are being evaluated that could reduce emissions or remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, including carbon capture and storage, hybrid vehicles, solar power, and biofuels.
“We think those are more viable and concrete ways to manage climate change and risk than a symbolic measure that does nothing to reduce emissions,” he said.
He added that fossil fuel — which supplies 80 percent of the world’s energy needs and is used in the manufacturing of aspirin, fertilizer, toothpaste, and a host of other products — makes modern life possible.
“We take great objection to the characterization of the work we do as somehow immoral,” he said.
Religious advocates of divestment are building on a campaign led by author and activist Bill McKibben that has swept US colleges and universities in the last year. Hundreds of student groups have formed to lobby their administrations to divest, although only a few institutions have actually done so thus far.
In a widely circulated article in Rolling Stone magazine last summer that helped spark the movement, McKibben wrote that the known coal, oil, and gas reserves of the top 200 fossil fuel companies contain five times as much carbon as climate scientists say is safe to burn without causing the most disastrous effects of global warming.
McKibben and his allies argue that the same tactic that helped end apartheid in South Africa two decades ago could pressure companies like ExxonMobil to lessen or even abandon fossil fuel extraction. Some say divestment could also galvanize public support for significant policy changes to limit consumption, such as the imposition of a carbon tax.
McKibben, who was on a speaking tour in Australia this month, said in an e-mail that he considers religious institutions an important part of the divestment campaign, both because they have some money and because of their moral sensibility.
“If we’re called to love our neighbors, we’re not allowed to enrich ourselves by drowning our neighbors, making it hard for them to grow their crops, spreading sickness in their midst,” he said.
The Jewish community has been less active on the issue, in large part because divestment has become so closely associated with pro-Palestinian divestment campaigns against Israel, activists say.
But some groups are working to change that, including the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, which recently launched a campaign called Move our Money/Protect Our Planet. Rabbi Arthur Waskow, the center’s director, said the group planned to work with seminarians at the major rabbinical schools and with college students to encourage Jewish institutions to divest from fossil fuel companies and reinvest in renewable energy.
Some religious activists for responsible investment, however, question the tactic.
Sister Patricia A. Daly, a Dominican nun who has long led the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility’s dealings with ExxonMobil, said the center’s roughly 275 faith-based institutional investors are committed to using shareholder engagement to influence corporate policy.
Although she welcomed the new momentum McKibben’s campaign has brought to global warming activism, she said that over more than two decades, shareholder activists have helped persuade many major corporations to accept scientific understanding of global warming; to stop funding groups promoting climate change denial; to begin identifying the greenhouse gas emissions in the manufacturing and use of their products; and to find ways to cut those emissions.
“We are nowhere near where we need to be, but the faith community has had a profound role in bringing about this change,” she said.
She acknowledged, however, that the fossil fuel industry remains committed as ever to extracting and selling fossil fuel.
“We just stick with it. That is what we do,” she said. “As people of faith, we are in there for the long haul. It is not something you just give up on.”
Tim Brennan, treasurer of the Unitarian Universalist Association, a denomination that has long been a leader in faith-based social and political activism, worries that divestment could be expensive and complicated for funds like the association’s endowment, which holds about $160 million in assets from about 200 congregations.
“It took us something like a decade to put together a team of managers and the funds we are in now,” said Brennan. “If we were to divest, we would have to get rid of the whole structure of the endowment.”
Brennan also said the association’s endowment has outperformed one of the best-known fossil fuel-free funds “by a substantial amount” over the last 10 years.
Both the association’s investment committee, which oversees the denomination’s endowment, and its advisory committee on socially responsible investing have unanimously recommended against fossil fuel divestment.
But divestment proponents say their faith tells them it is wrong to profit from the industry.
“Just as I wouldn’t want to be making money off tobacco or military operations, I don’t want to be making money off fossil fuel,” said the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas of Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, a veteran climate activist. “It is one of the only businesses I can think of that, if successful in carrying out their business plan, they are going to essentially be killing life as it has evolved on this planet.”
The Rev. Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal priest and executive director of GreenFaith, an interreligious environmental organization based in New Jersey, says financial risk bolsters the moral power of religious divestment.
Many of the mainline Protestant churches discussing divestment are struggling, having seen significant declines in attendance over the last two generations.
“They are saying, ‘We’re not the institutions we were 40 and 50 years ago, but we are looking at this because we believe it is what God is calling us to do,’ ” Harper said.Babies zero to three days old seem to have the ability to relate space, time and numbers of objects.
The newborns were sensitive to changes in the variables represented by a moving colored bar and spoken phrases if the changes were all made in the same direction. The infants even came to expect the changes, looking longer at new lines on a computer screen when the variables all increased or they all decreased. But the youngsters had more difficulty relating the variables if they changed in opposite directions, researchers report March 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The results suggest that the human mind may be predisposed to relate space, time and numbers before acquiring language or having experiences to connect the concepts, the scientists say.Will we someday gawk at decommissioned satellites and space stations like they're Roman ruins?
Historian of astronomy Randall C. Brooks and conservationist Robert Barclay pose this futuristic thought experiment in their paper, "In Situ Preservation of Historic Spacecraft," published as part of the 2009 Handbook of Space Engineering, Archaeology, and Heritage and recently re-surfaced by The Atlantic. They posit that dead spacecraft and other "junk" could become traps for the curious space tourist. One our way to Mars or on holiday to Enceladus, we could make pit stops to tour the empty International Space Station or visit graveyard orbits like they're museum exhibits.
Making “the distinction between what’s junk and what’s not junk” will require a new kind of archeology, Alice Gorman (aka Dr. Spacejunk) told The Atlantic. Spacecraft gone dark due to planned obsolescence is NASA's standard definition, but sifting the worthy pieces from the 500,000 bits of debris hurtling through space at speeds up to 17,500 mph will be the real challenge. Maybe instead of deorbiting, Mir could have stayed in space, opened a food court and charged admission.CLOSE As a contract dispute between dockworkers and their employers continues, international trade is being crippled through West Coast seaports. The slowdown could result in higher coffee and beer prices. (Feb. 19) AP
Cargo trucks wait in line to enter the Port of Long Beach on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015, in Long Beach, Calif. Seaports on the West Coast that were all but shut over the weekend because of a contract dispute are reopening as the nation's top labor official tries to solve a stalemate between dockworkers and their employers that already has disrupted billions of dollars in U.S. international trade. (Photo11: Jae C. Hong, AP)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The nation's top labor official ratcheted up pressure on the two sides haggling over a new contract for dockworkers at West Coast seaports, telling them if they don't reach an agreement by Friday, they'll have to leave California and negotiate in Washington.
Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez gave that deadline Thursday to leaders of the dockworkers' union and a maritime association representing their employers.
Should the two sides not succeed, Perez said he will haul their leaders to the nation's capital next week, according to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who learned about the deadline in an evening call Perez had with mayors of major West Coast port cities.
Shifting the stage to "the shadow of the White House will place immense pressure on these parties to resolve an issue that is being underscored as being of national importance," Schaaf said.
Perez's office did not have immediate comment Thursday night. Neither did the bargaining parties, which are operating under a media blackout.
The talks in San Francisco began nine months ago, but broke down in recent weeks. Perez began overseeing negotiations Tuesday.
Since his arrival, the two sides appear more engaged than before. On Thursday, talks extended into the evening.
Meanwhile, billions of dollars of cargo sits on ships anchored outside the 29 ports. They cannot dock because of historically bad cargo bottlenecks at ports that handle about $1 trillion of trade annually, much of it with Asia.
Cargo already was moving slowly due to systemic problems in the supply chain. Starting this fall though, problems reached crisis levels, due both to dockworkers who slowed their work rate to comply fully with safety rules and partial worker lockouts by companies that load and unload ships.
Though the economic impact has been hardest on specific industries — U.S. produce and meat exporters, for example, and smaller importers of consumer goods — no less than Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warned Thursday that congestion at the ports could affect selection in the retail giant's stores.
From the start of his involvement, Perez stressed the urgency of resolving the big remaining difference whether to change the arbitration system that dockworkers and companies use to resolve workplace conflicts. Standard contract issues such as health care and wages are not a stumbling block.
Thursday also saw continued pressure from elected officials.
"Every day that goes by without a resolution only adds to the economic pain for the West Coast and the entire country. This cannot continue," California's two Democratic U.S. senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, wrote to the leaders of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association of employers. The association represents companies that own, load and unload massive ocean-going ships.
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Contact Justin Pritchard at http://twitter.com/lalanewsman.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1AbVsJWThis weekend, Floyd Mayweather will fight Manny Pacquiao in what will be the most highly-anticipated boxing match I can remember. It's so highly-anticipated that people who generally give no fucks about boxing — people like The Wife Person and I — will be making plans this week to not only watch the fight, but possibly (gasp!) pay to watch the fight.
Mayweather is generally regarded as perhaps the best pound-for-pound boxer ever. And, although this fight should have happened five years ago, defeating Pacquiao will cement this legacy. He is also known for being a shitty human being; having been accused of violence against women seven times in the last 13 years.
Yet, although I don't have a rooting interest in this fight, if forced to make a choice at gunpoint, I'd first be confused by this randomly violent act. (And I'd question the decision making process that led me to attend an event where this is happening.) And then I'd say that I'd rather see Mayweather win than Pacquiao. For two reasons:
1. I don't root for underdogs
You know those people who'll have no real interest in college basketball, but will watch Kentucky play Slippery Rock State in the tournament and instinctively hope for Slippery Rock State to pull off the upset? I am not one of those people. Unless I have a particular animus towards the favorite (basically, if it's the New England Patriots) or a particular relationship with the underdog, I do not gravitate towards underdogs. I don't feel a connection to them, I don't believe them winning makes for a "better" story, and I fucking hated Hoosiers. Just as I wanted to see Kentucky go undefeated, I'd like for Mayweather to retire with no losses. I appreciate sustained athletic greatness more than statistically improbable occurrences (upsets) because sustained greatness is rarer. And more fun (for me) to watch.
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2. Floyd Mayweather is Black
I am also Black. Manny Pacquiao is not Black. Therefore, although I don't have much of a rooting interest in this fight, if given the choice, I'd rather see Mayweather win than Pacquiao.
The importance of Mayweather's Blackness in my rooting interest cannot be overstated. Because if the roles were reversed — if Pacquiao was the undefeated champion and Mayweather the underdog finally getting his shot — I'd root for…Mayweather. All of that shit I just said about not rooting for underdogs? Kicked out the window. And pissed on while sitting in on the lawn. Blackness is the Big Joker. It's such a trump card that despite my knowledge of his propensity for being a shitty human being — and despite having no trouble discontinuing support for other celebrities exposed as being shitty human beings (hi, R. Kelly) — I know that when the bell rings Saturday night and the fight starts, I'm probably going to pull for the Black guy.
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This is where you say "Pacquiao is no angel, either. He's been investigated for income tax evasion, and he seems to have a ridiculously inflated opinion of his basketball talents. You're not breaking some moral law rooting for Mayweather just because he's Black."
And this is where I say you're missing the point. Manny Pacquiao could very well be an actual angel. Like, descended from Heaven with wings and harps and shit. And it would not matter. Pacquiao seems like a nice guy and Mayweather is a caricature of every caricature sports movie villain — there really isn't much difference between him and Tong Po. |
Alberta. Were he around to advise us, Borovoy would undoubtedly argue that the work of organization and activism should only be amplified after the election victory. Governments, Borovoy once wrote, will more often be convinced to take action because of “political tension than by logical syllogism.” Following that logic, pressure from left-wing Albertans is more important now than it was before the election. Pressure from right-wing Albertans has already begun with “chicken little” protests over raising the minimum wage.
Pressure certainly, but reason too. What can be reasonably demanded of our new government? How can we create a real ‘Alberta Advantage’ as opposed to the current advantages for the highly advantaged? Wouldn’t a meaningful advantage for Alberta be a healthy population with access to the finest medical services in the country? A first-class education system that helps people to live creative and fulfilling lives, with learning opportunities available to all who sought them not just those who could afford them? A province that refused to accept that some of us live in poverty? These advantages sound idealistic, but, in a jurisdiction with, by considerable margin, the highest median income in a rich country, they are not unreasonable.
Thinking that these goals will be attained with money alone, however, is only less naïve than the Wildrose party’s highly imaginative concept of improving public services by cutting them. For one thing, the fiscal constraints on the provincial government – albeit needlessly created by absurd public policy over the last 25 years – are nonetheless real and will take time to change. Second, to effect these changes, the government will need the support of a public that has been immersed in the propaganda of the right-wing media for decades. Though 40% of Albertans voted for the NDP, a widespread, populist suspicion of government in this province remains. The NDP, in promising not to institute a sales tax for evidently populist reasons, is clearly aware of this public attitude. Party insiders perhaps occasionally read the Calgary Sun.
There seem then to be two alternatives. The cautious course would be to govern in a way ideologically indistinguishable from the PCs and, presumably, make incremental changes (possibly over the next 43 years). The other option is to foster major innovative overhauls for the delivery of public services in this province. The risks here are substantial. Failures would be trumpeted in the media and could alienate voters. For long term success, however – which would mean re-convincing Albertans of the capacities of the public sphere – actual and substantial change must be delivered.
Change does not come easily to public institutions such as hospitals, universities, and school boards. Their complexity creates what appear to be bloated bureaucracies. Right-wingers suggest that the antidote is to mimic corporate sector organization. In fact the elaborate infrastructure of administration within the corporate sector is the current model for the public sector. This infrastructure is sorted according to byzantine, hierarchical charts akin to the family tree of a particularly enthusiastic genealogist. Usually at the bottom of such charts are the people who most directly provide public service: teachers, doctors, nurses, snow plow drivers, professors, janitors, etc. Middle branches have many and varied leaves: legal advisers, risk managers, human resources professionals, ergonomic experts, accountants, data analysts, communications experts, information technologists, consultants of various stripes, and managers of all sorts. Perched atop of the chart are the executive class – the presidents, vice-presidents, directors and so on. Perhaps in some cases the elevation provides these birds with a superior perspective; from this worm’s eye view, however, it seems that they instead fly at some remove from the fundamental business of the provision of public service, answerable only to boards floating even higher in the stratosphere, somewhere among the clouds.
The corporate model that we have applied to our public services is fundamentally designed to foster hierarchy and subordination, and, ultimately, to accrue benefits to those at the top. If mimicking the private sector is the goal, than it becomes entirely reasonable to believe that large salaries are required to recruit executives because, somehow, being a boss is just so damned difficult. It can appear to be a wise investment to spend scarce dollars on a marketing strategy to communicate the value of a “brand” instead of, say, focusing on actually being excellent. With a government (for decades) in a sensual tango with the corporate sector, it is little wonder that this mirroring has occurred. Perhaps with a government with different priorities it would be possible to try something different.
Certainly, many managers and administrators in the public sector work very hard and provide valuable service. As Charlie O’Brien, the Crownest Pass miners’ representative in the Alberta legislature, said of mine managers after the 1910 Bellevue mine disaster, “we do not hold the individual responsible for conditions that exist, but rather, that the conditions around us, our environment, is largely responsible.” In other words, the problem is systemic. Too often management acts as if the work force is made up of recalcitrant children, in need of policing and discipline. How would our public sector institutions function differently if administrators understood that their primary role was to provide front-line workers with the agency, the autonomy, and the authority to provide outstanding public service through the institutions in which they work? In sum, getting the hell out of the way.
This does not mean that administrators need to “consult” more with front line employees in the decision-making process. “Consultation” as it is currently practiced is a veneer that is no substitute for genuine collaboration. Flip charts are opened, opinions are voiced, ideas are recorded (whether they are considered or not is another question) and then, somewhere outside of the flip-chart room decisions are made by those who are accountable only to the quasi-corporate board up in cloud cuckoo land. Is it not possible that front-line workers could (outside of determining their own salaries) set institutional priorities and establish the budgetary parameters in which administrators would have to work rather than vice versa? “Bottom-up budgeting” in which workers and clients set the agenda would have a fundamentally different mindset than the top-down model that is currently practiced because the starting point and priority would be the point of delivery, the fundamental raison d’etre of the institution. It would require a relinquishment of control by senior administrators and a leap of faith that would be enormously difficult for them to take voluntarily.
For good reason, public sector administrators tend to be risk averse. No one, naturally, enjoys being sued or wants to be known to have presided over an enormous screw up. Unlike the pirates of the corporate world who, if gambles pay off, might commandeer even more obscene amounts of treasure, the captains of our public institutions prefer a calm sea, even a dead calm with no discernible forward momentum. There are many ideas for improving healthcare and education in Alberta that do not require increasing budgets, but do require administrators willing to accept that risk and failures are the required costs of innovations. It hardly seems intuitive that a provincial government should encourage risk-taking among leaders in the public sector, but how else will change occur? In our current media climate, when scandal and perpetual outrage seem to dominate the market, it will be extraordinarily difficult to chart such a course – but while the political capital of the government is high they must make every effort to convey to the public that successes will not be achieved without failures and those that never make mistakes are only those who never get anything done.
Albertans, so the opinion polls say, value public services. They can be convinced to pay for them, too, I suspect, if it is obvious that the goods are being delivered. And, they can be. Some seventy years ago in Saskatchewan, the Tommy Douglas administration was enormously ambitious, extremely effective, and economically responsible. In part this was because of public sector workers and leaders who believed that things could be done differently, done better, and that they were part of a movement that was going to change the world. They were naïve, perhaps, on the latter score, but their more modest successes led to real tangible gains for working people in Saskatchewan and, ultimately, Canada as a whole. Pressure must be kept on the new government to make similar gains here. And, the pressure is on all of us to help them do it.
Kirk Niergarth is a historian and teacher in Calgary.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Mining, rugby, choral singing, daffodils and rain - oh, the interminable rain.
All things which, at least to the undiscerning and easily pleased, have come to signify Wales - but there's so much more lying beneath that surface image of us as being a nation of sports-mad, vocally blessed colliery workers with wardrobes full of waterproofs.
Indeed, a new book by trivia king and author Christopher Winn, entitled I Never Knew That About Wales and released just in time for St David's Day, is about to lift the lid on a treasure trove of hitherto obscure and little-known delights and curios about this country of ours.
You'll never know how much you never knew unless you read on.
1. Menai Bridge in Anglesey - designed by Thomas Telford and opened on 30 January 1826 - was the first suspension bridge in the world constructed to take heavy traffic.
At the time it was built it was also longest bridge in world (measuring 1,265ft, with a 579ft span).
2. Near Abercraf lies Ogof Ffynnon Dddu - at 1,010ft deep, it’s the deepest cave in Britain.
With over 30 miles of passages, it’s also the third longest.
3. The entrance to the coach yard of the 15th century Ye Old Bulls Head Inn in Beaumaris is the largest simple hinged door in Britain (13ft high and 11ft wide).
4. The first official Welsh settler to America, Howell Powell, was from Brecon. He left for Virginia in 1642.
5. The Great Orme in Caernarfonshire has the longest articial ski slope in Britain - built in 1987, it’s nearly 1,000ft long.
6. Aside from being (at 58 letters) the longest place name in Europe and the longest valid, single-word internet domain name in the world, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was actually used as a secret password in the in the cult 1968 Jane Fonda movie Barbarella - writers of the the sci-fi kitsch fest had characters say it each time they wanted to gain entry to a secret resistance HQ.
7. The well at Llanwrtyd Wells in Powys is the most sulphurous in Wales - historian Theophilus Evans (1693 - 1767) once wrote of how the waters had cured his scurvy.
8. Craig-y-Nos Castle was home for 40 years of opera singer Adelina Patti in the late 1800s.
Born in Madrid, she once sang at the White House and was said to have reduced Abraham Lincoln and his wife to tears.
(Image: Matthew Horwood)
9. The village of Aberdaron lies further away from a railway station than anywhere else in England and Wales.
10. The oldest tree in Wales is the Llangernyw Yew in St Digain’s church yard, Llangernyw, near Conwy.
It’s approximately 4,000 years old.
11. Swallow Falls at Betws-y-coed is the most visited waterfall in Britain.
(Image: Mark Sykes/Flickr/Creative Commons)
Look: 41 breathtaking reasons DJ Sara Cox would have a dream holiday in Wales
12. In the graveyard of Strata Florida Abbey in Cardiganshire is a head stone which reads: “The left leg and part of the thigh of Henry Hughes, cooper, cut off and interr’d here, June 18 1756.
Hughes had lost the limb in a farming accident, but still managed to later emigrate to America, where the rest of him was eventually buried.
13. The loser of the last fatal duel to be fought in Wales, Thomas Heslop, is buried in the church yard at Llandyfriog, near Newcastle Emlyn.
The duel was apparently fought over ‘ungentlemanly remarks’ made about the barmaid at the town’s Salutation Inn in 1814.
14. The great glasshouse in the National Botanical Garden of Wales, Carmarthenshire, is the largest single-span glasshouse in the world, measuring 312ft in length and 180ft in width.
15. In the Tabernacle cemetary at Glanaman lies James Colton (1858-1936), a miner who married one of early 20th century’s most controversial characters - namely Russian-born feminist and anarchist Emma Goldman.
Described by future CIA boss J Edgar Hoover as “the most dangerous woman in America”, Colton offered to marry her so she could gain a UK passport after being thrown out of the US.
She was played by Maureen Stapleton in the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role.
16. Denbighshire’s John Rowlands was born in 1841 and, after being sent to the workhouse in St Asaph as a boy, ran off to sea aged 16.
He sailed to New Orleans as a cabin boy and was adopted by Henry Stanley, a merchant whose name he later took.
He fought on both sides of American Civil War, went on to become a journalist and, in 1869, was sent to Tanzania to look for elusive Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone - to whom he is said to have proffered the now infamous greeting, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”
17. It was in the gardens of 17th century Nantclwyd Hall, near Ruthin, that Major Walter Wingfield apparently invented lawn tennis in 1873.
He came up with the idea after playing with a new kind ball made from of India rubber which had been designed to bounce on grass.
Wingfield later drew up a set of rules and, in 1874, patented the game with the title ‘sphairistrike’.
18. In 1881 the first lager brewery in Britain was opened in Wrexham by German immigrants.
Wrexham Lager was, for a long time, the only draught beer serve on British ships, as, unlike other traditional beers, it was unaffected by the motion of the waves.
19. Rhos-on-sea has, in St Trillo’s, the smallest chapel in Britain, measuring only 11ft by 8ft and seating just six people.
20. Cardiff’s Coal Exchange (completed in 1886) was once where the price of the world’s coal was determined. In 1907 the globe’s first £1m deal was struck there.
Looks: It's the Coal Exchange in pictures
21. The Mumbles gets its name from the French word ‘mamelles’, meaning breasts, referring to two little islands located offshore.
(Image: David365/Flickr/Creative Commons)
22. The world’s first message ever sent by radio was transmitted by Guglielmo Marconi on May 11 1897, from Larvernock Point, south of Penarth to a mast on Flat Holm in the Bristolchannel - a grand distance of three miles.
The message read: “Are you ready?”
I Never Knew That About Wales is published by Ebury Press on February 26, priced £8.99
More proud to be Welsh fun stuff:
26 tweets that could only have been written by somebody Welsh
14 people who have absolutely nailed being Welsh
Watch this stunning video of the sun going down at Rhossili and immediately feel less stressed
24 cult Welsh landmarks that just wouldn't make sense anywhere else• Dyke hands back controversial gift from Brazilian Football Confederation • Fifa demanded return after he had wanted to auction item for charity
Fifa has announced that the Football Association chairman, Greg Dyke, has returned a £16,000 watch he received as a gift.
Dyke was given one of a limited edition of Parmigiani watches by the Brazilian FA during a Fifa congress meeting in São Paulo during the World Cup, one among 65 handed out in goodie bags.
When the watches were recalled, Dyke initially refused to hand his back having promised to donate it to the FA’s official charity partner, Breast Cancer Care, so that it could be auctioned. But, with the threat of sanctions if he did not return the watch, Fifa’s ethics committee has confirmed receipt of the item and has now closed proceedings on the matter.
“Mr Greg Dyke has returned the CBF Parmigiani watch,” read a Fifa statement. “As a consequence, the adjudicatory chamber of the Fifa ethics committee has decided to close the proceedings in respect of a possible breach of the Fifa code of ethics.”By F. William Engdahl
While the Obama Administration is preoccupied with keeping an increasingly unhappy EU firm on further economic sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Putin is busy outflanking an increasingly desperate Washington. Rather than fixate on the deliberate US and NATO provocations in Ukraine, Russia is deepening its strategic ties with the other Great Eurasian land-power, the Peoples’ Republic of China. Far from Putin going begging to Beijing for money, the two powers are weaving a closer strategic counterweight to an Anglo-American elite gone bonkers as its empire slips from its hands.
Unimportant are all diplomatic declarations by Chinese deputy Prime Ministers and others in recent weeks about how China so deeply respects the unique role of the United States as sole superpower. The reality on the ground speaks of a tectonic and well-thought-through change in the geopolitical world order is underway. Not only are Russia and China signing gigantic oil and gas agreements that insulate Russia from the negative effects of a potential loss of the EU energy markets in coming months.
Now the two powers have agreed on one of the world’s largest-ever infrastructure projects that will create huge new markets across Eurasia.
Transforming Eurasia
Russia and China have agreed to build a 7,000-kilometer high-speed rail link from Beijing to Moscow, at a cost of $242 billion, almost a quarter trillion dollars, according to the Beijing city government. The journey from Beijing to Moscow would take two days on a route passing through Kazakhstan. It will take take eight to 10 years to build. The rail project is the most ambitious rail infrastructure project in the Eurasian history, even surpassing the Trans-Siberian Railway project across Russia.
The new Beijing-Moscow highspeed rail corridor shown in yellow will transform the economic space of Eurasia
In October, 2014, China and Russia signed an agreement to build the first leg of the Beijing-Moscow high-speed rail link. That specified that Chinese firms and their Russian partners will construct a 770-km high-speed line connecting Moscow and Kazan, an important metropolis on the Volga River, en route to Beiing.
Then last November as US sanctions and the US-engineered oil price collapse added a new urgency to the project, Alexander Misharin, vice-president at state-owned OAO Russian Railways, said a section would cost $60 billion to reach Russia’s border, and would cut the Beijing-Moscow journey from five days to 30 hours. Misharin at the time compared the new transport network to the Suez Canal “in terms of scale and significance.” In reality, it has the potential to far exceed the Suez Canal as it serves to unify a high-speed transport network integration vast new markets across Eurasia from Beijing to Moscow that draw in some 4.4 billion of the world population.
A close look at the new railway map by German politicians might be useful, in order for them to graphically realize where the future of Germany and of the European Union lies. A hint: it doesn’t lie with a dying American debt-bloated economy that only offers Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment scams to Europe. From Berlin, the four horses atop the historic Brandenburg Gate are symbolically pointed east, to Moscow. Sanctions cut German industry from participation in one of the largest construction projects in the world history. One might ask why?
A Russian Renaissance?
The new Moscow-Beijing rail link is arguably the most significant infrastructure project in Eurasia since the brilliant Russian Railways Minister, later Finance Minister and finally Prime Minister, Count Sergei Witte, built the Trans-Siberian Railway to unify the vast expanse of Russia in the 1890’s.
Witte, a student of the long-forgotten German national economist, Friedrich List, realized the central role that rail and other infrastructure had played in the emergence of Germany after creation of the Customs Union in the 1830’s, and of the United States with the construction of the first Transcontinental Railway.
Witte’s economic policies were well on the way to create a genuine economic renaissance within the Russian Empire, with peasant reforms, economic development and other policies that won him the hatred of the City of London and Wall Street. Witte argued to Czar Nicholas II on the eve of World War I that it would be a disaster for Russia to join the British in going to war against Germany. He was right and, symbolically or not, died of a brain tumor just after the Czar was pulled by various intrigues to declare war on Germany.
That disastrous war a century ago, which led to the Western-financed Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, hindered the development of the enormous economic potentials of Russia and Eurasia until the present. That is now undergoing a transformation, a new kind of Russian revolution based on peace and economic stability, ironically under the pressures of the ongoing NATO war, financial and military, against Eurasian integration.
That Eurasian integration, formal via Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union and the Sino-Russian led Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as informal via an escalating series of bilateral economic and military cooperation agreements between the two Eurasian Great Powers—Russia and China—is precisely what NATO and the neo-conservative war-hawks of the Obama Administration desperately try to prevent in Ukraine and with the Obama military Asia Pivot against China. The problem, for those poor loveless souls in Washington and Wall Street, is that wars don’t work the way they used to. The world is getting fed up dying in the wars of the One Percent.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.
The statements, views, and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of EMerging Equity.
Courtesy of New Eastern Outlook (NEO)
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The New Eastern Outlook provides a detailed analysis on the current state of affairs in the Middle Eastern and Asian countries. For more information, please visit http://journal-neo.org/“…and one more for the road.”
I am sad to say that the most recent Speakeasy with Paul F. Tompkins interview posted is also the last one I’m doing. In an effort to devote more time, energy and focus to fewer projects, I’ve had to make some tough decisions, and one such decision was “retiring” from Speakeasy. As much as I’ve enjoyed doing the show for the last few years, I have had to face facts and realize that if you burn the candle at both ends, you will get so close to the middle of the candle that you can see the middle of the candle is no more candle. And they should not sell those double-wicked candles! They are, at best, IMPRACTICAL!
It was my pleasure and privilege to work with the astonishingly talented Speakeasy crew, who were unfailingly professional, cheerful and efficient. Special props to Martim Vian, director of photography for most of the series, who established our look back in the first episode with Ty Burrell, which was better than any web series had a right to expect.
I will miss interviewing people in this setting. I will miss having often intimate conversations with interesting artists. But most of all I will miss spending a day with my producer/director Rebekka Johnson, a wonderful human being and lovely friend. I hope we get to work together again someday.
Thanks to all of you who liked the show and told other people about it.Donald Trump has made a lot of promises, but as president, there's only so much he can do alone. That said, some of the things he could do as president would have a significant and immediate impact.
Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, told ATTN: that presidents have gained power over the past few decades by staffing the White House Counsel's Office and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department with lawyers who are able to find "creative interpretations" of laws to help the president accomplish their goals.
Gage Skidmore/Flickr - flickr.com
"If Trump wants to do something that seems to be inconsistent with serious readings of statutes, there may be a creative reinterpretation of the statute," Ackerman said.
"Any program that is already in existence, the president has a lot of power to change the rules, change the regulations, adjust how programs are administered," Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University told ATTN:. "We've seen President Obama try to do this with immigration, with climate change. President Bush did this with national security and counterterrorism."
Through executive orders and executive actions, Trump could very well alter the government in serious ways. We decided to look at some of the scarier things Trump could do on his first day in office or shortly after.
National Nuclear Security Administration/Wikimedia - wikimedia.org
1. Drop a Nuclear Bomb
Americans were rightfully unsettled when rumors emerged that Trump had shown interest in using nuclear weapons. Senior military officials have indicated it would not be difficult for Trump to use such weapons.
"The constraints on nuclear weapons are mostly those of history, by which I mean, people have understood ever since World War II what the horrors are of using nuclear weapons, and nobody's done it since," Harold Bruff, a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told ATTN:. "The one thing I think that might stop him is military orders have to be executed by, of course, the various generals and admirals and so on. It might be that an order would be refused. That's a bad insurance policy, is what I would say."
While it seems unlikely Trump would initiate a nuclear strike right after taking office, it's within the realm of possibility.
Gary Bembridge/Wikimedia - wikimedia.org
2. Roll Back Environmental Protections
Obama has used his executive power to attempt to confront climate change in many ways. From the Paris climate agreement to his executive orders that were meant to work against climate change, he's done a decent amount. That said, Donald Trump could quickly reverse that progress after taking office.
"He could start to weaken the enforcement of EPA rules and regulations on the environment, and he could either make it clear he doesn't want the EPA to be enforcing things aggressively or he could staff the EPA... with officials who would support his agenda," Zelizer said. Executive orders of past presidents can be reversed by a new president, so Trump could easily nullify many things Obama has done.
Pink out for Planned Parenthood/Wikimedia - wikimedia.org
3. Roll Back Abortion Rights
There have been many executive orders related to abortion rights, which a President Trump could undo. "He can cut back on various kinds of abortion-related executive orders that have been out there for many administrations," Bruff said.
For example, Obama used his executive power to remove a policy that blocked funding to international health groups that perform abortions.
Jonathan McIntosh/Wikimedia - wikimedia.org
4. Go After Immigrants
It's no secret that Trump is not a fan of illegal immigration, and as president, he could do a lot to go after undocumented people. "With immigration, he could staff [the INS] with officials who would be very aggressive," Zelizer said. Obama has also initiated executive orders that would protect immigrants, and Trump could reverse them.
Obama's 2014 executive order on immigration expanded certain protections from deportation to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens who have lived in the country for more than five years. It also expanded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, so that undocumented immigrants who have been in the country since at least 2010 could apply for deportation deferral.
M&R Glasgow/Wikimedia - wikimedia.org
5. Roll Back Gun Control
Earlier this year, Obama directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to more strictly enforce standing laws that require gun sellers to be licensed and to conduct background checks on their buyers. Donald Trump has supported the NRA and spoken at length about the need to expand gun access, so it seems likely he'd tighten the throttle on those regulations.
All of that said, if Trump tried to take his executive power too far, there is something that can be done. "If he pushes executive power too far and is doing it in unconstitutional ways, in illegal ways, Congress reserves the right to impeach," Zelizer said.Running programs automatically as service is not always an easy task. Some well known applications come with their own managers (e.g. unicorn, forever, pm2) but there is no unified approach across technologies.Custom build code often tend to come as a simple executable that runs in the foreground. And eventually init scripts simply ensure the services start but usually does not handle respawn.
Supervisord offers a solution to all the issues above and allows you to monitor and control processes. It lets you:
starts / stop / manage processes (long or short running) via unix or http xml/rpc requests
automatically or manually start processes
easily restart crashed programs
manages log files and file rotation (conveniency)
easily manages running user
perfect for custom processes that are not managed as services
side benefit: play very well with docker containers
Using Supervisord to manage deployments
We're taking the mixed approach of running standalone commands and executing custom code as a service. Our example will be a deployement process.
A deployment may involve more that simply restart a service, but require to install dependency, etc.
When dealing with multiple servers, the deployment workflow may be different due to the various services involved; having supervisord doing some unified interface is extremely convenient.
Supervisord setup
Supervisord is often available within the package manager of your distrib ( apt-get install supervisor ), if not you should be able to install it via pip as well ( pip install supervisor )
We're creating here a simple config file that will define 2 programs:
deploy that will not start automatically and will require to be executed manually ( autostart option),
that will not start automatically and will require to be executed manually ( option), app that is a random node.js application that will start automatically
One can simply run supervisorctl start deploy and get the deploy process starting. Within the deploy.sh script, one can put any of the required logic needed to deploy the code
e.g. supervisord config in /etc/supervisor/conf.d/my_app.conf
[program:deploy] command=/usr/local/bin/deploy.sh autostart=false [program:app] command=/usr/bin/node main.js directory=/opt/app environment="NODE_ENV=prod" user=nobody autostart=true
Deployment script
We're now preparing a simple script in /usr/local/bin/deploy.sh that will perform the operations required to deploy a new version of the code. Obviously this is only a sample! Be sure to set the execute flag or supervisord won't be able to execute it. ( chmod +x /usr/local/bin/deploy.sh )
#!/bin/bash ################## # Simple deploy script for a node app ################## WORKDIR=/opt/app cd $WORKDIR updated=$(git pull 2>/dev/null) if [ "$updated" == 'Already up-to-date.' ]; then # Nothing to do, exit cleanly exit 0 else # Code has been updated, rebuild the app npm install... other commands... # And eventually restart the app supervisorctl restart app fi
Enhancing the workflow with HTTP support for supervisord
The 2 code snippets above let you simply run the deployment operations and get the app restarted if necessary. But supervisord does not allow (yet) remote control.
This can then be very easily extended and triggered remotely by making use of the HTTP xml-rpc interface.
Enabling HTTP xml-rpc
Add the following to your supervisord config ( /etc/supervisor/conf.d/inet.conf )
[inet_http_server] port=*:9001 username=secret_user password={SHA}secret_hash
Where the secret_hash is calculated as such echo -n'secret_pass' | sha1sum | cut -f1 -d' '. You need then to prefix this hash with {SHA} as explained http://supervisord.org/configuration.html#inet-http-server-section-values
Best practices still recommend that:
you don't set the password in clear in the config you protect your host via iptables and only allow selected hosts to reach the HTTP interface of supervisord
Multi host support
Now that Supervisord allows remote connections, you can orchestrate several boxes at once very simply. Obviously more logic is needed to play nice with the sequence, but you get the point...
for host in host1 host2 host3; do supervisorctl -s http://$host:9001 -u secret_user -p secret_pass start deploy done
And supervisor is now available in devo.ps! Hurray
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DisqusButch Jones knows there are rumors circulating about possible suspensions ahead for his Tennessee football team. As of Friday evening, following Tennessee's 15th practice of fall camp, there was no truth to those rumors.
"You know, I know there's a lot of rumors out there, I don't comment on rumors," Jones said after Friday's practice on Haslam Field.
"If there is a suspension, I think we've been pretty consistent. We'll make an announcement and we'll talk about it."
(Want the latest scoop on Tennessee football and basketball? Make sure you're in the loop — take five seconds to sign up for our FREE Vols newsletter now!)
Tennessee kicks off its season against Georgia Tech on Sept. 4 at 8 p.m. (TV: ESPN) at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Jones was also asked on Friday if there were any suspensions among his player, would he wait until the week of the Georgia Tech camp to announce them.
"You know, I don't know," Jones said. "We'll see. But there are a lot of rumors out there."
Get THREE FREE MONTHS of VIP access to GoVols247Louis Speight is a champion wheelchair racer from Yorkshire with a new business and a vision to change the world. He talked to Jayne Dawson.
“IF you want your lover’s name tattooed on your false leg, we will be able to arrange that for you. I would think carefully though, because legs are expensive.”
Louis Speight is the man speaking, and behind the flippancy he has an aim: To change the world. The 24-year-old has a vision of a better society and, just to be clear, it really does involve inscribing prosthetics, should that be his client’s wish.
But it is much more than that. Louis, from Doncaster but based in Leeds, wants to completely alter the way we think about disabled people. And he wants to start by getting rid of the concept and, ultimately, the word “disabled”. “Disability as an idea is dead, it’s time we moved on,” he says.
Louis says flatly there is no such thing, and no such group of people. We are all equal individuals on a scale of needs. “There are eleven million people classified as disabled in the UK but really that’s not true. There are many more subtleties to what we are talking about than that. Some of us have additional needs to help us take our place as a useful member of society – and we all have changing needs as we go through life.”
Louis believes this passionately and he talks with insight, humour and knowledge about his subject.
You might, though, be thinking it’s all a bit airy-fairy. But Louis has put his money where his mouth is and has started an online business called EthosDisability.com. He launched it at the end of 2014 with the help of a £20,000 grant from the Bradford Business Enterprise Fund so it is fledgling, but already the signs are that it will succeed.
His mission is to provide the practical help and advice that underpins his vision of everyone being able to contribute to and enjoy the world.
Hence that tattooist. Louis is tracking down the best in the art of hydrographic dipping, which is how you would get your lover’s name on your false limb, or any other word or image you fancy.
After all, prosthetics have undergone a revolution, being transformed from the ugly and cumbersome into objects of sleek and high-tech beauty.
That’s just one tiny aspect. Ethos Disability is a two-tier service. Users can buy from the shop in the usual way, choosing from all manner of aids, equipment, services and even tailor-made holidays. To make sure he is selling the right things, Louis has reviewers working for him to provide feedback.
Or, at no extra cost a client can become a registered user and receive a bespoke service: They say what they are looking for and Ethos Disability will do the research for them.
Louis plans to build up a vital body of information this way that will allow them to undertake research for the NHS and local authorities. It’s working already, we get new registered users every day. “It’s all about information and drilling down into the specifics. A lot of work goes into living with a condition.”
In the midst of all this, there is no doubt there is money to be made. The disabled consumer market was worth £80bn in the UK in 2012, mainly because the right equipment is crucial. Take Louis’ wheelchair as an example.
It cost him £2,650, will last about four years, and is key to his life – and not just because it allows him to get around.
“Your chair is a statement, it is much more important than a car, your clothes, your shoes. If a chair fits you, you can sit tall, so you command some authority, and that stops people doing that thing of talking to the person with you, rather than you. And it’s important that it looks nice. The whole package is really important.”
So Louis’s chair has a back as low as can be which means he can turn in it freely. It also forces him to use his stomach and back muscles and allows him to dance in it when the mood takes him.
But a wheelchair is also a very personal item and what suits one person will not suit another. “If you have no stomach muscles, for instance, then my chair would not be the best fit for you, but we will recommend the right one.”
A clue to Louis’ character is that his chair |
1.0. Cancer was a disease of uncontrolled cellular growth. It was excessive and haphazard eventually damaging all the surrounding normal tissues. It happened in all different tissues of the body, and often spread to other parts. If the problem was too much growth, then the answer is to kill it. This gave us surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, still the basis of much of our cancer treatments today.
Chemotherapy, in its classic form is essentially a poison. The point was to kill fast growing cells slightly faster than you killed off normal cells. If you were lucky, you could kill the cancer before you killed the patient. Fast growing normal cells, like hair follicles and the lining of the stomach and intestines were collateral damage leading to the well known side effects of baldness and nausea/ vomitting commonly caused by chemotherapy drugs.
But this Cancer Paradigm 1.0 suffers from a fatal flaw. It did not answer the question of what was causing this uncontrolled cell growth. It did not identify the root cause, the ultimate cause. The treatments could only treat the proximal causes and therefore were less useful. Local diseases could be treated, but systemic disease could not.
We know that there are certain causes of cancer — smoking, viruses (HPV), and chemicals (soot, asbestos). But we didn’t know how these were related. Somehow these various diseases all caused excessive growth of cancerous cells. What the intermediary step was unknown.
So doctors did the best they could. They treated the excessive growth with relatively indiscriminate killing of cells that are growing quickly. And it worked for some cancers, but failed for the majority. Nevertheless, it was a step.
Cancer Paradigm 2.0
The next big event was Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA in 1953 and the subsequent discovery of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. This would usher in Cancer Paradigm 2.0 — Cancer as a genetic disease. Once again, we had a list of known causes of cancer and known excess growth of cancer cells. According to the somatic mutation theory (SMT) all of these varied diseases causes genetic mutations which caused the excess growth.
We were bravely trying to peel back the layers of the truth. In addition to all the treatments of Cancer Paradigm 1.0, this new cancer paradigm as a genetic disease led to new treatments. Gleevec for chronic myelogenous leukaemia and Herceptin for breast cancer are the most well known treatments and the most notorious successes of this paradigm. These are major advances in treatment for relatively minor diseases compared to the totality of cancer. This is not to downplay their benefits, but, as a whole, this paradigm has failed to live up to its hype.
Most cancers, as we’ve discussed before, have not been affected. Cancer mortality continues to increase. We know that cancers have many, many genetic mutations. The Cancer Genome Atlas proved that without a doubt. The problem was not finding the genetic mutations, the problem was we were finding too many mutations. Different mutations even within the same cancer. Despite huge investments of time, money and brainpower into this new genetic paradigm, we’ve not seen the commensurate benefits. The genetic defects were not the ultimate cause of the cancer — they were still only an intermediary step, a proximate cause. What we need to know is what is driving those mutations.
Cancer Paradigm 3.0
As the sun is setting on Cancer Paradigm 2.0, a new dawn breaks over Cancer Paradigm 3.0. Since the early 2010s, realization is slowly percolating that the genetic paradigm 2.0 is a dead end. The National Cancer Institute reached out beyond the usual cadre of researchers and funded other scientists to help think ‘beyond the box’. Cosmologist Paul Davies and astrobiologist Charley Lineweaver were eventually invited to develop the new atavistic paradigm of cancer.
This, too, may not be the ultimate cause we are searching for, but at a minimum, we can expect new treatments, and new discoveries. Stay tuned…Ok, so there are a few different emotions happening in readers right now. Some of you are super excited, expecting a rage-filled takedown of all the failures of the titanic organization, 2GGaming. That’s not what’s about to happen. Others of you have already hit that downvote button, assuming this is just another rant about some minor mistake on the part of a great organization, and someone trying to puff themselves up by taking on someone bigger and better respected for free views.
Honestly, that second one is sort of true. Writing about 2GG has always gotten the best response on this blog for anything Smash related, the only exception being my mock PGR. They are a huge name in the scene and probably the most well-respected organization. Writing about them at all brings out critics, defenders, and casual observers alike. It’s just smart content creation to write about what gets a response.
That said, today’s article has been sitting with me since the moment ARMS Saga was announced. I was hoping to be wrong about it, and have no reason to write this. I was hoping that 2GG would continue to be immune to any of my concerns, and unaffected by any of the mistakes I thought they were making with the 2GGC. However, from a marketing perspective, there are some serious issues with the concept and execution of ARMS Saga that I think are super useful. This is not going to be a critique of 2GG as an organization–they are amazing. Easily the best org in Smash 4. What we’ll be looking at today are specifically the ways in which ARMS Saga does not work as a concept, how 2GG failed in it’s execution, and how that has resulted in the lowest attendance of any saga yet this year.
Bad Numbers
The primary reason I’m writing this article is because of an indisputable fact. ARMS Saga has a surprisingly low turnout for a 2GGC event. At time of writing there are 200 entrants for Smash 4 singles. This is a whopping 131 entrants less than the second-lowest attendance this year, 331 at Midwest Mayhem Saga. Only 200 entrants for a circuit event with a pot bonus run by the best org in the game. To me, that’s a big deal, and a great learning opportunity. Further, there are only 50 people signed up for the ARMS bracket–the thing the whole event is designed around.
Quickly, there are obviously some other factors. The PGR concluded last month, some players might be taking July easy. EVO is the following week, some players are surely resting this week. If there were 300 entrants, I think this would be very reasonable. Sure, the entrants are lower because July is a tough month.
However, every month has been completely stacked this year. We’ve had Genesis, Dreamhacks, CEOs, Smash ‘n Splash–there have been huge conflicting events all year long. EVO is a big deal, but Smash has always been somewhat contentious with it. I don’t buy that EVO alone would cause that big a drop in entrants for a 2GG circuit event with a pot bonus. Factor in the compendium-funded players, and ARMS Saga has lower entrants than many C-tiers this year. That is not simply a fluke of scheduling, it speaks to a larger issue with the conceit of the event. That’s what we’re going to discuss and learn from today.
Initial Theme
Let’s start with the concept of this particular saga. For every other 2GG saga, the theme has been around an influential part of the community. The player sagas celebrated a top pro or high profile player. Civil War celebrated the rivalry between Ally and ZeRo. I wrote in detail about my issues with Greninja Saga, but at least that was based on a character people enjoy watching. Every saga was a celebration of Smash 4 and its community.
Then we have ARMS Saga. If you just saw the name, you would have no way of knowing that this event had anything to do with Smash 4. ARMS Saga does not celebrate the Smash community in any way with it’s core theme. Yes, they found a way to shoehorn Smash in with the Little Mac compendium, but no one can argue that this is core to the theme of ARMS Saga. There’s no Little Mac round robin, there’s no exhibition that celebrates a character or persona in Smash. This is just a Smash 4 tournament with an ARMS side event.
When you’re designing a theme for your event, you have to consider your audience. Smash players are notoriously loyal to their game. We consistently discuss breaking away from multi-game tournaments. We value our grassroots origin and our community above all else. Most smashers don’t even play or watch other fighting games. When creating your theme, make sure it runs parallel to the values and desires of your core audience.
Pre-Planning
Now, I’ve considered the natural response to the failure of theme. “But Trent, 2GG said they’d only do ARMS Saga if they got enough retweets. The community clearly wanted this saga, so it must be a good idea.”
There are a couple issues with this. First, planning anything based on a Twitter poll or request for retweets is fundamentally flawed from a marketing perspective. It is very easy to hit that retweet button. A retweet doesn’t even necessarily mean you agree with something or want it to happen. It could just mean you want to share in the discussion, or let your followers see something that’s happening in social media today.
Second, even if every retweet was someone agreeing that they want to see an ARMS Saga, that doesn’t make it a good idea. As we said above, this takes away from the tradition of the sagas. It makes the curse clunky and less hype. It doesn’t fit as part of Smash 4’s first and only major circuit. It’s not the responsibility of your followers to consider tradition, longevity, and brand consistency. Twitter is for immediate emotional response. “Hey ARMS is in the news, 2GG is cool. I like both these things, so I’ll hit retweet.” That’s the level of engagement you get in a Twitter-based decision. Further, everyone loves 2GG, myself included. Their sagas are consistently awesome. I hate the theme as a Smash 4 circuit event, but even I was curious to see how 2GG executed on it. Getting a thousand retweets on an idea doesn’t give you any indiction of how that will translate to actual attendance. It just shows that a thousand people like 2GG, have heard of ARMS, and are intrigued by the concept.
This is now two events in a row that were left up to forces outside of 2GG’s control when deciding their theme. First Greninja Saga was decided by a round robin after community voting. Then ARMS Saga was what appears to be a fun idea that they floated on Twitter and then suddenly had to build an event around. The theme is so important. Civil War earned the highest view numbers of any Smash 4-only event in history based on the strength of its theme. Nairo Saga was incredible and a perfect celebration of Nairo because it had time to be properly planned.
At the start of the year, I would have bet money that 2GG had the theme for every saga already planned out. Now, I’m genuinely concerned that they don’t yet know what the theme for August Saga or September Saga will be. If I were on the marketing team, I would be freaking out. The theme for your event determines everything else. It informs the marketing, the banners, the overlays, the schedule, the side events–everything. When you’re waiting for the community to decide your theme, you put everything else on hold. Nothing can be done in advance because you don’t even know what you’re doing yet.
Note: I wrote this article yesterday, but had to come back in and add an edit here. 2GG just literally asked last night on Twitter for saga ideas, and said they may run a poll and use one of them for August Saga. It’s already July 6th!! That is not enough time to plan a themed event! It is wonderful that they want to involve the community, but have them choose the saga three months from now, not three weeks! This is very clear evidence that 2GG has not been learning from the planning and marketing issues of the last two sagas. If the numbers for August Saga shoot back up well over 300, then maybe I’m just a senseless critic; but either way no one should be looking at this as an example of how to run an event. I genuinely believe that if they took their pre-planning more seriously, we’d see more sagas closer to 500 entrants instead of hovering in the 300s.
Pre-planning is so important, and it’s one of the points where 2GG usually shines as the example for other orgs. It is only at these last two events where that has fallen short. When you’re planning an event, make sure your theme is determined a few months in advance. That way you have the time to confirm relevant players, design exhibitions and graphics, and put together a comprehensive marketing strategy.
Execution
So we have a hastily-designed theme that doesn’t fit the tradition of the sagas. All of this is recoverable if we can still execute well on the theme. Let’s examine how 2GG executed.
On the ARMS side, we have the side event. As mentioned before, the ARMS side bracket has a total of 50 entrants right now. That’s with a $1000 pot bonus for that bracket. Clearly just having a side bracket with a pot bonus was not enough to draw entrants. If this is going to be ARMS Saga, and the whole event is designed around arms, there needs to be more exhibition around the game. There should be side events for the mini-games within ARMS. Maybe do a cosplay contest with an ARMS focus. Put the main stage in a boxing ring. If ARMS is in the name, the reason someone should be attending is because this is a celebration of Nintendo’s new fighting game. This is Smash’s newborn baby brother, and we’re welcoming it into our community. That’s how you sell an ARMS Saga as part of a Smash event. Instead, there’s just a side bracket.
Then, we have the actual Smash side of the theme–the compendium. The compendiums have been awesome and well themed this year. Civil War was about the whole world of Smash joining the fight, so the compendium brought in the best from around the world. Greninja Saga had to bring the frogs. Nairo Saga was brilliant for funding players who regularly appear on Nairo’s stream during his Naifu Wars.
For ARMS Saga, there’s no good way to use the compendiums. There are no ARMS characters in the game. Still, 2GG is about the community, it’s one of the things that makes them so well-respected. They still wanted to use this opportunity to fly in some unique players. The best they could do was the Little Macs. They also have boxing gloves, so it totally works! However, this saga is not about them at all. They are an afterthought, not a feature. They are the tangential connection. This was the least successful player compendium to date for the sagas, when talking about the theme-specific players.
I will say that I like bringing in the winner of the Nintendo VS event to defend his ARMS title, however, the rest of the compendium just does not excite. I still have major issues with the Japan Squad goal. It has nothing to do with the Saga, and it features a player who is sponsored by 2GG. Champ has said before that if Komo attends an event, they bring out Ranai for doubles, so it doesn’t make sense that either player is on the compendium, a compendium that again has nothing to do with the theme of the saga. In fact, this one likely took away from getting more of the Little Macs funded, who were at least tangentially related to the theme.
When you execute well on a theme, everything fits. Look at Civil War or Nairo Saga–every side event, every compendium, every everything worked within the theme of the event. When they plan it out and are on top of their game, no one touches 2GG in terms of theme. They have reaped all the benefits of their excellence in event design, it makes it all the more puzzling that they are suddenly falling short in this area.
So in closing, what’s the point of this article? Why can’t I leave 2GG alone? It’s because to me, 2GG represents everything that frustrates me about Smash. They are an amazing, passionate organization. They love this community and have done more for it than almost anyone. However, they are also wasting so much potential. Smash 4 is still insignificant in the grand scheme of esports. This isn’t because Nintendo won’t support us. It has nothing to do with a lack of money in the scene. It has everything to do with our organizers and community leaders not capitalizing on their full potential. 2GG could be a goliath in esports if they wanted. They have so many resources at their disposal, and fewer hurdles in front of them than any other Smash 4 TO. To whom much has been given, much should be expected.
I’m new to Smash, but I’m already not satisfied with where we are. I want every TO and top player making a full-time living wage for their work. I want the PGStats crew getting compensated for their work. I want the cinematography of Civil War at every significant event. I want a real circuit, a governing body, and a clear global competitive structure. All of these things can happen, but only if we as fans expect more. It only works if we keep pushing our best and brightest to be better. 2GG is the cornerstone of Smash 4. Our success rises and falls with them. They got us to a new height with Civil War, but have not maintained that momentum. I want more, and I want our best organization to be leading the charge, to not get complacent, and to always press forward. I want it to be ok for us as a community to demand excellence. Our leaders are equal to the task. We know they can deliver. It’s up to us to give them the drive to keep climbing.
AdvertisementsQueensland's coal seam gas industry now has more than 7000 wells. Credit:Saah Moles, Wilderness Society US regulators this year lifted their estimate of America's annual emissions of methane – the potent gas that makes up most of natural gas – by 13 per cent with leakage from the oil and gas industry largely blamed. While methane clouds have been detected near gasfields, it took a huge leak starting last October from a gas storage site near Los Angeles to grab media attention. Thousands were forced to evacuate their homes, with the leak venting almost 100,000 tonnes of methane over 16 weeks. Methane has as much as 100 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and the release was akin to adding 500,000 cars to the roads during the event, local media reported. While Australia's gas boom, particularly for coal seam gas, is of a much smaller scale than the US shale bonanza, many of the issues are identical. These include the lack of baseline studies to distinguish the impacts of drilling and fracking of wells from natural methane seepage.
CSG has its protesters now – before fugitive emissions are known. Credit:Andrew Quilty Closer to the surface The uncertainties around CSG in particular "are really very large", Professor Rayner said. "It's closer to the surface [than conventional gas]... it's more dispersed, and the chances for something to go wrong are much higher," he said. The industry says just 0.02 per cent of the gas developed vents as methane to the atmosphere. Credit:Glenn Hunt
CSG operators such as Santos, Origin Energy and BG Group, say they have every incentive to limit leakage of the lucrative commodity from their lattice of CSG wells and pipelines. According to Santos' environmental impact statement (EIS) for its $25 billion Gladstone LNG project, fugitive emissions would only be 0.1 per cent for the CSG gasfields themselves. Total emissions were just 20,000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent last year across its entire business. LNG exports were worth $16.9 billion in 2014-15, APPEA says. Credit:Stephanie Kelly "Santos meets all its regulatory requirements around emissions," a spokesman said. "We monitor, independently audit and make this data publically available in our annual Sustainability Report." But a spokesman for Queensland's Department of Environment and Heritage Protection conceded that Santos's EIS "does not include provisions for a formal auditing process". However, the proponent is required "to document its proposed operations and how these will impact on the environment, which the department uses to "to inform the relevant permit conditions and requirements".
Chinchilla community members said the Condamine River has never bubbled with such frequency before CGS mining came to the region. Credit:Max Phillips Even without unanticipated leakage, the surge in CNG and its processing for export markets is set to play a big role in a forecast jump Queensland's greenhouse gas emissions. The government estimates that the state's emissions will surge 35 per cent between 2014 and 2030 even as Australia is aiming to cut them. Migratory emissions Researchers, though, say little is understood about how drilling and fracking may create conditions for leakage through the soil long after a well has been decommissioned. With more than 7000 CSG wells in Australia and headed towards tens of thousands, "the long-term, post-production fugitive [emissions] are certainly a sleeper issue," Professor Rayner said.
Dimitri Lafleur, a former geoscientist at energy giant Shell, said the industry has little idea of how much "migratory emissions" are making it to the surface. "With such a vast network and thousands of wells, it is very difficult to come up with an accurate number if you don't monitor on a regular basis," said Mr Lafleur, a PhD student at Melbourne University under Professor Rayner. "And given it is not a requirement to minimise fugitive emissions, why would you?" Mr Lafleur is part of a team commissioned by The Australia Institute to examine how big a problem such leakage is and how it might affect Australia's national emissions targets given the industry's rapid expansion. "No one knows what the baseline emissions are – from natural emissions from seeps, bores, for example – but I believe there is a chance that these emissions will become larger, with continued water extraction," he said. Companies remove huge amounts of water to get to the gas, depressurising the aquifers in the process.
'Social licence issue' Political opposition to CSG has come mostly from the Greens. Labor and the Coalition generally back developments in Queensland, but have mixed views of the sector in other states such as Victoria and NSW. NSW Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham became an internet sensation when he set the Condamine River in Queensland alight in April. Deputy Greens leader Larissa Waters, along with independent senator Gleenn Lazaus, has helped lead senate inquiries into CSG. "Coal seam gas and fracking wells and pipes leak like a sieve, and they could be just as bad for the climate as burning coal," Greens Senator Larissa Waters said. "As disused gas wells age and concrete casings break down, we risk further leaks for decades to come," she said. "No studies have systematically examined the deteriorations of old wells."
Fairfax Media sought comment from Environment Minister Greg Hunt and his Labor counterpart, Mark Butler. Gas produces as much as 77 per cent more energy per molecule of CO2 than coal. Professor Rayner said emissions issues with CSG had the potential to diminish public support for an industry already dogged with problems such as salt disposal, access to farmers' lands and interference with ground water. If CSG is not cleaner than coal, "the whole social licence issue is brought into question," Professor Rayner said. "It becomes quite serious."Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti's capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.
The country has faced more than its fair share of catastrophes. Hundreds died in Port-au-Prince in an earthquake back in June 1770, and the huge earthquake of 7 May 1842 may have killed 10,000 in the northern city of Cap Haitien alone. Hurricanes batter the island on a regular basis, mostly recently in 2004 and again in 2008; the storms of September 2008 flooded the town of Gonaïves and swept away much of its flimsy infrastructure, killing more than a thousand people and destroying many thousands of homes. The full scale of the destruction resulting from this earthquake may not become clear for several weeks. Even minimal repairs will take years to complete, and the long-term impact is incalculable.
What is already all too clear, however, is the fact that this impact will be the result of an even longer-term history of deliberate impoverishment and disempowerment. Haiti is routinely described as the "poorest country in the western hemisphere". This poverty is the direct legacy of perhaps the most brutal system of colonial exploitation in world history, compounded by decades of systematic postcolonial oppression.
The noble "international community" which is currently scrambling to send its "humanitarian aid" to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.
Aristide's own government (elected by some 75% of the electorate) was the latest victim of such interference, when it was overthrown by an internationally sponsored coup in 2004 that killed several thousand people and left much of the population smouldering in resentment. The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilisation and pacification force in the country.
Haiti is now a country where, according to the best available study, around 75% of the population "lives on less than $2 per day, and 56% – four and a half million people – live on less than $1 per day". Decades of neoliberal "adjustment" and neo-imperial intervention have robbed its government of any significant capacity to invest in its people or to regulate its economy. Punitive international trade and financial arrangements ensure that such destitution and impotence will remain a structural fact of Haitian life for the foreseeable future.
It is this poverty and powerlessness that account for the full scale of the horror in Port-au-Prince today. Since the late 1970s, relentless neoliberal assault on Haiti's agrarian economy has forced tens of thousands of small farmers into overcrowded urban slums. Although there are no reliable statistics, hundreds of thousands of Port-au-Prince residents now live in desperately sub-standard informal housing, often perched precariously on the side of deforested ravines. The selection of the people living in such places and conditions is itself no more "natural" or accidental than the extent of the injuries they have suffered.
As Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, points out: "Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses." Meanwhile the city's basic infrastructure – running water, electricity, roads, etc – remains woefully inadequate, often non-existent. The government's ability to mobilise any sort of disaster relief is next to nil.
The international community has been effectively ruling Haiti since the 2004 coup. The same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose. Proposals to divert some of this "investment" towards poverty reduction or agrarian development have been blocked, in keeping with the long-term patterns that continue to shape the distribution of international "aid".
The same storms that killed so many in 2008 hit Cuba just as hard but killed only four people. Cuba has escaped the worst effects of neoliberal "reform", and its government retains a capacity to defend its people from disaster. If we are serious about helping Haiti through this latest crisis then we should take this comparative point on board. Along with sending emergency relief, we should ask what we can do to facilitate the self-empowerment of Haiti's people and public institutions. If we are serious about helping we need to stop trying to control Haiti's government, to pacify its citizens, and to exploit its economy. And then we need to start paying for at least some of the damage we've already done.His fight for others
I think what differentiates him is that he fought for others, especially the ones who couldn't fight their own battle. It is all thanks to the position of Mars & Rahu in the sign of Libra. And not only are Mars & Rahu in Libra but also in the house of career (10th house).
Mars & Rahu are perhaps the most aggressive and passionate planets and together with Libra, they make a lethal combination. Because even though Libra is a peaceful sign; it has a strong sense of justice. Injustice or discrimination brought out the warrior in him. He fought to abolish slavery for the large part of his political career.
"Do you know he shares the Mars in Libra placement with Mahatama Gandhi? If you have this placement too then I am sure you are fighting somewhere for the rights of others"Gooda hits out at Aboriginal infighting
Updated
Social justice commissioner Mick Gooda says bullying, gossiping, jealousy and family feuding have become "a cancer" in Indigenous communities across Australia.
Mr Gooda will use tonight's annual Eddie Mabo lecture at James Cook University in Cairns to warn that Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders will not move forward if they keep attacking each other in family feuds, native title disputes and battles to control Indigenous organisations.
He says the unhealthy behaviour has become embedded in Indigenous communities.
"I am talking about a concept of what we call lateral violence - it is about how we treat each other in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders community, in our families, and in our organisations," he said.
"It goes to behaviours like gossiping, backstabbing, name-calling and jealously and constantly attacking each other in the media.
"And people just think, 'Oh well, we don't have to do anything, because this mob is just fighting among themselves'."
Mr Gooda says he wants to rebuild strong and respectful Indigenous communities in Australia.
"I think it is oppression, where we feel disempowered and therefore we have got to lash out at each other," he said.
"I don't want to name places, but I guess most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people I know would know exactly what I am talking about and can point to instances where it happens in their own communities.
"We are really good at fighting but not really good at resolving conflict."
Topics: indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-society, cairns-4870, rockhampton-4700, australia, qld, nt
First postedWhen the royal commission sat for the final time, the church was not there. Senior figures were not present. It fell to a layperson to attend, to Francis Sullivan, whose self-critical stewardship of the Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council has been the only redemption of an institution built on the preaching of forgiveness.
“I think it would have been a real sign of solidarity with the victims if we’d had some members of the hierarchy and senior figures from the church here,” Sullivan said afterwards. “One can only assume they didn’t feel comfortable coming here.”
The absence is terrible and unsurprising. The recurrent theme in five years of testimony at this commission has been abandonment. It is an abandonment of children and of responsibility.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse investigated more than 4000 institutions. There were tens of thousands of victims. The 21-volume report from the commission was delivered to the governor-general on Friday.
The commission’s chair, Justice Peter McClellan, confirmed the greatest number of abusers were hidden in Catholic institutions. This surprised no one. In hearing after hearing, an image emerged of an organisation that not only housed but enabled abuse. Paedophiles were shielded. Victims were disbelieved. Elaborate legal structures were built to deny rights.
When the commission was announced, George Pell’s mind was fevered with conspiracy. He fumed and preened and blamed the press for a “persistent campaign” against the Catholic Church. He insisted Catholics were not the “only cab on the rank”. Later, on the stand, he compared the church’s culpability to a trucking company whose driver “picks up some lady and then molests her”.
The commission’s final report is an extraordinary document, extraordinary for the fact it exists. A redress scheme must now be set up. The thousands of lives hurt by institutional deviancy must not be left without repair. Other changes must be made and are among the recommendations.
But there is one larger change that must also take place. It is not called for in the official documents, but it is urgent and necessary. The church must no longer be allowed to interfere with public life.
In the course of this commission, the church has shown itself to disregard ordinary laws. Frequently, it operated in conflict with them. At the same time, it attempted to control the moral life of the country.
The church maintains undue influence over laws governing euthanasia and abortion and stem-cell research. It collects undue privilege from the tax system and for its shadow systems of education and healthcare. It holds obscene rights to discriminate against minorities. All of this must change.
Politics kowtows to faith, even as faith plays a diminished role in life. As church pews have emptied, the corridors of power have filled with lobbying priests and other defenders of clerical privilege. But this commission proves what has always been true: the church has no claim to superiority and no right to dictate to others. That lesson must be learnt. Our country would be better for it.
The Catholic Church was absent at the final hearing. It was never there for the children it abused, and this last day was no different. Malcolm Turnbull was present, though. He left through a side door.Locks are tricky; I thought today I’d talk a bit about some of the pitfalls of locking that you might not have seen before.
As you probably know, the lock statement in C# is a syntactic sugar for the use of a monitor, so I’ll use the terms “lock” and “monitor” somewhat interchangeably. A monitor is an oddly-named data structure that gives you two basic operations: “enter” the monitor and “exit” the monitor. The fabulous thing about a monitor is that only one thread can enter a given monitor at a time; if threads alpha and beta both attempt to enter a monitor then only one wins the race; the other blocks at least until the winner exits. After the winner exits the monitor, the loser gets another chance to attempt to acquire the monitor; of course, there might be another race.
I give an example of a very very simple implementation of a monitor here, though of course you would never do this yourself; you’d just use the built-in support in the framework and the C# language.
The lock(x) { body } statement in C# is a syntactic sugar for
bool lockWasTaken = false; var temp = x; try { Monitor.Enter(temp, ref lockWasTaken); { body } } finally { if (lockWasTaken) Monitor.Exit(temp); }
The details of how the operating system implements (or fails to implement!) a system whereby every thread gets access eventually in some sort of fair manner is beyond the scope of what I want to talk about today. Rather, I want to talk about an advanced use of monitors. In addition to the straightforward “enter, do some work, exit” mechanism, monitors also provide a mechanism for temporarily exiting a monitor in the middle of a lock! That is, for the workflow:
block until I enter the monitor
do some work
temporarily exit the monitor until something happens on another thread that I care about
when the thing I care about happens, block until the monitor can be entered again
do some work
exit the monitor
Under what circumstances would we want to do this? The classic example is that we have a not-threadsafe finite-size queue of jobs to perform, and two threads called the producer and the consumer. The consumer thread sits there in a loop attempting to remove items from the queue so that the job can be performed. The producer thread runs around looking for work to do and puts it on the queue. Our code must have the following characteristics:
if the consumer is attempting to modify the queue then an attempt by the producer to modify the queue must block
and similarly vice versa
if the producer is attempting to put work onto a full queue, it must block and allow the consumer to clear out space
if the consumer is attempting to take work off of an empty queue, it must block and allow the producer to find more work
To achieve these goals, a monitor provides three operations in addition to enter and exit:
“wait” causes the monitor to exit and puts the current thread to sleep. More specifically, it causes a thread to enter the “wait state”.
“notify” — which, oddly enough is called Pulse in.NET — allows the thread which is currently in the monitor to place a single waiting thread (of the runtime’s choice) in the “ready” state. A ready thread is still blocked, but it is marked as ready to enter the monitor when the monitor becomes available. (There is no guarantee that it will do so; again, it might be racing against other threads.)
in.NET — allows the thread which is currently in the monitor to place a single waiting thread (of the runtime’s choice) in the “ready” state. A ready thread is still blocked, but it is marked as ready to enter the monitor when the monitor becomes available. (There is no guarantee that it will do so; again, it might be racing against other threads.) “notify all” pulses every thread in the wait state |
im chaabeneIs there any activity that helps people of all languages discover new curse words more than assembling Ikea furniture?
Well, put on your bike helmet and get out the swear jar: The Swedish-based home furnishings company is getting into the bicycle business.
Meet the Folkvänlig, an $1,000 electric bicycle that it hopes will get more commuters out of their cars in cities worldwide. The product's name is derived from the Swedish words for people and friendly.
Here are the details (or "detaljernas"):
The frame, which holds the rechargeable lithium-ion battery, is aluminum; the front fork is steel.
The electronic "pedal assist," which gives riders a boost when they start to run out of gas, er, steam, is powered by a 250-watt motor with a range of 37 to 45 miles. (Not bad at all.)
A Shimano transmission provides six different "driving" modes.
It's 60 pounds, which is typical for e-assist bikes.
All of the bike's parts (including the mysterious extra piece that will inevitably be left over after you've assembled it) come with a two-year warranty.
There are models for men and women.
Ikea Family members get a $150 discount.
The bike is not available at the Portland Ikea store. Yet.
Ikea is gradually rolling out the bike, starting with two stores in Vienna, Austria, and expects to expand to other test markets in the coming months.
Given Portland's reputation as the nation's most bike-friendly city, it seems to be just a matter of time before Folkvänlig arrives in the Rose City.
Another reason the Portland seems like a given for a mainstream e-bike: The city wants 25 percent of all trips to be made on bikes by 2030.
Rising oil prices, environmental concerns and an aging population point to the rise of the eBike. A lot of Portlanders say they would love to ditch their cars, if only the transition to bicycling wasn't so extreme.
Folkvänlig could be a game changer.
Still, if you want your local Ikea store to carry the Folkvänlig, it wouldn't hurt the company an email.
In many ways, the idea of Ikea selling its own bicycle isn't that crazy. In fact, the company has been recognized as one of the world's greenest corporations, building wind farms, growing more wood than it harvests for products and even selling solar panels at some stores.
Of course, Ikea's announcement doesn't answer two questions: Will assembly require a finger-chewing hex wrench? And can you carry a Klippan loveseat on it?
-- Joseph RoseIs it safe to use Bitcoin? How will you know? Who will legitimize it?
Not the noted economist Nouriel Roubini, who, as it was reported over the weekend, said some very pessimistic things like "…Bitcoin isn't a currency. It is (by the way) a Ponzi game and a conduit for criminal/illegal activities. And it isn't safe given the hacking of it." Roubini declared Bitcoin to be a “lousy" store of value.
It’s not even Marc Andreesen, the well-known venture capitalist and investor in Coinbase (a service that enables easier payments using Bitcoin), although he’s trying. In a January opinion piece for the New York Times Andreesen offered a number of reasons why Bitcoin matters, and sees the technology evolving in this way: “Eventually mainstream products, companies and industries emerge to commercialize it; its effects become profound; and later, many people wonder why its powerful promise wasn’t more obvious from the start. What technology am I talking about? Personal computers in 1975, the Internet in 1993, and – I believe – Bitcoin in 2014.”
It’s not Ben Bernanke either, although he sees “promise.” It’s definitely not the government of China. Nor is it Dorian S. Nakamoto, the guy who purportedly invented Bitcoin but denies it. Could it be companies like Overstock.com, Virgin Galactic and WordPress who have already accepted the currency? Or others who have bought in like Tesla Motors, OKCupid and Reddit? What about eBay?
Nope. These are not the ones who will legitimize Bitcoin. These are not the ones who will convince you to start using it. There is, in my opinion, only one person who can do that. And he has been the silent elephant in the room. You already know who that is. So let me quickly remind you of his influence.
Jeff Bezos runs the world’s largest online retailer, with revenues greater than the GDP’s of more than half of the world’s countries. He’s the one.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency tailor-made for online retailing which means it’s tailor-made for Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos is marketer, a salesman, a PR genius. He brought the world one-click shopping, free shipping, e-books and the image of thousands of drones magically flying in the sky to seamlessly deliver Amazon.com products to its happy customers. Bitcoin is a PR person’s dream. It is interesting. It is news. And Bezos loves making news, particularly when the news promotes Amazon.com.
He’s trying to make some news with Amazon’s own digital currency. Ever heard of it? It’s called Coins and since its launch in May, it’s available exclusively for Kindle Fire tablets (and now Android devices) and can be used to buy certain items on the retailer’s site. The company seems to be happy with the results so far: “Since the launch of Amazon Coins, we've been amazed by the number of customers using Coins, as well as how many Coins they're spending on apps and games," Amazon Appstore Vice President Mike George said in a statement. "Because customers can earn Coins when they buy apps in Amazon's Appstore, and because they can buy Coins themselves at up to a 10 percent discount, customers love the extra value they get when shopping in our Appstore."
This is nice. But it’s not that interesting. Or very newsworthy. It’s no Bitcoin.
And that’s what perplexes me. Jeff Bezos is the one guy who is all about service, all about making things as easy as possible for his customers, all about creating the best online retail experience at the lowest possible cost. He’s a salesman and a lover of great PR. Bitcoin brings this all together. Which is why Amazon.com’s embrace of it seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Sure, there will be challenges. But the benefits, as Andreesen noted, are enormous. The connection is natural. The future is not hard to predict.
If done the right way and supported by the kind of infrastructure that Amazon can provide, Bitcoin would quickly be legitimized as an easy way to pay for anything online. It would expand the opportunities for the company’s resellers. And most importantly it’s virtual, fee-less and not subject to tax. It will enable all of Amazon.com’s customers’ to save money. It can do the kinds of things that “Coin” cannot because there are no limits to its market. And the community, the infrastructure and (take note Mr. Bezos), the media attention is already in place and waiting for the next big thing.
Of course, Jeff Bezos knows all about Bitcoin. He has his reasons for waiting. I’m just hoping he eventually gets behind it. Backing Bitcoin would be great for the thousands of small businesses, like mine, who are tentative about it and would like to use it more. But most importantly, Amazon.com’s backing would provide a much needed stamp of credibility. It would encourage millions to start using it. And that seems like the kind of news that even Jeff Bezos couldn’t resist.
Besides Forbes, Gene Marks writes daily for The New York Times and weekly for Inc.com.Best Answer: Here is a "short" list of the Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs. I am sure one of the JW's can provide you with a more exhaustive list:
1. God is not a Trinity; the doctrine is inspired by the Devil
2. Jesus is not to be worshiped or prayed to-he is only an angel (a.k.a. Michael the archangel)
3. Jesus Christ is a "created being," who at one time did not exist
4. The Holy Spirit is not a person but is "God's active force" i.e. gravity, electricity etc.
5. Heaven is hope only for select Jehovah's Witnesses. The majority of JWs hope to live on "paradise earth"
6. Heaven is limited only to 144,000 Jehovah's Witnesses. There are only 9,105 alive today (2012 figures)
7. Jehovah's Witnesses are the only "true Christians." All churches and denominations are considered "false religion"
8. There is no Hell or eternal judgment ("Hell" is simply the grave)
9. There is no life after death except for the 144,000 Jehovah's Witnesses
10. Salvation is earned only by being a loyal Jehovah's Witness
11. Jesus second coming happened invisibly and secretly in 1914
12. The "first resurrection" occurred in 1918
13. Jesus did not rise from the dead bodily but as a spirit being
14. Jesus was equal to Adam (just a man)
15. Jesus could have sinned and failed in his mission
16. Jesus was not born the savior but became the savior at his baptism
17. God is not omnipresent
18. God is not omniscient
19. JWs are not sure of their salvation
20. All earthly governments are controlled by the Devil
21. The Holy Spirit is only available to select Jehovah's Witnesses
22. They are forbidden to serve in the military
23. They are forbidden to buy Girl Scout cookies
30. They are forbidden to celebrate any holidays (Christmas, Easter, etc.)
31. They are forbidden to celebrate their birthday
32. They are forbidden to run for or hold a political office
33. They are forbidden to vote in any political campaign
34. They are forbidden to serve on a jury
35. They are forbidden to own or wear a cross
36. They are forbidden to speak to former members who are shunned (disfellowshipped)
37. They are forbidden to accept Christmas gifts
38. They are forbidden to purchase Christian products (books, music, plaques, pictures etc.)
39. They are forbidden to read Christian literature
40. They are forbidden to have friends who are not Jehovah's Witnesses
41. They are forbidden to marry a non-Jehovah's Witness
42. They are forbidden to salute the flag, stand for the national anthem, or own a flag
43. They are forbidden to say "God bless you" when someone sneezes.
44. They are forbidden to have a tattoo
45. They are forbidden to use pet foods made with blood or blood products
46. They are forbidden to donate blood or their organs
47. They are forbidden to read any anti-Jehovah's Witness material
48. They are forbidden to interpret the Bible without Watchtower literature to explain it
49. They are forbidden to wear any Christian jewelry
50. They are forbidden to support their country and be patriotic
51. They are forbidden to be involved in martial arts, boxing or wrestling
52. They are forbidden to join any clubs or sports teams
53. They are forbidden to participate in a school play
54. They are forbidden to use any tobacco products
55. They are forbidden to attend the funeral of an ex-Jehovah's Witness
56. They are forbidden to say "good luck"
57. They are forbidden to be a police officer
58. Women are forbidden pray in the presence of men without a hat or head covering
59. They are forbidden to play chess
60. They are forbidden to wear jade jewelry
61. They must not own wind-chimes (they are for chasing away evil spirits)
62. They must read and study Watchtower literature regularly
63. They must go from door to door weekly to gain converts
64. They must attend five meetings per week
65. Only officially approved sexual practices are allowed in marriage
66. Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Halls have no windows
67. If they witness another Jehovah's Witness breaking the rules they must report them to the elders to be interrogated
68. They are forbidden to take a blood transfusion
69. Men are forbidden wear beards
70. The Watchtower organization is God's prophet on earth today
71. Women must submit to the authority of Watchtower elders
72. They must forgo vacations to attend annual conventions
73. They must study Watchtower books at least six months before they can be baptized
74. Before baptism, one must answer over 80 Bible questions with Scripture references in front of a panel of elders
75. Most of The Book of Revelation applies to the Jehovah's Witnesses
76. They cannot celebrate Mothers or Fathers day (it may produce pride)
77. Kingdom Halls cannot have pews for seating
78. They must appear before a Judicial Committee if they are caught breaking Watchtower rules (Secret files are kept on all members which record these meetings-these files are kept in New York and are never destroyed)
Source(s):
Poopyface McGee · 7 years ago
21 Thumbs up 50 Thumbs down Report AbuseFrom Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
Dome Ace Tucker (Japanese: ドームスーパースター ヒース Dome Superstar Heath) is the Frontier Brain and commissioner of the Battle Frontier's Battle Dome. He is the only character in the games to have the Trainer class Dome Ace (Japanese: ドームスーパースター Dome Superstar).
In the games
Tucker is a superstar and enjoys the sound of a crowd chanting his name. He prefaces battles with narcissistic comments, and if he loses, turns over the Tactics Symbol to the Trainer's Frontier Pass.
Pokémon
Tucker uses two of these Pokémon when battling the player.
Silver Symbol challenge
Gold Symbol challenge
Quotes
Initial battle
Before battle
"Ahahah! Do you hear it? This crowd! They're all itching to see our match! Ahahah! I bet you're twitching all over from the tension of getting to battle me! But don't worry about a thing! I'm the no. 1 star of the Battle Dome! I, Tucker the Dome Ace, will bathe you in a brilliant glow! Your strategy! Let's see it! The final match! <player> versus the Dome Ace, Tucker! Let the battle begin!"
Being defeated
"Grr... What the..."
If the player is defeated
"Ahahaha! Aren't you embarrassed? Everyone's watching!"
After being defeated
"Rules are rules! Let me see your Frontier Pass." ".................. I sorely underestimate you. I won't make the same mistake next time..."
Rematch
Before battle
"Ah... The pummeling roar of the crowd... Their furnace-like heat of excitement... This is a wonderful place... To the crowd, I am the Dome Ace... I represent their hopes and dreams... I must never fade from their sight... I must burn! Brighter and more brilliant! I must light all the gather here! I will unleash all the power that I possess! Right here and now! The final match! <player> versus the Dome Ace, Tucker! Let the battle begin!"
Being defeated
"Ahahaha! You're inspiring!"
If the player is defeated
"My Dome Ace title isn't just for show!"
After being defeated
"You're genuinely fantastic! Never before! I haven't ever lost in the times I've had to unleash my power. Yes, quite fantastic! Your Frontier Pass, please?" "You're strong above all, you have a unique charm! In you, I see a definite potential for a superstar like me. I will very much look forward to our next encounter!"
Sprites
Sprite from
Emerald Overworld sprite from
Emerald
In the anime
Tucker appeared in Tactics Theatrics!!, where he was shown to be a superstar with a large fan base. He is undoubtedly the most famous Kanto Frontier Brain and he likes to make his battles entertaining for spectators. His battles are known to attract the attention of the media, and a press conference is held whenever he has a new challenger.
Tucker's challenge consists of a Double Battle, which takes place in the Battle Dome in front of a large audience. Automatically before the battle, he allows challengers to send in their Pokémon from other locations. Even though Ash was allowed to do this, he still used two Pokémon from his current party, Corphish and Swellow.
Tucker faced off against Ash with his Arcanine and Swampert. Although he was defeated by Ash, he held a strong start for a while with his Pokémon's teamwork and strategy, including the use of the "Fusion of Fire and Water", an advanced combination which involved trapping the opponents in a water and fire whirlwind. Throughout the battle, May was very impressed by Tucker's showmanship skills and noted that his battle with Ash had some similarities to a Contest Battle. She later adapted his combination technique into her own battling style during the Kanto Grand Festival.
He reappeared in flashbacks in Channeling the Battle Zone! and A Pyramiding Rage!.
Pokémon
This listing is of Tucker's known Pokémon in the anime:
Voice actors
In the manga
In the Pokémon Adventures manga
Tucker in Pokémon Adventures
History
Tucker is one of the seven Trainers hired by Scott to be a Frontier Brain at the Battle Frontier. Tucker is first seen running late to the Battle Frontier's opening ceremony. He is interrupted by Emerald, who asks to direct him where the Battle Frontier's owner is. The incident leads into a fight, which ends with Emerald tying Tucker up and leaving backstage while he goes to interrupt the ceremony, where he announces to everyone that he wishes to conquer the Battle Frontier. The press mistakenly report the incident as allowing an ordinary Trainer to take part in the Battle Frontier before it officially opens a week later. The Frontier Brains decide to use this assumption as free publicity and allow Emerald to challenge the Battle Frontier under the condition that he completes it before it officially opens.
Later, while Emerald is challenging the Battle Pyramid, Noland is attacked by an unknown assailant and several rental Pokémon are stolen. After Noland is taken to a hospital, the other Frontier Brains begin to suspect Emerald as the culprit. They head to the Battle Pyramid to confront Emerald and find him after having defeated Brandon. When they ask him about what happened, Emerald reveals that he did not attack Noland and is actually after the Mythical Pokémon Jirachi. The Frontier Brains find Emerald's explanation suspicious, but decide to follow him into Artisan Cave, where Jirachi is currently located at. Upon arriving, everyone is attacked by a horde of wild Smeargle while Emerald continues inside to find Jirachi. After the Frontier Brains get past the Smeargle, they meet up with Emerald, who has managed to find Jirachi. Emerald attempts to capture Jirachi, but is attacked by Guile Hideout, the actual culprit who attacked Noland. When Jirachi runs off, Emerald attempts to pursue it, only to be attacked by the rental Pokémon Guile had stolen. Tucker, Brandon, Lucy, and Spenser all try to attack Guile to avenge Noland, but are easily defeated. Eventually, Jirachi escapes, forcing Guile to leave to continue his pursuit of it. Injured from the battle, everyone decides to return to the Battle Frontier. When they meet up with Scott again, he reveals that he was aware of Guile and Emerald's true mission the entire time. Scott states that he withheld the information from the Frontier Brains to help them get stronger as they still would have lost even if they had known of Guile beforehand.
The next day, visitors from around Hoenn arrive to watch and participate in the Battle Dome, which Emerald challenges to win his fifth Symbol. During the tournament, Tucker battles Sapphire in the semi-finals while Emerald battles Ruby. Eventually, both Tucker and Emerald defeats their opponents and face each other in the finals, which ends in Tucker's victory. Dejected, Emerald leaves to go challenge the Battle Palace while Tucker gloats over his victory. Just as he leaves to meet with the others, Tucker notices Guile running past the Battle Dome's window. He leaps to confront the villain, but arrives with the other Frontier Brain's just as Guile manages to successfully capture Jirachi.
Guile uses the rental Pokémon to the attack innocent bystanders and heads to the Battle Tower to make his wish. Once he arrives at the Battle Tower, Guile uses Jirachi to wish for a gigantic Kyogre made of seawater to flood the entire Battle Frontier. Tucker and the other Frontier Brains work together to get civilians to safety and fight off Guile's rental Pokémon while Emerald and the other Pokédex holders fight Guile. Eventually Emerald and the Pokédex holders manage to defeat Guile and destroy the gigantic Kyogre monster. The day after, an injured Tucker and the other Frontier Brains congratulate Emerald for the hard work he put into saving everyone.
Tucker and the other Hoenn Frontier Brains battle and defeat the Admins of Neo Team Magma and Neo Team Aqua, who had interfered in the launch of a rocket that was made to stop the meteoroid threatening to destroy the world. Later, Tucker and the other Hoenn Frontier Brains are called to Sootopolis City to assist in stopping the meteoroid.
Pokémon
Salamence ♂ Salamence is Tucker's first known Pokémon. He was first seen with his Trainer flying to the Battle Frontier's opening ceremony before being attacked by Emerald. During the Battle Dome tournament, Salamence was used to battle Sapphire's Rono in the semi-finals. The battle was unseen, but Sapphire was eventually defeated, which she attributed to her fear of Salamence. In the Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire chapter, he was seen helping Tucker fight the Admins of Neo Team Magma and Neo Team Aqua. Outside of battle, Tucker uses him as a mode of flight transportation. Salamence's only known move is Fire Blast, and his Ability is Intimidate. Debut Swanky Showdown with Swalot
Charizard Charizard is Tucker's second known Pokémon. It was first used to battle Emerald in the Battle Dome's finals. It proved to be a tough opponent and single-handedly defeated Emerald's Alakazam and Metagross despite their super-effective moves. Charizard's known moves are Earthquake and Overheat. Debut A Cheeky Charizard Change-Up I
Metagross Metagross is Tucker's third known Pokémon. When Ruby was wondering the sequence of Tucker's Pokémon, Sapphire mentions that Metagross will go last. However, since Charizard defeated Emerald's Pokémon single-handedly, Metagross was not seen. None of Metagross's moves are known. Debut A Cheeky Charizard Change-Up I
In the Pokémon Battle Frontier manga
Tucker in the Pokémon Battle Frontier manga
Tucker makes an appearance in Introducing the Frontier Brains! where he introduces himself and his two Pokémon (while admiring them) to Enta. He battles Enta in a Double Battle. He was able to defeat Enta's Vulpix but lost to his Feebas after it activated Swift Swim when Enta's Vulpix blew a hole in the roof with Flamethrower earlier. Tucker then tells Enta that his Feebas wouldn't have stood a chance against his Pokémon due to it being ugly. After the battle, Feebas evolves into Milotic, proving Tucker wrong.
Pokémon
Swampert Swampert was sent out in a Double Battle alongside Salamence against Enta's Vulpix and Feebas. It was able to defeat Vulpix but lost to Feebas. Swampert's only known move is Water Gun. Debut Introducing the Frontier Brains!
Salamence Salamence was sent out in a double battle alongside Swampert against Enta's Vulpix and Feebas. It was able to defeat Vulpix but lost to Feebas. Salamence's only known move is Rock Slide. Debut Introducing the Frontier Brains!
Trivia
Tucker is the only Frontier Brain whom Emerald didn't defeat to win a Symbol, aside from Anabel, who simply awarded him her Ability Symbol for having battled with her fairly while she was under Guile's control. In turn, Tucker is also the only Brain who never lost a fight with Emerald to yield him a Symbol, since the 10 Pokédex holders had their own tournament instead.
All of the Pokémon used by Tucker in the games received Mega Evolutions in Generation VI.
Names
Language Name Origin Japanese ヒース Heath From heath, both a family of plants and a plant habitat English Tucker From tactics French Takim From tactique, tactics German Tasso From taktik, tactics Italian Tolomeo Italian form of the name Ptolemy, meaning warlike or son of war Spanish Tactio From tacticas, tactics Korean 하인즈 Hainjeu From Heinz, a German name. Similar to Heath Chinese ( Mandarin ) 希爾斯 / 希尔斯 Xī'ěrsī Transliteration of his Japanese name. Vietnamese Heath Transliteration of his Japanese name.
Dome Ace
Related articlesWhen I first began reading through the Bible I looked for some unifying themes. I concluded that there are many, and that if we make one theme the theme (such as “covenant” or “kingdom”), we run the danger of reductionism.
However, one of the main ways to read the Bible is as the ages-long struggle between true faith and idolatry. In the beginning, human beings were made to worship and serve God, and to rule over all created things in Godʼs name (Gen. 1:26–28). Paul understands humanityʼs original sin as an act of idolatry: “They exchanged the glory of the immortal God... and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:21–25). Instead of living for God, we began to live for ourselves, or for our work, or for material goods. We reversed the original intended order.
And when we began to worship and serve created things, paradoxically, the created things came to rule over us.
Instead of being Godʼs viceregents, ruling over creation, creation now masters us. We are subject to decay and disease and disaster. The final proof of this is death itself. We live for our own glory by toiling in the dust, but eventually we return to the dust—the dust “wins” (Gen. 3:17–19). We live to make a name for ourselves, but our names are forgotten.
Here in the beginning of the Bible we learn that idolatry means slavery and death.
Snare of Idolatry
The Ten Commandments’ first two and most basic laws (one-fifth of God’s law to humanity) are against idolatry. Exodus doesn’t envision any third option between true faith and idolatry. We will either worship the uncreated God, or we will worship some created thing (an idol). There is no possibility of our worshiping nothing.
We will either worship the uncreated God, or we will worship some created thing (an idol). There is no possibility of our worshiping nothing.
The classic New Testament text is Romans 1:18–25. This extensive passage on idolatry is often seen as only referring to the pagan Gentiles, but instead we should recognize it as an analysis of what sin is and how it works. Verse 21 tells us that the reason we turn to idols is because we want to control our lives, despite the fact we know we owe God everything: “Though they knew God, they neither glorified God nor gave thanks to him.” Verse 25 tells us the strategy for control—taking created things and setting our hearts on them and building our lives around them. Since we need to worship something, because of how we are created, we cannot eliminate God without creating God-substitutes. Verses 21 and 25 tell us the two results of idolatry:
Deception—“their thinking became futile and their hearts were darkened.” (v. 21) Slavery—“they worshiped and served” created things. (v. 25)
Whatever we worship we will serve, for worship and service are always inextricably bound together. We are “covenantal” beings. We enter into covenant service with whatever most captures our imagination and heart. It ensnares us. So every human personality, community, thought form, and culture will be based on some ultimate concern or some ultimate allegiance—either to God or to some God-substitute. Individually, we will ultimately look either to God or to success, romance, family, status, popularity, beauty, or something else to make us feel personally significant and secure, and to guide our choices. Culturally, we will ultimately look to either God or to the free market, the state, the elites, the will of the people, science and technology, military might, human reason, racial pride, or something else to make us corporately significant and secure, and to guide our choices.
Idolatry at Root
No one grasped this point better than Martin Luther, who ties the Old Testament and New Testament together remarkably in his exposition of the Ten Commandments. Luther saw how the Old Testament law against idols and the New Testament emphasis on justification by faith alone are essentially the same. He observed that the Ten Commandments begin with two commandments against idolatry. This is because the fundamental problem in lawbreaking is always idolatry. In other words, we never break the other commandments without first breaking the first commandment—the law against idolatry. Luther understood that the first commandment is really all about justification by faith, and to fail to believe in justification by faith is idolatry, which is the root of all that displeases God:
All those who do not at all times trust God and do not in all their works or sufferings, life and death, trust in his favor, grace and goodwill, but seek his favor in other things or in themselves, do not keep this [first] commandment, and practice real idolatry, even if they were to do the works of all the other commandments, and in addition had all the prayers, obedience, patience, and chastity of all the saints combined. For the chief work is not present, without which all the others are nothing but mere sham, show, and pretense, with nothing back of them.... If we doubt or do not believe that God is gracious to us and is pleased with us, or if we presumptuously expect to please him only through and after our works, then it is all pure deception, outwardly honoring God, but inwardly setting up self as a false [savior]. (Treatise Concerning Good Works, Part X.XI)
Here Luther says failure to believe God accepts us fully in Christ—and to look to something else for our salvation—is a failure to keep the first commandment; namely, having no other gods before him. To try to earn your own salvation through works-righteousness is breaking the first commandment. Again, he says we cannot truly keep any of the other laws unless we keep the first law—against idolatry and works-righteousness. Thus beneath any particular sin is this sin of rejecting Christ-salvation and indulging in self-salvation.
Beneath any particular sin is this sin of rejecting Christ-salvation and indulging in self-salvation.
For example, letʼs say a person cheats on his income tax form. Why does he do that? Well, you say, because he’s a sinner. Yes, but why does his sin take this form? Lutherʼs answer would be that the man only cheated because he was making money and possessions—and the status or comfort from having more of them—more important than God and his favor. Or letʼs say a person lies to a friend rather than lose face over something she has done. In that case the underlying sin is making human approval or your reputation more important than the righteousness you have in Christ.
The Bible, then, does not consider idolatry to be one sin among many. Rather, all our failures to trust God wholly or to live rightly are, at root, idolatry—something we make more important than God. There is always a reason for a sin. Under our sins are idolatrous desires.
Idolatry in Postmodern Culture
Scripture’s teaching about idolatry is particularly helpful for evangelism in a postmodern context. The typical way Christians define sin is to say that it is breaking Godʼs law. Properly explained, of course, that’s a good and sufficient definition. But the law of God includes both sins of omission and also of commission, and it includes attitudes of the heart as well as behavior. Those wrong attitudes and motivations are usually inordinate desires—forms of idolatry. Yet when most listeners hear us define sin as “breaking Godʼs law,” all the emphasis in their minds falls on the negative (sins of commission) and on the external (behaviors rather than attitudes). There are significant reasons, then, that “lawbreaking” isnʼt the best way to first describe sin to postmodern listeners.
I ordinarily begin speaking about sin to a young, urban, non-Christian like this:
Sin isnʼt only doing bad things; it’s more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry.
Why is this a good path to take?
First, this definition of sin includes a group of people postmodern people are acutely aware of. Postmodern people rightly believe much harm has been done by self-righteous religious people. If we say “sin is breaking Godʼs law” without a great deal of further explanation, it appears the Pharisaical people they have known are “in,” and most other people are “out.” Pharisees, of course, are quite fastidious in their keeping of the moral law, and therefore (to the hearer) they seem to be the essence of what a Christian should be. An emphasis on idolatry avoids this problem. As Luther points out, the Pharisees, while not bowing to literal idols, were looking to themselves and their moral goodness for their justification, and therefore they were actually breaking the first commandment. Their morality was self-justifying motivation and therefore spiritually pathological. At the bottom of all their lawkeeping, they were actually breaking the most fundamental law of all. When we define and describe sin to postmodern people, we must do so in a way that challenges not only prostitutes, but also Pharisees, to change.
When we define and describe sin to postmodern people, we must do so in a way that challenges not only prostitutes, but also Pharisees.
There’s another reason we need a better explanation of sin for postmodern people. They are relativists, and the moment you say, “Sin is breaking Godʼs moral standards,” they will retort, “Well, who is to say whose moral standards are right? Everyone has different ones! What makes Christians think theirs are the only right set?” The usual way to respond is to become sidetracked from your presentation of sin and grace into an apologetic discussion about relativism. Of course, postmodern people must be strongly challenged about their mushy view of truth, but I think there is a way to move forward and actually make a credible and convicting gospel presentation before you get into the apologetic issues. I do it this way: I take a page from Kierkegaardʼs The Sickness unto Death, and I define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God. Instead of telling them they’re sinning because they’re sleeping with their girlfriends or boyfriends, I tell them that they’re sinning because they’re looking to their careers and romances to save them, to give them everything they should be looking for in God. Such idolatry leads to drivenness, addictions, severe anxiety, obsessiveness, envy of others, and resentment.
I’ve found when you describe their lives in terms of idolatry, postmodern people do not offer much resistance. They doubt there is any real alternative, but they admit sheepishly this is what they are doing. I’ve also found this makes sin more personal. Making an idol out of something means giving it the love you should be giving your Creator and Sustainer. To depict sin as not only a violation of law, but also of love, is more compelling. Of course a complete description of sin and grace includes recognition of our rebellion against Godʼs authority. But Iʼve found that if people become convicted about their sin as idolatry and mis-directed love, it’s easier to show them that one of the effects of sin is to put them into denial about their hostility to God. In some ways, idolatry is like addiction writ large. We are ensnared by our spiritual idols, just like people are ensnared by drink and drugs. We live in denial of how much we are rebelling against Godʼs rule, just like addicts live in denial of how much they are trampling on their families and loved ones.
In some ways, idolatry is like addiction writ large.
The biblical theme of idolatry has far more implications for ministry in a postmodern society than I’ve discussed here. Not only is it a key for evangelism, it’s also crucial for discipling and counseling, as David Powlison has shown in his many writings on the subject. (See his essay “Idols of the Heart and Vanity Fair.”) The Dutch Calvinists have also shown that the best way to analyze cultures is by identifying their corporate idols. Indeed, each field of vocation and study has its reigning idols, as do political parties and ideologies. While secular societies have made an idol of human reason and human autonomy, other more traditional societies make idols of the family or racial purity.
In her recent memoir Easter Everywhere: A Memoir, Darcey Steinke recounts how she, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, left her Christian profession. Moving to New York City, she entered a life of club-hopping and sexual obsession. She wrote several novels. She continued, however, to be extremely restless and unfulfilled. In the middle of the book she quotes from Simone Weill as summarizing the main issue in her life. “One has only the choice between God and idolatry,” Weil wrote. “If one denies God... one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such, but in fact, though unknown to oneself imagining the attributes of Divinity in them.”
Stephen Metcalf, in his New York Times review of the memoir, called Weillʼs |
fewer counterbalance when midrange-y BUG decks or Eldrazi decks are everywhere as counterbalance ranges from medium- to downright embarrassing in those match-ups.
3+ Swords to Plowshares – I have never played less than 4 it is the best removal spell ever printed and we are a control deck after all. However sometimes people shave one to run more stack interaction maindeck (Counterspell, Pyroblast, Spell Snare, sometimes even Flusterstorm).
3+ Terminus – The stock number is 4, but if you have a lot of Monastery Mentors shaving one is very acceptable as the 4th one is rarely needed. Having access to one or more Engineered Explosives in the main deck is also an excuse to shave one as they can also act as a sweeper.
4 Force of Will – The glue that holds legacy together. Often needed against fast combo decks. Once in a blue moon you see a list with 3 Forces, but I would never recommend going below 4 in the Main Deck. However, don’t be married to them in sideboarding, they are often worth cutting in non-combo, non-mirror match-ups.
4 Brainstorm – Best cantrip ever, the interaction with both Counterbalance and the Miracle mechanic is just insane, so never cut it. Many articles could be written to discuss how and when to play your Brainstorms, I often hang on to them a bit too long, but the best advice is practice, and lots of it.
X Ponder – I’d recommend 4 as it is just insane and allows you to cheat on lands in your deck, but less than 4 has been seen before. Fun fact: Before Dig Trough Time, Ponder was a contested card, and as a general rule Americans preferred more lands and fewer Ponders, whereas Europeans preferred more Ponders in place of some lands. Then we all “had” to play Ponder to fuel delve for Dig Trough Time. Dig was banned and the Americans had discovered how good Ponder was and it is being more and more adopted by the colony 😉
X Snapcaster Mage – This is possibly the best deck in the format at utilizing Tiago Chan’s invitational card. (Editor’s note: I would suggest Landstill is better… ) The exact number in lists varies, I’d never go below 2. I think the card is insane, but it can sometimes prove a bit too clunky. If the format is grindy with a lot of 3-drops you’d want more, but if people just want to kill you dead in the first few turns of the game, you’d want less. Never be too embarrassed to just snap back a Ponder.
Predict? – Predict went from being an experiment to being more and more adopted by Miracles pilots, and personally, I’m a fan of the card. The usual number is 2, but more or less are seen. I know MTGO user AnziD is a huge proponent of a 4 Predict build, but he is a bit of a madman. It is a 2-mana card that doesn’t play to the board. It is, however, insanely good against slower BUG decks as well as the mirror, so keep this in mind when choosing your numbers.
Options
There is a bunch of 1-2-offs that people run, it might be helpful quickly going over them. You might call them the seasoning of the meal that is our miracles deck.
Pyroblast – If you look at Miracles list from a few years back you’ll notice they run 1-2 copies of Pyroblast or its twin Red Elemental Blast. Back then, there was a lot of Monoblue (or mostly monoblue) Omni-tell decks which Red-blast effects were great against, as well as a lot of Miracles decks. The ability to steal game 1 by Main Decking sideboard-cards was very powerful in a slow match-up as the Miracles mirror. Today, with Eldrazi and Monowhite Control putting up numbers most Miracle players leave these in the sideboard.
Spell Snare – For one mana you get to handle a lot of problems; Chalice of the Void, Sylvan Library, Hymn to Tourach etc. which makes this a powerful option that some Miracles players choose to employ.
Counterspell – The old reliable. Sometimes a bit too slow, but it does what it says on the tin. You can safely leave these in your binder if Nimble Mongoose is the name of the game, otherwise you’ll see 1-2 most of the time.
Spell Pierce – Like Spell Snare this is a one mana counterspell. It has the upside of being able to answer planeswalkers like Lilliana of the Veil and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but the downside of quickly losing value after the first few turns of the game.
Engineered Explosives/Councils’ Judgement – I’m putting these as one effect as they tend to serve similar purposes: Answer something you can’t counter/swords to plowshares your way out of. This could be a Planeswalker, a bunch of elves, a Chalice of the Void sometimes even True-name Nemesis. Sometimes EE is better, other times CJ is better. As a rule of thump, the faster the format the more likely you are to use EE over CJ
Mana
The number of lands people run will also differ. For a 4 Ponder, Entreat build 21 lands seems to be very normal. And any deviation from this should be justified. Mostly your land count will depend on 2 things: The number of cantrips/cheap card draw you have, and the number of 4+ drops (This includes Entreat the Angels) you have. More cheap library manipulation allows you to cheat on lands. and naturally the fewer 4+drops the less lands you’ll need to operate. Also the amount you rely on Red cards out of the board will effect the number of Volcanic Islands you play in the main, although two seems to be the standard right now.
With that out of the way; let’s look at the first decklist.
Entreat Miracles
Entreat Miracles
This list was piloted by MTGO User Truckis to a 5-2 record for a 12th place finish in the Febuary Legacy Challenge on Magic Online.
The deck aims to grind the opponent out with counterbalance and/or Jace before ending the game with a big Entreat the Angels. Preferably in one or two attacks. It fell out of favor when Monastery Mentor was adopted, but is starting to come back. Its ability to go over the top of especially Leovold, Emissary of Trest and True-Name Nemesis while making Abrupt Decay a dead card after sideboarding makes it an attractive option since the printing of Leovold. Out of the lists I’m showing you today Entreat Miracles is the one that’s closest to a “true” control/draw-go deck.
When “Who grinds the hardest” is the question asked by the format, Entreat Miracles is my preferred answer.
Legends Miracles
Legends Miracles
This specific list was piloted by Whiskiy1 to a 5-0 finish in a competitive Legacy league, but the build was made famous by Joe Lossett. The main pull to it is getting an edge in the mirror with Cavern of Souls and Karakas together with Vendillion Clique and Venser, Shaper Savant to have unanswerable, disruptive threats, hence the ‘Legend’ moniker. It often incorporates a small amount of either Entreat or Mentor as a huge beater. It is an attractive option if you expect a lot of mirror and/or combo matches. This is the more midrange-y/battlecruiser magic of the Miracles decks, and will more often than other builds lose to a well-timed Wasteland. I don’t have much experience with this build but in my opinion it’s too clunky and the mana base is a bit…. ambitious.
Ed. After speaking to Joe about the various merits of his version of Miracles he believes that this version is objectively the most powerful but also the hardest to play.
Let’s look at the next contender!
Mentor Miracles
Here I’m humble enough to use my own list that I piloted to a 5-2 record for a 9th place (on breakers!!) finish in the Febuary Legacy Challenge
Mentor Miracles
Sometimes half-jokingly named “Monk Stompy” the Mentor build is better in an open field where if you face a rough matchup or situation you can just say “Meh” and Monk’em. It’s easier to answer than a huge Entreat, however, unanswered it steals the game very very fast, and it doesn’t require any set up. I’ve won games I had no business even being in by just going “Eff it” and just jamming monks. In paper I’m undefeated against my local 12-post player just by having monks and counterspells! This deck has the “weakness” of not being able to blank Decay and it is hard to have a Mentor “steal” a game against Decay decks. That being said, I’m a fan of making them have it. A strength of having 3 Mentors is that you can easily just run the first one into their answer without being too sad when they have it.
You’ll notice I’m running 3 Counterspells. for those of you who have some experience with the deck, this is a high amount. It is mainly a meta-call. Since Leovold, Emissary of Trest got printed and especially since Reid Duke won the latest Legacy GP with a 3-drop heavy list, it feels a lot like everyone wants to slam 3-drops. In that world, I’m happy jamming Counterspells! Partly I have to admit I just really favor generic answers like Counterspell over more powerful, but narrow answers like Spell Snare.
I also only run 20 lands. this is a bit on the low side of things. However between 8 cantrips, 4 Tops and 2 Divination err… I mean Predict, hitting our land drops is not usually an issue with this list. Take into account that I only run one 4 drop in the Main Deck (Jace) and I have the option to go up to 21 lands when I board in Entreat the Angels
Final Thoughts
Personally, I prefer the mentor build for its ability to just say “Eff it” and make an overwhelming amount of monks and win from unfavorable positions. It is also the build I feel most comfortable with which in my opinion counts for a lot. Against a lot of grindy BUG decks the Entreat version will have an edge, but for the latest Legacy Challenge I went with a build I felt comfortable with. In the future I’m likely to see if I can reignite my old love for Entreat. With all these Decays running around it seems like a good choice
I haven’t really played the Legends build, but as I noted earlier it will have some edges in the mirror, however I think it is too clunky in general and I wouldn’t play it unless I had a very good reason. (Ed. I’m going to persuade him to test it)
Where do we go from here?
So, as the title says this is “Part 1” that kinda suggests that there will be at least a “Part 2” and that is true, here is what I’ve planned out so far:
Part 2: Stick ’em with the pointy end: In part 2 we will educate ourselves in how to wield this powerful weapon; how to defeat our opponents with it, and maybe even how to defeat ourselves if we are not careful.
Part 3: The hate: Now that we know how we win, let’s examine what our opponents are doing to stop it, and what countermeasures to employ
Part 4: Game 2? So we’ve seen how we win, we’ve seen what hate our opponents will bring and how to hate their hate. Don’t you think we know enough to build a sideboard by now? Let’s try!
I hope this piece sparked an interest to play miracles. I’ve started streaming my adventures with Sensei’s Divining Top you can follow me on Twitter @Thiesenmagic for further updates in that regard.
<3 Thiesen
You can also follow Anders on Twitch
Like and Follow The Library at Pendrell Vale:
Anders is a Legacy enthusiast who Top 8’d the Legacy portion of EU Eternal Weekend 2016 and came 2nd in 2017! He mainly writes about Miracles, and you can find him as Alakazimdk in the mtgo legacy leagues. You can follow him at https://www.twitch.tv/alakazimdkI have to say I am just absolutely blown away by my Arbitrary Day gift! Clearly my Santa put a lot of thought into these and they did a great job of reading my likes and dislikes. I would like to go through each gift in the photo and state something about it:
Firstly, the iTunes gift card is perfect and reflects that I had stated I was most passionate about music in life. I was just thinking the other day that there is a band with an album I can't find anywhere but on iTunes and now I have no reason not to get it! Perfect!
Second, the stickers were great! I'll be throwing the Gravity one on one of my skate decks and the DC will be hitting up my snowboard. Just so happens I am a huge fan of DC boots/shoes and my latest pair of boots are killer pair of black DC's! Good coincidence :)
Third, the Burton flash drive. Now I have actually wanted one of these little guys for a while but couldn't find them anymore so this was so sick! A great highlight to my love of Snowboarding and the fact I said I love technology and gadgets. Add the fact that I believe you can never have too much storage and we have a winning combo :)
Fourth, the Fleischmann's Pizza Yeast. I literally burst out laughing with joy and the feeling that someone really understands you when I opened my package as this was the first thing I saw. What a brilliant pick on this, as not only do I love novelty I am beyond obsessed with Pizza and to show how much this was one of my favorite parts of the whole package. I wish you could have seen my reaction when I saw this!
Finally, the book Tuesday's With Morrie and the awesome guitar bookmark too. I have wanted to read this classic for a LONG time but it's just not one I usually think of when scanning the library or the bookstore. I loved the note you included with it so much also that I decided to put down the book I was currently reading to start reading this. I am sure there will be something of great value I will get out of it, and I will be sure to pass it on to someone else I feel needs the message.
It's a shame I don't know even your reddit name but I hope you get to see my post and can see what a great experience you have given me by being my Secret Santa. You certainly know what you are doing! Thanks so much again, I know I couldn't have gotten someone who could have made my first Reddit gift exchange any more enjoyable.Martha Eccles Dodd (October 8, 1908 – August 10, 1990) was an American journalist and novelist. The daughter of William Edward Dodd, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first Ambassador to Germany, Dodd lived in Berlin from 1933–37 and was a witness to the rise of the Third Reich. She became involved in left-wing politics after she witnessed first-hand the violence of the Nazi state. With her second husband, Alfred Stern Jr., she engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union from before World War II until the height of the Cold War.
Life and career [ edit ]
Martha Dodd was born in Ashland, Virginia. She studied at the University of Chicago and also for a time in Washington, D.C. and Paris. She served briefly as assistant literary editor of the Chicago Tribune.[5]
Martha and her brother, William E. Dodd, Jr., accompanied their parents to Berlin when her father took up the post of U.S. Ambassador in 1933. She initially found the Nazi movement attractive. She later wrote that she "became temporarily an ardent defender of everything going on" and admired the "glowing and inspiring faith in Hitler, the good that was being done for the unemployed."[6] She made a number of friends in high circles, and Ernst Hanfstaengl, her sometime lover and an aide to Adolf Hitler, tried to encourage a romantic relationship between Hitler and Dodd. Dodd found Hitler "excessively gentle and modest in his manners", but no romance followed their meeting.[6] She had numerous relationships while in Berlin, including with Ernst Udet and with French diplomat Armand Berard, later France's ambassador to the United Nations.[7][8] Other lovers included Max Delbrück and Rudolf Diels.[9]
Following the Night of the Long Knives, Dodd changed her views on the Nazis. People in her social circle were begging the Americans for help and the Dodd family found its phones tapped and their servants enlisted as spies.[10] Her mother wrote that Dodd "got into a nervous state that almost bordered on the hysterical [and] had terrible nightmares".[6]
In March 1934, NKVD ordered intelligence officer Boris Vinogradov (under diplomatic cover in Berlin as press attache), to recruit his lover, Dodd, as an agent.[11]
In 1935, Marguerite Young interviewed Dodd's father, at his request, for the CPUSA-controlled Daily Worker, agreeing to meet Young because she already knew Martha. Young wrote of Dodd, "his daughter, whom I'd met and liked, an attractive young woman, light yellow hair, large black velvet bow at the nape of her neck."[12]
Vinogradov and Dodd began a romantic relationship that lasted for years, even after he left Berlin; in 1936 they asked Joseph Stalin for permission to marry.[13][14] Dodd agreed to spy for the Soviet Union.[15] Other case officers soon replaced Vinogradov and Dodd worked with each of them while hoping to reconnect with Vinogradov.[11] (Vinogradov was executed in approximately 1938, during the Great Purge.[16]) Dodd informed the Soviets of secret embassy and State Department business and provided details of her father's reports to the State Department.[17] As part of her cover, she maintained a romantic relationship with Louis Ferdinand.[18] Anticipating her father's retirement from his Berlin post, she tried to learn the Soviet's preferred replacement for him as U.S. Ambassador and told the NKVD leadership, "If this man has at least a slight chance, I will persuade my father to promote his candidacy."[19] After the Dodds left Germany in December, 1937,[20] Iskhak Akhmerov, NKVD rezident in New York City, managed her espionage work.[21]
In Summer 1938, while still romantically involved with the filmmaker Sidney Kaufman, with whom she lived for several months,[22] Martha married New York millionaire Alfred K. Stern Jr.[23] According to Dodd, Stern was prepared to contribute $50,000 to the Democratic Party to secure an ambassadorship.[24] The Soviets viewed Dodd as a valuable but uncertain asset. One assessment was, "A gifted, clever and educated woman, she requires constant control over her behavior."[25] Another assessment was, "She considers herself a Communist and claims to accept the party's program. In reality [she] is a typical representative of American bohemia, a sexually decayed woman ready to sleep with any handsome man."[25] In a February 5, 1942, letter, Dodd told her Soviet contacts that her husband should be brought into their network. With their approval, she approached her husband and reported that he responded with enthusiasm: "He wanted to do something immediately. He felt he had many contacts that could be valuable in this sort of work."[26] Stern established a music publishing house that served as a cover for routing information to the Soviet Union.[27][28] Dodd and Stern proved of little value to the Soviets beyond providing the publishing house cover and occasionally recommending someone as a potential agent.[29] As part of the Soble spy ring, Miss Dodd (code named Liza) recommended Jane Foster to infiltrate the OSS.[30]
In 1939, Dodd published a memoir of her years in Berlin, Through Embassy Eyes. It included extravagant praise of the Soviet Union based in her travels there.[29] With her brother as co-editor, she published her father's Berlin diaries, Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933–1938.[29]
Her 1945 novel, Sowing the Wind, described the moral deterioration of decent Germans under Hitler. It was "not much esteemed as a work of fiction,"[5] but became a best-seller in translation in the Russian sector of Berlin in 1949.[31]
The FBI had Dodd under surveillance by 1948.[32] Contacts between Dodd and Stern and NKGB lapsed in 1949.[33] In 1955, Dodd published The Searching Light, a defense of academic freedom that told the story of a professor under pressure to sign a loyalty oath.[5] In July 1956, subpoenaed to testify in several espionage cases, Dodd and Stern fled to Prague via Mexico with their nine-year-old adopted son Robert.[33][34] They later applied for and were denied Soviet citizenship.[35] Boris Morros implicated Dodd and Stern in 1957 as Soviet agents as part of his exposure of the Soble spy network. The Soviets then allowed them to emigrate to Moscow just as they were convicted of espionage by a U.S. court.[35]
A KGB document, dated October 1975, noted that the Sterns spent 1963–70 in Cuba.[36] In the 1970s, apparently disappointed with their lives in the Soviet Union, they tried without success to have their American attorney negotiate their return to the U.S. The KGB monitored the negotiations and had no objections, since their knowledge of espionage activities was outdated or had been revealed by Morros.[36]
In 1979, the U.S. Department of Justice dropped charges against Dodd and her husband related to the Soble case.[34] She died on August 10, 1990, in Prague.[4]
Her letters were deposited at the Library of Congress.[37] Her FBI file contained 10,400 pages.[27]
Works [ edit ]
Martha Dodd, Through Embassy Eyes (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), excerpt available, UK title: My Years in Germany
(NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), excerpt available, UK title: Martha Dodd, Charles Austin Beard, eds., Ambassador Dodd's Diary, 1933–1938 (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1941), OCLC 395068
(NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1941), OCLC 395068 Martha Dodd, Sowing the Wind (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1945)
(NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1945) Martha Dodd, The Searching Light (NY: Citadel Press, 1955)
In popular culture [ edit ]
Dodd features as a character in the 2012 novel Flight from Berlin by David John.
by David John. Dodd figures prominently in the nonfiction book, In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, which recounts the Dodd family's experiences in Berlin in the 1930s.
References [ edit ]
Notes
BibliographyThis report comes MyRepublica, and documents the struggle of the Maoists in the Kaski district, for among other things better wages. This however should been seen in the larger context for the demand for revolution and liberation. We will continue to post news from this struggle as it develops.
Pro-Maoist workers shut industries in Kaski
POKHARA, Feb 15: Workers affiliated to UCPN (Maoist) on Tuesday launched an indefinite strike, forcing industries of Kaski district to shut down their operations.
The agitating All Nepal Industrial Worker Association (ANIWA) said it launched the strike because the promoters of the industries continued to ignore their calls to double wage and salary.
“It is difficult to survive with the salary we are receiving currently,” said Bhoj Raj Khatri, chairman of ANIWA. “We will not withdraw our strike unless the management fulfills our demand to double salary.”
According to the agitating workers, 75 percent of the total workers in Kaski are receiving a total salary of Rs 4,600 – the minimum wage fixed by the government.
If the promoters of the industries are to fulfill the workers´ demand, they will have to pay workers Rs 9,200 a month.
The ANIWA office-bearers said they had placed their demand to the management and were pushing for it since mid-June 2010. “We had notified them when we launched the strike, but they paid no heed,” Khatri said.
Stating that Pokhara is one of the most expensive cities in the country where prices of all essential commodities are expensive than Kathmandu — the capital city, Khatri wondered how workers could manage accommodation, food, children´s education, among others, with just Rs 4,600 a month.
The strike, meanwhile, has forced 53 industries operating inside the Pokhara Industrial Estate and another 45 industries based outside of it to shut down their operations. These industries employ 4,500 workers, including 2,500 working in industries within the Pokhara Industrial Estate.
Promoters of the closed industries said they cannot fulfill the workers´ demand. President of Pokhara Chambers of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) Krishna Mohan Shrestha said the demand was unjustifiable and they were not in a position to fulfill it, especially given the latest rise in operating cost due to 14-hour power cut and rise in bank rates.
During a meeting with trade union representatives, the management representatives clearly spelled out such a stance. Nonetheless, they said they could increase the salary of permanent workers by Rs 1,000 per month.
Shrestha said the demand of workers to hike salary appears genuine due to rise in basic commodities prices. “But employers too are not in comfortable situation. Hence, we believe the problem should be addressed at the government level, instead of industry level,” he added.
“Rising price of commodities has hit public everywhere across the country. The government should take necessary initiatives.”
An industrialist at Pokhara Industrial Estate said the government should revise the minimum wage if it thinks it is inadequate.
“The workers made a mistake by raising the national problem at the local level. No industry can address this demand,” he added.
AdvertisementsMohammed Bakr condemns lack of culpability for four boys’ deaths as new questions emerge over scope and accuracy of inquiry
The father of one of four Palestinian children killed on a Gaza City beach during last summer’s war between Hamas and Israel has said he is outraged that an Israeli investigation into the killings has been closed without finding anyone culpable for their deaths.
The comments by Mohammed Bakr came as new questions emerged about both the scope and the accuracy of the findings of the Israeli military police inquiry.
Witness to a shelling: first-hand account of deadly strike on Gaza port Read more
“There is no justice in the internal investigation,” Bakr said on Friday. “We are counting on the ICC [international criminal court] and human rights. We are not afraid and we are confident we will win because the world is with us.”
Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, 11, Ahed Atef Bakr and Zakariya Ahed Bakr, both 10, and Ismail Mahmoud Bakr, nine, were killed on 16 July last year when they were hit by explosive rounds. Three of the boys died as they tried to run from the beach after the first child was killed.
The Israeli military announced on Thursday evening that the “extensive” criminal inquiry into the case had been closed because it was deemed to be a “tragic accident”.
After a review of the investigation’s findings, Danny Efroni, Israel’s military advocate general, found that the process used in the attack “accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements”.
But among troubling issues to have emerged since the Israeli military closed its investigation is the fact that not all witnesses to the incident were interviewed by Israeli investigators, despite comments by Efroni’s office suggesting it would do so.
The incident came to global prominence because it took place in front of a number of international media organisations, including the Guardian and the New York Times.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The killing of four children on a beach in Gaza was one of the most controversial incidents in last summer’s Gaza war. Link to video
The New York Times’s Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Tyler Hicks, who witnessed the incident, though from a different angle to the Guardian, wrote in a blog at the time: “A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defence Forces’ intended targets.
“Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, doesn’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.”
Although pro-Israel social media activists at first made strenuous efforts to claim the deaths were the result of one of Hamas’s own rockets falling short, the IDF later admitted its own munitions were responsible.
Several weeks after the attack – announcing it was launching investigations into a number of controversial incidents in which civilians died – the military advocate general’s office briefed more than a dozen journalists. The senior Israeli officer was asked by reporters then if investigators would seek to contact all witnesses. The officer replied in the affirmative.
In reality, however, it appears no effort was made to contact a number of the journalists who witnessed the incident – including this correspondent. A handful of Palestinian witnesses supplied information by affadavit.
The IDF’s closure of the case comes at a highly sensitive time for Israel over the conduct of last year’s war. The UN is expected to publish a report on the conflict and there are reports that a delegation from the ICC may visit later this month as part of its preliminary investigation into alleged crimes committed by both sides.
Israel has, in the past, pointed to the credibility of its internal investigations as proof that the involvement of the ICC was unnecessary.
As the IDF announced it was closing the case having found no criminal culpability among its servicemen over the attack, the IDF’s chief spokesman, Peter Lerner, described the investigation as “extensive” in a post on Facebook.
According to Lerner: “From the factual findings collected by the investigators, it revealed that the incident took place in an area that had long been known as a compound belonging to Hamas’s Naval Police and Naval Force (including naval commandos), and which was utilised exclusively by militants.
“The compound in question spans the length of the breakwater of the Gaza City seashore, closed off by a fence and clearly separated from the beach serving the civilian population.
“It further found in the course of the investigation (including from the affidavits provided by Palestinian witnesses), that the compound was known to the residents of the Gaza Strip as a compound which was used exclusively by Hamas’s Naval Police.”
Several foreign journalists present at the time of the incident disputed that claim to the Guardian on Friday, echoing the Guardian’s own observations.
Indeed, far from being used “exclusively” by Hamas, the site of the initial attack – an area of several makeshift structures on the breakwater itself and where the first boy died – is regularly used by fishermen, and is immediately adjacent to, and accessible from, the public beach in Gaza port.
Clearly visible to journalists staying in the Al Deira hotel, it is far from being the site of obvious militant activity, appearing largely deserted – at least during daylight hours – and with little obviously discernible evidence of any nighttime boat launches.
The IDF’s statement said a container on the breakwater which had been attacked the day before was being used by Hamas as a storage facility for weapons. Journalists, however, who visited it in the immediate aftermath of the attack saw no weapons or equipment.
Usually reliable sources told the Guardian on Friday that they believed the container had been “incriminated” by Israeli intelligence, making it a potential target because it belonged to the equivalent of Hamas’s coastguard, even if it was empty. Its incrimination, in effect, meant anyone approaching it could be engaged.
Pictures posted on Facebook on Friday by the Daily Telegraph correspondent Robert Tait, who photographed the scene of the strike in its immediate aftermath, show twisted metal and scattered rubble but no sign of any military material.
Another question – unanswered by the IDF – relates to aerial oversight of the scene before the attack. According to the IDF, “civilian presence in the area had been ruled out”, including by the deployment of “real-time visual surveillance”.
According to multiple media and other witnesses, children had been playing football in the vicinity immediately before the attack.
One Israeli military expert at the time expressed his surprise that those conducting the surveillance were unable to distinguish between children and Hamas militants, when the children were clearly identifiable as they fled from several hundred metres away before the second strike.
An Israeli military spokesman had not replied to questions put to it by the Guardian at the time of publication on Friday afternoon.
However, a spokesman said on Saturday that the site was under full control of Hamas and that intelligence suggested Hamas militants were planning to use it to launch an operation.
Regarding the concerns that not all witnesses had been interviewed by investigators, he said: “They were presented with a number of witnesses’ names who, following several attempts to coordinate their testimonies being given to the investigative military police, refrained from coming to present their testimonies.”A 3-year-old boy who went missing in Oakland Friday after a family friend took the minivan he was in and never returned was located Saturday after an observant citizen spotted the pair, according to police.The citizen, who had seen the Amber Alert that was issued for the boy, contacted police, who then located the vehicle in the 200 block of Santa Clara Avenue in Oakland, police said.Inside the vehicle, officers found the missing boy, identified as Dartanian Brooks, and 48-year-old Tammy Martin.The boy was safe and he was reunited with his mother, according to police.Dartanian was last seen Friday at about 11:45 a.m. in the 10800 block of MacArthur Boulevard in a 1999 blue Odyssey minivan, which was being driven by Martin, police said.The boy's mother had left him with Martin, while she went to a business and gave Martin permission to take the vehicle to a nearby store, believing Martin and the boy would return shortly, according to police.Police did not say whether Martin would be arrested in connection with the incident.December 1, 2013 Javier Eguiluz
This week, the first Symfony 2.4.0 release candidate version was released. Meanwhile, the first ideas and changes for the upcoming Symfony 2.5 version were proposed, such as the new YAML linter and the deprecation of the Apache dumper.
Symfony2 development highlights
2.2 changelog:
8d69bb5: fixed @expectedException class names
5b9a727: [HttpFoundation] when getting the session's id, check if the session is not closed
d0c1db8: [FrameworkBundle] fixed the registration of validation.xml file when the form is disabled
2f9bb75: [Form] fixed DateType for 32bits computers
9f35368: [TwigBundle] modified guessDefaultEscapingStrategy to not escape txt templates
4828350: [WebProfilerBundle] fixed js escaping in time.html.twig
cd4df11: [Doctrine Bridge] use the correct class name to retrieve mapped class metadata and repository
3447f89: [DomCrawler] fixed extract() method to avoid recalculating count() for each iteration
a1b9c2e: [DoctrineBridge] normalized class names in the ORM type guesser
4ba6c0b: [HttpKernel] minor optimalization at bundle initialization
2.3 changelog:
00d79d5: [FrameworkBundle] adjusted CacheClear Warmup method to namespaced kernels
e30a7d0: [DependencyInjection] Container::camelize also takes backslashes into consideration
8fd3256: [Validator] replaced the inexistent ClassMetadataFactoryInterface interface with MetadataFactoryInterface
2d6c2aa: [Debug] avoid notice from being eaten by fatal error
d7a4cfb: [Debug] ensured that a fatal PHP error is actually fatal after being handled by our error handler
a534b55: [Doctrine Bridge] handled the scenario when no entity manager is passed with closure query builder
2.4 changelog:
ec43a0c: [HttpKernel] fixed an issue when overriding Client::setServerParameters() and using the getContainer() method in it
Master changelog:
0d8c34b: [SecurityBundle] minor simplification in main configuration
087403b: [Security] fixed typos in Security's ExpressionLanguage
d1e5006: [HttpKernel] fixed regression introduced in 2.4 in the base DataCollector class
f2d4b32: [Console] fixed undefined offset when formatting namespace suggestions
55a76e7: [HttpKernel] fixed profiler event-listener usage outside request stack context
4c0b44e: [ExpressionLanguage] fixed lexing expression ending with spaces
Newest issues and pull requests
They talked about usMarco Rubio. Joe Raedle/Getty Images Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio accused his rival Ted Cruz on Tuesday of spreading a false news story suggesting Rubio was about to drop out.
"It ain't true," Rubio said on Fox News Radio. "It is a lie. It looks like Ted Cruz's campaign is putting out emails in places like Hawaii, telling people about it."
Politico reported Tuesday that Cruz's surrogates in Hawaii had recently sent out an email titled: "WASTED VOTE."
"According to multiple news sources, Marco Rubio's advisers are telling him to drop out of the presidential race before losing his home state of Florida in a few days time," the reported email said.
That was an apparent reference to a CNN report on Monday that the Rubio campaign labeled "absolutely 100% false." CNN reported that there had "been a serious internal debate" among Rubio's advisers "about whether or not he should drop out before Florida."
On Fox News Radio, Rubio connected the Cruz email to an incident during last month's Iowa caucuses.
During the caucuses, Cruz's campaign forwarded a news story to its precinct captains that suggested Ben Carson was about to drop out of the race. Cruz later apologized to Carson and said his team should have also passed along Carson's denial.
Rubio spokesman Joe Pounder was even more forceful than the Florida senator. In a statement, Pounder said:
Senator Cruz is up to his |
rich, salty tapenade made of mixed black olives with capers and garlic, and perhaps a lighter, citrus-y dip (like Green Goddess) for contrasting flavor.
Spooky Cupcakes
No celebration is complete without a cupcake. Babycakes, a New York bakery that specializes in vegan/gluten-free baked goods, has an incredible cupcake recipe that can be altered to create a variety of tastes and flavors. The basic recipe can be found here, and do feel free to adjust ingredients to make them your own. For example, try using pumpkin puree instead of applesauce as the moistening agent, add some ground cinnamon and nutmeg, and top with chocolate frosting for a truly autumnal delight.
Ectoplasmic Smoothies
Anyone who remembers Slimer from the Ghostbusters movies probably remembers the goo he left in his wake: a thick, slimy green mess that grossed out anyone who was unlucky enough to come in contact with it. (Sort of like wheatgrass!) A bright green smoothie isn’t just reminiscent of spider guts or monster slime; it’s also a delicious pick-me-up on a cool October day.
1/2 cup vanilla almond, soy, or coconut milk
1 cup frozen pineapple chunks
1 cup frozen mango or piece slices
1 large handful fresh baby spinach leaves
2 tablespoons vanilla or peach soy yogurt (optional)
A couple of ice cubes
This will create either one large, or two small smoothies.
Pour the milk into your blender, followed by the remaining ingredients, and blend until smooth. If you feel that it’s a bit too thick, you can add a bit more non-dairy milk or even a bit of water. Serve immediately.
Crispy Rice Treats
You really can’t go wrong with these crispy, crunchy snacks, especially since you can mould them into any shapes you like. Try pressing them into witch’s hats or pumpkins, or just dip them into melted vegan white chocolate and decorate with a pair of dark chocolate chips as eyes for ghostly munch-ables.
3 cups crisp rice cereal
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup smooth salted nut butter (almond or peanut work best)
1/2 cup agave syrup
Melt the nut butter, extract, and agave in a saucepan until the mixture is nice and runny. If you like, add a few drops of food coloring to make the cereal orange, green, or yellow. Pour the cereal into a large bowl, and then drizzle the liquid over it, making sure that all the crisps are coated well. Form into whatever shapes you like, then place on a baking sheet that’s covered with wax or parchment paper. Place the sheet in a freezer for about an hour to set, and then store in the fridge or other cool, dry place until you’re ready to serve them to visiting goblins.
Graveyard Dip
A layer of spicy black bean dip covered with a chunky layer of guacamole, with dark blue corn chips or other crackers as “tombstone” dippers.
Black Bean Dip
2 cans (14 oz) black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup minced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, minced
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
Put all the ingredients into a food processor or blender, and puree until it’s quite smooth.
Guacamole
3 large avocados, peeled, pitted, and sliced
2 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/3 cup onion, minced
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
1 lime, juiced
1 teaspoon salt
2 shakes tabasco or other hot sauce (optional)
Pulse all ingredients in a blender or food processor until mashed and combined: you don’t want this to be pureed, but rather to maintain a chunky texture. You can even mash it all by hand if you don’t want it to get too smooth.
To Make the Dip:
Use a spatula to spoon the black bean dip into large, shallow serving bowl, and smooth the top so you have a flat surface. Cover that with the guacamole, and then stand blue tortilla chips into the dish like tombstones.
Mysterious Martinis
This alcoholic bevvie from Vegan Yack Attack is obviously for the adult crowd, but you can easily make a non-alcoholic version for kidlets, expectant mums, and other non-imbibers. You can find more vegan spooky sips on The Vegan Woman website as well.
1 oz Midori Melon Liqueur
1 oz Vodka (your preference)
2 oz Fresh green grape juice (the recipe’s creator just blended grapes together and strained the mixture)
Red grapes for garnish
Shake all ingredients with ice and pour into martini glass. This is not a super strong recipe so use less grape juice if you would like it to have more umph. For a non-alcoholic version, use the green grape juice as a base, and add in a bit of green cola of your choice.
Veggie Dog “Mummies”
Pillsbury Crescent Rolls are listed on PETA’s “Accidentally Vegan” list, and that’s good news as far as this snack is concerned! To make mummies, just wrap strips of the crescent roll dough around your favourite veggie dogs (uncooked), and then bake according to the directions on the rolls’ packaging. Once they’re nicely brown and toasty, dot a pair of eyes on the mummies with some mustard, and serve warm.
Sugar Cookies
These little niblets do take a little bit of time and effort, but they’re so worth it when you crunch into them. Children love to help out to make these, especially if they get to decorate them with orange, black, or green sugar sparkles! The Kitchen Witch has shared her recipe for the perfect vegan sugar cookies on her website, and if you have Earth Balance, Tofutti, and a few basic baking ingredients in the house, you can make a batch of these in just a couple of hours.
Pumpkin Pie Ice “Cream”
If you want to get really spook-tacular, slather some of this between two of the sugar cookies mentioned above for a delectable vegan ice cream sandwich. (You’ll need an ice cream maker to create it.)
1/2 cup raw cashews
1/4 cup coconut milk
2 cups roasted pumpkin chunks
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Blend cashews, coconut milk, pumpkin, water, and agave nectar in a blender until very smooth. Then add the remaining ingredients and pulse briefly to combine them. Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker and process according to the machine’s directions.
As a final note, if your little ghouls and ghostlings are heading out trick-or-treating, you can sift through PETA’s list of vegan candies to verify whether the sugary treats in their stash are cruelty-free.
Happy Halloween!
An avid permaculture gardener, locavore, and novice (but enthusiastic!) canner, Lana Winter-Hébert joins Inhabitat after spending the last decade working as a writer and event guru for non-profit/eco organizations. In addition to her work with this site, she writes features and blog posts for Vegan Cuts, Green Pigeon, and several event planning websites based in London, UK. Currently, Lana divides her time between writing, and doing collaborative projects with Winter-Hébert: the design studio she runs with her husband. Best described as “endearingly eccentric”, she spends any spare moments wrestling with knitting projects, and devouring novels by obscure Czech writers. A Toronto native, she has recently chosen to leave that splendid city in favor of a tranquil lakeside nook in rural Quebec, where she and her Sir co-habitate with two hand-raised sparrows that live in their writing-desk.Where does your city’s water come from? The question is simple but, as with food or energy, many of us don’t know the answer. Beyond faucets, pipes and municipal treatment facilities, the average H2O consumer probably isn’t aware of all the rivers and lakes that form her vast watershed.
A new project by The Nature Conservancy could change that. Titled the Urban Water Blueprint, it maps dozens of city watersheds and makes a compelling argument for a greener approach to engineering the flow to our tap. Instead of relying on costly capital projects to filter sediments and pollution, urban officials should invest in the “natural infrastructure” of riverbanks, forests and farmlands that affect the quality and quantity of their water before it even reaches city boundaries.
According to Daniel Shemie, one of the project’s architects, a growing number of agencies are gravitating toward this upstream “treatment.”
“Utilities are generally aware of where their water comes from,” he says, adding that many realize it’s not just better for watershed health to address pollution and sediment at the source — it’s also cheaper.
Here are five cities from the massive report that successfully utilize their watershed’s natural infrastructure to purify and conserve. From Santa Fe’s fire prevention strategies to San Diego’s farm incentives, these regions benefit from a number of low-tech but highly creative solutions.
New York
New York City’s watershed conservation policies are so famous in the world of what Shemie calls “water nerds” that they’re only alluded to in the Blueprint’s companion report. But for those of us who don’t know offhand why New York boasts the champagne of drinking water, it’s an interesting example.
According to Shemie, the city’s extra-urban strategies include a mix of land protection, reforestation and agricultural best management practices. Needing to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act in the ‘90s, officials realized they could either build an $8-10 billion treatment plant or clean city water much more cheaply through partnerships with farmers and loggers to address runoff and erosion. They’ve also invested in open space and land conservation upstate to keep streams and rivers pristine.
New York’s watershed, courtesy of The Nature Conservancy
San Diego
Due to widespread drought, California’s border city could easily war with Imperial Valley farmers for a shrinking water supply. Thankfully, the city and surrounding agricultural lands are used to doing more with less.
Because so much of the region’s water comes from the Colorado River, a federal cap on that widely-shared supply in 2003 inspired officials to incentivize agricultural water conservation. Regional farmers are now some of the most water-wise in the state, lining canals and using drip irrigation and micro sprinklers to spread the valued resource. By 2021 “these agricultural conservation measures will provide 37 percent of the city’s water,” according to the Blueprint.
“San Diego speaks to how California could be really resilient to changes in rainfall,” Shemie says.
San Diego’s watershed, courtesy of The Nature Conservancy
Santa Fe
Over the last decade, the small New Mexico city has taken a very proactive and somewhat unusual approach to watershed conservation — combating wildfires.
Officials have learned from history. In 2000, a fire in neighboring Los Alamos wiped out hillside vegetation, allowing topsoil and ash to pour freely into rivers and streams, with a hefty cleanup fee of around $17 million. Instead of waiting for a costly, crippling blaze, leaders in Santa Fe realized they needed to prevent such a disaster from happening again. Now, they’re investing in programs to thin out regional tree growth and burn regular, low-intensity fires every few years to keep their water clean.
Santa Fe’s watershed, courtesy of The Nature Conservancy
Cape Town, South Africa
Open space easements around New York have improved the city’s water, but simple conservation isn’t enough in Cape Town’s watershed. Large portions of land are held in preservation trusts near the South African city, but non-native species like pine, acacia and eucalyptus threaten the water supply. Because they haven’t acclimated to the region’s climate, they suck up massive amounts of water to survive and spread.
One program called Working for Water trains people to remove these invasive plants and restore natives, which naturally need less. Since the program began in 1995, the region has seen stream flow gains according to the Blueprint, instead of exponential losses.
Cape Town highlights another boon of restoring water at its source, Shemie says: Jobs. The report states that 32,000 people are employed by Working for Water every year.
“Watershed restoration is very labor intensive, but not capital intensive,” he says. “You can create a predictable number of jobs every year.”
Cape Town’s watershed, courtesy of The Nature Conservancy
Manila, Philippines
As rainfall changes with the global climate, the Philippines capital city faces water scarcity. Instead of turning to large engineering projects, agencies are funding riparian restoration. “Adopt-a-watershed” programs partner volunteers with hillsides that need to be replanted, and one utility estimates that around 500,000 previously stripped areas will be re-forested by 2016.Environmental activists and some local residents are pressing Maryland regulators to impose stricter water-quality safeguards on an aging power plant in the Baltimore area that’s periodically releasing “bottom ash” from its coal-fired boilers into a Chesapeake Bay tributary.
The owner of the C. P. Crane Generating Station, which sits on a peninsula east of the city, is seeking state permission to keep discharging “bottom ash transport water” as well as stormwater collected from the 156-acre facility. Much of the discharge lands in two creeks, Seneca and Saltpeter, that are between the Gunpowder and Middle rivers. The Maryland Department of the Environment has issued a draft five-year permit, and has been taking public comments on it this summer. A final decision is due soon, MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said.
The MDE and the owner, Middle River Power, a subsidiary of Avenue Capital Group, a New York-based investment firm, said the plant is safe and has a good track record. But activists and a Baltimore County civic group representative object, contending that the MDE hasn’t required enough testing of the plant’s discharges to tell if they could be a factor in the rivers’ pollution woes.
“I don’t think this permit protects public health,” said Gunpowder Riverkeeper Theaux Le Gardeur. “I don’t think it’s defensible.” He called the permit “half-baked” and contends that it doesn’t address multiple issues, including chemical discharges, stormwater, the ash releases and monitoring.
Though the Gunpowder River, a source of drinking water for the Baltimore area, is one of the cleanest tributaries in the state and known for its coldwater trout fishing, the lower, tidally influenced portion is impaired by nutrient pollution, as is nearby Middle River. Parts of Middle River, which has had several large fish kills recently, also are deemed impaired by sediments contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, now-banned chemicals which were once widely used, mainly in electrical equipment. PCBs and other hazardous chemicals used and dumped at an aircraft manufacturing plant on Middle River contaminate the groundwater beneath Martin State Airport. Aerospace company Lockheed Martin, which owned the airport before the state bought it, has been investigating and remediating pollution in the area since the 1990s.
The 55-year old Crane plant is one of the smallest in Maryland. It employs 50 people and runs only 10–20 percent of the year, generally in July or August or January and February, when demand for electricity is greatest, according to its operators. It can generate 400 megawatts of power from its two coal-fired units and its one oil-combustion turbine.
Crane, which has been sold several times since its last permit application five years ago, needs a water discharge permit to continue to operate. Its new owner, Middle River Power, says it would discharge stormwater as well as “bottom ash transport water,” which is used to clean out the plant’s boilers.
When power plants burn coal, one of the main byproducts is an ash composed of fine particles. The lighter fly ash comes out of the top of the smokestack. The coarser, heavier combustion byproducts fall to the bottom. Plants like Crane flush the bottom ash from their boilers periodically, and hold the wash water in impoundments or storage tanks to let the ash settle out. At Crane, that water is treated and discharged every other year into Seneca Creek.
Crane reports discharging 170,000 gallons every two years. Neither the company’s permit application nor the MDE fact sheet about it indicates how much ash is in the discharged water.
Both Crane and MDE officials maintain that such a release is safe because the water is confined while it’s being used to clean out the boilers and does not get discharged until it is treated to filter out the bottom ash, which after drying is supplied to a company that markets the material as an abrasive blasting agent.
The power plant’s owner says it expects to purge the transport water only one more time before 2020, as the company plans to stop burning coal by then and convert the facility either to burn natural gas or simply store it rather than generate energy. If the company goes the natural gas route, it will use new equipment. That conversion is driven by tightening air-quality regulations, which would require the Crane plant to significantly reduce smog-forming emissions in a few years, either by installing costly pollution scrubbers, switching to cleaner-burning fuel or shutting down.
Mark Kubow, president and chief executive officer of Middle River Power, said the transport water is “basically pristine” when discharged because it’s treated to filter out any remaining ash that hasn’t already settled out. He added that the company is “very honest. We do everything by the book.”
But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared that even after treatment, bottom ash transport water contains “significant concentrations of metals, including arsenic and mercury.” The agency last year established a zero-discharge standard, requiring coal plants to cease releases of bottom ash as soon as possible beginning Nov. 1, 2018, but no later than Dec. 31, 2023.
According to the EPA, about 79 percent of the coal and petroleum coke-fired power plants wet-sluice all or part of the ash produced.
Middle River resident Dan Doerfer, who lives about three miles from the plant and serves on the Essex-Middle River Civic Council, calls the permit application “incomplete, not enough, just completely insufficient.” He said he is concerned the plant did not do enough sampling, is not treating the waste for chemicals such as arsenic and bromides and is not monitoring for PCBs.
The plant is a few miles north of Hart-Miller Island, a popular swimming area where the Maryland Department of Natural Resources recently opened a new state park. On a recent visit, the river teemed with crabbers and recreational boaters.
Le Gardeur also contends that there’s been insufficient sampling of the plant’s discharges. The company submitted a sample from just one of its 29 outfalls into the creek, taken when only one of the two power units was running.
Sylvia Lam, an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, a DC-based nonprofit also opposing the permit renewal, said the plant’s discharge sampling doesn’t meet EPA standards. The agency requires applicants to take four separate samples within 24 hours for such tests, she said.
Le Gardeur said he believes state regulators are operating under a “see no evil, hear no evil” attitude with regard to other industrial chemicals as well. Among them are bromides, which the company’s permit application identified as an ingredient in its discharge, but which the MDE did not mention in the fact sheet it prepared for the public about the plant.
Apperson, the MDE’s spokesman, defended the agency’s handling of the plant, noting that under the new draft permit, the plant will be required to reduce by half its allowable discharge of total suspended solids — another pollutant impairing Middle River’s water quality — and to analyze and identify sources of nutrients in its wastewater. The company would also be required to develop a stormwater pollution prevention plan and do more testing for toxicity at both of its primary outfalls. Apperson said the other 27 outfalls do not need to be tested because “they are for stormwater runoff that has no reasonable chance of coming into contact with coal.”
The draft permit would allow the plant to continue discharging bottom ash water until June 20, 2020. Le Gardeur said the state rules should at least be as stringent as the federal ones. The MDE, in its fact sheet, said meeting the 2018 initial deadline set by EPA would be “onerous” to the company and would not provide a “significant benefit” if the company later ceases burning coal, as it said it would likely do.
Kubow said the company was surprised about opposition to its permit and in particular to the bottom ash. He said the sampling met the permit requirements and that taking more grab samples would not have made a difference.
“All we’re saying,” Kubow said. “is we have to do that once more before we stop burning coal.”Sir Robert Bryson Hall II[a] (born January 22, 1990), known professionally as Logic, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer. Raised in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Logic developed an interest in music as a teenager, and ventured into a musical career in early 2009 releasing Logic: The Mixtape and a mixtape titled Young, Broke & Infamous in 2010. He signed with Visionary Music Group, before releasing three more mixtapes over three years.
His fourth mixtape, Young Sinatra: Welcome to Forever (2013), was released to critical acclaim, and allowed Logic to secure a recording contract with Def Jam Recordings. He later released his debut studio album Under Pressure in October 2014, which debuted at number four on the U.S. Billboard 200, eventually becoming certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and having sold more than 171,000 copies. Logic's second studio album The Incredible True Story was released in November 2015, receiving mostly positive reviews from critics. Also certified gold in the U.S., it sold over 185,000 copies. Logic released his fifth mixtape, Bobby Tarantino, in 2016.
Logic's third studio album Everybody (2017) was his first to debut at number one in the U.S on the Billboard 200. It was eventually certified platinum by the RIAA in March 2018. The album spawned his first international top 10 single as a lead artist, "1-800-273-8255", which reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100.[4] In March 2018, Logic released his sixth mixtape, Bobby Tarantino II, a sequel to his 2016 mixtape. It also landed at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 119,000 equivalent album units in the first week[5] and later certified gold by the RIAA in September 2018.
Life and career
1990–2005: Early life
Sir Robert Bryson Hall II was born on January 22, 1990 at Shady Grove Hospital[6] in Rockville, Maryland. He was born to Robert Bryson Hall, an African-American Maryland native, and a Caucasian mother. Logic spent much of his youth in the West Deer Park neighborhood in Gaithersburg, Maryland. His father suffered from a cocaine addiction and his mother suffered from alcoholism.[7] Despite his father initially being absent in his childhood, Logic was able to reconnect with Hall due to his burgeoning rap career. During his early adolescent years, Logic witnessed his brothers produce and distribute crack cocaine to "addicts all over the block",[8] including to his father. Logic maintains that he accurately knows how to manufacture and produce crack cocaine following these experiences.[9] He attended neighboring Gaithersburg High School. However, he did not graduate and was soon expelled after he began skipping classes in the tenth grade. Logic would comment on the expulsion, stating "I started doing badly and failed every class but English, so they kicked me out of school, they gave up on me."[10]
2005–2012: Early career and various mixtapes
At the age of 13, Logic met Solomon Taylor, who would soon become his mentor. Logic became interested in rap and hip hop after watching the movie Kill Bill: Volume 1, directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film's score was produced by RZA, a member of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan.[11] Following this, Logic began listening to the group, and soon expressed a deep affection for hip hop. Logic bought The Roots' album Do You Want More?!!!??! later that year,[12] which prompted Taylor to bring Logic a large number of CDs containing instrumental beats, for him to write lyrics over.[13] In 2009, Logic performed under the stage name "Psychological" with Logic describing the name as "one name that really stuck [with me]. I just loved this word because it was about the mind and I knew that's what I wanted my music to consist of; something that really challenges the mind".[14] He released an unofficial mixtape titled Psychological – Logic: The Mixtape under his original stage name. The mixtape allowed Logic to serve as the opening act for artists like Pitbull, EPMD, Method Man, Redman, and Ludacris at various shows all over Maryland. Soon after, he shortened the "Psychological" moniker to "Logic".[14]
Following these introductory experiences, Logic released his first official mixtape, Young, Broke & Infamous, on December 15, 2010. The mixtape was well received by critics and was the genesis for Logic to establish an early following. Chris Zarou, the president of Visionary Music Group, heard the mixtape and signed Logic to the independent label. Upon signing, Logic stated in an interview, "Visionary Music Group is like Roc-A-Fella. Damon Dash, that's like Chris Zarou of Visionary Music Group, I like to see myself as a Jay. In no way am I arrogant or cocky, I have to see it in order to do it. They did it independent and when they signed with a major, they did it the way that they wanted to do it".[15] The mixtape was confirmed to have been downloaded over 250,000 times on online mixtape sharing platform DatPiff. Logic released his second mixtape, Young Sinatra, in 2011. It serves as the first installment in the Young Sinatra chronology, and the mixtape received critical acclaim from various publications, including XXL.[12] The music video for "All I Do", released on YouTube, gained over a million views in the week following its release.
After the success of his previous two projects, Logic released his third mixtape Young Sinatra: Undeniable on April 30, 2012.[16] The mixtape is notable for Logic addressing various personal topics, including his future, his father's drug use, his expulsion from school, and his mother getting stabbed.[17] Speaking about the mixtape, Logic said, "Fans tend to think that if you fall in love with an artist because he makes this kind of sound [but if he gets] bigger and he grows and [his sound changes, people also think he changes]. But with me, I created all types of sounds from the get go, so you can never say I'm changing."[16] He commented on the musical aspects of the mixtape, stating, "There's stuff on there for the motherf***ers that don't pay attention to lyrics and just want to have fun, but every line is constructed with such depth that the real lyricists and nitpickers have something to listen to."[12] After the release of Young Sinatra: Undeniable, Logic completed his first national headlining tour, the Visionary Music Group Tour.
2012–2013: Young Sinatra: Welcome to Forever and recording contract
In early 2013, Logic was featured in an edition of XXL, being included as a part of the publication's annual "Top 10 Freshmen List", alongside artists Travis Scott, Trinidad James, Dizzy Wright, Action Bronson, Joey Badass, Angel Haze, Ab-Soul, Chief Keef, Kirko Bangz and Schoolboy Q.[18] Logic completed his first European tour in March 2013, and confirmed his fourth mixtape, Young Sinatra: Welcome to Forever,[19] would be released on May 7.[20] He announced his second headlining national tour, the two-month-long Welcome to Forever Tour, to promote the project.[21][22] The mixtape was a critical success, with critics praising the project, calling it a "free album", as well as noting the rapper's rapid growth and adaptability. The mixtape received over 700,000 downloads on DatPiff.[23]
On April 15, it was announced that Logic had signed with Def Jam Recordings, with Def Jam producer No I.D. serving as the executive producer of his debut album.[24] Logic released a public statement about the signing, stating, "I'm excited to take this next step in my career. It's incredible for Def Jam [Records] and Visionary Music Group to work together, and the opportunity to collaborate [with No I.D.] is priceless. I'm very humbled to be a part of the most iconic hip hop label of all time."[25] Logic toured with Kid Cudi, fellow Def Jam signee Big Sean, and Tyler, the Creator on "The Cud Life Tour 2013", throughout the fall of the year.[26]
2013–2014: Under Pressure
On November 5, Logic revealed that No I.D., former GOOD Music producer Hit-Boy, RattPack member 6ix, and C-Sick would be providing production on his debut record, with No I.D. and 6ix serving as executive producers for the album.[27] On January 27, 2014, Visionary Music Group released the song "24 Freestyle". The song was released in celebration of Logic's birthday and serves as the first noted collaboration between all VMG artists.[28] On February 11, Logic announced that he would be touring alongside EDM band Krewella on the 2014 Verge Campus Spring Tour.[29] On April 8, Logic released "Now", originally scheduled to be featured on his upcoming free EP titled While You Wait. Logic embarked on the month-long While You Wait Tour alongside fellow Visionary Music Group member QuESt.[30][31] On April 22, he released "Alright", the third song from the While You Wait project, and features Big Sean.[32] Logic concluded the four-track project, releasing "Finding Forever" on May 7.[33]
In summer 2014, Logic announced that no featured artists would appear on his debut album, making it "personal [to Logic] and focused on only me".[34] On August 27, Logic released "Driving Ms. Daisy", featuring Childish Gambino. September brought the announcements of his album title and release date, October 21.[35] The title track, serving as the album's primary single, was released on September 15.[36] On October 14, Logic released the second single titled "Buried Alive", which was the final single to be released as promotion for the album.[37] On October 21, Logic released Under Pressure, selling over 70,000 copies in its first week after debuting at #2 on the Billboard Top Hip-Hop/R&B Chart.[38]
On November 12, Logic made his network television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon by performing "I'm Gone" alongside The Roots, 6ix, and DJ Rhetorik.[39]
2015–2016: The Incredible True Story and Bobby Tarantino
Logic performing in August 2016
On September 8, Logic released the trailer for his upcoming second album, announcing that the album will be released in the fall of 2015 and is considered a "motion picture sci-fi epic". The story, which takes places 100 years into the future, begins with Earth being uninhabitable due to severe human intervention. The primary characters begin traveling to a new planet called Paradise and as they travel, they play The Incredible True Story.[40] It features Logic, Steven Blum (as Thomas), Kevin Randolph (as Kai), and Anna Elyse Palchikoff (as Thalia) as main characters, and the cast took part in a panel discussion to promote and talk about the album at New York Comic Con.[41] Logic, Blum, Randolph, and 6ix returned to New York Comic Con in 2016 to discuss "life after The Incredible True Story.[42]
On September 22, 2015, Logic released "Young Jesus", the first single from the album, featuring longtime friend Big Lenbo. "Like Woah" and "Fade Away", the second and third singles from the album, were released on October 14 and November 5, respectively.[43][44] The Incredible True Story was released on November 13, 2015, surpassing his debut album on the Billboard 200, debuting at #3, with a combined first-week sales of 135,000. The album also topped the Billboard Top Hip-Hop/R&B Chart. It was also the second Logic commercial release to gain widespread critical acclaim.[45] Logic announced The Incredible World Tour, taking place in spring 2016.[46] After the conclusion of The Incredible World Tour, it was revealed that Logic and rapper G-Eazy would be co-headlining The Endless Summer Tour, a nationwide tour, together in summer 2016. Rappers YG and Yo Gotti would be the supporting acts.[47] Two weeks ahead of the start of the tour, Logic released "Flexicution", a song that he teased on social media for months. It features Jessica Andrea on the latter end of the song, where she provides backing vocals.[48]
On July 1, 2016, Logic released a mixtape titled Bobby Tarantino.[49] It is Logic's sixth mixtape, and his first since 2013's Young Sinatra: Welcome to Forever and was released unexpectedly via Logic's Twitter account. The mixtape includes singles "Flexicution" (which became his first solo Billboard Hot 100 charting single) and Wrist featuring Pusha T, with the production being handled mainly by Logic and 6ix. On October 3, 2016, Logic revealed the original title of his third studio album to be AfricAryaN, stating that "It's about me being black and white, and seeing life from two sides. [It's about] the cultural evolution and how you can go from the darkest of skin to the lightest of skin […] At the end of the day, we all have so many different ethnicities in our blood, no matter how pure we think we are".[50]
2017–present: Everybody, Bobby Tarantino II and YSIV
Logic performing at the 2018 VMAs
On March 29, 2017, Logic revealed the new title of his album called Everybody.[51] The news of his third album was shared and revealed publicly on Logic's Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube account in the form of videos revealing the official album cover designed and painted by Sam Spratt and directed by Andy Hines. The album was released on May 5, 2017. In an interview with Genius, Logic said that his fourth album is likely to be his final one.[52][53][54][55]
Everybody debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 247,000 album-equivalent units, of which 196,000 were pure album sales.[56] However, the album also set the record for largest second week drop of all time, as pure sales fell 96% to just 8,000 copies.[57] Its lead single "1-800-273-8255", a song created in association with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was certified triple platinum by the RIAA.[58] In August 2017, Logic guest starred in the animated comedy series Rick and Morty, voicing himself as the headliner of a festival.[59] In November 2017, Logic released the song "Broken People" as part of the Bright soundtrack.[60]
On February 23, 2018, Logic released a single titled "44 More". It was a sequel to "44 Bars", a song from Logic's 2016 mixtape Bobby Tarantino.[61][62] The song peaked at number 22 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.[63] The following single, "Overnight", was released four days later on February 27.[64] Logic would eventually release another single titled "Everyday", with record producer Marshmello on March 2.[65] Logic would later announced his sixth mixtape titled Bobby Tarantino II, with a promotional video featuring the characters of the Adult Swim series Rick and Morty, on March 7.[66] Bobby Tarantino II was released on March 9, 2018, through Def Jam and Visionary Music Group.[67] The mixtape featured guest appearances from 2 Chainz, Big Sean, and Wiz Khalifa. On March 30, he was featured in the premier episode of Netflix's original documentary series, Rapture.[68]
On September 28, 2018, Logic released his fourth studio album titled, YSIV. Before releasing the project, Logic released three singles: "One Day" featuring Ryan Tedder, "The Return" and "Everybody Dies". The album features the song “Wu Tang Forever” which features all the surviving members of the Wu Tang Clan.[69] Logic has also announced an album titled Ultra 85, which currently has no release date.[70] He has also announced that he has written a novel, titled Supermarket[71], which he plans to release sometime in 2018. He also has said that he has written and plans to star in his own movie, which he's began to work on.[72]
Personal life
To properly delve into music as a full-time occupation, Logic terminated a five-year romantic relationship in 2009. He had then stated, "You can put your everything into a relationship, but that doesn't mean you're going to get back what you give. When I created my first mix tape, I realized everything I put in my music — the hours, the lyricism, the time, the grind, pain, sweat, blood, tears — I get it back. I see it."[73] He further commented, saying "The thing is, I feel like so many artists, well, not really artists but so many people think they can rap and they just want a deal and the glitz and the glamour and the women but they don't understand that all I do and want |
, like Dumbledore’s Army, we won’t be going down without one hell of a fight.In a few weeks I will address my first TUC annual meeting as general secretary. But if I do so again in 2014 I risk committing a criminal offence. This is because the cost of the congress will take us over the limited ration of dissent the government plans to allow in the 12 months before the 2015 election. This shocking proposal is contained in the transparency of lobbying, non-party campaigning and trade union administration bill, published as the Commons shut for the summer break, and with debate starting the day after MPs return.
It is an open secret around Westminster that the proposals in this bill are a highly partisan attack on trade union relations with the Labour party. But as leaders of charities, churches and faith groups return from their holidays, they are starting to realise it could redefine activities they have always regarded as being far above party politics as election campaigning – and that if they fail to comply with the spending limits, they will be committing a criminal offence.
How will this gag work? At present the law restricts the spending of non-party groups on election campaigning. But the proposed law goes from providing reasonable rules to keep big money out of politics into a chilling attack on free speech.
Even informal local groups will be caught up in the new rules. Concerned about fracking in your village? Worried about proposals to close a hospital or build a road? Be very careful, you only have a limited ration of dissent in each constituency, and if you get overdrawn or even lose some receipts then you could face a police investigation. Are you a community group that organises a series of hustings but chooses to exclude extremist party candidates? Sorry, you are now considered to be election campaigners.
The bill, then, redefines what counts as electioneering. At present only materials and activities obviously targeted at shifting votes are capped. But anything that might change the mind of a voter will count as election campaigning in future. If you are critical of a government policy in the year before an election, that will count as election campaigning. If you are active against racism then you could be campaigning against far-right parties. Staff time will be included, so the wages of anyone who works on writing a critique of a policy or sends it to the media will count.
But while much more will count as campaign spending, the limit on what third parties can spend in the year before the election is cut by more than half to a UK limit of £389,000.
Our congress will not just take the TUC over the third-party limit, it would also criminalise all our affiliated trade unions. This is because when two or more organisations co-operate their spending is all added together and then counts against each of their individual limits.
We would not be able to organise the national demonstration for jobs and fair wages that the TUC is planning next year if it falls 12 months before the election as, again, the joint costs of everyone participating will easily exceed the limit. Our anti-austerity message has never been party-political, but there can be no doubt that we disagree with the economic strategy of the current government. Such dissent will be criminalised.
It is hard to know whether everyone in government intends this bill to be so draconian. I certainly do not believe that the Lib Dems could knowingly have signed up to such illiberal proposals.
This bill was originally announced as a reaction to press allegations of cash for lobbying. But its lobbying register has united transparency campaigners and lobbyists against it, and looks like an excuse to introduce these limits, an element which people are only now beginning to understand. While it may force campaign groups like the Taxpayers' Alliance to be more open about its funding, that is a small benefit to be weighed against proposals that have nothing to do with cleaning up elections. Political parties' spending limits, however, will not be changed.
Our democracy is too important to be closed down for everyone other than political parties for a year before an election. The government should withdraw part two of this bill. And if it thinks there is a problem that needs a legislative solution then it should at least make the effort to consult with others and build a cross-party, cross-civil society consensus. That would be the best way to guarantee freedom of speech while stopping those with the biggest wallets buying elections.Guns & Ammo magazine is facing stiff backlash from its readers after publishing an editorial in its December issue supporting gun regulation.
December issue of Guns and Ammo
The magazine's Facebook page has been inundated in the last 24 hours with people claiming they've either canceled their subscriptions or pledging to never buy another issue until Dick Metcalf, the contributing editor behind the article, is fired.
Mr. Metcalf's editorial, which appears on the December issue's final page, argues that gun regulation does not equal infringement of the Second Amendment. "The fact is," he writes, "all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be."
That position did not sit well with readers of "the world's most widely read firearms magazine," as Guns & Ammo describes itself. Unlike a Field & Stream or Outdoor Life, which focus on hunting and fishing, Guns & Ammo is specifically about the hardware, with articles rating guns and ammunition, offering tips for upgrading guns and, on its website, ranking the best conceal-and-carry states (Arizona). And while there are ads from marketers including Wrangler and Peak antifreeze, the bulk of the ads in print come from manufacturers of guns, ammunition, accessories and retailers offering such items.
Numerous commenters said they planned to boycott advertisers in the magazine and implored others to do so as well.
"I have read Guns and Ammo for most of my life, but due to Dick Metcalf's latest article I will no longer buy your magazine and will contact your advertisers and ask them to withdraw funding for your magazine unless you fire Mr Metcalf," a commenter wrote.
Some Twitter users have also expressed their displeasure over the editorial.
Wow what a Dick. RT @davidjones720: Guns & Ammo Editor: All Constitutional Rights Need Regulation, Even 2nd Amendment http://t.co/aHcmJ5PNnT — #DebtFreeAmerica (@chadharlan) November 6, 2013
And a number of conservative blogs and websites, including Breitbart.com, have weighed in. Meanwhile, the magazine's Facebook and Twitter accounts have avoided the topic.
Guns & Ammo Publisher Chris Agnes did not respond to several Ad Age emails. Jim Bequette, the magazine's editor in chief, also did not respond to an email.
A number of advertisers, including Beretta, laser-sight-maker Viridian and Sneaky Pete Holsters and ammunition manufacturer Hornady did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Metcalf was not calling to make guns illegal, but he does support regulation when it comes to training and preparation. "I firmly believe that all U.S. citizens have a right to keep and bear arms, but I do not believe that they have a right to use them irresponsibly," Mr. Metcalf continues later in the column (emphasis his). "And I do believe their fellow citizens by the specific language of the Second Amendment, have an equal right to enact regulatory laws requiring them to undergo adequate training and preparation for the responsibility of bearing arms."
The outrage seems to revolve not around the suggestion of training, but around Mr. Metcalf's interpretation of the Second Amendment.
On the TruthAboutGuns.com, site Publisher Robert Farago wrote: "Metcalf's bone-headed, uninformed, patently obvious misinterpretation of the Second Amendment's introductory clause isn't as bad as the... assertion that the [Second Amendment] only applies to Americans in a militia, but it's the next worst thing." (There are 327 comments on that piece alone.)
The editorial has drawn tacit approval from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a lobbying group in favor of strict gun control. The organization started a discussion on its own Facebook page around the piece, drawing mostly support from its Facebook followers. That has also rankled Guns & Ammo's readership.
"I see the Brady Campaign liked Dick Metcalf's editorial," a Facebook commenter wrote. "Shouldn't that set off some warning bells for -somebody- at G&A???"
Ad pages in Guns & Ammo are off 2.7% this year through November, according to the Media Information Newsletter. Its total paid and verified circulation is up 7% to 416,224 through the first half of 2013, according to its publishers statement filed with the Alliance for Audited Media.
The magazine's website experienced a traffic surge in March when the latest gun control debate in Washington peaked, MIN reported in May.India is booming, they say. The diaspora is coming home. But certain alienated classes of Indians are seeking their fortunes abroad. And improbably, some are going to war-torn Congo.
This is astonishing when one considers Congo’s wretchedness. Killing and rape are such daily affairs that they are only sporadically reported in the international press. Disease and death are rampant. The government is broken, unable to provide even basic services. There is perhaps less hope in this country than in any other place.
Europe, the US—these are the places Indians dream of. I went to Congo expecting myself to be the only Indian in sight.
But I found myself in the company of hundreds of my countrymen. To my surprise they had arrived recently, during India’s rise. Like me, they had no connection to Congo. They had no reason—family or roots—to choose this place over any other. But they too had sensed the possibilities in this country’s chaos.
Unpaved roads. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
One of these men, Bobby Singh, became my friend. He ran a small electronics shop in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. We first met at India’s Independence Day flag-hoisting ceremony, and for some reason he latched on to me. Bobby hoped to make his fortune in Congo, and with some hope he had bought a piece of land, deep in the jungle.
Bobby was spectacularly lucky, even if the odds were in his favour. Congo’s land is so rich with gold, diamonds, copper, tin, tantalum, cobalt and minerals unheard of, waiting to be exploited, that the country is considered a geological aberration—unusual on our planet, for so much wealth to be concentrated on so little territory. Bobby discovered that his land contained uranium.
One of my first big breaks as a journalist came on a journey with Bobby, up the mighty Congo River, to his piece of land. It was a fantastical journey, into the world’s second largest rainforest, to areas few outsiders ever see. There I met a primitive pygmy tribe, and it was a story about their way of life that earned me the funds to travel into Congo’s war.
Former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Photo: Giammi Ferrari/Cover/Getty Images
A family brought their mute girl to me one night in the jungle, and asked me to make her speak. When I told them I could not, they thought I did not want to help them and grew angry. Magic was everywhere when discussing India. Even in questions of football.
A group of young men, fans of the game, once said to me: “India has one billion people. Why does it fail to produce 11 good football players?"
“We are a nation that plays cricket," I replied.
“You are wrong," I was informed by these Congolese. “It is impossible that you can’t produce 11 good players. We think Fifa has banned India because its black magic makes it too good."
Someone should inform India’s sporting authorities.
Within the war I found Indians reinventing themselves. The Indian government had sent more than 3,000 soldiers as part of a UN mission to bring Congo peace. The soldiers were mostly young jawans, restrained to remote camps in the forests. But a few officers in cities at the heart of the war found themselves in a place of new liberty—with no family or society keeping watch, and with unprecedented power, they exploded in late-night orgies with girls from the local universities.
The girls needed money to pay their fees; and the officers, I sensed, were desperate to escape India’s suffocating social mores. Congo offered such liberty.
Gold produced in Congo. Photo: Anjan Sundaram
These immigrants, living their complicated lives, became a source of invaluable friendship and support. I was at one point in a city in the war threatened by a militiaman. I got it into my head to go and meet this man, but could not find a driver willing to take the risk. It was a Pakistani trader who took me to see him, blasting Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s songs from his speakers. The Pakistani was from Punjab, and had once been an arms dealer. He knew the militiaman personally from his dealings. It was at the time perhaps the biggest story I had reported.
The Pakistani said he had a criminal record in his home country; he had chosen Congo as a place to give himself a new life.
Success in Congo, for me and for these immigrants, did not come easy. I struggled to earn a living. My life was in danger at least twice; once with a gun to my head. The Congolese family I was living with nearly threw me out of the house because I did not understand their customs. I had not understood that I had to allow family members to steal from me, and that I should never accuse them of theft.
Bobby’s land was caught up in opaque deals, and I never found out if he was able to profit from his luck with the uranium. More likely he was locked up in years of endless negotiations and didn’t make a cent. And, shortly after I met the militiaman with the Pakistani, intense street-fighting broke out in Congo’s capital, and businesses in the city, many owned by Indians, were looted, and suffered for many months.
But it was during that battle that I began to write for The New York Times. Congo, remote, disregarded by the world, had become the place where I discovered an essential piece of my vocation.
I felt free in this land. I could turn myself into anything I wanted—reporter, pimp, businessman. I could pursue any dream. There were no established rules, no constraining society, no lines that I could not cross. It was a terre-neuve. In my travels I discovered mass graves. I saw starvation, death. I met people who had committed murderous atrocities. This was the world that had eluded me; it was a world I had wanted to see.
I arrived in Congo having never written a news story, and within a year was offered jobs with the Associated Press. Such opportunities would have been difficult to come by in India’s big cities, or for that matter anywhere else.
Like the Indians and Pakistanis I met and befriended, in Congo’s chaos I found something of my fortune. Like them, I had run against the Indian tradition of moving to the West. And I felt I had found my place.
Anjan Sundaram’s first book, Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo, will be published by Penguin India in February.“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Martin Luther King said that, and the phrase has likely been ringing in the ears of Aboriginal Australians for at least the last seven years.
Savvy Aboriginal observers have been watching, waiting for white Australians to finally cotton on to the fact that when Aboriginal people’s basic human rights were suspended under the Northern Territory intervention, it was only a matter of time before whitefellas would start copping it as well.
Over the weekend, it finally happened. On Sunday afternoon, The Guardian reported that the Abbott Government is poised for a wide-scale roll out of ‘welfare quarantining’, a policy which sees people on government benefits issued a ‘BasicsCard’, which then controls how they spend up to 70 per cent of their welfare entitlements.
People targeted will be those ‘identified’ by government as ‘the leaners’, to borrow a phrase from Treasurer Joe Hockey.
Cue the outrage from across the land at yet another Abbott Government assault on the people who can least afford it.
Australians should be angry that an administration which professes the principle of ‘small government’ should be intruding so deeply into the lives of individuals. But they should also know that a healthy dose of that outrage should be directed somewhere other than the Liberals. I’ll get to that part in a minute.
The welfare quarantining rot began under the Howard government in 2007, when it was launched as a key plank part of the emergency measures of the Northern Territory intervention.
Government thinking of the day was that Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory – and by ‘Aboriginal people I mean ALL Aboriginal people –are so corrupt and dysfunctional that they waste their welfare entitlements on booze and drugs, at the expense of their children.
So the BasicsCard was rushed out to more than 73 Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory. Every single Aboriginal person in those communities who received welfare payments was forced onto the card, regardless of whether or not they actually had children. Think pensioners, for example. And war veterans.
And here’s where it all falls apart. It’s a well-known feature of isolated Aboriginal communities that they’re a long way from anywhere, and so they rely on their local community store for basic supplies.
The BasicsCard was new, untested technology, and with its inevitable bugs and outright failures in the early days, it ensured that thousands of people couldn’t properly access half of their fortnightly welfare payments.
And that’s how the numerous reports of widespread starvation among men, women and children on Aboriginal communities across the Territory came about.
The introduction of the BasicsCard also helped to make appalling levels of poverty even worse.
As Aboriginal people found their BasicsCards wouldn’t work, they were forced to head to larger centres to find food, with all the resultant additional costs that brings. And out bush, in case you’ve never been, petrol can cost more than $2 a litre. And communities are often hundreds and hundreds of kilometres form anywhere.
So Aboriginal people were spending more and more on transport, and less and less on the basics of life, which the Liberals said was the reason for the introduction of the card in the first place.
Many Aboriginal people, of course, couldn’t afford to get home. And that’s how even greater levels of overcrowding and homeless came about in larger urbanized towns, and why so many of the Aboriginal communities emptied after the intervention.
None of this, of course, factors in the shame associated with being forced onto a BasicsCard, particularly as a black person in a predominantly white urban centre like Alice Springs.
Frustrated with the problems associated with the technology, larger supermarkets such as Woolworths began creating separate lines… multiple lanes for the whites, and a single lane for the blacks.
Of course, non Aboriginal Australians can relax a little. Starvation, poverty and shame would never be wrought on non-Aboriginal communities. That is the sole preserve of the First Australians.
The BasicsCard technology is now well-established, and outlets are popping up around the country, courtesy of more than half a billion dollars of federal government investment into a white bureaucratic black hole, on a technology designed to intervene in the lives and spending habits of a tiny proportion of the Australian community.
Which brings us to the outrage part.
It’s the Liberals who fluffed the introduction of the BasicsCard, and it’s the Liberals who are again looking at expanding it nationally, beyond Aboriginal people in the Territory and a handful of ‘trial sites’ around the country.
But it was, the Labor Party – to borrow from another Hockey phrase – who did the “heavy lifting” in readying the BasicsCard for its national implementation.
The overwhelming majority of money spent expanding the BasicsCard was blown by Labor, and it was done during a period when Labor was leading its own quiet assault on welfare, such as their slashing of the single parents pension.
And it was Labor that started the welfare quarantining trials sites, in communities in WA, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. It’s worth briefly examining why.
In Opposition, Labor supported the passage of the Northern Territory intervention legislations through parliament, while at the same time howling in protest at some of its provisions, including the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the racially discriminatory nature of the BasicsCard.
In Government, Labor not only vastly expanded the BasicsCard, but fended off increasing interest from the United Nations about our racist policies by re-instating the RDA, and then announcing welfare quarantining would be ‘expanded’ to the broader Australian community.
That’s how the trial sites came about – it was, in part, Labor’s way of skirting around the provisions of the RDA. A comparative handful of non-Aboriginal Australians were targeted in the trials, compared to the 15,000 plus Aboriginal people still forcibly subjected to it in the Territory.
But in truth, Labor has long-intended to subject the poorest people in the nation – those on welfare – to greater government control. It was just growing international condemnation of Australia’s racism that forced their hand.
In short, the Liberals’ planned expansion of welfare quarantining has been well and truly brought to you by Labor.
Which leaves us all where? Well, comprehensively wedged.
Not only do both major parties support the policy, but the vast majority of our nation have sat silently while this outrage was wrought on Aboriginal people. Indeed, a poll in the early days of the NT intervention revealed that almost two-thirds of Australians thought the policy – with all its human rights abusing provisions – was a good idea.
It looks more than a little hollow now to start screaming and shouting about one of the most invasive of those provisions – welfare quarantining.
So maybe the lesson in all this is that next time you see a large body of Aboriginal people objecting to the latest ‘radical experiment’ from government, more of us should take a closer interest.
If not because you believe in respecting the basic human rights of the nation’s most vulnerable people, the then maybe because sooner or later, government will inevitably train its sights on the rest of us.It's not a good day for the Mayor Muriel Bowser administration or for the Office of Campaign Finance if a charge leveled today has any merit.
Public Citizen filed a complaint with the regulatory body today asking it to investigate 23 contributions amounting to $31,500 during the 2014 mayoral campaign that it says violated the legal $2,000 limit for donors.
“The public records show illegal contributions," Aquene Freechild, co-director of Public Citizen's Democracy is For People campaign, says in a press release. "If this is due to sloppy reporting, it’s an egregious failure by the Bowser campaign and the Office of Campaign Finance. If it’s an abuse of the District’s campaign finance law, Bowser needs to be held accountable.”
She continues, “Corporate interests have been dominating D.C. elections for years, and now it appears that some of these donations are illegal. These apparent abuses highlight both the need for more rigorous enforcement by the OCF and for meaningful reform. The District Council must pass fair elections and campaign finance reform legislation to clean up elections and bring more D.C. residents—not corporate influencers—into the election process.”
The complaint notes City Paper's recent reporting that Bowser accepted $1,000 over the legal limit from Sanford Capital, a slumlord with hundreds of units in the District that has been repeatedly fined for violations of housing codes and consumer regulations. The situation is so bad that D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine's office has sued the company.
A City Paper investigation recently found that mold, vermin, broken refrigerators and toilets, children and elderly living without heat and air conditioning, and units open to vagrants no matter how many times tenants complain are standard conditions at buildings owned by Sanford.
Worse, D.C. taxpayers are subsidizing the Maryland company by the millions.
Ben Soto, who served as treasurer for Bowser's campaign and also sits on the board of directors at EagleBank, which has provided at least $46 million in financing to Sanford for its D.C. properties, responds by email that the campaign "was always committed to full transparency and strict adherence to all campaign finance laws. The Campaign Committee reported all contributions and expenses, is not aware of any excess contributions and never intended to accept any excess contributions."
Soto claims OCF conducted an audit of the campaign, and Bowser told FOX5 the same. According to OCF records, those claims are false.
And in a breathtaking display of hubris, Soto does not suggest in his response that the campaign has any intention of reviewing its records and returning any overages, which is standard campaign accounting procedure.
He cites a termination letter—which is distinct from an audit—that the campaign received from the OCF that says the agency found no irregularities. "Furthermore," he writes, "the Campaign Committee received 7,079 campaign contributions. So the Public Citizens Complaint amounts to less than.005% of all contributions received."
OCF spokesman Wesley Williams confirms that the agency has received the complaint and that it is "currently under review." He adds, "Inquiries of this nature are confidential until completion."
This post has been updated.Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi
The Congress spreads love and brotherhood while the BJP nurtures anger and arrogance, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi said at a rally in Guwahati in Assam on Tuesday.
"BJP leaders talk about Hindutva but do not read the Gita. If they open and read the book, they will see that it written that respect everyone, work with love and do not work with arrogance. This is also written in the Quran, Guru Granth Sahib and all other holy books," he said.
"Love and brotherhood run this country. There is no need to wipe out anyone. This is a bouquet. There is space for everyone - Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. If anyone is wiped out, it will be those who have anger in their hearts, arrogance in their hearts," he said.
"We gave power to the people. We shooed away Vedanta from Niyamgiri. We said it is the land of the tribals. We went to Bhatta-Parsaul and fought against land acquisition. We did not do this with anger, by cursing others, we did it with love. Gandhi-ji said revolution comes from love, not anger," he said.
Targeting the BJP further, he accused the previous AGP-BJP coalition government in Assam of corruption.
"There used to be an AGP-BJP government here. What they looted in three months could not have been looted in 50 years," he said.
Attacking BJP's PM nominee Narendra Modi, he said: "Leaders come and say they will change the world. Leaders don't change the world, people do," he said.
"A Sikh person said to me in Haryana. He said: 'I am from Gujarat. I came to Gujarat 50 years ago from Pakistan. I was given a small land. I farmed there. Forty years later, the Gujarat government says you are an outsider. You get out," he said.
He said the Congress has brought millions out of poverty.
"In the last 10 years, the Congress brought 15 crore people out of poverty. It is not a small job. This hasn't ever happened in history," he said.
"Now a new class has emerged - 70 crore people who run this country, those who are above BPL category and below middle class. We want to work for their welfare. We want to bring them into the middle class.
He said there should be a law against regionalism.
"No one - from Tamil Nadu or Assam or any other state - should feel that there is a place in India where he does not feel at home."
On the self-immolation of a man outside Assam secretariat over land rights on Monday, the Congress leader said, "A youth immolated himself. But we are a party of love, not of violence. I told Gogoi-ji to extend all possible help to his family."J. ARGUEDAS/EPA/Corbis
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is set to decide whether Costa Rica, the only country that completely prohibits in vitro fertilization (IVF), has infringed basic rights with its ban. The tribunal — which is based in the Costa Rican capital of San José but rules on human-rights violations throughout Central and South America — met last week to hear a case brought by affected couples against Costa Rica.
The decision, expected in the next few months, may oblige Costa Rica to lift the ban and regulate IVF. But scientists are concerned that if the prohibition is upheld, it will set a bad precedent for laws related to health, including one that would lift a ban on experiments involving humans, such as drug trials, that was first brought before the country's parliament in 2011.
Although several other countries have no regulation for IVF, or don’t actually offer access to fertility therapies, Costa Rica is the only nation known to have a total ban, says Sheryl Vanderpoel a spokeswoman for the Reproductive Health and Research Department at the World Health Organization.
IVF was legal in Costa Rica between 1995 and 2000, but the relevant law was revoked by the country’s Constitutional Court on the basis of the right to life expressed in article 21 of the Costa Rican constitution and article 4 of the American Convention on Human Rights.
“The state makes a mistaken interpretation of the right to life, treating a fertilized egg as a person: in fact, not all embryos result in a newborn,” says Gerardo Escalante, director of the Costa Rican Institute of Fertility in San José, the only clinic that provided IVF in Costa Rica before the prohibition. “The current situation is discriminating against people with reproductive disability, especially those without enough money to go abroad for treatment.”
Long wait
In January 2001, nine infertile couples presented a petition against the ban to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Ten years later, the commission issued a dossier stating that Costa Rica has infringed the rights to privacy, family life and non-discrimination, articles 11,17, and 24 of the American Convention on Human Rights. This pronouncement led to last week’s trial.
Alfio Piva Mesén, an animal physiologist and vice-president of Costa Rica, declined to comment on the trial. However, the expert witnesses who testified on behalf of the government defended the prohibition. “Life and personhood start at the moment of fertilization,” says one, Anthony Caruso, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. “There is no way to do IVF without losing embryos.”
Gabriel Macaya Trejos, director of the Costa Rican National Academy of Sciences in San Pedro, says that most scientists are in favour of IVF, “but those opposing are more vocal, and mask religious convictions with pseudo-scientific arguments”.
Macaya worries that a win for the opponents of IVF will make it more difficult to pass a law on research involving humans. In January 2010, the Costa Rican Constitutional Court suspended all human-based experiments in the country until a specific law on the issue could be approved. Legislation was finally put forward in February 2011, but the discussion is being delayed due to objections from members of parliament. “The Costa Rican system has proved incapable of reaching consensus on health-related issues,” says Macaya."We’re gonna get tired. We’re gonna get knocked out. Who’s going to compete when it’s time to compete?" asks Texas Longhorns strength and conditioning coach Pat Moorer.
In preparation for the 2016 football season, Moorer is putting the ‘Horns through his rigorous offseason conditioning program, which includes a competition called the "Battle for the Belts."
The ongoing contest features a lightweight champion, middleweight champion, and heavyweight champion after pushing weighted sleds and carrying and pulling large weighted bags.
The video features senior cornerback Sheroid Evans winning the lightweight title, senior quarterback Tyrone Swoopes earning the belt among the middleweights, and sophomore defensive tackle Chris Nelson finishing first among the heavyweights.
Here are more results:
The winner’s list is an interesting cross section of players — veterans like Swoopes and Evans, who is recovering from multiple knee injuries, and younger players like Locke, the likely starter at nickel this season.
Seeing Nelson win a heavyweight title is also encouraging, as he’s one of only three scholarship defensive tackles with playing experience for the Longhorns and will need to step into a much larger role in 2016. However, it’s difficult to project his success in the "Battle for the Belts" onto the football field with a high level of confidence.
The same goes for Nickelson, who wasn’t considered an especially strong player after one season at junior college. His biggest challenge this fall will be proving that he has the feet to handle pass-protection duties after struggling in that area during the Orange and White game.Hiya everyone~
I may be new here but I've loved the Neptunia series for a very long time now. When I saw this Amino, I thought it'd be a great place to gather fellow Neptunia fans who just want to sit back, relax, and watch some Neptunia together. Today I will introduce a new series I'm starting called "StreamDimension Neptunia!"
[Credit to Uzume Tennouboshi]
What is it? Well, on my twitch (shameless self-promotion,) I will start streaming Neptunia games, starting with MegaDimension Neptunia Vll. But the twist is, the twitch chat (you guys) decide well... EVERYTHING! Vote for what characters we use, what they wear, where we go, etc.
On top of that, I will be making a PS4 community, a Discord and a HDN Amino chatroom (with the name of all of them being "StreamDimension"
Oh, and one more thing...
I have around 120+ dlc's for the game, including all 'arena events', characters and of course, the swimsuits. Kappa.
I hope to see you there!
P.S. -I will make a post letting everyone know the stream is about to start-
Links:
PS4- StreamDimension
Twitch- twitch.tv/streamdimension
Discord- https://discord.gg/yCJJufMThe 2007 Glasgow Airport attack was a terrorist ramming attack which occurred on 30 June 2007, at 15:11 BST, when a dark green Jeep Cherokee loaded with propane canisters was driven at the glass doors of the Glasgow Airport terminal and set ablaze.[3] It was the first terrorist attack to take place in Scotland since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.[4] The attack took place three days after the appointment of Scottish MP Gordon Brown as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but Downing Street dismissed suggestions of a connection.[5] A close link was quickly established to the 2007 London car bombs the previous day. Although the doors were damaged, security bollards outside the entrance stopped the car from entering the terminal, where there were 4,000 people, with the potential for many fatalities.[6]
The car's driver was severely burnt in the ensuing fire, and five members of the public were injured, none seriously. Some injuries were sustained by those assisting the police in detaining the occupants.
Both of the car's occupants were apprehended at the scene, and all those injured were taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in nearby Paisley.[1][2][7][8] Within three days, Scotland Yard had confirmed that eight people had been taken into custody in connection with this incident and that in London.[1][9][10]
Police identified the two men as Bilal Abdullah, a British-born, Muslim doctor of Iraqi descent working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital,[11][12] and Kafeel Ahmed, also known as Khalid Ahmed, an engineer and the driver, who was treated for fatal burns at the same hospital.[13] The newspaper The Australian alleged that a suicide note indicated that the two had intended to die in the attack.[14] Kafeel Ahmed died from his injuries on 2 August.[15] Bilal Abdullah was later found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 32 years.
Events [ edit ]
A Jeep Cherokee, similar to the one used in the attacks
A dark green Jeep Cherokee, registration number L808 RDT,[16] travelling at a speed estimated by a witness as about 30 mph[17] (48 km/h), struck security bollards in a terror ramming attack at the main entrance to Glasgow Airport.[2] The vehicle was reported to have several petrol containers and propane gas canisters on board. One eyewitness said flames issued from beneath the car when it hit the building, while another eyewitness said it appeared the driver was trying to drive through the terminal doors. According to reports, the car was occupied by two "Asian-looking" men.[18] When the Jeep failed to explode, one man (later identified as Abdulla) threw petrol bombs from the passenger seat and the other (Ahmed) doused himself in petrol and set it alight.[6] Police indicated the vehicle burst into flames when it was driven at the terminal.[19] An eyewitness noted that a man got out of the car and began to fight with police.[20] Another eyewitness said that the man was throwing punches and repeatedly shouting "Allah".[21][22][23] The man was arrested and later identified as Bilal Abdulla, a UK-born doctor of Iraqi descent who was working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. Another man exited the car and ran into the terminal building while he was on fire and began writhing on the ground, before being kicked in the testicles by an airport employee, John Smeaton,[24] who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his heroism. Sky News reported that petrol was spread from containers by the occupants when they got out of the car.[citation needed] During the subsequent investigation propane gas canisters were removed from the car. A Strathclyde Police spokesman confirmed the two men in the car were arrested,[25] one of them badly burned. The man was initially taken to Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley before being transferred to the intensive care unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary due to it having a specialist burns unit, where he died on 2 August.[26] The Jeep was removed early on the morning of Sunday 1 July before flights resumed and the airport was partially reopened.[8]
Hospitals [ edit ]
Royal Alexandra Hospital's accident and emergency department was evacuated and then closed when a suspected explosive device on the bomber's body was found.[19] Affected patients were taken to the Southern General Hospital and the Western Infirmary. It later emerged the device was not explosive.[27] The second man, Bilal Abdullah, was initially held at nearby Govan police station, one of the UK's high security police stations with the capability to hold terrorist suspects.[28] He was later transferred to Paddington Green Police Station in London, along with two unnamed suspects, after the Lord Advocate Elish Angiol |
-minute mark as two of the older Marlies forwards combined. Colin Greening drove to the net and Colin Smith was on hand to pick up the loose puck for his first of the season.
It was one-way blue and white traffic following the fourth goal, with the Marlies swarming the Comets zone and drawing yet another penalty. From a few feet inside the blue line, Dermott appeared casual in possession before a quick-release wrist shot beat Demko all ends up. A good share of the credit goes to the Marlie forwards providing the screen, particularly Greening, who was a handful in front of Demko.
62 seconds later, Utica was back on the powerplay and once again Subban rifled home past Bibeau to draw his team within three with eight minutes left to play.
Similar to Saturday’s game, Utica never looked likely to threaten Toronto’s advantage, recording only two shots on net the rest of the way. The only real action of note came courtesy of Valiev and Michael Corcone; after exiting the box, the two came together and settled the affair with their fists.
A score draw was the result of the encounter, but that was as good as it got for the Comets. Utica was put in their place over the weekend, allowing ten goals to the Marlies’ potent offense, and they were fortunate it wasn’t worse.
Post Game Notes
– The ten goals in the first two games of the season is the Marlies’ best total since the beginning of the 2007-08 season, when Toronto fired four and six past Rochester and Lake Erie respectively.
– Rookie defenceman Travis Dermott picked up his first professional assist and goal, and his five shots on net were the most by a defenseman.
– Kasperi Kapanen was a real livewire, adding a goal and two assists to his account, appearing full of confidence early in the season.
– Just the one assist for Brendan Leipsic, but again he was a pocket dynamo and caused Utica trouble nearly every shift.
– Antoine Bibeau only made 19 saves, but came up with the crucial stops when the game was still close.
– Dmytro Timashov came on leaps and bounds from his first outing and looks an intriguing prospect. He showed he wasn’t shy about shooting the puck with five efforts on net and took his goal well.
Game Highlights
Game Sheet - Marlies 5 vs. Comets 2Every Dog Has its Day
Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood…patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment…
(The Proclamation of the Republic, 1916)
The Easter Rising of 1916 was a triumphant debut for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), whose creed of physical force republicanism had at last been vindicated. For years the group had toiled in the shadows to set such a scene, forced into a state of subterfuge by the attentions of a hostile state, and now its name was read out alongside the other participants whose combined efforts were set to create a new and free Ireland.
That these efforts collapsed after a week of fighting did not mean the end of the dream. The physical force methods that the IRB – or ‘the Organisation’ as insiders preferred – had pioneered were set to continue on through the rejuvenated Irish Volunteers, an electorally dominant Sinn Féin and the memories of the executed leaders of the Rising, almost all of whom had been the IRB’s own. That many members of these groups doubled as IRB men must have made continued Brotherhood dominance over the wider nationalist movement seem certain.
And yet even after a war that ended with the recognition of a separate Irish government, if not a wholly independent one, the group that had initiated the violent rejection of British rule in Ireland remained unloved and unappreciated. For the IRB there was to be no recognition from their fellow revolutionaries, no love from the masses who now lived in the state the IRB had helped to create, and in this new state, no place.
The Revolution Will Not Be Polled
The main fault-line between the IRB and many of its fellow revolutionaries was to be the Treaty, but the Organisation had been controversial even before that. A secret society had been all very well before the Rising, it was argued, but now that physical force republicanism had been taken up by the public bodies of the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin, there was little need for its original advocates.
Eamon O’Dwyer, a prominent organiser for the nationalist cause in South Tipperary, summed these thoughts up when recalling the discussions he had had in prison with a number of other notable republicans in 1918:
It was generally our opinion that the need for the I.R.B. had practically ceased to exist, owing to the fact that the Irish Volunteers were now doing the I.R.B. work, that when an Irish Parliament was set up the Volunteers would come under its control. They, the Volunteers, would then be titled the army of Ireland and the continuation of the I.R.B. would not, therefore, be necessary.[1]
These sentiments had an impact, in an exodus of members who resigned or refused to re-join the Organisation. For O’Dwyer, it was a simple matter of continuing the same work as before, except now for the Tipperary Volunteers instead for the IRB. As far as he was concerned, there was little the IRB could do that not already being done by the Volunteers.
Somewhat mischievously, O’Dwyer recounted a story of the IRB Supreme Council sending someone to Tipperary to ask him to reconsider his leaving, only to be imprisoned in a barn by local Volunteers who mistook him for a British spy due to his furtive manner – useful for a secret society, not always for outside of one. Only of the intervention of a doubtlessly amused O’Dwyer saw his release.[2]
Two of the most prominent individuals to shake the dust off their feet from the Brotherhood were Éamon de Valera and Cathal Brugha, both being alumni of the Easter Rising. De Valera’s resignation was unsurprising, as he had joined only weeks before the Rising upon discovering, to his horror, that his IRB-connected subordinates in the Volunteers knew more about the plans than he did – a testament to the influence the IRB had had in the Rising.[3]
Brugha was a different matter, going from a veteran member of the Organisation to one of its most outspoken opponents. One of his stated reasons for this volte-face was that the IRB had not turned out for the Rising, leaving the Volunteers to do the work.[4]
Brugha’s accusation of shirking prompted a census for numbers of the IRB members who participated in the Rising as opposed to those from the Dublin Volunteers. Apparently, the census found overwhelmingly in favour of an IRB turn-out compared to that from the Volunteers – for example, supposedly seventy-five IRB men turned out on Easter Monday compared to a mere twenty-five Volunteers. Whether or not one trusts the results of an in-house investigation, the IRB had clearly become a lightning-rod for controversy.[5]
Significantly, another reason was Brugha’s reluctance to be part of a group that he considered under the sway of Michael Collins, even at that early date.[6] This was a suspicion not entirely without foundation, for Collins was considered by IRB insiders to be the main reason for the re-establishment of the IRB Supreme Council after the Rising, and held the position of secretary before becoming its president.[7]
The tension between Collins and Brugha was to mark much of the IRA GHQ throughout the War of Independence. Supporting Collins was his fellow IRB associate and IRA Chief of Staff Richard Mulcahy, with De Valera helping Brugha to form an anti-IRB counter-balance.
Whether personal issues played as much as a factor as that of secret societies is debatable. But in many ways GHQ was to be a microcosm of the tensions the IRB could provoke in the wider revolutionary movement.
Down but Not Out
Despite these post-Rising resignations, the IRB remained an active body. How active is a matter of debate. Séumas Robinson of the Third Tipperary Brigade asserted that the authority of the IRB at this time was “moribund where not already dead.”[8]
He left the IRB but not before attending a meeting in Dublin intended to revive the influence of the IRB within the Volunteers, an account that is both comical and scathing:
I saw young fellows with notebooks rushing round and about the ground floor (there were about 150 present) button-holing individuals with anxious whispers – “We must make sure that no one will be elected an officer of the Volunteers who is not a member of the ‘Organisation’” – as if that were something new or something we would be allowed to forget, and without adverting to the fact that that sort of thing would undermine the authority and efficiency of the whole Volunteer movement. Without waiting for the meeting to start officially I walked out in disgust thinking of Tammany Hall.[9]
Robinson gave the address for the meeting at 44 Parnell Square but, unfortunately, not the date or names of any other attendees, making it hard to corroborate. One wonders if Michael Collins was one of these ‘young fellows with notebooks’.
For all of Robinson’s extravagant scorn and American comparisons, an alternative interpretation of this event could be that the IRB still had enough members with the energy and desire to continue its mission as prime mover towards Irish independence, even if it had to unashamedly infiltrate larger bodies like the Volunteers to do so.
The IRB desire for new recruits continued throughout the later years. Liam Deasy recalled a council of the South Munster IRB at Easter 1921, presided over by Michael Collins, where it was agreed to extend membership to Volunteers of proven worth.[10]
As late as November-December 1921, a similar decision was made at a conference in Limerick for the IRB branches – or ‘Circles’ in the IRB vocabulary – present to renew their drive for fresh initiates (as observed by the disgusted Ernie O’Malley, who had not been invited but gate-crashed the meeting anyway). Whatever the likes of O’Dwyer, Robinson or O’Malley may have thought or wanted, the IRB was there to stay.[11]
It was not always a case of the IRB members entering the Volunteers, for the reverse did also happen. Frank Henderson of the Dublin Volunteers decided to join the IRB around 1918-1919 on the grounds that since he saw that war was on the horizon and the Volunteers had been joined by post-Rising recruits of uncertainty worth, “membership would bind those in the organisation in the event of defections or attempts to compromise.”[12] This was after Henderson had already twice refused invitations to join, being sympathetic to Brugha’s concern, who told him in a conversation, that such a secret society would produce “conspirators but not soldiers.”[13]
As with De Valera before the Rising, Henderson’s reasons for IRB membership were pragmatic rather than passionate. Even with his doubts about the Brotherhood, he could recognise its value as backup.
Revolutionary Entrepreneurs
The IRB’s role in the War of Independence has been neglected by historians, to the point of the Organisation being dismissed as “in an advanced state of decay” by that time.[14] As the above examples have shown, the Organisation was in a state of anything but decay. This academic neglect is possibly due to how, for practical purposes, the IRB’s policy of armed resistance to British rule had become indistinguishable to that of the Volunteers/IRA in general, making it hard to tell where one began and the other ended.
That was the line Michael Collins took when responding to a letter of complaint in April 1920 from the Sligo Brigade complaining about IRB members participating in an unauthorised (by him) bank robbery, and demanding from Collins a clarification between the IRB and the Volunteers:
Arising out of your letter of the 4th inst. re attitude of Irish Volunteers and another organisation, you will notice that there is no difference between the aims and methods of the Irish Volunteer Organisation and the other one you mention.[15]
Collins did not even mention the IRB by name in his reply, either out of habitual secrecy or to annoy the Sligo commandant, who could hardly have been reassured to have received such a cursory response. Whether Collins wanted to admit it or not, the IRB continued to be a factor in the years between the Rising and the Truce, though less than a case of its members acting on behalf of a countrywide society and more as another complication in already complicated local scenes.
Tom Hales had been an IRB member before the Rising. In the increasingly militant atmosphere afterwards he took to swearing into his IRB Circle the Volunteers he trusted, making the IRB and himself central to the revolutionary scene in West Cork. When, in 1919, the original Cork Brigade was divided into three, he was a natural choice of leader for the Third Cork Brigade.[16] Hales was later to brag that he had ‘made’ the Third Cork Brigade with the men he had personally sworn in.[17]
Hales could be seen as something of a revolutionary entrepreneur, using a franchise to establish a local monopoly for himself rather than as an drone-like operative acting on behalf of the larger group. This was not unusual. The IRB provided the perfect outlet for individuals with ambition, energy and an enterprising zeal. Whether an IRB Circle was successful in a certain area could depend on finding the right person to promote it. In return, a successful IRB Circle could give such members like Tom Hales a good deal of local clout.
Seán Mac Eoin is another case in point. He had joined the IRB in 1914, but did not see any particular advantage from it until 1917, when Circles were properly established in Longford and he was elected to a senior position over them. The election of William Redmond in the Waterford 1918 by-election for the opposing Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) gave him his first chance to exercise his new-found authority. In response to the planned IPP victory celebrations, Mac Eoin, in his own words: “acting under the authority vested in me as Centre of the I.R.B, I proclaimed the celebrations and enforced the decision with the aid of the Volunteers.”[18]
While Mac Eoin was also in the Volunteers, and used that body to forcibly impose his decision, he felt entitled to decide in the first place from his IRB status. Also, he was not dependent on orders or instructions from above, acting as he was on his own initiative. Having suffered through his family being the targets of a Land League boycott, Mac Eoin must have relished the chance to play the local big man for once.[19]
Conversely, an IRB Circle could suffer if it depended too heavily on a particular member. The success of the IRB in South Tipperary was largely because of the efforts of Eamon O’Dwyer. When he passed over the Organisation in favour of the Volunteers, the former’s influence there withered and died, and there was little the IRB Supreme Council, for all the grandiosity of its name, could do about it.
Feuds and Factions
Hales’ success brought him into conflict with his official superiors in the Volunteers, Terence MacSwiney and Tomás MacCurtain, especially the latter, who struggled to rein in unauthorised actions from within the Volunteers that he was technically in charge of.[20] It is possible that the premature deaths of both MacSwiney and MacCurtain, the former on hunger strike, the other murdered by ‘persons unknown’ (almost uncertainly off-duty RIC officers), prevented the tensions from worsening.
Not so for the Limerick City Battalion, which remained split post-1916 between IRB stalwarts headed by Donnachadh O’Hannigan and those under Liam Manahan, who wished to remain free from IRB influence.[21] In both of the cases in Cork and Limerick, there were other factors at play: Manahan, MacSwiney and MacCurtain had been blamed by their detractors for bloodlessly surrendering Volunteer armouries in the aftermath of the Rising’s failure, and there were class dimension between the white-collar workers under O’Hannigan and the more working-class men under Manahan.[22]
One could ask whether these divisions would have still happened if there had been no IRB at all. It did not seem to be a case of IRB members acting on orders from above. If anything, the IRB comes across as a decentralised organisation, one with a central leadership and a consistent ideology, but not necessarily with much control over or input into its Circles throughout the country.
But in Cork and Limerick that did not have to matter. The IRB may have been perhaps more a “badge of militancy than a well-defined organization”, but it could be potent enough badge to rally behind all the same.[23]
The Cork IRA was to continue on as an IRB bastion, with many of its leading alumni – Liam Lynch, Liam Deasy and Florence O’Donoghue, among others – being of the Organisation throughout the War of Independence. In not every county was the IRB so divisive for the local Volunteers/IRA. Even in the ones where it was, it may not have been the most divisive of local issues. Either way, the IRB throughout the War of Independence was to remain a significant factor, up to the time of the Treaty, if only as one to fall out over.
Suspicious Minds
And there was much to fall out over. As far as many contemporaries were concerned, the IRB’s defining role after the Rising had been that of the Treaty. For many who opposed the Treaty, it was an article of faith that the IRB had worked behind the scenes to force through its pro-Treaty agenda. That one of the Treaty signatories was Michael Collins, by then President of the IRB Supreme Council, gave this view a certain credence.
Ernie O’Malley, writing years afterwards, castigated Collins and the IRB for the Treaty, and unfavourably compared them to the executed heroes of 1916 who, he was sure, would never have done such a thing (the number of IRB men among said heroes being lost on him). For the most part, however, such criticisms tended to focus on the IRB in general at the exclusion of Collins, who remained a heroic figure to many.[24]
Frank Gallagher of the Dublin Volunteers was to mention the IRB a mere two times in his memoir The Four Glorious Years (under the penname of David Hogan), once to darkly inform his readers that the IRB “plainly had plans of its own that which were not those of an elected Government. The I.R.B. regarded as the primary authority in Ireland the Supreme Council of their own Secret Society. There were the seeds of calamity in that kind of attitude.”[25]
While the book did not venture beyond 1921 to cover the Civil War, a hint is enough for Gallagher to lay the blame: “What was to prove a tragedy later for the Volunteers, and for Ireland, was that a section of the I.R.B. continued its secret existence, and its struggle for control both of the Dail and of the Army.”[26]
The same penchant for secrecy that had allowed the Brotherhood to operate under the noses of Dublin Castle had left it open to suspicions of conspiracy and self-centredness. To Séumas Robinson, a leading Anti-Treatyite, the Brotherhood was a “sinister cabal” while somewhat contradictory dismissing it as having only a “nuisance value” from 1919 onwards.[27]
Arguments against the IRB could often be on the tenuous side. Ernie O’Malley bemoaned that “the IRB had driven Sinn Fein underground” by the time of the Civil War due to the party putting its energies into electioneering as opposed to, say, economics, without much explanation as to why the IRB should be held responsible. Was O’Malley truly surprised at a political party in a democracy taking part in the democratic process? Either way, no act was too villainous like that of electioneering to hang on the IRB’s door.[28]
Equally myopic on the issue was Seamus McKenna of the Belfast IRA who was of the opinion that many of the IRB men who supported the “ill-fated” Treaty did so on the Organisation’s instructions. He based this on his own experience of being advised to do so by an IRB Supreme Council member; a man who, in McKenna’s strong opinion, had “already compromised, and led others along the same path.”[29]
This same man – McKenna was uncertain as to his name – went against the Treaty several months later, raising the question of whether he had originally advocated for the Treaty on the IRB’s instructions or his own opinion, which later changed as opinions are wont to do.
Another of McKenna’s gripes was that the IRB promoted its own within the IRA regardless of incompetence (himself presumably not included), his case in point being Joe McKelvey of the Third Northern Division.[30] McKelvey was later executed by the Free State for fighting against the Treaty, suggesting that the situation was more complex than McKenna was willing to give it credit for. But McKenna was an embittered man, and the IRB provided the perfect villain for his narrative, as it did for the Anti-Treatyite one. As with Brugha and Robinson, the IRB’s sternest critics were often its former Brothers.
Herding Cats
The long-held charge that the Brotherhood had forced the Treaty through rests on the premise that the IRB could exercise enough control to do just that. Given how widespread it was through its Circles and how highly placed certain members like Michael Collins were in the wider revolutionary movement, it would seem at first glance that this could indeed have been so. This was certainly Ernie O’Malley’s view when he wrote of the IRB conference in November-December 1921 that he intruded upon, intending to shock his readers with his depiction of an insidiously spreading conspiracy covertly gathering fresh members.
But the expectation of the IRB leadership at this same meeting was that it would be the grassroots who would be doing the work in recruiting. There was no indication of any penalties if Circles neglected to do so or that the IRB had the means to impose any in the first place.
On closer inspection, the Organisation reveals itself to have been too decentralised, too dependent on its grassroots, and with branches too self-sufficient for it to be a convincing character in a conspiracy theory. The Supreme Council could only have dreamed of exercising the control that its enemies accused it of. Ultimately, it could only ‘control’ its members who were willing to go along with it anyway.
Back in the Limelight
Joseph M. Curran, in assessing the IRB at the time of the Treaty, dismissed the Brotherhood by then as obsolete and constituting “no real threat to either the British or Republican government.”[31] Another obituary is from Michael Hopkinson, in that far from being a controlling power over the Treaty, the IRB disintegrated over the issue and ceased to be of importance.[32]
Whether or not it was obsolete, as its critics had long argued since after the Rising, and the Treaty split had certainly left it in a diminished capacity, the IRB was far from gone or over. Instead, it had taken root, away from the sight of the casual observer. When the Organisation was to surface again, it was in the most ignominious of ways: as a defence strategy in the investigation into a mutiny.
In March 1924, several Free State army officers issued an ultimatum to President Cosgrave, styling themselves the Irish Republican Army Organisation (IRAO) and protesting against the incoming demobilization. These malcontents included Liam Tobin and Charles Dalton, formerly of Michael Collins’ famous Intelligence Squad, and other veterans who had grown dissatisfied with having been repeatedly passed over for promotion in favour of those who may have been more qualified or better suited but who had not, as the mutineers saw it, paid their dues in the War of Independence. That demobilization would almost certainly include their jobs was enough of a casus belli against state policy.
As Commander-in-Chief, General Richard Mulcahy responded by dismissing the mutineers from their army posts, only to find himself as much on trial as the mutineers in the subsequent government investigation in April 1924. The IRAO based their defence on the claim that by forming their military faction they had merely been responding to the one already present: the IRB.
What appeared to be a flimsy excuse was given unexpected credence by the admission from the Army Council that not only was there indeed an IRB within the army, but that they were a part of it.
Coke vs. Pepsi
The ‘IRB card’ was not to be played by the mutineers until late in the day – the IRAO ultimatum to Cosgrave did not even mention the IRB, calling only for the “removal of the Army Council” and the “immediate suspension of army demobilisation and reorganisation.” It was the The Truth About the Army Crisis, a 16-page booklet published on behalf of the IRAO, that set the mutiny within the context of the IRAO-IRB dispute.[33]
The booklet claimed that this IRB was a counterfeit, and had only been set up by the Army Council as a counter-block to the demands of the IRAO, to the point of an anonymous IRB officer telling the IRAO to “drop your organisation and we will drop ours.” Many of the IRAO had been in the Brotherhood from before, and a point of contention was that they had not been invited to re-join it.[34]
However, the booklet did admit that the reason for the irreconcilable breakdown in talks between the IRAO and the Army Council had been the latter reneging on a promise to include the former on the IRB Supreme Council. The mutineers objected to the IRB less from its existence and more because of their exclusion from it. Up to these talks breaking down for good, the mutineers had seen reconciliation with the IRB and a place for themselves within it as both likely and desirable.[35]
The mutiny should perhaps be seen not as a feud between two separate groups, one worthy and the other not, as the mutineers claimed, but as one between members of the same body: an entrenched elite against a disenfranchised grassroots.
Under the Microscope
Understandably jittery from the last time a portion of its armed forces had displayed a mind of their own and gone rogue, the government clamped down on both the mutineers of the IRAO and the Army Council. The accusations of IRB dominance of the Army Council were in part confirmed in the resulting inquiry that was spearheaded by Minister Kevin O’Higgins. Through the inquiry, the exact role of the IRB became a matter of heated debate.
As Quartermaster-General of the Army Council, Seán Ó Muirthile was to bear the brunt of the inquiry committee’s questioning. A long-time Brother, he had been the chair of the IRB conference in Limerick that Ernie O’Malley had intruded upon in November-December 1921. His defence for his part in reorganising the IRB within the army was that it had been done to stop the Anti-Treatyites from taking up the IRB mantle for themselves. As prominent Anti-Treatyites Liam Lynch and Harry Boland had both been members of the IRB Supreme Council, this was not an unrealistic concern, and it shows that the IRB name still had enough potency to fear it.[36]
Lynch had gone as far as to propose – in November 1922, four months into the Civil War – writing to the IRB Supreme Council in the hope of reconvening an adjourned meeting from the previous April. There had been an anti-Treaty majority then, and Lynch had hoped to use that to re-establish the Brotherhood in his own anti-Treaty image. From there Lynch would have had a new resource from which to draw upon.[37]
As this plan was never attempted, its odds of success are debatable. But both sides of the Treaty-sundered IRB gave it the credibility of consideration: the Antis in proposing it, the Pros in countering it. As with the IRAO, the Anti-Treatyites could appreciate the value of being in the IRB as opposed to out of it.
Same Message, Different Times
Not knowing when to keep his mouth shut, Ó Muirthile went on to suggest that the IRB should continue on to guide “the social and political atmosphere with the programme of any government working towards the National and economic advancement of the Irish people without regard to parties or party influence.”[38]
This was more than just a spirited defence on Ó Muirthile’s part. Mulcahy had previously expressed the similar hope that the IRB would in time evolve into a more open society, and take the lead in implementing nationalist ideals for the rest of the country.[39]
In that regards, Ó Muirthile’s and Mulcahy’s hopes for the IRB’s role in the new Ireland were not dissimilar from that of the IRAO for itself, who publicly exhorted that “there is the unity of Ireland and full independence still to be achieved,” with themselves best placed to achieve this, of course.[40]
The sense of unfulfilled aspirations from the War of Independence and the unresolved grievances that were the Treaty’s aftertaste gave groups like the IRAO and the IRB the chance to position themselves as the true heirs of a national mission – not unlike the language in The Proclamation of the Republic which had kick-started everything off, for that matter. Given the IRB’s starring role in The Proclamation, as shown at the start of this article, one has to grant the Brotherhood a certain consistency after eight years.
In later years, Mulcahy was to find the IRB connection in the affair, and his own, a trifle embarrassing, preferring to characterise the Brotherhood less as a significant body at that stage and more, in vague and woolly terms, as a “pure Volunteer spirit that was just serving…in the traditional spirit.”[41]
One wonders, however, if the eventual result of either the IRB or IRAO continuing on would have been an Ireland in a situation akin to Turkey’s, with an ideology-led army prepared to intervene in politics to the point of ‘stepping in’ if it felt a civilian government needed amending.
And That Was That
If Ó Muirthile and Mulcahy honestly thought that the Free State would be happy for a Fenian throwback to be hovering over its shoulder like some praetorian guard, they were grossly mistaken. Likewise, the mutineers had badly misjudged the mood of the Free State government if they thought it would prefer their military faction over the other.
A plague was wished on both their houses. The inquiry committee concluded that “the reorganisation of the IRB…was a disastrous error in judgement,” and much of the blame was levelled by O’Higgins at the Army Council, Mulcahy especially as its most senior officer.[42] The Army Council – Mulcahy, Ó Muirthile, Adjutant General Gearoid O’Sullivan and Chief of Staff Sean MacMahon – were forced to resign in a ‘house cleaning’ of IRB influence from the upper military echelons.
As for the IRAO, had the mutineers been reinstated to their posts as they wished, then their faction may have continued on and even prospered in the absence of its rival. But they were not, and the fledgling IRAO died with their military careers.
From then on, the IRB ceased to be a factor in Irish politics or society. While the IRB had weathered worse storms than its loss of four senior members from the army, it never recovered from this one. Nor was there much to mark its loss. Fittingly for a society that had lived in the shadows, it passed away unseen. Even the historian Leon Ó Broin, usually an authoritative source on the Brotherhood, was uncertain as to “whether any formal decision was ever taken to wind ‘the Organisation’ up: the Supreme Council may have just stopped meeting.”[43]
An example of how deeply rooted the IRB had been, to be the point of being hard to tell where it began and ended, was how the government’s choice of replacement for Mulcahy, Eoin O’Duffy, had to resign as Treasurer for IRB funds in order to take up his new post as Commander-in-Chief.[44]
Despite this glaring oversight on the government’s part, there is no suggestion that O’Duffy used this position to continue the IRB in any form. As late as 1964, these same funds lay in a bank in the names of trustees, the first being Seán Ó Muirthile. Finally they were transferred towards the cost of the Wolfe Tone statue now on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin.[45]
Whatever the exact point the IRB could be pronounced dead, it was well and truly gone by that stage. The wheel had turned since the glory days of Brotherhood influence, such as when it had engineered at the Gaelic League ard-fheis of 1915 the election of one of their own as director of appointments despite Tom Clarke not knowing a word of Irish.[46] Or keeping an impetuous James Connolly from acting too soon with his Irish Citizen Army in 1916, thus allowing for the IRB’s own plans to go ahead for Easter Monday as synchronized. By 1924, the IRB had stepped on too many toes and made too many enemies, and few tears were shed at its loss.[47]
Fittingly, the man who more than anyone had delivered the coup de grâce to the IRB in the form of the Army Crisis investigation, Kevin O’Higgins, was a former Brother. There was to be little room for sentimentality in the new Ireland, and the sow had devoured its farrow.
Conclusion
While in many ways a successful organisation, the IRB was not a popular one. Its strategy of armed revolution against British rule in Ireland was vindicated by the adoption of this same policy by other nationalist bodies such as the Irish Volunteers. Yet the IRB was to be distrusted by many if its fellow revolutionaries for its secrecy and insularity, or dismissed as an irrelevance.
Despite this hostility, the IRB continued to thrive as it retained the enthusiasm of its members and recruited new ones throughout the War of Independence, even if its presence within IRA brigades led to tensions. Much has been said of its supposed role in pushing the Treaty through, but that is to misunderstand the structure of the IRB, which was too decentralised for its leadership to force anything on unwilling members.
While diminished from the Treaty split, the IRB nonetheless seemed set to continue on in an influential role within the Free State army, with its leaders within the Army Council nurturing ambitions for the Organisation as a shepherd of national ideals. This was until a mutiny and the subsequent government investigation in 1924 brought this influence to light and derailed these ambitions.
With its leading members forced to resign from the army, the IRB died an undignified death, fading away from a country and state built on its efforts that saw no further use for it.
Originally posted on The Irish Story (11/11/2013)
See also:
‘This Splendid Historic Organisation’: The Irish Republican Brotherhood among the Anti-Treatyites, 1921-4
Career Conspirators: The (Mis)Adventures of Seán Ó Muirthile and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the Free State Army, 1923-4
References
[1] O’Dwyer, Eamon (BMH / WS 1474), p. 39 [2] Ibid, pp.52-3 [3] Ó Broin, Leon. Revolutionary Underground: The story of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, 1858-1924 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1976), p. 163 [4] Lynch, Diarmuid (BMH / WS 4), p. 9 [5] Lyons, George (BMH / WS 104), p. 6 [6] Ibid [7] Lynch, Diarmuid (BMH / WS 4), p. 9 [8] Robinson, Séamus (BMH / WS 1721), p. 18 [9] Ibid [10] Deasy, Liam. Towards Ireland Free (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1973), pp. 258-9 [11] O’Malley, pp. 36-7 [12] Henderson, Frank (BMH / WS 821), p. 18-9 [13] Ibid, p. 18 [14] Bell, J. Bowyer. The Secret Army: The IRA (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008), p. 46 [15] Valiulis, Maryann Gialanella. Portrait of a Revolutionary: General Richard Mulcahy and the Founding of the Irish Free State (Kill Lane: Irish Academic Press Ltd, 1992), p. 48 [16] Deasy, p. 57 ; Hart, Peter. The I.R.A. and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork 1916-1923 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 192-3 [17] Hart, p. 193 [18] MacEoin, Seán (BMH / WS 1716), pp. 9-10 [19] Ibid, pp. 4-5 [20] Ibid, pp. 193, 241 [21] Hopkinson, Michael. The Irish War of Indepenence (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2002), p. 118 [22] Ibid [23] Hart, p. 242 [24] O’Malley, pp. 285-6 [25] Hogan, David. The Four Glorious Years (Dublin: Irish Press Ltd., 1971), p.246 [26] Ibid, pp. 246-7 [27] Robinson, Séamus (BMH / WS 1721), p. 18 [28] O’Malley, Ernie. The Singing Flame (Dublin: Anvil Books, 1978), p. 286 [29] McKenna, Seamus(Bureau of Military History / Witness Statement, BMH /WS 1016), p. 45 [30] McKenna, Seamus ( |
Chamber’s board, though it remained a member in order to press the organization to alter its positions. More recently, Nike joined with 100 other companies to support President Barack Obama’s proposed regulations on carbon emissions.
And it’s not just businesses, but local Chamber of Commerce chapters — at least 60 have left since 2009 because of the Chamber’s “extreme positions.” (Only 249 of the 7,000 local chambers are members of the national organization.)
Ignoring those companies opposed to the Chamber’s stand on climate change is easy. Why? Money, of course. A third of the Chamber’s revenue comes from just 19 companies, many of them in the energy industry.
The case of pharmacy giant CVS Health is also instructive. In 2014, it became the first big drug-store chain to remove cigarettes and other tobacco products from its stores — the reasoning being that it’s in a business related to health care. The following year, after reports that the Chamber was working around the world to fight antismoking measures, CVS decided to drop its membership.
Another schism between the Chamber and most of its membership is over the minimum wage. The Washington Post reported that leaked documents from Republican pollster Frank Luntz showed that 80 percent of business owners supported raising the pay floor:
LuntzGlobal managing director David Merritt told state chamber executives in a webinar describing the results…that it squares with other polling they’ve done. “And this is universal. If you’re fighting against a minimum wage increase, you’re fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are okay with raising the minimum wage.”
The Chamber is opposed to a higher minimum wage.
Some of the dissatisfaction with the Chamber is reflected in the growth of alternative business lobbying groups. Groups such as theAmerican Sustainable Business Council, the Main Street Alliance and the Small Business Majority have blossomed. A number of larger corporations (including Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News), have joined Ceres, which is committed to creating “a thriving, sustainable global economy” — a charge that puts it at odds with the U.S. Chamber on a number of issues.
The Chamber’s priorities are aligned with the small number of companies that are its largest contributors. Maybe that’s only natural. In any case, it no longer seems like the organization serves the interests of business at large.5 Planets Align in Celestial Treat
Starting early this morning, a rare celestial event is inhabiting the predawn sky. For the first time in more than a decade, five planets of our Solar System will (mostly) align diagonally – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – and be visible to the naked eye. Don’t worry. You didn’t miss it. This astronomical alignment will last until about February 20 and occur again in August.
These are the only planets that you can view like this with the naked eye. Neptune and Pluto are so far away, you need a telescope, and rarely can Uranus be seen without an aid and a truly dark sky.
How to View the Fab Five
Try to get to a place with a dark night sky. You’ll need to be outside about 45 minutes before sunrise. Look for Venus first, as it is the brightest of the planets. Then look for the others. Four of the five planets have already been visible recently in the predawn sky, but Mercury joined them for the first time this morning. According to Sky & Telescope, the best viewing will be the last week of January and first week of February.
So, go out and enjoy the wonders of the night sky!Guessing where a photo was taken can be a fun game. In fact, it is a game. But computers have historically had it easy, with the ability to quickly examine the metadata and place a picture on a map. A new machine learning program from Google, however, can place pictures that don’t have metadata and use machine learning instead.
PlaNet, created by Google computer vision specialist Tobias Weyand, can pinpoint 3.6 percent of photos down to a particular street, according to a new paper submitted to arXiv. Sure, that might not seem like a lot, but it fared much better than people at placing images on a map.
When going up against human opponents in the online game GeoGuessr, which asks contestants look at a Street View image and pick out where it is on a map, PlaNet won more than half the matches. Not only did it beat humans more than half the time, but its median error distance was nearly 1,200 km closer than the humans.
“In total, PlaNet won 28 of the 50 rounds with a median localization error of 1131.7 km, while the median human localization error was 2320.75 km,” Weyand wrote. “[This] small-scale experiment shows that PlaNet reaches superhuman performance at the task of geolocating Street View scenes.”
But how did the team teach a robot brain to place images? By showing it a ton of them.
Weyand’s team fed their machine 91 million images that had geolocation data, but the machine didn’t actually try to memorize exact coordinates for each image—that would be too much data to sift through when searching later. Instead, it placed each image on a grid and looked at the visual cues in each one. That grid had more squares in denser urban areas (where more pictures were likely to be taken) and less out in the boonies.
The team then verified the neural network with another 34 million images. After that, it was time to test.
Before going up against humans, Weyand’s team tested the machine with 2.3 million Flickr images. That test found that the machine was able to place 10.1 percent of pictures at city-level accuracy and 28.4 percent in the right country. Just under half were placed in the right continent.
Again, those number may not sound great, but you may want to test your own skill before bad-mouthing this machine. And finding photos isn’t necessarily the end goal of this project; instead, it shows the power machines can apply to visual problems and highlights a new way of organizing data for machine consumption.Authorities in Alaska have launched an official investigation, as polar bears are listed as threatened with extinction under the US Endangered Species Act and cannot be hunted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the oil company revealed that the female bear was shot in early August and died of its wounds about 11 days later. It was monitored by BP guards until it died on a nearby island.
Bruce Woods, a US Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, said: “We’re taking this investigation very seriously and hope to find out what happened.”
A BP spokesman said the bear had been killed by mistake, since the guard thought he was shooting beanbags rather than a “cracker round” at the animal, after it was spotted prowling towards employee housing at the Endicott field.
Companies are allowed to conduct “non-lethal harassment” of polar bears threatening humans, but not permitted to shoot to kill.
BP recorded 541 polar bear sightings between 2005 and 2010, but this is the first time an animal has been fatally shot.
The investigation is a setback for BP’s attempts to rebuild its reputation in the US, after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill harmed its environmental credentials.
Polar bears live on Alaska’s Arctic coastline, sometimes make their way on to oil fields on the North Slope region. The bears are monitored by the field operators when they venture near to human habitation.
Malcolm Graham-Wood, analyst at VSA Capital, said: “BP spent a lot of time last year firefighting following Macondo, you would have thought that they might have tried to keep their head down stateside.”
BP’s share price closed 0.2 higher at 386.3p on Thursday, having recovered since its depths just above 300p at the height of the oil spill, but around 25pc lower than this year’s peak of 509p.TOKYO (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N), the world’s biggest maker of passenger jets, has used Kobe Steel (5406.T) products that include those falsely certified by the Japanese company, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Boeing Co's logo is seen above the front doors of its largest jetliner factory in Everett, Washington, U.S. January 13, 2017. REUTERS/Alwyn Scott
Boeing does not consider the issue a safety problem, the source stressed, but the revelation may raise compensation costs for the Japanese company, which is embroiled in a widening scandal over the false certification of the strength and durability of components supplied to hundreds of companies.
The U.S. airline maker is carrying out a survey of aircraft to ascertain the extent and type of Kobe Steel components in its planes and will share the results with airline customers, said the source who has knowledge of the investigation.
The source asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Even if the falsely certified parts do not affect safety, given the intense public scrutiny that airlines operate under they may opt to replace suspect parts rather than face any backlash over concerns about safety.
Any large-scale program to remove those components, even during scheduled aircraft maintenance, could prove costly for Kobe Steel if it has to foot the bill.
Boeing’s European rival Europe’s Airbus (AIR.PA) said it does not buy products directly from Kobe Steel but is investigating whether any suppliers have been affected.
“So far we have not identified any suppliers that procure materials from Kobe Steel for parts fitted on our aircraft,” an Airbus spokesman said by email.
Airbus does, however, buy titanium landing gear parts for its latest long-haul jet, the A350, from France’s Safran (SAF.PA), which are manufactured by Japan Aeroforge, a joint venture between Kobe Steel and Hitachi Metals (5486.T).
A spokesman for Kobe Steel said Japan Aeroforge products were not under investigation “at this point.”
Kobe Steel’s CEO, Hiroya Kawasaki, on Thursday said his company’s credibility was at “zero.” On Friday he pledged that Kobe Steel would pay customers’ costs resulting from the data fabrication of that may stretch back 10 years..
In the U.S., General Motors (GM.N) said it is checking whether its cars contain falsely certified components from Kobe Steel, joining Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and around 200 other firms that have received falsely certified parts from the company.
Boeing does not buy products such as aluminum composites, used in aircraft because of their light weight, directly from Kobe Steel. Its key Japanese suppliers, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T), Kawasaki Heavy Industries (7012.T) and Subaru Corp (7270.T), however, do.
Mitsubishi Aircraft, a Mitsubishi Heavy subsidiary, said it uses Kobe Steel in the Mitsubishi regional Jet (MRJ), Japan’s first passenger aircraft in half a century. The aircraft has yet to enter service.
“We have concluded at this time that it will not impact the MRJ as it remains within the design standards we originally set for aircraft safety,” a spokeswoman for Mitsubishi Aircraft said.
Japanese companies are a key part of Boeing’s global supply chain, building one fifth of its 777 jetliner and 35 percent of its carbon composite 787 Dreamliner.
“Boeing has been working closely and continuously with our suppliers since being notified of the issue to ensure timely and appropriate action,” Boeing said in a statement earlier this week after Kobe Steel’s bombshell announcement over the weekend.
“Nothing in our review to date leads us to conclude that this issue presents a safety concern,” it added.
Work for the U.S. planemaker employs around 22,000 Japanese engineers, or 40 percent employed in the nation’s aerospace business.Caracas, May 18th 2016 (venezuelanalysis.com) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has hit out at “mounting aggressions" against his government after it was confirmed that a US plane had twice violated Venezuelan airspace.
The US Boeing 707 E-3 Sentry is reported to have illegally entered Venezuela’s national airspace on May 11th at 6.09am, as well as on May 13th at 6.03 am.
Both incursions were detected by Venezuela’s Bolivarian airforce and have sparked rumours that the US might be conducting covert spying operations over Venezuela.
“This plane has all the mechanisms to carry out electronic espionage,” stated Maduro on his television programme Tuesday.
According to US Airforce information, the Boeing 707 E-3 Sentry provides an accurate, real-time picture of the battlespace to the Joint Air Operations Center, and possesses a powerful radar to “detect, identify and track enemy and friendly low-flying aircraft”.
The double incursion comes as rightwing politicians at home and abroad step up their demands for military intervention against Maduro’s government.
Last Thursday, a former Colombian president made headlines after publicly enquiring which “democratic country is willing to put its armed forces at the service of the protection of the Venezuelan opposition?”
Likewise, rightwing “Justice First” politician and former Venezuelan presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, yesterday encouraged Venezuelan troops to form a mutiny against the national government.
“Prepare the tanks and war planes,” said the politician
“The hour of truth is coming to decide whether you are with the constitution or with Maduro,” he added.
A frenzy of international media reports over the last two weeks have painted an apocalyptic vision of the struggling South American country, citing a lack of access to basic food and medicine, skyrocketing inflation and devaluation of the national currency.
“I can say today that we are victims of the worst media, political and diplomatic aggression that our country has lived through in the past ten years,” stated Maduro.
The head of state has confirmed that his government will deliver an official complaint on the airspace incursions to US authorities.China's Second Pebble Bed Reactor Steam Plant; World's Third Commercial HTGR
July 3rd, 2008 by Rod Adams
I am a bit reluctant to call this plant a “first”, but I can get just as excited about the third, 10th or 100th plant in a progressive series of improved plants that should number 1000 reactors or more.
The plant, designated as HTR-PM, will be a 200 MWe pebble bed reactor heated steam plant with two reactors, each with a single steam generator (boiler) feeding a single turbine. The plant will be built in Rongchen City on a site large enough to host series of perhaps 10-12 similar plants. In that area of China, there are hundreds of older coal fired power plants generating 50-300 MWe each.
The HTR-PM is a carefully watched project that uses technology old enough to be new again. The concept was introduced in the late 1940s by Farrington Daniels who suggested the idea of combining uranium with graphite, which is a high temperature substance that also moderates neutrons, into small, discrete units that could be piled into a simple, shielded container.
This concept, known as the Daniels’ Pile, was a bit before its time. The material science available in the late 1940s could not provide the tight, vapor-proof coatings needed to ensure that all fission by-products remained sealed in the pebbles in all core conditions. That problem was addressed and overcome by the German project known as the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor (AVR) run in Julich from 1959-1988.
The AVR started operating in 1961, provided power to the grid in 1967 and was shut down after many years of testing and fuel developmental improvements in 1988.
The first commercial high temperature reactors
The AVR did not operate in isolation; during the same time there was a high temperature gas cooled reactor, built by Gulf General Atomics (now just General Atomics) and operated in the US at Fort St. Vrain. That HTGR was based on fuel in a different form, but it used fuel particles surrounded by layers of graphite and silicon carbide to provide the capability of operating at a significantly higher temperature and thermal efficiency than the conventional light water reactors.
I had the opportunity to visit General Atomics in 1994, before they decommissioned the fuel manufacturing facility that produced the Ft. St. Vrain fuel, and they gave me the pebble that you see here as a keep sake. It has been on my desk ever since.
The German group operating the AVR also built a commercial unit – Thorium High Temperature Reactor (THTR) – using fuel pebbles where some pebbles contained uranium-235 and others contained thorium-232. This fuel combination intrigued the designers because thorium is about 3-4 times as abundant as uranium, but it needs to be exposed to neutrons in a reactor before it can be used as fuel.
Unfortunately, though they were both commercial reactors, neither the Ft. St. Vrain HTGR nor the THTR operated for very long and neither led to any immediate successors. Good ideas, however, often incubate in the minds of problem solvers that see all of the potential and determine ways to solve the problems for another try.
China’s New High Temperature Reactors (HTR)
In 2000, the AVR rose up like a Phoenix in a new location at Tsinghua University with a new name – HTR-10. The Chinese had recognized the potential of the design and purchased essentially all of the makings including technical drawings, machinery, and consulting engineering services from the German owners. In January 2003, the HTR-10 began critical operations and testing. I have a number of friends and colleagues who have visited the facility and have been impressed. You can have a similar experience by watching a video produced by the Australian Broadcasting System titled Nuclear China.
There are many things about pebble bed reactors that fascinate me, but one of them is the fact that they can be configured to be able to withstand a complete loss of cooling without causing any core damage. As long as each reactor unit produces less than 400 MW of thermal energy, operators can turn off the cooling circulators and walk away knowing that the plant will heat up a bit, shut itself down, and never exceed a temperature at which any fuel damage will occur. Now that is a hot idea whose time has come!
The HTR-PM is capable of providing very high quality steam, identical to the steam produced in the most efficient coal fired power plants. In fact, Jim Holm has suggested that we could short cut the lengthy nuclear plant construction process by replacing boilers in existing steam plants with high temperature pebble beds.
It is one hell of a way to help solve the world’s most pressing energy challenge – how do we replace the low cost heat that coal provides to enable our modern economy without creating emissions that may overheat our planet?
Photo credits HTR-10 Schematic and simulated pebble fuel element from Rod Adams archives under creative commons.
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Speaking in Mexico City, Kelly pledged the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) sweeping new immigration enforcement rules would not result in “mass deportations.”
“Let me be very, very clear, there will be no, repeat, no mass deportations,” he said. “Everything we do in DHS will be done legally and according to human rights and the legal justice system of the United States.”
The comments came just hours after President Trump called the new deportation push a “military operation,” which threatened to heighten the concerns of immigrant-rights groups and the Mexican government.
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"There will be no, no use of military force in immigration,” Kelly said, telling the news media only "half of you get that right.”
Kelly may have been referring to a draft proposal, which was never adopted, to enlist roughly 100,000 National Guard troops to apprehend undocumented immigrants in nearly a dozen states.
The guidance, which was made official Tuesday, vastly increases the number of immigrants considered priorities for deportation.
It also directs immigration enforcement agencies to hire thousands of new agents to apprehend people living in the country illegally, with local police and sheriffs’ offices enlisted in the effort.
National Guard troops have been used in the past to staff observation posts, watch surveillance footage and build fencing. But they have not been used to arrest immigrants targeted for deportation.
Trump however, sowed confusion over the military’s role with his remarks earlier Thursday at the White House.
“We’re getting really bad dudes out of this country,” he said at a meeting with manufacturing CEOs. “And at a rate nobody has ever seen before. And they’re the bad ones. And it’s a military operation.”
Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday met with top Mexican officials in order to smooth over tensions that were exacerbated by the new immigration policies.MSI Afterburner 4.4.0 beta 11 is available:- I've added new options allowing you to display OSD history graphs for any graph from MSI Afterburner hardware monitoring module. New option is called "OSD item type", it is located in "Monitoring" tab next to "Show in OSD" option. It allows you to display each item as a text (i.e. like it was displayed before), as a history graph, or as a combination of both text and graph. That's early initial implementation of graphs embedded in OSD, which allows you to feel the graphs and allows us to polish the final implementation, so suggestions on desired graph layout are welcomed. For example, I'm not sure if we need additional labels with graph names next to each one, I'm not sure if current values displayed next to graph are necessary (personally I tend to remove them as they are duplicating text displayed above) etc.OSD Layout selection setting has been moved a bit above, it is located in separate line now.RTSS included in distributive is also upgraded to beta 25. It contains some internal changes related to graphs rendering implementation.Edgar Matobato is seen during the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights hearing held at the Senate in Pasay City, Metro Manila on 22 September 2016. The Senate is investigating on the recent rampant extrajudicial killings and summary executions of suspected criminals. (Voltaire Domingo/NPPA IMAGES)
A Davao City court will be issuing a warrant of arrest for Edgar Matobato after the self-confessed hitman failed to show up at a scheduled hearing.
Matobato was supposed to be arraigned on Tuesday at Davao City's Municipal Trial Court Branch 3 for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition but he and his lawyer Atty. Gregorio Andolana failed to show up.
Judge Silverio Mandalupe said he will issue a warrant of arrest and cancel Matobato's bail bond in favor of the government.
Matobato, who had tagged President Rodrigo Duterte in summary killings during his time as mayor, is accused of carrying a Colt.45 caliber pistol outside of his home without a permit or valid authority on June 19, 2014.
"There [is] reasonable ground to believe that a crime has been committed and that the accused is probably guilty," according to Assistant City Prosecutor Oliver Saniel.
Matobato was also earlier tagged in the abduction of alleged terrorist Sali Makdum.North Pointe Village
North Pointe Village is a failed housing development in the city of Highland Park, MI. Ground was broken in December of 2005 for 153 units of infill single-family housing in a distressed neighborhood bounded by Woodward Avenue, Oakland, Ferris, and McNichols streets.
Three different models of houses were offered – a ranch style home, and two colonial style two-story homes. A press release from the city of Highland Park noted, “…the new modular housing has three bedrooms, two baths, kitchen, living and dining spaces and full basements. The housing will have landscaping and driveways. Garages are optional… These homes will come equipped with alarm systems, security lighting, sump pumps and appliances.”
The houses were to be built alongside existing housing in the neighborhood, which had significant gaps due to original housing being abandoned and demolished. Prices were to range from $130,000 to $155,000, a very high price in a city where the median household income in 1999 was $17,737, the median home value was $49,800, and 32.1% of residents lived below the poverty line.
Financing would be achieved via “a unique rent to own program that is designed to create first-time home buyers after a two-year or less credit repair effort.” In addition, “Applicants will also be required to participate in the local neighborhood watch program, join the existing community organization, attend classes on neighborhood living skills, and home repair and be subjected to credit and criminal background checks.”
The first homeowners moved sometime in February of 2005.
106 houses appear to have been completed, with several empty foundations dug. It’s not clear how many houses were occupied under the original plan, as the developer and contractor both went bankrupt and abandoned the project. The quality of the houses turned out to be much lower than promised with defective roofs, and plumbing; other units never had back porches installed, leaving the sliding glass doors on the rear hovering five feet off the ground, facing a dirt lot.
Almost immediately after being constructed, units awaiting sale were quickly broken into and looted by scrappers who carted off everything of value. "People just came through, and they even pushed furnaces down the street," resident Michael Curry told WDIV. While a number of the houses were occupied by 2008, many were boarded up and left vacant, some without ever having been lived in. A few of them have burned down, leaving charred shells and empty lots.
The houses that were originally priced starting at $130,000 now go for less than $5,000 – if anyone actually buys them. A developer bought 13 of them intending to rehab the damaged units, paying between $2,000 and $8,000 for each unit. At least one of the houses was given to a refugee of Hurricane Katrina in 2006; Linda Davis was initially grateful for the support she received, but later felt abandoned when promised assistance never materialized.
The cost of the $20 million development was borne in part by out of state investors, 10 of which later sued the developers. The lawyer representing them told WDIV Detroit “each of his clients bought five homes to rent out with an average asking price of $130,000. He said his clients were too trusting and, being from California, had no idea the Highland Park property was overvalued;” and that they “were convinced by a promotional brochure that said, ‘Investing has never been so easy.’"
What was once touted as “a wonderful Christmas present for the citizens of our city” by City Council President Dr. Ameenah Omar in 2005 has been effectively disowned by its developers, financers, and city. “Those houses would be totally unacceptable to me personally. They are not sufficient for the citizens of Highland Park, " Omar said just three years later. The city began bulldozing vacant units in 2011, but many still remain. Due to their poor condition and build quality, it’s very unlikely that they will ever be occupied. Many now are in worse shape than the houses they were built next to, which have been abandoned for much longer.
"This whole thing was a rip-off," said Curry. The citizens of Highland Park are bearing the cost of this poorly-planned and expensive failure still today.The aggressive climbing perch, which can crawl on land, live for six days out of water and suffocate its predators, heads south from Papua New Guinea
An invasive fish species that can crawl across dry land, live up to six days out of water and suffocate its predators threatens to reach the Australian mainland after migrating south from Papua New Guinea.
The aggressive climbing perch has already been spotted on Australia’s two most northerly outposts, the Torres Strait islands of Boigu and Saibai, fewer than 10km south of the PNG mainland and 160km from Cape York, the northern tip of the Australian mainland.
A senior researcher in wetland ecology at James Cook University, Nathan Waltham, said the hardy fish would be a “major disaster” for certain native Australian fish species and other wetland dwellers, including turtles and birds.
The fish is native to south-east Asia and over the past four decades has spread south through Indonesia and PNG. It was first officially recorded on the two islands in 2006, having been washed over by heavy rainfall. Waltham said they will be very difficult to eradicate from the two islands.
The climbing perch, or Anabas testudineus, has sharp spines on the extendable cover of its gills, which it uses to drag itself over dry land as it travels from one waterhole to another.
Waltham said the fish was also able to survive for relatively long periods of time out of water because “next to the gills it has lungs, same as us, so it can breathe air on land”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nathan Waltham, right, with Torres Straits regional authority rangers. Photograph: Nathan Waltham/James Cook University
There was evidence that the freshwater fish, which have been known to hibernate in the mud of dried-up creek beds for up to six months, could tolerate exposure to saltwater. Waltham said he observed climbing perch living in very salty waterholes, equivalent to ocean water, on a trip to the two islands in December.
Although it was unlikely the fish would be capable of swimming to the Australian mainland there was a danger it would “arrive in the bottom of a fishing boat or as discarded live-bait fish”.
The scientists have brought the fish to their laboratory to better understand how much salt the fish can tolerate, how it is doing so and test how fast it can move across different terrain.
The fish has been known to swell up when swallowed by larger predators, blocking their throats so they choke or starve. Barramundi, catfish and even some aquatic birds that died after ingesting the fish have been discovered by Waltham’s colleagues in the PNG.
This unique ability worries Australian ecologists. “When they populate an area they’re not commonly found in, they can disrupt the balance of that habitat,” Waltham said. “That’s why we’re working with Torres Strait authorities to make sure they don’t spread further south.”
A team from James Cook University has been monitoring the perch’s spread with rangers from the Torres Strait regional authority and Torres Strait communities.
Waltham said locals that find a fish species they are not familiar with should report it to the relevant authorities. “Only with ongoing education and surveillance are we going to prevent climbing perch from arriving in northern Australia,” he said.
Herbert Warusam, a ranger on Saibai island, said the fish were being actively monitored and local fisherman were being educated to report sightings. “It is important we don’t let them travel beyond our island,” he said.
Waltham said the climbing perch was just one of several invasive wetland-dwelling species in PNG – including walking catfish, snakehead, pacu, tilapia and gourami – that posed a possible threat to Australian habitats.Google To Terminate Tap & Pay Support On All Non-KitKat Devices From Next Month
By Joshua Levenson
Google has officially announced that it will discontinue support for its Wallet Tap & Pay service on all devices running versions of the Android operating system below KitKat 4.4, starting Monday, April 14, 2014.
According to the team at Mountain View, the reasoning behind this controversial decision is due to a newer version of technology being used in the Google Wallet application. Older versions of the OS will no longer be able to support the software, therefore, compatibility for the ‘old method’ is being terminated.
“We wanted to let you know about an update to Google Wallet that might change the way you use the app. Right now it looks like you’re using tap and pay with a device running an Android version older than 4.4 KitKat. On the newest version of Android, tap and pay works with different technology for an improved experience. As a result, starting on April 14, 2014, tap and pay will no longer work for devices with older Android versions.” Says Google, in an email sent out to all Wallet users. “Tap and pay will be available for most devices running Android 4.4 KitKat. If you are able to upgrade to KitKat now, you can check if your device supports tap and pay. Supported devices will display a tile in your “My Wallet” screen that tells you to set up tap and pay. For devices that are not eligible for Android 4.4 KitKat or don’t support tap and pay, you can still use the Google Wallet app to store all of your loyalty cards and offers, send money to your friends, view your orders, and use the Google Wallet Card to make purchases. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for continuing to be a loyal Wallet user.”
If you own a smartphone that’s currently running Jelly Bean, but is expected to receive the much-anticipated KitKat update in the next couple of months, don’t fret. Upon updating your smartphone to the latest build of Android 4.4, you’ll instantly be granted access to the Tap & Pay service — so you won’t be without the facility for too long.Red hot Kate Upton usurps Irina Shayk as Sports Illustrated new cover girl takes centrestage at magazine launch
It's official, Kate Upton is the beauty gracing the 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition and tonight she got to bask in the glory of her coup at the New York launch party.
She of the fabulous physique didn't disappoint, in fact, 19-year-old Upton looked just as incredible even with her clothes on... in this fitted bright scarlet dress.
With her blonde hair swept up into a messy, loose chignon - the preserve of the young - she looked every bit the beautiful ingenue, but what of last year's girl?
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Upton Girl: Stunning Kate is the new Sports Illustrated cover girl, and celebrated the fact tonight at the launch party at the aptly named Crimson New York wearing this beautiful red dress and killer heels
Bombshell: Kate Upton looked wonderful for her big moment tonight
Step forward, Christiano Ronaldo's girlfriend, the ravishing Irina Shayk, 26, who was there tonight to celebrate her successor gaining the ultimate American modelling accolade.
If there were any sour grapes, the brunette was keeping them well behind that beatific smile and even chose to wear a heavenly white to absolve her of any sinful envy.
But she couldn't resist directing photographers to her spread inside the magazine, all the same.
Not quite as big a deal as the cover though, Irina.
Law of the jungle: Irina gets straight to the point as soon as she's done her duty
Check me out: Upton outside the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York earlier in the day, and Irina with her own cover, last year
Look at me! Irina poses by Kate's cover then can't resist showing her own picture inside the magazine
Irina sizzled on the cover of last year's coveted swimsuit issue, but had handed over the crown to Miss Upton, whose cover was unveiled on an enormous billboard in Times Square.
She was joined by a host of fellow Sports Illustrated beauties including Alyssa Miller, Izabel Goulart, Meredith Ariel and Jessica Gomes.
Speaking to the NY Post, Irina dished out some advice for women celebrating Valentine's Day.
Blue belle: Bar Rafaeli shone in a electric blue lace dress with her blonde hair worn loose
Electric: Bar was a knock-out in her lace minidress
Ladies-in-waiting: Jessica Gomes, Nina Ugdal and Michelle Vawer strutted their stuff on the red carpet
Bevy of beauties: Kirby Griffith and Cintia Dicker chose unusual hues for their gowns, but pulled off each individual look
The confident model said: 'Look beautiful. It’s such a sexy holiday, you should wear something red like a dress or cute lingerie or nail polish or lipstick.
'You just have to be yourself to flirt and be beautiful and sexy. You don’t need to have long legs and big lips and beautiful hair and makeup. Just be a normal person.'
White out: Irina went for an angelic look and left Kate to sizzle
Black Lace: Izabel Goulart smouldered in sheer black gown that revealed a lot yet kept her covered
Delicate: Chrissy Teigen also opted for lace, but was less successful in her choice
After last night's appearance on David Letterman to confirm she is this year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, Upton has proved that the cover is only a teaser of what's inside the edition.
A new photograph from the lengthy photo spread has emerged in which the stunning 19-year-old blonde from Michigan poses on a beach in a hot pink bikini with white hearts.
Newswires have been buzzing since yesterday with the news that the former Guess model and Victoria's Angel had snatched the coveted cover after having been named Rookie of the Year by the magazine in 2011.
Style misses: Adaora, Genevieve Morton and Crystal Renn all failed to set the red carpet alive with their dubious outfits
Short and sweet: Alyssa Miller looked stylish in a tuxedo jacket worn as a dress, while Julie Henderson and Anne V looked fabulous in green and silver respectively
A photograph of the 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue featuring Kate Upton was leaked before the billboard was unveiled
This time last year, Russian-born brunette stunner Irina Shayk won the coveted spot on the sports' publication's most popular issue.
Miss Upton was signed by Elite Model Management in 2008 and has been attracting a growing number of admirers thanks to the high-profile campaigns for Guess and Victoria's Secret.
Cocktail gowns: Jessica Perez and kept it classic for their party numbers
Last year, her popularity soared as thousands of fans logged on to watch a video of the curvy stunner dancing at a basketball game in Los Angeles which she had attended with fellow Sports Illustrated model Damaris Lewis.
First published in 1964, the Swimsuit Issue was launched as distraction to combat the winter lull in sporting events and news.
Published only once a year, the cover is a huge coup for a model hoping to make it to the big time.
Strike a pose: Earlier in the day Sport Illustrated models posed at the New York Stock Exchange, from left, Irina Shayk, Crystal Renn, Michelle Vawer, Nina Agdal, and Jessica Gomes
To many, the exposure from this cover is unparalleled and can catapult a well known model in fashion circles and the world of beauty to fame far beyond the catwalk.
Sports Illustrated has always favoured the voluptuous looking models like |
-rich spinach is one of the main ingredients. This simple and sweet weight loss smoothie will certainly ease your tummy quickly, and it's under 250 calories.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 /2 cup pineapple
1 frozen banana
2 cups spinach
1/2 cup papaya
1/4 cucumber (with skin)
1 cup chilled coconut water (or 4 coconut water ice cubes and 1/2 cup chilled coconut water)
4 ice cubes
Directions
Mix everything in a blender until smooth.
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 245
Fat: 0.7g
Protein: 4.1g
Carbohydrates: 61.4g
Fiber: 7.7g
Sugar: 38g
Vitamin A: 129%
Vitamin C: 190%
Potassium: 1587mg (45%)
#5 weight loss smoothie
Get your daily dose of essential nutrients with this Doctor. Oz approved smoothie. If you think you are not getting enough vitamins from your diet, this foolproof drink provides a powerful antioxidant punch and helps you absorb nutrients from your diet.
The papaya offers you more than the daily recommended value of vitamin C to maintain your immune system strong and ward off disease. The kale and spinach provide you with a healthy dose of calcium and magnesium, and the apple and banana give you a good dose of antioxidants!
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 cup papaya
1/2 cup spinach
1/2 cup kale
1/2 green apple
1/2 banana
Directions
Put all ingredients into a blender. Mix until smooth. Enjoy!
#6 weight loss smoothie
It's full of vitamins, so you'll get a powerful burst of energy. It's great to drink in the morning as a weight loss breakfast smoothie.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
2 cups of tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup of apple juice
1/2 cup of tomato juice
1/4 cup of celery, chopped
1/2 cup of carrots, chopped
1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon of hot sauce
8 to 10 ice cubes.
Directions
Put everything in the blender and mix until smooth.
#7 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
6 oz plain nonfat Greek yogurt
1/2 cup fresh pineapple chunks
1/2 cup fresh or frozen mango chunks
One frozen banana, chopped
2 tbsps ground flaxseed
DIRECTIONS
Mix all ingredients and blend until smooth, enjoy!
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 368
Fat: 7g
Protein: 22g
Carbohydrates: 60g
Fiber: 9g
#8 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 banana
1/2 cup of soy milk
1/2 cup of silken tofu
2 tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tbsp of honey
Directions
Slice the banana and then put it in the freezer until it gets firm; start by blending the tofu, honey, soy milk and cocoa in the blender, then add the banana pieces through the top, mix everything until smooth.
#9 weight loss smoothie
“Berries are full of antioxidant compounds that neutralize damaging free radicals that lead to skin cell damage and premature skin aging,” explains Tricia Williams, chef, and owner of Food Matters, a food delivery service in New York City.
They are loaded with hydrating water and are chock-full of vitamin C, which is essential for a healthy complexion. Plus, this colorful super-foods help your body manufacture collagen, which makes skin soft, smooth as well as youthful.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 cup water
1/4 cup frozen or fresh strawberries
1/4 cup frozen or fresh blueberries
1/4 cup frozen or fresh raspberries
1/4 cup kale
Directions
Put ingredients in a high power blender. Mix until completely smooth. Serve immediately and Enjoy!
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 106
Fat: 0.3g
Protein: 1.3g
Carbohydrates: 26.5g
Fiber: 4.7g
Sugar: 19.4g
Vitamin C: 79%
Vitamin A: 53%
#10 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 cup fresh or frozen mango chunks
1 cup green tea
1 cup spinach
1/2 medium avocado
1/2 tbsp coconut oil
A dash of sea salt
A little honey or stevia to sweeten
DIRECTIONS
Place all ingredients in your blender and blend until completely smooth.
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 329
Fat: 22g
Protein: 4g
Carbohydrates: 35g
Fiber: 10g
Sugar: 23g
Vitamin C: 131%
Vitamin K: 216%
#11 weight loss smoothie
In case you're looking for a quick and healthy weight loss breakfast, try this yummy apple cinnamon smoothie from registered dietitian Erin Palinski.
"Not everyone has a lot of time in the morning. That's why I love [this] cinnamon apple smoothie, which has good, natural fats, a punch of protein, and a wallop of fiber to keep you full longer, as well as natural sugars and electrolytes," Erin says.
"What makes this great for people on the go is you can even make this the night before and have it ready to grab in the fridge in the morning." Adding ground flaxseed allows making the smoothie a substantial drink that gets thicker as it cools in the fridge overnight.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
8 oz coconut water
4 raw almonds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped apple (about 1 medium apple)
1 tbsp flaxseed meal (ground flaxseed)
1/2 scoop unsweetened protein powder
Directions
Mix all ingredients into a blender, and pulse for 10-15 seconds.
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 238
Fat: 5g
Protein: 15.6g
Carbohydrates: 37.6g
Fiber: 8.7g
Sugar: 27.4g
#12 weight loss smoothie
Spinach is the pop-star in this delicious smoothie, with just one 16 ounce serving, you'll have your entire Recommended Dietary Allowance of vitamin A and vitamin K, as well as a great amount of essential nutrients like potassium, manganese, and vitamin C.
This 300 calorie weight loss smoothie is a good source of protein, thus, making this veggie-packed smoothie a good breakfast choice for you.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 fresh pear, peeled, cored, and chopped 2 cups spinach leaves, packed 15 red or green grapes 6 oz fat-free plain Greek yogurt 1 or 2 tbsps fresh lime juice 2 tbsps chopped avocado
Directions
In a blender, mix all the ingredients until smooth
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 296 Fat: 8.3g Protein: 16.5g Carbohydrates: 43g Fiber: 9.4g Sugar: 20.3g Vitamin A: 116 % RDA Vitamin C : 56 % RDA
#13 weight loss smoothie
Here’s another perfect summer weight loss smoothie for you! All you need is strawberries, cantaloupe, lettuce, and ice.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
10 large romaine lettuce leaves 1 cup of frozen strawberries 2 cups of chopped cantaloupe slices 6 ice cubes
Directions
Place everything in the blender and blend until smooth.
#14 weight loss smoothie
Chia seeds offer an easy source of anti-inflammatory omega-3s, protein and a great amount of antioxidants to your diet. Try putting them into this refreshing weight loss smoothie.
Rich in vitamin C and boasting more than ten grams of fiber, this antioxidant breakfast drink gets an extra lift with some chia power.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1/2 cup unsweetened pomegranate juice
1 cup frozen mixed berries
1/2 tbsp chia seeds
1/2 cup water
Directions
Put all ingredients in a blender, and mix until mostly smooth. Top of with an extra sprinkle of chia seeds if you want.
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 223
Fat: 10.2g
Protein: 4.1g
Carbohydrates: 41.3g
Fiber: 8.7g
Sugars: 27.6g
#15 weight loss smoothie
This weight loss smoothie is a total tropical treat!
The weight loss smoothie recipe
1/4 cup of cubed mangoes 1/2 cup of mango juice 1/4 cup of ripe avocado, mashed 1/4 cup of fat-free vanilla yogurt 1 tbsp of lime juice 1 tbsp of sugar 6 ice cubes
Directions
Add all the ingredients into the blender and mix until smooth.
#16 weight loss smoothie
This weight loss smoothie itself has a perfect amount of sweetness, and the tiny addition of cinnamon provides it a spicy kick. This meal will keep you full until lunch- trust me -!
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 red apple 1 banana 5 raw almonds 3/4 cup nonfat Greek yogurt 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 cup nonfat milk
Directions
Put all ingredients in a blender. Blend on medium-high for 30 seconds or until smooth.
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 397 Fat: 3.5g Protein: 15.6g Carbohydrates: 71.9g Fiber: 8.5g Sugar: 48.8.g
#17 weight loss smoothie
This weight loss smoothie is more than just a tasty drink. Take a drink and revitalize your energy level. At under 250 calories, this refreshing blend is the ideal way to begin your day.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
2 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 banana
cinnamon
8 oz Greek yogurt
Directions
Pour cocoa powder, Greek yogurt, peanut butter and ice cubes into blender and mix at high speed. Slice banana, add into blender, and re-mix. Pour smoothie into two cups and serve. Sprinkle dash of cinnamon on the top for more flavor.
#18 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe
2 cups of honeydew, cubed
1 kiwi fruit, peeled and chopped
1 Granny Smith apple, chopped
1 tbsp of lemon juice
1 tbsp of sugar
1 cup of ice cubes
Directions
Place the honeydew, apple, kiwi, sugar, and lemon juice into the blender and blend until smooth, and then add ice and mix until the mixture is slushy.
#19 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 cup water
1/2 fresh or frozen banana
1 cup fresh or frozen mixed berries
1 cup spinach
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp gelatin (optional, for protein)
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 251 Fat: 14g
Protein: 3g
Carbohydrates: 32g
Fiber: 5g
Sugar: 18g
Vitamin C: 43% RDA
Vitamin K: 181% RDA
Calcium: 10% RDA
Iron: 10% RDA
Directions:
Place all of the ingredients into your high-speed blender and mix for around 30 to 45 seconds or until smooth.
#20 weight loss smoothie
Made with only 4 ingredients, this weight loss smoothie tastes more like a yummy vanilla milkshake! Keep reading to discover how to make this smoothie that offers over seventeen grams of protein.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1/2 cup soft tofu
1 cup vanilla soy milk
1 frozen banana
1/2 tbsp peanut butter
Directions
Place everything in the blender and mix until smooth, about 1 minute.
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 323 Fat: 12.5g Protein: 17.4g Carbohydrates: 40g Fiber: 4.8g Sugar: 23.1g
You may also read: Best Vitamin for Weight Loss
#21 weight loss smoothie
Many smoothies for weight loss, are made up of blueberries, because they are so rich in antioxidants. This one is absolutely great as a weight loss breakfast smoothie, and it only has about 136 calories!
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1/4 cup of frozen blueberries
1/2 of a large banana
1/2 tbsp of flaxseed oil
1/3 cup of soy protein
1/2 tbsp of apple juice concentrate or honey
1 teaspoon of psyllium seed husks
8 oz of water
Directions
Slice the banana into pieces, place all the ingredients into your blender, and mix until smooth.
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 136
#22 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
2/3 cup of skim milk
1/2 cup of lime, sliced
1/2 cup of raspberries
1 cup of low-fat lime sherbet
8-10 ice cubes
Directions
Put everything in the blender and blend until smooth.
#23 weight loss smoothie This weight loss smoothie incorporates many of the tastiest fruits. It's tasty, juicy, and incredibly refreshing, so blend and enjoy the drink!
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1/4 cup of apple slices
1 orange, peeled
1/4 cup of banana slices
1 tbsp of honey
6 ice cubes
Directions
Place all the ingredients in the blender and mix until smooth.
#24 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
1 tbsp chia seeds or chia seed gel
3/4 cup of plain, Greek yogurt -preferably full-fat-
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 tbsp honey (optionally use stevia or 1/2 banana or maple syrup to sweeten)
Directions
Place all ingredients in your blender. Mix until smooth and enjoy!
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 327
Fat: 20g
Protein: 8g
Carbohydrates: 31g
Fiber: 5g
Sugar: 21g
Vitamin K: 86%
#25 weight loss smoothie
Mixed berry smoothies for weight loss are among the most delicious, and make a great treat on summertime, too.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 cup of frozen berries
1/2 cup of non-fat vanilla or low-fat milk or plain yogurt
Ice (optional)
Directions
Put all the ingredients into your blender, and mix until smooth.
#26 weight loss smoothie
The ingredients are easy, so it requires no time at all to get this weight loss smoothie.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 banana, sliced and frozen
2 teaspoons of flaxseed
1 tbsp of almond butter
1/2 cup of almond milk or non-fat yogurt
1/2 teaspoon of almond or vanilla extract
A drizzle of honey
Directions
Place everything in the blender and blend until smooth.
#27 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 banana
1 cup of strawberries
1/2 cup of low-fat yogurt or milk
1/2 of a sliced orange
5 ice cubes
Directions
Cut up a banana, toss in some strawberries, and add an orange for flavor, yogurt, ice and blend until smooth.
#28 weight loss smoothie
Approved Clinical and holistic dietitian Esther Blum finds that her clients begin to shed pounds with easily once they start to eat more protein, since high protein foods take a lot more work to "digest, metabolize, and use, which means you burn more calories processing them."
With over than 34 grams of protein per serving, this weight loss smoothie will regulate your appetite and keeping you full all morning long. Chopped walnuts are tossed into the blend for their nutty flavor and anti-inflammatory properties, while the addition of metabolism-boosting cinnamon ties the smoothie together for dessert-inspired perfection.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese 1/2 medium banana (frozen or fresh) 1/2 cup vanilla almond milk 1 scoop vanilla protein powder 2 tbsps chopped walnuts 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Directions
Blend all the ingredients together until smooth. Enjoy it!
Nutrition facts:
Calories: 412 Fat: 13.1g Protein: 15.6g Carbohydrates: 40.8g Fiber: 5.8g Sugar: 34.5g Vitamin A: 108% Vitamin C: 110% Calcium: 57% Iron: 37%
#29 weight loss smoothie
The avocado makes this weight loss smoothie so creamy and full of good fats! The raspberries are a good source of anti-oxidants. The blind is incredibly refreshing.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 peeled and pitted avocado 3/4 cup of orange juice 3/4 cup of raspberry juice 1/2 cup of frozen raspberries
Directions
Put everything in the blender and blend until smooth.
#30 weight loss smoothie
This weight loss smoothie is ideal as an alternative meal. Thanks to the peanut butter, you will get plenty of protein, and all together, it's like a peanut butter and banana sandwich!
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1/2 banana
1/2 cup of non-fat milk
1/2 cup smooth or crunchy low-fat peanut butter
6 ice cubes
1 tbsp of chocolate whey protein powder
Directions
Place all of the ingredients into the blender and mix until smooth.
#31 weight loss smoothie
What could be better than a watermelon smoothie on a hot summer day?
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
6 cups of seedless watermelon, chopped
1 cup of lemon sherbet, low-fat vanilla yogurt or non-fat milk,
12 ice cubes
Directions
Put half of the watermelon in the blender and mix until smooth, then place half of the ice and sherbet; mix until smooth. Repeat the process with the rest of the ingredients.
#32 weight loss smoothie
This is a great way to get your part from vitamin C. The citrus is so refreshing, you'll love this weight loss smoothie for breakfast or lunch.
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 cup of skim milk or soy milk
1 medium-sized orange in sections
6 oz of lemon yogurt
1 tbsp of flaxseed oil
6 ice cubes
Directions
Place orange, yogurt, milk, and the ice into the blender and mix for about one minute, then add the flaxseed oil.
#33 weight loss smoothie
The weight loss smoothie recipe:
1 cup of skim milk or soy milk 1 cup of fresh blueberries 6 oz of low-fat or non-fat vanilla yogurt 1 cup of frozen blueberries or ice 1 tbsp of flaxseed oil
Directions
Place yogurt, milk, and the fresh blueberries into the blender with frozen blueberries or ice, blend for 1 minute or so until smooth, then add flaxseed oil.
#34 weight loss smoothie
You absolutely should try this tasty combo of banana and mango! <3An ex-Illuminati member who is vowing to tell the world everything about the secret society has posted a list of the elite members of the Illuminati and the Committee Of 300 leadership.
After spending 47 years as a high-ranking illuminati member, the anonymous insider says that he wants to reveal everything about the secret society’s plans after it all became “too much to bear” for him.
In his first post the insider revealed the process you have to go through in order to become a member, as well as in-depth information about the ‘Space flights’ program, and shocking revelations about who Obama really is – he is much more evil than anyone realizes apparently.
Now, in his highly anticipated second post the ex-Illuminati member continues to lift the lid on the secret society by revealing the names of the senior leadership.
THE BRITISH MONARCHY AND THE COMMITTEE OF 300 (AS OF SEPTEMBER 2016)
CURRENT MONARCH AND SUPREME LEADER OF THE NWO: Queen Elizabeth II
Abdullah II of Jordan
Kerry, John Forbes
Abramovich, Roman Arkadyevich
King, Mervyn
Ackermann, Josef
Kinnock, Glenys
Adeane, Edward
Kissinger, HenryXenoblade Chronicles X Will Have A “Deep” Sci-Fi Story
By Ishaan. November 25, 2014. 2:20am
Xenoblade Chronicles writer Yuichiro Takeda is also the main script writer behind Xenoblade Chronicles X, director Tetsuya Takahashi revealed via Twitter today. Prior to Xenoblade, Takeda had worked with Takahashi on the anime adaptation of Xenosaga.
“After the basic fantasy story for [Xenoblade], we’re having him write a deep and distinctive sci-fi story this time around,” Takahashi tweeted.
Takahashi then went on to remind fans that composer Hiroyuki Sawano (Attack on Titan) is in charge of sound, while Kunihiko Tanaka (Xenogears, Xenosaga, Xenoblade) is in charge of character designs.
Regarding Tanaka, Takahashi stated: “I’ve known Mr. Tanaka for a long time, but this time I asked for his cooperation to bring out the Xeno-ness in the art.”
Xenoblade Chronicles X will be released for Wii U in Japan this Spring. Nintendo are targeting a 2015 release window for North America and Europe as well.The Stonewall Inn will now be a permanent fixture in the village after the Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved to make the bar an official city landmark Tuesday.
The vote came following a long public hearing meeting as elected officials, longtime LGBT activists, historians and other New Yorkers threw their support behind the proposal and urged the commission's panel to protect the property at 51-53 Christopher St.
Stonewall's landmarking is the latest milestone for the LGBT civil rights movement as the Supreme Court will rule on the legality of same sex marriages in the next few days.
"It's such a huge win not just for the LGBT New Yorkers, but for LGBT people around the world because Stonewall has been a symbol of freedom and fighting back against LGBT oppression," said the bar's co-owner Stacy Lentz, 45.
Stonewall was the site of the June 28, 1969 clash between gay patrons and police who were raiding LGBT bars in the city. The incident led to days of protest and sparked a surge in LGBT civil rights movements around the world.
Elected officials, such as Public Advocate Letitia James and Councilman Corey Johnson, likened the protests to the events in Selma, Alabama and Seneca Falls.
"It must be protected from rapacious developers who want to destroy history," James told the board.
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The designation prohibits any changes to the building's facade without approval from the city, a move that Lentz said gave a huge sigh of relief to her patrons. Tourists and other visitors checking out the location Tuesday agreed it is a major part of the New York City experience.
"Just the symbolism alone of this place is incredible," said Joann Holeck, 36, who was visiting the bar with her husband, Trevor, from Edmonton.
"Preserving it, and what it means to New York and the gay community, shows what an important symbol it has become."
Stonewall becomes the first city landmark designated for its connection to LGBT civil rights movement. Preservationists said they hope the city recognizes other spots like Julius' Bar at 159 W. 10th St. and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center at 208 W. 13th St.
"New York has been at the forefront of this movement and contains a wealth of sites connected to its history," said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation.
Others want the landmarks commission to take a stronger look at locations and properties that have historical significance in the city's not too distant past. LPC Commissioner Michael Goldblum said the agency should hear those cases.
"It's a great starting point," he said of the Stonewall landmark.Eric Swartout (Photo: Courtesy photo )
A Shreveport police officer has been arrested following a fight at a local bar.
At approximately 10:12 p.m. on Saturday, Shreveport police patrol officers were dispatched to a fight at the Brass Monkey Bar in the 3100 block of Youree Drive. Upon arrival officers contacted 26-year-old Harrison Daugherty who reported he had been accosted by two male suspects. The victim suffered moderate injuries and was treated at the scene by the Shreveport Fire Department.
Detectives were notified, and based on information and evidence gathered during the course of their ongoing inquiry, believe Daugherty was involved in a dispute with 41-year-old Eric Swartout and 39-year-old Brandon Howard. During the altercation Swartout and Howard allegedly struck the victim numerous times causing him to lose consciousness. Investigators subsequently charged Swartout, of the 1500 block of River Parkway Boulevard in Shreveport, with one count of simple battery and one count of second-degree battery while Howard, of the 4000 block of Glyn Street in Bossier City, is facing a single count of second-degree battery. Both men were booked into the Shreveport City Jail.
Swartout, who joined the department in May of 2003, has been placed on paid administrative leave by Chief of Police Willie Shaw in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Shreveport Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board which states: “When an employee is charged with a felony he shall, and if a misdemeanor he may, be immediately relieved of duty and placed on “departmental leave” for up to one week at full pay and with continuing seniority”.
Read or Share this story: https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/crime/2014/09/21/shreveport-police-officer-arrested-bar-fight/16014921/Thank heavens for Ed Miliband, eh? The leader of the opposition remains the single most compelling reason to hope the Conservatives remain in power next May.
A shame, then, that cabinet ministers appear determined to promote the idea that a Labour victory would be garlanded with at least some silver promise. Chiefly, Chris Grayling would no longer serve as Justice Secretary. This is a non-trivial consideration that’s worth pondering before anyone casts their ballot next May.
There is some dispute over whether the Conservative’s plans to rewrite Britain’s human rights legislation can really deliver all they promise; some disagreement, therefore, over whether they’re as dangerous as they initially appear. Is a half-baked nonsense worse than a fully-baked monstrosity?
I is no lawyer but there is, nonetheless, a simple test by which we may measure the importance and usefulness of Grayling’s plan to decouple England from the European Court of Human Rights and, perhaps, in time, from the European Convention on Human Rights too. That test is whether his proposals expand or limit the application of human rights in England.
I think we know the answer to that question.
Grayling, helpfully, makes his position clear: the Human Rights Act has ‘supported the rights of the few over the rights of the many’. In typical fashion, this brutish Justice Secretary sees this as a problem, not a virtue. In other words, he fails to understand that shielding citizens from the predations of an over-mighty state is the point of these protections, not a demonstration of their inadequacy or failure. That they frequently inconvenience governments is all to the good. That’s what they are for.
The Conservative proposals plan to ‘Limit the use of Human Rights laws to the most serious cases. They will no longer apply in trivial cases.’ But how is the divide between ‘serious’ and ‘trivial’ cases to be determined? For that matter, you could think that a move to limit the application of human rights concerns could render a previously-trivial, even frivolous, case suddenly serious.
Was the Twitter Joke Trial trivial or not? On one level, yes, on another certainly not. The rights to free expression are easily limited and the courts exist, at least in part, to secure and protect those rights.
Moreover, the part-time application of human rights seems quite deliberately intended to allow the state to act as it pleases, not as the law dictates it must. How else to interpret the Tory suggestion that ‘People who do not fulfil their responsibilities in society should not be able to claim so-called ‘qualified rights’ in their defence.’
Why not? The point of universal, inalienable, rights is that they are, well, universal and inalienable. A person does not forfeit those rights simply because the state deems said person ‘irresponsible’ or in some other loosely and capriciously defined sense unworthy of the full protection of the law. We disapprove of you is no basis for good law. Or civilised society. Grayling claims there must be no ‘legal blank cheque to take human rights into areas where they have never applied’, but why shouldn’t there be?
It cannot be stressed too often that the Human Rights Act places valuable limits on the ability of the state to persecute or otherwise coerce its citizens. So, more broadly, does the European Court and the Convention. Doubtless this inconveniences the state but, again, that’s a feature not a bug.
All the talk of parliamentary sovereignty is, in the end, a smokescreen laid to disguise the fact that the Conservatives really do think human rights legislation is a kind of folly that must be replaced by the robust implementation of robust common sense. In other words, the liberties and relief you currently enjoy should be limited because, well, because that’s just common sense innit? England will be a little less free if these proposals are ever actually limited. That’s the whole point of them and if it weren’t there’d be no point to them at all.
No liberal of any variety can support Grayling’s proposals and this oafish Justice Secretary is a walking, talking, advertisement for a Labour government.Americans discard more than 25 percent of all food produced domestically. That’s about 25.9 million tons of food.
Four thousand miles away, almost eight million residents of Niger — more than half the country’s population — are facing starvation because of climate conditions that have damaged food crops.
What you eat for lunch and what you pack in your child’s school lunch matters more than you might realize.
Climate change is an urgent global problem with social, economic, and environmental consequences.
Care2’s GinaMarie Cheeseman recently wrote that a poll of residents of Florida, Maine, and Massachusetts found that “the majority believe global warming is real and caused by humans,” and “the warming is mostly or partly caused by human activity.”
A tremendous amount of energy goes into the production of the food we consume and so casually discard. An article in New Scientist says that more energy is wasted in the food discarded by people in the U.S. each year than is extracted annually from the oil and gas reserves off the nation’s coastlines.
Most of the packaging around peanut butter, cereal, bread, and most of the other food products we buy comes from cardboard sourced from trees and plastics derived from fossil fuels. If you follow the trail from harvesting of ingredients to shipping, modifying, distribution, and to your kitchen, the energy required to pack your child’s school lunch is staggering and wasteful.
Climate Counts – Consumer Power
The nonprofit organization Climate Counts is a collaborative effort to bring consumers and companies together in the fight against global climate change. In order to promote awareness among consumers, Climate Counts scores companies on their climate impact.
By learning what companies are doing about climate change, we can make informed choices about where we spend our money. The food product companies scored by Climate Counts pulled in over $253.7 billion dollars last year. That’s a lot of money and we all know that nothing speaks louder than the bottom line.
Scores are based on four major elements — reviewing emissions, reducing emissions, public policy positions, and transparency — and give you the information you need to make purchasing decisions.
How You Can Help
The choices you make every day matter. Make climate-conscious consumer decisions that impact not only your health, but the amount energy you use and the waste you generate.
Make portion control a part of your routine to cut down on waste.
Make healthy choices for your body’s sake; patronize local organic food producers to support your community.
Check out company scores on Climate Counts — find out which ones are serious about climate control and which are not.
Let your voice be heard at the cash register and by reaching out directly — let companies know why you are purchasing from their competitors. Urge them on a path toward sustainability. When money talks, corporations listen.
Related Reading on Care2
From The Petition Site
For more information, visit ClimateCounts.org or on Facebook.com/pages/Climate-Counts
Photo credit: This image is in the public domain - NCI Visuals Online2014-02-24 16:26, edited 2014-02-25 13:11 by TheBikingViking
Hi everyone
Very soon, we will release Platoons on Battlelog for Battlefield 4 (details to be announced very soon), but we want to give early access to a smaller group of players to test certain parts of the system before a full rollout and get some even earlier feedback.
So if you are interested in this, please let me know in this thread. If you can list your own, existing Platoon with all its members, you will have an even bigger chance of getting on the early access list.
Please write each entry by their Battlelog/Origin username, exactly as it's spelled - e.g. "TheBikingViking" - with each entry on its own line, like this:
TheBikingViking
Uhpam
Kameeleon
Once people have been added to the early access list, I will update this thread with more information. If you have been added to the list, you will need to log out and back in to Battlelog for Platoons to appear (you will see a tile on Home and also find it under the Soldier dropdown in the menu).
Please note that you will only be able to invite other players that have access to Platoons to join your Platoon.
Looking forward to hear your feedback,
TheBikingViking
UPDATE
Wow, thanks for all the amazing interest! I have now locked the thread as we have gotten more than enough applies. Please bear in mind that the early access will be for just a small amount of players, but it won't be for a long period, so everyone will be able to enjoy Platoons soon!
UPDATE 2
The chosen players have now been given access to Platoons. In order to see if you now have access to it, just log out of Battlelog and back in. If you have access, a Platoons menu item will appear in the Soldier dropdown, and a tile will also appear on home.
Have fun!
Battlelog ProducerNew revelations show that "Billionaire Air" is not just a waste of taxpayer money — it might also violate federal law.
As much as Donald Trump wants it to go away, the scandal of his Cabinet members living large on unnecessary private and military jet travel continues to grow.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price may be out, but all the other Trump administration officials who took private trips on “Billionaire Air” and stuck taxpayers with the bill remain — including Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
And Zinke’s troubles may be only just beginning. A new Politico report may have taken Zinke’s use of non-commercial flights over the line from wasteful to illegal.
According to the report, Zinke flew to Alaska in a military plane, at taxpayer expense, and visited a steakhouse in Anchorage — at exactly the same time that steakhouse was holding a fundraiser for Republican Rep. Don Young:
Zinke’s calendar for that day includes a brief stop at Sullivan’s Steakhouse in Anchorage, the same venue listed on the invitation, for a “Rep. Don Young Reception.” Later that night, Zinke went to dinner with representatives of sportsmen’s groups, according to his schedule. The Anchorage stop came in the middle of a weeklong trip that included the use of a military plane to fly from Washington, D.C., to Norway, Greenland and then Alaska. Interior paid for Zinke and three Interior staff members to take the flight. Zinke’s wife, Lola, also accompanied him on the trip but reimbursed the government for the cost of her seat, Interior has said.
This trip creates the appearance that Zinke himself was participating in the fundraiser. As former White House ethics counsel Richard Painter pointed out, that would be a violation of the Hatch Act, which bans most executive officials from engaging in partisan political activity while in office.
Zinke has been tripped up repeatedly by federal ethics laws. In March, he allegedly posed for photos in the U.S. Virgin Islands with people in return for four-figure donations to the territorial Republican Party, prompting a lawsuit from watchdog group Campaign Legal Center and calls for a federal investigation from former Director of the Office of Government Ethics Walter Schaub.
That month, he also traveled to a ski resort in Montana for a fundraiser for Republican Sen. Steve Daines. As Politico notes, “All three fundraisers occurred on trips that Zinke took for official Interior Department business.”
Meanwhile, the Office of Special Counsel is looking into a speech Zinke gave to a professional hockey team owned by a major donor to his congressional campaigns. And Zinke’s chartered flights are the subject of another lawsuit from American Oversight, now under review by the Office of the Inspector General.
But Zinke’s visit to the Alaskan steakhouse while zipping around on a military jet now ties together his travel scandal with his Hatch Act violations, painting a picture of a profoundly corrupt government official who exploits his office to help himself and his friends at every turn.
Since taking office, Trump has filled the swamp with ever swampier creatures. It is time to clean house and make it clear that the Cabinet — along with their boss in the White House — are accountable to the people.In 2010, United Nations member states agreed to try to hold the planet’s temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. It was a goal that acknowledged it was too late to stop the planet from warming, so instead we aimed to cap the potential damage |
… looking for the pair of shoes that she is going to wear for the day. Naturally, the pair she wants is so far under the bed that when I turn my alarm off and poke my ahead around her corner of the bed… only the bottom half of her is exposed. I fight off the urge to take her… I also fight off the urge to shove her the rest of the way under the bed.
[Image by Pink Sherbet Photography, licensed by Getty Images.]
Joseph Boxer JB is the author of Memoirs of a Serial Bachelor. He is a fan of all things manly -- his girlfriend, beer, autos, and sports. He also dabbles in some pseudo-masculine endeavors, including men’s fashion and the resuscitation of chivalry. He recently canned his agent for being an unmotivated boat anchor and is currently looking for new management. More Posts - Website - Twitter - FacebookDisney’s Cinderella and Frozen Fever hits theaters Friday, and one local candy and gift store wants to celebrate all week.
Jeff Darby and his wife have owned Sweet Tooth Candy & Gift Company for 22 years, so they know a thing or two about what children like.
“Frozen has been very popular, obviously, since the movie first came out,” Darby said.
Their daughter, now 36, has been collecting Cinderella items since she was a child.
“So when the live action movie came in and, paired with the Frozen Fever short film, we thought this would be a great time to have people come in and have a good time with it,” Darby said.
Beginning Monday, the Sweet Tooth Candy & Gift Company in Tulsa is inviting children aged 3 to 12 to dress up as their favorite Cinderella or Frozen character and stop by the shop for a free goodie bag and a chance to win two tickets to see Cinderella in theaters.
“If kids come in and they aren’t wearing something, if they know part of the song they can sing that to us also,” Darby said. “Which I think every kid knows.”
Kids can also bring a book or prop from one of the two stories to be eligible to win.
Sweet Tooth staff will take pictures of all the children who participate, with their parent’s permission, and post them on the Sweet Tooth Facebook page.
The biggest celebration for the kids comes Saturday, with the free Sweet Tooth Cinderella and Frozen Party from 3 to 5 p.m. There will be party favors, cookies to decorate, coloring pages to color and even a visit from a princess and prince.
The drawing for movie tickets will be at the end of the party. The winner need not be present to receive the tickets.
More information here.Previous posts: Introducing AfterQuake and Details on AfterQuake usage
AfterQuake package has been updated. Here’s whats new:
latest FTE binary included (the first release binary had a bug – which disabled automatic updates. You should manually update from here – or just download AQ again);
Merged Binary with opengl, d3d and vulkan renderer is now included. More info below;
“fps” demo included. You can view which renderer is better for you. To benchmark type /timedemo demos/fps in the console;
new Downloads menu. Yikes! all the stuff!
Check FTE’s changelog for more detail;
Download the updated package now! Installation instructions on the first post.
Prepare yourself for a revisited Single Player campaign!
Graphic renderers
In this section we will talk a bit about the different renderers FTE provides. AfterQuake includes the merged renderer binary and the gl renderer. To use /setrenderer you will need to use the merged one, or download the specific renderers binaries and ignore /setrenderer.
OpenGL: /setrenderer gl
Old Faithful. Portable, but showing its age. This has so far been FTE’s favoured renderer, and is still the only one with all major features.
Direct 3D: /setrenderer d3d9
Tied to a specific operating system and strictly controlled by Microsoft. Its focus on only gaming and its popularity in benchmarks means the drivers have few weaknesses and will typically achive the higher framerates in the general case.
Vulkan: /setrenderer vk
The new plucky upstart. Vulkan is aimed at reducing CPU time and the ability to properly use multiple threads. Fantastic at low resolutions, but thanks to drivers failing to deal with fullscreen applications this can be the worst choice with low-detail fullscreen games like Quake. Hopefully this will change in time.
Note: Vulkan requires an updated version of your graphic card drivers, and might not be supported even then.
The following table summarizes which features are currently present in the different renderers. (Renderers may support partial implementations of things which can be expected to glitch, these are considered as not implemented. These things will hopefully be implemented in the future. )
Feature OpenGL Direct 3d Vulkan Dynamic lights Y N Y “fisheye” projections Y N N Bloom Y N N Quake3 Shaders Y Y Y FXAA Y N N Water Refraction Y N Y Vanilla Style Y N Y Specular+Bumpmaps+Offsetmapping Y N Y
Unknown features of the day
r_dynamic -1
r_dynamic has a different behaviour from many other engines. In FTE, /gl_flashblend (obsoleted by /r_coronas) enables glquake-style dlights, while /r_dynamic controls whether lightmaps are updated by rtlights. To disable lightstyle animations, /r_lightstylespeed should be set to 0, preventing them from animating but allowing light switches to still work.
r_dynamic 1: use lightmap editing to provide dynamic lighting effects. On some systems you may wish to just use shadowless rtlights instead. r_dynamic 0: ignore dlights when animating lightmaps, this gives a speedup as they don't need to be updated so often. r_dynamic -1: move lightmap animations as well as surface batching to an entirely different CPU thread (and ignores dlights). This setting also activates a different batching mechanism for the world, where the scene is cached from one frame to the next, with all the geometry being regenerated dependant upon temporal coherancy. Essentually, this means that the rendering thread can skip a whole load of work and spend more time throwing things at the GPU. On complex maps, this is a significant speedup.
Bottom line, if you like playing in big maps, /r_dynamic -1 is your new best friend.
r_projection
Setting this cvar causes the game to be drawn to a cubemap, which can then easily be sampled from according to the projection chosen.
stereographic (aka: pannini). fisheye (blub. blub. blub.) panoramic (fantastic for map screenshots) lambert azimuthal equal-area (probably not that useful). Equirectangular (oh hey look its a map of the globe!)
/r_projection will be disabled by pretty much all rulesets. To simplify this it is generally best to use the ‘/ffov’ cvar to control increased fovs, and the regular ‘/fov‘ cvar to control limited fovs.
The Console
FTE’s console is amazing!
^1 – ^7 quake3 colours
– quake3 colours ^b blinking text
blinking text ^&FB Ansi colour codes. The two letters should be hex codes for the foreground and background colours. The background is opaque, but can be transparent if – is used instead of a hex char.
Ansi colour codes. The two letters should be hex codes for the foreground and background colours. The background is opaque, but can be transparent if – is used instead of a hex char. ^xRGB Specifies a specific 12-bit colour value for the following text.
Specifies a specific 12-bit colour value for the following text. ^{XXXX} Specifies an explicit unicode char value. Note that Quake’s chars are mapped to the E0XX range, while various hud images are in the E1XX range, if you want to embed some of those images.
Specifies an explicit unicode char value. Note that Quake’s chars are mapped to the E0XX range, while various hud images are in the E1XX range, if you want to embed some of those images. The engine can support unicode text using the mechanism above, but in order for it to be displayed correctly, you’ll need a unicode font, eg: ‘/gl_font cour‘, which will use courier from yor windows’ fonts directory.
^[/foobar^] console links, this example can be clicked to provide hints to other people for console commands to use (like ^[/connect x.y.z.w^] ).
console links, this example can be clicked to provide hints to other people for console commands to use (like ). There are additional types of links which contain a trailing ‘infokey’ string, and can be context-dependant. For instance, ^[Hello\tip\I SAID HELLO^] will display some text when the mouse cursor is moved over it. ^[\img\gfx/conback.lmp^] can embed images, but only when it is the first thing on the line (hurrah for the echo command).
will display some text when the mouse cursor is moved over it. ^[\img\gfx/conback.lmp^] can embed images, but only when it is the first thing on the line (hurrah for the echo command). player names are also normally clickable, giving a couple of options (especially if you’re hosting a listen server).
The dir command will provide clickable filenames for extensions/paths that it recognises, to view/edit those files.
left-click and drag to scroll the console up/down.
right-click and drag to copy text to the clipboard. Paste it back with ctrl+v (or into other programs).
tab attempts to completes the command, up until the next deviation. Alternative completions will be displayed as footer text.
ctrl+space autocompletes the full predicted command.
Command/cvar descriptions will be displayed as footer text, where provided.
If you don’t know the full name/prefix of a command, type /apropos followed by what you do know, and the engine will display a list of the cvars/commands that contain your snippet as part of their name or description.
Mega Screenshots
This little feature uses render-to-texture rather than rendering stuff to whatever puny window you have. This allows the high-resolution screenshots, and by high-resolution, I mean 16384*16384. Each of these commands take a filename argument followed by width then height. The width and height are still limited by your GPU, but have absolutely no dependancy on your monitor or window size etc.
screenshot_mega: Takes a ‘simple’ large screenshot.
screenshot_stereo: Takes two screenshots side-by-side with a small(r_stereo_separation) offset (also assumed by screenshot_mega with the.pns extension).
screenshot_vr: Takes many many many screenshots giving a horizontal 360 perspective that can be viewed with a few different display software.
The resulting filename will be displayed in the console (as a more easily findable system path).
And hop in a server every once in a while…
r_renderscale
This renders the game view at a different resolution than your screen. A value of 2 is good for supersampling, giving a smoother appearance even mid-surface (unlike msaa), without needing to resort to bluring (read: fxaa). Fantastic looks. A value of 0.5 can give a small speedup with complex scenes involving many rtlights or reflections.
Values above 1 should not normally be used in conjunction with /r_fxaa. The result is not desirable, while smaller values are positively weird, but awesome with it.
Bloom
Yeah, FTE has bloom. So does my dog, if I had one. Yes its just a glorified blur filter. What do you mean blurring is annoying? Anyway, here’s some fun cvars to glitch it out for an awesome sylised effect:
/r_bloom 1; r_bloom_filter 0; r_bloom_retain -3;
Don’t forget to reset those cvars to their defaults once you’ve gotten bored of it.
Voip
To use voip, either simply bind something to +voip, or set the cl_voip_send cvar (both should be listed somewhere in the menus).
Voip requires a compatible server, but should work on both fte+mvdsv. Obviously the person you’re trying to talk to needs a client that supports it too, as well as have it enabled.
You can check your volume levels compared to other people by setting cl_voip_test (also should be in the menus). This will echo your microphone back to you through the engine, ensuring levels are correct. If it makes a horrible noise, remember that you’re probably echoing back lots of noise to other players, so reduce your mic level! Yay menus!
Voip data will normally be recorded into MVDs.
Speech-To-Text
Why stop to type those insults at that enemy who annoys you when you can just verbally abuse him? Just use the ‘stt’ command (use it again to disable it) and insult to your heart’s content!
What do you mean he laughed at your gibberish? Oh well, I guess it was all only a gimmick anyway.
Split Screen
cl_splitscreen specifies the number of additional clients to use (0=single, 1=two-way, 3=four-way splitscreen). Start a game with coop or deathmatch set, and you can dynamically add+remove clients on the fly by tweaking this cvar.
Input is expected to be done with game controllers. ‘/in_xinput 1; /in_restart‘ to enable xinput on windows. Failing that, ‘/joystick 1; /in_restart‘, but don’t use both. With rawinput, its also possible to use separate mice for each player. You can also bind different keys on your keyboard to control different players (eg: /bind uparrow “+p2 forward”).
If you wish to use splitscreen on public servers, you will need to get the server admin to enable splitscreen by setting ‘allow_splitscreen 1’ on the server (FTE servers only).
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Download Menu
The in-engine download menu provides easy access to install/uninstall additional packages, or simply update them more easily. You should be able to find retexturing packages and rtlight definitions in here, of note are the in-game editor (which needs cheats or singleplayer to use), as well as a number of additional plugins.
While FTE has had a ‘/menu_download‘ command for a while, its options didn’t include anything noteworthy and it wasn’t exactly advertised whatsoever. It should now actually be usable! Hurrah!
Quake Injector
The Quake Injector plugin downloads mods and metadata from http://quaddicted.com/. The mods are downloaded and run from cached zips within the downloads directory, rather than having their own individual game directories. Most entries are maps, but many will have dependancies. Note that few mods have directly been tested with FTE, but a number of those that have do require /sv_nqplayerphysics to be set to 1 (alternatively enabled via the ‘compatibility’ game config).
Quake Injector plugin in all his glory. Double click and insta-play!
IRC Client
FTE provides an IRC client using an external plugin (get it from Downloads menu) You can connect to FTE’s irc channel with this command:
/irc /connect quakenet.org "#fte" YourNickHere
Note that if you want to connect to other channels, you should do so with /join rather than creating additional connections to the server (irc servers don’t apprechiate that sort of thing). Once connected, you can use normal irc slash-commands within the irc] window. IRC connections will be re-established when you restart the engine, saving you from re-entering any passwords (which is probably a good thing if you intend to stream on twitch) – use /quit to forget about the server, or /part to leave a single channel. Yes, the initial connect window is annoying.
For twitch irc, you’ll first need to get an oauth token from http://www.twitchapps.com/tmi/. I’ve not tested twitch irc, so take that with a pinch of salt, you’ll need to figure out the channel names yourself.
/irc /connect irc.chat.twitch.tv:6667 "#somechannel" YourTwitchNick "oauth:deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeef"
XMPP (and holepunching)
(Because apparently IRC is not social…)
XMPP, originally known as the jabber protocol, is an open xml-based network protocol supported by many different networks. Some of which support affiliation, but there are notable exceptions. Despite the wording in the plugin, it is unable to create new accounts, you can only tell the plugin about existing accounts. The plugin uses embedded clickable links for its user interface. Click them to walk through the account opening process. It is not possible to configure an avatar image within the plugin, but it can display the avatars of your friends if they’re set by an external client or web interface.
If your friends are also connected with FTE’s XMPP plugin, the ‘invite’ and ‘join’ options will appear within your buddy list. These can be used to establish a game with holepunching through a NAT, which is fantastic for coop (for deathmatch there tend to be enough public servers already).
Google still provide an xmpp server, however, to connect to their network requires the use of oauth2, which is really quite horrible. Apparently exposing your password to a web browser is preferable to keeping it away from major sources of malware.
Manifests
This is a modder feature – manifest files are how you can reconfigure FTE to forget that it was ever a quake engine, and have it run your mod instead, just grab default.fmf from afterquake or whatever and modify it for your own mod. You can also directly embed the manifest into the exe along with an icon to fully rebrand it as far as the user is likely to see (‘-makeinstaller foo’ on the commandline will write out a new foo.exe based on foo.fmf).
Manifest documentation is here: https://sourceforge.net/p/fteqw/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/specs/fte_manifests.txt
QC Debugging
Open up your progs.src with fteqccgui (set up a file association or something). Hit f5, tell it the basedir of your quake install (guessed as two levels up from your.src file), tell it the engine to use (ie: fteqw.exe). And then debug away! Hit f9 to set breakpoints, f11 to single-step. Any qc errors that your code triggers will be displayed simply within the debugger.
Particles
Its like a party in here!
FTE’s particles are all sorts of crazy, from various different spawn patterns, to custom shaders with embedded glsl. They’re really quite versatile, with the ability to generate lights, sounds, models, decals, and even other particles. They’re also documented here: https://sourceforge.net/p/fteqw/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/specs/particles.txt
You should probably start with purplehaze’s various particles, packaged in AfterQuake.
And So Much More
CSQC, Advanced SSQC, BSP2, Lit files, RealTime Lighting, Specular, Bumpmapping, Paralax mapping, Refraction, Reflection, NetQuake mods, QuakeWorld mods, plays Quake2, plays Hexen2, Quake3 support too! Doppler, OpenAL Reverb, Ogg, Voip. Ingame brush editing, skeletal models. Cake Dispensers, oh wait, sorry, that one is a lie. A javascript port, an embedded web browser, 360 degree vision, walking on the ceiling, portals, 6dof, custom huds, skyboxes, fog, etc etc.
Now we just need someone to actually use all of those…
You can reach Spike @ Quakenet IRC, #fteLearn to replace the spark plugs in any car using the Toyota 1.8 liter 2ZZ-GE engine. Spark plugs are an important regular maintenance item, especially for engines like the 2ZZGE. They wear out over time, but can also be fouled very quickly depending on conditions inside you engine.
Changing plugs yourself is very easy, it's a good beginner's project. Saving an hour of dealership labor fees, you should be able to buy the tools for less then you'd pay someone else to do the work.
Lotus's official maintenance schedule for replacing the spark plugs is every 30k miles or 6 years. This seems very often for Iridium plugs that typically last a very long time. On the other end of the rage, Pontiac recommends you change these plugs at 120k miles.
There are no spark plug wires, this engine uses a coil on plug design that uses 4 ignition coils directly connected to the spark plug. As far as spark plug selection goes, forget experimenting with other brands, just get the ones listed below unless you know better. Avoid platinum plugs altogether for boosted applications.
The Toyota 2ZZ-GE engine used in a lot of different vehicles. This article shows a 2005 Lotus Elise, but this should apply to any model the 2ZZ is in, differing in minute details like different engine covers.
Vehicles that use the 2ZZ-GE (source: Wikipedia)posted on the official blog from The Sims
Ready to Relax?
The Sims 4 Spa Day Game Pack is coming on July 14, and we’re really excited for everyone to get their hands on it! In the announcement last week, we talked about how this game pack includes the Spa as a new type of Venue, a bunch of great new objects, and even the new Wellness Skill. Today, we wanted to dig a little deeper into the experiences and gameplay that await when you download the pack.
There are three new Maxis-made Spas, as well as a new Gym. After downloading The Sims 4 Spa Day, you’ll notice four new buildings in your My Library page within The Gallery. There are three Spas, ready to be plopped in any 20×30 lot you want. Aham Ashram Yoga Studio focuses on offering top tier yoga instruction; Center of Center Massage provides highly-trained masseuses and reflexologists to work out all your kinks; and Perfect Balance Spa has everything to enhance your wellness including a sauna and meditation! There’s also a Gym that includes some of the new objects found in the game pack.
You can make your own Spa. Of course, if you’re feeling creative and want to make a Spa of your own, you’re able to do that too. Once you’re done, you can share it to The Gallery and watch as Simmers from all around the world comment on and download your relaxing establishment.
The Wellness Skill gives your Sim a ton of new stuff to do. Practicing yoga, giving massages, and meditating all improve your Sim’s Wellness Skill. The higher the Wellness Skill, the better they’ll be at striking those Yoga poses and giving great, special-purpose massages. They’ll even be able to make new recipes with special benefits!
Meditation masters earn supernatural Interactions. Ever notice that people who Meditate just seem a little… calmer? Almost, like, supernaturally calm? Sims who work up their Wellness become capable of levitation and, eventually, teleportation. Talk about Zen.
Your Sims can WooHoo (or die!) in the Sauna. Saunas are more than just a place to unwind. When two amorous Sims are alone in the room, there’s a special WooHoo only available with the Sauna. But it’s not all fun and games – your Sim might meet their end if they spend too much time getting a Superfluous Steaming.
There’s a new Mud Bath with several soaks to choose from. If your Sim is looking for a safer form of relaxation, the Mud Bath in The Sims 4 Spa Day can give them just that. Laying in the mud can give your Sim the Confident moodlet while the other soaks can have different results: the Rose Garden Scent will have them leaving Flirty, the Baby Soft Skin soak has them feeling Happy. Others soaks can negate negative buffs caused by being Sad or Angry.
Nearly all of the items can be used outside of the Spa. Don’t feel like sending your Sim over to a Spa? No worries – just about everything that your Sims can do in Spas, they can do at home, too. They can install a Sauna in the basement or toss a Meditation Stool in the living room. Moreover, mud baths and soaks are available in nearly every type of tub!
The Sims 4 Spa Day comes out worldwide on July 14! We can’t wait to hear how your Sims are enjoying their time relaxing in the new Spas!Alternative Media and Citizen Journalists across the web are in a storm over the latest developments on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea test fired another missile on April 5th, 2017 ahead of the meeting between Chinese President Xi and President Donald Trump.
Strong language has been coming from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over the last few days warning that a preemptive military strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities was not off the table. As news on North Korea’s latest missile test broke, Rex Tillerson was quoted as saying,
“The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.”
What most people don’t understand is that the Korean War actually never ended. Although there was an armistice between U.S. and North Korean forces, no peace treaty was ever really signed.
This armistice signaled the end of hostilities in the Korean peninsula until a final peace agreement could be found and it established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Negotiators could not agree on conditions for top commanders to sign the armistice together in person, so the document was signed on July 27, 1953, by two delegates: U.S. Army Lieutenant General William Harrison, representing the United Nations Command, and North Korean General Nam Il, representing both the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army and the Commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers. Copies of the agreement were signed separately by UN General Mark W. Clark, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army Kim Il Sung, and Commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers Peng Dehuai. Several times, North Korea has stated that it no longer recognizes the armistice, in 1994, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2013.
Korean War Armistice Agreement – CFR Official Website
This is all happening amid rising tensions between China and its U.S. allied neighbors. China has been taking aggressive stances towards South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. This coupled with threats from North Korea has triggered the U.S. to take steps to safeguard its allies in the region.
If North Korea strikes South Korea or Japan, the U.S. will retaliate. China won’t sit by with its fingers crossed, they will get involved.
This is just a small sampling of news stories showcasing the kind of situation that is developing in the Asian theater.
My Perspective On A Russia-China Alliance
This all reminds me of the time period leading up to World War 1. Although the players are different, the geopolitical implications and signals are very similar.
China is seeking to become the preeminent global power and there are rumors that they are working with Russia to undermine the western run globalist factions.
We have leadership here in the United States that is priming the pump for war with Russia. They claim that Russia rigged our elections and have stood behind allegations that President Trump is an agent of Vladimir Putin while ignoring the looming Chinese threat.
Instead of seeking to improve relations with Russia, both the Democratic and Republican establishments have looked to scapegoat Russia with the purpose of covering up their own corruption and criminal activities. The globalist deep state within our own government attempted to hack the 2016 Presidential Election to secure a Hillary Clinton victory and still failed. It was agents inside our own intelligence services that leaked information to Wikileaks however it is Russia that is taking the blame for the coup and counter-coup that we saw unfold.
If this continues and we do not change our attitude on how we deal with Russia, there is a real risk that we could be pushing them into a military and economic partnership with China. Although the governments of both nations have disdain for each other, and would actively like to see each other fall, both understand that they have the potential to undermine the western globalists and their agenda and are increasingly looking to the United States as an enemy.
“The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend”
The economic and military power of an allegiance between Russia and China would be enormous and formidable. They would more than likely threaten open warfare with the West and would feel as if they had the sufficient strength to begin acting aggressively. Russia would most likely seek to unify with its former Soviet Satellite States, and China would probably feel comfortable invading Taiwan or intensifying its military push into the South China Sea, possibly even attempting an invasion of Japan.
A North Korean strike on South Korea, or Japan would immediately reignite the war between the North Koreans and the United States. It would be open warfare.
I fear that with current circumstances as they are, preemptive military action against North Korea could literally spawn open hostilities between the United States and China. If China strikes one of our allies in retaliation it would warrant a military response from American forces and would trigger a conventional or thermonuclear war. Russia would find itself free to act on the European continent as the U.S. and NATO would be occupied with China and North Korea.
The United States and their allies do not have the manpower and equipment to fight a war on so many fronts.
The West is not currently equipped to deal with such a threat.
Image Credit: Stefan Krasowski
AdvertisementsTottenham are attempting to fend off interest from Newcastle and Monaco by signing Joleon Lescott on a six-month loan deal after the England defender was given permission to leave Manchester City by Manuel Pellegrini.
The 31-year-old, a £22m signing from Everton in August 2009, held talks with Pellegrini following the New Year’s Day victory at Swansea.
And after making just 13 first-team appearances this season, Pellegrini told Lescott he can leave the Etihad on loan in an effort to boost his chances of securing a permanent move in the summer when his City contract expires.
Turkish outfit Besiktas had made moves to tempt Lescott into a move to Istanbul this month, but the centre-half is understood to favour a move within the Premier League.
Tottenham are keen to bolster their defensive options due to a raft of injuries at White Hart Lane and the north London outfit are the favourites to sign the player, who could make a move before Saturday’s FA Cup third round tie at Arsenal.
Newcastle manager Alan Pardew is determined to secure defensive reinforcements, however, after losing Fabricio Coloccini for up to six weeks with a knee injury sustained during the defeat against West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday.
Lescott views Monaco as an appealing option, with the wealthy French outfit currently lying second to Paris Saint Germain in Ligue Un.
But with Spurs and Newcastle both set to hold talks with the defender and his representatives this week, Lescott is expected to move to either White Hart Lane or St James’ Park.Another collection of micro parties will take control of the new Legislative Council, winning up to six seats from the Coalition, on figures posted late Saturday night.
With roughly a third of the vote counted, the Shooters Party appeared set to take seats off the Coalition in all three country regions, even though it won only 2 or 3 per cent of the vote in each.
The Legislative Council Credit:Simon Schluter
As in last year's federal Senate election, minor parties organised their preferences to elect at least one of their group in most of Victoria's eight regions, based on calculations using ABC analyst Antony Green's Senate calculator.
The Shooters appear likely to win seats in Eastern Victoria, with 2.6 per cent of the vote, Northern Victoria (3.5 per cent), and Western Victoria (2.4 per cent). In each case, the seats have been taken from the Coalition, with MPs Andrew Ronalds and David O'Brien among the losers.Phenomenon: How to Stretch a Shadow
"I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery, but can be understood by ordinary people."
Stephen Hawking
October 21, 2017 by S. Alex Martin
The most fundamental truth about science is that, to use it, you need to ask one question. That may be why science is so beautiful. Its entire practice relies on our own curiosity. You might have read that first sentence one of two ways. Did you read it as a statement? "To use science, you need to ask one question." Or did you read it as a prelude to me providing a question? "Okay, what is the question I need to ask?" If you reacted the second way, you're already thinking like a scientist. And that's a good thing, because this entire essay stems from me asking one, single question: "Why?" I look for phenomena in everything. Refracting light, sound waves, streams of dry sand blowing over a beach. Even on the tennis court in my apartment complex, there are these strange, dirty streaks along the fence-line that, oddly enough, look like iron filings dusted over magnetic field lines -- and I have no idea what these streaks are, or how they were formed. Every time I play tennis there, I stare at them, and a bunch of questions bounce around in my head: "What are they? What formed them? How did they form?" All of those questions boil down to a single question: "Why?" More explicitly, "Why do these streaks exist and look like magnetic field lines?" Several months ago, at my old workplace in Pennsylvania, the sun was shining in through the window, casting long shadows over the ground. I'm not sure what possessed me to do so, but I took a piece of paper and placed it in the sunlight, then moved its shadow toward another shadow on the ground. Before the shadows touched, however, something fascinating occurred: the two shadows stretched toward each other. I pulled the shadow away, then brought it closer again. Just like before, the two shadows bent toward each other. It wasn't a trick of the eyes: I called over my coworker, and she witnessed it, too. I proceeded to show this phenomenon to everyone I worked with, and we all saw the exact same thing: the two shadows, when brought close together, would bend, warp, and pull toward each other. Every time, I asked the same question: "Why are the shadows bending toward each other?"
In this series of images, you can see how as the shadow of my finger approaches the shadow of a window frame in Starbucks, the two shadows appear to stretch toward each other. I looked absolutely ridiculous as I filmed this experiment in public, but hey, the things you do for science.
Naturally, I began constructing my own conclusions, and the one that made the most sense was this: when the gap between the two objects became small enough, it acted like a slit and caused the light to diffract, much like diffraction you would see in the double slit experiment. I had solved the mystery. But...I was troubled. What had I proven? Nothing. I came up with an answer, accepted it, and didn't conduct another shadow experiment with any other variables. In fact, it would take me another several weeks to try bending shadows again -- and when I did, I discovered my conclusion was, in fact, wrong. If closing the gap between the objects created a slit that diffracted light and bent the shadows toward each other, it should work at any distance. I put the paper next the post casting the shadow, and the shadows bent toward each other. Then I put the paper near the ground, slid it close to the shadow of the pole...and the shadows didn't stretch toward each other. The horizontal distance between the objects, I discovered, was not the primary cause of the phenomenon I was witnessing. I tried this again and again. When the paper (and other objects I tried this experiment with) was casting a shadow from a distance, that is, several feet from where I was standing, the shadows stretched toward each other. When I brought the paper within a few inches of its shadow, the two shadows didn't stretch toward each other. Therefore, something about the distance to the shadows was causing them to stretch toward each other. Coincidentally enough, I made this observation right before the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 (for which I traveled to Oregon to witness!) It helped that I did so, because talk about light and shadows dominated the internet. One certain property about light and shadows stuck out, the fact that all shadows have three distinct regions: the umbra, the dark, more central region where most light is blocked; the penumbra, the border of a shadow, the grayer region where diffuse light reaches, making it lighter than the umbra; the antumbra, the region that mirrors the cone of the umbra, where the light source comes back into view and grows larger as you move away, and is the reason for annular eclipses (admittedly, I was not even aware of this term until writing this article! You learn something every day).
It clicked: somehow, this was the answer. I just needed to figure out why it was the answer, why the penumbras of two shadows made it look like the shadows were stretching toward each other. If you've ever turned on two or more lights located on different sides of a room, you've probably noticed that objects cast multiple shadows. The closer an object is to a single light source, its shadow grows darker in one direction, while the other shadows cast by other light sources fade away. However, if you overlap the fainter
shadows of two objects, the region of overlap becomes darker, if not completely black. Simply put, two overlapping shadows create a darker shadow in their region of overlap.
Left: an object with multiple light sources will project multiple penumbras. The penumbra nearest either source will appear dimmer than the other.
Right: overlapping penumbras will create a darker umbra.
All objects project an umbra and penumbra and antumbra, but the size (and, in the case of the antumbra, the existence) of each region depends on how far the shadow is projected. In the experiments at my work, the stretching effect was most distinct when the shadow of the paper was projected on the floor several feet away, and seemed to not work at all when the paper was inches from the floor. I also discovered that the more rounded/uneven the objects, the greater the effect was. The penumbra of any object is larger at a distance, because there is more area for more diffuse light to reach |
can seriously talk about control of the police, we have to ask, who controls the state? To Marxists, the state includes the police, courts, prisons, military, all the departments of the government, as well as the US Congress, state and local governments. The state does not exist in a vacuum, but is brought into being by the society around it. We live in a class society, where at one end there is a tiny minority, the capitalist class, which through its ownership of the banks and large corporations has tremendous power concentrated in its hands. At the other end there is the vast majority, the working class. In capitalist society, it is the capitalists who form the ruling class, with support from the tops of the military, civil service, and others, meaning that they are the ones who ultimately "call the shots." In short, the present state is set up to serve their interests and maintain capitalism.
In the United States today, many officials, such as the members of Congress and the President are elected every two to six years. At the state and local level, local representatives, judges, school boards, mayors, and some police chiefs are also elected. However, these elected officials represent just a small minority of all the people who work in one form or another within the state. The majority are regular working people, like postal workers and teachers. But there is another layer at the top end of the civil service, an "unelected army" of people who are in charge of running many day-to-day aspects of society and who have a huge amount of power. They range from the Generals and Admirals on the Joints Chief of Staff and in the Pentagon, the FBI, CIA and NSA, to the state and local police departments and different agencies and departments of the government. Then there is the unelected and appointed-for-life Supreme Court. Make no mistake about it: these people are very closely tied to the capitalist class and they are experts in running society in the interests of the minority, against the interests and wishes of the majority.
In reality, despite electing some officials in the state under capitalism, who themselves are under no real "control" by the working class once they are elected, the vast majority of those with real power in the state are unknown and outside of any "control" whatsoever by the working class, which makes up most of the voters and the population. If we cannot really "control" Congress or the president, how can we "control" the unelected and unaccountable police, which are on the front lines of the capitalist state? Even if, for example, there was a mass labor party in the United States which elected many people to Congress on a socialist program, their ability to fully implement the will of the majority would be hampered and sabotaged by this state bureaucracy.
The police are an organized armed force. How can we, the working class, as an unorganized unarmed force, take control of the police? That has never happened in history, and it unfortunately never will. As Leon Trotsky once explained: "In questions of life and death, arguments based on reason have never replaced the arguments of force. This may be sad, but it is so. It is not we that have made this world. We can do nothing but take it as it is." The reality is, we can never control the capitalist state and its police forces (or the Army or any other key part of the state).
Concretely, in those cities where something like what some have called "community control" has been won, these have mostly been "civilian review boards." However, there is not much genuine "control" with these boards because they only are able to "review" cases after the fact. They do not exercise any real control over the police. In the case of Ferguson, so far the local police chief has not even been forced to resign, let alone there being any real possibility of "community control."
Another idea put forward to change the way the police forces in Ferguson and other similar areas operate is to hire more black police officers, or at the very least, police officers who actually live in the communities they are supposed to serve. While we understand the motivation for this demand, we again have to point out that this will not fix the fundamental problem. The police in many parts of the country, especially in predominantly black communities, bear a lot more resemblance to soldiers patrolling a place like Fallujah, Iraq, than to Barney Fife walking a beat around the small town of Mayberry, North Carolina.
There is an "us versus them" mentality in many police departments, which is a reflection of material reality. Financially speaking, to cover their growing budgets—after all, they have to pay for that new armored personnel carrier!—many departments set demanding quotas for tickets and fines, adding a further burden on workers and the working poor, who often get ensnared by warrants for things like failure to pay traffic tickets or for a late vehicle registration. In Ferguson and the other municipalities surrounding it, "Court Night" feels like feudalism never really ended, with long lines of people waiting to pay off petty fees to the local robber baron (er, judge,) or to beg for a little more time.
These police departments "flex their muscle" on a daily basis, harassing residents in poorer neighborhoods with racially profiled "random" stop-and-searches, maintaining high arrest rates by going hard after even the pettiest offenses (or perceived offenses), patrolling like soldiers subduing an unruly foreign populace, and in general terrorizing residents, and especially the youth. Concretely, it is easier for these police departments to use "outside people" as the boots on the ground, because these officers have little or no direct connection to the people and communities they "serve." It also makes maintaining morale among the police easier. If these same departments relied on officers from these same neighborhoods, it would be harder to maintain morale. But simply hiring more black police officers in communities like Ferguson won't "solve" everything, because at the end of the day, the institution itself and its purpose remains at odds with the interests of the majority.
This does not mean that all or even most police officers are racist, un-feeling machines. To be sure, especially in institutions like the police forces, there can be found truly repugnant exhibits of human beings, poisoned by hate, racism, sexism and "isms" that have yet to be categorized. However, these are a minority. In the case of Ferguson, for example, after the first week of big clashes between police and protesters, several area police departments who came in as reinforcements pulled out of the area, all citing different reasons, despite the fact that "law and order" had not yet been established. One likely reason was the fact that as things intensified, many, or at least a few key rank-and-file officers, must have voiced doubts or opposition to being used in such a way. For example, since he has not yet been indicted or given any interviews, we do not even know if Darren Wilson himself is a racist, or what motivated him to kill Michael Brown. Possibly, what led Wilson to kill Brown was the same thing that leads individual soldiers to kill civilians in military occupations overseas—fear. When you place people in uniforms and give them guns and make them patrol daily, surrounded by people they are made to see as the "enemy," tragedies like this will occur. In this sense, we must say that the killing of Michael Brown was a crime committed by capitalism, which uses police officers as attack dogs just to maintain the rotting system.
Demands like "community control of the police" may therefore be well intentioned, but in practice can only serve to disorient and mislead those who are trying to find an alternative. What we must explain is the need for a different kind of state, a workers' state, in which the majority would control not only the key levers of the economy, but of the government as well. This would completely transform relations between people and the character of the state. The need for the police standing above the rest of the population is a function of capitalist society and scarcity. On the basis of socialist plenty, there would be no objective need for such a force.
Election 2014
McCulloch, a Democrat, ran unopposed, yet over 10,000 voters wrote-in candidates against him (presumably, many of these were for "Mike Brown"). In October, Zaki Baruti, a long-time area activist who was one of the public faces of the Ferguson protests, began an independent write-in candidacy for St. Louis County executive, focusing on the demand to remove McCulloch from office. Baruti received around 33,000 write-in votes out of approximately 275,000 cast in a low-turnout election. While his campaign was organized as a protest vote less than a month before the election, and lacked resources beyond word-of-mouth information and placards at demonstrations, the protest vote itself was split by parts of the local Democratic establishment and a wing of the Ferguson protest movement leadership.
The Democratic party has certainly been going through a crisis. In St. Louis County, which primarily votes Democratic, the local party has long taken black voters for granted. The local executive who sent in the militarized county police department was a Democrat, and the state governor who brought in the National Guard and Highway Patrol is also a Democrat. Not long after the announcement of Zaki Baruti's write-in campaign, a group of area black Democratic elected officials announced that they were calling for voters to support Rick Stream, the Republican candidate for county executive. Their motivation for supporting the Republican, who among other things supports tougher voter-ID laws and restricting access to abortions, was to "send a message" to the local Democratic party leadership, and by doing so, somehow gain "leverage" in the party. Incidentally, both major party candidates were in agreement on one thing—that if protests erupt in the future, they are in favor of instituting martial law. In the end, the Democratic candidate, Steve Stenger, who is closely tied to Bob McCulloch, was able to win the election.
The struggle in Ferguson has upset the old dynamic, but it is impossible to create a real alternative to the "status quo" within the confines of the two parties who uphold the very same! Let's be clear: this was nothing else but "greater-evilism," and like its twin "lesser-evilism," it brings the same result: evil. The only real alternative to the two parties who uphold the status quo of racism, inequality, and capitalism is to break with them and form a mass party of labor that fights for socialist policies.
Judicial Farce
One of the concrete demands of the protest movement was the stepping-down of Robert McCulloch, the St. Louis County Prosecutor. Over the past decade, McCulloch's office has brought cases of police killings to the courts only 4 times, and in each case failed to charge the police officers involved, including a 2011 case in which county cops were caught on video shooting two unarmed men to death while they sat in a parked car outside of a fast food restaurant.
Despite the unleashing of massive protests, and the uncomfortable spotlight of the media, making local authorities sweat, the state's Democratic Governor, Jay Nixon, has allowed his fellow Democrat McCulloch to keep his job and direct the course the courts take in this case. A grand jury has been convened which will decide whether or not to charge Darren Wilson later in the year. However, instead of the Prosecutor's office making a case to the grand jury for or against charging Wilson, they have simply dumped the unorganized mass of evidence on the jury and told the jurists to make their own decision.
This might at first seem "impartial," but in reality, nine times out of ten in cases like this, when a grand jury is asked to "make up its own mind" whether or not to indict a police officer, they do not vote to indict. Jury members are in effect undemocratically "drafted" local residents, not legal "professionals," and within the confines of the courtrooms can be susceptible to the lead given them by lawyers and judges. It is very clear that McCulloch is trying to steer the courts away from any trial of Darren Wilson, while trying to shield himself and the other professional, respectable hangmen in the "justice" system, from the ensuing popular anger if Wilson is allowed to go free. So far, it appears that yet another judicial farce is being prepared, and, as we pointed out in an earlier article, the courts will likely treat Darren Wilson with kid gloves.
Why is this happening? In the United States, many people place a lot of confidence in judges, prosecutors, and in the supposed "impartiality" of the courts. Television programs like "Law and Order" and "CSI" remain popular because of the "entertainment value" of a murder-mystery, but they also serve to reinforce the faith of many in the fairness and objectivity of the legal system. But the reality is far different. We live in a class society, and such justice as exists is justice for the wealthy minority, not the working minority.
Formally speaking, we are all "equal before the law." For over 50 years, black workers and youth have also been guaranteed formal equality before the law. However, as the the Greek statesman Solon put it: "Laws are like spiders' webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape." Formal equality on paper does not mean genuine equality. What we call "the law" in capitalist society is not law in the abstract, and out of time and space, but bourgeois law. At the end of the day, Michael Brown was not killed for any "crime." He was killed because in this unequal, brutal society, the machinery of the state—the courts, police, army—is used as a buffer between the haves and the have-nots.
The role of the courts under capitalism in situations like this is somewhat different than the role played by the police. Whereas the police use weapons like clubs, sound cannons, and tear gas to beat back the masses, the courts use the cloak of "impartiality," focusing attention on minutia and arcane and time-consuming procedures. Their aim is to allow the movement to "cool down" and eventually ebb against the slow-moving rock of "justice," as the "experts," who are far removed from the vast majority of society, decide the big issues among themselves.
"Respectable" defenders of the status quo like President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Jay Nixon and Robert McCulloch are unwilling to make any real concessions, despite the serious warning the protests and clashes represent. This is because in an age of austerity, the only way that they can defend the status quo is by force. As millions saw for themselves in the clashes in Ferguson, this means not just force but over-the-top, brutal force. Capitalism simply has nothing to offer the working class and the youth. The system can't provide the youth with jobs or a future. They want to continue using the police force as a battering ram to atomize the working class, and to make sure that the majority stays in line and does not try to influence the course of events in society. The message they are sending is very clear, despite the window-dressing of a US Justice Department investigation into the events and Obama's pleas for calm and restraint. However, as the eruption of the protests in August proved, black workers and youth in particular have reached the limits of their patience.
Socialist Appeal demands that Darren Wilson be indicted and tried in court free of interference from the likes of McCulloch. But we must be clear that, no matter how the proceedings against Darren Wilson go, unless we get rid of this rotten system, there will be more "Michael Browns" in the future.Notorious for keeping mum on details until the eve of a new season, much of the cast of Downton Abbey and executive producer Gareth Neame spoke with loose lips during Tuesday's PBS fete for the Masterpiece Classic drama.
In addition to premiering a slew of clips and the fourth season's first trailer, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Phyllis Logan, Joanne Froggatt and Sophie McShera all addressed where the coming episodes find them. And Neame firmed up when exactly that is: The premiere picks up several months after the death of Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) in Sept. 1921.
STORY: PBS Chief on 'Downton Abbey' Delay: If It's Not Broke, Don't Fix It
"Both the audience and the characters have experienced some passage of time," said Neame, noting that the fourth season takes place between February 1922 and spring 1923. "There's been time to mourn."
Time to mourn, but not enough time to fully recover. Dockery, still wearing all black as Mary Crawley in the few scenes shared with the Television Critics Association crowd, said it was a long road -- but one that left her pleasantly surprised.
"My first reaction was, 'Oh, crap,'" Dockery said of hearing the news of Stevens' elected departure from the series and the resulting death of her onscreen husband. "Initially I was concerned, but now I'm not. It's a very different [season] from what it could've been.... She's slowly, over the course of the series, coming back to life. It's important for her to move on."
That will include multiple love interests -- most notably Lord Gillingham, a longtime friend of the Crowleys, played by Tom Cullen. And while Mary might remain the focus of the show, Neame teased that her sister Edith (Carmichael) will see the most movement in the fourth season.
VIDEO: 'Downton Abbey' Cast on Shock, Backlash of Matthew's Death
"It is really a very different season for Edith this year," he said. "It's a very active story."
Carmichael seemed more interested in the influence her character's frequent trips to London have had on her wardrobe.
"Whenever they got me dressed in the first season, they always said, 'You look lovely,'" said Carmichael, adopting a sympathetic tone for her put-upon middle child alter ego. "She's gone on a real journey -- and since she's going to London more, [costume designer] Caroline [McCall] has gone to town with Edith."
Speaking to the series' future, more specifically Stevens and Jessica Brown Findlay's decisions not to renew their contracts, Dockery voiced her interest in keeping the series going for the immediate time being.
"As far as we know, we're all doing series five next year," she said. "Beyond that, it's in the hands of [creator] Julian Fellowes and our producers. If other actors start leaving, it would be a worry, but it's been fine so far."
The end of the series, whenever it comes, does not bode well for the landed gentry of Downton. Echoing previous statements from himself and Fellowes, Neame reminded the audience about the first description of the house in the series' first script: "It's described as a wonderful house, a stately home in this beautiful park land. It looks as though it will stand a thousand years. It won't."
But all is not grim. Neame added that an end to Downton Abbey was not on the immediate horizon.
"The show is so popular around the world now.... It's beloved," said Neame. "The fourth season is extremely good health, and my mind is already in the fifth season. I will say we're not going to World War II, but that's 18 years away. We want to make the show. When we feel it's had its time, hopefully we'll know before you guys. But it's not anytime soon."- 11:59 p.m. ET: Police arrested two people for looting and one for disorderly conduct, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said. But most of the 10 arrests made after the 10 p.m. curfew were for curfew violation.
- 11:55 p.m. ET: Baltimore police have made 10 arrests since the 10 p.m. curfew went into effect Tuesday night, Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said. But he said the curfew is working, and "the city is stable."
- 11:33 p.m. ET: Police have the situation under control in West Baltimore, which includes one of the most violent intersections of the past 24 hours. "Twenty-four hours ago, that intersection had a burned out car, we saw a tavern being looted, we saw a liquor store being looted," CNN's Brian Todd said. On Tuesday night, aside from officers in riot gear standing next to armored vehicles, "there's not a soul in sight," Todd said.
- 11:18 p.m. ET: Authorities with riot gear and heavy armored vehicles stood their ground in the neighborhood where Freddie Gray was arrested, but no clashes were underway more than an hour after Baltimore's city curfew went into effect. "Everybody's kind of staring at everybody, seeing who blinks," CNN's Miguel Marquez said.
- 10:53 p.m. ET: Baltimore police said credentialed members of the media may continue covering events in the city after curfew, the department tweeted Tuesday night. Earlier, authorities in a helicopter told the media to move or possibly face arrest.
- The crowd has "definitely lessened" after police deployed pepper bullets and smoke canisters, CNN's Ryan Young said. But CNN's Chris Cuomo said some protesters have simply moved elsewhere.
- Police said late Tuesday on Twitter they were making arrests at one location, where they said people threw bricks and rocks at officers.
Full story:
Defiant protesters squared off with police in some parts of Baltimore well after a citywide curfew went into effect Tuesday night.
Many protesters didn't budge after 10 p.m. curfew. Police said they have a "wide range of discretion" with how they enforce it, Baltimore police Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said before the curfew took effect.
"Officers are going to use common sense," he said.
Authorities, city leaders and fellow residents appealed for calm a day after the city devolved into chaos.
Some 2,000 National Guardsmen and more than 1,000 police officers from across Maryland and neighboring states were assigned to the streets of Baltimore on Tuesday night, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said.
"This combined force will not tolerate violence or looting, which has led to the destruction of property and put innocent Marylanders at risk."
Laquicha Harper, a 33-year-old resident, called the violence embarrassing and heartbreaking. "We owe it to ourselves to do better," she said.
Volunteers with brooms, trash bags cleaning up along Pennsylvania pic.twitter.com/27hnCbLlkr — Sonia Moghe (@soniamoghe) April 28, 2015
She was among those who responded to clean up the mess from Monday's violence.
Cars and building were burned. Police were hospitalized, businesses were looted, and hundreds of people were arrested.
"I understand that everybody is upset, I understand that tension is brewing... I'm here, I get it," Harper said. "But there are better ways that we can handle our frustration. And they can't hear us when we're behaving this way."
President Barack Obama said Tuesday that " some police aren't doing the right thing " and that a lot of the tension between law enforcement and the black community stems from "a slow-rolling crisis" that has been brewing for decades.
Fixing it will require more investment in cities, criminal justice reform, better funding for education and soul-searching for some police departments, he said.
"If we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could. It's just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant. And that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns," the President said.
Still, no angst can excuse what Obama called the behavior of "criminals and thugs who tore up" Baltimore.
"When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they're not protesting. They're not making a statement. They're stealing," he said. "When they burn down a building, they're committing arson. And they're destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own communities. That robs jobs and opportunity from people in that area."
No repeat of Monday night, governor says
Protesters rallied and marched Tuesday. Baltimore Police Capt. Eric Kowalczyk described them as peaceful, which he said is "what we're used to seeing in Baltimore." That said, about a dozen people had been arrested, according to the police captain.
Tuesday night, a group started attacking officers with rocks and bricks, and more arrests were made, police said.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said at noon that he didn't know of additional instances of looting, damage or violence. But he was mindful that may not be true for long, and said he's especially concerned about Tuesday night.
Tense moments witnessed by one photographer as protests turned to looting. #BaltimoreRiots http://t.co/in2gyPFcHo pic.twitter.com/c4krNsR9Dp — CNN iReport (@cnnireport) April 28, 2015
If there is another flare-up, Hogan said, authorities will be prepared with "as much manpower and as many resources as we can (have)."
"They are not going to be in danger, and... their property will be protected," he said of Baltimore residents and business owners. "We're not going to have another repeat of what happened last night. It's not going to happen tonight."
Hogan declared a state of emergency Monday evening -- after a request from Baltimore's mayor around 6 p.m. -- that, among other things, expedited the deployment of hundreds of National Guard members. Up to 5,000 of them are ready to answer the call to join Baltimore police and up to 5,000 law enforcement officers were requested from around the Mid-Atlantic region, said Col. William Pallozzi of the Maryland State Police.
Rawlings-Blake has imposed a mandatory curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., which is one reason why the Baltimore Orioles postponed their Tuesday night game and the Baltimore Ravens called off an NFL draft party set for Thursday night.
Wednesday's game between the Orioles and Chicago White Sox will be closed to the public, the Orioles announced. A source within Major League Baseball told CNN the league is not aware of any prior closed-door games in major league history.
There was no public school Tuesday, nor were there classes at Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore City Public Schools will reopen on Wednesday.
We will not let these deplorable and cowardly acts of violence ruin #OurCity. — Mayor Rawlings-Blake (@MayorSRB) April 28, 2015
"Seeing my city like this breaks my heart. But, like so many Baltimoreans, my resolve is strong," the mayor tweeted. "We will not let these deplorable and cowardly acts of violence ruin #OurCity."
Meanwhile, citizens young and old are stepping up. They include people who came out to clean up, like Harper and 15-year-old Sulaiman Abdul-Aziz, who said he saw some of the mayhem.
"I felt disappointed," Abdul-Aziz said, "because a lot of that could have been avoided if people would have started thinking before they would have done all that stuff."
'Broken windows are not broken spines'
The tensions in Baltimore come after demonstrations across the country over the deaths of black men after encounters with police, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner in New York; and Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina.
This latest eruption came after days of protests over Freddie Gray, who mysteriously died on April 19, a week after Baltimore Police arrested him. Anger over his plight may have spurred Monday's violence, but Baltimore City Council Member Brandon Scott said it was also fueled by "a long, long, longstanding issue with young African-Americans."
"We're talking about years and decades of mistrust, of misfortune, of despair that it's just coming out in anger," Scott said. "No, it is not right for them to burn down their own city. But that is what's coming out of these young people."
At least 20 officers were wounded in the unrest, according to Capt. Kowalczyk. One person is in critical condition as a result of a fire, he said.
"It's clear that what we have to do is change the culture within the Baltimore Police Department," Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said Tuesday. The process has been underway for more than two years, but there is more to do, he said.
Deray McKeeson, a community organizer who was active in Ferguson and is now in Baltimore, said that while he doesn't condone using destruction and violence, he understands it as a way some vent frustrations. "Broken windows are not broken spines," he said.
McKeeson said the Baltimore vandalism, even the injuries to some officers, doesn't compare to the lost lives of Gray and other blacks at the hands of police. That's why he said protesters will remain out in full force, rallying against what they see as systemic injustice.
"Police have continued to kill people," the activist said. "Tonight will be another night where people come out into the streets to confront a system that is corrupt."
'Dark day for our city'
There were many other secondary casualties -- people who saw their neighborhoods torn apart, their homes and vehicles damaged, their hopes for stability and progress thwarted by the mayhem.
There were people like Cindy Oxendine, who took to the streets to sweep up rocks, glass and more despite her aching back.
"It started off peaceful, and it ends up like this," Oxendine told CNN affiliate WBAL. "I've seen stuff like this on the news in other cities, but I never thought I would see it in front of my doorstep. It's crazy."
In addition to the clashes with police came the flames, and investigators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are joining local authorities to look into arson, a federal law enforcement source said.
The same source said that dozens of fires that erupted around Baltimore appear to be tied to the unrest. This includes one that consumed an affordable housing center for seniors that was just months away from opening.
Pastor Donte Hickman of the Southern Baptist Church, which owns the facility, said 60 units of senior housing were lost.
"What happened... destroyed so much of the progress that the people who actually live here have been working for," said Mayor Rawlings-Blake, calling Monday "a very dark day for our city."
But she found light in what she saw Tuesday.
"Today, I think we saw a lot more of what Baltimore is about. We saw people coming together to reclaim our city, to clean our city, and to help heal our city. I think this can be our defining moment," the mayor said.If you notice any errors, please report them on my profile page, rather than here.I've decided to redraw some of my early pages using newer vector, and without using stock images drawn by other creators. There's nothing new here, but it does look a bit better than my original page. I've also split the original page into several parts as I wanted to include a lot more dialog to make it clearer what was going on, in order to clear up some of the misunderstanding that happened when I first wrote this comic, where readers interpreted things differently from my original vision.CurrentCreated in Inkscape, and Clip Studio.This comic may include one or more of the following components, which I frequently use in my MLP comics.Assorted brushes by Obsidian Dawn (Link) My Little Pony Brushy 2.0 Brushes by Cosmic Unicorn ( Link Font: Celestia Medium Redux by Mattyhex ( Link Font: Badaboom BB (Link) Font: DeathRattle (Link) Felt\Paper Pony bases: Zacatron94's Specialty Pack 1-2 (Link) and Pony pack EUD zacatron94Not only is this one of the longest campaigns in Canadian political history, it may turn out to also be one of the most historically significant.
In recent public opinion polls, only two per cent of respondents said they think this election is less important than previous elections; 75 per cent think it is more important. Voters tell us they are unusually emotionally engaged and that they see this election having huge stakes. The vast majority of Canadians think both the country and their lives will not be the same after this election.
All in all, we have tracked a very dramatic lean among the Canadian public, who see this election as a historically significant choice for the country – and which may well be reflected in the significant turnout to the advance polls.
So why is this election so important? We need look no further than to the realm of values to see why it has assumed such momentous stakes. For an election that started out as all ‘about the economy stupid’ it has become ‘all about the niqab.’
But the debate about the niqab may be transforming into a broader debate about values, about the kind of Canada its citizens want, and what kind of country do we want to hand off to the next generations? How do we want to be seen by the external world? What constitutes our basic sense of right and wrong, good and bad?
It is not surprising that these kinds of fundamental normative questions result in an emotionally charged electorate and especially so against the backdrop of ‘two Canadas’ that are increasingly divergent at the level of basic values. The critical fault lines are both generational and class driven.
Older, less educated and dare we say ‘old stock’ Canada have very different value preferences than younger and university-educated Canada.
Many would consider the shift to a focus on culture, race, and identity to be a terrible distraction from what the Canadian public continues to identify as much more critical issues; the economy, the healthcare system and negotiating a path to a post carbon economy. Some would also decry the focus on the niqab and related culture war issues as an expression of reckless political adventurism, blind to the corrosive impact this may have on societal well-being in the future. While these may well be compelling critiques, the initial debate appears to have triggered a much broader and important contest for the future based on fundamental values choice. This is undoubtedly why our respondents are signalling that they see this as such a historically important election which is so engaging.
We would argue that the focus on these issues, which emerged following the media focus on the Syrian refugee crisis — elevated the Conservative Party from a party losing a race on the economy and corruption, to a party squarely in contention to win.
What may not have been as obvious – or even intended – is that that this debate about values has not only increased engagement amid the Conservative base, it may also have galvanized the dithering progressive majority.
Trying to assess who will win this values struggle is highly uncertain and why we can offer no clear answer yet as to who will win the next election. The level of engagement of the Conservative constituency really isn’t in doubt. The critical question is whether the growing engagement of the center-left constituencies will translate into actual voter behaviour (turnout and choice). At this stage, we can only hazard a guess that this heightened level of engagement will be reflected in voter behaviour; but at this stage, it simply is not clear.
We do note that Stephen Harper’s surprising victory in 2011 was rooted in his huge success with the elderly and less-educated cohorts. It is important to note that there are even more seniors this time out and contrary to some claims that the Liberals and Conservatives are equally matched with this cohort, that appears simply wrong. The Conservatives have a huge and stable lead with seniors at this time.
While we cannot clearly see the outcome of this protracted and increasingly acrimonious campaign, we do see some of the forces shaping it to date and the key issues to watch in the coming days. We are guessing by mid-week, the post-turkey discussions will have coalesced to provide greater clarity. There will likely be far more talk about cultural issues than about the economy, something that was frankly unforeseeable a month ago.
Apart from the shift to a debate about identity and culture, what other forces are clear at this stage? The Liberals have definitely made significant progress and now are the clear alternative for the forces of electoral change. The NDP have been in decline and if they don’t show signs of life by midweek they will see their fortunes greatly diminished in the coming parliament. Ironically, they may well have considerably greater power than they did in the last parliament where they had the second-most seats but almost no real power against the Harper majority.
We also note that the possibility of another Harper majority is greeted with near apoplexy in our internal polling of the two-thirds of the electorate that are seeking change.
The election outcome will almost certainly hinge on whose supporters are most engaged around the values issues — the big “what-kind-of-Canada-do-I-want” questions. The higher the levels of overall engagement, the higher the turnout and the poorer Mr. Harper’s prospects. Of great interest is the huge advance turnout which we have been tracking in our polling as well. Interestingly both the Conservatives and Liberals are running neck and neck there and the NDP isn’t doing very well.
Finally, it is worth noting the role of the cell-phone-only population — younger and better educated — in the coming days. Quite simply, this segment will be critical to the outcome of the election. In the last election, Ekos polls overestimated this segment’s willingness to vote. This time around, that cell-phone-only population is at least three times larger and tells us they are much more certain to vote than they told us last time. When polled, they insist they are extremely engaged and motivated by the values war that has come to underlie this election.
What that means: if they show up Harper loses; if they don’t he wins."Why is the Bitcoin price rising past $1,000?" is a question on a lot of lips this week. And for good reason.
The cryptocurrency had an astounding run in December, soaring more than 30% from $742 to $968. In the first two days of 2017, the price of Bitcoin is up nearly 6% more, to $1,025 on the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index.
That's the highest level for the price of Bitcoin since December 2013, when the digital currency had started its year-long retreat from its all-time high of $1,156.06.
For all of 2016, the Bitcoin price gained 123%, easily outperforming other assets such as stocks (the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 9.5%), crude oil (up 45%), and natural gas (up 59%). The closest currency to Bitcoin was the Russian ruble, up 17% against the U.S. dollar.
It's the second year in a row the digital currency has topped all other assets. In 2015 the price of Bitcoin rose 35%.
Trending: How Small Investors Can Take on Wall Street… And Win
Even so, the recent surge in the Bitcoin price – particularly December's steep rise – took many by surprise. It's left many searching for an answer about |
were like, 'Who's this murderer?' It was really uncomfortable at first."
"I just got addicted to getting better," Adams says. "My coach gave me a goal to get a tip dunk in a game -- you know a putback dunk off a rebound. I had never done that. He told me that he'd get me a pair of new shoes if I did it. I just kept trying. I couldn't get it, couldn't get it, couldn't get it. It took me a year or so. Finally one game, I got it. It happened. I was really pumped, I felt really good. When it finally happened, I didn't care about the shoes. From there, I got addicted to that success, that accomplishment."
BY THE TIME he was 16, Adams was close to 6-10, developing rapidly as a player and getting attention beyond New Zealand. McFadden sent off video and used connections that got Adams an invitation to Adidas Nations, a camp for international prospects in Los Angeles. It was Adams' first trip overseas.
"He's a bit of a miracle because there's not much basketball there," says Mark Bryant, a Thunder assistant coach who has gone to New Zealand several times to work camps with Adams. "Where he came from they're tough, because they all play rugby, but if he didn't have Kenny, there was no way he'd be where he is today. He found him, he taught him and he got him seen."
When Adams arrived in California, he played with the Latin American team, because there were no other players from his region. That all might have seemed disorienting to Adams, but after his experience being dropped into the strange world of Scots College, nothing seemed strange anymore.
"What happened to me at Scots is they lit the spark for me," Adams says. "My eyes were opened there. Now, I'm interested in anything."
Adams ended up playing a season at Pittsburgh, a connection established because coach Jamie Dixon had played professionally in New Zealand. The 7-foot center was drafted in the lottery by the Thunder, a pick the team acquired as part of the James Harden trade. Fair or not, that created expectations.
In 25 minutes per game this season, Adams put up a career-high 11.4 points per game (on 61.3 percent shooting) and 9.5 rebounds. Eric Gay/AP Images
He has developed a reputation for being unshakable. This was the case from nearly day one. "He's just so high energy, so wide-eyed," teammate Nick Collison says. "He's not easily impressed, he doesn't take things too seriously. I think that's the culture from his background. He's all about, 'Get over yourself.' He didn't grow up with the dream to play in the NBA, and it shows."
His first NBA training camp, as a rookie in 2013, featured many days of feisty drills and scrimmaging with veterans. Eventually, the legendarily tough Kendrick Perkins drilled an elbow into Adams' chest, turned and growled at him.
"I'm the only silverback!" Perkins said with his trademark scowl.
Adams laughed. "You saw right away this kid just came to work," Perkins says. "I don't think he even knew who a lot of the opponents were when he came into the league. He wasn't starstruck. He didn't give a s---."
That's true. Adams knew virtually nothing about the NBA when he arrived. One of his brothers had an old video game he played as a kid. In the game, the best player was Peja Stojakovic, Adams says. And his brother had a poster of Larry Bird. So when Adams started playing, it was a lot of shrugging and no deference, which unnerved a long list of opponents.
During his rookie season, Nate Robinson punched him in the stomach. Vince Carter elbowed him in the side of the head. Jordan Hamilton punched him in the shoulder. Larry Sanders elbowed him in the neck. Zach Randolph punched him in the jaw, a move that got Randolph suspended for Game 7 of the Thunder's first-round playoff series with the Memphis Grizzlies two years ago.
Last season, the Los Angeles Lakers' Nick Young was ejected for throwing a forearm into Adams' throat. Young said Adams was a "sneaky dirty player" and that his play had caused Young to "lose my mind a little bit, [I] checked into the crazy house."
"It's mostly because I wanted to listen to the coach," Adams says. "My coach Scotty Brooks yelled at me early that I shouldn't react because reacting hurts my team. So it hurts, but I don't want to hurt my team."
Bryant, Adams' big-man coach, laughs at the thought of it.
"Steven doesn't react. It's those guys who react," he says. "Most of the time Steven started it."
Adams ranked 369th in total real plus-minus in 2013-14, his rookie season. This year: 34th overall -- including 12th in defensive RPM. Sue Ogrocki/AP Images
ADAMS HAS EVOLVED. He doesn't scrap with opponents as much anymore -- they have the book on him now. And he's getting the book on them. Adams has learned his peers' names and tendencies. Now he studies Tim Duncan and Marc Gasol. Adams' minutes and his production per minute have crept up: This season, he finished the regular season with the 12th-best defensive real plus-minus in the league, and a top-50 overall rating.
"All of it is very slow. It's going to get a long time to get things to where I want them," Adams says. "I'm way off but I'm striving. I'm used to long journeys."
Further evidence of his maturation: Adams sponsors camps across New Zealand that last year involved more than 1,000 kids. He made a significant investment endowing several scholarships for promising young players at Scots College. And one of his nieces is showing major potential and hopes to play in college in the U.S.
HUNGRY: THAT'S THE word. Adams loves food, especially ethnic foods from across the world. Once withdrawn and parochial, he now spends some of every offseason traveling. And eating.
"He'll eat all day long," Collison says. "Earlier this year, we were in Miami. Some of us went to Whole Foods after practice. He went from Whole Foods to an Italian restaurant to a sushi place and he was ready for dinner later. When we go to dinner, he'll order an appetizer, two entrees at least, whatever he wants to try. You always heard about Michael Phelps and his unlimited calories. I never understood it -- but that's what Steven is like."
"I'll try anything," Adams says, "but the pig testicles in Taiwan were a little much. Eh, it wasn't half bad. There was this one dish I had there, the translations is, 'The Monk Jumps over the Fence.' It's a fish dish with all these spices. It was beautiful man, it was poetry. It had a whole story."Graveyard Variety Pack
Hi everyone!
I'm thrilled to finally be able to talk to you all about the details for the next content update for Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2. We had an incredible launch and we’re very humbled at all the amazing fan feedback we’ve received so far. We believe strongly that if you invest your time in us, then we should invest our time in you. So it's very exciting to announce all the juicy details of our first free content update, available March 8!
This update not only contains some critical gameplay tuning and balancing, but also adds in a new map, a bunch of new activities in the Backyard Battleground, as well as some fan requested gameplay and control options. In addition, it also includes a ton of quality and bug fixes as we continue to look for ways to improve the game. Please read on below for full details of all the awesome new ways to play. And don’t forget to check out our new trailer!
I hope you enjoy the new content as much as we've enjoyed making it, and look forward to your continued feedback and support.
Justin Wiebe,
Creative Director – Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2
@JA_WIEBE
March 2016, Garden Warfare 2 Tuning/Balance Notes
New Features
Added new co-op/team vanquish map "Aqua Center" which may seem familiar, yet completely different!
Added night version of the Great White North map to the Turf Takeover Playlist
Added Hide n' Find missions to Backyard Battleground
Added Bot & Pot Missions to Backyard Battleground
Added unique character variant images to group HUD
World Options now shows all friends playing the game, not just the joinable ones
Added classic setting in options to change primary fire button (PS4 Only)
Added Aim Sensitivity slider to now allow more precise control over aim speed (for PC this is broken up into both mouse and gamepad sensitivity)
Added ability to select between hold button to aim or toggle button to Aim
Added kick player option to the in-game scoreboard for easy access (player hosted modes only)
Added difficulty to Pause Menu for some game modes
Game Now defaults to common chat in Private Matches
Added ability to view scoreboard while vanquished
Critical Fixes
Reduced length of round timer between rounds in Multiplayer matches
Imp now properly earns XP when in Mech
Players can now see other players’ Backyard customizations when visiting their Backyard
Players can now see stats on other players stats boards when visiting their Backyard
Improved audio for garlic drone primary weapon
Setting HUD to "Light" now also hides XP Meter
Major improvements to hit reaction "flinching" animations
A plethora of quality & bug fixes
Tuning/Balance Notes
Overall
Improved regeneration upgrade for all characters
Re-tuned all hit reactions for both players and AI to reduce the flinching effect even more
Rose:
Completely re-tuned Rose class, bringing her back into playing as a support role
Reduced Rose’s health
Major changes to her homing abilities, ineffective at range, requires player to lead target in order to land more hits
Slightly reduced rate of fire for Magic Thistles
Significantly reduced length a victim is trapped in Time Snare
Changed how Goatify ability works so that damage does not break Goatify, creating a more predictable and less jarring experience and lowered time as a goat
Slowed down rose variants (Fire, Ice) when charging their weapons to make them more vulnerable
Citron:
Slightly decreased the Party Citron laser damage
Corn:
We needed to improve Corn's ability to be a front-line fighter so we increased his health and also improved his long range damage
Reduced Party Corn's damage output
Chomper:
Decreased the digestion time after a chomp escape (i.e. your victim got away using anti-chomp ability like jackhammer)
Brought Chompers regeneration delay to parity with all other playable characters
Fixed a bug where Chomp Thing’s health regeneration didn’t match his weapon description. He now regenerates health slightly sooner and faster than default
Increased Unicorn Chomper’s Rainbow Warp cooldown time
Increased goop cooldown so it couldn't be spammed quite as much
Cactus:
Zen Cactus was too damaging and needed some damage and reload adjustments
Imp:
Imps tuning focused on ensuring he had a bit more survivability outside of his mech, and also improved his primary weapon slightly
Increased Imp health
Fixed a bug where the Imp couldn’t receive damage while he is making his Z-Mech phone call (he's now only invulnerable when the beam of light appears)
Reduced Party Imp's damage output
Super Brainz:
Slight cooldown reduction to Super Ultra Ball and Super Multi Ball abilities
Minor speed improvement to Turbo Twister but at the cost of decreased his armor while in Turbo Twister
Removed the decay from Toxic Brainz legendary meter to make it more useful
Damage reduction to Party Brainz
Captain Deadbeard:Newly ousted White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon may join a roster of far-right incendiaries invited to speak at UC Berkeley this fall.
UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said Wednesday evening that Bannon, who returned to his former position at Breitbart News last week, had been invited by a student group called the Berkeley Patriot, which also invited Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos to campus between Sept. 24-27. On Thursday morning, Mogulof said he had been told by the student group that Bannon’s appearance was not, in fact, confirmed.
On Thursday afternoon, a representative from the Berkeley Patriot, a conservative campus publication, said he could not confirm whether any of the speakers had been invited, despite the initial statement by Mogulof.
“We’re still in a very early developmental and organizational stage,” said Bryce Kasamoto, bureau chief of the Berkeley Patriot and UC Berkeley senior. “We’re not ready to disclose information.”
Another student group, the Berkeley College Republicans, invited both Coulter and Yiannopoulos to campus last semester, but Yiannopoulos’s February appearance was canceled when anti-fascist protesters descended on the campus, and Coulter canceled her April speech during a tug-of-war over venue and security issues between the student group and the university. Both speakers vowed to return to Berkeley this fall.
The College Republicans have sued Cal for allegedly suppressing freedom of speech by thwarting conservative speaker engagements. This month, UC Berkeley offered another conservative speaker invited by the student group, Ben Shapiro, Zellerbach Hall on Sept. 14.
On Wednesday night, two UC Berkeley faculty members, Leigh Raiford and Michael Mark Cohen of the African American Studies Department, took to social media to blast their employer for entertaining the possibility of the far-right speaker lineup.
Horrified by my place of work. This is *not* free speech. These are discredited ideas meant to incite violence. Refuse false equivalences. https://t.co/xK0GG0xhWJ — Leigh Raiford (@professoroddjob) August 24, 2017
We will need a massive and effective response to the alt-right invasion of @UCBerkeley, an invasion welcomed by this administration. — Michael Mark Cohen (@LilBillHaywood) August 23, 2017
Bannon is credited by many, including Shapiro, with reshaping Breitbart into a platform for white supremacy, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. KKK leader David Duke praised President Donald Trump’s inclusion of Bannon in his administration, saying Bannon was “basically creating the ideological aspects of where we’re going.”
New Cal chancellor calls for ‘free speech year’
On Wednesday, new UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ released a letter emphasizing the university’s commitment to allowing a wide range of views on campus.
“The law is very clear; public institutions like UC Berkeley must permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view,” Christ wrote.
She conceded that some of the views in question could be affronts to the university’s values of inclusion and diversity, but told members of the campus community to “call toxic speech out for what it is, don’t shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech.”
Mogulof said the Berkeley Patriot students have followed a new campus events policy closely in their planning of the speaker series.
“They seem to be quite aware of the impact these guests might have on the campus. The seem interested in working with the campus to address concerns that may arise,” he said.
Christ has declared 2017-18 a “free speech year” at UC Berkeley, announcing that her administration will hold its own speaker events and debates.
Some other universities have changed their approaches to plans for far-right speaker events in the aftermath of a white supremacist march that turned deadly in Charlottesville, VA, earlier this month. At least five campuses have withdrawn invitations to prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer, citing concerns for student safety.
Mogulof said circumstances may be different at other campuses, but that Cal has no legal grounds on which to prevent the set of speakers from coming to Berkeley in September should they be invited.
This story has been updated with new information.The former world heavyweight champion, who himself once infamously bit an opponent in the boxing ring, has defended the Uruguay striker for his actions at the World Cup
Mike Tyson has leapt to the defence of Luis Suarez following the Uruguay striker's bite on Giorgio Chiellini at the 2014 World Cup.Suarez was handed a four-month worldwide ban by Fifa after biting the defender during Uruguay's Group D clash with Italy a fortnight ago.But former world heavyweight boxing champion Tyson, who himself once infamously chewed off part of the ear of Evander Holyfield during a title fight, has empathised with the Liverpool striker."Suarez's bite? I understand it. It was a blackout moment which can happen at times," Tyson replied during a Q&A on social networking service Reddit."It was just one moment in which the competition can make the blood in your veins boil and it overpowers your rationality."Sometimes you become something that you are not."Tyson is regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers in history, and still holds the record as the sport's youngest ever champion in his weight category at the age of 20 years and eight months.Suarez, who also incurred a nine-game ban from international matches as a result of the third biting incident of his career, is believed to be closing in on a transfer from Liverpool to Barcelona, despite his suspension from footballing activity.If you enjoy pennant-race ball, this year is for you. But regardless of place in the standings, each team took some ups and downs into the All-Star break.
Welcome to the second half of the 2015 season, baseball fans. We're in for a wild finish to a campaign replete with playoff contenders, surprise stars and excellent performances.
Welcome to the second half of the 2015 season, baseball fans. We're in for a wild finish to a campaign replete with playoff contenders, surprise stars and excellent performances.
If you enjoy pennant-race ball, this year is for you. But regardless of place in the standings, each team took some ups and downs into the All-Star break.
Below, find my review -- and look ahead -- for all 15 American League clubs. Each team-specific review/second-half preview is broken down as follows:
1. One player who exceeded expectations prior to the Midsummer Classic.
2. One player who could boost his team's fortunes by doing more in the second half.
3. A season-to-date snapshot.
My National League review
BLUE JAYS
Exceeded expectations: Kevin Pillar -- The 26-year-old went from fourth outfielder to strong contributor on offense and defense.
Needs to step up: Drew Hutchison -- Expected to be a leader on Toronto's pitching staff, the right-hander has instead struggled to maintain an ERA under 5.00.
Second-half skinny: Toronto's offense is propping up a poor starting staff. The Blue Jays will struggle to make the postseason if they don't receive more quality starts in the second half.
YANKEES
Exceeded expectations: Brett Gardner -- The outfielder has gone from good to great, and he will be part of the AL MVP Award discussion if he maintains his current pace.
Video: NYY@BOS: Gardner makes excellent leaping catch
Needs to step up: CC Sabathia -- The club seems reluctant to remove him from the rotation, so he needs to provide better results.
Second-half skinny: The Yankees lead the AL East, and they may be the favorites to win the division. Recently galvanized by the returns of Jacoby Ellsbury and Andrew Miller, the club boasts a deep lineup and a sterling back end to its bullpen.
ORIOLES
Exceeded expectations: Manny Machado -- He has reached star status earlier than some expected and is a legitimate candidate for AL MVP Award.
Video: HRD Rd 1: Machado drills a homer 461 feet
Needs to step up: Chris Tillman -- Starting pitching has been the club's weakness, and Tillman was expected to be the leader of the group. He needs to keep Baltimore in games.
Second-half skinny: Baltimore is hanging around in the AL East race despite a long absence from Matt Wieters and disappointing first-half results from some starters. This team has the talent to put together a run in the second half.
RAYS
Exceeded expectations: Chris Archer -- Previously regarded as a fine No. 2 or No. 3 rotation option, he is now among the 10 best starters in the Junior Circuit.
Video: TB@NYY: Archer overpowers Yanks over 6 2/3 scoreless
Needs to step up: Asdrubal Cabrera -- Offense is the Rays' biggest weakness, and Cabrera is among the few established veterans in the group. He needs to hit for average and supply more power in the second half.
Second-half skinny: On the strength of quality starting pitching and a strong bullpen, the Rays have hung around in the AL East race. But with seemingly little hope for offensive improvement aside from additions via the trade market, Tampa Bay could fall behind in the pack.
RED SOX
Exceeded expectations: Clay Buchholz -- The right-hander has bounced back from a disappointing 2014 season to become the ace of a staff that solely needed one.
Video: BOS@TB: Buccholz holds Rays to one run in win
Needs to step up: Rick Porcello -- Starting pitching has been the club's weakness this season, and Porcello has been one of its most disappointing starters. He doesn't need to be an ace, but he needs to string together quality starts and give his team a chance to put together a winning streak.
Second-half skinny: Boston's offense has been mediocre, and its rotation has been a notable disappointment. This team has the talent to climb back into the postseason race if its starting five rounds into shape in the near future. Young lefties Eduardo Rodriguez and Brian Johnson could make a difference down the stretch.
ROYALS
Exceeded expectations: Chris Young -- The right-hander started off the season by providing excellent relief work and has stabilized the rotation in the past two months. Kauffman Stadium is a great park for his skill set.
Video: TOR@DET: Young allows only three runs over six frames
Needs to step up: Yordano Ventura -- Starting pitching has been this team's weakness, and Ventura is arguably its most talented starter. He needs to lead this staff in the second half.
Second-half skinny: With an amazing bullpen and a pesky lineup, the Royals arguably are the class of the AL. They are the Junior Circuit version of their Midwest counterparts -- the Cardinals.
TIGERS
Exceeded expectations: J.D. Martinez -- By taking his power numbers from good to great, Martinez has emerged as a serious contender for the AL home run crown.
Video: DET@MIN: J.D. Martinez pads lead with 25th home run
Needs to step up: Justin Verlander -- This team needs better pitching behind David Price. With a massive contract and a lengthy resume, Verlander is the best candidate to lengthen Detroit's rotation.
Second-half skinny: The Tigers have plenty of star power, but they will be tested by the extended absence of Miguel Cabrera. A mediocre back of the rotation and an unimpressive bullpen could be their downfall.
TWINS
Exceeded expectations: Brian Dozier -- The second baseman, who has followed up his breakout 2014 season by performing even better this year, could be one of few middle infielders to top the 30-homer mark in 2015.
Video: Dozier plays hero with two walk-off homers in a week
Needs to step up: Phil Hughes -- This team is in the midst of a surprising postseason charge, but it would benefit greatly from Hughes duplicating his 2014 results and emerging as the ace of the staff.
Second-half skinny: Predicted by many to dwell at the bottom of the AL Central, the Twins are serious contenders for the postseason. They aren't particularly impressive in any area, but they also have few weaknesses. With some success in close games, they could stay in the Wild Card race until October.
INDIANS
Exceeded expectations: Jason Kipnis -- From the leadoff spot, the second baseman is having a career year. He is carrying an offense that contains several 2015 underachievers.
Video: OAK@CLE: Kipnis hits a triple off the wall in the 6th
Needs to step up: Carlos Santana -- His patient approach results in a high on-base percentage, but he isn't collecting enough hits or homers to be the centerpiece of a lineup that desperately needs one.
Second-half skinny: With a powerful pitching staff and a cast of veteran sluggers, the Indians expected to be in the thick of the AL Central race. Instead, they are trying to decide if they are buyers or sellers as we approach the July 31 non-waiver Trade Deadline.
WHITE SOX
Exceeded expectations: Chris Sale -- A torrid stretch across the past two months has put him into the discussion as the best pitcher in baseball. He has been one of the few players on his team to meet -- let alone exceed -- expectations this season.
Video: CWS@CHC: Sale sparkles over seven-plus frames
Needs to step up: Adam LaRoche -- Chicago's disappointing lineup has had several underachievers, but LaRoche stands out. He was expected to be an effective cleanup hitter behind Jose Abreu, but he has struggled to hit for average or power.
Second-half skinny: With arguably the worst offense and defense in the Majors, the White Sox have fallen far short of expectations. This team has a couple cornerstone pieces, but it may need to reconfigure the roster that surrounds Sale and Abreu.
A'S
Exceeded expectations: Billy Burns -- The speedster has emerged as the sparkplug of a lineup that desperately needed a leadoff hitter when it lost Coco Crisp for an extended period of time. With a high batting average and terrific basestealing ability, Burns has been one of the best table-setters in the AL.
Video: OAK@NYY: Burns' diving grab robs Murphy of a hit
Needs to step up: Evan Scribner -- The A's bullpen is the weakness of the team and one of the worst in baseball. Scribner, Dan Otero and Fernando Abad were expected to provide an effective bridge when Tyler Clippard assumed the closer's role in place of an injured Sean Doolittle, but that hasn't happened.
Second-half skinny: The A's sunk themselves with a poor start to the season, but they have played better in recent weeks. They will need to surge during the second half of July in order to avoid being sellers at the Trade Deadline.
RANGERS
Exceeded expectations: Yovani Gallardo -- The veteran righty has emerged as the ace of a staff that desperately needed one due to the injury losses of Yu Darvish and Derek Holland.
Video: TEX@BAL: Gallardo shuts down O's to extend streak
Needs to step up: Shin-Soo Choo -- The outfielder was expected to bounce back from a disappointing 2014 season and become one of Texas' lineup cornerstones. Instead, he has struggled vs. left-handers to the point where he may soon become a platoon candidate.
Second-half skinny: The Rangers managed to stay in the postseason discussion during the first half, but their lack of pitching will likely keep them from being serious contenders into September.
ASTROS
Exceeded expectations: Dallas Keuchel -- Houston knew it had a solid starter in Keuchel, but he has improved to the point where he may win the AL Cy Young Award.
Video: HOU@TB: Keuchel works seven innings in loss to Rays
Needs to step up: Chris Carter -- When swinging a hot bat, Carter is among the best power hitters in baseball. But he has struggled to push his average to.200 this season. An improvement from Carter could turn a solid lineup into an excellent one.
Second-half skinny: The Astros have been surprising up to the All-Star break. They have an exciting young core that will try to qualify for the postseason.
ANGELS
Exceeded expectations: Albert Pujols -- By turning back the clock, Pujols has given the Angels a potent complement to superstar Mike Trout. Some expected a notable regression this season, but Pujols may instead win the AL home run title.
Video: LAA@SEA: Pujols gloves liner, then doubles off runner
Needs to step up: Jered Weaver -- The longtime ace of the staff, Weaver has struggled to the point where he may no longer be among the team's five best starting options. The Halos don't possess a deep lineup, so they will need to receive quality starts on a steady basis in order to win the AL West.
Second-half skinny: Despite a mediocre offense and disappointing performances by Weaver and Matt Shoemaker, the Angels are in first place in the division. With the acquisition of a hitter or two, this club could have what it needs.
MARINERS
Exceeded expectations: Taijuan Walker -- Seattle hasn't had many positives this season, but Walker has been one. After a slow start, he has been working deep into games and limiting opposing offenses. Walker is a terrific sidekick for Felix Hernandez.
Video: SEA@SD: Walker allows one hit over six innings
Needs to step up: Robinson Cano -- The Mariners' lineup has been among the least productive in baseball. Nelson Cruz has done his part to build a dangerous combination with Cano, but the second baseman needs to reach base more often and provide some of his own power.
Second-half skinny: Due to a low-scoring lineup, Seattle has had a largely disappointing season. At this point, the Mariners' lineup seems unlikely to surge forward in time to climb back into the postseason chase.U.S. President Donald Trump in Hamburg, Germany July 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the State of Hawaii to respond by Tuesday at noon to President Donald Trump's motion to block a judge's ruling that prevented his travel ban from being applied to grandparents of U.S. citizens and refugees already being processed by resettlement agencies, the court's public information office said on Saturday.
In a court filing on Friday, the administration asked the justices to overturn Thursday's decision by a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, which limited the scope of the administration's temporary ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.
The latest round in the fight over Trump's March 6 executive order, which he says is needed to prevent terrorism attacks, began when the Supreme Court intervened last month to partially revive the two bans, which had been blocked by lower courts.
The Supreme Court said then that the ban could take effect, but that people with a "bona fide relationship" to a U.S. person or entity could not be barred. The administration had narrowly interpreted that language, saying the ban would apply to grandparents and other family members, prompting the state of Hawaii to ask Hawaii-based U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson to expand the definition of who could be admitted.
Trump banned travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, and refugees for 120 days.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral arguments in the fall over whether the ban violates the U.S. Constitution.
(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley and Lawrence Hurley; editing by Grant McCool)The first batch of Arsenal players will return to London Colney for training tomorrow morning, with each of them possessing different aims for the campaign ahead. One player who will be particularly determined to impress is 16 year old Gedion Zelalem, who enters his first full campaign as an Arsenal player after receiving an unprecedented amount of attention whilst still a schoolboy.
Zelalem featured four times for the U21s towards the end of the campaign, impressing with his ability to weave his way out of the most difficult situations, but will be especially eager to cement his claim for a place on the bench in the Capital One Cup this season.
There have been suggestions that it would be of greater benefit to Zelalem if the Germany U16 international were to start the new season in the U18s, for whom he is yet to make an appearance, but, such is his talent, the midfielder is instead likely to be one of the key players in the U21 set-up, whilst he will also aim to train with the first-team squad as often as possible.
Several of the players who were involved in international fixtures last month will not return until next week, providing the youngsters with an opportunity to train as part of the main group. Chuba Akpom and Isaac Hayden will also be aiming to impress tomorrow as they seek to book a place on the plane for the Asia Tour, whilst Chuks Aneke enters what could be a pivotal few weeks as far as his long-term future at the club is concerned.
AdvertisementsINTERVIEW: David Murphy Talks Sound Tribe Sector 9, Up Until Now
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 30, 2013 4:00PM
Photo from David Murphy's Facebook page Sound Tribe Sector 9, but recently he’s been up cooking up new tunes with his younger brother, Jay. The brothers’ band Up Until Now just dropped their second EP in December. Though David is no stranger to the city of Chicago, he’s pulling double touring duty this spring and stopping through twice - first with up Until Now this Friday at House of Blues and then in March with STS9.
CHICAGOIST: What itch do you get to scratch with Up Until Now that you don’t get to with STS9?
DAVID MURPHY: The biggest thing is that the guy who started the project and who does most of the songwriting is my younger brother. We’ve always wanted to do something together. I’ve actually always considered him the better musician in the family [laughs].
C: What role do you play in this new band?
MURPHY: Well, I help Jay out creatively, once he comes up with the song ideas, with an outside perspective. And then I do about 70% of the bass stuff for him.
C:How does an Up Until Now show compare to an STS9 show?
MURPHY: It is, to a degree, like an STS9 show. We’re playing more sequenced stuff. I play all of the bass lines Jay plays all of the melodies. And then there’s a drummer. So it’s similar to the way STS9 does it but a little different. More of the way someone like Big Gigantic or Pretty Lights would have done it when he had a drummer still.
C:1320 Records does a lot of free releases like Up Until Now’s recent EP. What’s the inspiration behind giving away the music for free?
MURPHY: We like to give it away for our hardcore fans. We give it on 1320’s site but we do still sell it on iTunes. For us, we hope it just re-enforces that we do care about our fans. And with a band like ourselves and a lot of bands in this scene you make your money by selling concert tickets. We’re instrumental. We’re not going to have a Top 40 hit. So giving away out music for free seems like the best way to spread our music and get people out to shows.
C: I can’t help be on the phone with you and not bring up your STS9 shows coming up in March. It seems like you guys have been here a lot during the last two years. What is it about Chicago that keeps bringing you back?
MURPHY: First off, Chicago as a city is amazing. Me and my wife joke that if I could ever deal with the winter, we might move there. We’ve also always been embraced by Chicago and by the fans there so I think to a degree it reminds us of being home. It’s a big city but there’s nothing pretentious about it.
Up Until Now plays Friday, February 1, at House of Blues, 329 N Dearborn, 11 p.m., $17.50-$20, 17+
STS9 plays March 16 at The Congress Theater, 2135 N Milwaukee, $30-$40, 8 p.m., 18+
By: Katie KarpowiczWisconsin governor Scott Walker (Scott Olson/Getty)
Clear winners and losers emerged from the first major candidate huddle in Iowa this weekend.
The Iowa Freedom Summit this weekend became a major event, with 1,500 voters and 200 journalists crammed into an old theater near downtown Des Moines. It showcased more than a dozen potential Republican presidential candidates, and even though big names such as Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Senator Rand Paul, and Governor Bobby Jindal didn’t make it, voters and journalists were able to size up most of the GOP field on the same stage for the first time.
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The field this cycle is the most open and competitive I’ve ever seen. Traditionally, Republicans have picked as their nominee the candidate who placed second in the most recent competitive nomination contest (the “it’s your turn” mentality). Think Ronald Reagan in 1980, George H. W. Bush in 1988, Bob Dole in 1992, John McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012. This year is different. The number-two candidate in 2012 was former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum; even though he might run again, he isn’t accorded first-tier status for 2016.
Clear winners and losers emerged from the marathon ten-hour session of back-to-back speeches that was hosted by Citizens United (the group at the center of the famous Supreme Court case) and Iowa congressman Steve King.
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Here’s the rundown.
WINNERS
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Scott Walker — The Wisconsin governor proved he can be a dynamic speaker, striding the stage in shirtsleeves and demonstrating Midwest sensibilities that connected him to his Iowa audience. Who knew that he’d lived in Iowa until the third grade or that he was an expert coupon clipper at Kohl’s, a well-known regional department-store chain? Walker made a strong case for electability: “I’ve won the race for governor three times in the last four years — three times, mind you, in a state that hasn’t voted Republican for president since I was in high school 30 years ago.” Everyone knew Walker had triumphed in his hard-fought battles against the state’s public-sector unions. After his speech this weekend, Iowa audiences will clearly now get the rest of the Walker story.
Ben Carson — The retired neurosurgeon made national waves in 2013 when he chastised President Obama over his health-care plan at the National Prayer Breakfast, with the president sitting just a few feet away. That fame has motivated his supporters to set up the first office of any potential candidate in Iowa; they’ve also collected 1.5 million e-mail addresses of supporters. Carson wowed the crowd in Des Moines, which expressed a clear affection for him. He endeared himself to pro-life activists when |
video sting operations, has posted videos in recent days purporting to show Democratic operatives bragging about inciting violence at Trump's campaign events, and appearing to detail how they could bus out-of-state supporters in to commit voter fraud.
"Once again Donald Trump was ahead of his times," campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Tuesday night. "He's been talking about this for the last couple days."
One of the operatives, Scott Foval, has been fired from his job at Americans United for Change, according to multiple news outlets.
The second, Robert Creamer, has said he's stepping back from his position at Democracy Partners.
Both firms have been doing political work for Democrats this year.
Unaware that he was being recorded by a hidden camera, Foval appeared to walk through how operatives could commit voter fraud by shipping in out-of-state people to vote. "You can prove conspiracy if there's a bus," he says at one point. "If there are cars, it's much harder to prove."
He also detailed how he and other operatives recruit and train people to protest Trump events and to try to draw Trump supporters into physical confrontations. "There's a script," he says. "Sometimes the 'crazies' bite... sometimes they don't bite."
"It is not hard to get some of these a******* to pop off," Foval said at another point. "It's a matter of showing up to want to get into the rally in a Planned Parenthood T-shirt, or 'Trump is a Nazi,' you know. You can message to draw them out, and draw them to punch you."
Trump has regularly blamed disruptions and violence at his rallies on Democratic campaigns. During the primary, he often said Bernie Sanders' campaign was sending people to protest at his rallies.
The videos are edited, and O'Keefe and Project Veritas have a history of selectively — and at times misleadingly — editing their videos. While they have previously posted raw footage, they have not done so with these latest stings.
Another political operative who appears in the video says this is a case of misleading editing. Immigration reform activist Caesar Vargas wrote on Facebook that "they just edited the video to distort the story."
The video shows Vargas appearing to agree to a scheme that an undercover Project Veritas operative is pitching that would involve busing people from state to state in order to vote illegally.
Vargas says, "this is not going to happen this election," but appears to be open to the idea at another point in time. "Can we make something special during midterm elections in 2017," he says.
But it's not clear what Vargas is talking about here. Theoretically, he could be talking about any number of proposals floated during that meeting. "Whatever I told this group is what I tell everyone in public: We fight for our family not for a political party," Vargas wrote on Facebook. "They have a transcript of our conversation to confirm I told them that voting twice was illegal."
The head of Project Veritas, James O'Keefe, has a long history of promoting conservative agenda items using hidden camera stings. He effectively shut down community organizing group ACORN in 2009 by posting videos of ACORN staffers offering advice on how to avoid taxes, among other things.
ACORN had already been a conservative target, but in the wake of the videos Congress voted to freeze its federal funding. O'Keefe has targeted former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, election officials in Michigan and New Hampshire, the Open Society Foundation and NPR.
Still, the voter fraud bluster comes at a time when Trump is regularly claiming the presidential election is "rigged" against him as he falters in the polls. Trump has tweeted about voter fraud, and instructed supporters to keep tabs on voting in big cities like Philadelphia.
Creamer's taped comments are much less inflammatory, but he has nonetheless stepped away from his firm, Democracy Partners. In a statement on Facebook, the group said it was "the victim of a well-funded, systematic spy operation that is the modern day equivalent of the Watergate burglars. The plot involved the use of trained operatives using false identifications, disguises, and elaborate false covers to infiltrate our firm and others."(Photo: Bosc d’Anjou / Flickr)To date, opposition to hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for unconventional oil and gas in the United Kingdom (UK) has been fierce. The opposition, though, seems to be meeting deaf ears in England, according to recent news reports.
Bloomberg reported on Dec. 4 that England’s Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, wants to lift the country’s currently exisiting moratorium on fracking. The halt was put in place after drilling sites owned by Cuadrilla Resources caused two minor earthquakes in northwestern England in November 2011.
England’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (a position equivalent to the Secretary of the Treasury in the United States), George Osborne, is set to release Britain’s new energy plan on Dec. 5 and told Bloomberg he wants to ensure “Britain is not left behind” in the unconventional oil and gas boom.
“Cuadrilla estimates that the area it is exploring in Lancashire, in northwestern England, could contain 200 trillion cubic feet of gas—more gas than all of Iraq,” explained Bloomberg. John Browne, the scandal-ridden former CEO of BP, sits as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cuadrilla.
Osborne, The Independent recently reported, will also offer tax breaks to oil and gas corporations hungry to profit from England’s shale gas prize.
“Mr. Osborne hopes that tax breaks for shale gas extraction will encourage investors and help economic growth,” The Indepedent wrote. “Oil and gas are currently taxed at between 62 per cent and 81 per cent. Shale gas would be taxed at lower rates.”
An astounding 64-percent of the English landmass could soon be subject to fracking, which is over 34,000 square miles, according to The Independent.
Fracking in Ireland on Hold For Now
England’s neighbor to the west, Ireland, also sits on massive reserves of unconventional oil and gas yet to be tapped.
A recent independent assessment, according to The Financial Times, estimates Ireland’s stockpile of shale gas at up to 13 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable gas. The Marcellus Shale, by comparison, which sits predominantly in Pennsylvania and New York, has 84 TCF of shale gas according to the most recent estimates by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Estimates of technically recoverable shale gas have proven controversial in the United States, though, with critics such as Bill Powers, Art Berman, Deborah Rogers, and Food and Water Watch all saying actual production rates have proven far lower than the estimations on what’s technically feasible. This ongoing trend, these critics say, portends the bursting of the “shale gas bubble” akin to the bursting of the “housing bubble” in 2008.
Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency is set to publish a report on the potential ecological risks of fracking in the country by 2014 and until then, the Irish ban on fracking will remain in place.
The question still remains: Is there as much gas under the ground in The Emerald Isle as the industry currently boasts of? The answer: Not likely.This story is about Published Jan. 2018
The Rangers are creating an advantage over every team in baseball -- and they're doing it in the kitchen Share This Story On... Twitter
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/Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer Texas Rangers nutritionist Stephanie Fernandes, right, tells minor league pitcher Reed Garrett to season a tray of vegetables during a spring training cooking class at the team's training facility on Thursday, February 23, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)
By Evan Grant, Staff Writer Contact Evan Grant on Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant
Editor's note: This story was originally published on March 3, 2017. As spring training approaches, we're bringing it back. SURPRISE, Ariz. -- We take you now to a moist, crisp spot at the very front of the Rangers battle to create a competitive edge on the field. It is called: "The produce aisle." That is not a euphemism. It is an actual produce aisle of a local grocery store, piled high with heads of cauliflower, bunches of broccoli and spears of asparagus. In the midst of this vegetable cornucopia Stephanie Fernandes, wearing a Rangers' "Train to Reign" hoodie, is discussing with a handful of players, mostly from the minor leagues, optimal leafy-green intake to boost workout recovery. A few moments later, she will do a dissertation on juices and a virtual power point on pasta. The shopping trip is just one step in the Rangers' attempt to optimize nutrition to enhance performance. Just as teams have taken a deeper interest in analyzing statistics, teams are diving into sports science for an edge. Many clubs, the Rangers included, have conducted studies on fatigue and maximizing the benefits of "efficient" sleeping.
/Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer Texas Rangers nutritionist Stephanie Fernandes gives a restaurant guide to starting pitcher Eddie Gamboa (78) while they shop for groceries at Sprouts before a spring training cooking class at the team's training facility on Thursday, February 23, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)
The Rangers, however, may be on the leading edge when it comes to emphasizing nutrition education. "We are trying to maximize player performance through good nutrition," said Director of Operations Matt Vinnola, who, along with Fernandes, built the nutrition program from the ground up. "It may be something hard to get measurable on it, but we are trying to improve nutrition and recovery so that maybe we can reduce DL days and increase performance." "Maybe a guy gets 30 starts instead of 27, maybe he gets 500 plate appearances instead of 450. We won't say we have it all figured out, but we are trying to create something." The Rangers hired Fernandes at the start of 2016 and made her what is believed to be the first full-time nutritionist on the staff of a major league team. The rest of baseball wasn't far behind. In the most recent round of collective bargaining negotiations, MLB and the Players Association agreed clubs must at least retain a dietitian on a consulting basis to help with meal plans. For Vinnola, that only reaffirmed the Rangers were onto something. The Rangers' plan seems to go deeper though. It isn't just about what's available in the clubhouse after the game for them. They are trying to change the culture of nutrition for the entire organization from the minor leagues up. On this trip, Fernandes will answer questions about how to achieve the best protein-to-sugar ratio when buying cereal. She will encourage players to throw healthy snacks in the cart for a sampling later on, though maybe the cookies-and-cream granola wasn't exactly what she had in mind. She will shove nutritional guides into the hands of players, which include a grocery-buying guide and hints for healthier options at some eateries in Surprise and places they are liable to encounter on the road in the minors. "Chipotle," says relieved Class A catcher Chuck Moorman, "now that's what I'm talking about." And she will hand out recipes for the dinner they are about to cook: Simple garlic chicken with rosemary roasted potatoes and asparagus (because the players kind of flinched at brussels sprouts). They will also make a healthier version of macaroni and cheese, using Greek yogurt instead of heavy cream. Eddie Gamboa, a 32-year-old grown man unafraid to face major league hitters with a 65 mph gimmick pitch called the knuckleball, hesitantly takes the recipe sheet, looks at and sheepishly says: "This looks like a foreign language to me," the 10-year minor league veteran says. "The only thing I ever made in the minors was cereal." Fernandes tosses a clove of garlic into the shopping cart. "Boom," she says with understated exuberance. "You got this." Creating good habits
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A look at four meals prepared for the Texas Rangers by the chefs at their spring training facility. Click through the gallery for more details. /Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer An egg white omelet with peppers and jalapenos and a plain omelet prepared for Texas Rangers baseball players by the chefs at their spring training facility on Friday, February 24, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News) /Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer Jalapeo bacon, chicken apple sausage and smoked hardwood bacon prepared Texas Rangers baseball players by the chefs at their spring training facility on Friday, February 24, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News) /Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer A potato hash with quinoa, spinach, kale and white cheddar cheese prepared for Texas Rangers baseball players by the chefs at their spring training facility on Friday, February 24, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News) /Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer Hoisin salmon topped with an orange garnish and sauted asparagus, and korean barbecue fried rice with quinoa and vegetables with a sriracha garnish prepared for Texas Rangers baseball players by the chefs at their spring training facility on Friday, February 24, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News) /Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer Sweet chili chicken served with micro greens and smoked beets with goat cheese, along with yakisoba noodles and stir fried vegetables prepared for Texas Rangers baseball players by the chefs at their spring training facility on Friday, February 24, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)
The idea is to develop not just talented and smart baseball players, but those who have a base for understanding the fueling of their bodies and the recovery process after exertion. Rather than focus on the major leagues only, Vinnola took a from-the-bottom-up approach. It makes sense. You aren't going to teach Adrian Beltre and Cole Hamels dietary tricks more than a decade into a successful career, but you might change the eating habits of teenagers straight out of high school or Latin America who have never lived or cooked on their own. Baseball mythology is littered with Latin American prospects who come to the states so lacking in language skills, they spend their first year on the road going into fast food spots and pointing at pictures. "We want this to be part of our organizational philosophy," Vinnola said. "Established major leaguers are going to do what they are going to do. We are trying to help create good habits before they ever get there."
/Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer Minor league pitcher Reed Garrett's baseball tattoo shows as he prepares rosemary for a lemon rosemary chicken dish during a spring training cooking class at the team's training facility on Thursday, February 23, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)
Fernandes joined the club last year and quickly made the youngest players in the system an equal priority to the major leagues. As she made her way to every stateside minor league affiliate, she got a good idea of what she was dealing with. Here, we should pause just for a moment on the topic of clubhouse spreads. Only a few years ago, there used to be a bowl of chili and a box of donuts at the players' disposal in the visiting clubhouse at Minnesota's old Metrodome. And compared to the minor leagues, this was elegant dining. Minor league post-game spreads often consisted of cheap sandwich meat and white bread. It was a big night when a major leaguer came to town on a rehab assignment mostly because tradition holds the big leaguer springs for a catered post-game meal from a real restaurant. The spreads have improved greatly in the majors and, at least marginally, in the minors, but, they can still strain the definition of "nutritious eating." During one of her visits, Fernandes found a bunch of players tearing into a platter of hot wings shortly before a game. The combination of spicy, high-fat foods makes for uncomfortable and lethargic players. A year ago, she met individually with 110 players in the system. She tailored individual nutrition plans for many of them. There was no cut-and-dried formula. She dealt with different body types, metabolism rates, demands of their individual positions and, in some cases, medical conditions. Fernandes tries to first get an idea of the players' environment eating habits, then provides some general education and, finally, creates an individual plan. She follows up with every player about once every three weeks. "If we aren't fitting the nutrition to their individual needs, then we are missing out on the next level of maximizing performance," she said. "It starts with the younger players. We want them to get a good foundation of knowledge so they know what works for them." "I never really thought about what I ate before," said starting pitcher Chi Chi Gonzalez, who, along with his fiancée, Ali, attended Fernandes' first grocery tour and cooking class this spring. "I ate because I was hungry. Now there is all this knowledge available to us that helps us prepare and create a routine. You know, if you create a routine for yourself in how you prepare as layer, you believe in it and you take the field with more confidence. It's the same thing with food." Seeing results
/Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer Minor league pitcher Reed Garrett, Texas Rangers starting pitcher Eddie Gamboa (78) and minor league catcher Chuck Moorman cut potatoes during a spring training cooking class at the team's training facility on Thursday, February 23, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)
In the Rangers' minor league clubhouse, Gamboa is learning how to properly slice a lemon for the garlic chicken. Fernandes changes his grip slightly to reduce the risk of slicing a finger. "Oh, almost like how I grip a knuckleball," Gamboa says. "I should be a natural at this." It is after this that Fernandes gets the inspiration for another class: A beginning chopping skills course. Her bosses' response: Great idea; go for it. The Rangers have said "no" rarely, if at all, to her requests. This includes a significant capital expenditure. The club won't reveal details, but an industry source confirmed the club has been among the leading spenders in the area. Several other clubs have also increased attention to nutrition, but the Rangers approach may be unique. One example: The Rangers have added an extra meal of service for minor league affiliates. It seems minor, but that's basically 125 extra meals per day for the full season. In addition, the Arizona minor league clubhouse serves meals for players there even on days when the Rookie League team doesn't play. What it means is that players don't nearly as often stop and grab fast food on the way into the ballpark or on off days. And, on the road, it allows players to stretch their meal money -- $25 per day - a little further toward, perhaps, a healthier breakfast. Add in the full-color, glossy 52-page nutrition guide Fernandes produced, the travel, the software to measure body composition and the dollars add up. It may not equal the salary of one major leaguer making the minimum, but it could have a much more wide-ranging long-term impact on more players. "We were looking for areas to invest," Vinnola said. "The investment is significant, but the ROI [return on investment] can be very high." In an era where everything must be measured, the Rangers have yet to determine an absolute methodology for correlating improved nutrition to improved performance. They've seen some weight variances for players and noticed an appreciable drop in fast food in their clubhouses.
/Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer Minor league catcher Chuck Moorman, minor league pitcher Reed Garrett and Texas Rangers starting pitcher Eddie Gamboa (78) wash potatoes during a spring training cooking class at the team's training facility on Thursday, February 23, 2017 in Surprise, Arizona. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)
"Can we measure its impact? That is really challenging," Vinnola said. "I think we are still trying to develop that. We have some more common-sense metrics, but that is the next step." In the meantime, Fernandes will continue to try selling common-sense nutrition to ballplayers, many of whom have not been given much, if any, direction, until now. One day last week, that meant that Gamboa could sit down to a healthy meal that took minimal preparation and provided excellent fuel. And he cooked it himself. "I wish they had a program like this in other places I've been," Gamboa said. "I have learned a lot. The future of the major leagues is in the minors. To invest that kind of time and effort shows they are thinking ahead." The Rangers are betting dinner on it. Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant
This Topic is Missing Your Voice.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Melting ice could trigger bigger eruptions, says geophysicist Dr Ian Stimpson
Iceland has issued a red alert to aviation after indications of a possible eruption under the country's biggest glacier, the Vattnajokull.
The Icelandic Met Office warned that a small eruption had taken place under the Dyngjujokull ice cap.
Seismic activity is continuing at the Bardarbunga volcano, about 30km away.
Airspace over the site has been closed, but all Icelandic airports currently remain open, authorities say. A Europe-wide alert has also been upgraded.
European air safety agency Eurocontrol said it would produce a forecast of likely ash behaviour every six hours.
Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in 2010, producing ash that severely disrupted air travel.
The red alert is the highest warning on the country's five-point scale.
Flooding threat
The Icelandic Met Office said a team of scientists was flying across the region on Saturday afternoon to monitor seismic activity.
"The eruption is considered a minor event at this point," police said in a statement.
"Because of pressure from the glacier cap, it is uncertain whether the eruption will stay sub-glacial or not."
Image copyright Reuters Image caption On Wednesday several hundred people were evacuated from the volcano area
Image copyright EPA Image caption The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in April 2010 caused the largest closure of European airspace since World War Two
The Met Office later issued an update saying that tremor levels had decreased during the afternoon but that earthquake activity was continuing.
Virgin Atlantic said it had rerouted a flight from London to San Francisco away from the volcano as a precautionary measure.
It said its other flights "continue to operate as normal".
British Airways said it was keeping the situation "under close observation", but that its flights were continuing to operate normally for now.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said there would be no impact on flights unless there was an actual eruption.
Bardarbunga and Dyngjujokull are part of a large volcano system hidden beneath the 500-metre (0.31-mile) thick Vatnajokull glacier in central Iceland.
Authorities have previously warned that any eruption could result in flooding north of the glacier.
On Wednesday, authorities evacuated several hundred people from the area over fears of an eruption.
The region, located more than 300km (190 miles) from the capital Reykjavik, has no permanent residents but sits within a national park popular with tourists.
The move came after geologists reported that about 300 earthquakes had been detected in the area since midnight on Tuesday.
The Eyjafjallajokull eruption in April 2010 caused the largest closure of European airspace since World War Two, with losses estimated at between 1.5bn and 2.5bn euros (£1.3-2.2bn).
Criticism following the strictly enforced shutdown resulted in the CAA relaxing its rules to allow planes to fly in areas with a low density of volcanic ash.Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
On a night where the Philadelphia Eagles and their star quarterback Michael Vick play the Houston Texans on the NFL Network's Thursday Night Football, many sports fans will instead watch an early season NBA game.
An interesting question to ponder for today; is Michael Vick, a man who was convicted of an awful crime, more respected in society than Lebron James, a person who has not broken the law, only broken the hearts of an entire Ohio region?
With all the criticism Lebron has taken (brought upon himself to be honest) this year, people have now portrayed him as public enemy number one in the world of sports.
Vick has had a tremendous season on the field, making a case for the NFL MVP award.
But his best job of the season has been done off the field. Vick has stayed away from trouble, and continues to perform the service to various organizations required as part of his punishment for his involvement in a dogfighting ring.
How quickly we forget someone's horrendous actions when the next guy comes along who makes us angry. Granted Vick's legal process was started over a year before Lebron's free agency became an issue, people haven't forgotten what Michael did.
Tonight, Lebron James and his Miami Heat teammates are about to play in the most volatile arena any of them have ever seen tonight in the Quicken Loans Arena, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Thursday night on national television (TNT), the Heat will visit the Cleveland Cavaliers in arguably the most anticipated regular season matchup ever.
Time has not healed the wounds that the majority of the Cleveland fans endured in the summer while watching Lebron's free agent special, "The Decision." That night in July is still fresh in the minds of Cleveland's citizens.
No matter the outcome tonight, Lebron and the Heat cannot take anything positive from the game.
If Miami loses, Cleveland will rejoice and remind everyone they have a nearly identical record. If Miami wins big, the people of Cleveland will take their hatred for Lebron to new heights.
The Miami Heat have had every game they've played analyzed like a playoff game, but they were expecting not to have as many losses broken down at this point of the season.
The Heat are 1-7 vs. teams with a winning record, two of those losses coming to the Boston Celtics. All of their losses to the NBA's elite are quite similar for a number of reasons.
Each team (including Dallas, Utah, Orlando, New Orleans) has an elite point guard and are committed to playing defense for 48 minutes. This may not be a problem vs. the Cavaliers tonight, but Cleveland has a roster loaded with athleticism.
The Heat have not revealed their travel plans for tonight game, and this tells us the team has a genuine concern for the safety of its players.
The Cleveland police department has announced it will not permit anti-Lebron t-shirts at the Quicken Loans Arena during the game.
The Cavaliers have done extensive research on popular anti-Lebron clothing to get an idea of what to expect from the fans Thursday, according to Yahoo Sports.
No one really knows what to expect when the Heat and James are introduced to the crowd, but will anyone be surprised if the crowd gets really out of hand?
When a player who is adored by his team and its city leaves in an ugly fashion, the return game is usually filled with boos and a wave of curse words from fans.
But Lebron's situation is different. He not only left on his team and city that loved him, he left his hometown team.
People fail to realize this is the main reason for the hatred. It's one thing to turn your back on a franchise that's been loyal to you, but it's much worse to put your hometown team in a bad situation.
Lebron must be afraid of what he's going to face when he sees his former fans for the first time. I know I would be.
Rarely do you walk into a building where over 10,000 people hate you. I realize there are many hated players in the NBA, but this type of displeasure is very unique to Lebron.
It's not often one of the most important/exciting games of the season is played in December, but this game is clearly an event worth watching, and not only for the first few minutes, but the entire game.
Two men who have angered millions of people, will both play important games tonight, for entirely different reasons.
Michael Vick is starting to regain fans with his brilliant play on football field and a respectful life off of it, Lebron James should start doing the same.Nero, allegedly, fiddled while Rome burned. Today we have a Commander in Chief who seems equally unhinged from reality. In a world fraught with Islamic terrorists and muscle-flexing autocratic nations, the enemy on which he is focused is climate change.
On the Wednesday before Memorial Day, President Obama came to the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut to warn the newly graduated second lieutenants of the far-reaching consequences of climate change, and of man’s responsibility to halt its effects. Like the Norse King Canute who, after conquering Denmark, England and Norway, tried to hold back the waves, Mr. Obama went to Denver in 2008 and promised that his Presidency would bring the time “when the rise of the oceans began to slow.” Global warming is the yardstick he has used to define his Presidency.
It seemed to make no difference that the world was being shattered – at least in part because of our neglect. The day before the President’s speech, the Iraq city of Ramadi fell to ISIS, the North Koreans revealed they had the ability to attach a nuclear device to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capable of reaching the U.S., and the Iranians said that UN nuclear inspectors would not be allowed into Iran. The next day, the ancient (and strategically important) Syrian City of Palmyra fell to ISIS. Two days later, tensions rose between the U.S. and China over the latter’s constructing of artificial islands 800 miles off their coast in the South China Sea.
In New London, Mr. Obama said: “I am here to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and make no mistake, will impact how our military defends our country.” He left no doubt as to the imperativeness of his message: he threatened those who are dismissive or skeptical of man-caused climate change as being “guilty of negligence and dereliction of duty” – an ominous threat from the Commander in Chief.
His speech was akin to a ship that had hoved anchor. He spoke of the dangers of climate change with the close-minded fervor of a fundamentalist preacher, leaving no room for climate agnostics. There was in the speech an absence of any apparent concern regarding terrorism and the homeland. He ignored the fact that there are those who would do us harm, who would upset the security of the world. Mr. Obama’s studied avoidance of those risks seemed odd when speaking to those responsible for defending our shores.
The President has the intellectually dishonest habit of calling his “climate” opponents deniers, while claiming that he and his believers are truth-tellers: “I know there are still those back in Washington who refuse to admit that climate change is real…” That’s hogwash. While I know of many who are skeptical as to the magnitude of the role man has played in climate change, I know of none who claim that climate change is not real. In making such outrageous accusations, Mr. Obama refuses to engage the real debate – What effect has man had on climate change? Is nature more or less powerful than man? What will be the economic costs to emerging and developing countries of complying with standards set by rich nations? How can we realistically enforce reductions of emissions of other nations without causing economic hardships?
A recent study by Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and former lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is of interest. Dr. Lloyd examined ice core-based temperature data going back eight thousand years – his purpose to gain perspective on the magnitude of 20th Century global temperature changes. What he found was that the standard deviation in temperature over that time was about 0.98 degrees Celsius, which compares favorably to the 0.85 degrees climate scientists say the world has warmed over the past century. Keep in mind, the 20th Century experienced the industrialization of much of the world and two world wars, where the price of victory included ecological devastation. “The key challenge in understanding climate change,” Dr. Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in April of this year, “is to assess the natural climate variability.”
Is man’s effect on a changing climate more important than the dangers we face from Islamic terrorism? Is it greater than the threat from a nuclear-armed North Korea, a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, an increasingly militaristic China that looks to dominate the South China Sea through which a third of all global trade passes, and a Russia looking to re-create its lost empire? From the files of Osama bin Laden that have been made public, it is obvious that al Qaeda’s real target has always been the “great Satan” that is the United States. The same is true for ISIS, as they have publically stated. The religious freedom we enjoy, along with our Constitution and Bill of Rights, are direct threats to those Islamists militants who would establish a caliphate, which is simply a dictatorship under the guise of religion.
Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons – a possibility that seems likely – will cause a nuclear arms race in the region. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey cannot allow Iran to exert preeminence. North Korea is a nation run by a madman, but a madman with nuclear weapons capable of reaching our West Coast. China’s military’s creation of artificial islands in the South China Sea could seriously (and negatively) impact world trade. Vladimir Putin wants to recreate the Russian empire. Should he decide to invade the Baltic Countries, what nations will stand against him? If not us, who will be the sheriff?
The Earth has been undergoing climate change since it evolved billions of years ago. What is new to the world is the freedom we enjoy as a people. It is the continuation of that individual liberty that should be the focus of our leaders, not just during Memorial Day week, but at all times. Contrast the words of President Obama in New London last Wednesday to those of President Reagan on Memorial Day in 1982 at Arlington Cemetery. Mr. Obama: “Climate change will affect everything you do in your careers…it will impact how our military defends our country.” Mr. Reagan: “War will not come again, other young men will not have to die, if we will speak honestly of the dangers that confront us and remain strong enough to meet those dangers.”
The world was already dangerous. It has become more so in recent years, in part because of decisions we have taken. For the President to come and tell 223 newly commissioned officers that the major enemy they face is climate change was, in my opinion, the act of a delusional man.
The Opinions expressed above are mine alone, and do not represent those of the firm Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., Inc., or of any of its partners or employees.I want to build a rougelike, but making the basic structure of a map takes too much time.
I want to make a game where you do stuff based off music, but there is no infinite supply of music anywhere.
I have nothing to live for. I just want to solve mazes all day long.
These are just some of the problems that no modern game developer faces. But still, there is a solution! Presenting Procedural content generation as a service, the brand new API developed by some people who didn't have anything better to do with their time.
By making a couple of simple API calls, you too can spend your time doing productive things, like gameplay design, and netcode, and eating icecream, instead of spending a couple of afternoons implementing procedural generation.FBI agents and other law enforcement officials investigate at the medical-office complex of Dr. Salomon Melgen who has possible ties to U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) on January 30, 2013 in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Feeling my oats after my Scott Brown prediction came true, let me revisit the saga of Bob Menendez—the senator from New Jersey currently being dogged by the limitations of scandal coverage. Ever since Menendez was lifted up to the Senate by then-Gov. Jon Corzine, New Jersey-watchers have waited for some scandal to catch up with him. His power came from two wellsprings—the Union County Democratic machine, and his prodigious fundraising. The two factors were connected. The only real panic of his 2006 senatorial campaign came when Chris Christie, then U.S. attorney, investigated a charity that paid rent to Menendez, after he’d secured it some federal funding (this was similar to a subplot in a Sopranos episode). From 2009 through 2010, Menendez ran the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which connected him to even more money.
And that, according to the NYT’s quad-byline A1 story, was how history repeated. In the 1990s, Menendez befriended an ophthalmologist named Salomon Melgen. The ever-wealthy donor flew the congressman, later senator, to Dominican Republic vacations on a private jet (“Both enjoyed a good cigar and playing golf,” reported the NYT). When Menendez ran the DSCC, Melgen made it rain. When Menendez faced a most re-election risk last year, Melgen gave a helpful Super PAC $700,000.
In a vacuum, this might be the Menendez scandal. In 2010, Melgen bought an ownership in ICSSI, a port security company with a gloriously one-sided contract. If the contract were enforced, the owners could make half a billion dollars. Menendez, who now runs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants the contract enforced. That could hurt Menendez!
But that’s not “the Menendez scandal.” That scandal is a wanly sourced rumor that one of the Melgen-Menendez parties featured prostitutes. Not just prostitutes—underage prostitutes. The evidence for this comes from an anonymous source who has released emails that prove not that he has the goods, but that he has been trying to tell people he does, and two anonymous women who repeated the tale to the Daily Caller, in a Skype interview. (Part of the tale. They didn’t claim to be underage.)
Because the second story involves sexual intercourse, the media has packaged it with the first story. It’s been strange to watch. Chris Cillizza pronounces that Menendez had the “worst week in Washington” because when he denied the prostitution story, he was nonetheless seeing his name “in the same headline with ‘prostitution.’” In this CNN report, the first (sourced) story is mixed together with the second (unsub |
and attack his partner with it, Shuff got out of the car and tackled White from behind, according to the reports. The officers struggled to handcuff him, prompting the rookie officer to draw her Taser. She pressed the stun gun against White at least twice, the reports said, but the struggle continued. The officer set the Taser on a nearby step. She later told investigators she believed the device was out of White’s reach but close enough for her to grab if she needed it again.
According to police, White then grabbed the taser and used it on Shuff’s partner. With his partner incapacitated, Shuff told investigators that he was “afraid the man would try to grab his partner’s holstered gun.” Shuff drew his firearm and shot White once in the neck, killing him.
“Simply believing White was going to gain control of [the] service pistol … did not constitute an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury,” the two [LAPD] board members concluded. The Police Commission also faulted the tactics used by Shuff and his partner leading up to the deadly encounter, saying some of their actions “unnecessarily compromised the safety of the officers.”
The ruling marks at least the fourth deadly shooting that the LAPD has ruled as unjustified: the shooting of homeless man Brendan Glenn at Venice Beach in May of last year; the Burbank shooting of Sergio Navas in March of of last year; and the August 2014 shooting of Ezell Ford. Ford’s shooting occurred during the same time period as that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Members of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles have made a point of showing up to weekly police commission meetings confronting the members about the issue of police shootings; some of those confrontations have ended in the arrests of BLM-LA members. The increased scrutiny on the police commission, coupled with the national clamor for police accountability, has undoubtedly played a part in the commission’s recent rulings.
Shuff has returned to the field; any discipline he faces will be decided by Beck. As per California’s Police Officer’s Bill of Rights, that decision will be part of Shuff’s personnel file and will remain private.After the enormous build up, Michael Schumacher's comeback drive didn't yield a pole or a podium, he finished sixth two places lower than on his last race in Brazil 2006. And this is probably more or less what he expected. The Mercedes didn't look as fast as the Red Bull and Ferrari in pre season testing and it more or less matched the McLaren for pace all weekend, showing what a good result third was for Lewis Hamilton.
Analysing Schumacher's performance is worthwhile for two reasons; it shows what kind of shape the great champion is in, on his return after three years off and it sheds some interesting light on the problems F1 faces with the new rules,
Having overshadowed his new team mate Rosberg in the run up to the event, Schumacher was forced to slot in behind him on track, which only happend very occasionally in the past. But he will have seen enough to know that he is going to be able to compete over a season. While he looked rather tense in the early part of the weekend, by the end of it he looked quite calm and that means he knows he can go up several gears from here.
Schumacher was around four tenths of a second slower than Rosberg in headline lap time throughout the practice sessions, but managed to get closer in qualifying, bringing the margin down to just three tenths of a second.
After qualifying he said, ""I certainly feel a little bit rusty, certainly on the one-lap issue I can do better. On long runs and consistent runs things are pretty good, I'm quite happy. I will just use the rest of the weekend in order to tweak out the little bits.
"It's not a problem. It's just that for one lap I saw that Nico was four-tenths up and that is a bit too much for my standards. I've got to raise my game a bit and I'm sure I'm able to."
Schumacher hadn't mastered the first lap on the new tyre, especially when the track got hotter in the decisive Q3 session. What happened then was that he overheated the tyre in the middle sector, which featured the twisty new section. And because of the way he had the Mercedes set up, the tyres did not cool down on the straight which followed, so he wasn't quick through the final sector. Everyone was faced with the same problem and the big margins between cars on the grid are as a result of this. It's something that Vettel and the Ferrari drivers got right.
"(The front tyres) are very small and narrow for my style of driving and so I cannot get the car into the corners the way I like to," he said after the race on his website.
Schumacher's race was very straight forward and is hard to analyse in any depth because he was always following other cars, maintaining a gap so as not to overheat his tyres or engine.
Starting seventh on the grid, he got a reasonable start, but not as good as Rosberg. Nico managed to squeeze past Hamilton who made a mistake in Turn Four and got himself on a bad line. Schumacher wasn't able to follow and stayed behind Hamilton and Rosberg for the opening stint, three seconds off Hamilton's tail.
He pitted on lap 15, the same time as Hamilton. When Rosberg pitted a lap later, he had lost the initiative to Hamilton, who made good use of the new tyre on his out lap and so Hamilton now led Rosberg with Schumacher behind. The gap was two seconds initially, but went out to four seconds and stayed that way to the finish.
"Overtaking was basically impossible unless somebody made a mistake," Schumacher said "That is the action we are going to have with this kind of environment of race strategy."
Schumacher's race symbolised the problem with the new rules in that there were no other possible game changing moments for Schumacher to take advantage of. There were no more pit stops, Rosberg didn't make any mistakes, they both dealt with the traffic pretty well and so there were no opportunities to change the game.
Refuelling stops break up that kind of pattern because they provide the possibility of a slow in or out lap, a mistake by the pit crew.
The crucial difference between now and the early 1990s, the last time we had no refuelling, is that the cars are so much more reliable now, thanks to the quality control processes imported from industry. The tyres are too also too good, as are the aerodynamics, so no-one uses up tyres significantly more than anyone else, making them vulnerable.
Of the retirements, four were new teams, who have yet to master reliability. Both Saubers went out with a hydraulic problem, which shows them in a poor light, given that all the other established teams got to the finish no problem.
In the opening race of 1993 in South Africa, a race I remember well as it was my only visit to that country to date, only seven cars were classified at the finish and to of them didn't actually cross the line. Schumacher was in that race for Benetton and collided with Ayrton Senna on lap 39.
Of the 26 cars which started the race, 10 retired due to technical failure and seven either spun out or crashed. Even in the last race of the pre-refuelling era in Australia that year, six cars had technical failures and five had accidents. The top three finishers that day were the same as the top three in qualifying, showing that it has never been easy to pass in F1.
At least we had a significant pass for position between Alonso and Massa on Sunday.There are two forms of legislation relating to metrication:
UK legislation : laws debated and passed by Parliament. Some of these laws implement European Union directives as part of the UK’s obligation under European Union treaties. Other laws have been enacted as a result of Britain’s own local initiative.
: laws debated and passed by Parliament. Some of these laws implement European Union directives as part of the UK’s obligation under European Union treaties. Other laws have been enacted as a result of Britain’s own local initiative. European Union directives: these are agreed by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, where the UK is fully represented and participates with voting rights as a member state.
UK legislation
UK legislation is termed either “primary” or “secondary”.
Primary legislation consists of Acts of Parliament that have been fully debated in and approved by both Houses of Parliament and given the Royal Assent.
Secondary legislation (also known as “delegated legislation”) consists of various Orders, Regulations and Directions made by Ministers and then laid before both Houses for approval. They can be challenged by any MP or peer, in which case there has to be a debate and a formal vote.
It is for the courts to interpret legislation, and they sometimes establish new “case law”, which must then be followed (unless subsequently overturned on appeal by a higher court – or amended by Parliament).
Consumer legislation
The basic law affecting measurement units is the Weights and Measures Act 1985 (as amended).
This Act sets out the units of measurement that are “legal for trade” – that is, the legal units that MUST be used when weighing or measuring goods at the point of sale or letting. With one or two exceptions (draught beer and cider, milk in returnable bottles) these are exclusively metric. Further detail is contained in the Units of Measurement Regulations 1986 (SI 1986, No 1082) as amended. Contrary to misleading advice from Government websites, this rule does apply to services as well as to goods – for example, carpet fitting or the letting of office floorspace.
The Price Marking Order 2004 (SI 2004, No 102) is designed to make sure that the pricing of goods in labelling and advertising enables the consumer to compare value for money easily. The Order requires that, for “loose goods” sold from bulk, all traders must display the “unit price” – that is, the price per legal, metric unit. Larger shops must also give the unit price (per metric unit) of packaged goods so that consumers can compare the value for money of packages of different sizes. The Order also permits traders and packers to display a “supplementary indication” (imperial conversion) provided that it is not more prominent than the legal, metric unit.
It was originally intended that supplementary indications would be phased out after 2009. However, in September 2007, the European Commission proposed that they should be authorised indefinitely and this was agreed by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. (Note that this does NOT mean that pounds and ounces may be used for weighing at the point of sale or as a primary measure on price labels.)
The Price Marking Order also provides that if an advertisement includes a price, it must conform to the same rules. However, some major retailers have claimed that the Order is ambiguous and does not apply to some forms of in-store advertising. They have taken advantage of this alleged ambiguity (and the reluctance of authorities to prosecute) to advertise in misleading ways (e.g. giving prices per lb alongside price reductions per kg). UKMA does not believe the rules are genuinely ambiguous and considers that this is irresponsible and unfair to customers. The purpose of the Order is clear and all traders should comply with it in both the short and longer term interest of people shopping for food in British stores.
In 2001 a number of traders, supported by the UK Independence Party, attempted to challenge the Price Marking Order, claiming that it was unconstitutional and infringed their human rights. All their arguments were rejected by the UK Courts and by the European Court of Human Rights (to which they appealed).
Enforcement of trading standards legislation (including the Price Marking Order) is mainly the responsibility of local authorities. They act under guidance provided by Local Government Regulation (formerly known as the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services – LACORS). Although this guidance is primarily intended for Trading Standards Officers, it may also be helpful to the general public if they wish to make a complaint and to traders who wish to comply with the law.
Unfortunately, many Trading Standards Authorities give low priority to enforcement of this legislation, with the result that the law is routinely flouted, especially in street markets.
A full list of legislation relating to Weights and Measures can be seen at this website.
Department for Transport
Currently, the UK is the only major country in the world whose road sign regulations do not include metric units as options for distances and speed limits. This is despite general use of metres in the Highway Code and roads having been designed and built in metric for decades. Ireland changed its distance signs over a period of years and subsequently changed its speed limits to metric in January 2005. Even the USA permits metric-only signs.
The current legislation governing speed limits and road signs in England and Wales is:
The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (especially Parts V and VI) (also applies to Scotland)
The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 (TSRGD) (SI 2016 No 362) (also applies to Scotland)
The Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992 (SI 1992, No 666). (Scotland has its own Regulations)
Legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland (where devolved) closely follows the England and Wales model.
It is the view of UKMA that the TSRGD are inconsistent with the Units of Measurement Regulations (UMR) in a number of respects. In particular:
The TSRGD permit mile to be represented by “m” while the UMR reserve “m” as the symbol for metre (“mile” should be written in full).
The UMR permit imperial units only for distances and speeds, whereas the TSRGD incorrectly prescribe feet and inches for vehicle dimensions.
. The TSRGD require that the symbol for feet and inches be single and double quotation marks respectively while the UMR require that “ft” and “in” be used since the single and double quotation marks are used as the symbols for minutes and seconds of arc respectively.
The UMR specify “yd” as the symbol for yards (and yard). The TSRGD permit “yds”.
As far as the UKMA is aware these inconsistencies have not yet been challenged in a court of law.
The rules for speed limits are laid down in Part VI of the Road Traffic Regulation Act. Clause 81 specifies the default limit for urban areas (30 miles per hour) but this may be varied by secondary legislation. Other speed limits are determined by traffic authorities under rules made by the Secretary for Transport.
European Union directives
EU Directives are not laws in themselves. Rather they are instructions to the Member States, requiring them to amend their domestic legislation to bring it into conformity with the provisions of the Directive. The English language version of the EU requirements for metric units of measurement are in Directive 80/181/EEC. This Directive effectively implements the recommendations of the International Bureau for Weights and Measures (BIPM).
The Directive contains a derogation authorising the UK to use miles, yards, feet and inches for “road signs, distance and speed measurement”. Previously, there was a requirement that these imperial measures should be phased out by “a date to be fixed by the Member State”. However, the 2009 amendment to the Directive removed this requirement.
The United Kingdom implemented this Directive in 1994 by means of The Units of Measurement Regulations 1995 (SI 1995:1804). The EU directive also meant a number of changes in United Kingdom law, which were implemented by Statutory Instruments. Some of these are listed below along with relevant SIs from previous years.
Finally, The Passenger Car (Fuel Consumption and CO2 Emissions Information) Regulations 2001 (SI 2001:3523) contain the interesting clause “Fuel consumption shall be expressed either in litres per 100 kilometres (L/100km) or kilometres per litre (km/L), and quoted to one decimal place, or, to the extent compatible with the provisions of Council Directive 80/181/EEC, in miles per gallon.” UKMA’s interpretation of the Directive is that, since gallons ceased to be authorised by the Directive in 1995, “miles per gallon” may only be used as a supplementary indication alongside a legal (metric) unit.Image: Flickr/ National Crime Agency
The closure of Silk Road two years ago hasn't stopped people from buying drugs online. In fact, more people used the internet—specifically, the "dark web" not accessible by normal browsers—to procure narcotics last year than ever before, a new survey shows.
The FBI shuttered Silk Road in October 2013 and recently convicted its creator, Ross Ulbricht, to life imprisonment. The agency said it was the "most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet" and hope its closure would reduce illegal drug activity online.
Not so. The Global Drug Survey 2015, which is a yearly round up of the world's drug habits culled from 100,000 people in 50 countries, shows that more people are using the "darknet" to buy drugs.
People are turning to the internet because there's less of a threat of transaction turning violent, better quality of drugs, and the "removal of street dealing," respondents said. Nearly half of respondents said they use the dark web to buy the "same range" of drugs, while a third said they consumer a "wider range" of drugs.
Ecstasy powder, LSD, and MDMA pills were the top three drugs people bought online. While weed (hydro, herbal and resin, respectively) landed in fourth through sixth spots, cocaine was the seventh most popular drug purchased.
In 2014, 25 percent said that was the first year they bought drugs online—a 9 percent increase from the year prior.
Of note, three of the four top places where people admitted to buying drugs online were from Scandinavian countries leading the researchers to write that "zero tolerance drug policies can drive people who like drugs to other sources." The United States was in seventh place.Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Christopher Ray Burnett, 28, died in a motorcycle crash in Cedar Park Oct. 9 (Cedar Park Police)
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Christopher Ray Burnett, 28, died in a motorcycle crash in Cedar Park Oct. 9 (Cedar Park Police)
CEDAR PARK, Texas (KXAN) -- Cedar Park police said a single vehicle motorcycle crash resulted in the death of Christopher Ray Burnett, 28, Sunday afternoon.
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Christopher Ray Burnett, 28, died in a motorcycle crash in Cedar Park Oct. 9 (Cedar Park Police)
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Christopher Ray Burnett, 28, died in a motorcycle crash in Cedar Park Oct. 9 (Cedar Park Police)
The crash happened just before 4 p.m. on Anderson Mill near Zappa Drive. Burnett was heading northbound on Anderson Mill at high speeds when he lost control of the Suzuki GSXR 600 he was riding.
He was ejected from the motorcycle and then hit a rock at the Lime Creek and Anderson Mill intersection. Burnett was pronounced dead at the scene. Officials say he was wearing a helmet.
The bike was not registered Burnett and police said he was on the way to meet-up with another motorcyclist nearby.
Investigators will reconstruct the crash on Thursday at 10 a.m. Anderson Mill Drive from Zappa to Lime Creek will be reduced to one lane on both sides.A deal on customs is important to reducing post-Brexit trade friction, but is only half the story. Our report Frictionless Trade? What Brexit means for cross-border trade in goods, says leaving the EU will disrupt the country’s important integrated supply chains in areas like automobile manufacturing. It will create friction in cross-border trade in goods.
The paper examines five potential options for future trade:
A deep and comprehensive free trade deal, including customs cooperation
A new customs union agreement
Staying in the Single Market
Combining staying in the Single Market with a new customs union arrangement
Leaving with no deal and trading with the EU on WTO terms.
The authors find that while 'off-the-shelf' options – staying in the Single Market (the Norway model) or a new customs union (the EU-Turkey model) – could remove some disruption, none eliminate friction entirely. Leaving with no deal would put the UK in a worse place than any other major trading partner and will maximise disruption, evidenced by the fact that no major country trades with the EU on WTO terms alone.
However, the authors say the Government is right to argue that friction at the border could be reduced by a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement including customs cooperation. But the options that might be easiest to negotiate are those that are most likely to cross current UK negotiating red lines.Gov. Malloy's public approval rating hits new low Copyright by WTNH - All rights reserved Video
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's popularity rating has hit a new low, with a majority of registered voters disapproving of how the Democrat has managed the state's economy, jobs, budget and taxes.
A new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows just 24 percent of registered voters approve of how Malloy is handling his job, while 68 percent disapprove. It's a drop from Malloy's prior lowest rating of 32 percent in October.
Poll director Doug Schwartz says Malloy's numbers appear to be linked to the state's economy. Eighty percent of those surveyed say the state's economy is "not so good" or "poor," while 74 percent say jobs are difficult to find.
The survey of 1,330 voters has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.It was December 22nd, 2013 and the Wolves were in the playoff conversation for the first time in a decade. Rick Adelman was calling the shots that had led the Wolves to 13 wins before Christmas Day. On December 22nd, the Wolves were led by a group of Europeans and Kevin Love as they headed to California for a matchup against Blake Griffin and the Los Angeles Clippers. (Corey Brewer was there too)
The Wolves lost that game in overtime 116-120. A game in which Love and Nikola Pekovic combined for 79 points and 33 rebounds. On offense, the Wolves worked a three-man game with Love, Pekovic, and Ricky Rubio all night long.
As beautiful as the offensive end was, the Wolves were completely helpless on the defensive end. Blake Griffin torched the Wolves. 10 of Griffin’s 11 field-goal makes came in the paint that night. The Wolves defense could not stop Griffin from getting to wherever he wanted to go. And that blame fell on Love and Pekovic.
It was that that game that led Fred Katz (Bleacher Report) to write a column titled: Why the Kevin Love, Nikola Pekovic Tandem Won't Work Long-Term. Wolves fans remember this sentiment, as Katz was not the only NBA-mind to pursue this take.
Katz wrote this:
“Opponents are shooting 67.4 percent in the restricted area against Minnesota this season (2013-14), by far the highest field-goal percentage from that area in the NBA. Love and Pek don't really stop anyone from getting shots at the rim... In today's NBA, rim protection is as important as it's ever been. Offenses are more focused on efficiency and shot selection. Because of that, they load up on a heavy diet of layups, dunks, and threes. And that means defenses need someone to deter players from taking those easy shots that are vital to most every offensive scheme.”
The Wolves have heeded those words. Fast forward three years and the fabric of the Wolves is completely different, most notably in the frontcourt. The Wolves have swapped out burly bruisers for wingspan and athleticism. Physically, both Karl-Anthony Towns and Gorgui Dieng look the part of modern NBA big men. They have yet, however, to help the Wolves defense get better.
Through their first 107 games together, Towns and Dieng have anchored what has been an atrocious defense, playing approximately 63.4 percent of the total big man minutes. Last season, the Wolves had the fourth worst defense in the NBA giving up 107.1 points per 100 possession, per NBA.com/stats. This season, the defense has gotten worse — defensive rating of 108.9.
In 2013-14, when Katz and many others were calling for the breakup of Love and Pek the Wolves defense was definitively average— 15th in defensive rating, 104.1 points per 100 possessions.
Wolves Team Defensive Rating with Towns and Dieng
2016-17: 108.9 — 27th in NBA
2015-16: 107.1 — 27th in NBA
Wolves Team Defensive Rating with Love and Pekovic
2013-14: 104.1 — 15th in NBA
So, what are the differences other than Towns and Dieng in place of Love and Pekovic? With Rubio the starting point guard in both 2013-14 and 2016-17, the difference is on the wing. Enter two 21-year-old kids.
It should be no surprise that youth and inexperience negatively effect the defensive end of the floor. Simply adding the length and athleticism of Towns, Dieng, Andrew Wiggins, and Zach LaVine has not hindered opposing offenses. We can talk about rim protection, post defense, and effecting the passing lanes but a defense is effective at the professional level through a five-man defensive shell.
Tom Thibodeau has the reputation as the defensive guru of the NBA over the past decade. His “Thibs Dust” was supposed to make the Wolves better at defense. Tom Thibodeau has not changed, it is his personnel that has.
Tom Thibodeau’s Pick and Roll Defense
While under the tutelage of Tom Thibodeau, the Chicago Bulls had a top-6 defense in the NBA four straight seasons. Much of this effectiveness was born out forcing opponents into shots from the least effective area of the floor, the mid-range. This was often executed by the Bulls using the approach of “ICE-ing” the pick and roll on defense.
A pick and roll is ICE-d when the on-ball defender cuts off the ball handler’s ability to use the screen. The below video pauses when Jimmy Butler ICEs the Deron Williams and Brook Lopez pick and roll.
With Butler angling himself vertically he has cut off the route to the screener Brook Lopez, opening the lane for Williams to penetrate. Williams is then met in the lane by Lopez’s defender (Joakim Noah) and a trailing Butler. At this point, Williams penetration has shrunk the floor. Williams has the option of pulling up from mid-range or passing to Lopez for a similarly inefficient mid-range shot. Those are the shots Thibodeau wants to live with.
The most difficult part of ICE is that it requires a great deal of recognition and communication. The screen must be called out by the center (Noah) so the guard (Butler) can sprint and cut off the screen. The center also needs to be able to slide their feet with the guard or recover back to the popping screener.
The Wolves have struggled with the implementation of Thibodeau’s ICE-ing defense in four particular ways:
Recognition Communication Recovery Trust
Recognition
Often times when the opposing ball handler is just standing at the top of the key dribbling (end of shot clock or end of quarter) the Wolves have time to “set” their defense. If the Wolves know a pick and roll is coming they often recognize and force the ball out from the initial ball handler and into the hands of a lesser threat. As they do here against Kawhi Leonard at the end of a third quarter against the Spurs.
It is when the speed is turned up that the breakdowns ensue for the Wolves. In ICE, the pick and roll needs to be recognized by both the on-ball defender and the defender of the screener. If both players do not know the screen is coming, ICE has inherently put the big man out of position.
Here, Nemanja Bjelica knows the screen is coming and puts himself in the proper place for ICE, but Kris Dunn does not. Because Dunn does not ICE off the screen Bjelica has been put out of position and rendered useless.
Recognizing a pick and roll is particularly difficult for the on-ball defender, often the point guard. If the pick itself is disguised within the motion of the offense, the Wolves young point guards are almost always caught off guard. This is why communicating “ICE ICE ICE” is crucial.
Communication
To combat ICE, opponents often sprint into the pick and roll so as to catch the defense off guard. Due to poor communication, this works against the Wolves. Here, Shabazz Muhammad is anticipating ICE so he defends the middle, but Tyus Jones does not know the screen is even coming. This allows Sean Kilpatrick to burn by both Jones and Muhammad.
(I don’t know what is worse, Wiggins’s effort in the corner or the belly flop by Muhammad.)
Kris Dunn often gets caught up in the difficult job of simply staying in front of NBA-caliber point guards. Just as before against Conley, Dunn is slow to recognize the screen. Aldrich and Dunn do not communicate and recognize the screen effectively. Aldrich proceeds to get burnt by Brandon Jennings who now has a head of steam off of the screen.
Here, again, both recognition and communication have gone awry. Dunn again finds himself in no man’s land as this Zach Randolph handoff serves as a pick. If Dunn becomes trapped under a screen (as he often does) he needs to communicate a full switch to Towns. Instead, both Dunn and Towns stay on Randolph leaving Conley wide open for a layup.
Recovery
ICE is not only difficult in slowing the ball handler but the “popping” screener must also be accounted for. In numerous games, the Wolves defense has been eaten by big men who can stretch out to the three-point line.
Brooklyn Nets (November 8th)
Brook Lopez and Justin Hamilton: 6 of 11 from three.
Charlotte Hornets (November 15th and December 3rd)
Frank Kaminsky: 6 of 14 from three in two games.
New York Knicks (November 30th and December 2nd)
Kristaps Porzingis: 5 of 13 from three in two games
Detroit Pistons (December 9th)
Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris: 6 of 9 from three
Golden State Warriors (December 11th)
Draymond Green: 5 of 8 from three
While all of those threes did not come out of the pick and roll, some did. Those possessions can be attributed to an ineffective close out on the popping big man. This could because ICE has the bigs reacting to the pick and roll in a way that feels unnatural. Most big men do not grow up having ICED pick and rolls.
More common, especially at a non-professional level (high school, AAU, and college) is “hedging” a screen, or simply switching. In both of those defenses, the big man does not have the responsibility of guarding the opposing big man if he pops. The inclination that Dieng and the other young bigs have almost been classically conditioned for is to be preoccupied with defending the lane.
As you can see here, Tyus Jones effectively ICEs the guard from using the screen but Dieng is slow to recover to Justin Hamilton. Dieng is then simply out of position while watching the ball handler. After the pass, there is no reason Dieng should not be sprinting to Hamilton who is little threat of penetrating off the dribble. When Hamilton catches the ball there are six seconds on the shot clock— if Hamilton does not get that shot off the possession dies for the Nets.
Trust
Dieng more so than any other player looks confused in pick and roll defense. Dieng simply does not seem to trust the process of the Wolves defense, often showing a hesitancy in committing to the play in fear that it already has or will break down.
In addition to not closing out on shooters, Dieng has shown an inability to stop guards in penetration following a screen. Here, Dieng and Rubio both fear Marc Gasol becoming open for yet another three-point shot on the pop. On this play, Rubio jumps up into the passing lane to Gasol. This should indicate to Dieng that he has become responsible for the defense of the baseline. Instead, Dieng stays in limbo.
Admittedly, Dieng has a difficult job in the pick and roll but he is doing that job terribly. Where Dieng places himself on this play he can neither recover to Gasol nor contest the wide open drive. Free two points.
A lack of trust in the Wolves defense is not limited to the two players directly involved in ICE. Maybe it is due to the sheer number of times the defense has broken down in pick and roll this season, but the other three defenders often look ready for the second shoe to drop.
On this play, the ICE execution is solid. Rubio and Towns recognize a switch. Rubio is all over Kristaps Porzingis to prevent the pop and Towns has denied the lane to the rim on Derrick Rose. The breakdown comes outside of the ICE. Aldrich unnecessarily leaves his man to contest the shot Towns already has contested, causing a negative chain of events to occur. LaVine has to drop all the way to the block to shield Aldrich’s man. It is then that Rose finds LaVine’s man who is wide open for the three. LaVine sprints out to contest and fouls Justin Holiday for the four-point play.
To ICE the pick and roll is a difficult defensive concept. Even the best defensive teams fail often in any pick and roll defense. The good news is that at least physically the Wolves have all of the defensive tools. Right now, implementing those tools is the crux of the Wolves problems.
There are flaws in both Towns and Dieng’s games defensively, but they both have better individual defensive tools than Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic ever did. Because of that, there is a hope that this defense will improve. Believe it or not, the Thibs Dust has already been sprinkled. From here, it is cohesiveness that will lead to success, not the waving of a magic wand. The future defensive efficiency for the Wolves will come from; recognition, communication, recovery, and trust.Mysterious glowing aurora over Saturn confounds scientists
A stunning light display over Saturn has stumped scientists who say it behaves unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system.
The blueish-green glow was found over the ringed planet's north polar region just like Earth's northern lights.
It was discovered by the infrared instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
The northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora and underlying atmosphere, as captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft
'We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere,' said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester.
'This aurora covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurora predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright aurora here is a fantastic surprise.'
Auroras are caused by charged particles streaming along the magnetic field lines of a planet into its atmosphere.
Particles from the sun cause Earth's auroras. Many, but not all, of the auroras at Jupiter and Saturn are caused by particles trapped within the magnetic environments of those planets.
A green aurora dances over the night side of the Earth as seen from the International Space Station in 2003. Earth, Jupiter and Saturn all have dazzling auroras
Jupiter's main auroral ring is caused by interactions in Jupiter's magnetic environment and remains constant in size. Saturn's main aurora is caused by the solar wind, and changes size dramatically as the wind varies. However, the newly observed aurora at Saturn doesn't fit into either category.
The new infrared aurora appears in a region hidden from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Cassini observed it when the spacecraft flew near Saturn's polar region.
In infrared light, the aurora sometimes fills the region from around 82 degrees north all the way over the pole. This new aurora is also constantly changing, even disappearing within a 45 minute-period.
'There is something special and unforeseen about this planet's magnetosphere and the way it interacts with the solar wind and the planet's atmosphere,' Cassini scientist Nick Achilleos from the University College London said.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.CALGARY — Conflict on the other side of the world is expected to drive up gasoline prices here in Canada.
Roger McKnight, an analyst with En-Pro International, said Friday that he sees pump prices rising by more than two cents in the Toronto area on Saturday to around $1.42 a litre. Wholesale prices are also rising in the western part of the country.
Canada-wide, the average pump price is currently at just under $1.36, according to price-tracking website Gasbuddy.com.
The coming increase has nothing to do with supply and demand in North America. Rather, McKnight said the culprits are traders on Wall Street who are nervously eyeing how sectarian tensions in Iraq could affect global oil supplies.
Al-Qaida-inspired militants captured two key cities in Iraq this week and are threatening to march on Baghdad.
The further south they get, it looks like the further north our prices go
“I get the impression that these traders are just watching these militants and seeing how far south they can go in Iraq because that’s where the oilfields are and the export terminals,” he said from Oshawa, Ont.
“So the further south they get, it looks like the further north our prices go.”
North America buys relatively little crude from Iraq, so any potential disruption to supplies would have more of an impact in Europe.
In fact, McKnight said things are looking pretty good in the Canadian and U.S. markets.
“The inventories in the U.S. are fine. The refineries are running pretty well … the demand is healthy, but not extreme. There’s no pipeline problems. So there’s no weather problems as yet,” said McKnight.
Everybody’s watching what’s happening 6,000 miles away
“Everything is just fine in North America. It’s just everybody’s watching what’s happening 6,000 miles away.”
Events in Iraq have an impact on the price of Brent crude, a global benchmark for oil that can travel around the world by sea. The main benchmark for inland North American crude, West Texas Intermediate, trades lower than Brent, but has recently been moving in tandem with it, McKnight said.
Oil prices are at 10-month highs, with WTI for July delivery hitting a high Friday of around US$107.68 a barrel and Brent rising |
to become their professors or advisers; it’s also that in many cases, they simply can’t. The academic opportunities just aren’t there; there has been a marked constriction of opportunity in the ivory towers. Furthermore, many students don’t see a life of academic specialization as the best way to employ their scientific talents. They recognize that specialization’s disadvantages go hand in hand with its advantages. They want to do something more, to bring science to the rest of America.
And America needs them.
Now, the critical step will be to ensure that such students aren’t punished for their unorthodox choices, but rather, that such choices open up a whole new field of opportunity to them. I don’t think there’s much worry about not having enough bench scientists; as already noted, the competition for those academic jobs is intense and there are far more young scientists out there than positions. But let’s make sure that we are also creating opportunities for this new generation of scientific innovators that Alberts highlights—if we channel their impulses in the right direction, the dividends will be enormous, not just for science but for all of our society.
Chris Mooney is contributing editor to Science Progress and author of several books, including The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. He and Kirshenbaum blog at “The Intersection.”
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Concord, New Hampshire—The chattering classes seem to have determined that New Hampshire voters think primarily as Northeasterners. Granite State voters are, we are told, regional automatons programmed to back candidates who prefer maple syrup and cheer for the New England Patriots.
By this calculus, much of the explanation for why Bernie Sanders is so far ahead in New Hampshire Democratic primary polls can be traced to the fact that he is from the neighboring state of Vermont.
But is it really true that New Hampshire voters prioritize proximity over the issues that Democratic and Republican candidates are highlighting and the records of these candidates?
Is it really just a matter of “geography.”
There is no question that, in several New Hampshire Republican primaries, New England–tied contenders have gotten a boost from their neighbors. In 2012, for instance, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won the state’s primary after narrowly losing to Rick Santorum in the first-caucus state of Iowa. Famously, in 1964, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., a former senator from Massachusetts who was serving in Saigon as US ambassador to Vietnam, beat Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as a write-in candidate. New Hampshire voters are not regional automatons who vote for every New England neighbor.
But four years before Romney won New Hampshire in 2012, he lost it to Arizona Senator John McCain in the state’s 2008 Republican primary. And members of the Bush family, who trace their political roots to Connecticut and who “summer” on the Maine coast, have lost New Hampshire to Arizonan McCain in 2000 and to Californian Ronald Reagan in 1980.
New Hampshire Democrats have certainly backed some Northeasterners. In 1988, for instance, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis topped a crowded primary field with 35 percent of the vote. And in 1992, former Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas topped another crowded Democratic field with 33 percent of the vote. But anyone who remembers 1992 will tell you that it was Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s stronger-than-expected second-place finish that opened the way for a “comeback-kid” run that ultimately secured the nomination.
New Hampshire Democrats have frequently dashed the hopes of candidates from neighboring states. In 1972, Maine Senator Edmund Muskie planned to launch his national campaign—as the party’s most recent vice-presidential nominee and a front-runner in the eyes of many analysts—with a big win in New Hampshire. He didn’t get it. After some stumbles of his own, and some dirty tricks by President Richard Nixon’s henchmen, Muskie’s margin narrowed. South Dakota Senator George McGovern closed that gap sufficiently so that, while Muskie lead, McGovern won bragging rights. Muskie never recovered, eventually suspending his campaign as McGovern parlayed his stronger-than-expected New Hampshire showing into more primary wins and the nomination. LIKE THIS? GET MORE OF OUR BEST REPORTING AND ANALYSIS
In 1980, Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy’s liberal primary challenge to President Jimmy Carter suffered a severe setback when New Hampshire Democratic voters chose Carter—a Georgian with low poll numbers—over a Democratic Party favorite from just across their state’s southern border.
In 2004, two New Englanders competed in New Hampshire: Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Vermont Governor Howard Dean. After losing the Iowa caucuses, Dean hoped to renew his prospects in New Hampshire, but the Vermont connection was only good for 26 percent of the vote. Kerry, who benefited from the fact that Boston media reaches a lot more New Hampshire voters than Vermont media, easily prevailed.
Indeed, it can be argued that New Hampshire’s reputation as a state that backs New Englanders is based on recent patterns of voters who have moved to New Hampshire from Massachusetts, who continue to read The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald (papers that regularly endorse in New Hampshire primaries), watch Boston television stations and often (though not always) back candidates from Massachusetts.
Candidates from other New England states, like Vermont’s Dean and Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman, have not enjoyed so consistent an advantage. As former New Hampshire state Representative and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Deborah “Arnie” Arnesen noted the other day: 9,000 New Hampshire residents commute to Vermont while 84,000 New Hampshire residents commute to Massachusetts. “Sorry,” says Arnesen, “Vermont’s influence on New Hampshire politics is nonexistent.”
If the polls are to be believed, Bernie Sanders could be the first Vermonter to win a New Hampshire Democratic primary in modern times. But if Hillary Clinton, who won the state in a 2008 upset over Illinois Senator Barack Obama, were to engineer another upset this coming Tuesday, then it might be seen as a case of one northeastern Democrat beating another.
Sanders, a Brooklyn-born transplant to Vermont, began his tenure in elective office as the mayor of Burlington. The senator still resides in that city, which is just across Lake Champlain from New York State. (As a candidate for positions in Vermont, Sanders has appeared often on upstate New York media outlets that reach the Green Mountain State.)
Clinton, who has a long history of campaigning in New Hampshire (for presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, for herself in 2008, and for other Democrats since then) is a former senator from New York state. She maintains a residence in Chappaqua, a community north of New York City.
Burlington is roughly 150 miles from the New Hampshire state capital city of Concord.
Chappaqua is roughly 235 miles from Concord.
It is certainly fair to note that Sanders lives 85 miles closer to Concord than does Clinton. And perhaps there are pundits who will find meaning in that distinction.
But the better bet is that there are distinctions between Sanders and Clinton matter more than regionalism.
New Hampshire Democrats take their primary seriously.
If Clinton upsets Sanders, it will be because her argument for herself as “a progressive who gets things done” has resonated with New Hampshire Democrats.
On the other hand, if Sanders prevails, it will be because New Hampshire Democrats are more ready for his “political revolution” than the pundits dare to imagine.Yesterday we reported on the announcement of Project Boundary, a new FPS for PlayStation VR from a Chinese developer. As is turns out, it’s far from the only PS VR title being developed in Asia.
At its Hong Kong press conference today, Sony Interactive Entertainment revealed a total of 13 new titles coming to the anticipated headset, all of which are in the works at Asian studios. The games were announced one after the other with little information on any of them, though a sizzle trailer that can be seen towards the end of the livestream did at least provide a very quick glimpse at a handful of them.
The first game announced Stifled from a studio in Singapore. Based on a few seconds of gameplay, the title carries a striking black and white art style and appears to be played from a first-person perspective. Following that, three games from Taiwanese developers were revealed: a god sim named O! My Gensis VR, a Mars exploration game named Unearthing Mars, and one that remains mysterious named The Occasional Encounter.
Korean developers were next, debuting a game that’s already out on Gear VR, Mortal Blitz VR, and another unrevealed title in The School: Swan Song. China has by far the biggest number of reveals, though. Ace Banana appears to be a colorful VR shooting game, Mixip could be some sort of space flight adventure, Pixel Gear looked like a cross between Minecraft and an FPS, and both Dying Reborn and Weeping Doll both look to be horror titles. Both Kill X VR and Phantom World were announced but remain unrevealed.
As announced yesterday, PlayStation VR will be launching in China on October 13th, and the conference confirmed that it will also come to other Asian territories on that date. It’s expected to have fewer games than other territories, though, with around 20 hitting between October and December compared to the 50 in US and Europe. It’s not yet been confirmed if the games announced today will be coming to other regions, but we certainly hope they do.
Tagged with: Dying Reborn, Mixip, O! My Genesis VR, Pixel Gear, Stifled, Unearthing Mars, Weeping Doll=>
Several colleagues asked me about the apparent defect on the maritime part of Sentinel-2 first image. I would like to reassure you, it is not a defect, only a directional effect.
Let's explain it :
- For each Sentinel-2 spectral band, 30 000 elementary detectors are necessary to obtain a field of view of 300km with a resolution of 10m. But the current technology does not allow to provide 30000 detectors in a row. What is used are 12 linear arrays of detectors, which are put together to cover the whole field of view. But as each linear array is surrounded by an edge, it is not possible to stitch the pieces together with no space between the linear arrays. It was decided to shift the 10 pieces within the focal plane, as in the drawing below. The odd chips are looking forward, and the even chips are looking backward, with angle differences that may reach 3 degrees for some bands.
On Sentinel-2A first image, we observe the see surface with the specular reflection of the sun on the sea surface (also called sunglint). Such a phenomenon tends to change quickly as a function of the viewing angle, as may be seen on the picture below. Bertrand Fougnie, at CNES, computed the amplitude of this effect as a function of the detector, for different wind speeds. It is provided on the plot below, on which you can see the line breaks between the odd and even detectors. The plot is provided for different wind speeds. When the wind is low, the sunglint makes a small spot with a large variation with angle, which increases the effect.
The "defect" we observe is therefore only linked to a difference of observation angle. This phenomenon is not at all visible above lands, because there, the directional effects are much lower except in some special cases (the "hot spot"), which should be avoided by Sentinel-2..
A few concerned users asked if that would prevent the use of data above ocean, but I do not think so. If one is able to remove the sunglint effect on the data, then one is able to account for the angle variations.One federal judge calls it a modern-day “shakedown.’’
A Minnesota attorney says it’s merely an effort to hunt down Internet pirates illegally downloading pornography.
The issue is “copyright trolling’’ — a practice in which lawyers threaten lawsuits to wring millions of dollars in settlements from people suspected of pirating videos online.
Now, defense attorneys have questioned whether a group of men with ties to Minnesota who are behind hundreds of such suits nationwide have used straw men as copyright holders when they asked judges to help them obtain the identities of Internet users.
A federal judge in Los Angeles, concerned about what he called a “possible fraud on the court,” intends to get to the bottom of the dispute at a hearing Monday afternoon. Attorney John L. Steele is among eight key figures ordered to appear before U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II to explain themselves or face sanctions that could include fines or jail.
Steele denies any wrongdoing. “If people sit back and let a fact-finder... hear evidence, these conspiracies always dissipate like fog,” he said in a recent interview.
But late Friday, his attorneys filed a motion challenging the judge’s authority to compel Steele and his associates from Minnesota and Illinois to appear in the California cases, which were handled by an associate in that state.
How the lawsuits arise
The cases arise from one of the latest forms of Internet piracy, in which people use file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent to download copyrighted movies. The computers or wireless routers involved can be identified by their “Internet protocol,” a numerical address, but the identities of the users are not clear.
The Star Tribune has identified more than 660 federal lawsuits filed by more than a dozen entities who have asked judges to help them identify thousands of computer users who may have illegally downloaded copyrighted videos.
Then lawyers send those users a settlement demand — generally ranging from $1,500 to $4,000 — warning that violations can result in penalties of up to $150,000 if they must go to court.
Steele, a 2006 University of Minnesota Law School graduate licensed in Illinois, has built a national reputation by specializing in such cases with his one-time partner and former classmate, Paul Hansmeier of Minneapolis.
“That was an area we thought we could make a big difference in because there weren’t too many types of people who were prosecuting these types of suits,” Hansmeier said.
Hansmeier said criticism of the litigation comes from copyright pirates and their attorneys who “spread conspiracy theories” because they lose in court.
Minnesotans listed
In June 2010, Steele formed Media Copyright Group in Minnesota with Hansmeier as its manager. Hansmeier’s brother, Peter, worked at the firm capturing Internet addresses of suspected copyright infringers. Several months later, the Steele Hansmeier law firm was formed in Minnesota and began filing lawsuits.
Allan Mooney, a Minnesotan who has brokered the sale of Internet-based businesses, said he introduced his friend Paul Hansmeier to some contacts in the porn industry. But he denied knowing that he was listed as the “sole organizer” of MCGIP LLC, a plaintiff in at least 20 lawsuits filed by Steele Hansmeier or contract attorneys.
Mooney also has been listed in court filings — with his name misspelled — as an agent for an entity called Guava LLC, which is registered in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies. Guava has been the plaintiff in 21 federal lawsuits since October, including six in Minnesota.
“That would be news to me,” Mooney said. “I’m not involved in any of that type of stuff. I’m more or less a personal trainer.”
Asked about Guava, Paul Hansmeier sent the Star Tribune notarized affidavits in which Mooney declares that he’s “a principal officer” of Guava and that his “standard practice” is to decline comment about the company if strangers call.
Mooney did not respond to efforts to verify that statement.
The name of another Minnesotan, Alan Cooper of Isle, appears as a representative of two West Indies entities that have filed nearly 300 lawsuits nationwide, including nine in Minnesota.
Cooper, a 39-year-old cabin caretaker from the Lake Mille Lacs area, also is named as president, treasurer, secretary and director of a Nevada company involved in at least two infringement suits. That company listed an address that has been linked to Steele in public records.
Cooper said he met Steele in 2006 when he agreed to take care of his 3,500-square-foot cabin on 125 acres in rural Aitkin County.
Cooper filed suit last month in Hennepin County against Steele and others, alleging that the documents bearing his signature are forgeries and that his name was used without his knowledge or consent.
In Florida, Steele sued Cooper and his attorney for libel, but dropped the suit last week and declined to comment on it.
Judges’ rulings vary
Presented with lawsuits in copyright trolling cases, some judges have compelled Internet service providers to turn over the identities of suspected pornography downloaders, while others have not.
Steele and Paul Hansmeier acknowledge that they’ve lost some cases, but say that they’ve won most of the time, including in Minnesota. They say their most significant victory came last August in a case filed in Washington, D.C.
In that case, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell refused motions by several major Internet service providers — including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon — to quash subpoenas seeking the identities of 1,058 subscribers. Howell wrote that a plaintiff is entitled to ask them to identify customers who might be illegally downloading movies. But because courts have split on the issue, she agreed to stay her order pending an appeal.
In an Illinois case, U.S. District Judge Harold Baker refused to issue subpoenas, saying the subscribers might not be the ones downloading.
“The ISPs include a number of universities, such as Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, and the University of Minnesota, as well as corporations and utility companies,” he wrote. “The infringer might be the subscriber, someone in the subscriber’s household, a visitor with her laptop, a neighbor, or someone parked on the street.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a brief in the case arguing that the suit should be dismissed and challenging 10 of 11 copyrights the plaintiff claimed were pirated.
Steele withdrew the suit, but declined to explain why.
Fraud on the courts?
Steele Hansmeier has since sold its practice to a Chicago firm called Prenda Law, headed by Paul Duffy.
Steele still works through Prenda Law at times. He declined to comment on the ownership of the entities he represents, saying that the lawsuits have resulted in death threats.
But at least two federal judges are demanding answers.
In Tampa, Fla., U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven dismissed “for attempted fraud on the Court” a case that had been brought by an adult film company. And she is a considering sanctions against Steele and others.
The judge’s ruling came after the film company’s attorney of record failed to appear at a November hearing. A “corporate representative” named Mark Lutz of Las Vegas, Nev., couldn’t answer basic questions and turned to a man in the gallery. It was Steele. He explained that he has worked on similar cases, but denied involvement in that case.
Lutz told the judge he makes $1,000 to appear as a corporate representative in infringement cases.
Seeking the mastermind
In Los Angeles, Wright has dismissed a number of the copyright cases and has ordered attorney Brett Gibbs of Prenda Law to explain who pulls the strings. Gibbs identified Steele and Hansmeier, and said Lutz was the CEO of the West Indies copyright holders.
Defense attorney Morgan Pietz challenged Gibbs’ assertions last week in a court filing, noting that Lutz had worked as a paralegal for Steele. “This ‘Lutz as mastermind’ story is simply not credible,” Pietz wrote.
Wright then ordered Cooper, Steele, Lutz, the Hansmeier brothers, Duffy and a Prenda Law paralegal from Minnesota to appear at Monday’s hearing to explain the ownership of the firms alleging copyright violations.
“If it is true that Alan Cooper’s identity was misappropriated and the underlying copyright assignments were improperly executed using his identity, then Plaintiff faces a few problems,” Wright wrote.Is there a difference between owning a file and owning a firearm? Thanks to the advent 3D printed guns, the line between files and weaponry is murky. The Australian province of New South Wales recently enacted a law banning the possession of files that could be used to print guns.
The Firearms and Weapons Prohibition Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 is an amendment to the Firearms Act 1996, with the purpose in part: “to create a new offence of possessing digital blueprints for the manufacture of firearms on 3D printers or electronic milling machines.” The law does include a few legal exemptions, including for "research purposes and public benefit" (so that police wouldn't get penalized if they printed one, say). Without successfully claiming those defenses, printing or milling a gun in New South Wales comes with a penalty of up to 14 years in prison.
This is a prohibition against both printing guns and on making gun parts through advanced electronic milling, where a machine follows a program to carve away parts of a metal block, leaving a useful gun part in its place. Defense Distributed, which made the first functional 3D printed gun, also has an electronic milling machine, designed for private citizens to make guns that cannot be traced by legal authorities. While the new law won’t stop people from making guns themselves, it does mean they’ll face legal consequences if they possess the files needed to do so.
Australia, which enacted strict gun regulation following a massacre in 1996, is deeply skeptical of 3D printed guns. In 2013, shortly after the first 3D printed gun was made, Australian police released a video warning that the 3D printed guns could explode, injuring their users. This latest law means Australia joins similarly strict Japan in trying to put Pandora’s gun back in the Makerbox.
[Via ComputerWorld]The South Sydney Rabbitohs have been dealt a massive blow on the eve of their clash with the Brisbane Broncos with halfback Adam Reynolds ruled out with a hip injury.
The injury has forced South Sydney coach Michael Maguire into a massive reshuffle of his side with John Sutton set to move to five-eighth from the back row and Cody Walker shifting to halfback.
George Burgess comes into the starting side at prop, pushing Kyle Turner back to the second row. Braidon Burns has also been replaced by Hymel Hunt on the wing. Rookie Cameron Murray is in line to make his NRL debut from the interchange bench.
The Broncos have been forced to make one change of their own with winger Jordan Kahu succumbing to a groin injury. He will be replaced by David Mead, with Jonus Pearson named on the bench.
Match Draw Widget
[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 8: Rabbitohs vs Broncos
South Sydney Rabbitohs
1 Alex Johnston
21 Hymel Hunt
3 Siosifa Talakai
4 Robert Jennings
5 Bryson Goodwin
11 John Sutton
6 Cody Walker
8 Thomas Burgess
9 Damien Cook
17 George Burgess
10 Kyle Turner
12 Angus Crichton
13 Sam Burgess (c)
Interchange
14 Robbie Farah
15 Jason Clark
16 Zane Musgrove
19 Cameron Murray
18 Robbie Rochow
20 Tyrell Fuimaono
Coach: Michael Maguire
Brisbane Broncos
1 Darius Boyd (c)
2 Corey Oates
3 James Roberts
4 Tautau Moga
17 David Mead
6 Anthony Milford
7 Kodi Nikorima
8 Korbin Sims
9 Andrew McCullough
10 Adam Blair
11 Sam Thaiday
12 Matt Gillett
13 Josh McGuire
Interchange
14 Alex Glenn
15 Joe Ofahengaue
16 Herman Ese'ese
21 Jonus Pearson
19 George Fai
20 Jamayne Isaako
Coach: Wayne BennettReflections on Reflections on Badges
There have been a bunch of posts from really smart people reflecting on badges over the past month, leading up to and following the DML Competition culmination and DML Conference. There is certainly a dose of skepticism across some of the posts (like here and here), mostly coming back to the question around motivation and rewards. In fact, Mitch Resnick held a session about his motivation-related issues with badges at the DML Conference, but unfortunately the room was so small, that most of us weren’t able to squeeze in, so we formed an Occupy Badges makeshift session to talk about badges ourselves.
After getting an update on Mitch’s session and catching up on some of the posts, the common concern is around introducing badges as extrinsic rewards into learning experiences where intrinsic motivations may be at play, and potentially disrupting a delicate balance of motivations or existing interest-driven learning. (It should be note that this is a generalization and there is more nuance to their claims - definitely worth a read).
I’ve been wanting to add some of my reflections on these reflections (get all meta) for awhile now and finally scheduled some time - a meeting for myself - to dive in so here it is:
On intrinsic vs extrinsic motivations:
There is a classic scenario referenced a lot: kid gets good grades in school because he wants to do well and then his grandparents start giving him money for every A. When the grandparents stop paying the kid later on, the kid suddenly isn’t motivated to get good grades anymore. It’s called ‘crowding out’ - the intrinsic motivations get crowded out by the extrinsic motivators. That’s the core of the argument against badges - that badges will be yet another extrinsic motivator that will squelch any existing intrinsic motivations.
This binary view of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is too simplistic. Dan Hickey, an assessment and motivation guru out of Indiana University, has a nice summary for those of us with less expertise on different theories of motivation and learning, and points out:
One of the things that has been overlooked in the debate is that situative theories reveal the value of rewards without resorting to simplistic behaviorist theories of reinforcing and punishing desired behaviors.
The 'crowding out’ concern is real (and should be considered with grades as well!) but too simplistic for learning and these complex social environments. We all agree on the issues, and we run the risk of doing nothing about them if we cling to overly simplistic interpretations of theory or research studies. It’s also worth noting that badges do not have to just be a carrot, but can be built as tools for formative assessment, empowerment, roles/identities, etc. This means we need to put some thought into the badge system design, but that’s exactly what the competition and other parallel work right now is focused on.
Don’t muck up interest-driven learning
There is another set of related concerns that go something like this: there is a lot of youth interest-driven learning already happening and its awesome because it is separate and pure and we aren’t mucking it up with adult-imposed rules or rankings, etc. Badges are just another top-down adult-driven system of rules that will just interfere with the learning.
There are some HUGE assumptions in here. The first is that all youth have opportunities for interest-driven learning and the second is that those that do understand that this is valuable and legitimate learning. I don’t think these are true. I don’t think most kids have opportunities to explore their own interests - instead are forced down the pathways we prescribe for them in school. And if they aren’t inspired by the topics or projects at school, then they are labeled as bad students and that’s not something kids can rise above very easily, or in most cases at all. Most don’t understand that there are other avenues. For those kids that are lucky enough to have some opportunities to explore interest-based stuff, usually in afterschool programs, I doubt that many understand that this learning at all, and that its legitimate and important and could lead to a lot of opportunities for them. They aren’t as empowered by these experiences as they could and should be. These are the gaps that this badge work is looking to fill - to recognize learning and help learners use it for real results like jobs or credits, as well as to help learners find other learning opportunities.
There are some smaller assumptions like badges are only for youth, which they aren’t and that badges are only created and issued top-down and they don’t have to be. But the big assumptions are the dangerous ones.
Badges as a silver bullet:
There were some concerns around badges being positioned or thought of as THE solution. It might have seemed that way at the DML Conference because there was so much attention paid to them. But badges are not THE solution. In fact, badges themselves are not even A solution, but part of a toolkit and common approach of redefining learning to be something that occurs beyond classroom, beyond age 22, etc., recognizing and legitimizing more types of learning and helping the learner have more choice and control about pathways and interests. Badges are the representation, the gateway, the conversation starter, but its really about this new way of thinking and approaching learning that is the powerful part.
I’ve also heard things like “why are you focusing on only one approach” or “one form of assessment”. It’s worth reiterating that badge itself only represents the learning, assessment, experiences and evidence behind it. There aren’t any constraints on the learning or the assessment behind the badge - and that’s by design at this point. If you stop and look at the badge systems people are developing, you will see that there is a lot of thought going into how to utilize badges for specific learning experiences and how to be innovative about assessment, etc. Badges don’t limit this at all.
Another flavor of the silver bullet concern is that we are moving too fast and have one standard too soon. But again, the standardization is only at the level of what information is included with the badge - there are no constraints on the learning and assessment part, at least not from Mozilla or the badges themselves. If there is still concern about the standardization at the level of the badge - I’m not sure how we would really truly give this a solid try if we weren’t working together. A bunch of siloed systems are not going to help empower the learner or help them create their own pathways. We need some way for the badges to work together - for the learner - and be tapped into a larger ecosystem of opportunity and access. That’s what the Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure is supporting.
A few last small(ish) reflections:
Education vs Learning: I think its worth making a distinction between 'learning’ and 'education’. Education is a set of policies, content, structures and expectations that we define and force youth through. That sounds negative and its not meant to be, education systems are important for many reasons. But learning is so much more than that - it’s any experience where people learn something and that can happen inside a classroom but can also happen in a seemingly limitless amount of ways outside of classroom, and across lifetimes. It’s all that other learning that isn’t currently consistently recognized or valued. That’s where badges can fit in, or at least that’s the current hypothesis we are working under. That’s not to say that badges don’t or won’t have some value in formal education, but there are some bigger questions to think through there - it won’t work if we just overlay badges on the existing system or trying to force the existing system on top of badges.
Badges are not a Mozilla solution - this experiment, and its success, is not dependent solely on Mozilla. We are building the infrastructure to support the badges, but its on everyone else - the learning providers - involved. It’s on them to continue to offer awesome learning experiences, be innovative and authentic about assessment, design badges that amplify that learning and empower learners, etc. But again, if you look at the types of badge systems proposed for the competition, this is exactly what people are doing.
More to come I’m sure.
-E
More reading:
Mimi Ito: Reflections on DML2012 and Visions of Educational Change
Alex Halavais Badges: The Skeptical Evangelist
David Theo Goldberg: Badges for Learning: Threading the Needle Between Skepticism and Evangelism
Dan Hickey Open Badges and the Future of Assessment
Audrey Watters (who I finally met in person at DML!) Thinking (Strategically) About Badges
Cathy Davidson Can Badging Be the Zipcar of Testing and Assessment?
Philipp Schmidt Let’s Make Badges Not StinkYesterday I got the most wonderful delivery :) My secret santa - I don't know your name, sorry - sent me some awesome stuff.
I received 3 skeins of LionBrand Hometown USA yarn in Long Beach Lime! I really love the color, it's gonna make a really nice warm scarf for next winter.
There were also 2 skeins of Moonstone by Premiere, in Bacchus colorway which is a lovely purple and green. I've never used anything quite so fancy, I will have fun figuring out what to make with it.
Last but not least, my secret santa sent me an Addi Turbo Lace circular needle, which is wonderful because I don't have too many circulars.
Thank you so much for all the wonderful goodies, I'm thrilled with them all!Even positive people have their down days. There are times when everything seems to be going alright, but you don’t feel your normal level of joy. Something might be sitting in the back of your mind: fear, worries, responsibility, and etc. Therefore, you need to develop a habit of finding simple ways that will cheer you up.
I used to be a very negative person, but this year I have transformed my mindset. However, It’s important to understand that positive thinking takes a lot of hard work and upkeep to not fall back into the trap of your old negative thinking habits. If today is one of those “days” doesn’t worry, you can always cheer yourself up even a tiny bit. Remember, switching to thinking positively doesn’t happen overnight (for most people), everything in life takes practice.
Here are my recommendations how to cheer yourself up
1. Watch a funny movie. My favorites are The Hangover, Bridesmaids and Mr. Bean on holiday. This one is my personal favorite!
2. Read a self-help book. This method is very effective because it will make you reevaluate your current thinking. If you feel stressful, I recommend you to read “Inner Game of Stress by Timothy Gallwey.”
3. Treat yourself with a delicious meal. Delicious meal doesn’t mean unhealthy options. You can make banana ice cream with almond milk and dates. Yum!
4. Write a gratitude list. I know how lazy you might feel when you are not in the best mood but once you push through, and jot something down you will start to feel better.
5. Paint. I highly recommend you to get out some paint and start painting whatever comes to mind; it makes me feel so calm and relaxed.
6. Go outside. Spend time with nature. The feeling of connecting with nature is indescribable. Go for a walk!
7. Meditate. So many people are making it too complicated. Sit in a quiet room, close your eyes, and pay attention to your breathing. Keep everything simple!
Have a great day!
Follow me on BLOGLOVIN’, TWITTER, FACEBOOK, TUMBLR, GOOGLE +In recent years the future of Canada's public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has been in doubt. The current Conservative government is no fan of the CBC and many times since they took power in 2006 they implied that the country would be better off without the CBC. They believe it has a left-wing bias that naturally slants their coverage against the right-wing Conservative movement. Recently, it's been suggested that the CBC switch to a purely online format ala Netflix as a means of securing its survival. How do such present concerns reflect on the origins of Canada's public radio?
It seems we have a peculiar predilection for radio here on Clio's Current, as we have discussed it in full or in part many more times than we would have guessed. Radio, as we have explained before, is a fascinating communication medium that greatly affected the 20th century. In Canada, it had immediate and long-lasting effects on the politics of the 1920s and 30s. Perhaps it's only natural that we would in time address the foundations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Radio first came to Canada at the turn of the century. In 1901, the Department of Marine and Fisheries built two Marconi wireless stations on the northern approaches of the Strait of Belle Isle, that separates the island of Newfoundland from the Labrador peninsula. One was on Belle Isle itself, the other on the Labrador coast and linked to Montreal by telegraph. In December, a station at Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland, was where Marconi sent the first wireless message across the Atlantic to Cornwall, England. Since the Department of Marine and Fisheries had traditionally been in control of placing telegraph cables and had a fisheries-signals department, it was the licensing body for radio broadcasting in Canada. For a time from the First World War it was under the control of the Department of the Naval Service, but in 1922 it was returned to the Department of Marine and Fisheries.
By the late 1920s, commercial and amateur radio was expanding across the nation. The Liberal government of Mackenzie King was increasingly worried about the Americanization of Canadian radio. Canada had already seen a similar outcome during the spread of the film industry and had experienced the heavy hand of American culture in its production. Movies had become for all intents and purposes an American cultural vehicle as famous stars like Mary Pickford were easily drawn south of the border despite their Canadian birth. The rise of a Canadian nationalism in English-Canada after the First World War coincided with the spread |
7.10.82) Previously Unreleased
3. Love Change (live Detroit 7.10.82) Previously Unreleased
4. What Is The Reason (live Detroit 7.10.82) Previously Unreleased
5. America (live Detroit 7.10.82) Previously Unreleased
6. Revolting Cocks: (Let’s Get) Physical (Banned original mix) (1989) Previously Unreleased
7. Revolting Cocks: We Shall Cleanse The World (Razormaid Mix) (1986) – Razormaid Records LP RM-!10
8. Revolting Cocks: Fish In Cold Water (1985) Previously Unreleased
9. Ministry: Self Annoyed (1987) Previously Unreleased
10. Pailhead: Don’t Stand In Line (remix 1989) – Sounds Blasts! EP2
11. 1000 Homo DJs: Supernaut (Trent vocal) (1990) – TVT Records CD TVT 7212-2
12. 1000 Homo DJs: Supernaut (dub mix) (1990) – Previously Unreleased
13. Revolting Cocks: Get Down (extended mix / cd version) (1990)
Bonus Live LP – Chicago 1982
1. Same Old Madness
2. Revenge
3. Effegy
4. Primental
5. I’m Falling
6. Overkill
Cleopatra Records and Lethal Amounts presents an exhibit featuring the WAX TRAX! RECORDS archives of Brian Shanley. Documenting the progression of musical prodigy and revolutionary American industrial pioneer Al Jourgensen.
An unearthed selection of photographs and archival printed matter including album art/layout, concept art, promo material and more dating from 1980-1990, featuring MINISTRY, REVOLTING COCKS, 1000 HOMO DJS, PTP, PAILHEAD, SPECIAL AFFECT, AND MORE.
(Photographs available for purchase)
Opening reception Friday April 17th at 8pm
Special guests and surprises to be announced.
1226 W. 7th St. Los Angeles CA. 90017
Comments
commentsA 16-year-old girl with severe depression associated with an eating disorder is to receive up to 12 sessions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in what a court heard will be life-saving treatment for her.
High Court president Mr Justice Peter Kelly ordered the therapy for the girl who, he was told, is a high achiever whose depressive illness has become so severe that she wants to die and attempts to injure herself including by running at walls and kneeing herself in the head.
The judge was satisfied it was a rare case in which ECT was “not only warranted but demanded” because all other medication, support and psychotherapy have not succeeded in improving her condition which is such that she is now “almost mute”.
He was satisfied, in granting the orders sought by the HSE, that the advantages of ECT far outweigh its disadvantages.
He was told its success rates in dealing with severe depression were between 50 and 70 per cent and that side effects appeared to be limited to some memory loss for the patient. It is carried out under anaesthetic but the risks of a reaction to this from the girl were no greater than in most cases, the court heard.
The judge also took into account that the College of Psychiatry in Ireland, and its equivalent in the UK, while aware of some public concern about ECT, had said it was highly effective.
A psychiatrist treating the girl said she first presented with anorexia nervosa with a body weight of just 47kgs, and a body mass index (BMI) of 15. She was eating about 800 calories a day, far below the normal requirement and also exercising, she said, to reduce her weight.
She underwent treatment at a specialist facility here and at a paediatric hospital eventually having to be fed with a tube through her nose.
Suicidal thoughts
By this stage she was had developed significant suicidal thoughts and just over a year ago, her parents and the HSE decided to transfer her to a specialist facility in the UK dealing in eating disorders. She agreed to the transfer.
The psychiatrist said while her weight stabilised in the UK under nasal feeding, her depressive state worsened to the point where she said she did not want to live and displayed distress, self loathing and guilt.
When the psychiatrist spoke to her, she responded with nods and only after a long delay.
Episodes of self harm included pulling her hair out, digging her nails into her skin and running at the nearest wall in an attempt to bang her head and kill herself. She had sustained bruising to her head from this and a bald patch has appeared on her head, the psychiatrist said.
The doctor’s view, and that of her treating psychiatrist in the UK, was that ECT was now the only option for her.
It would be carried out in a specialist ECT facility in the UK midlands by a psychiatrist with 25 years experience in this area. ECT treatment for children is rare with this facility using it on only about one child per year.
The doctor asked the court to review the treatment after eight to 10 sessions.
The court heard the child’s court-appointed guardian, as well as her parents, supported the treatment.
Mr Justice Kelly, in making the orders directing the treatment, said the case could come back before him on June 10th.
In the meantime, an application will have to be made to the UK courts to get approval of the Irish court ruling."DXB" redirects here. For the New Zealand locomotive operated by KiwiRail, see New Zealand DX class locomotive
For the other international airport serving Dubai, see Al Maktoum International Airport
international airport in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Dubai International Airport (IATA: DXB, ICAO: OMDB) (Arabic: مطار دبي الدولي) is the primary international airport serving Dubai, United Arab Emirates and is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.[4] It is also the third-busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic,[5] the sixth-busiest cargo airport in world,[6] the busiest airport for Airbus A380 and Boeing 777 movements,[7] and the airport with the highest average number of passengers per flight.[8] In 2017, DXB handled 88 million passengers, 2.65 million tonnes of cargo and registered 409,493 aircraft movements.[9]
Dubai International is situated in the Al Garhoud district, 2.5 nautical miles (4.6 km; 2.9 mi) east[2] of Dubai and spread over an area of 3,100 acres (1,250 ha) of land.[10] Terminal 3 is the second-largest building in the world by floor space and the largest airport terminal in the world.[11]
The airport is operated by the Dubai Airports Company and is the home base of Dubai's international airlines, Emirates and flydubai. The Emirates hub is the largest airline hub in the Middle East; Emirates handles 51% of all passenger traffic and accounts for approximately 42% of all aircraft movements at the airport.[12][13] Dubai Airport is also the base for low-cost carrier flydubai which handles 13% of passenger traffic and 25% of aircraft movements at DXB.[14] The airport has a total capacity of 90 million passengers annually. As of January 2016, there are over 7,700 weekly flights operated by 140 airlines to over 270 destinations across all inhabited continents.[15]
Dubai International is an important contributor to the Dubai economy, as it employs approximately 90,000 people, indirectly supports over 400,000 jobs and contributes over US$26.7 billion to the economy, which represents around 27 per cent of Dubai's GDP and 21% of the employment in Dubai.[16] It is predicted that by 2020, the economic contribution of Dubai's aviation sector will rise to 37.5% of the city's GDP and by 2030, the economic impact of aviation is projected to grow to $88.1 billion and support 1.95 million jobs in Dubai or 44.7% of the GDP and 35.1% of the total employment.[1][17]
History [ edit ]
The history of civil aviation in Dubai started in July 1937 when an air agreement was signed for a flying boat base for the aircraft of Imperial Airways with rental of the base at about 440 rupees per month—this included the guards' wages.[citation needed] The Empire Flying Boats also started operating once a week flying east to Karachi and west to Southampton, England. By February 1938, there were four flying boats a week.[citation needed]
In the 1940s, flying from Dubai was by flying boats operated by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), operating the Horseshoe route from Southern Africa via the Persian Gulf to Sydney.[18]
Construction [ edit ]
The airports' fire station and control tower seen from landside, constructed in early 1959
Construction of the airport was ordered by the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, in 1959. It officially opened in 1960 with its first airfield, at which time it was able to handle aircraft the size of a Douglas DC-3 on a 1,800-metre-long (5,900 ft) runway made of compacted sand.[19] Three turning-areas, an apron and small terminal completed the airport that was constructed by Costain.[20]
The first jet aircraft to land on the new runway at Dubai Airport in 1965 was a Comet from Middle East Airlines
In May 1963, construction of a 9,200-foot (2,800 m) asphalt runway started. This new runway, alongside the original sand runway and taxiway opened in May 1965, together with several new extensions were added to the Terminal Building, hangars erected, Airport and Navigational aids were installed. The installation of the lighting system continued after official opening and was completed in August of that year. During the second half of the 1960s several extensions, equipment upgrades like a VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) and an instrument landing system (ILS) as well as new buildings were constructed. By 1969, the airport was served by 9 airlines serving some 20 destinations.[21]
Operations and statistics Passenger movements 2003 18,062,344 2010 47,180,628 2004 21,711,883 2011 50,977,960 2005 23,607,507 2012 57,684,550 2006 28,788,726 2013 66,431,533 2007 34,340,000 2014 70,475,636 2008 37,441,440 2015 78,014,841 2009 40,901,752 2016 83,654,250 Airfreight movements in tonnes 2003 928,758 2010 2,270,498 2004 1,111,647 2011 2,199,750 2005 1,333,014 2012 2,279,624 2006 1,410,963 2013 2,435,567 2007 1,668,505 2014 2,367,574 2008 1,824,991 2015 2,506,092 2009 1,927,520 2016 2,592,454 Aircraft movements 2003 148,334 2010 292,662 2004 168,511 2011 326,317 2005 195,820 2012 344,245 2006 217,165 2013 369,953 2007 260,530 2014 357,339 2008 N/A 2015 406,625 2009 N/A 2016 418,220 Capacity Passenger (current) 83,000,000 (ultimate) 90,000,000 Cargo (current) 2.5m tonnes Cargo (ultimate) 2.5m tonnes Apron (current) 173 Number of destinations (air) 240 Number of airlines International 140+
The inauguration was on 15 May 1966 and was marked by the visits of the first big jets of Middle East Airlines and Kuwait Airways Comets.[22]
The advent of wide body aircraft required further airport development in the 1970s, which had already been foreseen by the Ruler of Dubai, and plans for a new Terminal, runways, and taxiways capable of coping with international flights were drawn up. The construction of a new terminal building consisting of a three-storey building 110 m (360 ft) long and included an enclosed floor area of 13,400 m2 (144,000 sq ft). A new 28 m (92 ft) control tower was also constructed.[23]
Expansion continued in the early 1970s including ILS Category II equipment, lengthening existing runway to 12,500 ft (3,810 m), installation of a non-directional beacon (NDB), diesel generators, taxiways, etc. This work made handling the Boeing 747 and Concorde possible. Several runway and apron extensions were carried out through the decade to meet growing demand.[24]
1971 saw the new precision category 2 Approach and Runway Lighting System being commissioned. The construction of the Airport Fire Station and the installation of the generators were completed in December of that year and was fully operational in March 1972. The ruler also commissioned and inaugurated the Long-range Surveillance System on 19 June 1973.[25]
With the expansion of the Airport Fire Services it was necessary to find more suitable accommodation and a hangar style building was made available to them at the end of 1976. This was located midway between the runway ends to facilitate efficient operations. A new building was also constructed to house the Airport Maintenance Engineer, Electronics Engineering section and Stores unit.
Expansion of the Airport Restaurant and Transit Lounge including the refurbishing of the upper level and the provision of a new kitchen was completed in December 1978.
The next phase of development was the second runway, which was completed three months ahead of schedule and opened in April 1984. This runway, located 360 m (1,180 ft) north of the existing runway and parallel to it and is equipped with the latest meteorological, airfield lighting and instrument landing systems to give the airport a Category II classification.
Also several extensions and upgrades of terminal facilities and supporting systems were carried out. On 23 December 1980 the airport became an ordinary member of the Airports Council International (ACI).
During the 1980s, Dubai was a stopping point for airlines such as Air India, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines and others travelling between Asia and Europe that needed a refuelling point in the Persian Gulf. This use was later made redundant with the availability of Russian airspace due to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the advent of longer-range aircraft introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s such as the Airbus A340, the Boeing 747-400 and the Boeing 777 series aircraft, which had the range to fly between Europe and Southeast Asia nonstop.[26]
Expansion [ edit ]
Azerbaijan Airlines Boeing 707-300 parked at a remote stand at Dubai International Airport in 1995.
The opening of Terminal 2 in 1998 saw the first step of phase 1 of the new development master plan launched in 1997. As the second stage, Concourse 1 opened in April 2000 under the name of Sheikh Rashid Terminal. The concourse is 0.8 km (0.50 mi) in length and connects to the check-in area by a 0.3 km (0.19 mi) underground tunnel containing moving walkways (conveyor belt/travelators). It also contains a hotel, business centre, health club, exchanges, dining and entertainment facilities, internet services, medical centre, post office and a prayer room. The next step was the reconfiguration of the runways, already part of phase 2, and aprons and taxiways were expanded and strengthened in 2003–2004. In addition, the Dubai Flower Centre opened in 2005 as part of the development. The airport saw the need for this as the city is a hub for import and export of flowers and the airport required a specialist facility since flowers need special conditions.[27][28]
Construction of Terminal 3 began in 2004 as the next stage of phase 2 of the development, with an estimated cost of around $4.55 billion. Completion was originally planned for 2006, but was delayed by two years.[29]
On 30 May 2008, a topping out ceremony was conducted. The terminal became operational on 14 October 2008, with Emirates Airline (EK2926) from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, being the first flight to arrive at the new terminal and EK843 to Doha, Qatar being the first departing flight. The terminal increased the airport's maximum passenger capacity annually by 47 million, bringing the total annual capacity up to 75 million passengers.[30]
On 29 October 2010, the airport marked its 50th anniversary. The airport has seen over 402 million passengers at an average annual growth rate of 15.5% and handled over 3.87 million aircraft at an average annual growth rate of 12.4%.[31]
With the arrival of the Airbus A380, the airport made modifications costing $230 million. These included the building of 29 gates capable of handling the large aircraft, five of which are in Terminal 3 and two are in Terminal 1. Other important projects at the airport include the next stage of the phase 2 development, which includes the construction of Concourse 3. This will be a smaller version of Concourse 2, which is connected to Terminal 3.
Also as part of the expansion, the airport is now able to handle at least 75 million (an increase of 19 million) passengers per annum with the opening of Concourse 3, which is part of Terminal 3. However, recent communications predict a further increase to 80 million passengers with additional reassessments of existing capacities. In 2009, Terminal 2 expanded its facilities to handle 5 million (an increase of 2 million) passengers annually, taking the airport's total capacity to 62 million passengers. The Department of Civil Aviation has said that Terminal 2 will be continuously upgraded and expanded to bring the total capacity of the airport from the initial 75 million passengers to 80 million passenger capacity by 2012.[32]
The Cargo Mega Terminal, which will have the capacity to handle 3 million tonnes of cargo a year, is a major development; it is going to be built in the long term. Completion of the Mega terminal will be no later than 2018. Terminal 2 will be completely redeveloped to match the status of the other two terminals. With all of these projects completed by 2013, the airport expects to be able of handling at least 75–80 million passengers and over 5 million tonnes of cargo.
Aircraft parked at concourse C. Concourse C has a capacity of 33 million passengers
The airport's landside facilities were modified to allow construction of two stations for the Red Line of Dubai Metro. One station was built at Terminal 1 and the other at Terminal 3. The line began service on 9 September 2009, and opened in phases over the next year.[33] The second Metro line, the Green Line, runs near the Airport Free Zone and has served the airport's north-eastern area with the Terminal 2 starting in September 2011.[34]
The proposed 52 km (32 mi) Purple Line will link Dubai International Airport and Al Maktoum International Airport, which is currently being built at Jebel Ali.[35]
With phase 2 of DXB's expansion plan complete, the airport now has three terminals and three concourses, two cargo mega terminals, an airport free zone,[36] an expo centre with three large exhibition halls, a major aircraft maintenance hub and a flower centre to handle perishable goods.[32] A phase 3 which has been included in the master-plan involves the construction of a new Concourse 4.
The airport revealed its future plans in May 2011, which involve construction of a new Concourse D for all airlines currently operating from concourse C. Concourse D is expected to bring the total capacity of the airport to over 90 million passengers and will open in early 2016. The plan also involves Emirates solely operating from Concourse C along with Concourse A and B.[37]
In September 2012, Dubai Airports changed the names of concourses to make it easier for passengers to navigate the airport. Concourse 1, in which over 100 international airlines operate, became Concourse C. Concourse 2 became Concourse B and Concourse 3 became Concourse A. The gates in Terminal 2 were changed and are now numbered F1 to F6. The remaining alpha-numeric sequences are being reserved for future airport facilities that are part of the Dubai Airports' $7.8 billion expansion programme, including Concourse D.[38]
Summary of Dubai International Airport Masterplan Phase Year Description Phase 1[39] 1997 Initial capacity of 11 million passengers per annum. $540 million phase 1 launched.[40] 1998 Terminal 2 inaugurated on 1 May 1998, to alleviate congestion from Terminal 1, with a capacity of 2.5 million passengers annually.[41] 2000 Sheikh Rashid Terminal (Concourse C) – reopened 15 April 2000. Capable of handling 22 million passengers per annum.[42] Phase 2[27] 2002 $4.5 bn ($545 m for the civils on T3 and concourse projects) launched. 2003 Taxiways were strengthened. In addition, work on other taxiways in the area was expanded in order to complete the work associated with the newly commissioned second runway.[43] 2005 Construction of Dubai Flower Centre completed.[44] 2005 US$225 million VIP Pavilion for the Dubai Royal Wing opens in July.[45] 2008 Capable of handling 60 million passengers per annum with the opening of Terminal 3 – Concourse B[46] 2012 Extensions to Terminal 2 are completed – new check-in hall, departure area, and extensions to the terminal building. 2013 New Concourse A constructed, enabling the airport to have a capacity of 80 million passengers.[32] 2016 Concourse D will be completed with a capacity of 15 million passengers. All airlines currently operating from concourse C will move to D. General Expansion 2004–2008 Includes construction of Emirates Flight Catering Centre, Emirates Engineering Facility. 2006 Opening of Emirates Engineering Facility – largest aircraft hangars in the world.[47] 2007 Opening of Emirates Flight Catering Centre, capable of producing 115,000 meals per day.[48] 2008 New Executive Flights Centre facility launched.[49] 2014 Runway refurbishment and upgrades after an 80-day project which ran from 1 May to 20 July 2014. During this period, DXB operated with one single runway. New LED lighting replaced the old tungsten runway lights and new taxiways were constructed enabling an increase in runway capacity.[50] 2015 Terminal 2 capacity increased to 10 million after expansion completed.[51]
Dubai's government announced the construction of a new airport in Jebel Ali, named Dubai World Central – Al Maktoum International Airport. It is expected to be the second-largest airport in the world by physical size, though not by passenger metrics. It opened 27 June 2010;[52] however, construction did not finish until 2017. The airport is expected to be able to accommodate up to 160 million passengers.[53] There has been an official plan to build the Dubai Metro Purple Line to connect Al Maktoum International Airport to Dubai International Airport; construction was set to begin in 2012. Since then, there have been rumours that the Purple Line is being postponed or even cancelled.[54] Another news report states that the Maktoum Airport expansion will placed on hold[55] [56] Concourse D opened on 24 February 2016 for all international airlines and moved out of the Terminal 1. Emirates now operates from Concourse A, Terminal 3 and Terminal 1.
Growth in traffic at Dubai International Airport[57][58] Airlines 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 Passenger movements 4.347 million 6.299 million 9.732 million 15.973 million 28.788 million 47.181 million 70.476 million Airfreight movements (tonnes) 144,282 243,092 431,777 764,193 1.410 million 2.19 million 2.37 million City links 36 54 110 170 195 210 240 Weekly scheduled flights N/A N/A 2,350 2,850 4,550 6,100 7,500 Airlines N/A N/A 80 102 113 135 140
On 20 December 2018 the airport celebrated its one billion passenger.[59]
In February 2019, Emirates signed a deal with Airbus for 40 A330-900s and 30 A350-900s, while reducing its A380 order;[60] 14 A380s remained to be delivered, after which Airbus will cease production of the A380.[61]
Air traffic [ edit ]
Main airlines based at DXB [ edit ]
Emirates operations at Dubai International
Emirates Airline is the largest airline operating at the airport, with an all-wide-body fleet of over 200 Airbus and Boeing aircraft based at Dubai, providing scheduled services to the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia and New Zealand. It operates out of Terminal 3, Concourses A, B and C. [62]
is the largest airline operating at the airport, with an all-wide-body fleet of over 200 Airbus and Boeing aircraft based at Dubai, providing scheduled services to the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia and New Zealand. It operates out of Terminal 3, Concourses A, B and C. Emirates SkyCargo, a subsidiary of Emirates, operates scheduled all-cargo services between Dubai and the rest of the world. [63]
, a subsidiary of Emirates, operates scheduled all-cargo services between Dubai and the rest of the world. Flydubai, a low-cost airline planning to operate over 100 aircraft on scheduled passenger services to and from Dubai, to the Middle East, Africa, Europe and South Asia. It operates from Terminal 2.[64]
Recreational flying to Dubai is catered for by the Dubai Aviation Club, which undertakes flying training for private pilots and provides facilities for private owners.[65]
The Government of Dubai provides short and long range search and rescue services, police support, medical evacuation and general purpose flights for the airport and all VIP flights to the airport.[66]
Statistics [ edit ]
See source Wikidata query.
Infrastructure [ edit ]
Airport Layout
Aircraft parked at remote stands at DXB
Dubai International Airport was conceptualised to function as Dubai's primary airport and the region's busiest for the foreseeable future without the need for relocation or the building of another airport when passenger figures increased. The area was chosen near to Dubai, to attract passengers from the city of Dubai, rather than travel to the busier Sharjah International Airport. The planned location originally was Jebel Ali.[74]
The original master plan for the existing airport initially involved a dual-terminal and one runway configuration over two phases with provisions for another two passenger terminals in the near future. Phase 1 included the construction for the first passenger terminal, the first runway, 70 aircraft parking bays, support facilities and structures, including a large maintenance hangar, the first fire station, workshops and administrative offices, an airfreight complex, two cargo agents' buildings, in-flight catering kitchens and a 87 m (285 ft) control tower. Construction for the second phase would commence immediately after the completion of Phase 1 and include the second runway, 50 new aircraft parking bays in addition to the existing 70 bays, a second fire station and a third cargo agent building.[75]
The third phase included construction of a new terminal (now the parts of Terminal 1's main building and Concourse C) and an additional 60 parking bays, as well as new aircraft maintenance facility. Then, in the early 2000s (decade) a new master plan was introduced which began the development of the current concourses and terminal infrastructure.[76]
Paul Griffiths (Dubai Airports' CEO) in his interview to Vision magazine, cited plans to build infrastructure to support the expansion of Emirates and budget airline flydubai, and ascend the ranks of global aviation hubs.[77]
Control tower [ edit ]
The 87-metre-tall (285 ft) airport traffic control tower (ATCT) was constructed as part of phase two of the then[clarification needed]-development plan.[78]
Terminals [ edit ]
Dubai International Airport has three terminals. Terminal 1 has one concourse (concourse D), Terminal 2 is set apart from the other two main buildings and Terminal 3 is divided into Concourse A, B, and C. The cargo terminal is capable of handling 3 million tonnes of cargo annually and a general aviation terminal (GAT) is close by.[27]
Aircraft parked at Concourse C before most of Emirates' operations moved to Concourse B. Emirates took over operations of concourse C in 2016 as all airlines operating from concourse C moved to concourse D.
Passenger terminals [ edit ]
Dubai Airport has three passenger terminals. Terminals 1 and 3 are directly connected with a common transit area, with airside passengers being able to move freely between the terminals without going through immigration, while Terminal 2 is on the opposite side of the airport. For transiting passengers, a shuttle service runs between the terminals, with a journey time of around 20 minutes from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 and 30 minutes to Terminal 3. Passengers in Terminal 3 who need to transfer between concourse A and the rest of the Terminal have to travel via an automated people mover. Also after early 2016 when the construction of Concourse D was done, there is now an automated people mover between concourse D and Terminal 1.[79]
Situated beside Terminal 2 is the Executive Flights Terminal, which has its own check-in facilities for premium passengers and where transportation to aircraft in any of the other terminals is by personal buggy.
The three passenger terminals have a total handling capacity of around 80 million passengers a year.
Terminals 1 and 3 cater to international passengers, whilst Terminal 2 is for budget passengers and passengers flying to the subcontinent and Persian Gulf region; Terminals 1 and 3 handle 85% of the passenger traffic and the Executive Flights terminal is for the higher-end travellers and important guests.
Terminal 1 [ edit ]
Terminal 1 has a capacity of 15 million passengers. It is used by over 100 airlines and is connected to Concourse D by an automated people mover. It is spread over an area of 520,000 m2 (5,600,000 sq ft) and offers 221 check-in counters.
The Terminal was originally built to handle 18 million passengers; however, with extreme congestion at the terminal, the airport was forced to expand the terminal to accommodate with the opening of 28 remote gates. Over the years, more mobile gates were added to the airport bringing the total as of 2010 to 28.
In 2013, Dubai Airports announced a major renovation for Terminal 1 and Concourse C. The renovations include upgraded baggage systems, replacement of check-in desks and a more spacious departure hall. Arrivals will also see improvements to help reduce waiting times. The renovation was completed by the middle of 2015.[80]
Concourse D
Planning begun for further expansion of Dubai Airport, with the construction of Terminal 4, it was revealed on the day Emirates completed its phased operations at the new Terminal 3, on 14 November 2008.[81] According to Dubai Airport officials, plans for Terminal 4 had begun and extensions would be made to Terminal 3. These are required to bring the capacity of the airport to 80–90 million passengers a year by 2015.[82]
In May 2011, Paul Griffiths, chief executive of Dubai Airports revealed the Dubai Airport masterplan. It involves the construction of Concourse D (previously Terminal 4). With a capacity of 15 million, it would bring the total capacity of the airport to 90 million passengers by 2018—an increase of 15 million. It also will see Emirates take over the operation at Concourse C, along with concourse A and B which it will already be operating. All remaining airlines will shift to Concourse D, or move to Al Maktoum International Airport. The airport projects that international passenger and cargo traffic will increase at an average annual growth rate of 7.2% and 6.7%, respectively, and that by 2020 passenger numbers at Dubai International Airport will reach 98.5 million and cargo volumes will top 4.1 million tonnes.[83]
Concourse D will have a capacity of 15 million passengers, include 17 gates and will be connected to Terminal 1 via an automated people mover.[84] On 6 February 2016, members of the public were invited to trial the concourse in preparation for its opening. On Wednesday, 24 February 2016, Concourse D officially opened with the first British Airways flight arriving at gate D8.[85]
Terminal 2 [ edit ]
FlyDubai aircraft parked at Terminal 2 aircraft stands
Terminal 2 built in 1998 has an area of 47,000 m2 (510,000 sq ft) and has a capacity of 10 million as of 2013, after several, decent reconstructions and a major expansion in 2012 which saw capacity double. It is used by over 50 airlines, mainly operating in the Persian Gulf region. Most flights operate to India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In June 2009, Terminal 2 became the hub of Air India Express and flydubai,[86] and the terminal houses the airline's corporate head office.[87]
Terminal 2 has undergone a major refurbishment recently, extending check-in and boarding facilities, changing the interior and exterior décor, and offering more dining choices to passengers. Capacity was increased to allow for 10 million passengers, an increase of 5 million.[88]
The terminal has now increased the number of facilities available to passengers. Check-in counters have increased to 37.The boarding area is more spacious, with more natural light. Also the new open boarding gates allow several flights to board simultaneously, improving passenger and aircraft movements. There are a total of 43 remote stands at the terminal. However, passengers cannot move between Terminal 2 to 1 or from 2 to 3 and vice verse inside the airport. They have to make use of Taxi service or public transport available outside.
The Dubai duty-free shopping area covers 2,400 m2 (26,000 sq ft) in departures and 540 m2 (5,800 sq ft) in arrivals.[citation needed] The 3,600-square-metre (39,000 sq ft) extension included a larger arrivals hall as well.
Terminal 3 [ edit ]
Interior of Terminal 3
The partly underground Terminal 3 was built at a cost of US$4.5 billion, exclusively for Emirates and has a capacity of 65 million passengers. The terminal has 20 Airbus A380 gates at Concourse A and 5 at Concourse B and 2 at Concourse C.[89] It was announced on 6 September 2012 that Terminal 3 would no longer be Emirates-exclusive, as Emirates and Qantas had set up an extensive code sharing agreement. Qantas would be the second and only one of two airlines to fly in and out of Terminal 3. This deal also allows Qantas to use the A380 dedicated concourse.[90]
Upon completion, Terminal 3 was the largest building in the world by floor space, with over 1,713,000 m2 (18,440,000 sq ft) of space, capable of handling 60 million passengers in a year. A large part is located under the taxiway area and is directly connected to Concourse B: the departure and arrival halls in the new structure are 10 m (33 ft) beneath the airport's apron. Concourse A is connected to the terminal via a Terminal 3 APM.[91][92] It has been operational since 14 October 2008, and opened in four phases to avoid collapse of baggage handling and other IT systems.
The building includes a multi level underground structure, first and business class lounges, restaurants, 180 check-in counters and 2,600 car-parking spaces. The terminal offers more than double the previous retail area of concourse C, by adding about 4,800 m2 (52,000 sq ft) and Concourse B's 10,700 m2 (115,000 sq ft) of shopping facilities.[93]
In arrivals, the terminal contains 72 immigration counters and 14 baggage carousels.[94][95] The baggage handling system—the largest system and also the deepest in the world—has a capacity to handle 8,000 bags per hour. The system includes 21 screening injection points, 49 make-up carousels, 90 km (56 mi) of conveyor belts capable of handling 15,000 items per hour at a speed of 27 km/h (17 mph) and 4,500 early baggage storage positions.[96]
Concourse A
Concourse A part of Terminal 3, opened 2 January 2013,[97] has a capacity of 19 million passengers and is connected to the two major public levels of Terminal 3 via Terminal 3 APM in addition to the vehicular and baggage handling system utility tunnels for further transfer. The concourse opened on 2 January 2013 and was built at a cost of US$3.3 billion.[98] The building, which follows the characteristic shape of Concourse B, 924 m (3,031 ft) long, 91 m (299 ft) wide and 40 m (130 ft) high in the centre from the apron level and accommodates 20 air bridge gates, |
and legacy status is only used to decide between the applicants in the bucket that straddles the cutoff. But what this means is that a university can make legacy status have as much or as little weight as they want, by adjusting the size of the bucket that straddles the cutoff.
By gradually chipping away at the abuse of credentials, you could probably make them more airtight. But what a long fight it would be. Especially when the institutions administering the tests don't really want them to be airtight.
_____
Fortunately there's a better way to prevent the direct transmission of power between generations. Instead of trying to make credentials harder to hack, we can also make them matter less.
Let's think about what credentials are for. What they are, functionally, is a way of predicting performance. If you could measure actual performance, you wouldn't need them.
So why did they even evolve? Why haven't we just been measuring actual performance? Think about where credentialism first appeared: in selecting candidates for large organizations. Individual performance is hard to measure in large organizations, and the harder performance is to measure, the more important it is to predict it. If an organization could immediately and cheaply measure the performance of recruits, they wouldn't need to examine their credentials. They could take everyone and keep just the good ones.
Large organizations can't do this. But a bunch of small organizations in a market can come close. A market takes every organization and keeps just the good ones. As organizations get smaller, this approaches taking every person and keeping just the good ones. So all other things being equal, a society consisting of more, smaller organizations will care less about credentials.
_____
That's what's been happening in the US. That's why those quotes from Korea sound so old fashioned. They're talking about an economy like America's a few decades ago, dominated by a few big companies. The route for the ambitious in that sort of environment is to join one and climb to the top. Credentials matter a lot then. In the culture of a large organization, an elite pedigree becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This doesn't work in small companies. Even if your colleagues were impressed by your credentials, they'd soon be parted from you if your performance didn't match, because the company would go out of business and the people would be dispersed.
In a world of small companies, performance is all anyone cares about. People hiring for a startup don't care whether you've even graduated from college, let alone which one. All they care about is what you can do. Which is in fact all that should matter, even in a large organization. The reason credentials have such prestige is that for so long the large organizations in a society tended to be the most powerful. But in the US at least they don't have the monopoly on power they once did, precisely because they can't measure (and thus reward) individual performance. Why spend twenty years climbing the corporate ladder when you can get rewarded directly by the market?
I realize I see a more exaggerated version of the change than most other people. As a partner at an early stage venture funding firm, I'm like a jumpmaster shoving people out of the old world of credentials and into the new one of performance. I'm an agent of the change I'm seeing. But I don't think I'm imagining it. It was not so easy 25 years ago for an ambitious person to choose to be judged directly by the market. You had to go through bosses, and they were influenced by where you'd been to college.
_____
What made it possible for small organizations to succeed in America? I'm still not entirely sure. Startups are certainly a large part of it. Small organizations can develop new ideas faster than large ones, and new ideas are increasingly valuable.
But I don't think startups account for all the shift from credentials to measurement. My friend Julian Weber told me that when he went to work for a New York law firm in the 1950s they paid associates far less than firms do today. Law firms then made no pretense of paying people according to the value of the work they'd done. Pay was based on seniority. The younger employees were paying their dues. They'd be rewarded later.
The same principle prevailed at industrial companies. When my father was working at Westinghouse in the 1970s, he had people working for him who made more than he did, because they'd been there longer.
Now companies increasingly have to pay employees market price for the work they do. One reason is that employees no longer trust companies to deliver deferred rewards: why work to accumulate deferred rewards at a company that might go bankrupt, or be taken over and have all its implicit obligations wiped out? The other is that some companies broke ranks and started to pay young employees large amounts. This was particularly true in consulting, law, and finance, where it led to the phenomenon of yuppies. The word is rarely used today because it's no longer surprising to see a 25 year old with money, but in 1985 the sight of a 25 year old professional able to afford a new BMW was so novel that it called forth a new word.
The classic yuppie worked for a small organization. He didn't work for General Widget, but for the law firm that handled General Widget's acquisitions or the investment bank that floated their bond issues.
Startups and yuppies entered the American conceptual vocabulary roughly simultaneously in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I don't think there was a causal connection. Startups happened because technology started to change so fast that big companies could no longer keep a lid on the smaller ones. I don't think the rise of yuppies was inspired by it; it seems more as if there was a change in the social conventions (and perhaps the laws) governing the way big companies worked. But the two phenomena rapidly fused to produce a principle that now seems obvious: paying energetic young people market rates, and getting correspondingly high performance from them.
At about the same time the US economy rocketed out of the doldrums that had afflicted it for most of the 1970s. Was there a connection? I don't know enough to say, but it felt like it at the time. There was a lot of energy released.
_____
Countries worried about their competitiveness are right to be concerned about the number of startups started within them. But they would do even better to examine the underlying principle. Do they let energetic young people get paid market rate for the work they do? The young are the test, because when people aren't rewarded according to performance, they're invariably rewarded according to seniority instead.
All it takes is a few beachheads in your economy that pay for performance. Measurement spreads like heat. If one part of a society is better at measurement than others, it tends to push the others to do better. If people who are young but smart and driven can make more by starting their own companies than by working for existing ones, the existing companies are forced to pay more to keep them. So market rates gradually permeate every organization, even the government. [ 3 ]
The measurement of performance will tend to push even the organizations issuing credentials into line. When we were kids I used to annoy my sister by ordering her to do things I knew she was about to do anyway. As credentials are superseded by performance, a similar role is the best former gatekeepers can hope for. Once credential granting institutions are no longer in the self-fullfilling prophecy business, they'll have to work harder to predict the future.
_____
Credentials are a step beyond bribery and influence. But they're not the final step. There's an even better way to block the transmission of power between generations: to encourage the trend toward an economy made of more, smaller units. Then you can measure what credentials merely predict.
No one likes the transmission of power between generations—not the left or the right. But the market forces favored by the right turn out to be a better way of preventing it than the credentials the left are forced to fall back on.
The era of credentials began to end when the power of large organizations peaked in the late twentieth century. Now we seem to be entering a new era based on measurement. The reason the new model has advanced so rapidly is that it works so much better. It shows no sign of slowing.
Notes
[ 1 ] Miyazaki, Ichisada (Conrad Schirokauer trans.), China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, Yale University Press, 1981.
Scribes in ancient Egypt took exams, but they were more the type of proficiency test any apprentice might have to pass.
[ 2 ] When I say the raison d'etre of prep schools is to get kids into better colleges, I mean this in the narrowest sense. I'm not saying that's all prep schools do, just that if they had zero effect on college admissions there would be far less demand for them.
[ 3 ] Progressive tax rates will tend to damp this effect, however, by decreasing the difference between good and bad measurers.
Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Sarah Harlin, Jessica Livingston, and David Sloo for reading drafts of this.NOTE - August 30, 2016: This post originally ran in April 2016. Today the ACLU and ACLU of Alabama filed a federal lawsuit on Ms. Allen’s behalf, arguing that Lee County’s refusal to provide a religious accommodation to Ms. Allen violates her rights under the Alabama Constitution and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit asks the court to order Lee County officials to allow Ms. Allen to retake her driver license photo with her headscarf.
I have always been a spiritual being. Even as a young child I would spend countless hours delving into the tattered pages of my Bible. Though I often have failed, I have tried to remain obedient to God and his Word. But last December, at the Alabama Department of Motor Vehicles, my faith was tested in a way that was humiliating and demeaning.
In accordance with my Christian faith, I cover my hair with a headscarf, but the DMV refused to take my driver license photo unless I removed it. The DMV officials said only Muslims were allowed to keep their headscarves on for photos. I didn’t know what to do. Without question, I believe that Muslim women should not have to violate their faith just to take a driver license photo, but neither should Christian women.
I couldn’t believe that DMV officials could discriminate against me in this way, and it turns out, they can’t. On Friday, the ACLU and ACLU of Alabama sent the state a letter, informing officials that what the DMV did was wrong and unconstitutional. The government can’t provide a religious accommodation to members of one faith while denying the same right to those of other faiths.
Wearing a headscarf is an integral part of my Christian beliefs. In 2011, I moved with my children to Alabama after the end of a 12-year relationship with their father. I was lost, confused, hurt, and broken. But I turned to God and spent hours in prayer and study. During that time, it became clear to me that, to be obedient to God’s Word and show my submission to him, I had to cover my hair on a daily basis. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul speaks very clearly without ambiguity about this. I have followed this command every day since and believe that removing my headscarf in public is extremely shameful and dishonors God.
Yet on that December day at the Lee County DMV office, I was forced into doing just that — or else officials said they would not renew my driver license, which was set to expire. As I posed for the photo, the clerk told me that I would have to remove my head covering and eyeglasses.
I replied, “No ma’am, I don’t uncover my hair.”
She asked me, “Is it for religious purposes?”
I smiled, “Yes, ma’am.”
She then asked, “Are you Muslim?”
I responded, “No, Ma’am, I am Christian.”
She abruptly stated, “No, then you need to uncover your hair. Only Muslim women have the right to cover their hair in their driver license photos.”
I was horrified. A friend who had accompanied me saw the look on my face and quickly explained, “Ma’am she doesn’t uncover her hair ever.” The clerk, in a smug and condescending tone, replied, “You are not a Muslim, and Christian women don’t cover their hair.”
I raised the issue with the clerk’s supervisor, but she too claimed that the rule was policy, adding that she was a Christian and does not cover her hair. I told the supervisor that while she is entitled to her interpretation of the Bible, so am I. She would not relent. With no other choice — I could not be without a valid driver license — I agreed to remove my headscarf for the photo. I first politely asked whether the clerk could close the door while my hair was uncovered. She refused. With tears in my eyes and utter disgust in my belly, I took the picture.
As I have aged, life has handed me many challenges, prompting me to seek solace and guidance in the Bible and my faith. That did not change with the incident at the DMV. But I also knew that I could not stop there; I could not allow the DMV to discriminate against me or others, and that’s why I contacted the American Civil Liberties Union to help me vindicate my right to assert my religious beliefs and have them respected by the government.
I hope that the DMV officials will do the right thing without the need for litigation by allowing me to retake my photo with my headscarf and putting in place policies that ensure that no else endures the same treatment I did.Spread the love
June 25, 2014
A Chicago man and his 9-year-old son were on the way to his mother’s house when they were pulled over by Chicago PD.
The man, who was well with in his rights to do so, chose not to roll down his window all the way during this shakedown.
This upset the harassing officer. The officer then refused to give the man a reason for why he was pulled over.
After detaining the man and his son for several minutes, and realizing that they had pulled over an innocent man for no reason, they were allowed to leave.
Upon leaving, the man asks again, “Can I get the probable cause for why you pulled me over?”
To which the officer finally replies, “We got some reports of shots fired and saw you turn around.”
As if a man would be on a drive-by shooting with his child!
Right at the end of the video the officer and the driver exchange words, at which point the officer says, “Hopefully your child dies.”
Aside from answering the questions at the end of the video, this driver did fairly well during this harassment.
Just another typical cop night in Chicago…..harassment following by wishes of ill will towards one’s child.“Jesus gave wine to drunk people.”
I stared at my good friend when he said that. “No he didn’t.”
He said, “John two.”
I checked.
Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have had too much to drink, then the poor wine, but [Jesus has] kept the good wine until now!
“What’s that prove?” I asked.
“Jesus gave more wine to people who were already drunk. Pharisees called him a glutton and a drunkard.”
My heart was racing, and not from excitement. “Are you telling me Jesus made it okay to be drunk?”
“I’m telling you he gave wine to drunk people at a wedding, consistent with the Proverbs that tell us to give wine to people in extreme situations.”
“Have you checked the Greek?” I asked.
“No, but the NIV, NRSV, and ESV all point that way.”
Though I left his house on good terms, I was publicly silent about that conversation for a year. And then, after my honeymoon in February of 2010, I looked it up again. There it was: had too much to drink.
How could I deny that the text seemed to read “Jesus gave wine to drunk people”? Sure, there were enough feasts to call him “glutton, ” but where was the cause for “drunkard”? I looked up the word:
methusko – to get drunk; intoxicated.
Plato used it the same way as John. Herodotus, Josephus, Dio Chrysostom, Testament of Judah, Cornutus all used the word like this: “get wasted.” The definition was evident, but what about usage? There seemed to be a distinction between “drunk” – singular event – and “drunkenness” or “drunkard.” In the lists of New Testament vices, habitual gluttony of wine is always condemned. Even Plato[i] showed drunkenness dwarfed men into weak children, but made a distinction where wine ignites the true emotions. When a man drinks just enough to liberate his mind, Plato thinks he’s on the way to wisdom.[ii] It’s, in the least, an interesting distinction between drunk and drinking.
Which brings us to John’s syntax. The word “have-drunk-freely” specifies the verb “bring out the poor wine.” When do you do bring out the watered-down stuff? When everyone’s already drunk… or drunked, as the Greeks put it.
Related: Beer at Church – by Tony Campolo
“A glutton and a drunkard.” John has demon (because he refuses) and Jesus is the drunk (because he indulges). When among gluttons: John fasts, Jesus feasts. When among drunkards: John abstains, Jesus drinks.
I can’t argue with my friend. Biblically, it seems that drunkenness is a sin, but getting drunk (a singular event) is permitted – even encouraged among a certain tier of pitch-perfect festivities. I would personally place that “singular event” at a wedding or a funeral, sandwiching the Cana passage and proverb together: give wine to really happy and really sad people.
Unfortunately, that ethical conviction won’t quite work in my current context. I’ve yet to get drunk in my life and, Lord willing, I won’t get drunk until I die and join the wedding feast on the Mountain of the Lord, the one that will include Isaiah’s “well-aged wines strained clear.” You see, I currently live in the beer gut of the Midwest. If you drink in Joplin, you belong to the Elks club, not the church. “Heaven forbid those, ” (and my local Evangelical friends mean this literally), “damned Catholics from drinkin’ wine at communion. They’re all drunks!” One side of my extended family calls it high treason to touch alcohol – they take pride in having never tasted. On the other side, an extended family member was sent to prison for his third DUI… only to sober up while there, writing me letters about Jesus. More fascinating still is the weird position I occupy in the American church between abstainers and partakers. Missouri church culture considers you a sinner for touching alcohol or openly having it in your home. Christians who drink in Missouri or Kentucky often drink in private. On the other hand, at this church plant I’m joining in Brooklyn, the pastor drinks a lot of beer right across the table from first-time-visitors. When students from a Missouri Christian college took his class in New York, one young girl from a conservative home asked the guy, “How do you build relationships?”
“I dunno, drink a lot of beer?”
A forty-five minute debate ensued in which the students attempted to parse out just how many drinks were kosher. I guess they each had in mind some ideal body mass index as well as some sacred statistic for alcohol-content-by-volume?
The church planter said to me, “I’m as naïve as they are. They think there are no pastors who drink. I never would have guessed that this, of all things, would have been such an issue.”
He was raised in Brooklyn.
They were raised in Pleasantville, Midwest.
Temperance keeps echoing in ballrooms of my mind like some clarion call to come and dance. Even Alcoholics Anonymous, like arrogant hypocrites who think they by their own power have freed millions from addiction, judge the stronger brother for partaking. And the stronger brothers, like arrogant hypocrites who think they by their own power have created their freedom in Christ, judge the weaker brother for abstaining.
On the one hand, you have the Christian college student development offices who judge people by writing up contracts that say “no drinking, ” judging any who question the “sacred” code. One the other hand, you have many who have signed contracts saying they won’t drink and then go break their vow. Neither contract writer nor contract breaker know anything of temperance, even if their justifications use the word “temperance.” The one who cannot temper his legal agreement of “I won’t” and the one who cannot temper his spiritual freedom in “we can” both miss out on virtue. Vow-breakers are, by definition, in-temperantia “without restraint, ” and the Christian Women’s Temperance Movement would have been better named the Christian Women’s Teetotaler Movement. Both sides lose.
No, we need a better foundation to get at temperance because contract-writing and contract-breaking, being offended and trying to offend, are all methods that aren’t working. Both strategies use terrible logic based on something other than true submission to the authority of scripture exercised in the confessing church.
Between the judgmental teetotalers and the contract-breaking indulgers, I hear Paul mention stumbling blocks in Romans fourteen. Who does “stumbling block” apply to: the “righteous” family member who prides herself in manicured pretenses, or the drunk?
What about the heart: who am I causing to sin when I drink in public? Who would be called to repentance by seeing me indulge?
And with whom am I, like the Proverbial fool, becoming easily offended? Am I wanting “cause them to stumble” to force everyone around me to bow down to my hypocritical judgments? Or am I helping any ragamuffin stumbling with an alcoholic past? In terms of temperance, who might be dragged closer to Hell on Earth or even to Earth in Hell?
Even while asking these better questions, I still didn’t know how to kill off the judgmental teetotaler or the judgmental indulger inside me. Either John’s a liar about Jesus giving wine to drunk people (neutering my view of inerrancy), Jesus is a sinner for giving wine to drunk people (neutering my view of salvation), or it’s okay to get drunk once in awhile (neutering my materialistic ethics). We can all be “liars” like John, “sinners” like Jesus, or we could repent of the way we Americans do ethics. I have little interest in talking about alcohol, but we must talk about this to get to the heart of the matter: our materialistic mindset.
Because getting to the heart of things is exactly what Jesus did and does.
When did our righteousness start taking root in the physical world? According to G.K. Chesterton, we have been making this mistake since at least the turn of the last century (the 1900’s):
“The standard of abstract right and wrong apparently is this: that a girl by smoking a cigarette makes herself one of the company of the fiends of hell. That such an action is much the same as that of a sexual vampire. That a young man who continues to drink fermented liquor must necessarily be ‘evil’ and must deny the very existence of any difference between right and wrong. That is the ‘standard of abstract right and wrong’ that is apparently taught in the American home. And it is perfectly obvious, on the face of it, that it is not a standard of abstract right or wrong at all. That is exactly what it is not. That is the very last thing any clear-headed person would call it. It is not a standard; it is not abstract; it has not the vaguest notion of what is meant by right and wrong. It is a chaos of social and sentimental accidents and associations, some of them snobbish, all of them provincial, but, above all, nearly all of them concrete and connected with a materialistic prejudice against particular materials.”
In twenty-first century English, Chesterton’s saying that a morality based upon substances such as alcohol or tobacco is not morality at all. You can’t judge a car as “evil” and a truck as “good, ” a tree as “demonic” or a shrubbery as “angelic.” This nonsense has bothered me enough that I created a photonovel called “Cold Brewed” that revised the history of the American prohibition: drinking coffee rather than alcohol was criminalized. Basing your right and wrong on a physical substance is, strictly speaking, materialism, which meant “atheism” in Chesterton’s time – faith in the material world rather than the Life or Form behind every thing. To plow forth morality in soil that won’t “drink, smoke, chew, or run with girls who do” is to plow forth morality into the bedrock of atheism. That’s one way to break a Gospel plow.
Malcom Gladwell, the author of Tipping Point and Outliers, wrote an article entitled “Drinking Games” for the February 15th & 20th (2010) issue of the New Yorker. In it, he traces Dwight Heath’s anthropological work on the Camba people who live between the Amazon Basin and the Chaco. The Camba are a peripatetic people working farmland without much time for socializing, so their ritualistic drinking party is essential. Traditionally, the words “drinking party” invoke images of Animal House and Varsity Blues from deep in our culture, but in Camba something alternative and beautiful emerged.
Whoever hosted the party bought the initial bottle and invited everyone to come. Around twelve on Saturday, people showed up and often the party went clear till Monday. It was structured – everyone sitting in a circle, maybe with an instrument going in back. Then a bottle of sugar-refinery rum made landed on the table. The host stood, walked to someone in the circle, raised his glass, drank half, and then gave the rest to the other. Later, the other guy would stand, fill a glass and go to a third – all governed by strict rules of “do” and “do not.” For instance, a man could drink for his wife if she couldn’t take much more, just like the gentlemen of Downton Abbey.
After lab testing in The States, they found this particular rum to be one-hundred-eighty proof – or ninety percent – alcohol. Remember that stuff you used in sophomore chemistry? This Camba rum is the same distillation of disinfectant. However, something was unusual: the Camba never faced a problem with “social pathology, ” Heath said, “none. No sexual aggression, no verbal aggression. There was pleasant conversation or silence… drinking didn’t interfere with work. It didn’t bring in the police. And there was no alcoholism.” Remember, we’re talking about drunk people here – drunk people – as in those to whom Jesus gave more wine. When Gladwell published this, anthropologists continued to realize how unreliable the effects of alcohol are (see the New Yorker article for the full story). In the end, the scientists concluded that alcohol cannot possibly be a disinhibitor. Gladwell says it better:
“Alcohol makes the thing in the foreground even more salient and the thing in the background disappear. That’s why drinking makes you think you are attractive when the world thinks otherwise: the alcohol removes the little constraining voice from the outside world that normally keeps our self-assessments in check. Drinking relaxes the man watching football because the game is front and center, and alcohol makes every secondary consideration fade away. But in a quiet bar his problems are front and center-and every potentially comforting or mitigating thought recedes. Drunkenness is not disinhibition. Drunkenness is myopia.”
In other words, when a woman drinks, she becomes so focused on her environment that she cannot think of anything else, which often means her image. Drunk men are more one-task-minded than regular men – which is truly saying something. If every drinking trope in a given culture – films, songs, stories – shows its youth out of control in bars and if the bar you drink in blasts music out the windows and if the men inside your bar are shouting and even fighting – if the social atmosphere surrounding alcohol is chaos, then why would a young twenty-year old act in any way other than chaotic, having taking a myopic substance? It’s not that the drinker’s numb to his surroundings, it’s that he’s hyper-sensitive to reckless surroundings and so becomes reckless. We teach our children what drunk looks like, even what drinking looks like, and for us, one sip looks like chaos. So for us, one sip ends in chaos.
Not so with the Camba. They grow more sensitive to this ritual undergirding relationships in their culture. They focus on the person in front of them. For Catholics, communion is also about what the brothers have in common. Wine is the climax of worship because it is from our confession, apology, repentance offered to those right in front of us that sends us out, that dismisses, that missio, that “Mass”-es us out into the world. The Camba had no other means for communal sanctification, no route for deeper friendship. Alcohol made them sensitive to the atmosphere: reverence, health, and conversation. Gladwell concludes, emphasis mine:
“Today our approach to the social burden of alcohol is a mixture of all [three policies]: we moralize, medicalize, and legalize…When confronted with the rowdy youth in the bar…we are reluctant to provide him with a positive and constructive example of how to drink. The consequences of that failure are considerable, because, in the end, culture is a more powerful tool in dealing with drinking than medicine, economics, or the law.”
Youth ministers? How common it is for any youth ministry to label any substance as “evil.” But how novel it would be for some youth ministry to be led by some godly man who’s different than the drunks in the lives of modern kids, a man of legal age who can drink without getting drunk, a man who demonstrates the virtue of temperance along with those of hope and peace and prudence and justice. Oh man, do we love our justice…
I say all of this to reveal the only powerful way to transform culture. You cannot just restrict, tax, medicate, ignore, or label a substance. My old professor, Doug Marks, said we seek to sculpt a “Christo-centric super-culture.” That wasn’t an elitist statement, but one of grass-roots renaissance – of unimaginable art flowing out of holy cores. Currently, our morality isn’t based on abstract right and wrong, but on atheism, materialism. Maybe that’s why pre-Christians laugh at Christians who police “morals” rather than create a new culture based on New Creation. We Christians give lists of acceptable substances and environments, but refuse justice, mercy, and humility.
Also by Lance: Why Dual Citizenship = Treason
Whatever the case may be about Jesus giving wine to drunk people, the pondering of that moment exposes a deeper vein: we have no bearing for right and wrong. We talk of virtue and vice as if we knew how one or the other might look were we to stumble across them on a New York sidewalk. In reality, we have no clue.
I beg of you to wrestle as I have wrestled with the true source of right and wrong, and if you find yourself basing your morality more on the physical than the personal – more on objects rather than relationships or choices – then maybe you and I are wrong about being right. Chesterton ends his article like this, emphasis mine:
“May I be allowed to hope that [Americans] will succeed in drawing a rather more logical line between bad men and good men? Something of the difference and the difficulty may be seen by comparing the old Klu Klux Klan with the new Klu Klux Klan. The old secret society may have been justified or not; but it had a definite object: it was directed against somebody. The new secret society seems to have been directed against anybody; often against anybody who drank; in time, for all I know, against anybody who smoked. It is this sort of formless fanaticism that is the great danger of the American Temperament; and it is well to insist that if men must persecute, they will be more clear-headed if they persecute for a creed.”[iii]
If we are to love, let us love as human souls rather than as sentient masses of carbon refusing to inhale hot gaseous carbon or swallow liquid hydroxyl strands (C 2 H 5 OH). And if we are to hate, let us hate not flesh and blood (for human beings are never our enemies according to Ephesians 6:12) but rather the dark principalities in this world. Let’s get rid of stupid, ignorant thoughts that certain foods or drinks or substances can make a man The Devil. I hope we give up, like John the Revelator, talks of hyper-literal surface matters like H2O, hemoglobin and types of grains and hydroxyls – substances that would make Jesus himself in need of baptism, a sinner and a glutton and a drunkard. Which He was not, though the title of this article does refer to this accusation they hurled at him when he hung out with drunks, when he gave drunks more wine in the middle of a miracle about a New Creation and New Kingdom.
Instead, may we speak of and seek out truer forms behind and beyond His physical substances: water, blood and bread and wine.
[i] Plat. Resp., IX, 537b c; Leg., I, 645e, 646a [ii] Leg., II 666b c [iii] Both quotes taken from G.K. Chesterton’s, On American Morals. Every American Christian should read it in its entirety.One of the originators of the Idle No More movement says she supports Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence, but is concerned with how the media is portraying her as the leader of the grassroots campaign.
"Idle No More is the face of all indigenous people, all grassroots people," Sylvia McAdam said Monday, following a forum with university students in Regina. "It's not just the face of one. We hardly have any communications with Chief Spence."
Spence has been limiting her food intake since Dec. 10, consuming only fish broth, water and medicinal tea in an effort to force a meeting attended by both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Gov. Gen. David Johnston to address First Nations issues.
The Idle No More campaign originated on social media, first on Facebook and later with Twitter, when Sylvia McAdam, Nina Wilson, Sheelah Mclean and Jessica Gordon expressed concern about provisions of Bill C-45, which reduce the number of federally protected waterways.
"We're going to get off the couch and we're not going to be idle any more," McAdam said about the nascent idea behind the movement. "And we said, 'Why don't we just call it Idle No More?' And it just stuck."
At first, the movement engaged people in an online discussion. It gained wider attention in late November and early December with what were called flash mob-style round dances at shopping malls.
McAdam said recent coverage of the movement has focused on Spence and other First Nations chiefs, but insists they do not speak for the movement.
She said even the originators are not the official voice of the campaign.
"The founders have been looked toward for guidance and discussions, if that can be defined as leadership," she said.
Blockades a concern
McAdam also questioned the actions of some First Nations planning blockades at border crossings and rail lines.
"I think those portray a message of aggressiveness," McAdam said. "That's not peaceful.
"We have to be careful with Idle No More that we don't go into areas where we're saying, 'Save the gophers,'" she added. "There has to be a purpose behind it."
She said she is worried about the movement's core message, about protecting land and water in Canada and promoting indigenous sovereignty.
But even McAdam was not precise when it came to defining sovereignty.
"We're still talking about that," she said. "We're still defining it as we go."
McAdam was also adamant that neither the Assembly of First Nations, nor individual chiefs, are in charge of the Idle No More movement.
"History has shown that when movements like this happen, if leadership takes over, it kills the movement," she said.
McAdam said the movement is keen to have a global Idle No More rally near the end of January.Kate Beaton affectionate. This is alien, and when they get back this evening she will return to not caring about me at all. For usual Wednesday updates, I refer you to I'm working on another comic that should be up today or tomorrow, but my muse here has made me drop everything for her. Wednesday is not my cat, she is Emily's. Whenever Emily and Jeremy are gone as they are this weekend, Wednesday turns into the biggest weirdo and stalks me for days and days and rubs her face on me and is. This is alien, and when they get back this evening she will return to not caring about me at all. For usual Wednesday updates, I refer you to Emily's flickr. She is also available on both a shirt and a tote. Right now she's tearing up a cardboard box in the living room, this has been your cat update. Store!Receive five $2 coins for $10.00! As Canada prepares to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation in 2017, the Royal Canadian Mint proudly celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of the nation’s primary architect and first Prime Minister: Sir John A. Macdonald.
An ideal gift for someone you know who enjoys Canadian history. Order yours today!
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About Sir John A. Macdonald
On July 1, 1867, the Dominion of Canada was created, and Sir John Alexander Macdonald, a key architect of Canadian Confederation, became the new nation’s first Prime Minister. Knighted by Queen Victoria for his role in Canadian Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald led the nation until his death in 1891, with only a single interruption in his leadership, from 1873 to 1878.
John Alexander Macdonald was born on January 11, 1815, in Glasgow, Scotland. He and his family immigrated to Kingston, Upper Canada in 1820. With a successful law practice, and having held political office at the municipal level in Kingston, Macdonald joined the Upper Canada cabinet in |
. The Live stream can be accessed at Live.Yallwire.com and at home on TV via the Yallwire Roku app.
They are encouraging fans to Tweet the stream URL (Live.Yallwire.com), with #yeticoolers & #yallwire for a chance to win a free cooler or other YETI giveaways!
Viewers can also stay tuned to the Facebook Event Page for announcements and more details as they arise.
For a full list of who's playing plus more details about the festival visit oldsettlersmusicfest.org/
Other relevant links:
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For Press Contact: Jeramy@Blastro.comAkeem Spence said his protest during the national anthem cost his father a job.
According to a tweet Thursday by the Lions defensive tackle, a contractor refused to hire his father because Spence kneeled during the national anthem on Sunday.
Got some awful news from my father a contractor deny giving him a job on doing a house because of my peaceful protest #smh — Akeem spence (@AkeemSpence) September 28, 2017
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Spence's father, Floyd Spence, operates Spence Concrete Contractors in Navarre, Fla.
Spence was among eight Lions players to kneel during the anthem. He even took to his Instagram account to post a picture of him kneeling with his teammates, which included Ameer Abdullah and Tahir Whitehead.
He has also been vocal on Twitter about the protests, calling out President Donald Trump and reiterating he won't just stick to sports.
Together we stand divided we fall #unity#onepride — Akeem spence (@AkeemSpence) September 24, 2017
Spence signed with the Lions during the offseason after spending four years with the Buccaneers. He said he made the decision to kneel in last Sunday's game in response Trump's comments about players kneeling during the anthem.This week, the Government of Nova Scotia released a report about the skilled and diverse immigrants who have temporarily and permanently settled in the friendly province within the last year.
The report indicates that 2015 proved to be a very prosperous year for Nova Scotia, and 2016 is projected to continue this success. As of June this year, 2016 has already settled 3,418 newcomers as permanent residents; surpassing 2015's figure of 3,403 settlers.
Over 1000 of those newcomers are refugees from Syria, who started coming to Nova Scotia last December. Lena Diab, the Minister of Immigration for Nova Scotia, stated that having an incredibly warm demeanour is one of the key factors that attracts and encourages individuals and families to stay in Nova Scotia. "They are welcoming people like they never welcomed them before," she said.
Diab believes that this positive attitude that will help persuade more people to remain in Nova Scotia permanently. The sizeable province has seen an incredible rise in their retention rate to 74% from newcomers in recent years (2008 - 2013). This substantial difference is noteworthy considering that only a decade ago, only fewer than one-third of newcomers stayed.
"The support that we have received across this land and across this province from one region to the next has been overwhelming. I don't believe anybody would have expected that kind of support. People are embracing diversity, people are loving the fact that we're all different", stated Diab. The Nova Scotia Government has been enthusiastically pushing its Nova Scotia Nominee Program (NSNP) since early 2015. The NSNP is a migration program that permits the Canadian province to select newcomers based on pre-set criteria.
Nova Scotia was the first to launch a migration program that closely aligned with the Express entry immigration system. The province was also the first to introduce multiple streams. The Nova Scotia Nominee Program currently has five streams; all designed to suit all types of immigrants. As a result of successful petitioning, the government has increased the overall PNP allocation for Nova Scotia twice; bringing their total to 1350 from 700.
Talk to one of our ICCRC-regulated migration consultants if you have questions about the Nova Scotia Nominee Program and the application process. You can also take our free online assessment to determine your eligibility to enter Canada under the Nova Scotia Nominee Program.Image copyright RSPCA Image caption A man was seen punching the dog four times in quick succession
Named suspects are being sought in the hunt for a man seen repeatedly punching a dog in a Norwich street.
CCTV footage showed the man striking the unknown breed four times after attaching a lead in Jex Road.
RSPCA inspector Laura Sayer said the punches were landed with "considerable force" and the dog showed "clear signs of fear".
The RSPCA said a "number of names" had been put forward in connection with the attack at 13:30 GMT on 9 February.
Image copyright RSPCA Image caption The man landed the punches before attaching a lead to the dog
Image copyright RSPCA Image caption The dog had been wandering loose shortly before it was punched
The charity said it had not been able to establish the breed of the dog but it was believed to be a "bull breed type", with white markings on its front leg and chest.
The dog is seen wandering loose in the footage, filmed from a camera at a nearby property. The man punches the animal four times on the side before attaching a lead to its collar.
Image copyright RSPCA Image caption The man is seen walking off with the dog attached to a lead
An RSPCA spokesman said: "We have had several names put forward and we are investigating.
"We are pleased that there has been such a strong response from the public to what happened."
He said no arrests had been made.Israelis rally outside an Israeli military court in Kiryat Malakhi in support of an Israeli soldier shown on video shooting an incapacitated Palestinian in the head, 29 March. Oren Ziv ActiveStills
An Israeli soldier shown on video executing an incapacitated Palestinian last week was arrested only “to avoid embarrassment in front of the world,” according to the human rights group Al-Haq.
The group’s investigation sheds new light on the incident in which two Palestinian youths were slain, and comes as the arrested soldier, Elor Azarya, faces manslaughter charges, rather than the murder charges previously announced by military prosecutors. He may be released within days.
Al-Haq, based in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, asserts that both the slaying of Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, shown on video, and that of Ramzi al-Qasrawi, which was not recorded, constitute deliberate killings and are thus war crimes.
The group adds that statements made by Israeli leaders – including former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who endorsed the videotaped killing and asserted that “the soldier carried out orders” – indicate that soldiers have been given orders to kill rather than neutralize Palestinians who pose a threat.
“The occupation authorities’ detention of the accused soldier is a cover-up of the crime, to show the occupier state as law abiding and holds violators accountable,” Al-Haq’s Arabic-language report states.
“The arrest of one soldier and not the other suggests that what the other soldier had done was not a crime because it was not captured on camera,” the group adds.
Extrajudicial executions
Al-Sharif and al-Qasrawi, both 21, were shot dead after allegedly stabbing a soldier, who was lightly injured, in the West Bank city of Hebron on the morning of Thursday, 24 March.
A resident of the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron’s Old City testified to Al-Haq that after shots were heard around the nearby Gilbert military checkpoint, he took his camera and looked out the window of his home, recording the scene.
He saw a young man in a black jacket, apparently al-Sharif, carrying a knife running around the area, seemingly confused and trying to flee.
The witness told Al-Haq that an Israeli soldier fired two shots at the young man from a distance of 10 meters, causing him to fall to the ground. The same soldier then fired two bullets at the head of a youth wearing a grey top, apparently al-Qasrawi, who was lying on the ground, from a distance of three to five meters.
“It appears that [al-Qasrawi] was injured as a result of the gunfire the witness heard at the beginning while he was inside his house,” Al-Haq states.
Al-Haq’s chronology also recounts what is shown on the video of the incident released last week:
Israeli ambulances arrived at the scene and paramedics treated the wounded soldier but not the Palestinians who were bleeding heavily.
After the wounded soldier was loaded into an ambulance, another soldier, who was not the same one who initially shot the two youths, approached al-Sharif, who was lying on the ground and moving his head from side to side, while settlers roaming the scene shouted that “the terrorist is still alive.”
The soldier shot al-Sharif in the head at a distance of three meters and some 20 minutes after the initial shooting.
Intent to kill
The cries of the settlers that al-Sharif was still alive demonstrate that the purpose of the shooting was murder and to confirm the youth was dead, according to Al-Haq.
Such was also the case with al-Qasrawi, who was shot in the head by a soldier with the clear intention to confirm he was killed, after the youth had already been shot and was lying on the ground, posing a threat to no one, according to the rights group.
Al-Haq adds that many of the dozens of killings of Palestinians in recent months constitute avoidable cases of extrajudicial executions, at the very least, and that alleged attackers could have been apprehended instead of shot dead.
The group calls for accountability of not just the soldiers who killed al-Qasrawi and al-Sharif, but for all of those who participated in this and other similar crimes, whether they planned, gave orders, or were otherwise complicit.
Al-Haq also calls for the investigation of paramedics and doctors such as the ones in Hebron to determine their level of involvement and responsibility.
The group adds that it is preparing a file on this and other crimes which will be submitted to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
In November, Al-Haq joined several other human rights groups in delivering documentation of alleged crimes committed by the Israeli army during its 2014 assault on Gaza to the ICC prosecutor.
The group’s director, Shawan Jabarin, told The Electronic Intifada in March that he believes these efforts towards accountability are why there are increased attempts to undermine Al-Haq’s work, including death threats against its staff.
Eyewitness threatened
Imad Abu Shamsiyeh, the Palestinian volunteer who recorded the footage of al-Sharif’s killing, has also been subjected to death threats, according to B’Tselem, the Israeli rights group which released the footage.
The group called on Israeli military and police commanders “to do all that is in their power to protect the family from further violence, including issuing clear, adequate directives to soldiers and police officers stationed in Hebron.”
Yet the soldiers and police deployed in Hebron are there to support and protect the very settlers threatening Abu Shamsiyeh and his family.
Abu Shamsiyeh recorded video of Elor Azarya shaking hands with notorious settler leader Baruch Marzel just after he executed al-Sharif.
Settlers look on as Israeli forces evacuate the body of Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif in the West Bank city of Hebron on 24 March. Wisam Hashlamoun APA images
Meanwhile, Israel’s top court has reportedly refused an appeal to allow a Palestinian doctor to participate in the autopsy of al-Sharif, scheduled for Sunday.
“A number of Palestinian families signed a letter late last year demanding that families should be allotted time to request an official autopsy report on their dead relatives. Autopsy reports are used in official paperwork necessary to file cases against Israeli authorities at the International Criminal Court,” the Ma’an News Agency reported.
Since October Israel has withheld the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed during alleged attacks, effectively preventing autopsies and independent investigation.
On Monday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also called for the protection of Abu Shamsiyeh and for the full investigation of other incidents in which Israeli forces have caused death and injury.
“We are concerned this killing may not be a lone incident: a disturbing number of Palestinians – reportedly more than 130 in all – have been killed in recent months during or after attacks on Israeli civilians and members of the security forces, during which 28 Israelis have been killed,” the body stated.
US Senator calls for investigation
It was revealed this week that a ranking US Senator, along with 10 members of Congress, has asked the State Department to investigate “possible gross violations of human rights by security forces in Israel and Egypt – incidents that may have involved recipients, or potential recipients, of US military assistance.”
The letter, initiated by Patrick Leahy, head of the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, adds that “Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have reported what may be extrajudicial killings by the Israeli military and police,” mentioning the slayings of Fadi Alloun, Saad al-Atrash, Hadil Hashlamoun and Mutaz Uweisat, and raises “reports of the use of torture” in the cases of Wasim Marouf and the child Ahmad Manasra.
A law named after Leahy, enacted in 1997, prohibits the US from providing military assistance to units of foreign militaries when there is credible information that those units violated human rights with impunity.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lashed out against the senior Senator from Vermont, insisting that “The IDF [Israeli military] and security forces are not murderers.”
“IDF soldiers and Israeli police put their lives on the line to defend themselves and innocent civilians from bloodthirsty terrorists who try to kill them,” Netanyahu added.
Meanwhile, the Israel military closed an investigation into the videotaped killing of Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu al-Thahir in May 2014.
Another boy, 16-year-old Nadim Siam Nuwara, was also shot and killed during the incident.
The youths were unarmed and no confrontations with Israeli soldiers were happening when they were slain.
Military prosecutors said this week that there was no evidence Abu al-Thahir died as a result of Israeli army gunfire.
An Israeli Border Police combatant was indicted over Nuwara’s death.
An independent forensic investigation determined that “both deaths were the result of Israeli security personnel masking the firing of live ammunition” through a barrel extension designed to fire rubber-coated bullets.Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around the super-Earth planet GJ 1132b. This marks the first detection of an atmosphere around an Earth-like planet other than Earth itself, and thus is a significant step on the path towards the detection of life outside our Solar System. The team that made the discovery, led by Keele University's Dr John Southworth, used the 2.2 m ESO/MPG telescope in Chile to take images of the planet's host star GJ 1132. They were able to measure the slight decrease in brightness as the planet and its atmosphere absorbed some of the starlight while transiting (passing in front of) the host star.
Dr John Southworth explains, "While this is not the detection of life on another planet, it's an important step in the right direction: the detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b marks the first time that an atmosphere has been detected around an Earth-like planet other than Earth itself."
Is there life out there?
Astronomers' current strategy for finding life on another planet is to detect the chemical composition of that planet's atmosphere, on the look-out for chemical imbalances which could be caused by living organisms. In the case of our own Earth, the presence of large amounts of oxygen is a tell-tale sign of life.
Until these findings by Dr Southworth's team, the only previous detections of exoplanet atmospheres all involved gas giants reminiscent of a high-temperature Jupiter.
Dr Southworth says that whilst we're still a long way from detecting life on exoplanets, this discovery is the first step:
"With this research, we have taken the first tentative step into studying the atmospheres of smaller, Earth-like, planets. We simulated a range of possible atmospheres for this planet, finding that those rich in water and/or methane would explain the observations of GJ 1132b. The planet is significantly hotter and a bit larger than Earth, so one possibility is that it is a "water world" with an atmosphere of hot steam."
Studying atmospheres
The planet in question, GJ 1132b, orbits the very low-mass star GJ 1132 in the Southern constellation Vela, at a distance of 39 light-years from Earth. The system was studied by a team led by John Southworth (Keele University, UK) and Luigi Mancini (currently at the University of Rome Tor Vergata), and including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA, Germany) and the University of Cambridge.
The team used the GROND imager at the 2.2 m ESO/MPG telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile to observe the planet simultaneously at seven different wavelength bands spanning the optical and near-infrared. As GJ 1132b is a transiting planet, it passes directly between Earth and its host star every 1.6 days, blocking a small fraction of the star's light. From the amount of light lost, astronomers can deduce the planet's size -- in this case only 1.4 times that of Earth.
Crucially, the new observations showed the planet to be larger in one of the seven wavelength bands. This suggests the presence of an atmosphere that is opaque to this specific light (making the planet appear larger), but transparent to all the others.
The discovery of this atmosphere is encouraging. Very low-mass stars are extremely common (much more so that Sun-like stars), and are known to host lots of small planets. But they also show a lot of magnetic activity, causing high levels of X-rays and ultraviolet light to be produced which might completely evaporate the planets' atmospheres. However, the properties of GJ 1132b show that an atmosphere can endure this for billion of years without being destroyed. Given the huge number of very low-mass stars and planets, this could mean that the conditions suitable for life are common in the Universe.
This discovery makes GJ 1132b one of the highest-priority targets for further study by the current top facilities, such as the Hubble Space Telescope and ESO's Very Large Telescope, as well as the James Webb Space Telescope which is slated for launch in 2018.The ban will take effect later in March, and the government will begin paying the first installments of $72 million in subsidies to fishermen and others who make their living from the shrimp catch. The payments will be spread over two years.
“I really think that this is the last chance, and we had better get our act together,” said Omar Vidal, the director of World Wildlife Fund Mexico, who said that more than two decades of efforts to save the vaquita had slowed but not halted its decline. “I think the government is very serious.”
The two-year moratorium on the use of gillnets will give researchers time to improve vaquita-safe nets that will catch enough shrimp to generate sufficient income for fishermen. Fishermen complain that the nets that are now available do not allow them to make enough money to feed their families.
Enforcement of the ban will be a bigger challenge. Officials have failed to enforce past limits on gillnet fishing, and boats regularly sneak into what had once been a small vaquita refuge of about 480 square miles.
The totoaba trade has raised the stakes. With swim bladders fetching as much as $10,000 a kilogram, organized crime is controlling the business, paying the fishermen, smuggling the fish bladders to California and shipping them to China.Influential midfielder Emre Can is expected to be fit for Liverpool’s Premier League clash with Chelsea on Friday evening.
The 22-year-old has been sidelined with an ankle injury of late, but will return to first-team training at Melwood on Tuesday, according to the Liverpool Echo.
Having featured for just 21 minutes in the 4-3 win over Arsenal on the opening weekend, Can then missed the 2-0 defeat at Burnley with a back problem.
The Germany international made his first start of the campaign against Burton in the League Cup second round, but limped off with the aforementioned ankle problem midway through the second-half. He has not played since.
It gives Jurgen Klopp a potential selection headache going into Friday’s trip to Stamford Bridge, following such a superb team performance against champions Leicester City on Saturday.
Captain Jordan Henderson produced his best display of the season in Can’s deep-lying midfield role, while Georginio Wijnaldum was an underrated presence in the middle of the park.
It would be a risk for Klopp to alter things for such an important game, but Can’s qualities have become increasingly evident since he joined from Bayer Leverkusen for £9.75million in July 2014.
The youngster was one of Liverpool’s best players in 2015/16, producing some dominant performance as the Reds reached the Europa League final.
When fully fit, his place in the starting line-up is not in doubt, but depending on how he fares in training this week, a cameo off the substitutes’ bench could make more sense against Antonio Conte’s side.
Dejan Lovren will also be monitored in the coming days, after the Croatian missed the win over Leicester with a severe black eye.
Lucas Leiva played well in Lovren’s absence, despite his catastrophic error that led to Jamie Vardy’s goal, but Klopp will surely be keen to get his first-choice centre-back pairing of Lovren and Joel Matip back on the pitch.Story highlights Gene and Vern Ann Baxter were married in the fall of 1936
Now 102, the Iowa couple will mark 80 years of marriage this year
(CNN) At 102 years old, Gene Baxter has a thing or two to teach young folks about the art of courting.
It all started when a young woman walked into the car dealership where he worked, looking for a heater for her car.
That was January 17, 1936.
"My youngest brother said you should have been here, a girl brought in a Ford pickup. Slickest chick you'd ever seen -- sexy looking, he said," Gene Baxter told CNN affiliate KCRG in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Baxter found Vern Ann Hering with her friends nearby, and he offered to show her the town.
Read MoreNigel Farage holds up a sign he claimed to show Article 50’s wording (Picture: LBC)
Nigel Farage has been called a ‘foghorn of ignorance’ after he claimed to know what Article 50 contains.
The world-famous author Philip Pullman described the Brexit-supporter ‘b*llock-faced’.
Child killer Jon Venables begs not to have new identity revealed 'over fear of death'
The author of the His Dark Materials trilogy had been riled because the radio presenter used a verb incorrectly.
Writing on Twitter, he said: ‘Extinguish is a transitive verb, you b*llock-faced foghorn of ignorance.’
It comes after Farage’s employer, LBC radio, issued a clarification about what he had said on-air.
Philip Pullman is known for his children’s books (Picture: David Levenson/Getty Images)
The radio presenter, and European Parliament MEP, campaigned to leave during the Brexit campaign and led Ukip until resigning (again) last year.
However he came unstuck after telling listeners that Article 50, the legal basis for triggering an exit from the EU, contains no obligations to pay extra money after leaving.
Firefighters race to battle blaze as huge fire tears across Arthur's Seat
The politician held up a sign reading: ‘Article 50. The rights and obligations deriving from the Treaties would therefore extinguish.’
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In fact, the quote was a widely shared memorandum explaining the legal treaty to MEPs before Brexit.
Article 50 comes from the Lisbon Treaty, a key part of the EU legislation agreed in 2007.
He has called Brexit a ‘catastrophe’ (Picture: David Levenson/Getty Images)
LBC said in a statement: ‘LBC can clarify that a comment made by Nigel Farage on his show last night is not accurate.’
Pullman has in the past called Brexit a ‘catastrophe’ and outlined 1,000 reasons for the vote.
MORE: A man is organising gay hookups next to Farage’s office in Brussels
MORE: Frazzled Nigel Farage ends interview by telling reporter to go on a comedy showAutoGuide.com
Chevrolet just announced new details about the next-generation Volt.
The upcoming electric car will be powered by a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine and will benefit from an all-new Voltec extended range electric vehicle (EREV) propulsion system. According to the American automaker, the new propulsion system was “substantially developed from Volt owners including data collected on their driving behaviors.” The system, which includes the battery, drive unit, range-extending engine and power electronics, will be more efficient and offer more range and better fuel economy compared to the current Volt.
SEE ALSO: 2016 Chevrolet Volt to Make Motown Debut in January
The 2016 Chevrolet Volt’s two-motor drive unit operates approximately five to 12 percent more efficiently than the current one, while weighing 100 lbs less. In addition, the Traction Power Inverter Module has been directly built into the drive unit to reduce mass, size and build complexity while improving efficiency. Unfortunately, no updated range figures were announced today, but Chevrolet did say that those numbers will come when the vehicle makes its debut at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show.
The company also announced that the new Chevrolet Volt’s electric drive unit will be built in Warren, Mich., meaning most of the Volt’s major powertrain components will be made in the state. Nearly $300 million in capital investments will be made in Michigan between now and the end of the year.
GALLERY: 2016 Chevrolet Volt
Discuss this story at our Chevrolet Volt forumA new report raises ethical questions about stock trades by employee at the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
Forget hiring a top hedge fund to manage your portfolio. Your better bet might be an employee at the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a new report suggesting that regulators are trading on inside information relating to investigations and upcoming enforcement actions.
In the report titled "The Stock Picking Skills of SEC Employees," researchers found that SEC employees' stock purchases look like your average person's. But when these employees sell their stocks, they appear to systematically beat the market by making sales within weeks of costly enforcement actions by the agency.
"These results suggest that SEC employees potentially trade profitably under the new rules, and that at least some of their profits potentially stem from trading ahead of costly SEC sanctions and on privileged non-public information," write Shivaram Rajgopal, a professor of accounting at Emory University, and Roger M. White, a doctoral student in accounting at Georgia State University. "In short, it appears that SEC employees continue to take advantage of non-public information to trade profitably in stocks under their regulatory purview."
A spokesperson for the SEC, which has made crackdowns on insider trading a priority in its enforcement division, declined to immediately comment.
The information was obtained from the SEC under a Freedom of Information Act request, but it was limited. The researchers did not have access to the portfolios of the SEC employees. And none of the trades were identified by employee, so the researchers could not tell how much in profits certain employees were earning, or whether employees with certain kinds of jobs or levels of power were able to make more money.
Instead, they built hedge fund portfolios where they went long on stocks that SEC employees buy and short on stocks they sell. The findings are startling.
Researchers found that out of the 56 enforcement actions against publicly traded companies during the time period analyzed, SEC employees traded ahead of six -- and were far more likely to sell rather than buy. "This fact pattern indicates that the monitoring mechanisms the SEC planned to impose to discourage such practice are either weak or nonexistent," the researchers say.
The six enforcement actions were against Bank of America (Feb. 4, 2010), General Electric (July 27, 2010 and Dec. 23, 2011), Citigroup (July 29, 2010), Johnson & Johnson (April 8, 2011) and JPMorgan (July 7, 2011).
In these cases where trades were made ahead of an announcement, the vast majority were sales. Take a look at the table below comparing the actions of SEC employees compared to the entire market, in various run-up periods ahead of an enforcement action. The disparity is striking. Thirty days or less before an announcement, for instance, more than 74 percent of trades by employees were sales, versus just half in the total market.
Source: "Stock Picking Skills of SEC Employees"
The SEC apparently did not begin tracking data on its employees' transactions until 2009. Even now, the report says that there is no way of knowing whether the agency is auditing the reported trades to verify their accuracy.
New rules from 2009 state that any employee must first obtain clearance for any securities transaction. The idea is that if the employee gets cleared for the stock trade, then the clearance will serve as evidence that the employee didn't do anything improper.
But the report's writers say that the profits made by employees still raise questions.
"Given that the SEC is charged by Congress with enforcing insider trading regulations against corporate officers and other market participants, our findings indicating abnormal risk adjusted profits on trades by SEC employees are arguably troubling," write Rajgopal and White.
Update: The SEC says it has an explanation. "Each of the transactions was individually reviewed and approved in advance by the Ethics office," said John Nester, spokesperson for the SEC. "Most of the sales were required by SEC policy. Staff had no choice. They were required to sell."
Nester explained that before staff can work on an issue that involves a company, they have to sell any holdings of stock in that firm. As a result, he said, there shouldn't be any surprise that a sale would precede the announcement of an enforcement action.Hong Kong (CNN) It's been a busy week for arms tests in North Korea. They fired three ballistic missiles on Monday, followed by the test explosion of a nuclear warhead on Friday.
The pace of North Korea's weapons program seems to be increasing, raising speculation that it may be trying to upgrade its arms before the deployment of a controversial US missile defense system in South Korea.
The simplest way to bypass a missile defense system is to just launch more missiles than it can effectively intercept, says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the US-based East Asia Nonproliferation Program
"Launching them simultaneously is more difficult for a missile defense system," he says..
If those missiles are equipped with nuclear warheads "they don't have to get too many up in the air and past the missile defense system to have an effect."
Multiple missiles fired
On Monday, three ballistic missiles fired from a base in the west of North Korea flew across the country and fell into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan.
All three landed within 250 kilometers of Japan's Okushiri Island, the country's Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The accuracy of the multiple missile launches suggested North Korea's technology was improving, Japan's Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said.
Defense dodging
Tensions have raised considerably on the peninsula since Pyongyang allegedly successfully tested a hydrogen bomb in January. Friday's nuclear warhead test heightens tensions even further.
North Korea's weapons tests also come amid negotiations between South Korea and the US to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD).
South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo said last month that THAAD is expected to be fully deployed by the end of 2017.
THAAD beater
Lewis pointed to another way North Korea can potentially bypass THAAD's defenses: via a submarine-launched ballistic missile.
Pyongyang appears to have successfully tested such a missile last month, much to the jubilation of Kim, as seen in photos released by North Korean state media.
JUST WATCHED North Korean leader calls missile test 'great success' Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH North Korean leader calls missile test 'great success' 02:15
"THAAD has a forward-looking radar with a 120-degree field of view," Lewis wrote in a recent report for Arms Control Wonk. That means "North Korea's submarines would not have to travel very far out to sea to attack the THAAD system from behind."
The missile could also be mounted on a truck and deployed on land, in the manner of the Chinese DF-21, which forms a major part of that country's nuclear arsenal, Lewis says.
Firing a missile nearly straight up, whether from submarine or land, would also increase its effectiveness against THAAD. According to a report (pdf) by the US Defense Technical Information Center, THAAD tests show it achieved its lowest possible rating against intermediate-range missiles of the type Pyongyang appears to have been developing.
"THAAD might be able to handle the KN-11, but it is distressing that North Korea can already present a threat that stresses defenses not yet deployed," Lewis writes.
Recent tests show "may be a signal that Kim Jong Un is seeking to diversify his deterrents in a way to create some strategic ambiguity," says Alex Neill, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Asia
Nuclear threat
While any missile that passes Seoul's defenses would be potentially devastating for those in its path, the true threat posed by North Korea to its neighbors comes from its purported ability to equip such weapons with nuclear warheads.
Pyongyang claimed in March that it has successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads, a crucial step to their mounting on an intermediate or long range missile. US officials said it was " prudent " to take North Korea's word regarding this development.
"The North's nuclear capability has quite consistently been underestimated," says Neill, adding that it is safe to assume Pyongyang would want to add nuclear-capabilities to any new parts of its arsenal.Joss Whedon, a famous Hollywood director, writer and producer, took to Twitter Sunday — also Mother's Day — to bash what America has become under President Donald Trump by stating he's glad his mother isn't alive to witness it.
"Today I gratefully give my mother the gift of having been dead for 25 years and not having to see what a tub of f**kery our country's become," Whedon tweeted.
Image source: screenshot
Whedon is known for his work in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Angel," "Toy Story, "Cabin in the Woods" and other various movies and television shows. He is an avowed atheist and liberal, supporting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the last presidential election cycle, although Warren never ran.
Given that Sunday is Mother's Day in America, a day where everyone celebrates their mother, Whedon's negative and politically charged tweet was quick to earn the stern rebuke of Twitter.
Many blamed Whedon's tweet on an over-politicized America:
@joss So, you're glad your mom is dead, so she doesn't have to live to see President Trump. You're insane even for Hollywood's standards man. — Mark Dice (@MarkDice) May 14, 2017
@joss Only a Hollywood liberal would prefer his mom be dead than live under the Trump Administration. — Mark Dice (@MarkDice) May 14, 2017
@MarkDice @joss This is a whole new low from Hollywood's liberal nutters — Señor Gruñon (@stewyj2) May 14, 2017
@joss Shame on you. Nothing I would want more than to have my mother back despite how bad things may be. A mother's life and love trumps all. — Austin Petersen (@AP4Liberty) May 14, 2017
@joss *Tweets that he'll 'be quiet for a bit' *Chimes in on #MothersDay to say he's grateful his Mom's been dead for 25 years @joss is awful pic.twitter.com/fC0E6aX3Hk — Chet Cannon (@Chet_Cannon) May 14, 2017
@joss I find it disturbing that a son would use his dead mother's memory, on Mother's Day of all days, to hash out petty politics. — Tracie whitmore (@Traciewhitmore3) May 14, 2017
@joss I find this tweet very upsetting. Who says things like this? What happened to you? — Alyse On Life (@Alyse_On_Life) May 14, 2017
@joss nice job making Mother's Day about you — mitch (@FreeMitch) May 14, 2017
@joss That was just tasteless. Do you know how many miss their mothers as of today? — Adam J. (@AFreakyDude) May 14, 2017
This isn't the first time Whedon has found himself in a bit of controversy. In fact, since Trump became president, Whedon as found himself mired in some sort of controversy quite a few times.
Just one week before Trump's inauguration in January, Whedon tweeted that he hopes House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is murdered by a rhino. He also stirred up controversy last month when he mocked a teenage cancer survivor's appearance after she met with Republicans.The theory that the moon landings were hoaxed by the US government to assert their victory in the space race over Russia, is something which has grown in popularity over time.
Recent polls indicate that approximately 20% of Americans believe that the U.S. has never landed on the moon. After the Apollo missions ended in the seventies, why haven’t we ever been back? Only during the term of Richard Nixon did humanity ever land on the moon, and after Watergate most people wouldn’t put it past Tricky Dick to fake them to put America in good standing in the Cold War.
In this list I have presented some of the proposed evidence to suggest that the moon landings were hoaxes. I tried to include NASA’s explanations to each entry to provide an objective perspective.
10 The Waving Flag
Conspiracy theorists have pointed out that when the first moon landing was shown on live television, viewers could clearly see the American flag waving and fluttering as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted it. Photos of the landing also seem to show rippling in a breeze, such as the image above which clearly shows a |
is the only living elephant capable of this feat that they know of, though other elephants have exhibited the ability to mimic the sounds of trucks and other elephants.National & World News, Crime
By Christian Abbatecola Published: May 27 2013
Grant Acord, a student in West Albany, was brought into custody after local police received a tip that he was planning an attack on his high school.
A planned attack on a high school in the town of West Albany, Oregon has prevented by police late last week. Local officers took 17-year-old Grant Alan Acord into custody at 10:26 PM on Thursday, May 23rd and held him on two counts each Possession of a Destructive Device and Manufacture of a Destructive Device.
The high school junior had built six explosive devices—including napalm bombs, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and other explosives made from drain cleaner—and had more bomb-crafting material on hand, all of which was hidden under a floorboard in his bedroom. Police have conducted searches to ensure no other dangerous materials are present in the home or the West Albany High School, which has been swept twice before classes are to resume on Tuesday.
According to District Attorney John Haroldson, the bombs were intended to be used in an attack specifically modeled after the Columbine shooting of 1999. Diagrams patterned by the Columbine attack, checklists, and a plan to use firearms were discovered alongside the explosives in Acord’s bedroom. The bombs were intended to increase the effectiveness of the attack.
Police began investigating the plot after they received a tip that Acord had been manufacturing explosive devices; reportedly he had told friends of his plan and asked them to film it. He will be arraigned tomorrow, as the courts are closed for Memorial Day, and charged as an adult with attempted aggravated murder. The plans and diagrams found in his room will play a pivotal role in proving his guilt according to Haroldson, as they show a substantial step had been taken toward enacting the attack.
[Source: West Albany School District, KATU]Cops Allowed to Work "Half Drunk"
One might expect police officers to face harsher-than-average penalties for on-the-job drinking. But this is not the case, according to a recent report by the Better Government Association. In Chicago and surrounding areas, union rules dictate that cops can show up to work with a 0.049 blood alcohol content without facing disciplinary action. The rationale is that a zero-tolerance policy wouldn't account for incidentals—such as an officer having wine with dinner before an overnight shift, or taking a bit of cough medicine. But several departments even impose a limit as high as 0.08 BAC—which is the definition of legally drunk in all 50 states. "I worry about it every day," says Sam Pulia, Mayor of Westchester, Illinois. "I could argue that you are half drunk. I still believe that police officers are held to a higher standard." Many community members and former officers believe that any amount of alcohol poses a safety threat. "I think it places the city at great risk," says Walter Zalisko, a retired police chief who now runs Police Management Consultants International in Fort Myers, Fla. "Zero would be the wise choice, that you can’t have any alcohol." But an area police chief, April Padalik, insists there is no cause for concern—if a cop were drunk on the job, supervisors would intervene. "We’ve never had a problem," says Padalik. "We would follow policy and procedure, and that employee would be removed from duty." Evidently there is some exception: the City of Chicago recently paid a $4.1 million settlement to a man's family after he was fatally shot by a drunk police officer.Background Household crowding is an important problem in some aboriginal communities that is reaching particularly high levels among the circumpolar Inuit. Living in overcrowded conditions may endanger health via stress pathophysiology. This study examines whether higher household crowding is associated with stress-related physiological dysregulations among the Inuit.
Methods Cross-sectional data on 822 Inuit adults were taken from the 2004 Qanuippitaa? How are we? Nunavik Inuit Health Survey. Chronic stress was measured using the concept of allostatic load (AL) representing the multisystemic biological ‘wear and tear’ of chronic stress. A summary index of AL was constructed using 14 physiological indicators compiled into a traditional count-based index and a binary variable that contrasted people at risk on at least seven physiological indicators. Household crowding was measured using indicators of household size (total number of people and number of children per house) and overcrowding defined as more than one person per room. Data were analysed using weighted Generalised Estimating Equations controlling for participants’ age, sex, income, diet and involvement in traditional activities.
Results Higher household crowding was significantly associated with elevated AL levels and with greater odds of being at risk on at least seven physiological indicators, especially among women and independently of individuals’ characteristics.Holika Holika UV Wonder Shield Smart Sun Spray SPF 50 PA+++ review 11:58 AM Moi Sanom 0 Comments
Tried Leports Sun and absolutely hated it!
1.Blegh 2. Pff 3. Meh 4. Oohh 5. Awwyeah 6. Wooha
Sunscreen is a necessary woe.It is important to use sunscreen for so many reasons yet most of the ones available are absolutely disgusting and uncomfortable to wear. On top of that, if you use sunscreen daily to protect yourself from sun damage yet live in the US, not only do you have to deal with products that feel terrible, but you also don’t have sufficient UVA protection which are the rays responsible for sun damage in the first place.In comes Asian sunscreen to save the day.It changed my perception of skincare and sunscreen completely!I have already raved about the glorious Biore Watery mousse here, but since the tube is small and I like trying new things I had to buy some new sunscreen.I don’t know if it is just me but I forget to apply sunscreen often. I usually remember but then it is too late since I already applied concealer or CC cream. Or what about the parts such as arms and chest when I wear something a little less modest. Or about the days I actually spend a few hours in the sun? Well, applying sunscreen is not really something I do in these situations and I knew there had to be a solution for it.In comes sunscreen spray!I know it has been around for ages, but I only had tried the yucky Western counterparts.After reading that sprays were not meant to be used on the face I thought it might not be suitable for me. But finally I found some sprays that were for the face specifically (and body of course) and I took the plunge. Since I couldn't find any reviews I just ordered the cheapest one of the Get It Beauty list I am very happy that I did.This stuff is great!I was a little worried since I first used Leports Sun from the same line that I hated but thankfully they are nothing alike.This spray is lightweight, leaves no white cast and is easy to use.I like that I can't feel it when applied and that even when I layer it, the spray is still undetectable.I generally apply one thinnish layer on my face, close my eyes and mouth, hold my breath and spray it from about 15 cm distance all over my face. Then I walk away from the spray area, breath and repeat.This way I want to make sure that I applied it properly and evenly.After it is sprayed, there is a misty foggy haze hanging in the air.I assume it is the sunscreen floating around. It dissipates fast and I didn't notice any staining on my walls or carpet.I cant really explain how it smells. Kind of sunscreeny and sprayey.It doesn't linger though so it is not something I think about.I really like this spray since it has all the characteristics I want from a sunscreen.I am excited to try more sprays to see how they compare to this one but honestly I am not sure what they could improve (besides prettier packaging or possibly coconut scent).I really like it and I will never look back to the dark times before I discovered spray sunscreen!And here I leave you with Johnny Clyde being Johnny Clyde.Disclaimer: he is like a cat, he has a serious aversion to any kind of spray.He freaks out like this, be it hair spray or plain water.And this was not his first time using this spray!Ingredients: Here Rating:Purchased at Testerkorea Available on Ebay1. A Temperature Check
The condition of experiencing warmth amongst an assemblage of people. Likewise, the feeling of coldness from a group of enemies.
In the absence of standards and values, a means of measurement—informal, spontaneous—for the participants.
In the absence of scale, in the absence of reference points, in the absence of history, an attempt at determining the degree in which the bodies present were able to push themselves.
To have even asked the question means expectations have been exceeded. When moderation has become impossible, all that’s left is a documentation of intensities. A document of the capacities with which some bodies were able to transmit energy to their surroundings; to the bodies surrounding them.
These investigations, fragments, drafts, come from a series of disappointments and frustrations; limits, which were refused, ignored; in favor, instead, of continuation. A document of some periodic arrivals-as-opportunities; to communicate, internally and externally, an evolution of some thoughts and desires. These words serve as both reminders and suggestions.
With the understanding that, for many, to take, to take the time, to think, to talk, to write, means to stop, to stop forcibly—and suddenly—movements; activity which aspired to be, to be direct, to be a direct challenge, a challenge against, against this state. We. get. it. These processes will not be a restraint and retreat from these activities, but rather a means to propel the comrades further.
In acknowledging mistakes, hesitations, confusions, the hope is to find inspirations for new and ongoing experimentation.
This project serves as a document that the desires have not diminished, nor have the commitments. Some of what was lacking was coherence, a coherent analysis. Not in the form of a master text, but a series, a series of texts, thoughts; from various sources, on various situations, events, actions, discussions and meetings. After running into wall after wall, eviction after eviction, unfortunately we have often been flung back into atomization, isolation, some lonely individual antagonists, alone with their righteousness.
The comfort found in the family and its structures, the cults, the found comfort… was a retreat; a retreat from the moment, the history, the demands, the contradictions.
Nothing said will be able to be verified, so none of it is correct. It is always already an offering to ourselves.
2. Becoming Splinter
Becoming again is a process during which one accepts that they are unattractive. But that to be disagreeable can be beautiful. What is pleasing, what becomes pleasing, is not the ordering, the ordering of appearances, but that the parts seem generally suitable, together, changing, together changing, again. This becomes just one, just one potential actuality, just one actuality, potential, just one potential actuality, of a potential, that might seem appropriate, for now, or inappropriate but proper, for now, for later. It might seem fitting, this growth, to come, a new being, together, for now, for later.
It becomes you to be here, to be, to be apart, for now, for later. The responsibilities and, the responsibilities of, these situations, coming again, coming, coming now, happens together, here. From high to low, this move, from major to minor, whole to part, moving, splintering, together, form the new dignities, processes, processes of arrival, of appearance, dignified, together.
No singularities, there is, there is no what we’d like, no to do. No particularities, there is no about who we are, we’re not. Just a generalized force, against everything, we hate. Just a generalized force, for everything, for everything we desired. Some points, there were some points in time and space, when decisions seemed impossible, impossible but inevitable. This thing, this thing like a crisis, like a natural disaster, mismanaged, mismanaged with all its mismanagement, but happening here, now happening here.
This is, this is less a title, less a container, than a place, a place from which to speak, giving voice, to many, or a few, or one, or none, as necessary. This is, this is less an identity than a suggestion, however modest, for that which will never be approved, and was therefore important.
How to take? Or first, how to want? Or, how to give substance, give substance to dissatisfactions, desperate, disparate dissatisfactions? Or, how to not limit, how not to limit, and how to challenge the experiences of effectiveness and time? These lives inside and outside, inside and outside a class against a class, as a collapse, a collapse of distribution, as a beginning of circulation.
To compare accounts, to signify nothing, to see how constructions correlate, or don’t. What specificities can be pointed towards, pointed towards outside of an assumed community, assumed culture, a society, an aesthetic? What can be done to qualify what is meant by the present, the present moment, to qualify the present moment?
The position, a position of an emphasis, a position of emphasis, that’s all, on certain thoughts and activities, on certain theories and practices, certain ideas, an initiation. A running documentation of an ongoing praxis, neither normative, nor authoritative.
This fragment will disintegrate, among its own collective shivers, during an unforgiving winter.
In the rejection of the body, of any main bodies, of any body ever actually existing, one is assumed to be another; small, weak, but dangerous in ways no one understood. There were never any splits, breaks, fractions, because it was assumed all along that such diversions meant that autonomy, independence, was not necessary. But the experience was one of denunciation, being discarded. While the pieces, now reduced, remained sharp, explosive.
As people congregate, this is an accumulation, an aggregation, of experiences, intelligences, energies. Their association does not mean organization, that they are organized, that they were organized, nor that they want, that they want to be, though the experiences of exclusion, of exclusion combined, often points this way. This cluster, instead, instead this cluster will be, simply, a collection, a collection of of those things, those things left, left along the way. This is their only relation, their only relation to be considered, in their most radical non-arrangement, together. Our languages will remain apart, opposed, but we’ll travel together, in formation, in more and more formations, flexible formations, administratively, tactically, flexible, more battalions than headquarters, operations subordinate to no other squadron, an orchestra mixed up, an orchestra whose instruments are all mixed up, associations open and closed, identities affirmed, affirmed by being hidden.
To associate, to arrange, to form, to be part of, nothing, nowhere, never, as a collective, without common standards, without interests, but some affinities, some aggravated aesthetics. No characteristics or habits, ownership or control, but traveling together, complementary, for an unknown purpose. Never bound together like some free radicals in a brigade without a hierarchy.
Reduced, as always, to something baroque, to some critique, some aesthetic – the great crisis. That which becomes separated from, which acts apart, in disagreement, but united all the same.
For dissension, the holy schism, the break of communion, facilitated heresy. A secession for the new councils.
3. Why We Wear Masks
Our planned assault will be experienced as inevitable. No one can plead, “we did not know.” The next targets have been announced. Now how to stop such a monster.
We wish not to be seen, for our actions not to be, for our signals to point toward some other legibility, something else, again, a new life; something that our old selves could never have conceived, could never have comprehended. Everything that we were now exists only as a carcass, a corpse hidden in our basements, attics, closets, under our beds, a zombie, chasing us around, all these terrible places we find ourselves in, trying to talk to us, to touch us, to find a common language, which brings us back only, always, to their fields of recognition, again.
We have been inspired to experiment, not reconcile. The disorganization, confusion, and chaos of the occupation and its assemblages are its greatest strength, the only reason we show up, the only thing keeping us around. It is no longer necessary to become understood by our oppressors, to satisfy their requirements of discourse, negotiation, compromise. Our demands are only of each other, to make each other come, to challenge ourselves, to keep pushing.
It was never our obligation or responsibility to explain, to relive, the details of our alienation, exploitation, oppression, only to have you reassure us that you didn’t really mean it; that it won’t happen again; that you’ll try to be better; that you think we can work it out. We are constantly surrounded by triggers, signposts of all the abuses we’ve suffered throughout our entire lives. Indeed, we’re surrounded by affirmations of abuses still to come. Every time we leave the house we’re reminded, corrected. Every time we stay home it’s even worse. We look at you and see all the times we’ve stayed silent, all the times we mustered up the courage and words to call you, to say something, all those attempts at accountability, justice, that were refused, abandoned, brutalized, ignored, manipulated, perverted, all those front groups and their twisted identities formed to pretend as if it was possible for you to ever change, or that you wanted to. You turned us all into apologists, but we have now given up on conciliation.
We preserve now only our mobility, our commitment to not stay in one place, but rather stay in all places, at all times, as we wish; as we give each other the courage to try and try and try. A wall is to be either torn down or scaled, not simply led to, looked at, pleaded to, understood, turned away from, and reported back on.
We were sick of being inside, inside our ugly homes, our stupid rooms, with our ugly furnishings, shitty design, all our fucking stuff, with all those people we’ve grown sick of, because you can only talk so much before you want to fight, or fuck, or leave. Now we are sick of being outside, looking at all these empty buildings while we stand in the rain, fight the wind, are constantly watched, surveilled by police, by journalists, who we can’t bear to make eye contact with any longer.
We’ve seen our hexes work, we’ve seen our enemies flee, their outposts abandoned without a trace. We remember the fear in their eyes, their horror in not knowing what it was we wanted, what we were trying to say, what we were about to do. The confusion is yours, you caused it, we will deal with it in the ways that we choose.
It is no longer possible to speak of how and who to accuse, to punish; or what to do with the institutions that administer our lives; or which representatives should figure out what to say and do with each other – with the borders of jurisdiction that existed before, before we found ourselves crossing them. The past will not exist. We will become the most ruthless revisionists ever conceived. This will be our only demand.
We affirm no misunderstood essences, but only a future of which nothing is known. This is our demand. We look around at each other, in these occupations, in the streets, and we hold hands, lock arms, we run.
Wandering limbs without venom can march and march, but if nothing is taken along the way, it’s all forgotten like a faint breeze. Our marches should become more than just walking tours for out of town activists, visiting artists, and other opportunists – they should be exercises towards a true insidiousness, preparations for the ultimate betrayal. It is from this dishonesty to everything we’ve previously committed ourselves to that we can build a new trust.
Teething is not a process of slow growth, but rather an eruption; the moment in which we realize we have new weapons of attack. A snake’s teeth curve inwards, towards its throat, preventing its prey from escape. The force of movement, the movement of force, making turning back, makes stopping, the most dangerous course. As our muscles swell up beyond what our bodies were ready for, we feel a violent, throbbing pain, and we rest. We rest not to make the swelling go down, but to prepare ourselves for this new stage.
A rupture is the moment of recognition, when we recognize that we have only ourselves to overcome. That all is now ours to take. We see those trying to maintain order, the police, trying to protect those who created this order. Who prevent the possible, of anyone thinking of what might be. All those attempts to make our ideas, our dreams, criminal, to make our desires punishable. To control the potentialities of where our affinities may lead us. We have been provoked so much throughout our lives, it is now impossible for us to be provocateurs. The shock will be not what it is to come, but that it took so long to happen.
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They say you should never meet your heroes, let alone learn how they make an omelet. But it’s confession time, so I’m sharing an untold story of Top Gear to celebrate its re-launch—or re-hash, depending on your view.
(Editor’s note: I asked former Stig, stunt driver, racer and friend of Jalopnik Ben Collins to tell me a story no one has heard about Top Gear before. And he did, because he’s awesome like that.
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If you like Ben’s writing you really should check out his book, How To Drive, which just went on sale in the U.S. And if any readers out there are wondering what to do when your brakes fail and you’re NOT filming a Top Gear race, Ben has conveniently written a chapter on just that. -PG)
Back in the summer of 2008 we were looking for a nation to insult and Germany seemed to have it all: a seemingly humorless populace with high-speed highways and a new motoring show hosted by three presenters. Sounds familiar.
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One of these was none other than Sabine Schmitz: the heroine of the Nürburgring who left Jeremy’s pride in tatters in the back of her white van.
In order to thoroughly humiliate the Germans, Top Gear relied on a tried and tested formula: invite them to a contest where we had all the cameras, and then edit accordingly to make them look stupid.
Operation Sauerkraut was staged at Zolder Racing Circuit in Belgium, which holds a special place in many hearts as the fateful venue where the legend of Formula One, Gilles Villeneuve, was extinguished by a colossal crash in the 1980s.
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The Germans bowled up to the venue by car and were blissfully unaware that the English team would be “arriving” in World War II Spitfire fighter planes. At least, that’s how it would look after Top Gear’s editor worked his magic on the footage.
Once filming got underway, we adopted another widely used filming technique known as “The Kick, Bollock and Scramble.” What this amounts to is throwing all your people and toys into one place and filming whatever happens next.
To avoid detection or enemy fire, the Spitfires were filmed in the safety of England while the Germans were filmed on location looking curiously at an empty sky. No doubt they were informed to look out for our arrival in the back of a low fair airliner. The footage, once spliced together, delivered a satisfactory mugging off.
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Once filming got underway, we adopted another widely used filming technique known as “The Kick, Bollock and Scramble.” What this amounts to is throwing all your people and toys into one place and filming whatever happens next.
Double-decker cars were cleverly constructed by our version of NASA: a large man called Steve who set to work with the crack of his arse on display more often than a Kardashian. Steve’s welding conjoined one car on top of another like two ugly insects screwing, with one presenter sitting downstairs controlling the pedals and a crew-member doing the steering upstairs.
Somehow this was deemed insurable.
The race comprised two of these monsters from each team, and the carnage that ensued is readily available on the internet. The only problem was that Steve’s abominations proved to be far more reliable than anybody predicted, and nobody could get Jeremy and co to stop driving them. That left precious little time to film the remaining challenges.
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In another subtle homage to Germany losing World War II, a timed autotest was set up using a BMW Mini that would be shot at with paintballs by opposing members in tiny tanks. There was so little time to film this segment that only Jezza got to drive before being whisked off to the track for a race against Sabine. Even an amoeba could forecast the winner of that contest.
Top Gear was trailing on points and the sun was starting to do that thing that film producers hate by falling out of the sky. The final contest was winner-take-all. James May, AKA Captain, Slow versus Germany’s Tim Schrick, AKA a professional racing driver, racing around the full 2.5-mile Zolder Circuit in a pair of 180 mph GT3 racecars. For James, this was tantamount to euthanasia.
I donned the Stig’s white suit and helmet and we all played along with the gag that it was actually James who had squeezed into the Nomex. But that was where the team orders ended.
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Schrick eagerly climbed aboard his Porsche, I jumped in the Aston Martin. The race would be two laps, from a rolling start, and Schrick would be given a four-second lead on account of their points advantage.
I was understandably eager to drive the car for the first time around a track I had never seen, but my car wouldn’t start. Schrick, meanwhile, was roaring around the track getting his tyres and brakes up to temperature. Hot tyres means more grip, which makes the car go faster. It seemed conspicuously competitive for a scripted race where the Stig was supposed to save the day. “Scripted my ass,” he was thinking.
The Aston spluttered to life and I was finally released from pit lane with orders to drive directly to the start line. My protests about warming the tyres fell on deaf ears. We had ten minutes left to film what normally took hours.
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The Aston’s bare metal surfaces were liberally covered in black rubber particles and oil residue, the hallmarks of an unloved beast that had been wheeled out of semi retirement to perform against its will. I floored it and weaved left to right to try and get the rubber working, and braked hard and early on the back straight to check the binders. Lucky I did.
The mechanics dived briefly into the footwell and re-emerged, shrugged their Gallic shoulders and looked like they might go on strike at any moment. Fixing the problem was either uninteresting or impossible.
The brakes worked fine apart from the fact that the throttle stuck open, resulting in the car trying very hard to accelerate me towards a wall. Back at the grid the cameras were ready and Clarkson was waving his giraffe-like limbs around, accentuating the “Bollock, Scramble” nausea now gripping the crew.
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I tried explaining my predicament calmly but clearly to the director thusly: “The brakes on this fucking car don’t fucking work.” He looked at his watch, jogged on the spot and called the French mechanics over to take a look. Jeremy was frothing nearby. The mechanics dived briefly into the footwell and re-emerged, shrugged their Gallic shoulders and looked like they might go on strike at any moment. Fixing the problem was either uninteresting or impossible.
The option of sending up the white flag on safety grounds didn’t bode well for my TV career. Then again, losing would be unforgivable regardless of whether the car had brakes or not.
“Let’s do this,” I said with faux confidence.
Schrick, who must have been running low on fuel by now, pulled into formation and we drove towards the start line. I felt a gigantic rush of adrenaline. Schrick tore off and four long seconds later, I wheelspun away in pursuit.
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For the first ragged lap, I drove the hell out of the car and the throttle behaved itself. Bless those garlic-crunching mechanics after all. I advanced towards Schrick’s Porsche until reaching Turn 1 where things went pear-shaped. I braked for the fast left-hander and the throttle jammed fully open, pouring 550 BHP of resistance against my brakes. The front tyres locked up and I fell off the circuit and into the sand trap.
I lost some ground, but at least the tyres were cooking. After another desperate lap I had the Porsche within my sights and I went for the world’s longest lunge under braking for a tight hairpin, whilst praying the Aston would play ball.
I squeezed past and The Stig saved the day.
The Top Gear editors took the footage into their windowless caffeine chambers and somehow managed to unscramble it to create an entertaining, joined-up piece of TV.
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With seven presenters filling the screen the new Top Gear is sure to be an editor’s delight, and hopefully a crowd pleaser too.Broadcasting Live
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By accessing the materials on this Web site, you acknowledge and represent that you will not redistribute this material to anyone, nor will you permit any minor or any person who might find such material personally offensive to see this material. You further acknowledge and represent that you understand and accept responsibility for your own actions, and release the owners and operators of this Web site and its service provider(s) from all liability.Dan Sevy, a member of the Followers of Christ and a practitioner of faith healing, told lawmakers today, “I want to point out that we believe in freedom of health care. Not free health care, but freedom of choice in health care.”
Sevy, who lives near Marsing, said he believes in healing by prayer only, and cited concerns about deaths from medical error. “The medical profession, I understand, they want to help,” he said. “Their intentions are good. But our intentions are good. Life extends beyond this earth.”
“Suffering is real,” he said. “It’s real all over the world and it’s real right here and it’s real personally. And there’s no greater suffering than one that is personal to oneself, whether it be himself or his children, and I as a parent find the suffering of my children far greater than my own. … None of us wants to see anybody suffer. If you do, there’s something wrong with you.”
Sen. Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, told Sevy that he, too, is a person of faith, but he believes that medicine is among God’s gifts. He asked Sevy why he wouldn’t want to make use of it. Sevy responded, “We believe that pharmaceuticals and medicine is a product from Satan. Proof can be found in one of the lost books of Enoch.” He said he equates medicine to “witchcraft and sorcery,” and said, “Those who imbibe in those things will not attain a home in heaven. That is our belief. We use it to condemn no one but ourselves. Like I said, we respect your choice and your belief, and hope the very best for you. … We do disagree with medicine and believe that it puts our very eternal lives in jeopardy.”
Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, asked Sevy when he believes that a child reaches an age where he or she can decide for themselves. Sevy said that differs for every child and for the parent who decides it.
“Our goal is eternity, it isn’t here,” Sevy said. “Our goal is not suffering. … If the statute is changed, I’ll not change anything I do.”
Sevy said he had five children, three of whom survive, and has one grandchild. That grandchild was born in a hospital, and he was there, even though he doesn’t believe in that, because he said that was the parents’ decision. Sevy, 52, said he was born to believing parents in the Followers of Christ church.Shortly after Jeremy Corbyn finished his speech to the Labour party conference, his closest colleagues gathered in a small bar at the end of Brighton Pier. Among the attendees were the leader’s aides, as well as those of John McDonnell and Diane Abbott. Abbott’s birthday coincided with the end of the conference and a birthday cake was produced in her honour. As is almost inevitable when Corbyn’s allies are gathered together, the discussion turned to his football team, Arsenal, and the fortunes of its long-serving manager, Arsène Wenger.
Corbyn might have been a serial rebel in parliament but he is a loyalist when it comes to his football team, whose home ground is in his constituency. He is one of the dwindling band who will argue for retaining Wenger’s services no matter what.
The Labour leader’s support for the Frenchman is attributable in part to the latter’s success in overseeing Arsenal’s move from Highbury to the state-of-the-art 60,000-seater Emirates Stadium a decade ago without saddling the club with unsustainable debt. Perhaps Corbyn sees a parallel with his stewardship of Labour: he has transformed the party’s finances and moved it to the left. But Corbyn has yet to claim the major trophies that marked Labour’s and Arsenal’s 1990s and 2000s golden years.
Corbyn’s support for Wenger has an emotional element, too: the two men have known each other for a long time, and they discuss not only football but politics and philosophy. It might seem counter-intuitive, given his long record of voting against official Labour policy, but Corbyn puts a great premium on personal loyalty. That’s why he will not use his enhanced internal clout to conduct a wide-ranging reshuffle, even if Theresa May refreshes her team, as seems likely. Corbyn feels a sense of obligation to those MPs who stuck with him even during his most difficult period as leader.
That frustrates some of his inner circle, who fear that they may come to regret their leader’s excessive sense of fidelity. One aide blames Corbyn’s loyalty to long-standing allies for the party’s underwhelming response to anti-Semitism among its rank and file. Many believe that cost Labour votes in areas with large Jewish populations. In Chipping Barnet on the outskirts of London, where Wenger has long been rumoured to be a party member, Labour came within 353 votes of unseating Theresa Villiers, a prominent Brexiteer and former Northern Ireland secretary.
Factor in five additional seats in which the Jewish population was larger than the Conservative majority – Harrow East, Hendon, Chingford and Woodford Green, Finchley and Golders Green, Cities of London and Westminster – and, they believe, a more robust intervention against anti-Semitism would have helped put Labour in office, albeit in a fragile coalition.
Some in the leaders’ office also worry that there is too much dead wood on the front bench, particularly at junior ministerial level. One shadow cabinet minister who is the target of particular ire is Jon Trickett, who was stripped of his responsibility for the election campaign, in favour of Andrew Gwynne and Ian Lavery, but retains his role as shadow lord president of the council.
Trickett, it is said, was no good as campaign co-ordinator, is not a reliable presence on television or radio, and acts as a bed-blocker to more talented and younger MPs with impeccable Corbynite credentials. (It’s worth noting that although Trickett has reinvented himself as a left-winger, he came into the Commons after a stint as a fairly right-wing council leader and served as a parliamentary private secretary to both Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown.)
Others disagree with this analysis, however. As one of Corbyn’s aides put it to me, the trouble with reshuffles is that “they always make more enemies than |
him that he is the only one who can help Cable save the future.[88] In the final fight, Xavier is accidentally shot in the head by Bishop. Immediately afterward Xavier's body disappears and Cyclops declares that there are no more X-Men.[89]
Professor Xavier survives Bishop's gunshot but falls into a coma.[90] Xavier is kidnapped by Exodus, Tempo, and Karima Shapandar. Exodus tries to heal Xavier, Xavier mentally fights Exodus. Exodus finally approaches Magneto, who is apparently still depowered, for help. Magneto and Karima Shapandar are able to stir Xavier's memories and coax him out of his coma, though Xavier remains slightly confused and partly amnesiac. Later, Exodus confronts Magneto about Joanna Cargill's injury (Magneto was forced to shoot a laser through her eyeball in order to prevent her attempted an assassination of Xavier). Exodus nearly kills Magneto, and Xavier drags Exodus onto the Astral Plane, putting Xavier's own newly restored mind at stake. Xavier defeats Exodus after a harrowing psionic battle, and Exodus reveals the reason he abducted Xavier and to restore his mind: Exodus wants Xavier to lead the Acolytes and find the mutant messiah child (now under the guardianship of Cable) in order to indoctrinate the child into their cause. Xavier refuses. Emma Frost's telepathy picks up on the psychic fight, and Emma informs Cyclops that Xavier is alive. Xavier parts company with Magneto and Karima to try to regain his lost memories by visiting people from his past.[91]
The first person Charles visits is Carter Ryking, who had gone insane after losing his powers. Charles reads Carter's memories and discovers that when the two were children they were used as test subjects by Nathan Milbury of the Black Womb Project, with the approval of Charles' father, Doctor Brian Xavier. Xavier makes the connection Milbury and X-Men villain, Mister Sinister, who has apparently long been manipulating Charles' life in addition to other X-Men. Afterwards, he discovers he has been targeted by assassins.[92]
Charles eventually discovers Mister Sinister had set up Charles, Sebastian Shaw, Juggernaut, and Ryking (Hazard) as potential new hosts for Sinister's mind.[91] Bleeding slowly to death, he apparently gives in to Sinister becoming the new Mister Sinister. But in reality, Xavier is still battling Sinister for control of his body.[91] As Sebastian Shaw and Gambit destroy Sinister's Cronus Machine, the device that he used to transfer his consciousness into new hosts, Xavier drives Sinister out of his body permanently.[92] Xavier thanks Shaw and Gambit for their help and declares he must go and see Cyclops immediately.[93] Professor X returns to the X-Mansion to find it destroyed after recent events.[93] Afterwards, Xavier leaves the ruins of the X-Mansion to secretly meet up Cyclops by psychically coercing his former student for the visit. Xavier explains to Cyclops about the recent events with Mr. Sinister and tries to explain to Cyclops how Sinister has been manipulating Scott's and Jean's lives since when they were children. Xavier attempts to have Scott give him permission to scan Scott's mind for traces of Sinister's influences, but instead, Scott turns the tables on Xavier by revealing that he has secretly invited Emma Frost into their entire meeting and also into Xavier's mind.[94]
While in his mind, Emma forces Xavier to relive each of his morally ambiguous decisions under altruistic pretenses. As the issue continues, Charles realizes his human arrogance and that while some of his decisions were morally wrong, he must move forward with his life and deal with the consequences. Emma ends her incursion into Xavier's mind by reminding him of Moira MacTaggert's last words. As he reflects on Moira's words, Xavier gives Cyclops his blessing to lead the X-Men and leaves to find his own path.[95] Following his encounter with Wolverine (in the "Original Sin" Arc) Professor Xavier seeks out his step-brother, the unstoppable Juggernaut in an attempt to reform him. After a conversation about the meaning of the word "Juggernaut" and a review of Juggernaut and Xavier's shared history Xavier offers Cain an empty box as a gift. Confused by Xavier's gift Cain attempts to kill the Professor bringing an entire sports bar down over their heads in the process. Later Cain battles the X-Men in his full Juggernaut armor and conquers the planet. Just as everything appears to be under the Juggernaut's control Xavier reappears and informs him that everything that has just taken place except for Juggernaut destroying the bar took place in Cain's mind. A baffled Cain demands to know how Xavier managed to overcome his psychically shielded helmet to which the Professor replies that he decided to visit Cain in his sleep. Professor Xavier then informs him that he now understands Cain as a person and that he will not attempt to get in his way or reform him again. But Xavier also warns Cain that if he gets in the way of the Professor's path to redemption Xavier will stop him permanently.[96] Following his encounter with Cain it has been revealed that Xavier is now searching for Rogue.[97]
After his bruising encounter with Cyclops and Emma Frost, Professor X is forced to revisit the biggest challenge and the biggest failure of his career, Wolverine, when the feral mutant asks for Charles' help in freeing his son from the clutches of the Hellfire Club. As the two search for Daken, Wolverine reveals that when he first joined the X-Men he attempted to assassinate Xavier due to some unknown programming. In response, the Professor broke Logan's mind and rebuilt it so that any and all programming he received was forgotten. Logan also revealed that the real reason Xavier asked him to join the X-Men was that Charles "needed a weapon".[98] Eventually Professor Xavier and Wolverine locate Sebastian Shaw's mansion and attack his minions, just as they are about to enter a bomb explodes from within catching them both off guard. From the wreckage emerges an angry Sebastian who immobilizes Wolverine. Meanwhile, Miss Sinister knocks Daken unconscious and has him taken to the med lab in the mansion's basement. As Shaw prepares to deliver a killing blow to Xavier, Wolverine recovers and stops him telling Xavier to rescue his son. Professor Xavier locates the med lab and after a quick psychic battle with Miss Sinister enters Daken's fractured mind. While in Daken's mind Xavier discovers Romulus's psychic tampering and comments that Daken's mind is even more broken than Wolverine's was. Before Xavier can heal Daken a psychic bomb explodes causing Xavier to become comatose and Daken to wake up. Miss Sinister arrives and attempts to manipulate Daken who reveals that the psychic bomb in his head restored his memories and stabs Miss Sinister in the chest. Meanwhile, Wolverine defeats Shaw and enters the mansion to find Daken standing over an unconscious Xavier preparing to kill him.[99] Wolverine tells Daken that he won't let him hurt Xavier and the two fight. Overcome with guilt over what happened to Daken and Itsu, Wolverine allows himself to be beaten. Just as Daken appears to have won Xavier pulls both of them onto the astral plane revealing that the psychic bomb had little effect on him because his psyche was already shattered. Xavier then explains to Wolverine and Daken that Romulus is solely responsible for Itsu's death and that he lied to Daken about everything because he wanted Wolverine to become his weapon. As the three converse, Daken returns to the physical plane and prevents Shaw from killing Xavier. With the truth revealed Wolverine and Daken decide to kill Romulus. As the two depart Wolverine tells Xavier that he forgives him for all of the dark moments in their history. Wolverine acknowledges that Professor Xavier allowed him to become a hero. Wolverine then tells the Professor that he hopes he will one day be able to forgive him for choosing to kill Romulus.[100]
Professor Xavier recruits Gambit to go with him to Australia to find and help Rogue who is currently staying at the X-Men's old base in the Outback; unaware Danger is using Rogue as a conduit for her revenge against him.[97]
In a prelude to the "Secret Invasion" storyline, Professor X was at the meeting of the Illuminati when it came to the discussion about the Skrulls planning an invasion by taking out Earth's heroes and posing as them. He claims he was unable to distinguish that Black Bolt had been replaced by a Skrull, and his powers were tested quickly by the Black Bolt Skrull. Professor X leaves after learning even he can no longer trust the others, yet appears to have severely restricted the number of people he informs of the forthcoming alien invasion, as the X-Men were not prepared for the Skrulls, at least at first.[101] Xavier has not seen again during the events of Secret Invasion, though his X-Men in San Francisco are successful at repelling the invaders there through the use of the modified Legacy Virus.
During the Dark Reign storyline, Professor X convinces Exodus to disband the Acolytes. A H.A.M.M.E.R. helicopter arrives and from inside appears Norman Osborn, who wants to talk to him.[102] During the Dark Avengers' arrival in San Francisco to enforce martial law and squelch the anti-mutant riots occurring in the city, Xavier appears (back in his wheelchair) in the company of Norman Osborn and publicly denounces Cyclops' actions and urges him to turn himself in. However, this Xavier was revealed to be Mystique who Osborn recruited to impersonate Xavier in public.[103] The real Xavier is shown in prison on Alcatraz and slowly being stripped of his telepathic powers while in psionic contact with Beast, who was arrested earlier for his part in the anti-mutant riots.[104] It was also revealed by Emma Frost that she and Professor X are both Omega Class Telepaths when she manages to detect the real Professor X.[103] Professor X helps Emma Frost enter Sentry's mind. However, as Emma frees him of the Void's influence, a minute sliver of the entity itself remains in her mind. Xavier quickly tells her to remain in her diamond armor state to prevent the Void from gaining access to her psi-powers. Professor X is later seen with Emma Frost where Beast is recuperating.[105]
After the events of Utopia, Xavier has come to live on the risen Asteroid M, rechristened Utopia, along with the rest of the X-Men, X-Club, and mutant refugees and is also allowed to join the Utopia lead council (Cyclops, Storm, Namor, Iceman, Beast, Wolverine and Emma Frost). While he no longer continues to openly question every move that Cyclops makes, he is still concerned about some of his leadership decisions. Xavier had wanted to return to the mainland in order to clear his name, but in the aftermath of Osborn declaring Utopia as a mutant detention area, Cyclops refused to let him leave, stating that it would be a tactical advantage to have him as an ace in the hole in case the need arose. To that end, he has kept Xavier out of the field and instead relied on Emma Frost, Psylocke and the Stepford Cuckoos respectively for their own psionic talents.[106] While attending the funeral of Yuriko Takiguchi, Magneto arrives at Utopia, apparently under peaceful motives. Xavier does not believe it, and attacks Magneto telepathically, causing Cyclops to force him to stand down.[107] He later apologizes to Magneto for acting out of his old passions from their complicated relationship, which Magneto accepts.[108]
During the Second Coming storyline, Professor Xavier is seen on Utopia delivering a eulogy at Nightcrawler's funeral. Like the other X-Men, he is deeply saddened by Kurt's death and anxious about the arrival of Cable and Hope.[109] Xavier is seen using his powers to help his son Legion control his many personalities and battle the Nimrods.[110] At the conclusion of Second Coming Professor X is seen surveying the aftermath of the battle from a helicopter. As Hope descends to the ground and cradles Cable's lifeless arm, Xavier reflects on everything that has transpired and states that, while he feels that Hope has indeed come to save mutant kind and revive his dream, she is still only a young woman and will have a long and difficult journey before she can truly achieve her potential.[111]
During the "Avengers vs. X-Men" storyline, the Phoenix Force is split into five pieces and bonded with Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Colossus and Magik (who become known as the Phoenix Five).[112] Eventually, Cyclops and Frost come to possess the full Phoenix Force, and Professor X is instrumental in confronting them both, and dies in the ensuing battle with Cyclops.[113] The Phoenix Force is subsequently forced to abandon Cyclops as a host by the efforts of both Hope Summers and the Scarlet Witch.[114]
Xavier's body is later stolen by the Red Skull's S-Men while the group also captures Rogue and Scarlet Witch.[115] Xavier's brain is removed and fused to the brain of the Red Skull. After Rogue and Scarlet Witch snapped out of the fight they were in, they find the lobotomized body of Professor X.[116] Red Skull uses the new powers conferred upon him by Professor X's brain to provoke anti-mutant riots. His plans are foiled by the Avengers and the X-Men,[117] and the Skull escapes.[118]
Professor X's spirit is later seen in the Heaven dimension along with Nightcrawler's spirit at the time when Azazel invades Heaven.[119]
During the AXIS storyline, a fragment of Professor X's psyche (which had escaped the scrubbing of his memories) still existed in Red Skull's mind preventing him from unleashing the full potential of Professor X's powers.[120] During a fight with the Stark Sentinels, Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch attempt to cast a spell to invert the axis of Red Skull's brain and bring out the fragment of Professor X to defeat Onslaught. Doctor Strange was targeted and captured by the Sentinels before they could cast the spell.[121] When Magneto arrived with his supervillain allies, Doctor Doom and Scarlet Witch attempted to cast the inversion spell again and Red Onslaught was knocked unconscious and reverted to his Red Skull form. Although they did not know whether Professor X was now in control, the Avengers decided to be cautious and take Red Skull to Stark Tower.[121] It was later revealed that the spell had actually caused all the heroes and villains present to undergo a "moral inversion" rather than simply bringing out Professor X in the Skull, with the result that the Skull and other villains became heroic while the Avengers and X-Men present became villainous.[122] Eventually, the inversion was undone.[123]
After the Skull mounts a telepathic assault that nearly allows him to take control of the Avengers, he is defeated when Deadpool places Magneto's old helmet on Rogue, allowing her to knock out the Skull and take him to Beast.[124] Beast is subsequently able to perform brain surgery on the Skull, extracting the part of Xavier's brain that was grafted onto the villain's own brain without causing any apparent damage to the Skull. Rogers attempts to claim the fragment for himself, but Rogue flies up and incinerates the fragment with the aid of the Human Torch, the two expressing hope that Xavier will rest in peace.[125]
The astral form of Professor Xavier has since been revealed to be imprisoned in the Astral Plane after Shadow King somehow acquired it upon Professor X's death.[126] After what appeared to be years in the Astral Plane, Professor X is able to trick Shadow King into playing him in a 'game' that lures Rogue, Mystique and Fantomex onto the Astral Plane,[127] while turning others into carriers for the Shadow King's 'contagious' psychic essence. With the Shadow King certain of his victory, he fails to realize that Xavier's apparent'surrender' to his game was really just him biding his time until the Shadow King's influence was distracted long enough for him to drop his already-subtly-weakened guard long enough for Xavier to break his bonds, luring in the three aforementioned X-Men as their identities were already fundamentally malleable. With the Shadow King defeated, Xavier is apparently returned to the real world in the body of Fantomex, Fantomex reasoning that nobody really knows who he is as an individual beyond his status as one of the X-Men whereas this act of sacrifice will ensure that he is remembered for a great deed.[128]
Proteus has spent years trapped in a psionic hellscape of the Astral Plane, where The Shadow King reigned surpreme, only to escape last issue. Part of the reason that he could was the escape of Charles Xavier (who now chooses to go by X, since he is now in a younger body after escaping), and now X leads the X-Men directly into an ambush, as Proteus has warped an entire village with his powers, leading to a mind-to-mind battle that leaves X on the receiving end of a psychic beatdown.[129]
Proteus has started his garden and his seeds are planted all over the world. Psylocke is in command and has a plan which mainly consists of Archangel using metal and Mystique morphing into his mother. Once they drain him, Rogue and Bishop convert his energy and release him back to the universe. Whilst this all went down Psylocke and X combined forces to burn out the seeds across the planet. As they are working on it they discover they are not enough to accomplish the task. X mentions the network of psychics the Shadow King was using and that Betsy who is in control should tap into it. She agrees and does so yet unbeknownst to her X was possessed by the Shadow King who violently erupts from X's head.[130]
Following X’s apparent death after the Shadow King exploded from his skull, the psychic villain tears the X-Men apart until X literally pulls himself back together (a feat he later refuses to explain), and he and Psylocke team up to harness the power of all of Earth’s psychics to destroy the Shadow King. As Psylocke says she feels no psychic trace of him anywhere, X implants comforting post-hypnotic psychic suggestions in his allies and then erases their memories (including allowing Warren Worthington to switch between his identities at will). Only Psylocke’s memory is left intact, with X telling her she’ll be the one to “keep him honest” while he embarks on a new mission.[131]
Powers and abilities [ edit ]
Professor X is a mutant who possesses vast telepathic powers, and is among the strongest and most powerful telepaths in the Marvel Universe. He is able to perceive the thoughts of others or project his own thoughts within a radius of approximately 250 miles (400 km). Xavier's telepathy once covered the entire world; although following this, Magneto altered the Earth's electromagnetic field to restrict Xavier's telepathic range.[132] While not on Earth, Xavier's natural telepathic abilities have reached across space to make universal mental contact with multiple alien races.[133] With extreme effort, he can also greatly extend the range of his telepathy. He can learn foreign languages by reading the language centers of the brain of someone adept, and alternately "teach" languages to others in the same manner. Xavier once trained a new group of mutants mentally, subjectively making them experience months of training together, while only hours passed in the real world.[134]
Xavier's vast psionic powers enable him to manipulate the minds of others, warp perceptions to make himself seem invisible, project mental illusions, cause loss of particular memories or total amnesia, and induce pain or temporary mental and/or physical paralysis in others. Within close range, he can manipulate almost any number of minds for such simple feats. However, he can only take full possession of one other mind at a time, and must strictly be within that person's physical presence. He is one of the few telepaths skilled enough to communicate with animals and even share their perceptions.[92] He can also telepathically take away or control people's natural bodily functions and senses, such as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or even mutant powers. A side effect of his telepathy is that he has an eidetic memory. He has displayed telepathic prowess sufficient to confront Ego the Living Planet (while aided by Cadre K)[135] as well as narrowly defeat Exodus.[136] However, he cannot permanently "reprogram" human minds to believe what he might want them to believe even if he wanted to do so, explaining that the mind is an organism that would always recall the steps necessary for it to reach the present and thus'rewrite' itself to its original setting if he tried to change it.[137] However, his initial reprogramming of Wolverine lasted several years, despite Wolverine overcoming the reprogramming much faster than an ordinary human because of his healing factor.[138]
He is able to project from his mind 'bolts' composed of psychic energy, enabling him to stun the mind of another person into unconsciousness, inflict mental trauma, or even cause death. These 'bolts' inflict damage only upon other minds, having a negligible effect on non-mental beings, if any. The manner in which Xavier's powers function indicates that his telepathy is physical in some way, as it can be enhanced by physical means (for example, Cerebro), but can also be disrupted by physical means (for example, Magneto's alteration of the Earth's magnetic field).
Xavier can perceive the distinct mental presence/brain waves of other superhuman mutants within a small radius of himself. To detect mutants to a wider area beyond this radius, he must amplify his powers through Cerebro and subsequently Cerebra, computer devices of his own design which are sensitive to the psychic/physical energies produced by the mind.
Professor X can project his astral form into a psychic dimension known as the astral plane. There, he can use his powers to create objects, control his surroundings, and even control and destroy the astral forms of others. He cannot project this form over long distances.
Uncanny X-Men writer Ed Brubaker has claimed that, after being de-powered by the Scarlet Witch,[139][140] and then re-powered by the M'Kraan Crystal, Charles' telepathy is more powerful than was previously known. However, the extent of this enhancement is unknown.[141]
Charles Xavier is a genius with multiple doctorates. He is a world-renowned geneticist, a leading expert in mutation, possesses considerable knowledge of various life sciences, and is the inventor of Cerebro.[11] He possesses Ph.D.s in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology, and an M.D. in Psychiatry. He is highly talented in devising equipment for utilizing and enhancing psionic powers. He is also a great tactician and strategist, effectively evaluating situations and devising swift responses.
During his travels in Asia, Xavier learned martial arts, acquiring "refined combat skills" according to Magneto. When these skills are coordinated in tandem with his telepathic abilities, Xavier is a dangerous unarmed combatant, capable of sensing the intentions of others and countering them with superhuman efficiency. He also has extensive knowledge of pressure points.[142]
Charles Xavier was also given possession of the Mind Infinity Gem.[143] It allows the user to boost mental power and access the thoughts and dreams of other beings. Backed by the Power Gem, it is possible to access all minds in existence simultaneously. Like all other former Illuminati members, Xavier has sworn to never use the gem and to keep its location hidden.
Xavier Protocols [ edit ]
The Xavier Protocols are a set of doomsday plans created by Professor X. The protocols detail the best way to kill many powerful mutant characters, including the X-Men and Xavier himself, should they become too large of a danger. The Xavier Protocols are first mentioned during the "Onslaught" crossover and first seen in Excalibur #100 in Moira MacTaggert's lab. Charles Xavier compiled a list of the Earth's most powerful mutants and plans on how to defeat them if they become a threat to the world.[144] They are first used after Onslaught grows too powerful. Only parts of the actual protocols are ever shown. In the "Operation: Zero Tolerance" crossover Bastion obtains an encrypted copy of the protocols, intending to use them against the X-Men.[145] However, Cable infiltrates the X-Mansion and secures all encrypted files before Bastion has a chance to decrypt them.[146] Due to the tampering of Bastion and his Sentinels, the X-Mansion computer system Cerebro gains autonomy and seeks to destroy the X-Men by employing its knowledge of the Xavier Protocols. In a virtual environment created by Professor X, Cerebro executes the Xavier Protocols against the X-Men.[147]
Each protocol is activated by the presence of a different combination of X-Men and were written by Xavier himself:[144]
Code 0-0-0 (Charles Xavier) was activated by Moira MacTaggert, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. This file is both an entry on Charles Xavier, as well as an introduction to the Xavier Protocols. It contained a holographic image of Charles Xavier, reading the following message: "Moira, Scott, Jean; if you three are seeing these images, then I have become a mortal threat to my X-Men. In this instance, I must be stopped by any means necessary. Some years ago, I made a study of various forms of possible defense against my own psychic abilities. The image next to me is that of an anti-psionic armor. The wearer should be protected from my talent. When I finish speaking, a blueprint for this armor will be downloaded."
Code 0-2-1 (Wolverine) was activated by Archangel, Cyclops, and Jean Grey.
Code 1-3-9 (Cable) was activated by Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Cannonball.
Other X-Men who have faced their Xavier Protocols are Colossus, Rogue, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Gambit.[147]
Other versions [ edit ]
In other media [ edit ]
Professor X has appeared on a number of animated television shows including the X-Men animated series voiced by Cedric Smith, X-Men: Evolution voiced by David Kaye, and in Wolverine and the X-Men voiced by Jim Ward.
He has appeared in nine live-action X-Men feature films to date. He is played by Patrick Stewart in X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Wolverine, and Logan, and by James McAvoy in X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Apocalypse. Both actors play him at different time-periods in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
He has also appeared in a number of books and video games.
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will visit Miami on Wednesday and try to bestow some grass-roots cred on new Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.
It’s part of the DNC’s “Come Together and Fight Back” tour, which has Sanders and Perez visiting eight states. Former Labor Secretary Perez was elected in February in what was seen as a victory by the party establishment over the more liberal Sanders wing. Sanders favored Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison for the job.
Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton last year in part because he appealed to many working-class voters that Democrats took for granted in Florida and other swing states.
Now, the DNC says, the Perez-Sanders tour “will focus on the needs of working families and building a Democratic Party that fights for the issues that lift families up, not tear them down.”
Barack Obama won Florida twice before Trump carried the state last year. As always, the Sunshine State will be a key battleground for both parties.
Says Florida Democratic Party Chair Stephen Bittel in a statement released by the DNC: “Florida is the largest swing state in the country and the resistance movement against Republicans and their harmful and discriminatory policies is stronger than ever throughout the state. I look forward to welcoming Senator Sanders and Chairman Perez and working with them to turn Florida blue.”
If you go
Where: Knight Center Complex, 400 S.E. 2nd Ave., Miami
When: Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday
Information/RSVP: www.fightbacktour.comWhat I'm finding on the floor is very interesting. I'm witnessing the impact of People Power. Walking around with a bill is how we sign up new supporters. I have a few advantages when I do this. One, I can hand out copies of our legislation, because it's short. Two, I can explain our legislation clearly, because it's so simple. Three, members want to talk to me. Because they have heard from you.
So what you and I are doing, together, is working.
Simplicity. People power. Principles. A movement.
It may feel small now, up against the lobbyists and the crooks. But Members of Congress are noticing. Insurance companies are noticing. The Federal Reserve and the big banks are noticing. And the media is noticing.
And we're growing.
Here is something else that we've done together. We've put together a campaign that is not funded by favor-seeking lobbyists and big shots. It's funded by you and people like you. Last quarter, we raised $500,000 dollars in one day, an average of $50 at a time. We topped every other House campaign.
But since then, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations can spend unlimited sums of money to buy elections. In Massachusetts, the US Chamber of Commerce spent more than $1 million to wipe out the Democrats' filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
We need to stand together against this corporate onslaught. On March 27, we're going to drop another moneybomb on the special interests. I need you to make a pledge to give to my campaign on that date, at http://www.congressmanwithguts.com.
A moneybomb will work because we're a movement. You might only have $5 to give, or $100, but on March 27th, your $100 can become $100,000.
So come to our site, and help keep me on the floor of the House, working for you, instead of calling lobbyists, and begging from them.
http://www.congressmanwithguts.com
Do it.A well-known veteran in Grand Junction received inadequate treatment at the local Department of Veterans Affairs hospital before he died, the agency’s inspector general found.
Vietnam War veteran Rodger Holmes had survived homelessness, recovered from alcohol addiction and volunteered as a Salvation Army van driver.
But he suffered from liver disease, and his health deteriorated rapidly despite numerous visits to the Grand Junction VA medical center in 2014. He died that December.
Three Colorado members of Congress, Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner and Rep. Scott Tipton, requested an investigation of the hospital’s treatment of Holmes.
“We substantiated the allegation that followup care was inadequate and led to further hospitalization,” says the inspector general’s report released this week. “The hepatitis C care provider often did not provide the care or assess the patient thoroughly when seen. The circumstances of discontinuity of care and the lack of a thorough analysis of the patient’s condition may have contributed to his progressive decline and slower recovery.”
The report stopped short of concluding that VA treatment killed Holmes, however, by finding that his final hospital admission was timely.
One contributing factor to Holmes’ treatment was a decision by the hospital’s hepatitis specialist to reduce his hours. The inspector general report recommended that the hospital ensure “contingency plans for specialities” when too few specialists are available.
“If Rodger were with us, he would be thrilled with that change,” said Chris Blumenstein, a social worker who quit the hospital to protest Holmes’ treatment. “When staff is insufficient, there needs to be a plan for that. The clinics can’t just wing it like they did with Rodger.”
Blumenstein challenged the report’s finding that Holmes had recovered when he was sent home in September 2014, saying his friend was a very sick man when he and others launched a Saving Veteran Rodger Holmes campaign that fall.
He plans to appeal on the grounds that the inspector general failed to hold the hospital fully responsible.
The VA’s medical director in Grand Junction, Marc Magill, disputed the finding that Holmes’ treatment was inadequate.
“We believe the review of encounters below supports appropriate clinical care was provided to this veteran,” he responded. “The veteran’s issues were appropriately addressed at each encounter, including medication adjustments, emergency room treatment and IV fluids, and hospitalization when appropriate.”
He concurred, however, with the recommendation to make sure specialty care will be available as needed for veterans in Grand Junction.
Medical center spokesman Paul Sweeney said the hospital has hired a cardiologist and neurologist and is contracting with other specialty care doctors. Hepatitis patients are treated through a telehealth program, he said, but the Western Slope still lacks a liver specialist.
Jenny Davies, one of Holmes’ supporters, recalled helping him start to use e-mail and Facebook in the campaign to save his life.
“He was kind, funny and very humble about the whole thing — while he did want to improve his own health care, his feeling was that he’d already had a nightmare experience and this effort was to improve the care for all the veterans coming after him,” she said. “Little did we know that all that mismanaged care was going to continue and he wouldn’t survive.”
David Olinger: 303-954-1498, dolinger@denverpost.com or @dolingerdpIt seems as though the sad story behind Los Angeles Rams running back Tre Mason is just getting worse and worse. After multiple stories coming out over the past few months, including Mason reportedly going missing, and his mother stating that he was dealing with issues stemming from his time playing football, yet another arrest warrant has been issued for Mason.
According to TMZ Sports, Mason failed to show up for a mandatory court appearance. The site stated the following:
Mason was ticketed for driving with a suspended license on August 13th in Palm Beach, FL and was told he needed to appear before a judge on September 7th. According to court records, the 23-year-old was a no-show … so the judge issued a warrant for his arrest. When he turns himself in, his bond will be set at $2,000.
It’s another piece to add to Mason’s very strange, yet concerning 2016 offseason. We’ll continue to monitor the situation, but as of now, it’s unknown what the future may hold for Mason.As night falls on certain beaches around the world, the waves glow with an eerie blue light: tiny, neon dots that make it look as though stars are washing up on shore.
The surreal scene arises not from magic, but from plankton that have evolved to glow in order to startle or distract fish and other potential predators. Some scientists call it the “burglar alarm effect”: by lighting up, the plankton draw even larger predators that, in turn, eat the animal threatening them. The phosphorescence only occurs when the microorganisms, which exist worldwide, are agitated – such as when the water crashes onto the shore, someone steps on the wet sand or a paddle hits the waves.
The phenomenon’s effects can vary depending on time of year and weather, so sightings cannot always be predicted. Even so, here are three spots where you’re most likely to see the sea shine with its own light.
Maldives
Visitors to the Indian Ocean archipelago say they have had the most luck seeing the blue glow from about July to February, especially during a new moon since the darkness of the sky helps intensify the light. The bioluminescence can occur throughout the country’s 26 atolls, but some of the most spectacular photographs have been captured on the grouping’s eastern islands, including Mudhdhoo, Vaadhoo and Rangali.
Puerto Rico
Mosquito Bay on the island of Vieques has the nickname of Bioluminescent Bay (often called Bio Bay) for the bright plankton that illuminates the water. Unexpectedly, the bay went dark in January 2014. Some scientists theorise that a wind shift pushed many of the microorganisms out of the bay, but the various factors that contribute to the bioluminescence make it difficult to say for sure.
Thankfully, the bay brightened again in June, although at a lower intensity. Though no one knows if the bay will return to full strength, tour operators are still running kayak tours Fridays through Sundays, as scientists work to study the bay the rest of the week in hopes of preserving the magical glow.
San Diego
There is bizarre bioluminescence in this Southern Californian city, too, caused when millions of phytoplankton form a group of algae so big they discolour the nearby water. Surfers see a “red tide” every few years, when these algal blooms give the sea a reddish tint by day and a bright blue phosphorescent glow by night. When the right combination of water temperature, wind, darkness of the sky and other factors come together, surfers and swimmers can glide through the water with a glow illuminating their way. Though some algal bloom can be harmful, the species common to San Diego, Lingulodinium polyedrum, is not considered to be toxic.BILLINGS, Mont. -- A Minnesota man who carved the names of himself and his wife near the 1806 signature of explorer William Clark on a national monument in Montana has agreed to pay $4,400 in restitution and fines, the Bureau of Land Management said Monday.
The fine came after the U.S. attorney's office filed a misdemeanor vandalism charge against Cole Randall of Plymouth, Minn., for the carving in sandstone at Pompey's Pillar that reads "Cole + Shpresa 10/10/2013." The carving also included a heart.
Randall agreed to pay $3,400 in restitution and a $1,000 fine to settle the case.
The BLM said the restoration work in southeastern Montana is expected to occur in May.
"We are hopeful that some of the damage to our historic treasure will be fixed," monument manager Jeff Kitchens said in a statement. "However, the carving by Mr. Randall was so deep and severe that we are limited in what can be done."
Randall's carving - made just a few feet to the left of the "W. Clark" signature made in July 1806 - also impacted other, more faded historical signatures, some of which were over 100 years old, Kitchens said.
Randall has said he made the carving after his wife discovered a lump in her breast during their honeymoon. He said he was inspired during their stop at the monument by a description that said generations of Americans passing by had left their marks on the rocks, and that he decided to leave the couple's name in case anything happened to her.
He had to climb over a railing to make the carving.
Randall apologized in an email to the BLM and media outlets in November.
"I regret my decision and... I humbly apologize to the people of Montana and |
my Watkins @ Tennessee Titans – $6,200 Fanduel – $4,400 DK – This week against the Titans, Robert Woods should draw Adoree Jackson, Cooper Kupp should draw Logan Ryan and LeShaun Sims is likely to line up on Sammy Watkins. It’s clear that Robert Woods is Jared Goff’s favorite target in the passing game, but the fact is that Sean McVay’s offense is designed to distribute the ball to the player with the best matchup and it won’t simply force feed its best player with targets. Watkins is a risky play on a week to week basis, but this is setting up for a big Sammy Watkins game. Logan Ryan and Adoree Jackson have been solid this year, and the Rams may look to avoid them. Gurley has been the focal point of the Rams offense this year, but the Titans have only been giving up 3.5 yards per carry, meaning the Rams may need to get it done through the air rather than the ground this week.
“Big Rigg” DK Wide Receiver Special – Jarvis Landry @ Kansas City Chiefs – $6,300 DK – Steven Nelson has been getting absolutely slayed this year and there’s no reason to think that won’t continue this week facing one of the league’s best slot receivers, Jarvis Landry. No in-depth analysis required, don’t overthink this one, get Landry in your lineup.
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WhatsAppDonald Trump can be overwhelming. His coming administration presents so many potential risks it’s hard to know which to feel anxious about.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m feeling anxious, it helps to make lists. Here, then, in a rough order of dangerousness and/or horribleness, but also grouped by category, are 50 things to be worried about, as the new administration takes shape.
National Security and International Affairs
1. Unprepared, trigger-fingered amateurs in a situation of crisis. Surely the most dangerous aspect of the Trump presidency isn’t what we know – it’s what we don’t know. What happens when the next terrorist attack takes place, or the next belligerent move from Russia, China, or North Korea? With ideologues and amateurs in charge of national security, surely there’s a high risk of war, even nuclear exchange, or at the very least bumbling incompetence that hurts the U.S.
2. Having alienated our former allies in the Muslim world and in the U.S. Muslim community, we’ll have worse intelligence and more radicalized Islamists. The risk of a large-scale terror attack on our soil is an order of magnitude greater now, even more so if Homeland Security is run by inept extremists.
3. With America’s retreat from the world stage, Russia gains power, influence, and money. This, of course, is why Putin’s regime hacked Democrats’ emails and delivered the presidency to Trump. As a side effect, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law retreat globally, and the Baltic republics are no more.
4. With America’s retreat from the world stage, China gains power. In addition to loss of the U.S.’s economic dominance, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law retreat globally.
5. Trump’s erratic behavior alienates our allies, destabilizes the entire world order, and destroys American prestige (as has already begun to happen with his buffoonish phone calls with Taiwan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and the U.K.).
6. NATO and the UN are crippled and the United States’ hard-won economic and political dominance is lost. The world becomes far more dangerous.
7. Trump makes good on his promise to kill terrorists’ families and is brought up on war crimes charges. In response, the US pulls out of the ICC (as Russia recently did), crippling it. Meanwhile, innocent people are targeted and murdered by the United States (as opposed to killed unintentionally by drones, also a tragedy).
8. Climate change accelerates, leading to violence such as the drought/hunger-sparked chaos in Syria, and to further economic destabilization. Global agriculture is severely disrupted, and entire ecosystems wither. Most of the damage takes place ten or twenty years in the future.
9. With ideological extremists running the executive branch, the U.S. engages in fruitless, deadly “cowboy diplomacy,” including numerous military actions in the Middle East and around the world, just like the last time they were in charge (i.e. the Iraq War). Hundreds of thousands of deaths.
10. The United Nations is greatly weakened as the U.S. undermines it and refuses to pay its dues. International rule of law declines to its lowest point since World War I.
11. With no real plan in Syria, Russia’s sphere of influence grows, while thousands of people die as the U.S. “bombs the hell out of ISIS.” The gains Iraq has made against ISIS are lost when the U.S. alienates Iraq and others. ISIS emerges much stronger.
12. Chaos in the Middle East threatens Israel, and so Israel responds with a wave of anti-democratic measures, annexation of parts of the West Bank, reoccupation of Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing of parts of the territory.
13. With the Iran Deal scuttled, Iran resumes development of nuclear weapons. This leads to a massive, deadly military exchange with the United States.
14. The State Department not only stops funding pro-women, pro-education, pro-human rights, and pro-LGBT initiatives around the world, but starts funding the exact opposite, channeling billions of federal dollars to hard-right Christian organizations, including those behind “Kill the Gays” bills around the world.
15. It can’t be ruled out that Russia had further interests in influencing the American election beyond having a weakened America. We don’t know what these are.
Decline of Democracy
16. Civil liberties are trampled like never before. Muslims and Mexicans are the primary targets, but the rule of law decays in America. Perhaps this leads to creeping fascism, or just to a demagogue destroying American democratic institutions.
17. All Americans are spied upon, all the time. Per Gingrich’s recommendation, an Un-American Activities Committee is reformed, targeting political opponents, liberals, etc. Registries of “subversives” are created. Political dissidence is squelched.
18. Registries of Muslims, religious tests barring Muslims from entry, and other anti-Muslim activities erode the fundamental constitutional order of the United States – and alienate our most important allies against radical Islamist terror.
19. Deporting three million people is a human rights nightmare, especially for the many undocumented who are contributing to society – and even more especially DACA enrollees, who were brought here as young children, and who gave over their private information in exchange for deferred action on deportation. Now ICE knows right where they are.
20. The “Trump Effect” leads to widespread violence and discrimination against people of color, Muslims, women, LGBT people, and Jews, among others. Rudeness, boorishness, chauvinism and vulgarity is commonplace and it often spills into physical attacks (as has already taken place).
21. The rise of the “Alt-Right” embodied in Steve Bannon will have unknown effects. At the very least, antisemitism and racism (such as the belief that blacks are mentally inferior to whites) is mainstreamed.
22. National stop-and-frisk and “law and order” policies lead to violent rebellion by people of color, which in turn leads to further militarization of police, crackdowns across the country, and an enormous spike in mass incarceration. Massive private prisons are built. Half of young black men are in the criminal justice system. Many are dead.
23. With the mainstream media no longer granted credentials or access to the White House, the ‘third estate’ is supplanted by partisan, billionaire-funded yellow journalism such as Fox News. The press itself becomes regarded as the enemy, and standards of truth and fact-checking are disregarded.
24. Trump continues to baselessly allege voter fraud, leading to widespread disenfranchisement, particularly of people of color. The GOP seizes on voter suppression as a primary way to maintain power as a minority party. Respect for civil institutions reaches all-time lows.
25. Trump’s outrageous kleptocracy goes unpunished by the GOP-led House of Representatives. In addition to his family siphoning billions of dollars off the US economy, American democracy becomes a banana republic in which kowtowing to the megalomaniac leader is de rigeur for anyone wishing to do business here.
26. Trump continues to insult and assault artists on social media, leading to de facto censorship, as well as further insult to American democratic ideals.
27. All of the foregoing and more lead to a retreat from truth and reasoned discourse more generally, and its replacement by yellow journalism, propaganda, and a conservative relativism that denies science and the basic principles of truthful exposition.
28. Trump’s absurd border policies are an abject failure, leading to further militarization of the border and numerous incidents of deadly violence.
Other Domestic Issues
29. All gun control is banned across America, with a federal law taking precedence over local and state regulations and banning gun restrictions. Handgun violence and mass shootings skyrocket, amplifying calls for “law and order.”
30. The ludicrous “Drill, Baby, Drill” mantra becomes national policy. Devastating spills in the Gulf of Mexico and the former Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Keystone XL and other mega-pipelines are built, and also spill. U.S. loses edge in renewable technologies, enriching China. And of course, climate change accelerates.
31. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act are repealed or unenforced, and pollution reaches levels never before seen in America. The EPA is dismantled from within by a ‘director’ cherrypicked from the fossil fuel industry. Climate change is ignored, and worsens.
32. America is paved: vast open areas are turned into coal mines, forests are clear-cut, and wilderness areas are destroyed across the country. The mass species die-off spikes. Migratory bird species, salmon, and other migrating species quickly go extinct.
33. GMOs, pesticides, and other newly unregulated technologies lead to unexpected devastation in ecosystems across the country.
34. With a former KKK sympathizer heading the Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Act is basically ignored and African Americans have essentially no legal protections whatsoever. The Voting Rights Act is fully repealed and we see a return to Jim Crow era restrictions on voting. Affirmative action is likewise repealed, of course.
35. Within a year, another Supreme Court justice dies, and so Trump will have nominated two arch-conservatives who not only roll back Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage but take a “strict” reading of the Commerce Clause and thus invalidate all civil rights laws, most environmental laws, and the modern American state as we know it.
36. With the passage of the ‘First Amendment Defense Act,’ it becomes legal to discriminate against LGBT people across the country. Taxpayer money flows to right-wing organizations like Catholic Charities. Conversion therapy is offered in public schools.
37. Transgender is declared to be mental illness. Not only are trans people not a protected category for civil rights, but they are no longer a category recognized by the federal government at all. Violence against trans people, already an epidemic, skyrockets.
38. The “re-Christianization” of America leads to billions of dollars flowing to conservative religious organizations and “religious liberty” laws that enable anyone to discriminate or otherwise flout laws for religious reasons. Like under President Reagan, the executive branch is filled with moralizers who use intimidation, censorship, and regulation to shut down “immoral” art and expression.
39. Focusing on the non-issue of “political correctness” and “safe spaces,” public university education is gutted, with numerous closings. Liberal arts education particularly suffers. The American work force is dumber and less adaptable than ever to changing conditions.
40. Under education “reform” officials like Betsy DeVos, federal funds for public education are rerouted to barely-regulated sectarian private schools. Ignorance skyrockets. Federal education curricula promote intelligent design, abstinence-only education, and discredited pseudoscience on sexuality.
Financial Issues
41. With taxes slashed for the.01% richest Americans, the wealth gap balloons to levels unknown since feudalism. American society further stratifies into the extremely wealthy, controlling half of the wealth in the country, and everyone else. The depredations of the 1% look like a socialist paradise.
42. With Obamacare repealed and replaced by private health accounts, millions become uninsured once again, and the health system becomes further stratified, resembling an airplane with a crowded coach class and ever more opulent first class.
43. Union-busters take over (or eliminate) the Department of Labor, destroying the institutions most responsible for the middle class: labor unions. Wages fall across the country. Perhaps the so-called “white working class” wakes up to how it has voted against itself, or perhaps not.
44. With America retreating from the world stage, the dollar loses its status as reference currency, the New York real estate market crashes, and trillions of dollars of wealth are wiped out, causing economic depression.
45. A trade war with China and protectionist policies devastate the US economy, and since the TPP dies, China establishes economic dominance over the entire Pacific Rim. Either a global recession or a US depression quickly follows.
46. Dodd-Frank is repealed, which causes a new round of risk-taking and double-dealing on Wall Street, exacerbating the risk of a repeat of 2008. Wall Street wins big, and when the crash comes, they win big again, as in 2009. Trump’s supposed base loses.
47. The Trump administration meddles with the Fed, causing financial panic.
48. Immigration laws make it impossible for talented technology workers to come to the U.S., leading to a massive brain drain to other countries.
49. Net neutrality is utterly discarded, leading to a monopolization of the Internet by a small handful of companies whose content is available at high speed. The Internet as we know it is replaced by something that looks more like network television.Expected Inflation and the S&P 500 Redux
On Monday I wrote a post with the chart below showing the close correlation since January of this year between the S&P 500 and expected inflation as (approximately) reflected in the spread between the constant maturity 10-year Treasury note and the constant maturity 10-year TIPS. A number of other bloggers noticed the post and the chart. One of those was Matthew Yglesias who coupled my chart with a somewhat similar one posted by Marcus Nunes on his blog on the same day as mine.
One commenter (“Fact Checker”) on Matthew’s blog criticized my chart accusing me of cherry picking.
The second graph is meaningless, as it does not work through time. Here it is from 1990: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=7gX
Again from 2000: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=7gY
From 2005: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=7gZ
From 2009: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=7h0
And in another comment:
The S&P + inflation chart is reproduced below, with longer windows. And as you suggest there is no correlation in any time frame but the very short window cherry picked by MY.
Two points to make about his comment. First, if Fact Checker had read Yglesias’s post carefully, or, better yet, actually read my post (let alone the original paper on which the post was based), he would have realized that my whole point is that the close correlation between expected inflation and stock prices is generally not observed, and that one would expect to observe the correlation only when deflation exceeds the real rate of interest (as it does now when slightly positive expected inflation exceeds the negative real real rate of interest). So the fact that the correlation doesn’t work through time was precisely the point of my post. Second, the graphs to which Fact Checker links use survey data by the University of Michigan of the inflation expectations of households. I do not totally discount such data, but I regard survey estimates of expected inflation as much less reliable than the implicit market expectations of inflation reflected in the TIPS spread.
To show that the correlation I have found is reflected in the data since approximately the beginning of the downturn at the very end of 2007, but not before, here is a graph similar to the one I posted on Monday covering the entire period since 2003 for which I have data on the 10-year TIPS spread.
Before the beginning of 2008, there is plainly no correlation at all between inflation expectations and stock prices. It is only at some point early in 2008 that the correlation begins to be observed, and it has persisted ever since. We will know that we are out of this Little Depression when the correlation vanishes.
AdvertisementsTOWNSEND, Tennessee – Cody Saunders was born in 1992 with failing kidneys and a hole in his heart.
When he died on his 24th birthday, he had endured 66 surgeries and more than 1,700 rounds of dialysis, his parents said. Some days, he hid the pain in upbeat selfies on Facebook. Other days, he shared an excruciating reality, posing in a hospital bed with bandages strapped across his scarred chest.
On his Facebook profile, Cody wrote that he was looking for a girlfriend who will accept “me for me.”
“Y am I ugly,” he posted on Christmas Day 2015.
Cody lived with his parents in an aged motorhome at an East Tennessee campground. When he was well enough, he worked on a farm with his father, feeding cattle, putting up hay, hauling molasses in a dump truck from one barn to another.
On August 2, 2016, Cody died after a heart attack on his way home from dialysis. Too poor to bury or cremate him, Cody’s parents donated their son’s body to an organization called Restore Life USA. The facility sells donated bodies – in whole or by part – to researchers, universities, medical training facilities and others.
“I couldn’t afford nothin’ else,” father Richard explained.
The month after Cody died, Restore Life sold part of the young man’s body: his cervical spine. The transaction required just a few email exchanges and $300, plus shipping.
Whether Restore Life vetted the buyer is unclear. But if workers there had verified their customer’s identity, they would have learned he was a reporter from Reuters. The news agency was seeking to determine how easy it might be to buy human body parts and whether those parts would be useful for medical research. In addition to the spine, Reuters later purchased two human heads from Restore Life, each priced at $300.
The transactions demonstrate the startling ease with which human body parts may be bought and sold in the United States. Neither the sales nor the shipments violated any laws, say lawyers, professors and government officials who follow the issue closely. Although it’s illegal to sell organs used for transplants, it’s perfectly legal in most states to sell body parts that were donated for research or education. Buying wine over the Internet is arguably more tightly controlled, generally requiring at minimum proof of age.
To comply with legal, ethical and safety considerations before the purchases, Reuters consulted with Angela McArthur, who directs the body donation program at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She took immediate custody of the spine and heads for Reuters, inspecting and storing them at the medical school.
McArthur said she was troubled by how easily the body parts were acquired and by the failure of Restore Life to perform proper due diligence.
“It’s like the Wild West,” McArthur said. “Anybody could have ordered these specimens and had them delivered to their home for whatever purpose they want.”
McArthur examined the remains and the documentation included with them to determine how useful the parts would be for medical research. Her review was based on national safety and ethics standards she helped draft for the American Association of Tissue Banks, the American Association of Clinical Anatomists and the University of Minnesota.
She concluded that the medical history Restore Life provided was insufficient, and that the accompanying paperwork was sloppy and inadequate. For those reasons, the specimens did not meet standards for use at her university, she said.
“I haven’t seen anything this egregious before,” McArthur said. “I worry about the future of body donation and public trust in body donation when we have situations like this.”
“RESPECT AND DIGNITY”
Contacted several months after the sales, Restore Life President James Byrd briefly explained his approach to business.
“Organizations like ours are what I consider accountable because, especially us, we have direct contact with the donor family,” he said. “And there’s a certain level of respect and dignity that is involved there because we have that personal relationship with them.”
Byrd subsequently declined to be interviewed or answer written questions. But he emailed a statement in which he criticized Reuters for making the purchases.
“It’s obvious your team at Thomson Reuters has no concern for those that seek help from our organization,” he wrote. “You only wish to hurt those that need help the most.”
Byrd added that Restore Life does good work by supplying body parts to researchers working to cure cancer, dementia and other diseases.
“We help countless people through a wide range of research working with world-renowned researchers,” he wrote.
Whatever good Restore Life hoped to achieve by supplying these body parts, McArthur said, its poor handling of the remains “miserably failed” to serve researchers and the three donors: Cody Saunders and the unidentified man and woman whose heads Byrd sold to Reuters.
McArthur said the relatives of donors, whose intentions are noble during a difficult time, deserve better from the industry.
“People think they are doing the right thing, and they want to fulfill their loved ones’ wishes,” said McArthur, who formerly chaired Minnesota’s body donation commission and serves on the leadership council of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists. “I know they would feel exploited to know that something like this happened.”
Thomas Champney, an anatomy professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, also expressed alarm at the ease of the sales.
“Human body parts should not be bought and sold in the same manner as used refrigerators,” he said.
THE BROKER
Byrd, 50, has been in the body parts business for two decades. An East Tennessee native, the body broker recently was runner-up in a stand-up comedy contest called The Funniest Person in the Tri-Cities, the region surrounding Kingsport, Johnson City and Bristol.
Before opening Restore Life, Byrd directed a nonprofit tissue bank called American Donor Services, then located near Memphis.
For several years, one of American Donor’s chief orthopedic customers was a Texas firm affiliated with a company that distributed bone grafts made in part from human tissue. In 2005, according to sworn testimony in a civil lawsuit, American Donor shifted to a new chief orthopedic customer. The new buyer paid as much as $10,000 per donor, provided a $200,000 line of credit and began managing American Donor’s financial affairs.
Byrd left American Donor Services a short while later, worked briefly for a vascular tissue bank, and then founded Restore Life in 2008. Based in Elizabethton, Tennessee, Restore Life obtains bodies mostly from people in Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina. In return for body donations, Restore Life offers to pick up the deceased, cremate the unused remains for free and return them to the family.
In 2011, Byrd spoke publicly about Restore Life in a presentation to the commissioners in nearby Sullivan County. Officials there had grown frustrated by the increasing cost to taxpayers of cremating the indigent. According to a recording of that meeting, Byrd explained that he could help the county. He also noted that many families who donated to Restore Life did so for financial reasons: All expenses were covered, including cremation.
“We have become more a service for those indigent and pauper cases that can’t afford a funeral,” Byrd told the commissioners. “It’s a perfect fit for situations where families don’t have the funding or sometimes where it’s left to the county for funding.”
Restore Life’s informal arrangement with Sullivan County to take indigent bodies continues today, county officials said. A few times a month, they said, the medical examiner or other officials refer pauper cases to Byrd for possible donation. At the 2011 meeting, County Attorney Dan Street said a formal arrangement with Byrd was unnecessary because officials were merely referring the indigent to him, without any endorsement implied.
“This company is simply going to come and take these bodies,” Street told commissioners. “We’re simply getting out of the way and letting them do what private enterprise does best.”
Since it opened, Restore Life has grown almost every year, according to the latest available tax records filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
Records show that Restore Life’s annual revenue rose from $49,251 in 2009 to $1.1 million in 2016. Income also increased, the records show. In 2009, expenses exceeded revenue by $1,277. Last year, revenues were $187,884 higher than expenses. The tax records show the charity’s net assets were $354,556 on Aug. 31, 2016, the last date for which records are available.
Byrd lives and works in a Tennessee town where the median household income is $30,000. The nonprofit he operates paid him a salary of $113,000 last year, the tax records show.
THE DONOR
Angie Saunders recalls that during her pregnancy, there were no signs of trouble in her prenatal check-ups or ultrasound tests. But when Cody was born on August 2, 1992, he arrived in grave distress.
“Human body parts should not be bought and sold in the same manner as used refrigerators.”
He was moved from the county hospital to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, where he stayed three months. He was diagnosed with VATER Syndrome, a condition involving multiple birth defects.
Besides the hole in his heart and failing kidneys, Cody was born without a rectum. For the first two years of his life, Cody’s parents said, they fed him through a gastrostomy tube.
Cody had so many dietary restrictions – no milk, no chocolate, no tomatoes, no salt – that he settled on dry Fruit Loops as his go-to meal. For dessert, he took a couple of bites from a stick of butter.
Cody needed dialysis three times a week, four hours per session. Given her son’s needs, his mother couldn’t work much. His father told every employer upfront that his child came first.
“Half of his life, if it wasn’t the hospital, it was dialysis,” Richard said. “I went through a lot of jobs.”
When Cody was about 9 years old, his parents said, he received a kidney transplant that transformed him. It freed him from constant dialysis. He learned to swim and had more time for school.
“I wouldn’t say he was normal,” Richard said, “but at least we wasn’t having to be tied down as much.”
The new kidney lasted a little more than five years, and when it failed, Cody was rushed by helicopter to the hospital for a monthlong stay, his parents said. Dialysis began anew.
At 14, Cody won a children’s art contest. The charity, American Kidney Fund, flew him to Washington, D.C. On a contest questionnaire, he listed his favorite things, including gym class, coloring, and riding his bike. His favorite actor was Scooby Doo. His role models: his dad and his mom. When he grew up, Cody wrote, he hoped to work with his father.
Cody left school in the 11th grade. His parents say he was reading at a second-grade level. He worked on farms as often as he could with his dad, and in the winter they sold firewood. He chewed Skoal tobacco and played pool at a local club. To protect his kidneys and heart, he didn’t drink alcohol. But he didn’t always follow doctors’ advice. He could drink a six-pack of Mello Yello soda in a day, his parents said.
In his final years, Cody grew sad and lonely. His parents noticed, and so did his friends on Facebook. He was weary of the pills, the dialysis, the hospitals and the constant reminders of what he could and could not do, his parents said.
“I think not just his body was tired, but his whole mind was done,” his father said.
“He wasn’t scared,” his mother said. “He was ready.”
Cody’s heart stopped on his birthday, August 2, 2016. Not long afterward, Restore Life collected his body.
ORDERING A SPINE
On August 29, 2016, Reuters reporter Brian Grow sent an inquiry via email to Restore Life’s Byrd. At the time, the news agency knew nothing about Cody Saunders.
To contact Byrd, the reporter used his real name and his Thomson Reuters email account.
“We are seeking pricing, including shipping costs, to procure one cervical spine specimen for purposes of a research project involving non-transplant tissue,” the query said. The term “non-transplant tissue” refers to body parts, such as heads and spines, which cannot be transplanted into living humans.
The request from the reporter provided a delivery address in Minneapolis, a few miles from the University of Minnesota’s anatomy lab. The query concluded, “We look forward to hearing from you.”
Byrd responded about an hour later. “Thank you for your email, I do not believe we have worked with you in the past. How did you hear about our organization?”
“Your firm was referred to us by an industry contact,” Grow replied.
Byrd asked if Grow wanted a full cervical spine – the vertebrae and tissue in the neck, just below the skull. When told yes, Byrd replied that the price would be $300, plus $150 shipping. He attached X-rays, which were described as belonging to a 24-year-old male.
Three days later, Grow accepted the offer.
Byrd replied, “Thank you again for allowing us the opportunity to work with you and your organization.” He added three questions. One concerned billing, and one asked to confirm that the spine should be sent frozen, not thawed. Byrd’s third question was whether the specimen would be used for “medical research or medical education.”
In addition to determining how easy it might be to buy body parts, Reuters sought to assess the quality of the specimens and the documentation that came with them. When the reporter responded simply, “It’s being used for medical research,” Byrd closed the deal.
“Thank you again (sic) the opportunity to work with you and your organization,” he wrote.
McArthur said the Reuters purchase was legal and ethical. No law prohibits such sales, she said, and the news agency was conducting legitimate research. Byrd, she added, broke no laws by selling the body parts. Still, she said, the three questions he asked in his email demonstrated the broker’s focus on completing the sale, rather than on seeking more details about the buyer’s intentions.
That process can include a request by the seller for details about how the buyer intends to use the body parts for research or education.
McArthur said brokers like Byrd who accept donations have an ethical responsibility – though not a legal one – to ensure that body parts will be used in a medical setting for an appropriate purpose. Reuters turned over the remains to McArthur for analysis and safekeeping. But another buyer could have done anything with the human spine and heads, she said.
THE SPINE ARRIVES
On September 27, 2016, a FedEx driver delivered a brown cardboard box to the Minneapolis location where Reuters had leased a mailing address. There, Grow received the package and gave it to a courier who specializes in transporting human remains. The courier drove it directly to McArthur at the medical school.
“I didn’t get to hold Cody when he came into the world and I didn’t get to hold him when he went out.”
McArthur immediately noticed problems. She said she found it odd that the outside of the box was not labeled with a customary warning that human remains were inside. McArthur found a pair of one-page documents in the box. One contained the results of a serology test by a reputable company, certifying that the donor was free of infectious disease.
The other page offered a handwritten summary, in layman’s terms, of the donor’s medical history.
“In my experience, I would have expected to see a more robust form,” McArthur said, explaining that most brokers provide precise and detailed medical histories. “It’s very superficial.”
The medical summary contained neither letterhead nor contact phone number, she noted. McArthur also cited inconsistencies in the specimen identification numbers listed at the top and bottom of one of the pages. And she noticed a small discrepancy between the identification numbers listed on the paperwork and a tag attached to a plastic bag covering the spine.
Precise, legible medical history and consistent donor identification systems are critical information for proper medical research, said University of California anatomical services director Brandi Schmitt. The medical history helps the researcher account for variables such as disease or trauma. Clear paperwork and accurate tagging, she said, allow researchers to track specimens in a scientific manner.
To prevent mishaps that could lead to lost or misidentified body parts, Schmitt said, most hospitals and medical schools use modern tracking techniques, including computer-generated metal discs or barcode tags. A label of some sort should have been directly attached to the spine itself, she said, not merely to the packaging.
“Misidentification is a real problem, for sure,” said Schmitt, who coordinates body donation for the University of California’s medical schools statewide. “I don’t think that a handwritten document is your most professional approach. It can lead to human error.”
A week after the spine arrived, Byrd responded to a follow-up email from Grow. Byrd said human heads were available for $300 each. He also offered discounts on knee and foot specimens to free up “some freezer space.” He wrote that his low prices for body parts reflect the company’s “nonprofit public charity” status, adding: “We are looking to just cover our overhead.”
GRIEF AND ASHES
Richard and Angie Saunders said they wanted to bury Cody beside relatives in a nearby cemetery. But Richard, who struggles to read, earns only about $900 a month. Angie, who has long suffered from debilitating anxiety, cannot work or drive. A burial was simply too expensive.
Friends offered to pay for cremation, which typically costs at least $695 in the region. But the Saunders said they felt uneasy about accepting charity from folks they know. So they donated Cody’s body to Restore Life. At the time, Richard said he was grateful for the free cremation the firm promised.
The hardship the family faced is not uncommon among donors, said Martha Thayer, chair of the mortuary science program at Arapahoe Community College in Colorado.
Bereaved families are “vulnerable and are being put in the position of choosing this as an option when they don’t have money,” Thayer said. “The only thing that’s more sad than a person who can’t afford to live is a person who can’t afford to die.”
In Cody’s case, a relative read a donor consent form aloud to his parents before they signed it.
One paragraph says: “I authorize Restore Life USA to obtain all necessary tissue and organs for research and educational purposes. I understand this gift will be used for scientific research, teaching or other conforming purposes and for use in multiple research or educational venues with for profit and/or non-profit organizations that Restore Life USA, in their sole discretion, deems necessary to facilitate the gift.”
The Saunders said they believed this meant that Restore Life would merely remove small skin samples from Cody for medical research, cremate him and then return his ashes. The Restore Life consent form for Cody didn’t disclose that a donated body may be dismembered, as consent forms of most other brokers do.
A few weeks after the donation, a man from Restore Life delivered an urn with Cody’s ashes. Angie can’t recall the man’s name but said he was kind.
“Really nice and understanding,” she said.
The toll Cody’s death has taken on Richard worries Angie. He won’t eat more than a few bites of whatever she cooks and usually refuses to talk about their loss. Richard said Angie isn’t wrong, but he noted he has reduced his smoking, from five packs a day to about three.
On the rusted red-and-white pickup he used to ride in with his son, Richard placed a large sticker on the rear window: “In Loving Memory of Cody Saunders.”
“He was my buddy. He was my best friend,” Richard said. “I keep telling myself I’ll get over it, I’ll get over it.”
In a shoebox inside her motorhome, Angie Saunders keeps four photographs of Cody. In each one, he looks directly into the camera, shades perched over his ballcap. She also keeps a silver urn containing his ashes on the dashboard.
“I didn’t get to hold Cody when he came into the world and I didn’t get to hold him when he went out,” she said. “But he came back to me, so he’s in here with me.”
TWO MORE SPECIMENS
In January, Restore Life shipped a second package to Reuters at the same Minneapolis address. This one contained two human heads: one male, one female. As an upcoming story will detail, Reuters purchased the heads as part of its research into a case in Pennsylvania. There, a human head was found in a wooded area near Pittsburgh almost three years ago.
Again, the specialist courier brought the box to McArthur’s university lab, where she donned protective gear and opened it.
The Styrofoam container inside the cardboard box arrived cracked along two of the outside edges, making it vulnerable to leaks and presenting a potential health risk to anyone handling it, from shippers to researchers, McArthur said.
She also found problems with the paperwork for the male head.
“The area where tissue samples are usually listed – usually with client, sample description, sample ID, type of preservation, and the date and time of preservation – is all blank,” she said.
Likewise, the paperwork for the female head was unprofessionally prepared, she said. McArthur said the documents were so hard to read that she struggled to understand key information any researcher would require, including the person’s medical history.
After the wrapping and paperwork were removed, McArthur found that neither head had an identification tag. A tag is considered critical, McArthur said, to track identity, especially when working with multiple body parts.
McArthur said that she was familiar with stories of casual sales of body parts by brokers, but the sloppiness of this shipment surprised her.
“I don’t believe what I have just seen here should be allowed or should be legal,” McArthur said. “I know that it can be handled in a way that won’t stifle medical education and research. We can do this |
the filesize or not. If no size reduction will be achieved, the input is left as a literal in the output. Otherwise, the section of the input is replaced with an (offset, length) pair where the offset is how many bytes from the start of the input and the length is how many characters to read from that position.[21] Another improvement over LZ77 comes from the elimination of the "next character" and uses just an offset-length pair.
Here is a brief example given the input " these theses" which yields " these(0,6)s" which saves just one byte, but saves considerably more on larger inputs.
Index
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10 11
12
Symbol
t
h
e
s
e
t
h
e
s
e
s
Substituted
t
h
e
s
e
(
0
,
6
)
s
LZSS is still used in many popular archive formats, the best known of which is RAR. It is also sometimes used for network data compression.
LZH
LZH was developed in 1987 and it stands for "Lempel-Ziv Huffman." It is a variant of LZSS that utilizes Huffman coding to compress the pointers, resulting in slightly better compression. However, the improvements gained using Huffman coding are negligible and the compression is not worth the performance hit of using Huffman codes.[19]
LZB
LZB was also developed in 1987 by Timothy Bell et al as a variant of LZSS. Like LZH, LZB also aims to reduce the compressed file size by encoding the LZSS pointers more efficiently. The way it does this is by gradually increasing the size of the pointers as the sliding window grows larger. It can achieve higher compression than LZSS and LZH, but it is still rather slow compared to LZSS due to the extra encoding step for the pointers.[19]
ROLZ
ROLZ stands for "Reduced Offset Lempel-Ziv" and its goal is to improve LZ77 compression by restricting the offset length to reduce the amount of data required to encode the offset-length pair. This derivative of LZ77 was first seen in 1991 in Ross Williams' LZRW4 algorithm. Other implementations include BALZ, QUAD, and RZM. Highly optimized ROLZ can achieve nearly the same compression ratios as LZMA; however, ROLZ suffers from a lack of popularity.
LZP
LZP stands for "Lempel-Ziv + Prediction." It is a special case of ROLZ algorithm where the offset is reduced to 1. There are several variations using different techniques to achieve either faster operation of better compression ratios. LZW4 implements an arithmetic encoder to achieve the best compression ratio at the cost of speed. [22]
LZRW1
Ron Williams created this algorithm in 1991, introducing the concept of a Reduced-Offset Lempel-Ziv compression for the first time. LZRW1 can achieve high compression ratios while remaining very fast and efficient. Ron Williams also created several variants that improve on LZRW1 such asa LZRW1-A, 2, 3, 3-A, and 4.[23]
LZJB
Jeff Bonwick created his Lempel-Ziv Jeff Bonwick algorithm in 1998 for use in the Solaris Z File System (ZFS). It is considered a variant of the LZRW algorithm, specifically the LZRW1 variant which is aimed at maximum compression speed. Since it is used in a file system, speed is especially important to ensure that disk operations are not bottlenecked by the compression algorithm.
LZS
The Lempel-Ziv-Stac algorithm was developed by Stac Electronics in 1994 for use in disk compression software. It is a modification to LZ77 which distinguishes between literal symbols in the output and offset-length pairs, in addition to removing the next encountered symbol. The LZS algorithm is functionally most similar to the LZSS algorithm.[24]
LZX
The LZX algorithm was developed in 1995 by Jonathan Forbes and Tomi Poutanen for the Amiga computer. The X in LZX has no special meaning. Forbes sold the algorithm to Microsoft in 1996 and went to work for them, where it was further improved upon for use in Microsoft's cabinet (.CAB) format. This algorithm is also employed by Microsoft to compress Compressed HTML Help (CHM) files, Windows Imaging Format (WIM) files, and Xbox Live Avatars.[25]
LZO
LZO was developed by Markus Oberhumer in 1996 whose development goal was fast compression and decompression. It allows for adjustable compression levels and requires only 64kB of additional memory for the highest compression level, while decompression only requires the input and output buffers. LZO functions very similarly to the LZSS algorithm but is optimized for speed rather than compression ratio. [26]
LZMA
The Lempel-Ziv Markov chain Algorithm was first published in 1998 with the release of the 7-Zip archiver for use in the.7z file format. It achieves better compression than bzip2, DEFLATE, and other algorithms in most cases. LZMA uses a chain of compression techniques to achieve its output. First, a modified LZ77 algorithm, which operates at a bitwise level rather than the traditional bytewise level, is used to parse the data. Then, the output of the LZ77 algorithm undergoes arithmetic coding. More techniques can be applied depending on the specific LZMA implementation. The result is considerably improved compression ratios over most other LZ variants mainly due to the bitwise method of compression rather than bytewise.[27]
LZMA2
LZMA2 is an incremental improvement to the original LZMA algorithm, first introduced in 2009[28] in an update to the 7-Zip archive software. LZMA2 improves the multithreading capabilities and thus performance of the LZMA algorithm, as well as better handling of incompressible data resulting in slightly better compression.
Statistical Lempel-Ziv
Statistical Lempel-Ziv was a concept created by Dr. Sam Kwong and Yu Fan Ho in 2001. The basic principle it operates on is that a statistical analysis of the data can be combined with an LZ77-variant algorithm to further optimize what codes are stored in the dictionary. [29]
Dictionary Algorithms
LZ78
LZ78 was created by Lempel and Ziv in 1978, hence the abbreviation. Rather than using a sliding window to generate the dictionary, the input data is either preprocessed to generate a dictionary wiith infinite scope of the input, or the dictionary is formed as the file is parsed. LZ78 employs the latter tactic. The dictionary size is usually limited to a few megabytes, or all codes up to a certain numbers of bytes such as 8; this is done to reduce memory requirements. How the algorithm handles the dictionary being full is what sets most LZ78 type algorithms apart.[4]
While parsing the file, the LZ78 algorithm adds each newly encountered character or string of characters to the dictionary. For each synbol in the input, a dictionary entry in the form (dictionary index, unknown symbol) is generated; if a symbol is already in the dictionary then the dictionary will be searched for substrings of the current symbol and the symbols following it. The index of the longest substring match is used for the dictionary index. The data pointed to by the dictionary index is added to the last character of the unknown substring. If the current symbol is unknown, then the dictionary index is set to 0 to indicate that it is a single character entry. The entries form a linked-list type data structure.[19]
An input such as "abbadabbaabaad" would generate the output "(0,a)(0,b)(2,a)(0,d)(1,b)(3,a)(6,d)". You can see how this was derived in the following example:
Input:
a
b
ba
d
ab
baa
baad
Dictionary Index
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Output
NULL
(0,a)
(0,b)
(2,a)
(0,d)
(1,b)
(3,a) (6,d)
LZW
LZW is the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm created in 1984 by Terry Welch. It is the most commonly used derivative of the LZ78 family, despite being heavily patent-encumbered. LZW improves on LZ78 in a similar way to LZSS; it removes redundant characters in the output and makes the output entirely out of pointers. It also includes every character in the dictionary before starting compression, and employs other tricks to improve compression such as encoding the last character of every new phrase as the first character of the next phrase. LZW is commonly found in the Graphics Interchange Format, as well as in the early specificiations of the ZIP format and other specialized applications. LZW is very fast, but achieves poor compression compared to most newer algorithms and some algorithms are both faster and achieve better compression. [19]
LZC
LZC, or Lempel-Ziv Compress is a slight modification to the LZW algorithm used in the UNIX compress utility. The main difference between LZC and LZW is that LZC monitors the compression ratio of the output. Once the ratio crosses a certain threshold, the dictionary is discarded and rebuilt. [19]
LZT
Lempel-Ziv Tischer is a modification of LZC that, when the dictionary is full, deletes the least recently used phrase and replaces it with a new entry. There are some other incremental improvements, but neither LZC nor LZT is commonly used today. [19]
LZMW
Invented in 1984 by Victor Miller and Mark Wegman, the LZMW algorithm is quite similar to LZT in that it employs the least recently used phrase substitution strategy. However, rather than joining together similar entries in the dictionary, LZMW joins together the last two phrases encoded and stores the result as a new entry. As a result, the size of the dictionary can expand quite rapidly and LRUs must be discarded more frequently. LZMW generally achieves better compression than LZT, however it is yet another algorithm that does not see much modern use. [19]
LZAP
LZAP was created in 1988 by James Storer as a modification to the LZMW algorithm. The AP stands for "all prefixes" in that rather than storing a single phrase in the dictionary each iteration, the dictionary stores every permutation. For example, if the last phrase was "last" and the current phrase is "next" the dictionary would store "lastn", "lastne", "lastnex", and "lastnext". [30]
LZWL
LZWL is a modification to the LZW algorithm created in 2006 that works with syllables rather than than single characters. LZWL is designed to work better with certain datasets with many commonly occuring syllables such as XML data. This type of algorithm is usually used with a preprocessor that decomposes the input data into syllables.[31]
LZJ
Matti Jakobsson published the LZJ algorithm in 1985[32] and it is one of the only LZ78 algorithms that deviates from LZW. The algorithm works by storing every unique string in the already processed input up to an arbitrary maximum length in the dictionary and assigning codes to each. When the dictionary is full, all entries that occurred only once are removed.[19]
Non-dictionary Algorithms
PPM
Prediction by Partial Matching is a statistical modeling technique that uses a set of previous symbols in the input to predict what the next symbol will be in order to reduce the entropy of the output data. This is different from a dictionary since PPM makes predictions about what the next symbol will be rather than trying to find the next symbols in the dictionary to code them. PPM is usually combined with an encoder on the back end, such as arithmetic coding or adaptive Huffman coding.[33] PPM or a variant known as PPMd are implemented in many archive formats including 7-Zip and RAR.
bzip2
bzip2 is an open source implementation of the Burrows-Wheeler Transform. Its operating principles are simple, yet they achieve a very good compromise between speed and compression ratio that makes the bzip2 format very popular in UNIX environments. First, a Run-Length Encoder is applied to the data. Next, the Burrows-Wheeler Transform is applied. Then, a move-to-front transform is applied with the intent of creating a large amount of identical symbols forming runs for use in yet another Run-Length Encoder. Finally, the result is Huffman coded and wrapped with a header.[34]
PAQ
PAQ was created by Matt Mahoney in 2002 as an improvement upon older PPM(d) algorithms. The way it does this is by using a revolutionary technique called context mixing. Context mixing is when multiple statistical models (PPM is one example) are intelligently combined to make better predictions of the next symbol than either model by itself. PAQ is one of the most promising algorithms because of its extremely high compression ratio and very active development. Over 20 variants have been created since its inception, with some variants achieving record compression ratios. The biggest drawback of PAQ is its slow speed due to using multiple statistical models to get the best compression ratio. However, since hardware is constantly getting faster, it may be the standard of the future.[35] PAQ is slowly being adopted, and a variant called PAQ8O which brings 64-bit support and major speed improvements can be found in the PeaZip program for Windows. Other PAQ formats are mostly command-line only.Blondes are not dumb after all, researchers have claimed, as they revealed they have a slightly higher IQ than brunettes.
A new study found blondes had an average IQ of 103.2, compared to 102.7 for those with brown hair, 101.2 for those with red hair and 100.5 for those with black hair.
They were slightly more likely to be in the highest category, and slightly less likely to be in the lowest.
Marilyn Monroe perfected the 'dumb blonde' in films like Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
But Jay Zagorsky, professor of economics at Ohio State University, said although it may seem harmless, it has done women no good.
He explained: "Research shows stereotypes often have an impact on hiring, promotions and other social experiences.
"This study provides compelling evidence there should not be any discrimination against blondes based on their intelligence."
• Why having 'blonde' genes will not make you ditzy
Blondes have long been the butt of jokes for their supposed lack of intelligence but the study of 10,878 American baby boomers found this is simply wrong.
Prof Zagorsky said their average IQ was actually slightly higher than those with other hair colours, but that finding was not "statistically significant".
He said: : "I don't think you can say with certainty blondes are smarter than others, but you can definitely say they are not any dumber."
The overall message was white women whose natural colour was blonde had an average IQ within three points of brunettes and those with red or black hair.
The results for men were similar - blonds also had IQs roughly equal to their counterparts with locks of other hues.
The study published in the journal Economics Bulletin used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), whose participants were between 14 and 21 when they were first interviewed.
In 1980, they took the Armed Forces Qualification relied upon by the Pentagon to determine the intelligence of recruits with scores based on maths and English skills.
Five years later all participants were asked for their natural hair colour.
• End of grey hair in sight as scientists find gene responsible
To eliminate any bias in the IQ tests caused by ethnic and racial differences, Prof Zagorsky dropped all African Americans and Hispanics from the analysis.
The study can't say whether there are any genetic relationships between hair colour and intelligence, but Prof Zagorsky did find one fact that could at least partially explain why blondes showed slightly higher intelligence - they grew up in homes with more reading material than the others.
He said: "If blondes have any slight advantage, it may simply be that they were more likely to grow up in homes with more intellectual stimulation."
Prof Zagorsky also noted more women than expected reported they were blonde - 20.7 percent compared to just 17.1 percent of men.
Assuming hair colour is not related to gender and men were less likely to use dye, he said the results suggest about 3.5 percent of women reported they were blonde when they were not.
Prof Zagorsky said he could not say for sure how that may have affected the results, but the major finding was almost certainly still true - blondes could hold their own intellectually with those of any other hair colour.
It backs up research two years ago that revealed hair colour is 'only skin deep' because it depends on just a single letter of the genetic code and is completely unrelated to any other trait, including the shallow claim it signifies lower intelligence.
Scientists at Stanford University, California, found switching just a single 'letter' of DNA would turn brunettes to blondes, and would have no affect on the brain.
It is believed the originator of the 'dumb blonde' was an 18th century French prostitute named Rosalie Duthé whose reputation of being beautiful but stupid inspired a play about her called Les Curiosites de la Foire.
A possible explanation is attractive women have less pressing incentives to cultivate and demonstrate their intellect in order to ensure their future, since attractiveness is an asset.
Other actresses to have made a living out of playing stereotypical 'dumb blondes' include Judy Holliday, Jayne Mansfield and Goldie Hawn.
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox
The notion has spawned counter narratives such as in the 2001 film Legally Blonde in which Reese Witherspoon succeeds at Harvard despite biases against her beauty and blonde hair.
But whether they have more fun is still open to question.
• 12 pictures of outrageous celebrity hair coloursIs Costco Open on Labor Day?
Federal holidays tend to double as huge shopping days. This Monday September 3, Labor Day, is no different. Bearing this in mind, you’d expect that most large retailers would be open for holiday sales. Other retailers, however, will be closing their doors in honor of Labor Day. Costco is one of those companies that closes its doors while other retailers remain open. So you may be wondering, will Costco close its doors for Labor Day?
No. Costco will be closed on Labor Day. Costco gas stations will also not be open on the Labor Day Holiday. Costco is known to value its employees immensely and the company has chosen Labor Day as one of the few days during the year that it will not be open. This won’t stop the company from offering its customers great Labor Day deals on the weekend before Labor Day.
Costco Labor Day Deals
Costco doesn’t have any Labor Day-specific deals but the company’s current sales range from items such as laptops, consumer electronics, furniture, room accessories and men’s and ladies’ wear. If you are shopping at Costco, you’ve got at least two options for saving money. First, you can look for a one time discount through a coupon site like the crazy coupon lady or you can contact the Costco warehouse and see if they have any manager specific or store specific discounts. Second, you can use a cash back Costco credit card and take the 2% rebate offered by Costco. Most in-store purchases count for the 2% cash back.
What is Costco’s Holiday Schedule?
Costco is known to close on holidays that many other companies remain open for. The company chooses to close its doors for seven major holidays in the United States. It is closed for these following holidays in the U.S.:
New Year’s Day
Easter Sunday
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Day
Other holidays like New Year’s Eve, Christmas Eve and days surrounding other majors holidays may have altered hours of operation, depending on your location. If you are wondering about specific hours for a Costco near you, check the company’s website or give them a call.
Costco Hours of Operation
Costco understands that there will always be last minute shoppers around the holidays but the company stands firm on its decision to remain closed on the six major holidays above.
Costco remains open on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, however they are only open on limited hours. They will close at 6 p.m. You are likely to see extended hours during the rest of the holiday shopping season. Normal hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
These hours aren’t always guaranteed though. Make sure to call the store before you plan to visit or before you leave. Stores may close for other reasons. Also, please take note that Costco Business Centers don’t share the same schedule with warehouse stores.
Photo: Flickr: Mike MozartGetty Images
Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis and Patriots owner Robert Kraft are both on a tour of Israel that included a visit to a neurotechnology company that wants to improve the ways doctors diagnose concussions. But they’re not necessarily on the same page.
Bettis said he thinks the NFL has taken advantage of players by not giving them the full information they’re entitled to about the risks of brain injuries. Kraft, however, said the NFL has taken great strides in improving player safety.
“I really think that may be overdone a little bit. I mean, I don’t think the game has ever been safer than it is now,” Kraft told the Associated Press.
That might be true: The NFL has changed in several ways — ranging from limiting contact practices in the offseason to mandating that players with concussions be removed from games to cracking down on helmet-to-helmet hits — that are intended to make football safer than it was in decades past.
Saying the game has never been safer, however, is not the same as saying the game is safe. There are still a lot of players suffering concussions, and still a lot of questions about how healthy those players’ brains will be when they’re Robert Kraft’s age.I am a sixth grade teacher at Camas Prairie Elementary School in Spanaway, Washington. My class would like to send a weather balloon into near space so that we can collect data on temperature, air pressure, and wind speeds on the skies above our school! But we need your help. In order to complete this experiment, we need to purchase a kit from High Altitude Science and three GoPro cameras to record the trip.
This project is very close to my heart. Earlier this year, our school tragically lost a teacher very dear to us. Science was his passion and he wove it into every school day. After his passing, I took on the task of teaching his class, and I cannot think of a better way to honor his memory than to pull off a science project of this size! The best part is that, upon successful retrieval of the "ship", this project can be repeated for years to come!
We are a low-income school and a project of this magnitude is simply not in our budget. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. Your donations will go to me personally and I will then donate to my school district. Any money extra money I raise will go towards more weather balloons and keeping the subscription to the satellite-based tracker going so that other schools in my district can pull this project off with as little expense as possible.
Update:How many young girls can claim they descend from Pocahontas? I didn’t know much about my ancestors or my relationships to them when I was a girl, but I do now and I’m very glad that I took the time to learn more. In fact, this is my primary reason for writing these posts–to share the knowledge of our heritage with future generations.
To summarize one of my earlier posts written nearly two years ago, Pocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.
In 1614, Pocahontas married John Rolfe, a tobacco farmer, and gave birth to Thomas Rolfe in 1615. The marriage between John and Pocahontas was the first recorded interracial marriage in American history. Soon after having Thomas, John and Pocahontas left for England where she became somewhat of a celebrity.
At age 22, Pocahontas, became gravely ill and died. It was Thomas, her only child that began the lineage of Pocahontas descendants, including the First Families of Virginia, First Ladies Edith Wilson and Nancy Reagan, and astronomer Percival Lowell.
Mrs. Wilson, too, was very proud of her heritage. She was the 9th generation descendant of Pocahontas, and her great-great grandmother was also sister to Thomas Jefferson.
I’m wondering if Edith’s large, poor southern family and being the seventh of eleven children born to William Holcombe Bolling and Sarah “Sally” Spiers White was the impetus for her becoming a strong woman and even a secret president (as she cared for her ailing husband, President Woodrow Wilson)?
Below is an excerpt from Edith Bolling Wilson’s book, My Memoirs, published in 1935 by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. I understand used copies of this book may be purchased from the Edith Bolling Wilson Foundation by emailing them at: info@edithbollingwilson.org.
The Genealogy of Edith Bolling Wilson
Edith Bolling Wilson and I through many generations, share the same direct descendants of the famous American Indian, Pocahontas, as shown below:by State Senator John Carey (OH-17th)
Over the past several years, our leaders in Washington — from both political parties — have watched over a major expansion of the size and scope of the federal government.
This has been fueled by excessive regulations, unfunded mandates, multi-billion dollar bailouts and the federalization of banks and other industries.
This growth not only threatens the financial stability of states and local governments and the well-being of future generations of Americans, but violates the very ideals that our country was founded upon.
When our Founding Fathers traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to draft the Constitution, they came from states as far south as Georgia and as far north as New Hampshire, all with different economies, landscapes and traditions.
Therefore, they fought to preserve their states’ individuality and ensure that the laws of the nation protected the right of each state to govern themselves and make local decisions.
The 10th Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.â€
In other words, the federal government only has certain powers which are spelled out in the Constitution.
Unfortunately, many recent actions by the federal government directly contradict this principle.
For instance, President Obama and many Democrats in Congress continue to champion a cap and trade energy policy that could have a devastating effect on Ohio’s economy, while dramatically raising electricity prices for consumers in our region.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is also pushing excessive regulations on states that would not only increase operating costs for existing Ohio business, but could impact our ability to attract new development and create jobs.
In addition, the President is leading an effort to create a public health care option and give the federal government more control over our nation’s health care system.
Concerned about the increasing influence of the federal government and its impact on the future of our state and Ohio taxpayers, my colleagues and I in the Ohio Senate recently approved Senate Concurrent Resolution 13, which urges Congress to respect the 10th Amendment and adhere only to the limited rights and responsibilities delegated by the states to the federal government.
I co-sponsored the resolution.
Similar resolutions have been introduced in other states, including New Hampshire, Arizona, Michigan and Missouri.
However, it is important to note that SCR 13 does not threaten secession; it only seeks to affirm Ohio’s sovereignty at a time when the federal government is rapidly expanding.
Former President and author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, once said: “The states should be left to do whatever they can do as well as the federal government.â€
While all levels of government can serve a valuable purpose in our society, there must be a strong balance between local, state and federal power.
What is good policy for California or New York may not be good for Ohio or West Virginia. For that reason, our leaders in Washington need to honor the 10th Amendment and respect the right of the states to make their own decisions.
Originally published at The Ironton Tribune
John A. Carey is a member of the Ohio Senate and represents the 17th District. He can be reached at Ohio Senate, Statehouse, Columbus, Ohio 43215 or by phone at (614) 466-8156.Here it is. Beets the Third. On wax for the first time ever.
Infinity thanks to my fans for the undying support. I wouldn't be able to keep doing this music thing without you.
>> Listen to Beets 3 on Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2f1uErz
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Notes:
● You can still order copies even if we surpass the target quantity - that's just the threshold at which it's guaranteed to print.
● You'll receive a free digital download with your purchase.
● The record will be pressed when we reach 200 units sold. The turnaround time from the moment the goal is met is ~8 weeks, so be patient please <3
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Share it or buy one as a gift - there's a shipping discount if you order more than one.
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More links:
● Spotify » http://spoti.fi/2f1uErz
● iTunes » http://apple.co/2fTprzRSUSKIND: What's fascinating here, is that if you run the timelines side by side, you see for the first time...that the key thing being sent down by the policymakers, by the White House, is find a link between Saddam and al Qaeda, so that we can essentially link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks, and then march into Iraq with the anger of 9/11 behind us. That was the goal, and was being passed down as the directive.
It's often called "the requirement" inside the CIA, for both agents with their sources and interrogators with their captives: "Here's what we're interested in, here's what we, the duly elected leaders want to hear about. Tell us what you can find." What's fascinating, is in the Senate [Armed Services] report, is finally, clear confirmation that that specific thing was driving many of the activities, and, mind you, the frustration inside of the White House...as frustration built inside of the White House that there was no link that was established, because the CIA told the White House from the very start that there is no Saddam to al Qaeda link - we checked it out, we did it every which way, sorry - the White House simply wouldn't take no for an answer, and it went with another method: torture was the method. "Get me a confession, I don't care how you do it." And that bled all the way through the government, both on the CIA side and the Army side.4 Things Most Preppers go W/O But Really, Really, Really Shouldn't
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1. Merino Wool Clothing
As far as I understand, merino wool is one of, if not the best clothing fabrics on the planet. Far superior to both cotton and "under armor".
It is
soft
does not have the ABILITY to retain odor
dries quickly
keeps you warm even when wet
is the warmest fabric by weight
breathes better than under armor in cool weather
fire resistant
offers high UV protection
It never itches, even when worn for over 1 month straight (yes people where this material for that long, and even then the material refuses to retain odors).
The only real downside is that is aint cheap, at least not for the brand I buy,
But the good news is the clothing lasts and lasts. I've worn one short sleeve shirt some.... ~300 times now? Maybe even more. I've worn is 5-6 days a week for over a year and a half now, still holding up fairly well, and looks the exact same the day I bought it (not counting tears that I personally put in it through typical wear and tear).
Anyway, I'll never willingly buy cotton clothes again over merino wool - money aside. It's just awesome... and if you consider it's benefits, I think it's a valuable survival tool. Cotton for one sucks heat when wet, and takes forever to dry. Under armor and other synthetic clothing stink pretty quickly, and can not be worn for extended periods without resulting rashes.
Neither of which insulate or breathe as well as merino wool.
I think you get the point. Probably best to get it on Amazon or BackCountry.com (BC offers a life time warranty on anything you buy from them, including clothes).
2. Coconut Oil
Coconut Oil is another item that isn't discussed much on this board, without good reason.
Coconut Oil is excellent for you, digesting much like a carbohydrate due to it's high concentration of MCT's (medium chain triglycerides). Translation? Fast fast energy, without the same degree of insulin spiking found in carbohydrate.
Better yet, since it's pure fat (mostly saturated, the good kind), it's packing a lot of calories. Without protein or a host of other vitamins/minerals it is not a complete food, but never the less it's a ton of calories. Even a relatively small jar could sustain the average many for quite a few days, especially if keto-adapted (more in a sec).
But food is only one use of coconut oil. It's other uses are just as, if not more important.
Coconut oil is
anti viral
anti bacterial
anti microbial
anti fungal
completely sterile (no kidding)
The first one is perhaps the most important, as it will "kill" any virus it comes into contact with, in addition to virtually all other pathogens.
Better yet, it is easily absorbed by the skin.
Personally I've used it to rid myself of a case of molloscum contagiosum (viral skin infection/irritation).
I had gone to the doc, and he used liquid nitrogen to burn off the red bumps that result from this virus. It hurt pretty bad due to the location (need I say more?), left minor scars, and took over 2 weeks to heal.
Upon healing, some of it came back. I was pi$$ed!
I applied coconut oil liberally for 3 days. On day 4, all remaining bumps were gone, left behind no scars, and I suffered no pain. Bam, never had a problem again (thank god this virus only lives on the surface of our skin!).
Not to mention I spent 1/10th on coconut oil as I spent on the doc.
So, considering all of this (and yes coconut oil is safe to apply to wounds), I find coconut oil especially useful as a survival item. You can eat it, and it can save your life. It's even useful as a skin moisturizer - as in significantly better than almost anything else you can find. Chapped lips? Look no further, this will heal them faster and better than all chap sticks I have ever come into contact with.
And need I take a step back and discuss other skin infections? Oral infections? Coconut oil can even be used to heal eye infections (although I'd be cautious with the amount I applied to my eyes).
3. Keto-adaption
"Fat adapting" or "keto adapting" is more of a trait than an item. It is what happens when one consumes little or no carbohydrate. It takes 2-4 weeks for most individual, during which some head aches can occur due to a magnesium deficiency in the SAD (standard american diet). Producing ketone bodies consistently (keto adapting) requires more magnesium, hence when you dont have enough, you have minor problems.
In any case, that kind of information is something one can Google or search for on Wikipedia. The point I'm trying to make is that once "keto adapted", you are significantly better suited to burn both dietary and bodily fat - when necessary.
You are less hungry, and when you are hungry, there is no serious pain. No stomach cramps, muscle weakness, head aches, grumpiness, etc.
Once fat adapted, your body lives off of, well, mostly fat. Guess what you have plenty of just sitting around?
Fat.
Where this comes into play is in a survival situation. A person who is keto adapted can easily go 24 hours WITHOUT EATING A DAMN THING, and be completely fine, and function normally.
A person who typically consumed 200-350 grams of carbohydrate per day? (very common in Amerikuhhh). They will be RAVENOUS in far less than 24 hours without a fix and regularly scheduled meal.
I think this is a major factor in SHTF scenarios actually. People get hungry, FAST, because they are accustomed to eating 4-6 times a day.
Personally? (I have been fat adapted for many months). I eat once, maybe twice a day. It is extremely rare I eat 3 times a day, and when I do, that third meal is hardly a "meal" but a small snack of jerky or something.
I regularly go more than 24 hours without eating, and while I "know" I should eat some food, I won't blink an eye till it's convenient. I just don't care, and I'm not keeling over from starvation any time soon.
See how this is playing out in a survival situation? Carbohydrate addicted person is freaking out without constant and readily accessible food. When they don't get it, head aches ensue among other problems.
A fat adapted person? Going to last a hell of a lot longer with minimal or no food. You're body is made up of fat, nearly 100% saturated. I recommend you practice using it =).
For more info on keto adaption, check
4. Pemmican
Pemmican (properly made) is the closest thing one can find to a "perfect food". It is a highly stable mix of rendered animal fat, and completely dried animal protein (very lean meat).
Properly made and stored (dry location, relatively low temp, although "warm" temps won't seriously limit it's life span), it has been reported to last for decades. In fact, the |
Hillary Clinton still may seek the nation’s highest office, her collecting huge speaking fees is seen a bit differently by some in Washington.
Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf acknowledges that in Washington’s heated partisan environment, some insiders in both parties “are going to complain about anything that Secretary Clinton does, and her supporters are going to say everything she does is great.”
But, Sheinkopf said, “This country has a history of putting rich people into public office. If they’re jealous of the amount of money she’s making for speeches, they should become the former first lady and a former senator and a former secretary of state, and see what happens.”
Clinton has said that she will not decide whether to run for president before the end of this year. Until then, she will continue the speaking tour, and promote a new memoir that focuses on her time as a diplomat.
Clinton has said that an assault by militants on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans in 2012 was her greatest regret as secretary of state, and Republicans continue to try to use the episode to portray her as incompetent on foreign policy.
The summer release of her book will give her opportunities to talk about her time as secretary of state in carefully staged appearances, while continuing to give lucrative speeches.
Some of her supporters play down the notion that she could face a backlash from her speaking tour.
“A huge part of politics is staying in touch and being engaged and involved,” said former Ohio governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat who says he would welcome a Clinton presidential bid. “She’s a phenomenon, and seems to be becoming more so.”Not long after his unlikely rise from Czech prisoner to Czech President, Václav Havel paid a visit to Moscow. Until that moment, the leaders of Eastern and Central Europe had arrived at the gates of the Kremlin as little more than nerve-racked supplicants. They came to receive instructions and to pay obeisance to the General Secretary. Now Havel was there to see Mikhail Gorbachev, but, with an air of modest self-confidence, he carried a set of demands and an ironic prop. As Michael Žantovský tells the story in his excellent new biography, Havel asked that the Soviet Union remove its troops from Czech territory, and that the two nations sign a statement declaring them equals. Gorbachev, who had already relinquished his imperial holdings, agreed, at which point Havel produced a peace pipe, telling Gorbachev that it had been given to him by the chief of a Native American tribe during a recent trip to the United States. “Mr. President,” Havel said, “it occurred to me right there and then that I should bring this pipe to Moscow and that the two of us should smoke it together.” Žantovský, who was Havel’s press aide at the time, recalls that Gorbachev “looked at the pipe as if it were a hand grenade.” Then the Soviet leader turned to Havel and stammered, “But I... don’t smoke.”
Last week, a bust of Havel, who died in 2011, was unveiled at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, in Washington, exactly twenty-five years after Czechoslovakia, in concert with the rest of the Eastern and Central European countries under Moscow’s rule, became free. For decades, this had been beyond imagining. The rupture, seemingly so sudden, had many underlying reasons, not least Gorbachev’s realization that the imperial system was bankrupt, immoral, and without a future. But it was led and shaped by a singular politician—a playwright of the absurd who well understood the comic improbabilities of his life. Havel was a child of the Czech bourgeoisie, a lab assistant, a soldier, a stagehand, a dramatist, a moral philosopher, a dissident, a political prisoner for four years, and, finally, a President for fourteen.
Part of the reason that Havel is so celebrated today is that he radiated a homey brand of intellectual glamour—his passion for the Velvet Underground and for the Plastic People of the Universe, his decision to ride around the Castle on a scooter, his late, smoky nights in pubs and theatre basements. Although he trafficked in footlights and stage makeup, there was nothing false about him. His honesty was so extreme, so theatrically self-exposing, that his aides came to dread it. In April of 1990, less than a year after he became President, Havel visited Jerusalem and spoke at the Hebrew University, where he confessed a “long and intimate affinity” with his countryman Franz Kafka, and the near-certainty that his ascent to the Castle had been illusory and undeserved, and was sure to end in his being found out by the authorities:
I am the kind of person who would not be in the least surprised if, in the very middle of my Presidency, I were to be summoned and led off to stand trial before some shadowy tribunal, or taken straight to a quarry.... Nor would I be surprised if I were to suddenly hear the reveille and wake up in my prison cell, and then, with great bemusement, proceed to tell my fellow prisoners everything that had happened to me in the past six months.... The lower I am, the more proper my place seems; and the higher I am, the stronger my suspicion that there has been some mistake.
Like all politicians, Havel made errors of judgment; what was unusual about him was that he openly acknowledged it. He was also assisted, as he knew, by certain advantages. He was working with a relatively prosperous nation and could look for political inspiration to figures from the pre-Communist past, particularly the great democrat Tomáš Masaryk, who was President in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. Nevertheless, Havel must be credited with guiding his country, which had been ruled for so long by Berlin and Moscow, to independence, democracy, and the rule of law. He preferred to seize opportunities rather than to nurse grievances. When Gorbachev asked that there be no retribution against Czech Communists, Havel readily agreed.
Such moral imagination is, globally, in short supply. The day before Havel was honored in Washington, another chapter of cruelty unfolded not far from where he delivered his speech at the Hebrew University. In the Har Nof neighborhood of West Jerusalem, two Palestinians, cousins from East Jerusalem, burst into Kehilat Bnei Torah, a synagogue filled with people at their morning prayers. Yelling “Allahu Akhbar!”—God is great!—the men attacked the worshippers, with cleavers and guns. They seriously injured eight and killed five, including a rabbi named Moshe Twersky, who was a grandson of the late Joseph Soloveitchik, the leader of Modern Orthodoxy; and a young Israeli policeman, a Druze named Zidan Saif. Then came the moral leadership: Mushir al-Masri, a spokesman for Hamas, wrote on his Facebook page, “The new operation is heroic and a natural reaction to Zionist criminality against our people and our holy places. We have the full right to revenge for the blood of our martyrs in all possible means.”
There are many ways to think about such a horror, but one might start with the fact that this was a deliberate massacre of human beings at a moment of devotion—no less an act of bloody-minded fanaticism than the one carried out twenty years ago by an Israeli physician named Baruch Goldstein, when he entered the mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs, in Hebron, and opened fire with a machine gun, killing twenty-nine Muslims at prayer. The Hamas spokesman’s attempt to provide a triumphal “context” is as indecent as the veneration of Goldstein as a martyr by some Israeli fundamentalists.
It is hard to ward off despair when looking at the cast of political players in this drama: the cynical, the racist, the exhausted. For Havel, though, despair was indeed an unforgivable sin. In his first New Year’s address to the Czech people, Havel admitted that the years of oppression had led them to live in a “contaminated moral environment.” Occupation, resentment, terror, and religious hatred have done the same in a place where despair is a constant shadow. Moral leadership, a moral generosity in politics, will not resolve every question—to suppose that it will is a form of sentimentality—but it is an essential part of what is required in Jerusalem and beyond. ♦I want to take this moment and share my thoughts and concerns with you.
Yesterday, my son asked me if I wanted to go to Wal-Mart. A way to get out of the house and to get Al’s mind on something other than his pains. I said sure, why not.
We got to the store and the first place we headed was for the big bin of Hot Wheel Toys. In my mind I was smiling, as I see my son and my brother, both adult men, rummaging through each car package. They were like children in a candy store! Their dreams becoming a slight reality as each of them picked out cars that they wished they owned.
Al picked out five cars, and then he decided that there was no better car than a Johnny Lightening car. I have to admit, I had no idea what this was, but I didn’t let on. I said that this was a great idea! I wish I had thought of this myself for him! He just smiled at me and took his scooter over to the boys toy aisle, and began his search. We did find a few of them, and I learned quickly, that they are not only a better looking car, they are also more than eighty-eight cents. These cars were over five dollars each. When I looked into his eyes, and saw the stars shining through, I could not resist telling him he could choose one. In the end he had acquired six new cars. To me it was worth it just to see he had forgotten his pains and he was smiling.
I picked up a flash drive for myself, and my candy I am addicted to, Wintergreen life savors. It may sound disgusting to you, but I love to have one in my mouth, as I am drinking my morning coffee. It does something to the coffee flavor, sometimes I splurge and will have a total of three of them, with my two cups of morning coffee! Try it, you’ll like it! Isn’t that the old common phrase?
After we all had gotten what we came for, we decided to go to the restaurant inside of Wal-Mart, Subway, and grab some lunch. We all walked in that direction, and when we arrived, we all got in line to place our order, except Al.
Al was stuck in his scooter. His leg was frozen, and his knee would not bend. When I glanced back to see if he was getting out of the scooter, I saw his familiar tears running down his cheeks. I left the others in the ordering line and went over to help him get out of his seat. I couldn’t get him out. I tried bending his leg, no good. I tried scooting him to the opposite side, but the steering column was in his way, and there was no moving his body.
I blanked everyone out in the restaurant. I did not care who was looking, or if anyone was talking about this scene anymore. I had finally reached the point in my life, that I had to overlook my emotional drama about what people think anymore. This was about Al, and I needed to be his hero and get him out of this chair!
After much struggling, which probably was only seconds, but seemed minutes, I stood there and tuned everyone out, including Al, and closed my eyes in prayer. Asking God to use his strength through me, and to place a thought inside of my head, on how to complete this task.
It was like feeling a miracle happening, not seeing, but actually feeling it. I had Al’s leg in my hand, and it had felt like a block of cement until now. His leg became instantly putty. I was able to bend it with little effort, and I was able to place it in the perfect position, where it came right out. God wiped his tears away, and we were able to make our way, the two of us, over to the ordering line. All of us ordered, and our lunch continued as if we had never encountered a problem. Thank you God.
Last evening I suggested to Al that we go give him his shower. It took him quite a few seconds to be able to rise out of the chair, but he did it himself. As we walked through the house, I noticed that his leg was reminding me of a pirate’s leg. It was stiff as a board, not wanting to bend at the knee. He was without trying to, throwing his leg somewhat to the outer side of his body as he walked.
He cried once again. He is so frustrated with his life. I know I sound like a broken record here, but this is what he feels every day. Frustrations, a sense of declining in his body, the pains in his legs.
I cry out so many times to God, to please help him. I remember once a few years back that someone had told me, that I only needed to pray once for what it was I thought I needed. If I prayed more than once, than I was showing God, that I didn’t trust that he heard me, or I was being too impatient, not waiting for his perfect moment. Whether there is truth in this statement or not, I do not know for sure, but I do know, that today, I need God to hear my prayers. Prayers asking for help in Al’s healing, removing his pains and emotional sufferings. I will and do pray many times a day for Al. It feels right to me, and it is comforting to me, as I know the only true miracle worker is God. This alone brings me comfort.
Today, is a brand new day. Al is not up yet, but I have already ask God to help us through this day. I know that this is all due to the Parkinson’s. I have read the writings on this terrible disease. I know the toll it is taking on his body, and what lies ahead for the two of us, but I don’t deal with it well, the final results of this chapter in our lives.
May today God will be looking down on Al, soothing him, comforting him, as not even I can comfort enough. May I see peace in one smile or a twinkle from his eyes. It is Sunday God, a day of rest. Let Al have rest today.
41.238100 -85.853047
AdvertisementsWith leaders Chelsea being toppled by Crystal Palace at Stamford Bridge, is it any surprise that my Team of the Week is dominated by Eagles?
But it wasn't only a good weekend for Palace - Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool kept up the chase at the top, while Arsenal and Manchester City played out an entertaining draw.
At the bottom, Hull joined Palace in earning a big win.
Do you agree with my team of the week or would you go for a different team? Why not pick your very own team of the week from the shortlist selected by BBC Sport journalists and share it with your friends?
Goalkeeper - Wayne Hennessey (Crystal Palace)
Hennessey made 10 saves - the most by a Crystal Palace keeper in a single Premier League game since 2003-04
Three first-half saves by Wayne Hennessey set the tone for an outstanding victory by Crystal Palace over Premier League leaders Chelsea. Prior to the arrival of Sam Allardyce, I've seen Palace capitulate having gone 1-0 down away from home. Not so anymore.
I sat behind the dugout at Stamford Bridge and marvelled at the performance by the manager. I saw Allardyce tell Luka Milivojevic in no uncertain terms not to stick his foot where it didn't belong after a first-half tackle on Eden Hazard. The message being that with 11 men on the pitch Palace had a chance of winning this match and the manager wasn't prepared to countenance any self indulgence from any player who might undermine his plan.
With Milivojevic firmly back in his box it was left to Hennessey to continue performing in the second half as he did in the first, demonstrating superb goalkeeping with confidence and stature. It worked.
Right-back - Fernandinho (Manchester City)
Fernandinho attempted more passes than any other City player against Arsenal (64)
This player is fast becoming a favourite of mine. Fernandinho can play full-back or in midfield and wherever he plays these days, he's as safe as houses.
The difficulty the Brazilian has is he and the team are missing a fit Vincent Kompany. I have no doubt that if Kompany plays, Shkodran Mustafi doesn't win the header that produces the Arsenal equaliser and City go on to win.
What is also clear to me is that City are getting better under Pep Guardiola and whilst there will be changes of personnel next season, Fernandinho will be part of Guardiola's future.
As for Arsenal, I was perplexed by the muted reaction of their players when Theo Walcott equalised. Muted celebration when you equalise in a game like this? Strange.
Centre-back - Mamadou Sakho (Crystal Palace)
Crystal Palace have won all four of their Premier League games in which Mamadou Sakho has played, keeping three clean sheets in the process
You would have got odds of 11-1 for Crystal Palace to win 2-1 away at Stamford Bridge. The bookies are notorious for giving nothing away, which gives you an indication of the enormity of their victory against Chelsea.
The man responsible for thwarting most of the advances from the league leaders, and has done so for Palace since his arrival on loan to the Eagles, has been Mamadou Sakho. He has been immense for Palace who, despite Chelsea's many chances, failed to take advantage of them largely due to the out of form Diego Costa.
Allardyce must be congratulated for getting Sakho to Palace. Since his arrival the Eagles have not stopped soaring. If there was a tackle or header to be made he won it and at no stage did the defender look in the least bit fazed by the pressure posed by the Blues, who have an impeccable home record.
The big question for Allardyce and Palace is can they lure the Frenchman away from Liverpool (who still retain his contract) and get him to play for Palace on a permanent basis? If Liverpool were to get a top four place, and their chances seem to improve with every game, I can see Jurgen Klopp seriously thinking about retaining the services of the player to bolster his squad.
Centre-back - Eric Dier (Tottenham Hotspur)
Dier's goal was his first in the Premier League since December 2015 and first away from home in the competition since August 2014
What a wonderful finish by Eric Dier. He might have been a tad fortunate the way the ball fell for him in the Burnley penalty area, but there was nothing remotely lucky about the way the defender tucked it away.
Dier's progress for club and country has been meteoric, although this season we've seen the occasional glitch here and there, especially in the Champions League games at Wembley.
Nevertheless, the defender strikes me as a solid individual with leadership qualities, the sort of defender a manager can depend upon in a crisis.
His goal against Burnley will do his confidence a power of good. I've not seen Dier smile in an interview for a long time. It's always good to see a player with a smile on his face.
Left-back - Andrew Robertson (Hull City)
Along with scoring Hull's first goal, Robertson attempted more passes than any Hull player on Saturday (49)
His touch with his right foot was measured, but the finish with his left was deadly. If you are going to open your Premier League account this was the way to do it.
I didn't know an awful lot about Robertson before this game although I had seen him play before. However he looks like one of those cultured left-footers who has the ability to manipulate the ball in tight situations.
I can't really commend Robertson's performance without talking about the efforts of Hull's manager Marco Silva. The response he has got from his players has been quite remarkable not to mention their level of performance since he took over from Mike Phelan. This victory over West Ham has given Hull a real chance of survival in the Premier League.
As for West Ham I am delighted that the club have finally released a statement supporting their manager and removing any speculation concerning Slaven Bilic's immediate future at the club.
Bilic has handled the difficult transition of moving to a new stadium brilliantly. He rid the club of the poisonous Dimitri Payet and almost certainly guaranteed the club another season in the best league in the world. I should think West Ham did have 100% in faith in Bilic. Now all they have to do is show it.
Midfield - Dele Alli (Tottenham Hotspur)
Alli has been involved in 11 goals in 11 Premier League games for Tottenham in 2017 so far (8 goals, 3 assists)
With no Harry Kane to look to for inspiration, Spurs gave the mantle to Dele Alli in the attempt to keep the pressure on Chelsea and it's working.
His performance against a Burnley side who have taken big scalps at Turf Moor this season epitomised a young lad who appears fearless on the ball.
The 20-year-old moves gracefully over the ground and his general awareness is outstanding. The way he found Son Heung-min for Tottenham's second goal was quite brilliant. The only feature I don't like about Alli's game is his obsession with making contact with his opponent in the opposition's penalty area and making out he's been impeded.
Penalties should be awarded, not prized out of referees. If he wants to be a Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard, he must eradicate that from his game and promote the things that make people want to pay good money to see him. That way he can be anything he wants to be.
Midfield - Kevin de Bruyne (Manchester City)
De Bruyne has assisted 11 Premier League goals this season, the joint-most in the division along with Gylfi Sigurdsson
That was a world-class ball from Kevin de Bruyne for Leroy Sane to score Manchester City's opening goal against Arsenal. To hit a defence splitting 60-yard, first-time ball takes some doing.
For one hour, De Bruyne was the best player on the park. He hit the post with David Ospina beaten and he was instrumental in City's second goal.
Arsenal, meanwhile, should be concerned. They are fighting for a top-four position and an FA Cup final place and, for some inexplicable reason, their fans seemed to be subdued for long periods against City.
The Arsenal players showed real backbone to bounce back in this game on two occasions. There is still a lot to play for and the team deserves their wholehearted support regardless of what some fans might think of their manager.
Midfield - Philippe Coutinho (Liverpool)
Coutinho has assisted six Premier League goals this season, his second best tally in a campaign
It's great to see Philippe Coutinho back in sparkling form again. Regular readers will know that it has been N'Golo Kante, Eden Hazard and Coutinho who are my three Premier League stars competing for the player of the season award.
Had it not been for his injury sustained earlier in the year, Coutinho might have canvassed enough votes to render himself the clear favourite to receive the prestigious award, as opposed to Kante or Hazard who have both had injury-free seasons.
Coutinho's goal against Everton was simply superb in a Merseyside derby that snapped, crackled and popped. That said, Ronald Koeman's disapproval of the Liverpool bench's insistence that the referee must issue a card every time a foul is committed was justified.
Ross Barkley made two poor challenges and was lucky to stay on the pitch but that was the decision of the referee. Please let us not descend to coaching staff trying to get players sent off. Referees don't tell them how to do their job.
Forward - Demarai Gray (Leicester City)
Gray won more fouls than any other Leicester player against Stoke
If Leicester City's game against Stoke was anything to go by, then the Foxes really should have dispensed with the services of Claudio Ranieri much sooner. Central to this performance was Demarai Gray, who appears to be becoming a driving force behind Leicester revival.
Gray produced two glorious saves from Stoke keeper Lee Grant and was a constant menace throughout the game. The Potters were in similar battling mood as they were against Chelsea two weeks ago, when Phil Bardsley seemed determined to get a second yellow card regardless of the cost to his team or their future fixtures.
Similarly Ryan Shawcross's tackle on Gray reminded me of Manchester United's Nobby Stiles' tackle on Eusebio in the 1968 European Cup final at Wembley. Shawcross seemed so concerned about Gray's pace and willingness to run past players and, like Bardsley, took it upon himself to take the player out regardless of the consequences.
Fortunately, Shawcross only received a yellow card. It should have been a red just for the cheek of it!
Forward - Christian Benteke (Crystal Palace)
Benteke has scored in each of his last three Premier League appearances at Stamford Bridge, each with a different club (Aston Villa, Liverpool and Crystal Palace).
It's been some time since I picked Christian Benteke in my Team of the Week, but it's good to see him back. The former Liverpool striker led the line for Crystal Palace beautifully against Chelsea and gave David Luiz and Gary Cahill a torrid time in every department.
If he wasn't challenging them in the air and putting them under pressure he was heading away corners in his own penalty area. However, it was his partnership with Wilfried Zaha that really excited me. These two boys were responsible for Chelsea's demise with great link play and two sensational goals.
It was Palace's second goal and the chip over an advancing Thibaut Courtois by Benteke that was pure genius. It wasn't just about the skill but the way the striker held his nerve and waited for Courtois to go to ground before he chipped him that was most impressive.
A beaming Allardyce came into the press room and said "I bet you weren't expecting that?" He got that right as well.
Forward - Wilfried Zaha (Crystal Palace)
Zaha has scored six times this season for Palace, as many as in his previous three Premier League seasons combined
What a week Wilfred Zaha has had. He scored a sensational goal for Ivory Coast in midweek and continued in the same vein against Chelsea. It wasn't just Zaha's confidence on the ball that was so impressive - we know he can play - but his overall contribution to the collective team effort was outstanding.
There is a lot of talk about the Ivorian joining Spurs in the summer. An attractive move for the player I must admit. Who wouldn't want to add the possibility of playing Champions League football to his international career?
However, may I suggest that Zaha, having had a disappointing period at Manchester United, takes a pause before considering White Hart Lane. Another season at Crystal Palace under the tutelage of Allardyce may be more beneficial to his overall development.
Spurs have enough Fancy Dans in their line-up without adding to them. Palace, on the other hand, are in desperate need of flair and exuberance in an otherwise functional, but effective outfit. Still, if Zaha insists on a move to the Lane, who could blame him?The Wendy Experience: What had Happened Was Podcast!!!
It has been over a year since I started producing this labor of love: The Wendy Experience: What had Happened Was Podcast!!! (#WHHW podcast) I would love to continue to bring you these quality, intimate conversations, but I am in need of support in order to devote the time, money and equipment that it takes to continue on!
I realize there are so many podcasts to choose from, but I think we've got something special going on over here--at least that's what my listeners tell me! We have already built up the listenership to over 10,000 downloads per episode! Many of you are already familiar with the show and it's format: I basically sit down with someone that I find fascinating and interesting--usually a fellow performing artist--and we chit chat about their journey to becoming a working professional. Such luminaries as: Chad Michaels, Alaska Thunderfuck, Detox Icunt, Delta Work, Pandora Boxx, Tammie Brown, Jujubee, Latrice Royale--the list goes on--have all sat down with Miss Ho in her humble office for a slice of life conversation to answer the question "What Had Happened Wuz?"Massive earthquake hits Japan
11 March 2011
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UPDATE 8: 9.48pm GMT
Nuclear reactors shut down during today's massive earthquake in Japan. Work to stabilise three reactors at Fukushima Daiichi continues into the morning.
The magnitude 8.9 quake hit at 2.46pm, centred offshore of the city of Sendai on the eastern cost of Honshu island. Serious secondary effects followed including a significant tsunami causing widespread destruction. The quake comes just two days after one of magnitude 7.3 also offshore in the same general region.
The Japan Atomic Industry Forum (JAIF) issued a notice saying all reactors in the north-eastern part of Japan had shut down automatically. Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan made a statement on television in which he noted that there had been no early indication of any radioactive release.
Tohoku Electric Power Company's Onogawa 1 suffered a fire in the non-nuclear turbine building which took eight hours to extinguish. A minor fire burned in a non-nuclear service building of Tepco's Fukushima Daini 1 but this was extinguished within two hours.
A tsunami warning was issued for most of the Pacific Ocean, including Taiwan, but reactors there operated normally throughout. There was no tsunami concern for nuclear power plants in South Korea or China.
At Tokyo Electric Power Company's (Tepco's) Fukushima Daini 1, an increase in reactor containment pressure was noted around 6pm, and "assumed to be caused by leakage of reactor coolant in the reactor containment" this led Tepco to notify government of another emergency status. As of 11pm Tepco said it had not detected additional radiation, making a coolant leak seem less likely.
Fukushima Daiichi
A more serious situation emerged at Tepco's nearby Fukushima Daiichi power plant, after the sudden stoppage of emergency diesel generators. These had started as expected upon automatic reactor shutdown, but stopped after one hour leaving units 1, 2 and 3 with no power for important cooling functions.
This led the company to notify the government of an 'emergency' situation, which allows local authorities to take additional precautionary measures. An evacuation was subsequently ordered of over 1000 people living within three kilometres while engineers worked to restore power.
Almost nine hours later, an announcement from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said that three of four mobile power supplies had arrived at Fukushima Daiichi and cables were being set up to supply emergency power. Other power modules were in transit by air.
However, pressure inside the containment of unit 1 had been steadily increasing over the time that emergency core cooling systems had not been active. Tepco reported at 2am that pressure had increased to around 600 kPa, compared to normal operating levels of 400 kPa.
The company then announced a decision to reduce the pressure within containment "for those units that cannot confirm certain levels of water injection" by the safety systems. "We will endeavor to restore the units and continue monitoring the environment of the site periphery."
An International Atomic Energy Agency announcement at 4.20am confirmed the work to restore power using mobile power supplies. It noted the increase in pressure at unit 1 and said that this would be relieved by a controlled venting operation, "which will be filtered to retain radiation within containment."
JAIF issued a statement giving the status of nuclear power reactors in the effected area of Japan. This was based on various information sources, including event reports from Nisa released half an hour after the earthquake struck. Reactor Operator Status Onagawa 1 Tohoku Automatically shutdown Onagawa 2 Tohoku Automatically shutdown Onagawa 3 Tohoku Automatically shutdown Higashidori 1 Tohoku Shut for periodic inspection Fukushima Daiichi 1 Tepco Automatically shutdown Fukushima Daiichi 2 Tepco Automatically shutdown Fukushima Daiichi 3 Tepco Automatically shutdown Fukushima Daiichi 4 Tepco Shut for periodic inspection Fukushima Daiichi 5 Tepco Shut for periodic inspection Fukushima Daiichi 6 Tepco Shut for periodic inspection Fukushima Daini 1 Tepco Automatically shutdown Fukushima Daini 2 Tepco Automatically shutdown Fukushima Daini 3 Tepco Automatically shutdown Fukushima Daini 4 Tepco Automatically shutdown Tokai Japco Automatically shutdown Hamaoka 3 Chubu Shut for periodic inspection Hamaoka 4 Chubu In normal operation Hamaoka 5 Chubu In normal operation Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 1 Tepco In normal operation Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 2 Tepco Not operating Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 3 Tepco Not operating Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 4 Tepco Not operating Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 5 Tepco In normal operation Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 6 Tepco In normal operation Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 7 Tepco In normal operation Tomari 1 Hokkaido In normal operation Tomari 2 Hokkaido In normal operation Tomari 3 Hokkaido In normal operation In addition, the reprocessing plant at Rokkasho is being supplied by emergency diesel power generators.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear NewsCPU caches are very fast and small memories. They are part of the CPU and store a subset of the data present in main memory ( RAM ) that is expected to be used again soon. Their purpose is to reduce the frequency of main memory accesses.
Why can’t we just have one uniform type of memory that’s both big and fast? Cost is one reason, but more fundamentally, since no signal can propagate faster than the speed of light, every possible storage technology can only reach a finite amount of data within a desired access latency.
Cache Operation Overview
Whenever a program requests a memory address the CPU will check its caches. If the location is present, a cache hit occurs. Otherwise, the result is a cache miss and the next level of the memory hierarchy, which could be another CPU cache, is tried.
CPU caches are managed by the CPU directly. They are generally opaque to the operating system and other software. That is, programmers have no direct control over the contents of CPU caches. Unless explicitly prevented, the CPU brings all accessed data into cache. This happens in response to cache misses and will, much more often than not, cause another cache entry to be evicted and replaced.
Types of CPU Caches
Current x86 CPUs generally have three main types of caches: data caches, instruction caches, and translation lookaside buffers (TLBs). Some caches are used for data as well as instructions and are called unified. A processor may have multiple caches of each type, which are organized into numerical levels starting at 1, the smallest and fastest level, based on their size and speed.
In practice, a currently representative x86 cache hierarchy consists of:
Separate level 1 data and instruction caches of 32 to 64 KiB for each core (denoted L1d and L1i).
A unified L2 cache of 256 to 512 KiB for each core.
L2 cache of 256 to 512 KiB for each core. Often a unified L3 cache of 2 to 16 MiB shared between all cores.
L3 cache of 2 to 16 MiB shared between all cores. One or more TLBs per core. They cache virtual-to-physical address associations of memory pages.
Here’s a table with approximate access latencies:
L1d L2 L3 Main Memory Cycles 3–4 10–12 30–70 100–150
My laptop’s AMD E-450 CPU has cores with an L1d cache of 32 KiB and a unified L2 cache of 512 KiB each:
$ lscpu | grep 'L1d\|L2' L1d cache: 32K L2 cache: 512K
Let’s verify those sizes and measure the access latencies. The following C program repeatedly reads elements from an array in random order. To minimize the overhead of picking a random index, the array is first set up as a circular, singly linked list where every element except the last points to a random successor. When compiled with -DBASELINE, only this initialization is done.
#define N 100000000 // 100 million struct elem { struct elem * next ; } array [ SIZE ]; int main () { for ( size_t i = 0 ; i < SIZE - 1 ; ++ i ) array [ i ]. next = & array [ i + 1 ]; array [ SIZE - 1 ]. next = array ; // Fisher-Yates shuffle the array. for ( size_t i = 0 ; i < SIZE - 1 ; ++ i ) { size_t j = i + rand () % ( SIZE - i ); // j is in [i, SIZE). struct elem temp = array [ i ]; // Swap array[i] and array[j]. array [ i ] = array [ j ]; array [ j ] = temp ; } #ifndef BASELINE int64_t dummy = 0 ; struct elem * i = array ; for ( size_t n = 0 ; n < N ; ++ n ) { dummy += ( int64_t ) i ; i = i -> next ; } printf ( "%d
", dummy ); #endif }
The difference in CPU cycles used by this program when complied with and without -DBASELINE is the number of cycles that N memory accesses take. Dividing by N yields the number of cycles one access takes on average.
Here are my results for different array sizes (set at compile time with the SIZE macro):
Up to 32 KiB, each access takes almost exactly 3 cycles. This is the L1d access time. At 32 KiB (the size of the L1d) the time increases to about 3.5 cycles. This is not surprising since the cache is shared with other processes and the operating system, so some of our data gets evicted. The first dramatic increase happens at 64 KiB followed by smaller increases at 128 and 256 KiB. I suspect we are seeing a mixture of L2 and L1d accesses, with less and less L1d hits and an L2 access time of around 25 cycles.
The values from 512 KiB (the size of the L2) to |
1.05% of the births and 0.88% of the population) and 753 births to Blacks and others (3.60% of the births and 3.56% of the population).[67]
The state's Northern Panhandle, and North-Central region feel an affinity for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Also, those in the Eastern Panhandle feel a connection with the Washington, D.C. suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, and southern West Virginians often consider themselves Southerners. Finally, the towns and farms along the mid-Ohio River, which forms most of the state's western border, have an appearance and culture somewhat resembling the Midwest.[68]
Largest cities or towns in West Virginia
[69] Source: Rank Name County Pop.
Charleston
Huntington 1 Charleston Kanawha 50,404
Morgantown
Parkersburg 2 Huntington Cabell 48,807 3 Morgantown Monongalia 31,073 4 Parkersburg Wood 30,981 5 Wheeling Ohio 27,790 6 Weirton Hancock 19,362 7 Fairmont Marion 18,740 8 Martinsburg Berkeley 17,743 9 Beckley Raleigh 17,238 10 Clarksburg Harrison 16,242
Birth data
Note: Births in table do not add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
Live Births by Race/Ethnicity of Mother Race 2013[70] 2014[71] 2015[72] 2016[73] 2017[74] White: 19,823 (95.2%) 19,245 (94.8%) 18,814 (95.0%)...... > Non-Hispanic White 19,542 (93.8%) 18,860 (92.9%) 18,442 (93.1%) 17,460 (91.5%) 16,943 (90.7%) Black 754 (3.6%) 813 (4.0%) 738 (3.7%) 587 (3.1%) 629 (3.4%) Asian 229 (1.1%) 214 (1.0%) 225 (1.1%) 170 (0.9%) 201 (1.1%) American Indian 19 (0.1%) 29 (0.1%) 28 (0.1%) 17 (0.1%) 26 (0.1%) Hispanic (of any race) 219 (1.1%) 350 (1.7%) 331 (1.7%) 378 (2.0%) 390 (2.1%) Total West Virginia 20,825 (100%) 20,301 (100%) 19,805 (100%) 19,079 (100%) 18,675 (100%)
Since 2016, data for births of White Hispanic origin are not collected, but included in one Hispanic group; persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race.
Religion
Religion in West Virginia[75] religion percent Protestant 70% Unaffiliated 18% Catholic 6% Mormon 2% Jewish 1% Muslim 1% Other faith 1% Unanswered 1%
Several surveys have been made in recent years, in 2008 by the American Religion Identity Survey,[76] in 2010 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.[77] The Pew survey results admit to a 6.5% margin of error plus or minus, while the ARIS survey states that "estimates are subject to larger sampling errors in states with small populations." A characteristic of religion in Appalachian communities is the abundance of independent, non-affiliated churches, which "remain unnoted and uncounted in any census of church life in the United States." This sometimes leads to the belief that these communities are "unchurched".[78]
The largest denomination as of 2010 was the United Methodist Church with 136,000 members in 1,200 congregations. The second largest Protestant church was the American Baptist Churches USA with 88,000 members and 381 congregations. The Southern Baptist church had 44,000 members and 232 congregations. The Churches of Christ had 22,000 members and 287 congregations. The Presbyterian Church (USA) had 200 congregations and 20,000 members.[79]
A survey conducted in 2015 by the Pew Research Center found that West Virginia was the 7th most "highly religious" state in the United States.[80]
Economy
Overview
The economy of West Virginia nominally would be the 62nd largest economy globally behind Iraq and ahead of Croatia according to 2009 World Bank projections,[81] and the 64th largest behind Iraq and ahead of Libya according to 2009 International Monetary Fund projections.[82] The state has a projected nominal GSP of $63.34 billion in 2009 according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis report of November 2010, and a real GSP of $55.04 billion. The real GDP growth of the state in 2009 of.7% was the 7th best in the country.[83] West Virginia was only one of ten states in 2009 that grew economically.[84]
While per capita income fell 2.6% nationally in 2009, West Virginia's grew at 1.8%.[85] Through the first half of 2010, exports from West Virginia topped $3 billion, growing 39.5% over the same period from the previous year and ahead of the national average by 15.7%.[85]
Morgantown was ranked by Forbes as the #10 best small city in the nation to conduct business in 2010.[86] The city is also home to West Virginia University, the 95th best public university according to U.S. News & World Report in 2011.[87] The proportion of West Virginia's adult population with a bachelor's degree is the lowest in the U.S. at 17.3%.[88]
The net corporate income tax rate is 6.5% while business costs are 13% below the national average.[89][90]
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that in 2014 West Virginia's economy grew twice as fast as the next fastest growing state East of the Mississippi River, ranking third alongside Wyoming and just behind North Dakota and Texas among the fastest growing states in the United States.[91]
Tourism
Tourism contributed $4.27 billion to the state's economy and employed 44,400 people in 2010, making it one of the state's largest industries.[92] Many tourists, especially in the eastern mountains, are drawn to the region's notable opportunities for outdoor recreation. Canaan Valley is popular for winter sports, Seneca Rocks is one of the premier rock climbing destinations in the eastern U.S., the New River Gorge/Fayetteville area draws rock climbers as well as whitewater rafting enthusiasts, and the Monongahela National Forest is popular with hikers, backpackers, hunters, and anglers.
Seneca Rocks, Pendleton County
In addition to such outdoor recreation opportunities, the state offers a number of historic and cultural attractions. Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is a historic town situated at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. Harpers Ferry was the site of John Brown's 1859 slave revolt and raid on the US Armory and Arsenal. Located at the approximate midpoint of the Appalachian Trail, Harpers Ferry is the base of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
The Greenbrier hotel and resort, originally built in 1778, has long been considered a premier hotel, frequented by numerous world leaders and U.S. presidents over the years.
West Virginia is the site of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which features the Green Bank Telescope. For the 1963 Centennial of the State, it hosted two high school graduate delegates from each of the 50 States at the National Youth Science Camp near Bartow, and has continued this tradition ever since. The main building of Weston State Hospital is the largest hand-cut sandstone building in the western hemisphere, second worldwide only to the Kremlin in Moscow. Tours of the building, which is a National Historic Landmark and part of the National Civil War Trail, are offered seasonally and by appointment year round. West Virginia has numerous popular festivals throughout the year.
WV State Sesquicentennial
Resources
Bituminous coal seam in southwestern West Virginia
One of the major resources in West Virginia's economy is coal. According to the Energy Information Administration, West Virginia is a top coal-producer in the United States, second only to Wyoming. West Virginia is located in the heart of the Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Bed, which stretches from Tennessee north to New York in the middle of Appalachia.
As of 2017, the coal industry accounted for 2 percent of state employment.[93]
Nearly all of the electricity generated in West Virginia is from coal-fired power plants. West Virginia produces a surplus of electricity and leads the Nation in net interstate electricity exports.[94] Farming is also practiced in West Virginia, but on a limited basis because of the mountainous terrain over much of the state.
Green energy
West Virginia has the potential to generate 4,952 GWh/year from 1,883 MW of wind power, using 80 meter high wind turbines, or 8,627 GWh/year from 2,772 MW of 100 meter wind turbines, and 60,000 GWh from 40,000 MW of photovoltaics, including 3,810 MW of rooftop photovoltaics.[95]
West Virginia Wind Generation (GWh, Million kWh) Year Capacity
(MW) Total Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec 2009 330 742 86 86 69 71 31 49 49 32 46 71 68 86 2010 431 939 92 79 85 86 66 69 49 33 66 114 89 112 2011 564 1099 102 113 112 114 49 62 45 68 60 122 124 132 2012 583 1286 201 147 136 130 59 90 85 41 65 98 100 133 2013 583 1387 175 154 174 140 134 78 55 58 52 58 159 152[96] 2014 583 1451 166 146 167 143 100 62 76 64 67 154 157 149 2015 583 1376 158 137 181 137 75 103 65 44 71 122 147 136 2016 686 1432 166 164 134 120 74 92 69 57 67 130 135 222 2017 115 118 168 173 147 141 115 79 86 148 151
Source:[97][98][99][100]
Taxes
West Virginia personal income tax is based on federal adjusted gross income (not taxable income), as modified by specific items in West Virginia law. Citizens are taxed within five income brackets, which range from 3.0 percent to 6.5 percent. The state's consumer sales tax is levied at 6 percent on most products except for non-prepared foods.[101]
West Virginia counties administer and collect property taxes, although property tax rates reflect levies for state government, county governments, county boards of education and municipalities. Counties may also impose a hotel occupancy tax on lodging places not located within the city limits of any municipality that levies such a tax. Municipalities may levy license and gross receipts taxes on businesses located within the city limits and a hotel occupancy tax on lodging places in the city. Although the Department of Tax and Revenue plays a major role in the administration of this tax, less than one-half of 1 percent of the property tax collected goes to state government.
The primary beneficiaries of the property tax are county boards of education. Property taxes are paid to the sheriff of each of the state's 55 counties. Each county and municipality can impose its own rates of property taxation within the limits set by the West Virginia Constitution. The West Virginia legislature sets the rate of tax of county boards of education. This rate is used by all county boards of education statewide. However, the total tax rate for county boards of education may differ from county to county because of excess levies. The Department of Tax and Revenue supervises and otherwise assists counties and municipalities in their work of assessment and tax rate determination. The total tax rate is a combination of the tax levies from four state taxing authorities: state, county, schools and municipal. This total tax rate varies for each of the four classes of property, which consists of personal, real and intangible properties. Property is assessed according to its use, location and value as of July 1. WV Assessments has a free searchable database of West Virginia real estate tax assessments, covering current and past years. All property is reappraised every three years; annual adjustments are made to assessments for property with a change of value. West Virginia does not impose an inheritance tax. Because of the phase-out of the federal estate tax credit, West Virginia's estate tax is not imposed on estates of persons who died on or after January 1, 2005.[102]
Largest private employers
The largest private employers in West Virginia, as of March 2011, were:[103]
Quality of life
Economy
West Virginia Governor Tomblin's proposed 2014–15 budget submitted in January 2014 had an estimated budget gap of $146–$265 million, and halfway through the 2013–14 fiscal year, tax revenues were $82 million short.[104] The West Virginia Legislature in March 2014 passed its budget bill, taking $147 million from the Rainy Day Fund to balance the 2015 budget.[105] Governor Tomblin's Deputy Chief of Staff Jason Pizatella, after the state legislature passed the budget, said that West Virginia is expecting another dismal budget in 2016 and could need $150–170 million to balance the next year's budget.[106]
West Virginia coal exports declined 40% in 2013 – a loss of $2.9 billion and overall total exports declined 26%.[107] West Virginia ranked last in the Gallup Economic Index for the fourth year running. West Virginia's score was −44, or a full 17 points lower than the average of −27 for the other states in the bottom ten.[108] West Virginia ranked 48th in the CNBC "Top States for Business 2013" based on measures of competitiveness such as economy, workforce and cost of living – ranking among the bottom 5 states for the last six years running.[109] West Virginia ranked 49th in the 2014 State New Economy Index, and has ranked in the bottom three states since 1999. West Virginia ranked last or next-to-last in critical indicators such as Workforce Education, Entrepreneurial Activity, High-Tech Jobs, and Scientists and Engineers.[110]
On January 9, 2014 near Charleston, the state capital, a chemical spill occurred that contaminated the water supply of 300,000 people in nine West Virginia counties. According to Bloomberg News, lost wages, revenue, and other economic harm from the chemical spill could top $500 million.[111][needs update] and West Virginia's Marshall University Center for Business and Economic Research estimated that about $61 million was lost by businesses in the first four days alone after the spill.[112]
Employment
In 2012, West Virginia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 3.3%.[113] The state issued a report highlighting the state's GDP as indicating a fast-growing economy, but did not address employment indicators.[114] In 2009–2013, the U.S. real GDP increased 9.6% and total employment increased 3.9%. In West Virginia during the same time period, its real GDP increased about 11%, while total employment decreased by 1,000 jobs from 746,000 to 745,000.
In 2013, West Virginia ranked last in the nation with an employment-to-population ratio of only 50%, compared to the national average of 59%.[115] The state lost 5,600 jobs in its labor force in four critical economic sectors: construction (1,900), manufacturing (1,100), retail (1,800), and education (800), while gaining just 400 in mining and logging.[116] The state's Civilian Labor Force dropped by 15,100.[117]
Wages
Personal income growth in West Virginia during 2013 was only 1.5% – the lowest in the nation – and about half the national average of 2.6%.[118] Overall income growth in West Virginia in the last 30 years has been only 13% (about one-third of the national average of 37%). Wages of the impoverished bottom 1% income earners decreased by 3%, compared to the national average, which increased 19%.[119]
Population
United Van Lines 37th Annual Migration Study showed in 2013 that 60% more people moved out of the Mountain State than moved in.[120] West Virginia's population is expected to decline by more than 19,000 residents by 2030, and West Virginia could lose one of its three seats in the United States House of Representatives.[121] West Virginia is the only state where death rates exceeds birth rates. During 2010–2013, about 21,000 babies per year were born in West Virginia, but over 3 years West Virginia had 3,000 more deaths than births.[122]
Family
Gallup-Healthways annual "State of American Well-Being" rankings reports that 1,261 concerned West Virginians rated themselves as "suffering" in categories such as Quality of Life, Physical Health, and Access to Basic Needs. Overall, West Virginia citizens rated themselves as being more miserable than people in all other states – for 5 years running.[123] In addition, the Gallup Well-Being Index for 2013 ranked Charleston, the state capital, and Huntington last and next-to-last out of 189 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas.[124]
The Annie E. Casey Foundation's National Index of Children's Progress ranked West Virginia 43rd in the nation for all kids, and last for white kids.[125] The Annie E. Casey Foundation's 2013 KIDS COUNT Data Book also ranked West Virginia's education system 47th in the nation for the second straight year.[126] Charleston, West Virginia has the worst divorce rate among 100 cities in the nation. Stephen Smith, the executive director of the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition, said that poor employment prospects are to blame: "The pressure to make a good living puts strain on a marriage, and right now it is infinitely harder to make a living here than it was 40 years ago."[127]
Health
United Health Foundation's "America's Health Rankings" for 2013 found that Americans are making considerable progress in key health measures. West Virginia, however, ranked either last or second-to-last in 20 categories, including cancer, child immunization, diabetes, disabilities, drug deaths, teeth loss, low birth weight, missed work days due to health, prescription drug overdose, preventable hospitalizations, and senior clinical care.[128] Wisconsin Population Health Institute annual "Health Rankings" for 2012 showed West Virginia spends $9,671 per capita on health care annually. El Salvador spends just $467, yet both have the same life expectancy.[129] In 2012, according to the Census Bureau, West Virginia was the only state where death rates exceeds birth rates. During 2010–2013, about 21,000 babies per year were born in West Virginia, but there were 24,000 deaths.[122] In demographics, this is called a "net mortality society."[130]
The National Center for Health Statistics says that national birth rates for teenagers are at historic lows – during 2007–2010, teen birth rates fell 17% nationally;. West Virginia, however, ranked last with a 3% increase in birth rates for teenagers.[131] A study by West Virginia's Marshall University showed that 19% of babies born in the state have evidence of drug or alcohol exposure.[132] This is several times the national rate, where studies show that about 5.9% of pregnant women in the U.S. use illicit drugs, and about 8.5% consume any alcohol.[133] An Institute for Health Policy Research study determined that mortality rates in Appalachia are correlated with coal production. In twenty West Virginia coal counties mining more than 1 million tons of coal per year and having a total population of 850,000, there are about 10,100 deaths per year, with 1,400 of those statistically attributed to deaths from heart, respiratory and kidney disease from living in an Appalachian coal county.[134]
In 2015, McDowell County had the highest rate of drug-induced deaths of any county in the United States, with a rate of 141 deaths per 100,000 people. Four of the five US counties with the highest rates of drug-induced deaths are located in West Virginia (McDowell, Wyoming, Cabell and Raleigh Counties).[135]
Governance
The West Virginia State Capitol
150th Statehood
West Virginia's capital and seat of government is the city of Charleston, located in the southwest area of the state.
Legislative branch
The West Virginia Legislature is bicameral. It consists of the House of Delegates and the Senate, both housed in the West Virginia State Capitol. It is a citizen's legislature, meaning that legislative office is not a full-time occupation, but rather a part-time position. Consequently, the legislators often hold a full-time job in their community of residence.
Typically, the legislature is in session for 60 days between January and early April. The final day of the regular session ends in a bewildering fury of last-minute legislation to meet a constitutionally imposed midnight deadline. During the remainder of the year, monthly interim sessions are held in preparation for the regular session. Legislators also gather periodically for'special' sessions when called by the governor.
The title of Lieutenant Governor is assigned by statute to the Senate President.
Executive branch
The governor, elected every four years on the same day as the U.S. Presidential election, is sworn in during the following January.
Governors of West Virginia can serve two consecutive terms but must sit out a term before serving a third term in office.
The title of Lieutenant Governor is assigned by statute to the Senate President.
Judicial branch
West Virginia is one of nineteen states that do not have a death penalty, and it is the only state in the southeastern United States to have abolished it.
For the purpose of courts of general jurisdiction, the state is divided into 31 judicial circuits. Each circuit is made up of one or more counties. Circuit judges are elected in non-partisan elections to serve eight-year terms.
West Virginia's highest court is the Supreme Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia is the busiest appellate court of its type in the United States. West Virginia is one of 11 states with a single appellate court. The state constitution allows for the creation of an intermediate court of appeals, but the Legislature has never created one. The Supreme Court is made up of five justices, elected in non-partisan elections to 12-year terms.
West Virginia is an alcoholic beverage control state. However, unlike most such states, it does not operate retail outlets, having exited that business in 1990. It retains a monopoly on wholesaling of distilled spirits only.
Politics
Gubernatorial election results[136] Year Democratic Republican 1952 51.5% 454,898 48.5% 427,629 1956 46.1% 377,131 53.9% 440,502 1960 54.0% 446,755 46.0% 380,665 1964 54.9% 433,023 45.1% 355,559 1968 49.1% 365,530 50.9% 378,315 1972 45.3% 350,462 54.7% 423,817 1976 66.2% 495,661 33.8% 253,420 1980 54.2% 401,863 45.4% 337,240 1984 46.7% 346,565 53.3% 394,937 1988 58.9% 382,421 41.1% 267,172 1992 56.0% 368,302 36.6% 240,390 1996 45.8% 287,870 51.6% 324,518 2000 50.1% 324,822 47.2% 305,926 2004 63.5% 472,758 34.0% 253,131 2008 69.8% 492,697 25.7% 181,612 2012 50.5% 335,468 45.6% 303,291 2016 49.1% 350,408 42.3% 301,987
Presidential election results[136] Year Democratic Republican 1952 51.9% 453,578 48.1% 419,970 1956 54.1% 449,297 45.9% 381,534 1960 52.7% 441,786 47.3% 395,995 1964 67.9% 538,087 32.1% 253,953 1968 49.6% 374,091 40.8% 307,555 1972 36.4% 277,435 63.6% 484,964 1976 58.1% 435,914 41.9% 314,760 1980 49.8% 367,462 45.3% 334,206 1984 44.6% 328,125 55.1% 405,483 1988 52.2% 341,016 47.5% 310,065 1992 48.4% 331,001 35.4% 241,974 1996 51.5% 327,812 36.8% 233,946 2000 45.6% 295,497 51.9% 336,475 2004 43.2% 326,541 56.1% 423,778 2008 42.5% 303,857 55.6% 397,466 2012 35.5% 238,269 62.1% 417,655 2016 26.2% 188,794 67.9% 489,371
Treemap of the popular vote by county, 2016 presidential election.
At the state level, West Virginia's politics were largely dominated by the Democratic Party from the Great Depression through the 2000s. This was a legacy of West Virginia's very strong tradition of union membership.[137] Since 2000, state elections have become more competitive at both the state and federal levels. After the 2014 midterm elections, Democrats controlled the governorship, the majority of statewide offices, and one U.S. Senate seat, while Republicans held one U.S. Senate seat, all three of the state's U.S. House seats, and a majority in both houses of the West Virginia Legislature. In the 2016 elections, the Republicans held on to their seats and made gains in the State Senate and gained three statewide offices.[138][139]
Since 2000, West Virginians have supported the Republican candidate in every presidential election. The state is regarded as a "deep red" state at the federal level.[137][140] In the 2012 presidential election Republican Mitt Romney won the state defeating Democrat Barack Obama with 62% of the vote to 35% for Obama. In the 2016 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump won the state with 67.86% of the popular vote, with West Virginia being the second-highest percentage voting for Trump of any state.[136]
Evangelical Christians comprised 52 percent of the state's voters in 2008.[141] A poll in 2005 showed that 53 percent of West Virginia voters are pro-life, the seventh highest in the country.[142] A September 2011 Public Policy Polling survey found that 19% of West Virginia voters thought that same-sex marriage should be legal, while 71% thought it should be illegal and 10% were not sure. A separate question on the same survey found that 43% of West Virginia voters supported the legal recognition of same-sex couples, with 17% supporting same-sex marriage, 26% supporting civil unions but not marriage, 54% favoring no legal recognition and 3% not sure.[143] A poll published regarding another social issue, abortion, in 2014 by Pew Research found that 35% of West Virginians supported legal abortion in "all or most cases" while 58% wanted it to be banned "in all or most cases."[144] In 2008, 58 percent favored troop withdrawal from Iraq while just 32 percent wanted troops to remain.[145] On fiscal policy in 2008, 52 percent said raising taxes on the wealthier individuals would benefit the economy, while 45 percent disagreed.[146]
Transportation
Highways form the backbone of transportation systems in West Virginia, with over 37,300 miles (60,000 km) of public roads in the state.[147] Airports, railroads, and rivers complete the commercial transportation modes for West Virginia. Commercial air travel is facilitated by airports in Charleston, Huntington, Morgantown, Beckley, Lewisburg, Clarksburg, and Parkersburg. All but Charleston and Huntington are subsidized by the US Department of Transportation's Essential Air Service program. The cities of Charleston, Huntington, Beckley, Wheeling, Morgantown, Clarksburg, Parkersburg and Fairmont have bus-based public transit systems.
West Virginia University in Morgantown boasts the PRT (personal rapid transit) system, the state's only single rail public transit system. Developed by Boeing, the WVU School of Engineering and the Department of Transportation, it was a model for low-capacity light transport designed for smaller cities. Recreational transportation opportunities abound in West Virginia, including hiking trails,[148] rail trails,[149] ATV off-road trails,[150] white water rafting rivers,[151] and two tourist railroads, the Cass Scenic Railroad[152] and the Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad.[153]
West Virginia is crossed by six interstate highways. I-64 enters the state near White Sulphur Springs in the mountainous east, and exits for Kentucky in the west, near Huntington. I-77 enters from Virginia in the south, near Bluefield. It runs north past Parkersburg before it crosses into Ohio. I-64 and I-77 between Charleston and Beckley are merged as toll road known as the West Virginia Turnpike, which continues as I-77 alone from Beckley to Princeton. It was constructed beginning in 1952 as a two lane road, but rebuilt beginning in 1974 to interstate standards. Today almost nothing of the original construction remains. I-68's western terminus is in Morgantown. From there it runs east into Maryland. At the I-68 terminus in Morgantown, it meets I-79, which enters from Pennsylvania and runs through the state to its southern terminus in Charleston. I-70 briefly runs through West Virginia, crossing the northern panhandle through Wheeling, while I-470 is a bypass of Wheeling (making Wheeling among the smallest cities with an interstate bypass). I-81 also briefly runs in West Virginia through the Eastern Panhandle where it goes through Martinsburg.
The interstates are supplemented by roads constructed under the Appalachian Corridor system. Four Corridors are complete. Corridor D, carrying US 50, runs from the Ohio River, and I-77, at Parkersburg to I-79 at Clarksburg. Corridor G, carrying US 119, runs from Charleston to the Kentucky border at Williamson. Corridor L, carrying US 19, runs from the Turnpike at Beckley to I-79 near Sutton (and provides a short cut of about 40 miles and bypasses Charleston's urban traffic for traveler heading to and from Florida). Corridor Q, carrying US 460, runs through Mercer County, entering the state from Giles County, Virginia and then reentering Virginia at Tazewell County.
Work continues on the long delayed Corridor H, which will carry US 48 from Weston to the Virginia line near Wardensville. As of 2018, a section from Weston to Kerens just past Elkins, and another section from Wardensville to Davis are complete. Other projects under development are a four-lane upgrade of US 35 from Scott Depot to the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, which is about two-thirds complete; a four lane upgrade of WV 10 from Logan to Man and then of WV 80 from Man to Gilbert, which is about one-half complete; and four lane upgrades to US 52 from Bluefield to Williamson, known as the "King Coal Highway" and from Williamson to Huntington, known as the "Tolsia Highway" which are many years from completion. A project known as the "Coalfields Expressway" is also ongoing, and will carry US 121 from Beckley west across Raleigh, Wyoming, and McDowell counties, entering Virginia near Bishop.
Rail lines in the state used to be more prevalent, but many lines have been discontinued because of increased automobile traffic. Many old tracks have been converted to rail trails for recreational use, although the coal producing areas still have railroads running at near capacity. Amtrak's Cardinal roughly parallels I-64's path through the state. MARC trains serve commuters in the eastern panhandle. In 2006 Norfolk Southern along with the West Virginia and U.S. Government approved a plan to modify many of the rail tunnels in West Virginia, especially in the southern half of the state, to allow for double stacked cars (see inter-modal freight). This is expected to also help bring economic growth to the southern half of the state. An Intermodal Freight Facility is located at Prichard, just south of Huntington.
Because of the mountainous nature of the entire state, West Virginia has several notable tunnels and bridges. The most famous of these is the New River Gorge Bridge, which was at a time the longest steel single-arch bridge in the world with a 3,031-foot (924 m) span. The bridge is also pictured on the West Virginia state quarter. The Fort Steuben Bridge (Weirton-Steubenville Bridge) was at its time of construction one of only three cable-stayed steel girder trusses in the United States. "The Veterans Memorial Bridge was designed to handle traffic from the Fort Steuben Bridge as well as its own traffic load", to quote the Weirton Daily Times newspaper.[154] The 80-year-old Fort Steuben Bridge (Weirton-Steubenville Bridge) was permanently closed on January 8, 2009. The Wheeling Suspension Bridge was the first bridge built across the Ohio River in 1849 and for a time was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It is still the oldest vehicular suspension bridge in the United States still in use.
Important cities and towns
Charleston is West Virginia's most populous city
Huntington
Parkersburg
Clarksburg
State capitals
Originally, the state capital was in Wheeling (1863 to 1870). It was then moved to Charleston, a more central city (1870 to 1875). However it was returned to Wheeling in 1875, until the capitol burned down in 1885. It was moved back to Charleston in 1885, and it has been there since.[155]
Large cities
Towns and small cities
Metropolitan statistical areas
Micropolitan statistical areas
Morgantown
Wheeling
Beckley
Fairmont
Martinsburg
Education
Colleges and universities
Culture
Sports
West Virginia is home to college sports teams from two schools – West Virginia and Marshall – that play in NCAA Division I. West Virginia is also home to several professional minor league baseball, football, soccer, and other sports teams.
Music
Appalachian music
West Virginia's folk heritage is a part of the Appalachian folk music tradition, and includes styles of fiddling, ballad singing, and other styles that draw on Scots-Irish music. Camp Washington-Carver, a Mountain Cultural Arts Center located at Clifftop in Fayette County, hosts an annual Appalachian String Band Festival.[159] The Capitol Complex in Charleston hosts The Vandalia Gathering, where traditional Appalachian musicians compete in contests and play in impromptu jam sessions and evening concerts over the course of the weekend.[160] The Augusta Heritage Center sponsored by Davis & Elkins College in Elkins in Randolph County produces the annual Augusta Heritage Festival, which includes intensive week-long workshops in the summer that help preserve Appalachian heritage and traditions.[161]
Classical music
The West Virginia Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1939, as the Charleston Civic Orchestra, before becoming the Charleston Symphony Orchestra in 1943. The first conductor was William R. Wiant, followed by the conductor Antonio Modarelli, who was written about in the November 7, 1949 Time Magazine for his composition of the River Saga, a six-section program piece about the Kanawha River according to the Charleston Gazette's November 6, 1999 photo essay, "Snapshots of the 20th Century".[162] Before coming to Charleston, Modarelli had conducted the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, according to the orchestra's website.[163]
The Pulitzer Prize-winning 20th-century composer George Crumb was born in Charleston and earned his bachelor's degree there before moving outside the state. There had also been a series of operatic style concerts performed in Wheeling during mid-century as well.
Musical innovation
The West Virginia Cultural Center in Charleston[164] is home to the West Virginia Division of Culture and History,[165] which helps underwrite and coordinate a large number of musical activities. The center is also home to Mountain Stage, an internationally broadcast live-performance music radio program established in 1983 that is carried by many affiliates of National Public Radio.[ |
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